"No cost of living increase for people on Social-Security this year. Even Bush gave an increase

[roughsatori]

in my Social Security," said my 80 year old mother today (She got the letter today). She gets 12,000 dollars a year. She is ill, with Medicare she must pay 20 percent of every hospital bill, doctor bill, X-Ray, MRI, etc. I buy her health insurance for full coverage of her medical bills. But due to that, I can't afford to buy it for myself as I have a Pre-existing condition.

I said "Mom, turn the channel Obama has another surprise: more war." She fucking Loved Obama, she voted for him, berated me for any questioning of Obama; but we both cried tears of joy when he was elected. She jumped up and down "I never thought this day would come."

I am starting to cringe when he speaks on television. And as I am gay--he thinks I am not his equal in deserving the same rights he has. My Mom know longer asks me to not criticize Obama. During his speech she said: "I didn't think he was going to be another war monger." Think again, Mom.

Another WASTED VOTE by a Gay person for a member of the Democratic party---NEVER FUCKING AGAIN!!!

[Skittles]

1. well, he HAS always whored for the Afghan war

so it's really no surprise

[Libertas1776]

2. More WAR! WAR! WAR!

the old, the sick, and the indigent can wait in line. Thanks a lot, President Let Down.

[unabelladonna]

37. i love edward hopper

best american painter....ever.

[Javaman]

67. If you ever get a chance, check out his sketches...

they are harder to find but well worth the effort.

Very few lines convey so much.

[Davis_X_Machina]

3. Should there be cost-of-living increases...

...when the cost of living decreases?

[roughsatori]

4. If that cost of living has gone down for you.You must be living in a different country than I do.

When *Bush played the statistics game, all of DU called him on it--but with Obama it is different around here. Everyone quoting bullshit numbers.

[rhett o rick]

7. Similar posts with in a minute. lol. nt

[katandmoon]

10. No fucking kidding! As a federal retiree, I don't get a COLA in 2010, either, but my living expenses

have increased, including medical bills for cancer treatment my health insurance didn't fully cover.

Those fucking statistics mean nothing to me. Only my decreasing savings account!

[roughsatori]

16. The insurance company offered full coverage for 99 dollars a day.

I am not inventing that number. I have a seizure disorder, and my liver is not working correctly due to years of the meds. My mother would be dead if I dead not help her. I was crying for her, she was so upset today.

[Individualist]

27. This federal retiree agrees with you

My savings account is shrinking too.

[rhett o rick]

58. I hope you are a member of NARFE. On page 14 of their Dec mag they tell

how the republicants are actively trying to "fix" your retirement plan.

[Davis_X_Machina]

12. The CPI is what the COL increases are pegged to.

If they're bullshit, and I'm not saying they aren't, you've got to change the legislation, and on that process pick another index that's going up, and then deliver the increase.

Or just change the legislation to simply give the OASDI recipients more money, without reference to the CPI. That I don't have a problem with, either -- it should be part of any Stimulus II package. SS recipients have a high marginal propensity to spend.

But you can't get there without changing the legislation -- and hopping up and down will not actually accomplish this.

[rhett o rick]

6. LOL. Yeah right. the cost of health care decreased. What planet do you live on?

Have you even been to the grocery store lately. The prices are not down. And I just got rate increases from Comcast and the local garbage company. The local electric company is asking to be able to increase rates. By the way the amount Medicare will cover is decreasing also.

[roughsatori]

11. HAHA, I know, I was thinking every bill has gone up and my bank fees are higher.

But we gave the bankers all our tax money. Bankers and Bombs!!! Go USA.

[JVS]

31. Yes. Because the cost of living for the elderly seldom involves purchasing real-estate...

which is what drove down the cost of living index by collapsing in price. Whereas things like healthcare, which have been steadily getting more expensive, form a major portion of the elderlys' consumer basket.

[Bitwit1234]

35. The reason we get no increase is

In 1976 congress passed a law that tied the Cost of living increase to inflation. Since they said there was no inflation last year no increase. The reason they passed the law was because each year congress had to vote for, and pass the increase to social security. Some years - you know how congress is -- they didn't get around to it. Then when they did they had to give seniors two or three year raise. So to keep it automatic they just passed the bill to tie it to inflation, and each year social security got the raise.

