Breaking: U.S. dipping into pensions as it hits debt limit

[Cali_Democrat]

This is probably another reason why the Republicans want to delay the raising of the debt ceiling. They know the Treasury will have to tap into pension funds.

U.S. dipping into pensions as it hits debt limit
Posted: Monday, 16 May 2011 9:31AM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Congress he would start tapping into federal pension funds on Monday to free up borrowing capacity as the nation hits the $14.294 trillion legal limit on its debt.

The Treasury will issue $72 billion in bonds and notes on Monday, pushing the nation right up against its borrowing cap at some point during the day, according to a Treasury official.

Geithner said he would suspend investments in two government retirement funds, which will give the U.S. Treasury $147 billion in additional borrowing capacity.

"I will be unable to invest fully" in the civil service retirement and disability fund and the government securities investment fund, he said in a letter to congressional leaders.

Read more...http://www.myvictoriaonline.com/pages/9847291.php?contentType=4&contentId=8170148

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Republicans= Anarchists....

truly, time people realize this.

[aquart]

3. They are terrorists, not anarchists. They seek to destroy us.

EVERYTHING bin Laden wanted is being accomplished by the Republicans, the American arm of al Qaida.

[LiberalLoner]

4. But the way the right-wingers will interpret this news is,

that the Democrats have refused to work with the R's and that's why this is being done, and the evil government is now stealing retirement funds.

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. THeir ideology is anarchism

serious.

And they believe in it fully.

[LiberalLoner]

9. You know, I've had some people tell me they don't believe in government at ALL...

But then I'm from Montana and sometimes people there will get to yakking and say stuff just to yank the other person's chain. You know, see who can be the most outrageous.

But I never knew if they were just kidding or if they were for real.

If they were for real, I just don't understand how they think everything would be great if there was no police force, no military, no people working together to build bridges and roads and the like. I think there is this glorification of the Old West but you know even in the old days there was still government and taxes. And when I think of no government at ALL, at any level, all I can envision is Somalia and I think Somalia sucks.

[nadinbrzezinski]

20. A local former state senator was yaking

Over the glory of zero taxes. So I didn't ask him 'bout schools or roads...I asked him who'd pay for his salary? The others he was convincing had an aha moment as soon as I pointed out his pay comes from my taxes...

[LiberalLoner]

22. I think that the idea is like when we shut down bases overseas. There is a work crew

there (soldiers) who stay to dismantle things and ship personnel and equipment out. Then, when everything is closed up and locked up, the work crew who did the closure also leaves.

I think the plan for Republicans is to dismantle all Federal government (maybe all state and local government too, not sure about that) and then when that is accomplished, they take their last paycheck and return to the civilian world.

You can see the plan being executed now by the raiding of pension funds now, the plan to eliminate social security and medicare, etc. I think they will easily be able to get rid of medicare and social security (who cares if we protest? Doesn't change a thing...) and federal pensions, but they might run into some resistance (maybe) when they try to eliminate the military along with military pensions and military healthcare. Or maybe that will come easily too.

People seem to be in the mood to want to have no government whatsoever. No regulations, no one to make sure the food is safe to eat, no one to turn to if you are disabled or grow too old to work.

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. Then there is Wisconsin...

Americans are waking up.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

7. Gandhi was a Republican?? Who knew.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_India

[nadinbrzezinski]

21. He believed in government, modern-day GOP

Does not.

Ghandi Didn't believe in COLONIAL government. There's a difference.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

28. But, he was an Anarchist.

As was Tolstoy, Bakunin, Proudhon ("property is theft", Kropotkin, Joe Hill, Emma Goldman, etc.

Equating tea-baggers with Anarchists is like equating Nazis with Marxists.

[nadinbrzezinski]

29. Classic anarchism is also different from this

Though strictly neither believes in government. You are also using LEFT WING anarchists to drive your point. Like LIBERTARIANISM ther range to both ends. Yes Virginia there are LEFT WING LIBERTARIANS AND RIGHT WING ANARCHISTS.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

31. I'm objecting to the use of "Anarchism/Anarchist" as pejorative.

I have yet to hear tea-baggers refer to themselves as "anarchists" or express a belief in anarchism. They do, however, call themselves "Patriots" and are very fond of flags and the trappings of the state. What they are seeking is far, very far, from what Anarchists seek...namely a curb on the power of the few, whether from government, corporations, or the school yard bully.

