Interesting piece of information .....Baseless THREATS

I felt the "SS scare" was only that. I know people got their checks today, I got mine, deposited in the bank, right on schedule. This article explains what I was NOT concerned.

What happens to Social Security if the government shuts down?


"People don't get their Social Security checks." That was President Obama at a press conference last week.

And this is Harry Reid, the top Democrat in the Senate, in a statement on Tuesday: "A shutdown could ... mean no Social Security checks for seniors."

The Democrats are saber rattling, hoping to portray Republicans as irresponsible. And the claim has been repeated by other top Democrats.

Here's the rub: It doesn't appear to be true.

During the last major shutdown, which lasted about a month starting in late 1995, the Social Security Administration mailed checks throughout the crisis, and a close reading of established law makes clear the agency has the legal authority to do so again.

"I am absolutely sure the checks would be sent out," said John F. Cooney, a partner at law firm Venable who designed shutdown plans for the government while employed at the Office of Management and Budget.

Robert Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute and a trustee of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, backed that view, saying claims that benefits won't be paid are "not true."

The legal case is pretty clear. In 1995, President Clinton's lawyers in the Department of Justice laid out how federal agencies should operate if Congress failed to appropriate funds.

Running the government on 8¢

At the time, Clinton's lawyers pointed out that Social Security checks could be mailed during a shutdown, because the program doesn't need Congress to authorize funds for it each year. Instead, Social Security benefits are paid from the program's trust fund.

Times are a-changin .......... Part One

I received this in an email today, and there is some good food for thought contained herein. It is lengthy, so I am going to put up a few items at a time. I am not sure of the origin or the validity, but it contains some interesting thoughts..............

CHANGES ARE COMING ---- Whether these changes are good or bad depends in part on how we adapt to them. But, ready or not, here they come!


1. The Post Office. Get ready to imagine a world without the post office. They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way to sustain it long term. Email, Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the post office alive. Most of your mail every day is junk mail and bills.

2. The Check. Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with checks by 2018. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checks. Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check. This plays right into the death of the post office. If you never paid your bills by mail and never received them by mail, the post office would absolutely go out of business.

3. The Newspaper. The younger generation simply doesn't read the newspaper. They certainly don't subscribe to a daily delivered print edition. That may go the way of the milkman and the laundry man. As for reading the paper online, get ready to pay for it. The rise in mobile Internet devices and e-readers has caused all the newspaper and magazine publishers to form an alliance. They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies to develop a model for paid subscription services.

4. The Book. You say you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages. I said the same thing about downloading music from iTunes. I wanted my hard copy CD. But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered that I could get albums for half the price without ever leaving home to get the latest music. The same thing will happen with books. You can browse a bookstore online and even read a preview chapter before you buy. And the price is less than half that of a real book. And think of the convenience! Once you start flicking your fingers on the screen instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story, can't wait to see what happens next, and you forget that you're holding a gadget instead of a book.

5. The Land Line Telephone. Unless you have a large family and make a lot of local calls, you don't need it anymore. Most people keep it simply because they've always had it. But you are paying double charges for that extra service. All the cell phone companies will let you call customers using the same cell provider for no charge against your minutes

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