Is there ever a time when Corruption is not Corruption?

Obama payback


With the Occupy Wall Street Movement and Occupy Movement(s) around the country and the world still raging; the Republican hopefuls for the 2012 election doing their very best not to implode; and the rest of us just trying to keep our heads above water both literally and figuratively,  to have the above information brought to my attention was both disheartening and a confirmation of what the We Are the 99% movement is all about.


Our political system broken.  Cronyism is alive and well in both major parties and Obama is no different than George W. Bush when it comes to payback for getting him elected.


It makes me very angry to see that we, the 99%, have again been duped into believing that our participation in getting someone elected (by voting) is changing the system.  Obama had no intention when he arrived in Washington of doing things differently.  In fact, he did things exactly the same as his predecessor only on an accelerated time frame.


It wasn't the $25 or $50 that you and I donated to the campaign that made the difference, it was the hundreds of thousands the "bundlers"  pulled together and were handsomely rewarded for after the election.  It may not have been illegal but it certainly has the smell of impropriety and at the very least unethical behavior given how this President campaigned.  


The Whitehouse can spin it any way they like, and I have been a strong supporter of Obama up to this point, yet the actions speak so much louder than the words.  "Do as I say, not as I do" doesn't fly here.


I don't know if there is enough time for the OCCUPY movement to create a People's Congress in time to mount a credible Third-Party Candidate for this next election, so what are the alternatives?  The lesser of the two evils seems to be Obama and electing a Democratic House and Senate to try and get this Country moving rather than focusing on ideological wars with the GLBT community and the Poor and Middle-Class as well as attempting to send women to clandestine back-alley abortionists again all in the name of being good "Christians".


When will the American people demand - require - that their elected officials are held directly accountable for the platform that they run and are elected on?  It seems as though once elected, all bets are off and the platform is completely rewritten.  This could be done in a myriad of ways: financially by removing the possibility of receiving lobbying dollars by the candidate and their family and by  prohibiting lobbying after holding office for at least 5 years; limiting the number of terms they can serve in the House to 6 terms and the number of terms they can serve in the Senate to two. This makes both the House and the Senate available to serve a total 12 years and once you serve in one legislative branch you may not serve in the other but you are not precluded from running for President.  We term limit the President, why do we not term limit our elected representatives?  This would at the very least limit the effect the lobbyists would have on the legislative process.  Alas, as long as these two houses have the ability to police themselves and make the rules to guide their behavior, no such sensible legislation will be forthcoming.  It is up to the 99% to make it happen and we are on the move.

A short-sighted world...

There's a line of trash bigger than the state of Texas, floating it's way to the islands of Hawaii.  Residual from the humungous earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan earlier this year.  It's not rushing towards the U.S. at break-neck speed - no it's flowing with the currents and ships that travel the Pacific Ocean have seen it and reported on it's size.  Some of those ships have picked up bits and pieces to figure out where it came from, but there has been no reported effort from the shipping magnates to help clean up the ocean they use as a traffic way, nor from the fishing consortiums who fish in those  parts of the ocean to help clean up the waters to protect the ecosystem they depend on.

This is an outrage.  This ocean belongs to the inhabitants of this planet.  We are ALL responsible for the well-being of those waters.  Those who use those waters for transportation, for fishing, for recreation, all have a responsibility for the health of those waters and when an event such as the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami occur, it is incumbent on all of us as stewards of this planet upon which we live, to clean up the mess.  Even if it doesn't bring us any profit, it is our responsibility.  Our short-sighted, give me a profit, or I won't help mentality has killed the US economy, the European economy, and may even kill off the Chinese economy as they have taken cues from the western world.

We, as a people need to wake up and take some responsibility for the planet we inhabit or there will soon be no inhabitable space left for us here.  The stuff recovered from the Fukushima mess should be able to be recycled for the most part, so recovery by ships that travel through the area, would not be so much of a hardship.  Is there not room in the holds of those ships for picking up some of this debris?  Even if each ship picked up a little as it passed by, and deposited what it picked up at the next port, that would be a start.

