Cross posted from dailykos because, well because it takes more than 15 minutes to read through this and in 15 minutes at kos its already rolled off these days:>)

With apologies to Bonddad:>)

Looking through Bonddad's diary last night on the payroll employment differences between Clinton and Bush, I've decided its time to clarify something about the governments economic reporting.

The best way to do this is to point all of you to this website, John Williams', Shadow Government Statistics. For those that are interested in government economic reporting and just how wrong it really is then I suggest you read through the Government Reporting economic primers on this website for a complete background.

Yesterday, our wonderful president outlined his agenda for Saving Social Security and making all the young people in the country rich by allocating 4% of their contribution to the Social Security Insurance system into the stock market.

As I wrote yesterday that the Medicare Prescription drug plan costs exceed the total amount of money outlay-ed to social security from its inception to date.

And yesterday, Harry Ried mentioned that the debt we have to pay is currently a 36,000 birth tax on our grandchildren.

But is it really?

Well assuming that we would walk in and pay the entire amount off right freakin now, yes it is 36k per man women and child in this country.

But that's not likely to happen is it? The reality is that it'll have to be paid off over time and with interest.

So plugging in some really big numbers into a loan amortization program, this is the reality.

Using a number of 11 trillion (current debt plus trust fund), which is the number 11 followed by 12 freakin zeros and calculating the total paid over a 30 year period at 5% then the reality is that we'll pay back, $21,258,136,271,282.40 or $73,303 per man, woman and child in the United States.

And thats if we started paying it back today, but even that number is misleading, because the reality is everyone in the country does not work and earn a living, so whats the number for just the workers in the country? Glad you asked, that number is $151843.83 per working stiff in this country, using a workforce of 140 million which is likely to be the number in the long run as the age demographics change.

152k is a pretty large number when you look at it that way, but I've even got more for you. As our president is so concerned with the welfare of our grandchildren, lets just see what that number works out to be if invested weekly at 5% interest for 30 years.

Breaks down to $97.34 per week, which after 30 years turns into a nice little sum of $352294.49.

Wow, that's a hell of a lot of money that our grandchildren would have if they just did not have to pay our debts. For those of you doing the math, taking the 152k and adding 352k to it you have a half a million dollars which is the true "birth tax" on our grandchildren. Thats a million dollars per couple, or 1.5 million per family and so on.

And thats if we stopped adding additional debt right here and now. The reality is that number will be much much larger than 11 trillion and its likely that the interest rate will be significantly larger as our dollar diminishes in value.

So please Mr President, give us a freakin break would you?

I've been thinking through the blogpac idea and have been wondering if there has been any discussion as to building a network from the ground up, I.E at the state level.

I live in Georgia and have really become pretty irritated lately at how dishonest the elected republicans in this state are being with the citizens of Georgia, its either complete dishonesty or totally mis-informed or both. I don't accept mis-informed as an excuse so as far as I'm concerned its dishonesty to the core.

Hi Folks, I'm just testing the waters on this idea and thought I'd run it by the fine folks on this site.

Personally, I don't see a real problem with SS except the fact that the government has stolen all of our money and given it to rich folks and just does not intend to give it back to us in addition to the fact George Bush has created a mess where there was none just 3.5 years ago.

By a Reagan era conservative PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS,

An Era of End-Timers and Neo-Cons

Whatever Happened to Conservatives?

I remember when friends would excitedly telephone to report that Rush Limbaugh or G. Gordon Liddy had just read one of my syndicated columns over the air. That was before I became a critic of the US invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration, and the neoconservative ideologues who have seized control of the US government.

Read it here...