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Social Security

The Danger of Voter Apathy and Third Parties for Biden

by Gregory N. Heires September 12, 2020

written by Gregory N. Heires

By GREGORY N. HEIRES and RAYMOND MARKEY
Whether to vote in the 2020 presidential election is not an academic question.

Yet many progressives and other apathetic and cynical voters intend cast their vote for a third-party candidate or to sit out the election.

This isn’t an election in which you should throw away your vote. The stakes are too high.

“We do not have room for error in this election,” said MSNBC analyst Claire McCaskill, a former Democratic senator from Missouri.
Armed fascist militias following President Donald Trump’s call to action are now actively attacking demonstrators in our nation’s cities in an effort to help him win.

A victory by Trump would lead to an entrenchment of authoritarianism, a deepening of inequality, a continuation of the coronavirus health crisis, and a further weakening of vital government institutions adopted since the New Deal. It would also be a victory for white supremacy with fearful consequences for people of color.

Trump must be defeated.

Using the ballot box and voting for Democrat Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris in November is the first and most immediate step in doing so.

Third Party Help for Republicans

The last presidential election makes it clear that voters who decide to support a third-party candidate or abstain would once again hand a victory to Trump.

In the 2020 race, two third party candidates, Howie Hawkins of the Green Party and Jo Jorgensen of the Libertarian Party, have ballot access to at least 270 electoral votes, which is the number needed to win the presidency. Republicans are backing rapper Kanye West’s bid in an effort to siphon off votes from Biden.

During the 2016 presidential race, Trump said if people didn’t like him and didn’t like Democrat Hillary Clinton, they should vote third party or not vote at all. This was a very successful strategy.

If Clinton had received the Green Party’s votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, Trump would not be president. The failure of Bernie Sanders ideological purists to support Clinton and a drop in the African-American vote sealed her fate.

Unfortunately, the Greens played the same role in the 2000 presidential election that they did in the close 2016 election. Ultimately, George W. Bush’s victory in our country’s closest presidential election was determined by 537 votes in Florida, where Greens received 97,488 votes. Eight years of Republican control of the presidency followed.

For all practical purposes, the Greens have functioned as a wing of the Republican Party in presidential elections. Not only have they been a very important factor in helping to elect Republican presidents, but their constant attack on Democrats have helped make Mitch McConnell the senate majority leader and enabled Republicans to maintain control of many state legislatures.

Trump: A Menace to Democracy and Working Families

The differences between Biden and Trump are so stark that it is puzzling–not just disturbing–that many Bernie supporters and other progressives are prepared not to vote.

The bankruptcy of Trump’s policies—-apart from his threat to our democracy–is quite apparent. But a brief review is in order.

Disenchanted Republicans cite the GOP’s failure to write a platform as a sad sign of how the party has lost its bearing and evolved into a cult of a personality. Indeed, the Republican convention was little more four days of a love vest for Trump that played up his law-and-order candidacy while ignoring his dismal record, which includes nearly 200,000 deaths and more than 6.6 million cases resulting from COVID-19, mass unemployment and a crashed economy.

But despite the absence of a platform, the underlying philosophy and policies of Trump’s party are clear:

• kill off Social Security by eliminating the payroll tax

• dismantle Obamacare, leaving millions of Americans without health-care coverage

• adopt more tax cuts to continue redistributing income and wealth to the economic elite and corporations

• disenfranchise African-American and new immigrant voters and

• ignore climate change.

Defying the usually practice of presidential nominees, Biden moved to the left rather than to the center after his nomination. For progressives, Biden’s shift to the left–together with Trump’s threat to our democracy–should weaken the argument for supporting a third-party alternative or sitting out the presidential election.

If progressive ideological purists and apathetic voters deliver the election to Trump, we will lose an historic opportunity to build a new movement to fight to put an end to the right-wing and neoliberal assault on worker families that has occurred over the past four decades.

Biden offers a vision of an expansive government with policies that would address the country’s deepening of inequality resulting from tax cuts, the attack on unions, elimination of business regulations and anti-worker trade deals.

The two most progressive candidates in the Democratic primary–Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—-played a major role in shaping the platform.

The party’s unity task force included strong supporters of progressive policies like Medicare-for-All and a Green New Deal, like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) and Pramila Jayapal (WA).

“The people who supported Bernie Sanders–this absolutely gives us a step forward,” she said Sara Nelson, the co-chair of the party’s economic task force, who is the president of the Association of Flight Attendants union, which backed Sanders. “We improved Biden’s policies, and you can always be stronger in the fight when you’re fighting from higher ground.”

A 21st Century New Deal?

Biden’s far-reaching agenda has led some political observers to compare it to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. His plan includes:

• Jobs and the Economy: a $200 increase in the monthly Social Security payment; raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour; a $400 billion program to buy American goods; and rescinding Trump’s tax cuts.

• Climate Change: A $17 trillion investment in green technologies research, cutting greenhouses gases up to 28 percent by 2026, the creation of millions of union manufacturing jobs to produce green energy products and rejoining the Paris Climate Accord, which Trump abandoned

• Race: The creation of $30 billion investment fund for minority business and crimination justice reforms that would include the creation of a $20 billion grant to encourage states to reduce incarceration rates, eliminate minimum sentences and decriminalize marijuana possession, expunge records of cannabis convictions and abolish the death penalty

• Health: a plan to expand Obamacare, insure 97 percent of Americans and create a public health insurance option similar to Medicare.

• Immigration: Reverse Trump’s policy of separating children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexican border, eliminate the travel ban on Muslim countries, protect the “Dreamers,” the children of undocumented immigrants, guaranteeing their eligibility for federal student aid
.
• Labor: strengthen the right to organize and hold corporations and executives personally accountable for interfering with organizing efforts; check corporate power by fighting wage theft; beef up enforcement of workplace safety protections; end mandatory arbitration clauses imposed on workers contracts; ban the permanent replacement striking workers; lift the prohibition on supporting secondary boycotts; ban state laws prohibiting unions from collecting dues or comparable payments from all workers who benefit from union representation that unions are legally obligated to provide, and expand protections for undocumented workers who report workplace violations.

