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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (49206)	2/15/2012 12:31:39 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

Judge: Obama eligible to be Georgia candidate By Bill Rankin The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 6:22 p.m. Friday, February 3, 2012 ajc.com President Barack Obama’s name will remain on the Georgia primary ballot after a state law judge flatly rejected legal challenges that contend he can not be a candidate. In a 10-page order, Judge Michael Malihi dismissed one challenge that contended Obama has a computer-generated Hawaiian birth certificate, a fraudulent Social Security number and invalid U.S. identification papers. He also turned back another that claimed the president is ineligible to be a candidate because his father was not a U.S. citizen at the time of Obama's birth. The findings by Malihi, a judge for the State Office of Administrative Hearings, go to Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who will make the final determination. Last month, at a hearing boycotted by Obama's lawyer, Malihi considered complaints brought by members of the so-called "birther" movement. With regard to the challenge that Obama does not have legitimate birth and identification papers, Malihi said he found the evidence "unsatisfactory" and "insufficient to support plaintiffs' allegations." A number of the witnesses who testified about the alleged fraud were never qualified as experts in birth records, forged documents and document manipulation and "none ... provided persuasive testimony," Malihi wrote. Addressing the other claim that contends Obama cannot be a candidate because his father was never a U.S. citizen, Malihi said he was persuaded by a 2009 ruling by the Indiana Court of Appeals decision that struck down a similar challenge. In that ruling, the Indiana court found that children born within the U.S. are natural-born citizens, regardless of the citizenry of their parents. Obama "became a citizen at birth and is a natural-born citizen," Malihi wrote. Accordingly, Obama is eligible as a candidate for the upcoming presidential primary in March, the judge said. Even though Malihi ruled in Obama's favor, he expressed displeasure that the president's lawyer, Michael Jablonski of Atlanta, refused to attend the recent hearing. "By deciding this matter on the merits, the court in no way condones the conduct or legal scholarship of defendant's attorney, Mr. Jablonski," Malihi wrote. "This decision is entirely based on the law, as well as the evidence and legal arguments presented at the hearing."

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (49206)	2/25/2012 9:47:53 PM
From: greatplains_guy	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Raiding Social Security by Linda Chavez 02/18/2012 Extending the payroll tax cut -- as the GOP leadership has now agreed with Democrats to do -- may be good politics, but it is lousy policy. For the average household with earnings of $49,445 a year (about the median), keeping individual payroll taxes at 4.2 percent as opposed to 6.2 percent will mean about a thousand dollars more in their wallets this year. And generally speaking, letting people keep more of their own money to spend and invest as they choose is a good thing, both for individuals and the economy as a whole. But there is a difference when it comes to payroll taxes, whose specific purpose is to fund Social Security. Many people mistakenly believe that the payroll taxes they pay when they're working actually provide the funds for their own future Social Security benefits. But that is not the case. Payroll taxes of currently employed workers end up paying for the benefits of current Social Security recipients, with any excess retained by the Social Security Trust Fund. But because, on average, Social Security recipients receive more in benefits over their lifetimes than they and their employers contributed in taxes during their working years, the system functions only because there are enough current workers making additional payments into the fund. This is why some people describe Social Security as a giant pyramid scheme. There are only four ways to keep the system solvent: Hope there are always more people paying into the system than drawing from it; increase taxes; raise the retirement age; or lower benefits for some, if not all, recipients. For much of the history of the Social Security Administration, the first option took care of the problem. There were always more people paying in at the bottom of the pyramid than were drawing out at the top. But that's changing, with the huge cohort of Baby Boomers now drawing or about to draw benefits and with people living longer than they used to. When the first monthly Social Security checks started being distributed in 1940, there were 9 million Americans over the age of 65. Today there are more than 41 million. What's more, in 1940, the average lifespan for a man who reached 65 was an additional 12.7 years. Today, the average 65-year-old man will live an additional 15.3 years and the average 65-year-old woman will live almost 20 more years, which is why benefits almost always exceed contributions. Congress has slowly raised the payroll tax over the years to help make up for the shortfall. Unlike federal income taxes, which almost half of Americans don't pay at all, all workers must pay payroll taxes. Congress has increased payroll taxes in two ways over the years: by increasing the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) tax rate and by raising the cap on income subject to the tax. Currently, the first $110,100 of income is subject to FICA taxes, an amount that has been raised several times as the need arose to insure the system's solvency. If the administration and Congress continue to play politics with Social Security -- as they are surely doing now by extending the temporary payroll tax cut -- the system will eventually implode. It's understandable that Republicans don't want to be accused of giving all working Americans a 2 percent tax hike in an election year, but keeping payroll taxes low in order to avoid making other changes to the Social Security system is certainly not going to solve the problem. It will make things worse. Unfortunately, politicians know that real solutions will entail difficult decisions: Raise the retirement age once again. Increase the FICA tax rate or raise the cap on how much income is subject to the tax. Or reduce benefits. It's pretty simple, but painful, especially for politicians addicted to handing out goodies without figuring out a real way to pay for them. Linda Chavez is a Fox News analyst, Chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity and was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to White House Director of Public Liaison. humanevents.com