This Social Security snafu needs immediate attention...

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

...at the end of the first thread covering this issue, Robert Cook mentioned that everyone should be contacting their Representatives in Congress...I have e-mailed Jim Traficant, my rep. from Ohio, and have also sent the story onto the Pittsburgh Post Gazzette, who have an excelent track record as a first rate investigative daily newspaper. I think a full fledged effort is needed here by all to alert as many people as possible. Without a compliant SSA, what the heck we gonna do with all the old people in this country. This in itself, is worse than a BITR!

-- Vern (bacon17@ibm.net), December 06, 1999

Answers

Vern, its the tip of the ice-berg, and only those lucky folks that visit this forum will understand that. Thats why theres still last minute preps for the true believers...---...

-- Les (yoyo@tolate.com), December 06, 1999.

Vern,

"without a compliant SSA..."

What about IRS? FAA OIL

POWER

WATER

FOOD?

Should these be mentioned in the email? Or just the SSA!

DEC. 6th is today!!!!!!!!!!!!! Nothing personal my friend, but I think I'm beginning to understand why contingency planning was so doggone (not you doggone) important!!

-- d----- (dciinc@aol.com), December 06, 1999.


Why the sudden rush to alert the people that can do the least to help the situation: Congress? They barely know what the problem is and wouldn't have the courage to trumpet preparedness if they did.

Alot of old people will be suffering next year. Very sad. Come to grips with it.

Traficant spins converative(whatever that is these days), votes liberal. Please don't impeach that criminal. Liars protecting liars.

-- PJC (paulchri@msn.com), December 06, 1999.


Dont look to the government if things go wrong.

In the 1920s unfunded liabilities were meager. In 1992 total unfunded liabilities were 16 $trillion.(liability over assets)

In 1927 total welfare expenditures per capita were $7.50 (in 1982 dollars). In 1989 total welfare expenditures per capita were $2913(in 1982 dollars). Thats a 29,000% increase.

Today, families are spread out all over the continent, unlike the depression era, when families were normally close by.

In the 1930s people were generally lawfull. Today there is a huge burgeoning underclass who cant tell if they are getting the right change for a hamburger.

I offer no solutions.

-- earl (ejrobill@pcpostal.com), December 06, 1999.


It just may move the masses to prepare if we can get NATIONAL attention to this story. Whatever amount of preparations that they could accomplish in the next 3 weeks will reduce the severity of the yet to be seen consequences of the rollover. I hope you all never quit trying to help one more person "get it". Folks, I'm sorry, but we need to get this story into the NATIONAL news! Why isn't Rather/Jennings etc. reporting it? I'm sorry, but even if you assume that the infrastructure holds (as the masses do), losing the SSA will be more than a BITR!

-- Vern (bacon17@ibm.net), December 06, 1999.


Very good, earl.

Wow, but facts never got on the way of worldsavers. The SSA thing...??!! ...-"Time's up, boys and girls!" Sorry, at 25 days to go, use your energy for contingencies, old boy. What's done, it's done. What'll be, will be. -"Batten down, batten down those hatches!"...

-- (Eli@zephyr.net), December 06, 1999.


The primary reason to get attention to the SSA isn't (as correctly pointed out above) the relative ability of the SSA to "support" everybody.

I agree completely, the SSA can't do that, it was never intended to do that - although the various administrations since Roosevelt have specifically kept trying to hold the seniors through the promise of extended SSA benefits (at the hidden price of future tremendous deficits for their grandchildren and great children....)

The SSA is a "key word and tricky phrase" as we used to say. It rings alarm buttons and sirens whenever 'touched." People (and reporters) who know nothing else, and who respond so slovenly elsewhere are jump-started into "a spontaneous combustion" of response as soon as Social Security is mentioned - at least by a Republican....

If this is breeched nationally, watch the response and the spin- it will amaze; and the process of "debunking" the falsely-printed checks and statements - more people than you'd ever believe are going to "get it."

Why? It's a "mother" and "apple pie" issue - also, we've been told forever that SSA has been compliant and the "checks will be delivered" .... only now, it's evident that the WRONG checks will be delivered as well ....

YES - it's critical to ask/warn/demand a response from your Congressman - not just to get the systems fixed, to demand an audit, to get the incompetent manager fired and the program fixed; but to alert others that failures in other programs are going to occur.

A complacent press - if alerted, even if only in efforts to debunk the story and deny it - as was tried in Seattle, isn't going to ignore Social Security. They may not investigate it, they may only repeat exactly what the White House says about it - but they won't ignore it.

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Marietta, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), December 06, 1999.


And what good would it do even IF all the SSA checks get out to the right people, on time?

They use that money to buy, among other things, PRESCRIPTION DRUGS. It's looking like there may not be any around to buy in January; in fact, it's been showing up already, if the DRUG post threads here are any indication.

-- profit of doom (doom@helltopay.ca), December 06, 1999.


25 days.

Y2K CANNOT BE FIXED!

-- Jack (jsprat@eld.~net), December 06, 1999.

Time to change the "handle". Things are beginning to bubble and it is not looking good.

-- ghost (fading into the@background.com), December 06, 1999.


Hmm, I'd be more inclined to just print off a lot of copies of the addresses of my government representatives. You could hand them out to any hungry people you meet in the coming months. Just so they know.

-- Colin MacDonald (roborogerborg@yahoo.com), December 07, 1999.

Kathy ?Abrams?..... the SSA CIO who bailed a couple months ago?

Is she somewhere in the Virgin Isles?

-- lisa (lisa@work.now), December 07, 1999.


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