Old factually incorrect Social Security meme making the rounds again

A very old meme/pile of lies has been making the rounds again claiming that FDR promised a bunch of stuff he didn’t promise when he established Social Security that Democrats broke.

If you have the bandwidth to speak up in your elderly relatives comments who are now re-sharing this, I have a response you can copy and paste if you want, responding to each point.

Our Social Security

Franklin Roosevelt, a Democrat, introduced the Social Security (FICA) Program. 

Correct, minus the FICA error.
Source: 1935 Social Security Act.

He promised:

1) That participation in the Program would be completely voluntary,

No longer Voluntary

Incorrect. He did not promise this; he created a tax. Taxes are not voluntary.

2) That the participants would only have to pay 1% of the first $1,400 of their annual incomes into the Program,

Incorrect. He did not promise this. The tax rate in the original 1935 law was 1% each on the employer and the employee, on the first $3,000 of earnings. This rate was increased on a regular schedule.
Sources: “Debunking Some Internet Myths,” Social Security Administration website; 1935 Social Security Act.

Now 7.65% on the first $90,000.

Incorrect. The tax on Social Security income is 6.2% up to $175,000.
Source: Internal Revenue Service.

3) That the money the participants elected to put into the Program would be deductible from their income for tax purposes each year,

No longer tax deductible

Incorrect. Social Security has never been tax deductible; the original act forbade it.
Source: Social Security Act 1935, Title VIII: Taxes With Respect to Employment.

4) That the money the participants put in went to the Independent ‘Trust Fund’ rather than into the General Operating Fund, and therefore, would only be used to fund the Social Security Retirement Program, and no other Government program, and,

Under Johnson the money was moved to The General Fund and spent.

Incorrect, and also complicated. Source: “Research Note #20: The Social Security Trust Funds and the Federal Budget,” Social Security Administration.

5) That the annuity payments to the retirees would never be taxed as income.

Under Clinton & Gore up to 85% of your Social Security can be taxed.

The first part is incorrect, and the part that is correct seems intentionally misleading. FDR made no such promise, although it wasn’t taxed for nearly 50 years until President Reagan’s administration. A split Congress approved his plan to tax 50% of Social Security income in 1983.
Source: Social Security Amendments of 1983.

The Clinton administration did raise this tax to 85%, but only on high-income earners. Source: The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993.

Since many of us have paid into FICA for years and are now receiving a Social Security check every month – and then finding that we are getting taxed on 85% of the money we paid to the Federal government to ‘put away — you may be interested in the following:

Q: Which Political Party took Social Security from the Independent ‘Trust Fund’ and put it into the General Fund so that Congress could spend it?

A: It was Lyndon Johnson and the Democratically controlled House and Senate.

Incorrect. No one did this. Source: “Research Note #20: The Social Security Trust Funds and the Federal Budget,” Social Security Administration.

Q: Which Political Party eliminated the income tax deduction for Social Security (FICA) withholding?

A: The Democratic Party.

Incorrect. No one did this. Social Security has never been tax deductible; the original act forbade it. Source: Social Security Act 1935, Title VIII: Taxes With Respect to Employment.

Q: Which Political Party started taxing Social Security annuities?

A: The Democratic Party with Al Gore casting the ‘tie-breaking’ deciding vote as President of the Senate, while he was Vice President of the U.S.

Incorrect. President Reagan’s sought-after and heavily lobbied-for Social Security Amendments of 1983 were passed by a split Congress and signed into law by a Republican president.

Q: Which Political Party decided to start giving annuity payments to immigrants?

A: That’s right!

Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party.

Immigrants moved into this country, and at age 65, began to receive Social Security payments! The Democratic Party gave these payments to them, even though they never paid a dime into it!

Incorrect; Jimmy Carter did nothing regarding Social Security and immigrants. That said, Social Security has never been based on country of origin; it’s based on payroll taxes.

Since its inception, immigrants to the U.S. have paid the same amount into Social Security as everyone else; it’s a built-in payroll tax. Those who have been issued Social Security numbers can collect on Social Security based on what they’ve put into it when they reach their 60s; immigrants without Social Security numbers, in fact, never receive a single dime of the thousands and thousands of dollars they have put into the system.

Then, after violating the original contract (FICA), the Democrats turn around and tell you that the Republicans want to take your Social Security away!

And the worst part about it is uninformed citizens believe it!

Incorrect. The Democrats have not violated any original contract; there was no original contract. There was simply the 1935 Social Security Act, which subsequent administrations amended in various injurious ways— the Republicans with more verve, greed, and hamfistedness; the Democrats with more spineless roll-over-ness.