Also, provide a federal guarantee for public sector employees to bargain for better pay and benefits and the working conditions they deserve; extend the right to organize and bargain collectively to independent contractors; ensure that workers in the “gig economy” receive the legal benefits and protections; expand long overdue rights to farmworkers and domestic workers and stop employers from denying workers overtime pay they’ve earned.

Most Progressive Agenda in Decades

“It’s the most progressive platform of any Democratic nominee in the modern history of the party,” Waleed Shahid, communications director for Justice Democrats, a group that backs left-wing challengers to incumbent congressional Democrats, told Vox’s Matthew Iglesias in July.

As for Biden, he has suggested, when discussing the challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic and the current economic crisis, that his challenge as president would be as great as what Roosevelt confronted during the Great Depression.

A Biden win would open a big opportunity for progressive change during the greatest social, political and economic challenges the country faces since the Great Depression. Biden needs a strong mandate. Third-party candidates and voter apathy pose a threat to that mandate and, worse, could deliver the election to Trump.

The New Crossroads blogger Gregory N. Heires is a former president of the Metro NY Labor Communications Council. Raymond Markey is a former president of the New York Public Library Guild Local 1930.

September 12, 2020 0 comment

Economics Environment Income Inequality Jobs Labor Issues News Politics Safety Net Social Security Uncategorized

Yup, Trump Did Scam Us

by Gregory N. Heires September 2, 2019

written by Gregory N. Heires

By GREGORY N. HEIRES
The evidence keeps growing that President Trump’s tax overhaul was little more than a gift to Corporate America and the 1 percent at the expense of the middle class.

What’s more, with economists predicting we are headed into a recession, it’s quite apparent the president’s promise that his massive tax cuts would turbo-charge the economy has proved bogus.

The typical American family didn’t come close to receiving the $4,000 in tax savings promised by Trump. Ordinary taxpayers got a $1,000 cut but then basically lost it to inflation.

The president also suggested that wages would pick up as a result of the tax cuts. That didn’t happen either.

In 2018, real wages did increase. But they grew more slowly than the economy.

Adjusted for inflation, the wage growth amounted to 2.0 percent. But for ordinary workers (“production and nonsupervisory workers,” as classified by the government), the wage growth was lower than that–1.2 percent.

Deepening the Wealth and Income Divide

Thus, the tax plan has plan has done virtually nothing to reverse the decades-long shift of income from working families to the rich in spite of rising productivity.

So, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 deepened the U.S wealth and income divide. Our trickle-up economy continues to become more polarized as the middle class hollows out.

The new law increased after-tax incomes of people with incomes of more than $1 million by 3.3 percent, compared to 1.3 percent or less for people earning less than $100,000, according to the Tax Policy Center. Millionaires received an average tax cut of $69,840, while people making less than $100,000 typically received $453.

The tax doubled what the wealthy can transfer to their heirs without triggering the estate tax to $11 million for children and $22 million for married couples.
Remember those promised bonuses?

The Trump administration suggested that our generous employers would share their tax savings with their employees. Well, the widespread distribution of significant bonuses didn’t happen. In our economy of 157 million workers, the average bonus came to a paltry $28, according to Americans for Tax Fairness.

What Economic Stimulus?

As far as its impact on the economy, the tax law has turned out to be a dud.
A Congressional Research Service report released in May concludes that the tax plan had “a relatively small (if any) first-year effect on the economy.”

The economic growth rate did increase from 2.2 percent in 2017 to 2.9 percent in 2018. But the increase was much lower than what Trump claimed would happen.

Early this year, the national Association for Business Economics released the findings of a survey about how corporate economists viewed the tax cuts.
Eighty-five percent of the economists reported that the tax cuts “have not caused their firms to change hiring or investment plans.

“The economic benefits of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act seem to have petered out,” a Tax Policy Center report said in August. “The economy’s strength now seems to lie almost entirely with consumer spending.”

Rather than pouring their huge tax savings into the economy, companies opted instead for a buyback bonanza to enrich corporate chiefs and shareholders. Buybacks hit a record $1.1 trillion in 2018.

“Corporations have used their tax windfalls to line the pockets of their rich executives, not to increase wages for their workers,” Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez said in August. “Meanwhile workers at places like Harley-Davidson are losing their jobs.”

As for the repatriation of profits that the administration predicted would follow the tax cuts, corporations have apparently generally chosen to continue to park those estimated $2.6 trillion to $4 trillion in accumulated earnings in tax havens outside the United States. Shortly after the Trump tax law went into effect, a Federal Reserve Bank study found “no obvious spike in investment” by the 15 companies that account for most of the profits deposited abroad.

The tax plan lowered the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. Over a decade, the projected savings for corporations will be $1.35 trillion, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, which reports to the Senate and House finance and budget committees.

All told, the tax cuts will add an estimated $1 trillion to the deficit by 2022, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. Meanwhile, the number of companies paying zero taxes doubled in 2018, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

The 31 percent drop in corporate tax revenues registered by the U.S. Treasury in 2018 is far larger than expected. A report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy called the reduction “a more precipitous decline than in any year of normal economic growth in U.S. history.”

So, apart from filling corporate coffers and the pocketbooks of the 1 percent, the $1.9 trillion cut has put the federal government in a financial straightjacket.

Starving Government

Take a look at what, according to the Center American Progress, the lost revenue could pay for:

• the elimination of childhood poverty

• a doubling of the federal investment in climate science

• extending universal access to affordable child care and pre-kindergarten

• a $10,000 raise for teachers in high-poverty schools

• free community college and

• addressing the opioid epidemic.

Government is being starved.

Quite clearly, the Taxs Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 is about more than giving handouts corporations and the wealthy.

Today, it is ever so evident that–as critics contended from the beginning—anti-government Republican legislators concocted the tax scheme in part as a Trojan Horse for gutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

In November 2020, the agenda is clear for voters who care about those programs and economic fairness: They must unite to vote out Trump and the other politicians who are turning our country into an authoritarian plutocracy.