The people in this country are now blaming it on Obama and the Democrats, they had nothing to do with no raise this year. And the administration is trying to get a bill passed to give each senior a $250 one time payment to make up for no raise. This $250 would be just about what each senior would get for the year. I suppose when the Health Care Bill is passed they will vote on the raise.

Also Medicare is being raised in some instances. They are making it so that if your check is under a certain amount your Medicare premium will stay the same.

[roughsatori]

41. She has been notified that Medicare is taking more out already. NT

[katandmoon]

5. The sight of Obama now makes me every bit as sick as the sight of Bush did.

[roughsatori]

8. I had actually typed that at first, but was afraid I would be Tomb-stoned

so I changed the wording. You are more bravely honest than I am.

[katandmoon]

17. You know what? I don't care if I am. I have always voted Dem and supported the Dem party...

But when I voted for Obama I voted for an absolute pig in a poke. I am so fucking fed up with him and his lies and warmongering. I'm straight but gay issues are close to my heart and I absolutely despise Obama for his cowardice on those issues in particular.

[roughsatori]

22. Thanks I have lost some Democratic family members due to the gay issue

They, like Obama, say they are "fierce" advocates for gays, but they should never be allowed to marry. I no longer talk with, or visit, either of my brothers, or my born again Christian Democratic party member sister over this issue. They don't even think their own brother should be equal to them. Damn, that hurt.

[katandmoon]

44. IMO anyone who claims to be ANY kind of advocate for gays who doesn't support gay marriage,

is full of shit. Totally sucks that your siblings don't even support your right to marry. Well, I sure as fuck do!

[roughsatori]

50. Worse my siblings have me the Gay brother and T. a Lesbian sister.

Of our 4 heterosexual brothers and sister's: 2 say we are going to hell when we die. 1 of my brothers E uses the word faggot constantly (he has children--and one of his kids is gay,(my brother is in denial about that.)

I have beaten up both of my brothers out of anger, they used to call me fag constantly. I loved art and poetry, they were on the football team.

One day my brother J said "Hey sissy, I want to watch something else on the television fag." I punched him in the stomach. When he bent over I put my fists together hit the top of my head with all my strength. He fell on the ground, I strangled him until he passed out. My parents had to pull me off him--that brother never called me a faggot again. I learned to fight. I had to.

Growing up aways talking about poetry.Russian, and French literature, and being gay boy growing up in a Trailer Park in the sticks was a bit tough. That was good to get out.

I was just paste in a poem I wrote about, my brothers, and the Trailer Park--but it is going to be in a magazine. If I put it anywhere on the web, the contracted is over. After the issue comes out I will post it. Thanks I am glad I got that out.

[Skittles]

9. oh I have not gotten near THAT far

I had to put up with that twit bush for TWELVE FUCKING YEARS

[shadesofgray]

20. After tonight, I think Obama makes me sicker. Because I voted for him, and now I feel like I voted

for Bush. I've even had a bumper sticker on my car since 2004 that says "I did not vote 4 Bush" that I feel is a lie now.

[katandmoon]

45. I hear you!

[Luciferous]

21. I feel the same way...

[noamnety]

25. When Bush was in office

I felt that way - I couldn't watch him on tv, I had to change the channel because I had a physical reaction to him. I thought it was just me and that I was a bad person for not watching presidential speeches.

Then one of my friends mentioned the same reaction to Bush, couldn't watch him. That guy happens to be gay, and I thought the discrimination might have been part of it, I wasn't sure.

I wonder what he thinks of Obama now.

Anyway, I didn't watch the speech tonight.

[unabelladonna]

38. same reaction to bush

but i'm still giving obama a chance. why? i don't know.

[phasma ex machina]

48. During the '60s Speaker Rayburn couldn't stand to look at Nixon

so he'd ask one of his aides to fiddle with the TV to make Nixon into a nonperson, a voice from a screen of snow.

[SammyWinstonJack]

33. +1

:thumbsup: Me too.

[diamidue]

62. You are not alone. n/t

[Ishka Kibble]

13. Obama has lost me.

I cannot recall a bigger disappointment in a politician. Sort of a Ted Kennedy in reverse - Ted arrived in the Senate with low expectations, screwed up some things, and then pulled it together and became a powerhouse for liberal causes.

