WASHINGTON - Millions of older people face shrinking Social Security checks next year, the first time in a generation that payments would not rise.

The trustees who oversee Social Security are projecting there won’t be a cost of living adjustment (COLA) for the next two years. That hasn’t happened since automatic increases were adopted in 1975.

By law, Social Security benefits cannot go down. Nevertheless, monthly payments would drop for millions of people in the Medicare prescription drug program because the premiums, which often are deducted from Social Security payments, are scheduled to go up slightly.

“I will promise you, they count on that COLA,” said Barbara Kennelly, a former Democratic congresswoman from Connecticut who now heads the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. “To some people, it might not be a big deal. But to seniors, especially with their health care costs, it is a big deal.”

Cost of living adjustments are pegged to inflation, which has been negative this year, largely because energy prices are below 2008 levels.

Kennelly’s group wants Congress to increase Social Security benefits next year, even though the formula doesn’t call for it. She would like to see either a 1 percent increase in monthly payments or a one-time payment of $150.

The cost of a one-time payment, a little less than $8 billion, could be covered by increasing the amount of income subjected to Social Security taxes, Kennelly said. Workers only pay Social Security taxes on the first $106,800 of income, a limit that rises each year with the average national wage.

But the limit only increases if monthly benefits increase.

About 5,000 people were expected to demonstrate in favor of President Obama’s health care proposals. Nearly 1,500 showed up to demonstrate against the President.

1,500 actually showed up to protest against healthcare plans.  But 5,000 were expected to demonstrate in favor of it.

Look at this douche protesting:

Even with their estimates, roughly 20-25% of the protesters will be against Obama’s bill, yet they show 2 out of their 15 photographs or 12% of the total.  It is intended to diminish the number of opponents to Obama’s brand of healthcare reform.

I guess it is easier to find 5,000 Democrat/Union/ACORN activists that don’t have to work on a Monday morning.

Some of the dirtiest, smelliest, most dangerous jobs are suddenly looking a lot more appealing in this economy.

People who have been out of work for months are lining up for jobs at places they once considered unthinkable: slaughterhouses, sewage plants, prisons…

The desperation of the long-term jobless has rippled through the labor force. More skilled and educated workers have filled clerical or restaurant jobs. So unskilled workers such as teenagers or high school graduates who once held most of those positions have displaced those even lower on the economic ladder, such as immigrants, Freedman noted.

The intensified competition has hurt all workers - even those who are still employed - because it shrinks wages. Employers don’t have to pay more to lure workers.

“It’s easy for someone like your middle manager to take on a job at a poultry plant, because they have the skills to do many things. But for the immigrant, that might have been the only option,” said Catherine Singley of the National Council of La Raza, an immigrant advocacy group in Washington.

Not true.  It has hurt unskilled workers disproportionately because they are easily replaced.  Skilled workers are not feeling the pinch, especially in areas in high demand and that require high skills.

To make matter’s worse, let’s say that three years ago, you had three workers earning $5.15 an hour.  That is $15.45 an hour worth of labor.  Now, you are forced to have two workers do the same job for $7.25 an hour.  I know that $5.15 an hour really sucked ass and $7.25 isn’t great either, but the reality is that unemployment is that the unemployment rate for those age 18-19 is 23.2%.  The unemployment rate for those 20-24 is 15.4%.

ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.cpseea13.txt

You can break things down further.  The age group 16-24 that are not enrolled in school (dropouts age 16-24) do not have a high school diploma have an unemployment rate of 29.6% and those that do have a high school diploma are at 21.4%.

ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.cpseea16.txt

The prospects for this age group and this education group are the most dire.  They are squeezed by the minimum wage on one side and by folks with more skills, education, experience or just older people on the other.  When people that have some college or people that are older and have more experience come along, they get the jobs.  And with fewer minimum wage and entry level positions, competition is stiff.