September 2, 2019 0 comment

Economics Income Inequality Labor Issues Politics Social Security Taxes

Lousy Job? It’s Your Fault!

by Gregory N. Heires June 27, 2014

written by Gregory N. Heires

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Technological change and inadequate education are often cited as the principal causes of our wage crisis.

This argument, in a certain sense, blames workers for their plight. They are unwilling to invest sufficiently in their education, and they lack the necessary skills for complex jobs in the Information Age.

Similarly, conservatives charge that the unemployed leach off the taxpayers, content to get by on generous unemployment benefits and to allow unskilled immigrants to do the low-wage work that they should be doing.

Blame the individual. It’s a very American concept. As the title of a song from the musical “Into the Woods” by Stephen Sondheim puts it: “Your Fault.”

Another argument is that we can’t do much about the wage decline.

Americans simply can’t compete with the low-wage workers of China and developing countries. This presumes a certain inevitability about our falling standard of living. So, let’s just give in.

But how true is this? Can we put a brake on our declining and stagnating wages?

Rising Inequality is No Accident

A recent study by the Economic Policy Institute, “Raising America’s Pay: Why It’s Our Central Economic Policy Challenge,” suggests that the economic squeeze on the middle class and the poor isn’t an accident. Largely it’s the result of a shift of greater economic and political power to the wealthy. Public policies account for much of our rising inequality and the wage crisis. And therefore public policies can address most of the problem.

“The causes of stagnant wages for the vast majority and unequal wage growth are, in our view, related to intentional policy decisions,” write the authors of the report, EPI President Lawrence Mishel and economists Josh Bivens, Elise Gould and Heidi Shierholz. “The connecting principle among them is that nearly every policy change had the completely predictable effect of reducing the bargaining power of typical workers (individually and collectively), and boosting the bargaining position of capital owners and corporate managers.”

The EPI report identifies several policies at the root of falling and stagnating wages, including:

(1) the dramatic drop in the top rate of taxes since the late 1970s: This has increased the pretax income share of the top 1 percent, and it has slowed the income growth of everyone else.

(2) skyrocketing corporate pay: In 1993, corporate tax law was changed to allow corporations to deduct only the first $1 million of executive salaries from corporate income taxes. But pay above the $1 million threshold could continue to be deducted as long as it was “performance based,” allowing corporations to boost executive compensation through stock options and profit-related bonuses.

(3) economic globalization: Trade agreements have protected corporate profits but done little to protect domestic wages.

(4) macroeconomic policy: The Federal Reserve Bank has focused on keeping inflation, rather than unemployment, low.

(5) regulatory policy: Financial deregulation has led the financial sector to double its size compared to the rest of the economy. The financial sector is overrepresented in the 1 percent. And,

(6) labor market policy and business practices: The decline in the minimum wage explains about two-thirds of the wage gap between low- and middle-wage workers. And weakened unions account for a fifth to a third of the rise of wage inequality from the 1970s to the late 2000s.

The Decline of Workers’ Share of Productivity

Progressive public policy must address the divergence between productivity growth and worker compensation.

From 1979 and 2013, productivity grew eight times faster than the typical worker’s compensation, according to the report. During that period, productivity went up 64.9 percent while the compensation of production and non-supervisory workers grew a mere 8.2 percent.

“Much of this productivity growth accrued to those with the very highest wages,” the EPI report says. “The top 1 percent of earners saw cumulative gains in annual wages of 153.6 percent between 1979 and 2012—far in excess of economy-wide production.” Between 1979 and 2007, the wages of the top 1 percent of earners increased by 156.2 percent—nearly 10 times as fast as the bottom 90 percent of the work force.

What steps should we take to restore share prosperity in the United States? We could simply begin by changing the policies cited by the EPI report.

Strengthening unions, boosting the federal minimum wage, supporting full employment, maintaining the competitive value of the U.S. dollar, adopting fair trade policies that protect workers, and implementing fairer taxes would significantly help reduce inequality.

Immigration reform would raise wages by bringing undocumented workers into the formal economy, where labor standards are higher than in the shadow economy.

Protecting government programs–Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and unemployment benefits—must be a key priority. Public policies that aim to address inequality and our threatened standard of living should also include steps to restore pensions, resolve the foreclosure crisis and relieve the debt burden of college graduates. Creating good jobs and greater economic equality are the foundation of a shared prosperity.

“Inequality fueled by a broad wage stagnation is by far the most important determinant of the slowdown in living standards growth over the past generation, and it has been enormously costly for the broad middleclass,” the EPI report says.

Inequality is now at Great Depression levels and only seems to be getting worse. If we don’t support a progressive change in our public policies, how long will it take for our society to reach a boiling point?

June 27, 2014 0 comment

Economics Labor Issues Safety Net Social Security Taxes

Expand–Don’t Cut–Social Security

by Gregory N. Heires August 19, 2013

written by Gregory N. Heires

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

With a growing acceptance that millions of Americans will face a retirement crisis, the deficit hawks’ call for cutting Social Security is losing credibility.

As the federal deficit continues to fall and the baby-boom generation enters retirement with insufficient savings to maintain their standard of living, the deficit hawks will be exposed as callous anti-tax advocates and drum majors for the 1 percent if they persist in their attack on Social Security. But the Right’s campaign to reduce benefits has always been based more on a conservative and anti-government ideology than facts. With its own funding stream, some argue that Social Security doesn’t technically contribute to the deficit anyway.

As the United States continues to become more economically polarized, we should be talking about expanding Social Security rather than reducing benefits and forcing the cash-strapped poor and middle class to contribute more.

Two compelling arguments exist for expanding Social Security.

First, more and more Americans will need to rely on Social Security because they are unable to sock away enough savings to support their current lifestyle. Decades of stagnant and falling wages have left them unable to build up their nest eggs as employers have whittled away their benefits.

Second, the destruction of traditional, defined-benefit pensions and the failure of the 401(k) experiment means that Social Security will be the principal source of income for more and more retirees and therefore should be strengthened rather than cut.

The Retirement Crisis

Let’s take a look at the first point.

For decades, the 1 percent has waged an economic war on the rest of us.

