I don’t know how bloggers who write every day manage the curveballs that life throws at them, or even how they make blogging a priority when competing priorities squeeze down on what discretionary time they have. I’ve got a little of both (curveballs and competing priorities) going on right now, so I’ve been offline for a couple of days.
The Resident keeps ramping up his support for Ukraine in their war with Russia. He “snuck” into Kyiv on America’s “President’s Day” for a five-hour photo op with Zelensky, promising more money, artillery, ammunition and US support for the long haul. While he was there, the air raid siren went off, even though the US had told Vladimir Putin that our so-called “president” would be in Ukraine and to not nuke him while he was there.
The siren was there for effect, to make it seem more dangerous than it was, and thereby make Biden seem more courageous than he is. Indeed, the legacy media went out of its way to laud him as some kind of hero.
So the Resident goes jet-setting to some country that no one knows about and which has no strategic value to the US while ignoring the immediate crisis in East Palatine, Ohio while Americans are suffering under the neglect of his administration. But most infuriating of all is the revelation that the dollars the U.S. government takes from me in taxes, without my permission and without me having a say in it, are going to fund Ukrainian pensions.
As American taxpayers paying into Social Security today stare down the barrel toward substantial cuts to their own benefits, estimated to take place in 2034, they can at least take solace in knowing that all categories of Ukrainian pensioners will get a 20% raise in March 2023. “As early as this March,” says Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, “the government will index pensions by 20%” for about 10 million Ukrainians.
Indexing the payments “is not mandatory according to the Law of Ukraine on the State Budget for 2023,” but benevolent President Zelensky has instructed them to reprice the benefits upwards anyway.
And why wouldn’t he? His government is swimming in American cash.
Americans have spent more than $100 billion on aid to Ukraine. And, as the notoriously corrupt Ukrainian government is undoubtedly well aware, money is fungible.
I dunno, during an existential struggle for survival, don’t you and your countrymen sacrifice everything to preserve and sustain your existence? Nothing else matters, right?
Nope.
But we all know that few Americans would have signed on to billions in foreign aid if the impetus was to preserve Ukraine’s pension infrastructure. What’s truly amazing, though, is that Joe Biden and the media are just coming right out and saying exactly that — the government is using your money to pay Ukraine’s obligations to ten million of its pensioners. American aid to Ukraine, Biden says, is “going to allow pensions and social support to be paid to the Ukrainian people.”
Biden and his henchmen are running the US economy into the ground, wrecking our 401ks with inflation and saddling our children’s children and their children with mountains of debt while padding Ukrainian retirement accounts with your money. And don’t you get any ideas about getting a 20% raise in what Social Security owes you.
This cycle will continue until roughly 2034, until the IOUs from the Treasury run out, and the Treasury is no longer obligated to pay for the shortfall between what is owed to beneficiaries and payroll tax receipts. God only knows what the national debt will be at that time, but what we do know is that you, your children, and grandchildren will be on the hook for whatever is owed by the Treasury. And at that time, again, barring any intercession, all Americans on Social Security are expected to get a 20%+ pay cut.
It’s all I can do to bite my tongue so that I don’t say something I’ll regret.