Obama was the pretty boy bought and paid for by the corporate interests who made sure he'd get elected, and now he's the Pentagon's dancing puppet and Wall Street's Good Boy.

He lost me tonight. I expected this to happen tonight. He shredded my last bit of hope.

Photogenic, yes.

Competent and dedicated to his constituents, no.

[roughsatori]

51. Exactly and people talk as if he has the "secret" that we are not smart enough to see.

It is a bizarro world at DU in some aspects.

[Ishka Kibble]

54. People want to believe.

Just as in Vietnam, where there was some secret menace, a domino theory that ultimately was nothing but someone's wet dream, and millions of dead civilians, while the Chinese - they were the Big Scary Enemy, don't forget, the ones we were so afraid would join up with Vietnam, in spite of thousands of years of animosity between the two countries - watched and laughed and prospered.

The public was fed this pap, while our friends came home in boxes. Thousands of them. Everyone should go to the Vietnam Wall in Washington sometime, and realize that this Afghanistan/Iraq abomination, too, began with a small bunch of white guys in expensive suits and military uniforms seeking to make money and keep themselves important.

What I've seen here is a kind of ignorance, a lack of understanding of history, and a need to believe in magic.

The fact is that we're being had, and every day, it's getting worse. One in eight Americans gets Food Stamps, and yet I see people here posting about how people on Food Stamps shouldn't be allowed to buy soda or junk food with them. Can these people be any crueler? And this place is called "Democratic Underground"?

This is hardly the place I expected to find. My wife was a regular here, and she quit in disgust a few months ago. I signed up then, wondering what she'd seen that pissed her off so much.

My wife was right.

[dysfunctional press]

14. bush didn't give an increase in her social security...the cola did.

and the cola prevents the increase next year, not obama.

i get about the same amount on social security, due to disability- and i can't even get the supplemental coverage, because nobody will sell it to me, due to my disability. so i'm on the hook for it, for at least the next 17 years- until i turn 65, and there's an open enrollment. hopefully we'll have single-payer by then and it will be a moot point. or i'll die by then and it will still be a moot point.

[sabbat hunter]

15. this non-SS raise

was not decided this year,it was decided before Obama took office.

has your mom applied for medicaid? It could fill the gap of what medicare is not paying.

[roughsatori]

19. 12,000 is too much money to get Medicaid.

I tried that for her. They turned her down due to receiving the Medicare and 12.000. No Medicaid for her. So I tried charity care for her--but they turned her down because they combine the incomes of everyone in the household--so they added my income to her's. And again a refusal letter. It is a Catch 22

[Individualist]

60. I'm in a similar situation

My retirement income isn't enough to survive on without going into my savings, and it's too "high" to receive any kind of assistance. You're exactly right when you describe it as a Catch 22.

[Neecy]

18. Medicare is going up next year, too

I think that's why Congress is going to pass (or perhaps they already have, I haven't checked) a $250 rebate to seniors to make up for the lack of a COLA coupled with the increase in Medicare. That won't help a lot but it should put her a little ahead.

[roughsatori]

24. Do you know if she will get the money this year? 250 is a lot to her.

It would make her feel a little better.

[Neecy]

26. let me check it

I think it's for next year, but I'll see what the status is on it.

[roughsatori]

28. Thanks, I'll try and Google it too, but if you do find out., please post it.

I will be back to check. Thank you very much.

[Neecy]

29. It doesn't look like it's passed yet

And most of the articles say January 2010 at the earliest.

[roughsatori]

40. Thanks. I won't mention it to her. They might rescind it before they even send it. NT

[MilesColtrane]

34. Yes, the extra $250 is like a 2% raise for someone making $12,000.

She should have already received the check.

Here's a web site with info:

http://www.socialsecurity.gov/payment/

[roughsatori]

39. She's been sleeping for hours. But I take her to the bank tomorrow

and food shopping. I will make sure she checks to see if she received the direct deposit. Thank you very much.

[Neecy]

63. That was this year's check

I think my mother received it in June or thereabouts....

This is a second round of $250 checks, mainly to make up for the Medicare increase/lack of COLA.

[lovuian]

23. You can't justify the Iraq War and Afghanistan war

with a 2 trillion deficit

and then tell your people
no cost of living
and no health care

is he Nuts????