The Right has never accepted Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, which created the middle class during the post World War II years. And it has done everything it can to undermine the New Deal from the beginning.

Beginning with the Carter years in the ‘70s with the attack on government regulations, conservative class warriors started to achieve major victories–and ordinary Americans started to feel the impact in their pocketbooks. The 1 percent and their allies have been on a roll ever since President Ronald Reagan broke the air traffic controllers union in 1981.

The emergence of right-wing think tanks helped move the country to the right and create a growing acceptance of a conservative economic and political agenda that unfortunately was often supported by Democrats. Besides deregulation, this agenda included destroying unions; exporting U.S. jobs overseas; containing the growth of the federal minimum wage; breaking down the regulatory barrier between commercial and investment banks; reducing the taxes of corporations and the rich; replacing traditional pensions with the 401(k) and similar, defined contribution savings plans; ending welfare and forcing the poor into workfare and capping their lifetime benefits, and chipping away benefits like health care.

The result? A slow but steady decline of the standard of living of the vast majority of Americans who face a big financial pinch–strangulation?–in their retirement.

Signs of the looming retirement crisis:

• About half of Americans lack an employer-provided retirement plans. Millions don’t have enough cash and wealth to retire in dignity. The 2008 and 2009 financial crisis exposed the weak foundation of our economy and has forced many baby boomers to work longer than they expected.

• Just over half of adult Americans have accumulated little savings, meaning that they will have to rely on Social Security for their entire retirement income. The share of households at risk of not being able to maintain their pre-retirement standard of living after age 65 increased from 44 percent in 2007 to 53 percent in 2010, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

The median financial net worth of American households of all ages, excluding homes and cars, is $10,890, according to New York University economist Edward N. Wolff,. The figure is $61,300 for households headed by those in the 55-to-64 year bracket. Financial planners say you should have at least ten times your annual income in savings if you wish to maintain your current lifestyle during your retirement.

• The percentage of Americans with defined benefit pensions, which guarantee a steady stream of income during retirement, has plummeted as employers have replaced them with less rich 401(k) plans. In 1980, about 40 percent of private-sector workers were covered by such plans, compared to 15 percent in 2006, according to Dept. of Labor data cited by an April report by the New America Foundation that calls for the expansion of Social Security.

• The 401(k) experiment has failed. The typical worker approaching retirement needs about $250,000 in a 401(k), according to the public policy institution Demos. Most accounts don’t come close. The average is closer to $98,000, which is only a little more than a third of the recommended amount.

Strengthen Social Security

The economic squeeze on ordinary Americans makes it ludicrous to consider President Barack Obama’s “chained CPI” plan, which would reduce benefits by changing the consumer price index used to calculate the cost-of-living increases for beneficiaries. Other proposals popular in the Washington beltway include increasing the retirement age and raising contributions—steps that would fall on the backs of the poor and middle class.

So, the grim retirement prospects of millions of Americans cry out for government action. Certainly, we can’t expect corporations to respond in the low-wage and union-free Age of Wal-Mart.

Proposals exist to create a new government-supported retirement savings plan.

But the most immediate and easiest solution would to expand the Social Security system. Two thirds of seniors rely on Social Security for more than half of their income. Why not simply expand it instead of creating another program? What should be done to improve Social Security?

We should begin by recognizing that Social Security is fundamentally sound and that the talk about its demise is bunk.

First of all, Social Security is a very efficient program. Its administrative costs–about 2 percent of its total costs–are far below those of the parasitical financial industry, which has profited handsomely from the 401(k) hoax. Privatization would only lead to waste–Wall Street administrative costs and profits.

If Social Security collapses, it will be because conservatives succeed in defunding the system, which actually can be bolstered by minor changes. The system has not missed a single payment since its creation in 1935.

Social Security’s reserves are expected to run out in 2033, according to the latest trustees report After that, the system would be able to pay for 75 percent of the benefits until 2086. But nearly 90 percent of the current shortfall could be met by eliminating the cap on the payroll tax used to fund benefits, according to the Social Security Administration. Currently, both employers and employees pay 6.2 percent on earnings, which are capped at 113,700.

Possible Solutions

Recently, a couple of proposals to expand Social Security have emerged. Hopefully, this will mark the beginning of a shift in the public debate.

In March, Sen. Tom Harkin (Dem.-IA) introduced The Strengthening Social Security Act of 2013, which calls for increasing benefits for everyone by $70 a month.
The legislation would pay for the increase by raising the cap and adopting an inflation formula that more accurately reflects the cost of living increase of seniors than the current COLA or “chained CPI.” The new formula would, for example, better account for health care expenses.

The Harkin legislation has the support of the AFL-CIO, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the Alliance for Retired Americans, Campaign for Community Change, the National Organization for Women (NOW), the National Education Association, Paralyzed Veterans of America, Strengthen Social Security Coalition, Social Security Works, the United Automobile Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW), and United Steelworkers.

“The American Dream promises that if you work hard and play by the rules you’ll be able to save for retirement and enjoy your golden years with your grandchildren,” Harkin said when he introduced the legislation. “We must ensure that, after a lifetime of hard work, Americans are able to retire with dignity and financial independence. This legislation helps to achieve that goal.”

The New American Foundation plan–written by Michael Lind, policy director, Economic Growth Program, New America Foundation, Steven Hill, researcher and author, publisher, Steven-Hill.com, Robert Hiltonsmith, policy analyst, Demos, Joshua Freedman, policy analyst, Economic Growth Program, New America Foundation–calls for restructuring Social Security and devoting one plan to retirement and a second on to disability.

“Retirement security is often thought of as three-legged ‘stool’ consisting of Social Security, employer retirement plans, and private savings,” the report says. “Social Security has been far more stable and successful than the other two legs of the stool. The reliance on these other legs of the system has resulted in a retirement security crisis for most Americans.”

August 19, 2013 0 comment

AFL-CIO Labor Issues News Politics Social Security

Senate Rejects Plan to Cut Social Security by Changing Inflation Formula to Set Benefits

by Gregory N. Heires April 6, 2013

written by Gregory N. Heires

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

The plan to gut Social Security by changing the inflation formula used to calculate benefits is running into trouble.