Judge Reyes’ various smackdowns

Context added later: this is from a hearing on the Rump administration’s ban on trans people in the military in U.S. District Court (District of Columbia). OF COURSE, whiny manbabies are all filing complaints against her excellent and appropriate conduct because a lady was mean to them and hurt their feewings and Rump wants an INVESTIGASHUN.

From a transcript shared by Rebecca Solnit on FB, and elsewhere, so I’m going to assume that it is a true and accurate transcript:

Judge Reyes: EO 14183 adopts the definitions of a separate executive order called Defending Women from Gender Ideology, Extremism and Restoring biological Truth to the federal government. And that EO states, “sex shall refer to an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female.” And it states that, “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female.” Do you see that or do you remember that?

Jason C. Lynch: will take the court’s word for it.

Judge Reyes: You understand, as a matter of biology, it’s just incorrect that there are only two sexes, right?

Jason C. Lynch: Do I understand that to be incorrect as a biological matter?

Judge Reyes: Yes. It is incorrect as a biological matter. You understand that, right?

Jason C. Lynch: I don’t understand that to be incorrect.

Judge Reyes: You understand that not everyone has an xx or an xy chromosome, right?

Jason C. Lynch: Honestly, no, I don’t.

Judge Reyes: It’s actually kind of a really important point because this executive order is premised on an assertion that’s not biologically correct. There are anywhere near about 30 different intersex examples. So someone who does not have just xx or xy chromosome is not just male or female. They’re intersex. And there are over 30 potential different intersex examples. We’ve got genetic differences. We have people with xxx chromosomes. We have androgen insensitivity, xy genetically, that may have female external sex characteristics and internally have testes. There’s a five alpha reductase deficiency that causes changes in testosterone metabolism, xy that may have female external genitalia or ambiguous genitalia.

The point being, and I’m happy to have you guys brief this more if you want, but I’m telling you right now that there are people who are neither male or female. And so the premise of the executive order is just incorrect.

*

The following posts are all from Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social:

“Every single pronoun in the history of mankind has been invented.” – Reyes’s response to this part of the EO:

(b) The Secretary shall promptly issue directives for DoD to end invented and identification-based pronoun usage to best achieve the policy outlined in section 2 of this order.

*

Reyes asks if there is current discrimination against transgender people, and the most DOJ’s Lynch will say is, “I am sure they can find an instance of discrimination.”

Reyes then reads a list of Trump administration actions against transgender people in its first month.

*

Reyes goes off.

“You cannot tell me that transgender people are not being discriminated against.” Of the Stonewall website deletion, Reyes says, “We are literally erasing their contributions to modern society. … It screams animus.”

*

 Mueller, She Wrote @muellershewrote.bsky.social

Another fiery exchange from Judge Reyes in the trans military case:

REYES: [The order] calls an entire category of people dishonest, dishonorable, undisciplined, immodest, who lack integrity, people who have taken an oath to defend this country, people who have been under fire, people who have received medals for taking fire for this country. I want to know from the government whether that language expresses ‘animus.’ Does that express animus?

DOJ ATTORNEY: Not in any constitutional –

REYES: In a commonsense way. This is a policy from the President of the United States affecting thousands of people … to call an entire group of people, lying dishonest people who are undisciplined, immodest and have no integrity. How is that anything other than showing animus?

DOJ ATTORNEY: I don’t have an answer for you.

REYES: You do have an answer, you just don’t want to give it… People can make solid arguments as to why some or even most transgender people shouldn’t be in the military … We’re dealing with unadulterated animus. We are dealing with the president of the United States dealing with a group of people serving their country … calling them liars.

(Reyes then said she changed her courtroom orders to bar people who graduated from UVA law school from appearing before her because “they’re all liars and lack integrity and are undisciplined and can’t possibly meet the high rigors of being a lawyer for the government”

She made the DOJ lawyer sit down on that basis, then after he did, she called him back up and asked whether that was a display of animus.)

*

 Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney.bsky.social

 Quite an exchange here between Judge Reyes and DOJ attorney on how “pronoun usage” affects military readiness.

REYES: Can we agree that the greatest fighting force… is not going to be impacted in any way by less than 1 percent of the soldiers using a different pronoun than others might want to call them?

DOJ ATTORNEY: I can’t agree with that here.

REYES: Would you agree with me that if our military is negatively impacted in any kind of way that matters … We all have a lot bigger problems than pronoun use. We have a military that is incompetent. Any common sense rational human being knows that it doesn’t.

