They say it's your birthday

Social Security, that wondrous program championed by the greatest American President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, is seventy-eight years old today.  For a poor bastard like me, it's also the program that stands between me and being eighty years old, standing behind the counter of a McDonald's, and asking some scruffy seventeen year old if he'd like fries with his Big Mac.

Many people are using today to give a boost to the Harkin-Begich amendment which would--rather than cut as far too many fools are encouraging--actually give a generous raise to those collecting Social Security.  A most worthy cause for today, but...

...today is also a day when we can remind everyone that Social Security is not an entitlement.  I have been paying into Social Security, at a clip of 6.2% of my wages for almost thirty years now--as have the vast, vast majority of my fellow Americans.  When I retire, I am being given nothing when I receive my Social Security checks.  I earned every fucking penny of them--and so have my fellow Americans.

Today would also be a good day to remind the American people just who it is who would benefit the most from cuts to Social Security--big business.  Unbeknownst to many, our employers match our 6.2% contribution.  The same mother fuckers who ended pensions as we knew them for the crapshoot (for ordinary Americans, anyway) that is the 401k plan, who shifted health insurance premiums to employees (believe it or not, boys and girls, 'twas a time when employees contributed nothing to their company sponsored health insurance--the company bore the entire cost) for little more than to make the rich richer and the rest of us to live paycheck to paycheck ad nauseum, would certainly see their bottom lines balloon should they not have that match, and as before, all that it would mean is Daddy Warbucks would have a few more hundred dollar bills to light his cigars while the nation's elderly would keep Purina Cat Chow profits soaring.

Remember--Social Security is the panacea that will prevent the drool from my eighty-year old lips falling on your grandkids french fries....

Peace,
emaycee