The budget resolution passed by the U.S. Senate on March 30 includes an amendment opposing the funding formula known as the “chained CPI.”

Labor, veteran, senior and progressive groups have been lining up against the benefit cut since late last year when the Obama administration floated the proposal during the negotiations to avert the country from falling off the “fiscal cliff.” The administration has continued to support the proposal as it prepares to reach a “grand bargain” over the deficit.

“We are very pleased to see the Senate firmly reject chained CPI,” said Barbara J. Easterling, president of the Alliance for Retired Americans, an AFL-CIO group. “Retirees and veterans paid into the system and they deserve their full Social Security benefits.”

Currently, Social Security benefits are determined by the Consumer Price Index, the most widely recognized inflation rate.

The “chained CPI” would create a formula linked to how seniors alter their consumption in response to price changes. The change, though, would reduce benefit increases.

“This is a strong signal that when push comes to shove the Senate is going to oppose any effort to balance the budget on the backs of seniors, disabled veterans and their survivors,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the non-binding amendment’s sponsor, after the vote.

Typical 65-year-old retirees would lose more than $650 a year by their 75^th birthday and more than $1,000 a year would be cut from their benefits once they reach 85, according to Sanders.

Supporters of Sanders’ amendment included AARP, the AFL-CIO, the National Organization for Women, the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Veterans, AMVETS and others.

Sanders is chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs and the founder of the Defending Social Security Caucus.

The proposed change also would affect more than 3.2 million disabled veterans receiving disability compensation benefits from the Dept. of Veterans Affairs. Veterans who started receiving VA disability benefits at age 30 would have their benefits reduced by $1,425 at age 45, $2,341 at age 55 and $3,231 at age 65, according to Sanders. Benefits for more than 350,000 surviving spouses and children also would be cut.

In a meeting with Republicans on March 13, President Barack Obama discussed an offer he made to House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) during talks in December about the $1.2 trillion spending cuts over 10 years known as the sequester. Obama’s plan would scrap those automatic cuts and implement an alternative plan that would include $700 billion in new tax revenue and an additional $400 billion in savings from Medicare and $130 billion from Social Security through the chained CPI.

The Senate vote on the amendment comes after growing opposition to the chained CPI.

In January, Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, said at a news conference that the labor federation would launch a “full mobilization” against the chained CPI that would include leafleting, workplace visits and lobbying.

More than 100 Democrats in February signed a letter opposing entitlement cuts, including the chained CPI. In March, AARP sent out a letter to its members soliciting financial support for its campaign against the change.

Fifty-six million people receive Social Security. Considering that the typical recipient gets about $15,000 a year, the $675 cut resulting from the change in the inflation formula would represent a significant hit.

The reduction would be especially hard on women. Social Security is the only income of an estimated 70 percent of retired women.

www.thenewcrossroads.com. Posted on April 6, 2113. This post appeared earlier on the Daily Kos.

April 6, 2013 0 comment

Economics News Politics Social Security

Eliminating the Payroll Tax Cap Would Guarantee the Solvency of Social Security

by Gregory N. Heires March 11, 2013

written by Gregory N. Heires

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

As President Barack Obama looks to strike a “grand bargain” on the deficit by July, Social Security is being targeted for cuts.

But the alarm over the system’s supposed weak fiscal health is more about deficit hysteria than real facts.

Social Security will be solvent for years. And whatever tinkering it needs can be achieved without harming the overwhelming majority of beneficiaries.

Currently, the regressive payroll tax that funds Social Security maxes out at $113,700. That means wealthy individuals are not taxed on their earnings above that amount while the workers who earn less are taxed on their entire income.

One simple step—doing away with the current cap structure—would not only eliminate the inequity of the payroll tax but also guarantee the solvency of Social Security for three-quarters of a century without raising the retirement age or cutting benefits.

A bill sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind.-Vt.) calls for scrapping the cap. His sensible proposal should be a part of the discussion as Washington politicians seek to address the deficit by introducing changes in the country’s three principal entitlements, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

The Social Security system is currently fully funded until 2037, according to its trustees. Scrapping the payroll tax cap would virtually eliminate the projected funding shortfall for the next 75 years.

Unfortunately, the beltway power brokers and pundits—including President Obama—seem to be coalescing around a proposal to change the inflation formula used to set Social Security payments—and that would reduce benefits.

“Social Security is facing an unprecedented attack from those who either want to privatize it completely or who want to make substantial cuts,” said Sanders at a news conference on March 7 in which he announced his introduction of the bill to eliminate the cap.

“The argument being used to cut Social Security is that because we have a significant deficit problem and a $16.6 trillion national debt, we just can’t afford to maintain Social Security benefits,” he said. “This argument is false. Social Security, because it is funded by the payroll tax, not the U.S. Treasury, has not contributed one nickel to our deficit.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Dem.-Iowa) is a co-sponsor of the legislation. Rep. Peter DeFazio (Dem.-) has introduced companion legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Specifically, the Saunders bill calls for applying the 12.6 percent payroll tax to individuals with earned incomes of over $250,000. By kicking in at that amount, the legislation would only affect only 1.3 percent of the workers paying the Social Security payroll tax, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research. For a millionaire and the employer, the new tax burden would be $46,500 each.

The scrap-the-cap proposal flies in the face of the notion that all of us must “share the burden” as the country addresses the deficit. But the deficit hawks who promote that agenda in effect are ignoring the reality that our country over the last three decades has become a plutocracy in which the wealthy have enjoyed the fruits of production while everyone else has seen their income stagnate and drop.

As inequality rises, incomes fall, traditional pensions disappear, and the 401(k) fails as a retirement vehicle, Social Security needs to be strengthened not gutted.

“Two-thirds of Americans who are over the age of 65 depend on an average annual Social Security benefit of $15,168.36 for at least half of their income,” wrote Thomas B. Edsall in a March 6 New York Times blog post titled “The War on Entitlements.” It is people like them who will suffer if the predominant “reform” proposals—raising the retirement age and cutting benefits—are adopted.