It is pretext. It is frankly ridiculous. If you want to get me an officer of the U.S. military who is willing to get on the stand and say that because of pronoun usage the U.S. military is less prepared because of pronoun usage. I will be the first to give you a box of cigars.

A note to any Irish poet considering my advances

(in response to John W. Sexton and for Dax, of course)

Sir,

If you were my lover, locked away from me inside that sally hazel,

Not a damn thing could stop me.

To get to you, (if you were my lover)

I would fly, howling, over oceans — even that terrible Irish Sea that rocks and rages and hurls Midwestern tourists face down into their own puke.

Sliabh Luachra? HAH. I cut my teeth and busted my cherry in marshes where the sedges, sharp as sawblades, grew so high they blocked out the sun— as sure as I’m standing here.

“Note to Any Woman Considering Making Advances upon This Poet'” by John W. Sexton, from his collection Futures Pass from the Irish Centre for Poetry Studies.

The sodden, sucking stink they grew in? I danced lightly across, doing the sevens, as if it were high dry prairie.

(Plus, the King of Luacar owes me a favor for my help with something I swore never to reveal.)

If you were my lover— her soft, firm thighs and rolled-back eyes and her screaming filthy howls kept from me

I’d leap that creek and its steep bank without a thought, using my crutches with their tornado tips to fly so fast that merry little band in the tree wouldn’t know if I was coming or going.

From the sky, or from hell.

If I knew my lover —with her wild green eyes and thick, soft mouth, her panting desperate cries and her elegant, back-gouging fingers— was in that dwelling of yours? It wouldn’t matter what door I came through.

The south door? Please.

I’ve had sprites mistake me for a man and try to enthrall me who wound up

demanding I go harder, faster, more, more as they rocked back on that pistol I pack in my hip bag for just such occasions;

who pledged their undying love or at least something like it, waving me on with an exhausted hand, forgetting their task entirely.

The north door? Come on, now.

When I was a young butch, I held down the wolves that lived in my backyard next to the rusted-out cars on cinderblocks that were filled with vicious goats and psychotic chickens, and I poured pine tar on them— just for sport.

You think some hound, some silly cur with a sticky pelt and a mouth full of madness could make me even break my stride?

To get to my lover, I’d chug his drool down like Old Style and leave him a cicada husk baking in the sun.

Your sídhe princess?

(Now there is a terrifying prospect, ain’t gonna lie. I want no truck with any of her kind and have spent considerable thought and effort on the problem, actually: door haint blue and bent pin in my sleeve, salt over my shoulder— and I always look before I spit.)

But you have never heard the sound of my name in my lover’s mouth, like a jewel, like a poem, like a wonder whispered in the velvet summer dark.

For her?

Anything.

If you were my lover, I’d sweep you up in my arms and you’d forget your betrothed like yesterday’s news. If you were her, I’d give back your sword (surely if my lover couldn’t return to me, then someone hid it); we’d fight, back-to-back and sideways like a crab, holding tight no matter what your affianced turned us into, until we were free of that drafty little dwelling, trailing entrails and tar and marrow vomit from the heels of our boots all the way home.

*

But, as you are not my lover (and instead yet another Irish poet prancing as a stoat fancy as you please around the countryside in front of God and everybody —curse my endless, endless tripping over Irish poets and stoats when I visit my ancestors’ bones—), your hound and your sprite and your hazel and your betrothed

are all safe from me.

chatGPT probably won’t replace you. It might get you fired, though.

NYC Public Library Research Room, where I spent many a day in blissful nerddom in my youth, researching.
“File:NYC Public Library Research Room Jan 2006.jpg” by Diliff is licensed under CC BY 2.5.

Lawyers. Amirite?

There are multiple articles making the rounds about a lawyer in big trouble for using chat GPT to create a brief, thereby presenting completely fictional citations in court.

People like innocent, so perfectly innocent if criminally negligent lazy-ass lawyer Steven Schwartz are shocked, SHOCKED to discover that ChatGPT pulls answers out of its shiny metal ass.

Yes, shock and surprise– despite plenty of information about its unreliability since the bot’s* release, such as Stack Overflow banning ChatGPT-sourced answers last December because they are so often just plain wrong.

The thing is, ChatGPT doesn’t know how to say ‘I don’t know.’

It is only as good as its programming, which reflects a certain tendency that I and many others have noticed to be prevalent in the demographic primarily responsible for funding, building, and providing data for ChatGPT: making shit up when you don’t know anything about it.

It pulls its data from the internet, where people often lie, or mindlessly copy and paste.

It’s a plagiarism speeder-upper.

