RUTHFULLY YOURS

The age old adage of politics boils down to four words: never speak the truth.  Politicians promise the moon and the media are more than happy to frame it to their agenda.  Truth be damned!

Take the recent debt ceiling charade for instance.  While President Obama waxed so eloquently about how the compromise requires America “to live within its means,” his admission was nothing short of a political farce.   Meanwhile, the left was up in (non)arms as former Labor Secretary and eat-the-rich expert Robert Reich called the deal “grossly unfair” for the middle and lower class.   Of course the deal contained no actual cuts, (the deficit still increases by $7 trillion in 10 years), but facts are a hard sell to those who believe government can overcome scarcity.

Politicians lying is a tradition older than stoning adulterers.  Yet where stoning is regarded as inhumane by today’s standards, misinforming the public has become a full fledged profession complete with a good health care plan and a pension to boot.  And when someone running for high office breaks protocol, journalist fueled fireworks are never far behind.

Case in point: presidential candidate and Texas Governor Rick Perry’s painfully true admission that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme.”  At a recent campaign stop in Iowa, Perry described the entitlement as “…a Ponzi scheme for these young people. The idea that they’re working and paying into Social Security today, that the current program is going to be there for them, is a lie.”

And like vultures to a decaying varmint, the media pounced all over this rare elucidation of reality.  From the HuffingtonPost to Firedoglake.com, outcry in favor of the status quo was spewed all across the high echelons of left wing punditry.  Here is a man running for president who thinks that the program Bernie Madoff modeled is bankrupting a generation.  Good grief!

At least Madoff got his clients to voluntarily throw away their life savings.  Granted he lied about his financials, but look at Social Security’s current state.  Since the beginning of 2010, the guaranteed senior-vote producer has been running in the red and it doesn’t look like black is coming anytime, or decade, soon.  Unless of course you use silly White House logic and claim that Social Security is fully funded by the government from IOU’s owed to itself.  In Director of the Office of Management and Budget Jack Lew’s own words, “the government has just as much obligation to pay back the bonds in the Social Security trust fund as we do to any other bondholders.”

According to Lew, Social Security is solvent because it is backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.  It’s similar to NY Times columnist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman’s claim that government debt isn’t a bad thing because it’s “basically money we owe to ourselves.”  Winton Smith would feel right at home with such doublespeak.  The Orwellian rhetoric of “government owing itself money = solvency” is more reminiscent of “war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance of strength,” than any real acknowledgement of the fiscal truth.

In a town where good intentions come to die, Gov. Perry is going to learn the hard way that telling the truth is no way to win a spot in the Oval Office.

As a 23 year old college grad, I accepted long ago that Social Security won’t be available for my retirement.   Many of my peers have come to the same realization.   If the generation of Jersey Shore and viral Youtube videos can accept reality, it’s only a matter of time for the media and politicians to accept their own fatal conceit.