Go one step farther and look at the unemployment rate for married folks, age 25 or older, all levels of educational attainment and you will find that the unemployment rate is you will find that the rate is 6.4% for men and 5.9% for women.

ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.cpseea29.txt

While the employment situation sucks in general, it sucks a lot less for married folks over age 25.  There are 2.2M unemployed, never married men age 16-24 and there are another 1.7M unemployed never married women age 16-24.  That is out of the total 15M unemployed. 

I am not going to point solely to minimum wage laws, but I will say that if the minimum wage was lower, more of these unmarried workers under age 24 would have jobs.  With all the rhetoric about single women trying to raise families on minimum wage, which is a fallacy, Dems failed to point out that it would put millions of teens and young adults with low job skills on the unemployment line.

But when you add in the folks that are older and more skilled taking their jobs on top of it, it is a recipe for all kinds of ills as our friends in France found out.

First Paragraphs—

The number of Americans filing claims for jobless benefits fell more than economists predicted, a sign some employers have stopped paring staff as the recession eases.

Applications dropped by 38,000 to 550,000 in the week ended Aug. 1, figures from the Labor Department showed today in Washington, the fifth straight time claims were under 600,000 after being above that level since January. The total number of people collecting unemployment insurance rose.

Great news.  So great that later on:

These numbers signal the worst is behind us, but we are not out of the woods yet, said David Semmens, an economist at Standard Chartered Bank in New York. We are not going to see strong consumer spending with numbers that look like this.

The worst is behind us… until you see the numbers further down:

The four-week moving average, a less-volatile measure than weekly initial claims, fell to 555,250 from 560,000 the prior week.

The level of continuing claims increased by 69,000 to 6.31 million in the week ended July 25…

The Labor Department will probably report tomorrow that the economy lost 328,000 jobs in July, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg, following a decline of 467,000 in June. The jobless rate probably rose to 9.6 percent from 9.5 percent, the survey showed.

I am all about optimism, but what I see here is that long term continuing recipients of unemployment rose by 69,000 in one week and the 4 week moving average feel by less than 5,000 people or under 1%.  Furthermore, the unemployment rate is going to rise tomorrow and another 350,000-400,000 jobs are going to be lost during the month of July.

Each month there are 150,000 new entrants into the job market so 150,000 jobs need to be created just to keep pace.  This means that when added to the job losses there are a net half a million more people without jobs this month.

Turning the corner is when we stop losing jobs each month, we see a real drop in the weekly unemployment numbers, and the unemployment rate stabilizes, something that was already supposed to have happened according to the graphs that the Dems showed us when they ramrodded through the stimulus.  They “misread” how bad the economy was though, and it is Bush’s fault.

What we know is that things are going to continue to get worse for a while.  What turned the corner means is that things getting worse will continue, just at a slower pace of getting shittier.  Turned the corner to me means things are starting to get better, not that things are not getting worse as quickly as they were before.

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Postal Service Wednesday posted a net loss of $2.4 billion in its third quarter and expects to lose more than $7 billion by the end of the fiscal year.

The rising tide of red ink could leave the Postal Service with a potential cash shortfall of as much as $700 million by its fiscal-year end on Sept. 30, when it must pay as much as $5.8 billion to prefund retiree health benefits. Postal Service officials hope Congress will pass legislation that would increase its ability to borrow from the U.S. Treasury Department before the bill comes due.

Continued declines in traditional mail are weighing on the Postal Service. It said mail volume fell 14.3% in the third quarter, following a 14.7% drop in the second quarter, with little improvement projected in the coming year.

“The recession has been brutal,” Postal Service Chief Financial Officer Joe Corbett said at public meeting of the postal service board of governors.

The Postal Service has imposed a hiring freeze and is cutting hours and costs as revenue has declined. It is considering closing more than 600 postal facilities and is looking to switch to five-day-delivery service from six days, a move that would require congressional approval.