[ima_sinnic]

57. he got away with robbing us blind already & giving it to the bankers

-- I'm sure he can make it all good in a pretty speech without breaking a sweat. The People will obviously buy any line of BS handed to them. We "can't afford" health care and COLA for the elderly when there are people in the world who must be bombed and murdered. The need to bomb and kill is greater than the need for a healthy, prosperous populace.

[quiet.american]

30. My mom is on Soc. Sec. too, but who do you think brought us the economic meltdown. nt

[roughsatori]

42. Are you blaming our Moms? NT

[quiet.american]

43. Is she the first person you think of when you hear the words, "economic meltdown"?

Bush is the person that comes to my mind.

[Triana]

32. Nope. We gotta pay for WAR. NO health care reform either. We gotta pay for WAR.

:wtf:

[Echo In Light]

61. American Prioritie$

[tyedyeto]

36. Did Congress vote itself a pay raise this year?

Seems like they they do do that every year. If they did, then why the fuck are they messing around with the elderly?

[roughsatori]

46. Congress gets the best health insurance. They're Socialists when it comes to their own Healthcare

And selfish Capitalists when it comes to voting on their own raises.

[katandmoon]

47. IIRC, they did not

[Obamanaut]

56. There was a congressional pay increase that was effective 1 Jan '09,

but in the budget bill in March '09 there is a line that states there will be no pay raise for Dec '09 (1 Jan '10.)

[alfredo]

49. He has proposed a $250 check to all SS recipients. That's like a $20 a month increase.

[roughsatori]

53. Proposed does not mean they "will" it means they "might"

I hope you are correct. But that leaves out anyone on Social Security under the age of 62 who are permanently disabled. I feel sorry for those on SSDI. (that is what it is when you are disabled and under 62 with a work history). SSI, is for people with a temporary disability and/or who have not put enough into Social Security to get SSDI. It is so much more difficult than people know. I was an advocate for the homeless and mentally-ill and a site inspector for the Philly Dept. of Mental Health. It is worse than people seem to know.

[alfredo]

59. I was on SSDI until I reached 62 when I went on SS. I've learned how to live

on my SS check and the pittance I get as a pension. The last COLA we received was near double what we usually receive because of gas prices and the effects of those costs. Gas prices have dropped, so has the price of groceries. I'd like to have a COLA, but I understand that if the cost of living hasn't increased, they can't adjust the COLA up.


Last time I got a COLA milk was over $3 a gallon. Now it is under $2 a gallon. The price of gas in nearly half what it was.


BTW, Veterans, if you haven't signed up for care at the VA, do it. It will save you a bundle of money if you are living on low income or fixed income. Because I am on SS and a small pension, I don't have to pay for care and my medicine is very cheap. You will receive very good care, and when you walk into your VA hospital, you will be among friends.

[Sultana]

52. Oh Lordie

This board has gone MAD!!!!

[BzaDem]

55. What a false piece of bullshit propaganda.

The cost of living increase is determined by, well, the cost of living. You may not like the way they measure it, but it has NOTHING to do with Bush or Obama. Bush did not give any increase, and Obama did not stop any increase. Neither has the power to change the consumer price index to what they would like it to be.

And by the way, I don't believe you for a second when you say you won't vote for the Democratic party ever again. You may not vote next time, or the time after. But as soon as a Republican comes into office, and reality hits you and hits you hard, I'm pretty sure you'll vote Democratic (regardless of whatever you have to say about the subject today).

[redqueen]

66. Anything to bash Obama... anything at all.

Ain't DU great these days?

But hey... at least I saw a couple of responses bothering to try to share the facts. Kinda gets drowned out by the howling... but why not at least try, right?

[hfojvt]

64. don't FCC regulations require a tag line?

Something like "I am an RNC shill and I approved this message"

[diamidue]

65. I hear ya.

It is getting harder and harder to find any Democrats in power who share my beliefs.

Obama? Nancy Pelosi? Rahm Emanuel? Harry Reid? Joe Biden? Diane Feinstein? Come on.

I have become totally disillusioned with both parties (and not only for the reasons you quote). I think it is all a scam. It is the corporate world & the banksters who are in charge.

I'd say that I would like to vote for a 3rd party, but I don't believe that a 3rd party could possibly succeed with a governmental system so corrupt and so stacked against them.

Waiting for the Revolution...