The tea-baggers, and their "Libertarian" brothers are much more akin to fascists who seek power for the few and the triumph of the corporate state. Which is exactly what the likes of Gandhi, Bakunin, Emma Goldman, etc fought.

[nadinbrzezinski]

32. They do, they just don't realize it

For the record I am not using it as a pejorative, but as a descriptor.

It is a political science thing, and the shoe fits, nor do I expect these people to recognize it in themselves...just like left wing libertarians rarely use that themselves either.

That said, both are the broadest ideologies. In fact they are cousins and the debate at times is how close. In my mind there are enough differences to make them quite distinct, but both range anywhere from distrust of government to open hate.

Of course libertarians pray to property and mamom, where anarchists at times hate property.

Oh and by the way...like communism, Marxism, socialism et al, most people really have trouble telling apart the different schools within Anarchism. And I mean both historic and current.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

35. The "shoe" also fits with capitalists, Fascists, Populists, and Militarists.

I know what you're getting at but, I think your brush is too broad when it comes to Anarchists. To me, it's like saying that Fred Phelps is a Christian. Factually correct, but I don't think that Fred and his ilk represent Christians or Christian thinking.

But, we could go on with this circular discussion for years, I imagine. Hell, Kropotkin would probably dismiss Gandhi and Tolstoy as ineffective dreamers, and they would dismiss Kropotkin, Makhno, and Zapata as murderous thugs who hadn't a clue about Anarchism.

[nadinbrzezinski]

36. I'll dismiss Zapata as an Anarchist since

he did not, clearly, come from that tradition of thought. Sorry. His roots go farther back into MEXICAN history and the rights of Indigenous People. It has nothing todo with classic European anarchism. He is in the school of one Miguel HIdalgo y Costilla and Morelos.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

37. He may not have come from that tradition but he was influenced by it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emiliano_Zapata

Zapata was partly influenced by an anarchist from Oaxaca named Ricardo Flores Magón. The influence of Flores Magón on Zapata can be seen in the Zapatistas' Plan de Ayala, but even more noticeably in their slogan (this slogan was never used by Zapata) "Tierra y libertad" or "land and liberty", the title and maxim of Flores Magón's most famous work. Zapata's introduction to anarchism came via a local schoolteacher, Otilio Montaño Sánchez – later a general in Zapata's army, executed on 17 May 1917 – who exposed Zapata to the works of Peter Kropotkin and Flores Magón at the same time as Zapata was observing and beginning to participate in the struggles of the peasants for the land.

The plan proclaimed the Zapatista demands for "Reforma, Libertad Ley y Justicia" (Reform, Freedom, Law and Justice). Zapata also declared the Maderistas as a counter-revolution and denounced Madero. Zapata mobilized his Liberation Army and allied with former Maderistas Pascual Orozco and Emiliano Vázquez Gómez. Orozco was from Chihuahua, near the U.S. border, and thus was able to aid the Zapatistas with a supply of arms.

[nadinbrzezinski]

38. My lord, wikipedia is wrong on this

Flores Magon was not an anarchist, but a POSITIVIST...

Not even close in ideology or anything like that. He was also part of the early school reform movement under our wonderful Diaz... (yes he did a few things right...) that led to the formation of the National University in Mexico.

Oy.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

39. And, this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricardo_Flores_Mag%C3%B3n

Cipriano Ricardo Flores Magón (September 16, 1874 — November 21, 1922) was a noted Mexican anarchist and social reform activist.<1> His brothers Enrique and Jesús were also active in politics. Followers of the Magón brothers were known as Magonistas.

He was born on Mexican Independence Day, in San Antonio Eloxochitlán, Oaxaca.