Here is the difference between the postal service, social security, medicare and Obama’s newest healthcare monstrosity:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;...

To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;

Even when exercising Constitutional authority, the government proves inept at managing a business.  And make no mistake, the Postal Service is a business.  A heavily subsidized, unionized, government run business.  All three of those phrases describe Amtrak among other government ventures.  And they will no doubt describe the new “co-ops” or even worse, the whole enchilada healthcare reform Obama wants passed.  Card Check will be used and co-op or government healthcare employees will most certainly be union and overpaid bureaucrats.

I would love if someone could explain how something as trivial as delivering mail, that UPS and FedEx do extremely well and certainly profitably, can be so mismanaged that the Postal Service is losing $7B a year and is already heavily subsidized to begin with.

NEW YORK—Fox News Channel commentator Glenn Beck said he believes President Barack Obama is a racist. Beck made the statement during a guest appearance Tuesday on the “Fox & Friends” morning show
. He said Obama has exposed himself as a person with “a deep-seated hatred for White people or the White culture.”

His remarks came during a discussion of Obama’s reaction to the arrest of Harvard University scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. Gates is black and was arrested for disorderly conduct by a white policeman over a misunderstanding about a break-in at Gates’ home.

An Obama spokesman, William Burton, said the White House had no comment on Beck.

Beck’s statement was challenged on the air by Fox host Brian Kilmeade, who noted that most of the people who work for the nation’s first Black president are White.

“I’m not saying he doesn’t like White people,” Beck said. “He has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist.”

Beck is supposed to be a mainstream guy and most certainly, any discussion of race at this point is a red herring that takes the Republicans off mission on healthcare and cap and trade.

Expect Beck’s comments to lead off the news cycle and divert attention from the real problems facing the country.  This provides political cover for Obama and his defenders.

All of this talk focuses on Obama the man, not on Obama’s Liberal policies.  Obama the man is intensely popular AS A PERSON with all of his negatives coming from his job performance and politics.  The Republicans will lose every fight they pick where they attack the first black president and bring up race to do it.  It is a no win proposition.  It comes off mean spirited and diverts attention from where it needs to be focused.

Now Beck is playing on Obama’s turf.  Why not focus on healthcare and cap and trade.  The Gates incident is minor in comparison.

July 20 (Bloomberg)—India won’t bend to demands from the Obama administration or threats from the U.S. Congress to adopt legally binding caps on its carbon emissions, the country’s environment minister told visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday.

“There is simply no case for the pressure” the U.S. is exerting, considering India produces among the lowest per capita emissions in the world, Minister Jairam Ramesh told Clinton during an unexpected discussion of climate negotiations during an event intended to showcase U.S.-Indian cooperation on clean energy at a “green” office building outside New Delhi.

“As if this pressure was not enough, we also face the threat of carbon tariffs on our exports to countries such as yours,” Ramesh said, referring to a climate-change bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on June 26 that imposes tariffs on exports from countries that refuse to adopt greenhouse gas controls by 2020.

If we fail to curb the growth in emissions by China and India that make up almost half the world population and have by far the fastest growth rates, what good does destroying our economy by making energy prohibitively expensive do?

What is interesting is the other part of the conversation:

The U.S. and European countries must offer financial incentives and equitable reductions in carbon emissions to ensure any deal won’t hinder growth, food security and poverty alleviation in developing nations such as India, China and Brazil, Ramesh said.

So not only do we have to penalize our population with higher energy prices and prices on goods, plus less competitive goods abroad because we have to compete with countries that are not capped, but we also have to provide massive transfer payments to these countries to bribe them into token efforts to cut their own emissions.

NEW YORK - When undercover detectives busted Jose and Maximo Colon last year for selling cocaine at a seedy club in Queens, there was a glaring problem: The brothers hadn’t done anything wrong.

But proclaiming innocence wasn’t going to be good enough. The Dominican immigrants needed proof.