We must be good stewards of the land and of the sea or we as a people and as a planet will cease to be livable.

What isn't talked about when they talk about Social Security...

It's not just senior citizens who are affected by the loss of Social Security checks.  It's folks who are unable to work due to debilitating disabilities, those with Developmental disabilities, and Mental retardation.  So hold on there, Skippy - it's not just Senior Citizens we're talking about....

According to the Office of Retirement and Disability Policy, Social Security Administration, here are the figures as released in July 2011

  Monthly Statistical Snapshot, June 2011

Table 1. Number of people receiving Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, or both, June 2011 (in thousands)

Type of beneficiary	Total	Social Security only	SSI only	Both Social Security and SSI
All beneficiaries	60,114	52,057	5,299	2,758
Aged 65 or older	38,540	36,491	892	1,158
Disabled, under age 65 a	13,596	7,589	4,406	1,601
Other b	7,977	7,977	. . .	. . .
SOURCE: Social Security Administration, Master Beneficiary Record, 100 percent data. Social Security Administration, Supplemental Security Record, 100 percent data.
NOTES: Data are for the end of the specified month. Only Social Security beneficiaries in current-payment status are included.
. . . = not applicable.
a. Includes children receiving SSI on the basis of their own disability.
b. Social Security beneficiaries who are neither aged nor disabled (for example, early retirees, young survivors).
CONTACT: Art Kahn (410) 965-0186 or ssi.monthly@ssa.gov for further information.

Table 2. Social Security benefits, June 2011

Type of beneficiary	Beneficiaries		Total monthly benefits (millions of dollars)	Average monthly benefit (dollars)
	Number (thousands)	Percent
All beneficiaries	54,815	100.0	59,146	1,079.00
Old-Age Insurance
Retired workers	35,158	64.1	41,517	1,180.80
Spouses	2,303	4.2	1,342	582.80
Children	596	1.1	346	579.80
Survivors Insurance
Widow(er)s and parents a	4,255	7.8	4,734	1,112.40
Widowed mothers and fathers b	154	0.3	130	845.50
Children	1,920	3.5	1,450	755.00
Disability Insurance
Disabled workers	8,403	15.3	8,988	1,069.50
Spouses	162	0.3	47	287.50
Children	1,862	3.4	594	318.80
SOURCE: Social Security Administration, Master Beneficiary Record, 100 percent data.
NOTES: Data are for the end of the specified month. Only beneficiaries in current-payment status are included.
Some Social Security beneficiaries are entitled to more than one type of benefit. In most cases, they are dually entitled to a worker benefit and a higher spouse orwidow(er) benefit. If both benefits are financed from the same trust fund, the beneficiary is usually counted only once in the statistics, as a retired-worker or a disabled-worker beneficiary, and the benefit amount recorded is the larger amount associated with the auxiliary benefit. If the benefits are paid from different trust funds the beneficiary is counted twice, and the respective benefit amounts are recorded for each type of benefit.
a. Includes nondisabled widow(er)s aged 60 or older, disabled widow(er)s aged 50 or older, and dependent parents of deceased workers aged 62 or older.
b. A widow(er) or surviving divorced parent caring for the entitled child of a deceased worker who is under age 16 or is disabled.
CONTACT: Hazel P. Jenkins (410) 965-0164 or oasdi.monthly@ssa.gov for further information.

Table 3. Supplemental Security Income recipients, June 2011

Age	Recipients		Total payments a (millions of dollars)	Average monthly payment b (dollars)
	Number (thousands)	Percent
All recipients	8,057	100.0	4,327	499.40
Under 18	1,269	15.7	794	595.10
18–64	4,738	58.8	2,702	515.10
65 or older	2,050	25.4	831	404.00
SOURCE: Social Security Administration, Supplemental Security Record, 100 percent data.
NOTE: Data are for the end of the specified month.
a. Includes retroactive payments.
b. Excludes retroactive payments.
CONTACT: Art Kahn (410) 965-0186 or ssi.monthly@ssa.gov for further information.