Magón explored the writings and ideas of many early anarchists, such as Mikhail Bakunin and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, but was also influenced by anarchist contemporaries Élisée Reclus, Charles Malato, Errico Malatesta, Anselmo Lorenzo, Emma Goldman, and Fernando Tarrida del Mármol. He was most influenced by Peter Kropotkin. He also read from the works of Karl Marx and Henrik Ibsen.

He was one of the major thinkers of the Mexican Revolution and the Mexican revolutionary movement in the Partido Liberal Mexicano. Flores Magón organised with the Wobblies (IWW) and edited the Mexican anarchist newspaper Regeneración, which aroused the workers against the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz.

Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread, which Flores Magón considered a kind of anarchist bible, served as basis for the short-lived revolutionary communes in Baja California during the "Magonista" Revolt of 1911.From 1904, Magón remained in the USA. Half this period he was in prison. His last arrest was in 1918, when he received a 20-year sentence for "obstructing the war effort", a violation of the Espionage Act of 1917. The Wilson administration conducted what were called the Palmer Raids, a wholesale crackdown on war dissidents and leftists that also swept up notable socialists such as Eugene V. Debs. He died at Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas.

The cause of Flores Magón's death has been disputed. Some believe that he was deliberately murdered by prison guards. Others contend that he died as a result of deteriorating health caused by his long imprisonment, possibly exacerbated by medical neglect by Leavenworth Penitentiary officials and staff. Flores Magón wrote several letters to friends complaining of debilitating health problems and of what he perceived to be purposeful neglect by the prison staff.<2> Yet others have contended that he likely died while in prison due to natural causes.<3>
Legacy

Flores Magón's movement fired the imagination of both American and Mexican anarchists. In 1945, his remains were repatriated to Mexico and were interred in the Rotonda de los Hombres Ilustres in Mexico City. In Mexico, the Flores Magón brothers are considered left-wing political icons nearly as notable as Emiliano Zapata; numerous streets, public schools, towns and neighborhoods are named for them.

In 1997, an organization of indigenous peoples of Mexico in the state of Oaxaca formed the Popular Indigenous Council of Oaxaca "Ricardo Flores Magón" (Consejo Indígena Popular de Oaxaca "Ricardo Flores Magón", or CIPO-RFM), based on the philosophy of Magón.<4>

[nadinbrzezinski]

42. Yes, unless all I leanred IN MEXICO mind you

of the positivistic movement is wrong... or the El Colegio de Mexico Historia General de Mexico... for example. One of those things I picked up last time at the Airport.

He was a late comer to the Liberal wing in those wonderful civil wars... that lasted to about 1870.

He was part of the Barrera movement and Parra school. Riva Palacios was one of the fathers of this.

He was a social reformer, mind you... that they have right. Like most of these people they believed the nation had to be modernized, and all that. He was indeed a social reformer of the first order.

As to Zapata, he drew heavily also from the writings of Morelos and Hidalgo who a hundred years before wanted land reform and to end the colonial land system and go back to the glorious past. That tension is present to the modern day by the way.

Mexican history is complex. Among other things because while there are strong European influences, chiefly French and German (Prussia was big for example)... there is also a whole paralel nativist strain that is hard to understand. So to understand this, more than Bakunin, Comte is a good read... and yes there is a little bakunin... also the anarcho syndicalist movement in Mexico took on really strange contours around the 1920s and the formation of the Mexican Federation of Labor, since they wanted to reject the well meant reforms, like the Preparatoria Nacional, (Barrera had a lot to do with it) and the National University. What drew them away from that was the Cristero Revolt, the other tension...

Been doing US Labor history in the recent past, but I am new to US History in the depth needed. My shtick in college WAS Mexican History.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

43. Well, I'm not an expert on the History of Mexico.

But, I find Magon's relationship with the IWW fairly telling.

But, it's been very nice discussing this with you.

[nadinbrzezinski]

44. That he had, but many of the members of the movement did

I found that a lot of the US based history of Mexico has some ahem... issues as it were.

They try to put things in cubby holes that we can understand.

