From http://www.democrats.com/node/2660 --

Lie: "By the time today's workers who are in their mid-20s begin to retire, the system will be bankrupt...

... So if you're 20 years old, in your mid-20s, and you're beginning to work, I want you to think about a Social Security system that will be flat bust, bankrupt, unless the United States Congress has got the willingness to act now." Bush 1/11/05.

Truth:

The Social Security system cannot go "bankrupt," for it has no creditors. By law, the trustees will continue to pay reduced benefits even if the trust fund is exhausted. Payroll taxes will continue to come in and benefits will continue to be paid.

According to the trustees' intermediate economic forecast (neither doom nor boom), the trust fund will be able to pay about 73 percent of scheduled benefits in 2042 and about 68 percent of scheduled benefits in 2078.

Future presidents and Congresses could also choose to fully fund scheduled retirement benefits from general tax revenue.

Lie: "Most younger people in America think they'll never see a dime." Bush 1/11/05

Truth: Retirement benefits for today's younger workers - even under a "flat-bust" system - will be significantly higher than today's benefits in real terms.

For low-income Americans, currently scheduled benefits for those who retire in 2080 are $19,906 per year in 2004 dollars. If Social Security can pay only 68 percent of those benefits, that would be $13,536 per year, compared with benefits of $8,804 for low-income retirees who retired last year.

For the highest earners, Social Security is currently promising $53,411 per year for those who retire in 2080 (or $36,319 per year if Social Security can pay only 68 percent). Current maximum benefits are $21,891 per year for those who retired last year.

There's more at the link above. See also http://pdamerica.org/newsletter/2005-01-PreSummit/ss-misconceptions.php

From http://firedoglake.com/2007/12/21/big-scary-bogus-numbers/ ==

Funny thing: Health care costs, which are out of control in the US (to the point where they're rising twice as fast as wages), aren't out of control in places with socialized medicine. You know, like Canada, where car makers like Toyota are building new plants instead of in America, because in the US health care costs make up around $1500 of the cost of each car that rolls off the assembly line. But the privatizers don't want you to know about that.

The amount of bullcrap the privatizers have slung over the years is amazing. Apparently their new trick is to conflate Medicare (which is in trouble -- that's why the privatizers want nothing to do with it) with Social Security (which is not).

Why is Social Security safe? Because the sky-is-falling projections used by the Trustees are based on unrealistically gloomy economic forecasts (less than 2% per year forever), as if we were going into a permanent recession or depression. The reality is that even with growth that averages below-par -- 2.7% -- Social Security never runs out of money. Ever.

But get this: In order to convince Americans to destroy Social Security and hand their pensions over to the brokerage firms, the privatizers tout phenomenal rates of return on stock-market-based accounts of as much as 7% per year. These rates are possible only if the economy is growing at 1998-peak-boom-year levels every single year to the end of time. So the privatizers aren't just arguing Permanent Recession -- they're also arguing Permanent Boom. At the same time!

Verily, 'tis a Bogosity Trifecta of such proportions that it threatens the very fabric of the space-time continuum.

Of course they'll justify this by saying that we have a Democratic POTUS now. Funny how they never hired, say, Molly Ivins or Bill Moyers to a similar position when Bush was in office:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ira-forman/cbs-news-pick-claimed-dem_b_168688.html

Nevertheless, if you're inclined to make interpretations yourself, Showalter offers more grist for the mill than a hundred volumes of theory. Why, for example, did Britain produce several women novelists of genius during the 19th century -- Jane Austen, George Eliot and the Brontës, as well as accomplished lesser artists like Elizabeth Gaskell -- while America did not?

Actually, there was also a paucity of of what would be considered decent MALE American novelists during that same time period, in part because the anti-novel prejudice among male literati hung on in America for a bit longer than in Britain. (Remember Jane Austen's having her character Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey do an apologia for the women novelists of the time?) For 'respectable' American novelists, Hawthorne was the only one, male or female, up to the start of the latter part of the century -- the other male writers of the time were people like James Fenimore Cooper and Edgar Allan Poe who wrote what was considered popular trash. (Yeah, I know, the French just love Poe, but I'm speaking of the reputation he had in his lifetime and the decades immediately following his death, pushed by a literary rival of Poe's.) Ernest Hemingway went even further, discounting even Hawthorne, when he said "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. It's the best book we've had." And of course Twain's famous -- and famously witty - dissection of Cooper's prose style is assigned as required by American high school English teachers.

Ironically enough, the UK's Patrick O'Brian, quite possibly the best naval novelist ever, has been strongly compared to (and was a big fan of) Jane Austen in his ability to put a woman-like focus on human interactions, balancing out his male-pleasing battle scenes.

He can get congressmen like Georgia's Gingrey to grovel at his feet in abject apology.

No Republican congressman will be grovelling at Steele's feet any time soon.

Rush Limbaugh has more pull with GOP politicians than does Michael Steele. That makes him the de facto RNC Chair.