Fuck you Trump, just fuck you

Mr. Mike Cartoons.com

Within the orbit of six degrees of separation (probably only one or two) everyone in this country, if not receiving benefits themselves, is connected to someone who is dependent on Social Security for some measure of support. Parents, grandparents, children, somewhere in the current milieu is a person you are related to or at least know who is collecting benefits. And, everyone who has ever held a job and had that "payroll tax" deducted has an investment in their own retirement future, not to mention a stake in it that could cover a myriad of personal disasters that for some reason or other threaten the individual's basic existence.

In my own case, while my income has always been limited by personal choices, I now survive mostly on monthly payments from Social Security. I have enough put away to meet a major problem, but for day-to-day expenses that check every month supports me. And, if not for Medicare to cover increasing expenses since I have emerged from the bulletproof years of my youth, grow older and develop increasingly serious infirmities, I would have used up that emergency fund several years ago. 

Now, as mentioned above, almost every wage earner in the country has paid into the system. I have paid into it since 1959 when I received my first check from a job as a teen-aged chef's helper in a New Hampshire seaside restaurant. That's almost 60 years of paying that "tax." That is not an entitlement in the current use of the word by some elected officials but as a true entitlement in that as I have paid into the program I am entitled to the benefits of those contributions. And, something a younger person might not realize, a premium for Medicare coverage is deducted from every Social Security payment I receive. That's right, Medicare is not free to any of us.

So, now comes a spoiled brat of a #fakepresident, attempting by exeuctive order to stop that "payroll tax," that payment wage-earners make to support current benefits on the promise that when their time comes, the money will come back to them. It's questionable whether that order is legal or not or can be enforced. Probably a judicial ruling somewhere along the line will decide that before the first time it's applied. Worse is the underlying reason most who undestand these things believe is the motive for removing the "tax." More important from this #fakepresident who was elected by people who are most likely to need Social Security, is his threat to end Social Security and Medicare if we elect him to a second term.

I would say this is about the dumbest thing a candidate could advocate going into a hotly contested election alienating 63 million Social Security recipients who pretty much all vote, but as I drive around my neighborhood and see the Trump signs and flags in some yards, it seems no matter what this guy says, he is still supported by a large stupid percentage of the American voting public. This is not a wealthy neighborhood, there are young people with kids they are sending to school on the insistence of the same man despite the Coronavirus slowly creeping north from its largest Alaska concentration in Anchorage into the next largest Alaska population area, filled with people proud to claim their rights as Americans to not wear protective masks. And those people support the man who would take away the only safety net many of them have.

What generated this diatribe? I mean so many people discuss this crap on news shows that there's little I can add except my own outrage so I haven't written much about it. But this morning shortly after I woke up and began my usual Internet tour starting with facebook, I came across a post showing a grinning president over the headline that he plans to eliminate Social Security and

Medicare in his second term. For a moment my body literally went cold with the realization that at the age of 78 I would be without secure income to support me. A quick mental tour through my finances assured me I might be able to last as long as three years and that's if nothing unexpected happens.           Considering that I am facing two serious medical procedures in the near future, that time is shortened considerably. It has gone beyond a bunch of talking heads on TV into the very gut of existence. It's a helpless feeling. The one bit of optimism I hold is that this is another of the #fakepresident's bait and switch maneuvers. He starts a new outrage  and the press focuses on the new one so we forget about his failure with coronavirus and his failure to act on Russia paying a bounty on American soldiers in Afghanistan, his failure to act on Black Lives Matter, maybe his failures altogether. It certainly shows he doesn't give a good damn about the regular folks in this country. Unfortunately none of those failures matter to those people putting up signs in the neighborhood. But you can bet if he carries through with his threat many of them will feel the effects at some time in their future.
Oh, and by the way: There is no logic in politics. C–

When good people do nothing
There's no logic, no logic at all
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