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@alexdel.bsky.social

130 followers 130 following 2K posts

Recovering blogger MIA from social media for over a decade. Non-recovered Gooner. Returned via Bluesky only to find that it is too late now, it will always be too late, fortunately! Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.

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alexdel.bsky.social @alexdel.bsky.social · 12h

As today, mostly an accounting tool since excess contributions are as you state are loaned to the US government by purchasing treasuries. The Trust Fund became more important after the 1983 reforms when demographics (boomers retiring) made it important that funding exceed spend future retirees.

alexdel.bsky.social @alexdel.bsky.social · 12h

Wrong. There was no money under the mattress. Benefits started as soon as they started collecting taxes. The purpose was to move older workers into retirement so unemployed workers could get jobs. It was a tax and a subsidy ab initio.

alexdel.bsky.social @alexdel.bsky.social · 12h

As originally conceived there was no trust fund. It started paying benefits to retirees (who had never contributed to SS) at the same time it started collecting contributions from wage earners and employers. There was no Trust Fund; it was a tax (on wage earners) and a subsidy (to retirees).

alexdel.bsky.social @alexdel.bsky.social · 12h

No, it didn’t. You obviously know nothing about the federal budget, or its accounting. Otherwise you would know what on-budget and off-budget deficits are, and how the government tracks them.

alexdel.bsky.social @alexdel.bsky.social · 1d

it was those antifa-Catholics

alexdel.bsky.social @alexdel.bsky.social · 1d

“Contributed” not created

alexdel.bsky.social @alexdel.bsky.social · 1d

… for the last 40 years. He was a flawed man but Trump is a malignant cancer who is tearing immigrants from their families and terrorizing his own people, and given a chance he will raze Social Security and Medicare, which Reagan would consider pure evil.

alexdel.bsky.social @alexdel.bsky.social · 1d

Not a huge Reagan fan but he did sign the most significant immigration bill of the last century which created a path to citizenship for millions of law-abiding immigrants who created greatly to American prosperity, and he also promoted and signed legislation which kept Social Security solvent…

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alexdel.bsky.social @alexdel.bsky.social · 1d

Some old memories here. Man.

Berkeleyside @berkeleyside.org · 1d

She co-managed the Gilbert and Sullivan Troupe, where over 1,000 fifth and sixth grade students performed operettas.

Remembering Catherine Lynch, Berkeley elementary teacher for 30 years

She co-managed the Gilbert and Sullivan Troupe, where over 1,000 fifth and sixth grade students performed operettas.

www.berkeleyside.org

alexdel.bsky.social @alexdel.bsky.social · 1d

I was in Mr. Clute's class when our class and Mrs. Lynch's performed HMS Pinafore.

alexdel.bsky.social @alexdel.bsky.social · 1d

A bathroom in the style of a 2000 Calabasas flippr home isn't appropriate to the style of the Lincoln era. This ignorant chucklefuck doesn't know what he doesn't know. We're talking Victorian era in the 1860's.

alexdel.bsky.social @alexdel.bsky.social · 2d

She did exactly what any sane person advised by a competent lawyer would do, ended an interview when the interviewer continued to ask her about evidence in a pending charged felony case.

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alexdel.bsky.social @alexdel.bsky.social · 2d

Two word: Manhattan Project.

alexdel.bsky.social @alexdel.bsky.social · 3d

Inspired by some ketamine fueled billionaire who invoked Hobbits to compare white supremacist shitberg Tommy Robinson to the steely men of Gondor.

alexdel.bsky.social @alexdel.bsky.social · 3d

The Germans called theirs the Enabling Act.

alexdel.bsky.social @alexdel.bsky.social · 4d

The argument that people will find the Democratic Party more relevant if they follow the advice of failed consultants to run a tepid campaign on vague, poorly defined centrist slogans is dumb beyond all reckoning.

alexdel.bsky.social @alexdel.bsky.social · 5d

That sounds like something a 12 year old might say.

alexdel.bsky.social @alexdel.bsky.social · 5d

Some of us are still mourning the absence of wigwam you insensitive bugger!

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Adam Bonin @adambonin.bsky.social · 6d

🚨We have reached the Even Peggy Noonan stage of Trump-induced fears for our Republic: "The photos of the tearing down of the East Wing were upsetting because they felt like a metaphor for the idea that history itself can be made to disappear." www.wsj.com/opinion/a-re...

The tearing down of the East Wing of the White House also seems, in this context of concern, disturbing. White House defenders dismiss qualms as pearl clutching—a big vital building’s gotta grow, it’s been torn down and built up before, we need more room.

But all this was done without public demand or support, and was done in a way that was abrupt, complete, unstoppable. Congress has the power of the purse for such projects but the president says no, our wonderful donors are paying for it, but the names of the donors were not quickly revealed. Your imagination was forced to go to—why? Might certain bad actors be buying influence? Crypto kings, billionaires needing agency approvals, felons buying pardons, AI chieftains on the prowl. Might the whole thing be open to corruption? Would it even have been attempted in a fully functioning, sharp and hungry republic? Or only a tired one that’s being diminished?

The republic they devised produced not efficiency but equilibrium. It established not only a system but a spirit. It has seen us through for 237 years.

Are we maintaining our republic? Is our equilibrium holding? The last nine months a lot of lines seem to have been crossed—in the use of the military, in redirecting the Justice Department to target the president’s enemies, real and perceived. There are many areas in which you’ve come to think: Isn’t the executive assuming powers of the Congress here? Why is Congress allowing this? The executive branch takes on authority to bend its foes, defeat them. You ask: Is all this constitutional? The president “jokes” that he may not accept the Constitution’s two-term presidential limit. Are you laughing?

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alexdel.bsky.social @alexdel.bsky.social · 8d

He’s accelerating. He’s not getting the same kind of rush from his criming as he used to before during his first term when congressional republicans or his cabinet of non lickspittles would try to put the brakes on so he needs to do more faster. Kinda like a serial killer devolving.

alexdel.bsky.social @alexdel.bsky.social · 8d

"some old internet posts" carrying a lot of weight there...

alexdel.bsky.social @alexdel.bsky.social · 8d

Trying to merge Speer into his Goebbels act.

alexdel.bsky.social @alexdel.bsky.social · 8d

OTOH, one doesn't need to praise Reagan to use a video of him talking point out that Trump is flat out lying about what Reagan actually said about tariffs.

alexdel.bsky.social @alexdel.bsky.social · 8d

This is such completely stupid bullshit. There are about 1.3 million active duty military personnel so $130,000,000 equals about $100 per soldier, sailor, airmen or marine.

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Oliver Willis @owillis.bsky.social · 8d

The poll watchers are back

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