The proposal to adjust the Consumer Price Index used for calculating the Social Security benefit—known as the “chained CPI” is one of those proposals. It would constitute another attack on the standard of living of recipients. Using the chained-CPI formula for determining benefits for Social Security would result in the typical 65 year old living on some $15,000 a year receiving $650 less each year when they turn 75 and $1,000 less a year when they turn 85, according to Sanders.

“We shouldn’t cut benefits or try to balance the budget on the of seniors who have earned these benefits,” said DeFazio. “We can just close a tax loophole that allows millionaires and billionaires to pay a lower percentage of their income into Social Security than everyone else.”

“Ninety-four percent of the country pays Social Security taxes on all their income. Six percent do not. This has got to change,” Sanders said.

Posted on thenewcrossroads.com on March 11, 2013. This article was previously posted on the Daily Kos on March 10, 2013.

March 11, 2013 0 comment

Economics Income Inequality Labor Issues Politics Safety Net Social Security Unemployment

Europe’s Austerity is a Warning to the United States

by Gregory N. Heires February 16, 2013

written by Gregory N. Heires

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

With deep cutbacks in government spending looming and conservatives pushing for reduced expenditures on Social Security and Medicare, the United States need only look across the Atlantic Ocean to consider the consequences.

Three years of austerity has devastated Europe.

The region is engulfed in a political, economic and social crisis, struggling with record unemployment, rising homelessness, increasing inequality, more crime, low and even negative growth, an erosion of health-care and other public services, and reduced pensions.

Cutting taxes and slashing spending during a period of weak economic growth has only made the region’s economies worse. Decades ago, of course, economist John Maynard Keynes warned against doing that, but European policy makers chose to follow the dictates of international bankers instead.

Do we really want this in the United States?

Polls show a majority of Americans oppose cuts in government services, Medicare and Social Security. But many of the Washington elite and their misguided conservative supporters do—and they are driving the debate over the role of government in our society.

On a positive note, President Barack Obama did express concern in his State of the Union Address on Feb. 12 that deep automatic spending cuts scheduled to begin March 1 could set back the U.S. economy’s recovery and warned against ideologically-driven budget reductions.

While Obama didn’t mention the economic crisis in Europe, the austerity experiment there is a clear warning that if the U.S. government follows the European public policy prescription, we could be headed for a deep economic malaise and further downward social mobility after many of us hoped his re-election would put a stop to decades of stagnating and falling wages. An attack on our public sector would put us over a fiscal cliff.

Let’s look at the dismal track record of Europe’s austerity:

Greece and Spain, where unemployment is close to 25 percent, are struggling with depressed economies.
The women’s employment rate in 22 countries is back to 2005 levels, way below the European Union’s goal of 75 percent employment in 2020. The drop in employment has resulted from policies that have cut public sector jobs and wages, reduced services and benefits and slashed funding for women’s rights and gender equality, according to the European Women’s Lobby.
Youth unemployment in Europe was 36.6 percent (or 19.5 million people) in 2011, the worst on record, according to a study released in October by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound), an autonomous body of the European Union. Youth unemployment has reached over 50 percent in Spain and Greece. “The consequences of a lost generation are not merely economic, but are societal, with the risk of young people opting out of democratic participation in society,” the report said.
Gross disposable income has declined in most European Union countries since 2009.
“Economic suicide” is a new term in the European lexicon. Studies show that for every 1 percent rise in the unemployment rate, the rate of suicides goes up by 0.8 percent, according to Silvana Enculescu, communications manager at Mental Health Europe.
The Gross Domestic Product of the Eurozone is expected to contract this year, according to some forecasts. Growth in the leading economy of the region, Germany, is even expected to be flat.
As wages fall and job losses occur, homelessness is on the rise. Service providers estimate the demand for homeless services has increased 25 to 30 percent in Portugal, Spain and Greece since the onset of the crisis, according to a report by the European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless. Homelessness is up an estimated 10 percent in Europe’s strongest economy, Germany. “These increases in homelessness reflect increased unemployment and loss of income which mean more people have difficulty meeting housing costs,” the report says. “At the same time, austerity budget cuts are diminishing capacity to respond to homelessness.”

So, how did we get here?

Since the financial crisis of 2008, European countries have embarked on a path of austerity, selling off public assets, reducing collective bargaining rights and the power of unions, cutting pensions and slashing government services.

Governments adopted austere policies as they came under pressure from the financial sector to reduce their debt obligations.

In March 2010, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recommended that Europe adopt a program of austerity for six years. The Financial Times called the proposal “highly sensible.”

Some critics believe the financial elite and their political allies, led by Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel, exaggerated the threat of the debt crisis to carry out an agenda of smashing the welfare state.

But “labor flexibility” and “structural reforms” have failed to jump-start troubled economies like those of Greece, Spain, Portugal and the United Kingdom. Instead, the region now grapples with 11 percent unemployment and depressed economies.

The European Union’s budget policies of cutting in health care, public pensions, education and other social services have led to falling income, which has hurt demand in the private sector.

There is growing frustration in the Eurozone that individual countries have insufficient control over their own economies since their use of the euro means they don’t have the option of devaluing their own currency. Instead, they are left only with the policy of gutting the public sector.

As Europe continues down the road to austerity, dissident voices are speaking out more forcefully. “We want to get the message across that austerity kills,” said Gabi Zimmer, a member of the European Parliament, in an article on publicserviceeurope.com. “Too often we hear of policies and measures that promise ‘stability’, but we need to ask the question: who is this stability for? Stability for banks and the financial sector–the main drivers behind the financial crisis.

Anti-austerity demonstrations swept Europe on Nov. 14, a sign that ordinary people are getting fed up with the relentless assault on their living standards.

In January, the presidents of the medical associations in Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Greece expressed their alarm over inadequate funding for health care that they said has caused “extensive and deep human suffering” and “an increased number of situations that defy our ethics and basic notions of human dignity.”

Their statement, signed also by leading figures in the medical and academic communities, called upon governments to adopt policies to “prevent further deterioration of health and health services.”

A health-care crisis. Homelessness. Rising inequality. Mass unemployment.