The creators call plagiarism “predicting text,” by “including the next word, sentence or paragraph, based on its training data’s* typical sequence.” Fancy!

And we still have laws against plagiarism.

The US Copyright Office, for instance, won’t allow AI-generated art to be copyrighted. And the way the decision is written, this appears to apply to the written word as well.

The courts back them on this.

In conclusion: You may want to reconsider things that sound too good to be true. And do your own damn research.

*”training data” = vast swaths of copyrighted texts
** I said what I said.

I am so motherfucking inspirational

Last nighb587bfb85af8480e8e4d9179574f1029-adaptive-sports-wheelchair-sportst, I was in a Fringe play, and my character was a disabled woman who has figured out how to monetize pity and guilt by going on a motivational speaking tour circuit. (It’s fun! You should see it if you’re in town.)

This morning, I was at a coffee shop with a very young and charming gentleman who was chatting with the woman in lineahead of us.

The lady assumed that I was Connor’s mom, and he straightened her out on that with enormous detail. We chatted a bit. Little boys excited about scones are delightful. She is from Galway; I have been there. We all like scones and hash browns. Tea is good.

Because I knew that I would be carrying things in both hands, I hadn’t brought my crutches. Because I was standing in line, I didn’t move as we spoke.

She left with her stuff and Connor and I got ours and I lurched with him out of the coffee shop.

He asked me to move my wheelchair from one side of the seat to the other so he wouldn’t have to get in on the busy side of the street, because he is smart AF.

I proceeded to do this.

That’s when I saw the lady who likes scones and hash browns, sitting at an outside table, staring at me with that Very Special Expression.

“You’re amazing!” she said. “Good on you!”

I took a deep, cleansing breath. “Thank you,” I said.

“No, I really mean it— you’re astounding!” she said.

I took another deep breath. “Thank. You,” I said through clenched teeth.

So she started talking to Connor. “Isn’t she wonderful? So full of life and love and verve!”

Connor looked at her blankly, and then looked at me like: “What is this weird lady going on and on about?”

I smiled widely.

“Have a good day!” I said to the woman, staggering to my door and trying to get in without leaping over it and punching her.

“I really mean it!” she said. “You are AMAZING! Good on you! Good on you!”

I could not bring myself to thank her again.

“That lady talked funny,” said Connor as I pulled out into traffic, and I don’t think he was talking about her accent.

These sorts of scenes set me off for hours afterward, and I NEVER know how to respond. When you’re disabled, the micro or macro-aggressions are often SO well-meant. Responding to them with anything but brusqueness comes across as assholedry of the highest order. She’s probably sipping her tea, imagining she made the day of some poor crippled lady by complimenting her.

But I am shaking and furious and right now feel just as helpless as she clearly thinks I am.

I prefer the assholes who demand with hostility: “What makes YOU deserve that handicapped placard?” Or who try to Jesus at me. Those ones are so much easier to deal with.

Second open letter to union-busting Seward Co-op: stop illegally harassing Amy Swenson.

union

This is my second open letter to Seward Co-op’s board, HR, and managers regarding unionization efforts at Seward, and your by-the-book union bashing.

After my first letter, Sean sent me an email all about how cooperative they were being with the union. Look! He said. Look how great we are being!

This letter was clearly a lie.

You continue to have ‘disciplinary meetings’ with one of the major organizers.

I see you. I know what you are doing. This is a classic intimidation technique, and an attempt to not only silence her, but cow others into submission and fear.

I am beyond disgusted. Stop this NOW. Everyone can see you. We can all see what you are doing. This is NOT what the co-op movement is all about.

You should all be ashamed of yourselves. You are on the wrong side of history. Stop. NOW.

Most extremely sincerely,
Haddayr Copley-Woods
Member # 31XXX

On Being SEEN

Today, walking downtown, I approached a man sitting on a windowsill, holding a cane.

We locked eyes and exchanged the Crip Nod. We know what it’s like to have people look away from you on the street.

“How are you TODAY?” he asked.

“TODAY is good,” I said. “How’s it going TODAY?”

“Good, good.”

No one else would have heard the emphasis I provided. Just us. We know some days are better than others.

*

A few blocks further down, I was stopped at a light waiting for it to change when a beautiful young woman with a sleek, close hair cut stood next to me.

“Happy Pride!” she said.

I looked down. I was wearing no rainbows, no ‘GAY AF’ shirt, no Secret Queer Army pin. She just knew.

I lit up. “Happy Pride!” I said.

All the way to my errand, I was grinning.

Thanks for seeing me, random strangers. I hope you felt seen, too.

disabledqueer