That said, US History has covered periods of Mexican History that Mexico avoids, like the Caste War of Yucatan. Now that is a good read, and will explain some of the reasons behind the Chiapas revolt. That was not original by any stretch.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

34. posted in wrong place

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

12. But it's Geithner.

:think:

[LiberalLoner]

2. Hope they will be repaid. Hubby and I do the Federal Thrift Savings Program and

all I can say is, hope they put the funds back eventually. It would pretty much suck to be us if they didn't.

But then, I get the feeling it's going to suck to be any of us in this nation pretty soon after everything goes belly-up.

K&R

[CTyankee]

11. God, that is terrible! People plan their LIVES around their pensions!

How do they expect these people to get by?

This is breaking a contract with people who faithfully gave their service, thinking that when they retired they could live decently. To pull the rug out from underneath them is just criminal...I get furious just thinking about it :grr:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. Gee, thanks, Tim. Screwing the retiress is sooo...Democratic?

[Ichingcarpenter]

8. When your credit card is overdrawn you can dip into the Pensions

of City Bank executives.

[LiberalLoner]

10. Snort ! Wouldn't that be fun, LOL! Well shoot the banks (with the govt help) stole huge

amounts of money from us during the bailout. Maybe it's just fair if we steal some back. No, two wrongs don't make a right. But this post is funny anyhow.

[woo me with science]

13. Everything is speeding up. They are coming for us openly now. nt

[Autumn]

14. They don't even care that we see

what they are doing. They seem rather desperate.

[woo me with science]

16. Yup. Why should they care?

Do they really expect us to do anything about it?

[LiberalLoner]

19. The funny thing is, the right wingers and we are both upset by what we see, the way

I figure it.

We just see things from different angles. The teabaggers see things and think things are going to hell in a handbasket because the government is controlling the corporations (driving away jobs with too much taxation and regulation, etc.) and we look at things and see that things are going to hell in a handbasket because the corporations are controlling the government (demanding bailouts for the bank or else the economy dies, etc.)

But both sides see that things ARE going to hell in a handbasket and ALL of us are pissed about it and worried about the future.

[Hannah Bell]

15. geithner is a fucking liar. he doesn't have to do any such thing. did you know jd rockefeller's

daughter blanchette was his first cousin twice removed?

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Hannah%20Bell

[The Backlash Cometh]

17. Exactly how do they distribute the pain around the civil servants?

From one month to the next, do they see a decrease?

[Rex]

18. So we can give a huge tax bailout to the uber-rich, start a new war,

make sure to bailout companies that put us into a financial nightmare (to the tune of trillions), BUT for some reason we seem to lack the ability to 'just say no' to corporate malfeasance and instead steal from hardworking retirees?! Why not steal the money from corporations? At least that would help keep grandma's heater on this winter and maybe cause a mega-conglomerate to cut back on having 21 different types of TP!? Just a thought.

[NotThisTime]

23. How the hell can that be legal?? If we tapped our pensions we'd pay exhorbitant fines in this case

these pension funds don't belong to the Government, the Government just oversees them, no?

[Rex]

26. Looks like they are going to lie to us into believing the money

will be repayed...with later money borrowed to cover up even more debt? Some day we will reach a point where we can no longer entertain the Beast. I hope I am long dead before that point.

[LiberalLoner]

30. Yup, THIS +1,000. I think the whole rotten apple cart is crashing to the ground

now and yeah maybe they can rob Peter to pay Paul for awhile and play accounting games and keep running the printing presses and whatever other tricks they have up their sleeves but anyone can see we are in a collapse. Will it be a slow collapse or a fast one? So far it's been a slow one, relatively speaking. It could turn into a fast collapse in a heartbeat though.

[coalition_unwilling]

25. Rather than, say, cease production on the B-1 Stealth bomber. - n/t

[Cali_Democrat]

27. We certainly can't do that now can we?

There are people out there that hate us for our freedom.

[quaker bill]

41. Nice idea

but we don't make that many of them. You gotta go a bit bolder. Stop building weapons, all of them, then you are getting close.

[mod mom]

33. why not dip into GOP congressional pensions & see how long they hold out.

[quaker bill]

40. an afternoon perhaps two.

There just isn't that many congress critters.

[Kablooie]

45. Great! First thing they do is steal from the old folks. Admirable.