The track record of Europe’s experiment with austerity is a warning to the United States not to go down the road to economic and societal malaise.

www.thenewcrossroads.com. Posted February 17, 2013.

February 16, 2013 0 comment

Politics Social Security

A Plan to Gut Social Security Benefits Gains Favor Among Washington Policy Wonks

by Gregory N. Heires February 7, 2013

written by Gregory N. Heires

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

As deficit talks resume in the coming months, Social Security will once again likely be targeted for cuts.

One of the more popular proposals among Washington insiders is to change how inflation is calculated when benefits are set each year.

Proponents like to depict the adjustment as a technical tweaking that provides for a more accurate measure of inflation. But, in reality, the change is about cutting Social Security.

The new inflation measure, known as the “chained” Consumer Price Index, would reduce the annual cost-of-living adjustment by 0.3 percent.

A small amount?

Well, no, if you rely on Social Security for most of your retirement monthly income, which is the case with most retirees.

The reduction would slash the Social Security benefit by 3 percent over 10 years ($135 billion)–and 6 percent over 20 years. That’s a substantial sum when you’re living on a fixed income, so this change would be a big hit on the poor.

How does this change work?

Currently, the adjustment is based on the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, which is calculated by using price changes in a number of consumer goods. The “chained” CPI is determined by tracking price changes according to how consumers switch their preferences and expenditures by deciding to spend more on, say, chicken when the price of meat goes up.

But if the supporters of the chained CPI really cared about improving the accuracy of calculating inflation—and not finding a spurious justification for cutting Social Security—they would be talking about using another U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistic index based on the actual spending of seniors. But guess what? That index shows that the price increases of the products seniors purchase fall below the standard measure of inflation.

Unfortunately, the chained CPI controversy with all its technicalities is a debate that policy wonks love to engage in and doesn’t enter the radar screen of most of us. But if implemented by the U.S. Congress and the Obama administration, the change would drive down our living standards—and the middle class and the poor will be hurt the most.

The adoption of the chained CPI would also be another blow to retirees and baby-boomers approaching retirement.

Already, middle-class retirees are squeezed because of low interest rates, which have significantly reduced earnings from their savings. Workers nearing retirement—who have already been walloped by the 2008 financial debacle and now realize that their 401(k) plans are going to fall short—are in line to take another dagger.

The chained CPI would be a new factor—added to the end of traditional pensions, failure of the 401(k)s as reliable retirement savings plans, and stagnating and falling wages–forcing workers to remain in the labor force until they drop. Will this never end?

The Social Security crisis is a phony crisis. The system will remain solvent until 2033, according to the trustees’ estimate.

The projected deficit of Social Security would be largely wiped out if only Congress would lift the payroll cap—currently $113,700—and require the wealthy to pay more.

Most workers earn less than the cap, so they are being taxed on their full income. Why not ask the wealthy to assume that same burden instead of adopting the chained CPI, which will be yet another blow to the middle class and the poor?

www.thenewcrossroads. Posted Feb. 7, 2013

February 7, 2013 0 comment

Economics News Politics Safety Net Social Security Taxes

Does Social Security Contribute to the Deficit?

by Gregory N. Heires January 16, 2013

written by Gregory N. Heires

By GREGORY N. HEIRES
Conservatives are using the looming showdown over the debt ceiling and deficit as an opportunity to gut Social Security.

But progressives are fighting back by arguing that Americans’ most popular program technically doesn’t contribute to the federal debt or deficit and is securely funded for decades.

“Well, we’ve got to make the president and Republicans and any Democrats that want to cut Social Security an offer they can`t refuse, and that is tens of millions of people have got to make it very clear to Congress — Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Jan. 4 in an interview with MSNBC’s Ed Schultz.

Sanders’ comment reflected the position of some Democrats during the fiscal cliff negotiations late last year when they feared Social Security cuts would be a part of the deal to ensure that scheduled tax cuts and deep budget reductions didn’t go into effect.

“Social Security does not add one penny to the deficit,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said in an appearance on ABC’S This Week on Nov. 25. “Not a penny. It’s a separate funded operation, and we can do things that I believe we should now, smaller things, played out over the long term that gives it solvency.”

“Over 77 years and now through 13 recessions, Social Security has not added one penny to our deficit or our debt,” Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA) said during a fall meeting of the House Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee.

As it ended up, the entitlement programs were spared the ax in the fiscal cliff deal. But deficit hawks are hoping that Social Security will be part of a grand bargain on the federal debt and deficit in the coming months that will be linked to the discussion over the debt ceiling. Durbin proposes that Social Security be removed from these negotiations and instead be assigned to a commission.

Recently, defenders of Social Security have enjoyed backing their position by looking back a few decades to cite the Republicans’ favorite president of modern times, Ronald Reagan–surely much to the horror of many conservative ideologues.

In 1984, Reagan said, “Social Security, let’s lay it to rest once in for all…Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit. Social Security is totally funded by the payroll tax levied on employer and employee. If you reduce the outgo of Social Security, that money would not go into the general fund to reduce the deficit. It would go into the Social Security trust fund. So Social Security has nothing to do with balancing the budget or erasing or lowering the deficit.”

Social Security is a pay-as-you-go program that relies on its own funding stream—not federal income taxes—from the payroll tax. It has its own trust fund, which is separate from the government’s budget for discretionary and military spending. The U.S. Congress, however, borrows from the Social Security trust fund to pay for government programs.

As a pay-as-you go-program, the Social Security system is not allowed to borrow to pay out benefits. Making that point, Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, explains that, “Social Security is prohibited from spending any money beyond what it has in its trust fund. This means that it cannot lawfully contribute to the federal budget deficit, since every penny that it pays out must have come from taxes raised through the program or the interest garnered from the bonds held by the trust fund.”

What is actually going on here is that conservative groups like corporate-funded Fix the Debt are using deficit hysteria as a bogus justification for reducing Social Security benefits and undermining the program, which right-wingers have hated ever since its was created in 1935. Groups like the libertarian Reason Foundation for decades have described Social Security as a Ponzi scheme as they call for privatization. As privatization effort of President George W. Bush failed, the fallback plan of conservatives seems to be to try to chip away at the program.