“I sat in the jail and thought ... how could I prove this? What could I do?” Jose, 24, recalled in Spanish during a recent interview.

As he glanced around a holding cell, the answer came to him: Security cameras. Since then, a vindicating video from the club’s cameras has spared the brothers a possible prison term, resulted in two officers’ arrest and become the basis for a multimillion-dollar lawsuit.

The officers, who are due back in court June 26, have pleaded not guilty, and New York Police Department officials have downplayed their case.

But the drug corruption case isn’t alone.

On May 13, another NYPD officer was arrested for plotting to invade a Manhattan apartment where he hoped to steal $900,000 in drug money. In another pending case, prosecutors in Brooklyn say officers were caught in a 2007 sting using seized drugs to reward a snitch for information. And in the Bronx, prosecutors have charged a detective with lying about a drug bust captured on a surveillance tape that contradicts her story.

Elsewhere, Philadelphia prosecutors dismissed more than a dozen drug and gun charges against a man last month when a narcotics officer was accused of making up information on search warrants.

The revelations in New York have triggered internal affairs inquiries, transfers of commanders and reviews of dozens of other arrests involving the accused officers. Many drug defendants’ cases have been tossed out. Others have won favorable plea deals.

The misconduct “strikes at the very heart of our system of justice and erodes public confidence in our courts,” said Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson.

Despite the fallout, authorities describe the corruption allegations as aberrations in a city where officers daily make hundreds of drugs arrests that routinely hold up in court. They also note none of the cases involved accusations of organized crews of officers using their badges to steal or extort drugs or money for personal gain - the story line of full-blown corruption scandals from bygone eras.

Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, agrees the majority of narcotics officers probably are clean. But he also believes the city’s unending war on drugs will always invite corruption by some who don’t think twice about framing suspects they’re convinced are guilty anyway.

Read the whole story.  This illustrates the power of government to deprive a person of life, liberty, and property.  And it also illustrates that the justice system concentrates power into the hands of police that make arrests, prosecutors that almost blindly follow what police have done, and ultimately courts where criminals without means to defend themselves are locked away while the wealthy can escape justice.

I am not going to compare us to a third world country when it comes to corruption, but will say that the war on drugs has so drastically expanded the power of the police state that it leads to these sort of situations on a fairly frequent basis.  And who to believe?  If not for the security cameras, these innocent men would be in prison and these officers would still be dealing drugs and targeting other innocent folks.

It is time to end the war on drugs.  It isn’t just a war on drugs, but rather a war on freedom.

DENVER - Former Rocky Mountain News staffers plan to start an online newspaper if they can get 50,000 paying subscribers by April 23.

That date would have been the News’ 150th anniversary.

The E.W. Scripps Co. shut down the News last month, citing mounting losses.

The founders of InDenverTimes.com say the site will go live on May 4 if they meet the subscription goal.

The Web site would be free but subscribers who pay $4.99 a month would get interactive chats, columns and other extras.

The site calls the subscriptions an investment “to encourage a bold, creative effort to continue a vision based on a 150-year Denver tradition.”

InDenverTimes.com includes 30 reporters and editors who worked at the Rocky.

Apparently, there are enough websites out there that are free:

DENVER - The future of a Denver online news venture is uncertain.

It fell short of its subscriber goal, and its backers and staff parted ways.

Kevin Preblud, one of the original investors behind InDenverTimes.com, said Thursday the site attracted just 3,000 paying subscribers, well short of the goal of 50,000.

Preblud says the investors haven’t decided on their next step. But he says the original concept of using 30 staffers from the defunct Rocky Mountain News isn’t viable with that number of subscribers.

David Milstead, one of the former News staffers who planned to work for InDenverTimes.com, says some of the staffers believe they can make the original concept work and are looking for new backers.

The News folded in February. Thursday would have been its 150th anniversary.

Well color me surprised.  Do these newspaper folks get it at all?