Free Frank Warner

Democrats finally admit their Social Security 'assets' hoax

Or, as Investors Business Daily puts it, "Obama Exposes Social Security Big Lie."

The Democrats have been telling us for decades there's no need to do anything about Social Security's finances because there's enough money in its Trust Fund to last decades into the future.

In fact, there is no money in the Social Security Trust Fund. There are government IOUs reminding Congress it spent $2.6 trillion that are supposed to be in that fund on all sorts of things other than Social Security.

IOUs equal nothing. With only those IOUs in the Trust Fund, to come up with that $2.6 trillion, Congress has to do the same thing it would have to do if it had nothing in the Trust Fund. It has to raise taxes or borrow more. In other words, those IOUs are no cash, no asset at all -- worthless.

President Obama made that clear two days ago in the debate over raising the national debt ceiling by Aug. 3. He told CBS News:

"I cannot guarantee that those checks [for Social Security, veterans and the disabled] go out on Aug. 3 if we haven’t resolved this issue, because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it.”

In other words, folks, on Social Security the case is closed, the jig is up. If there were something real in the Social Security Trust Fund, if the all the money workers sent in Social Security taxes each year were reserved only for Social Security, there'd be $2.6 trillion in reserve and sending out grandma's checks next month would be no problem.

All savings spent. Because of the Great Recession and reckless government planning, Social Security as of last year no longer is able to cover retirees' benefits with the money that workers pay in taxes. That pay-as-you-go racket also has been exposed.

We were supposed to be saving Social Security's $2.6 trillion for a rainy day, to avoid problems like unrelated national debt. But like every other fund Congress has had its hands on for the past 40 years, it's gone.

Thanks for finally (and accidentally) making that clear, Mr. President.

Punishing fraud. Two months ago, the Social Security trustees issued a report assuring us the Trust Fund had that $2.6 trillion in "assets." In fact, the trustees said the assets had grown by $69 billion in 2010. The report was a fraud.

Now that the fraud has been exposed, it's time for a law punishing Social Security trustees, members of Congress and presidents with life in prison if they tell the public the Social Security Trust Fund has assets when they're referring to money already spent.

Frank Warner

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See also: Dow was at 10,596 when President Bush proposed partial privatization of Social Security on Feb. 2, 2005. On July 15, 2011, Dow was at 12,479.

Even under partial privatization, workers would not have to direct their Social Security payments to the stock market. The payments could go to bonds or money market certificates. But it would be something. As things are, no matter how many years he's worked, each worker has no money, no stock, no bond, nothing in his Social Security account.

Obama wiretaps far outpace Bush wiretaps

It’s hard to say why government wiretaps were up 34 percent last year, and why there were more federal and state wiretaps -- 3,194 -- last year than in any year in modern memory. It’s hard to say why federal wiretaps have skyrocketed since the Bush Administration.

According to the Report of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, wiretaps are usually for drug investigations. Without knowing the details, it’s hard to say whether the wiretap warrants were warranted. (It’s also hard to fathom that each wiretap costs $50,000 to $63,000 to carry out.)

But the most amazing mystery is how the same people who vehemently protested federal wiretaps when they were carried out by the Bush Adminstration are suddenly quiet when they’re carried out at a 60 to 100 percent higher rate by the Obama Adminstration.

Frank Warner

Atlantis’ last flight: For NASA, the beginning of the end

Today’s launch of the space shuttle Atlantis begins the last flight of the modern American space program. Its scheduled return on July 20, 42 years after Americans first landed on the moon, will be a sad day, an ending.

The optimists are assuring us that ending the government-sponsored U.S. space program opens the door to privately sponsored space exploration, in which entrepreneurs will have market incentives to find more efficient ways to take humans far deeper into space.

The pessimists are not so sure. It is possible that government will kill private space travel, too. The most likely scenarios: Someone will complain that Private Launcher X’s rockets produce scary pollution, or Private Launcher Y will have one fatal accident, and the government will over-react. Result: Americans grounded forever.

I hope private companies will pick up the fallen baton. I hope they’ll find breakthroughs in energy and biology to thrust new manned (and womenned) spaceships to Mars and beyond. I pray the government that abandoned the new frontier doesn’t block others who are boldly determined to go.

Frank Warner

News! Noam Chomsky bites Hugo Chavez

Would-be Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez even helped sell Noam Chomsky's seldom-read book, "Hegemony or Survival." But now tyrant-lover Chomsky is turning on his old friend.

Speaking to the Observer last week, Chomsky has accused the socialist leader of amassing too much power and of making an "assault" on Venezuela's democracy.

"Concentration of executive power, unless it's very temporary and for specific circumstances, such as fighting world war two, is an assault on democracy. You can debate whether [Venezuela's] circumstances require it: internal circumstances and the external threat of attack, that's a legitimate debate. But my own judgment in that debate is that it does not."

Chomsky, a linguistics professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, spoke on the eve of publishing an open letter that accuses Venezuela's authorities of "cruelty" in the case of a jailed judge.

Revulsion threshold. There must be much more to this story. For decades, Chomsky has defended Pol Pot for murdering nearly 2 million Cambodians in the mid-1970s, so his threshold for revulsion is unusually high. Was it something Chavez said? Or does Chomsky have his eye on a healthier dictator for poor Venezuela?

Frank Warner

Motorcyclist protesting N.Y. helmet law crashes, hits head, dies

Fifty-five-year-old motorcyclist Philip Contos joined an anti-motorcycle-helmet protest today in upstate New York. As he rode with the pack of bareheaded bikers through Onondaga, he braked, the Harley fishtailed and he flew head-first onto the Route 11 pavement.

Contos was pronounced dead at a hospital. Police said a helmet probably would have saved his life.

Setting aside the obvious Darwin jokes, we might ask, did Contos' decision not to wear a helmet affect only him? Assume he had a family of some kind, and assume that taxpayers had to pay for the cleanup.

Frank Warner