Yet for all the alarm over Social Security and its supposed contribution to the federal debt and funding problems, the program is on solid ground for the foreseeable future.

Social Security will become exhausted—unable to pay fully for benefits through the payroll tax–in 2033, according to the 2012 report of the Social Security trustees. But even without any tinkering, the program will still be able to cover 75 percent of its benefits if the current payroll tax remains the same.

Economic projections beyond five years are notoriously uncertain. So the trustees’ projections could prove to be wrong if, say, the U.S. economy (in an admittedly unlikely scenario) enters a long period of high growth, which would boost the funding from the payroll tax. The projected shortfall could be addressed substantially by raising the income cap—$113,700 in 2013—on the payroll tax. In any event, claims of Social Security’s pending doom and contribution to the deficit and debt go against the facts.

“Social Security is not part of the problem. That’s one of the myths the Republicans have tried to create,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said.

www.thenewcrossroads.com Posted Jan. 16, 2013

January 16, 2013 0 comment

Economics Politics Safety Net Social Security Taxes

It’s Time for a financial transaction tax

by Gregory N. Heires January 7, 2013

written by Gregory N. Heires

By GREGORY N. HEIRES
Now that the U.S. Congress has raised taxes on the wealthy for the first time in two decades, right-wing politicians are stepping up the cry for spending cuts, falsely claiming that our government can’t afford entitlements like Medicare and Social Security.

The issue, though, is not affordability. The money is there. The real question, of course, is who controls it.

The debate over the deficit reflects differing views over the role of government and ultimately the structure of our society, whether we want to support protections of the welfare state or shred our safety net and force individuals to fend for themselves under savage capitalism. Conservatives want to destroy New Deal and Great Society programs—and sabotage Obamacare.

Unfortunately, the deficit hysteria of the Right is so strong and effective that the mainstream media and many of the pundits who set the terms of the debate in Washington are also hung up on the affordability issue. Their ideological blinders, for instance, lead them to push for cuts in Social Security even though that program doesn’t contribute directly to the federal deficit or debt.

Progressives need to fight back and refuse to bow to this deficit hysteria and vicious assault on the welfare state. They should seize upon the opening provided by U.S. Congress’ decision to raise the tax rate for the wealthy and promote other revenue streams. And they need only to look across the Atlantic Ocean to find hope.

In December, the European Parliament voted for a financial transaction tax as the region confronts massive deficits and soaring unemployment. This makes common sense since speculators and bankers have the deep pockets to contribute their fair share to government programs and they bear a responsibility for wrecking the economy.
Eleven European countries are now considering adopting a financial transaction tax. The London Stock Exchange already has a .5 percent tax on financial transactions, though it has several exceptions.

In the United States, the Economic Policy Institute, the Institute for Policy Studies, National Nurses United, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, George Soros, Warren Buffet, U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., are among those leading the call for a transaction tax, which would provide billions of dollars annually in revenue.

“In its essentials, the idea of a financial market transaction tax is simple,” said economist Robert Pollin, co-director, Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. “It would mean that financial market traders would pay a small fee to the government every time they purchased any financial market instrument, including all stock, bond, options, futures, and swap trades. This would be the equivalent of sales taxes that Americans have long paid every time they buy an automobile, shirt, baseball glove, airline ticket, or pack of chewing gum, eat at a restaurant, or have their hair cut.”

The average sales tax rate in the United States that consumers pay on almost all goods and services is 9.6 percent, according to the National Nurses Union. Yet, absurdly, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and the other financial giants on Wall Street pay no sales tax on the thousands, even tens of thousands of trades, they carry out every second.

In December, as the debate over the “fiscal cliff”—impending automatic tax increases and spending that the last-minute deal between Congress and Obama administration averted–heated up, the 185,000-member National Nurses Union rallied in 20 cities across the country to call for a transaction tax, also known as the Robin Hood Tax.
“Wall Street’s agenda, of more punishing cuts for working people, and more handouts for the banks, who are the main beneficiaries of policies that put debt payments ahead of protecting seniors and working families, was roundly rejected by voters in November,” nurses union President Deborah Burger said. “Let’s not hand Wall Street the victory they lost at the polls. Instead, it is time to hold the bankers and speculators accountable, and levy a small tax on their reckless behavior to help rebuild the economy they did so much to wreck.”

Ellison has sponsored the Inclusive Prosperity Act. By imposing a 50-cent-tax on every $100 of stock trades and a lesser amount on other financial transactions, the legislation would bring in as much as $350 billion every year.

Sanders’ proposed legislation would establish a speculation fee of .03 percent on the sale of credit default swaps, derivatives, stocks, options and futures. It would raise $350 billion over 10 years.

A study by the Economic Policy Institute says a modest tax on the buying and selling of stocks and other financial products could bring in an estimated $150 billion a year while dampening the speculation and rapid turnover of stocks that contribute to the instability of the economy. That financial instability, of course, was one of the causes of the 2008 economic blowup.

So, in addition to providing a new, substantial revenue stream, a transaction tax would hopefully curb the recklessness of financial traders and speculators. Tens of millions of dollars in computerized trades sometimes occur within minutes, and that can cause market turbulence.

The average holding period of financial transactions has plummeted from four years to 22 seconds, bringing instability to the market and taking $635 billion out of the economy, according to Wallace Turbeville, a senior fellow at Demos and former vice president of Goldman Sachs. Proponents like Turbeville say that even a small transaction tax should contribute to the stability of the market by making hedge funds, investment banks and speculators more cautious.

“The American public provided hundreds of billions to bailout Wall Street during the global fiscal crisis yet bore the brunt of the crisis with lost jobs and reduced household wealth,” said Ellison, when he introduced his legislation last year.

“This is a phenomenally wealthy nation, yet our tax and regulatory system allowed the financial titans to amass great riches while impoverishing the systems that enable inclusive prosperity,” Ellison said. “A financial transaction tax protects our financial markets from speculation and provides the revenue needed to invest in the education, health and communities of the American people.”

www.thenewcrossroads. Posted January 7, 2013

January 7, 2013 0 comment

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