Social Security is the compulsory government retirement program Americans are required to pay into for as long as they are employed. All revenue which is used to pay for Social Security is acquired through payroll taxes. More specifically, it is acquired through Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) taxes, which also fund Medicare and Social Security disability benefits. A specific portion of these taxes then pay for the benefits received by retired Social Security beneficiaries, currently a pension averaging $1,657 per month which is eligible to individuals over the age of 62. In...
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U.S. Inflation Climbs To 7.5%
Rents rose 0.5% last month in another of a series of sharp increases since last summer. The cost of rent — the biggest expense for many households —has jumped almost 4% in the past year. Food prices also increased again, up almost 1% in January. The cost of groceries have climbed 7.4% in the last 12 months — a 14-year high. Dairy and fruit showed the biggest increases last month. Energy prices rose almost 1% last month due to a large spike in the cost of electricity. Cold weather also boosted demand. Gas and natural gas prices fell slightly, but the respite for consumers probably won’t...
SWAT Destroys Innocent Woman’s Home, Sends Her the Bill
In July of last year, Vicki Baker, 75, was excited to move on to the next chapter of her life in Montana by selling her home she owned for 12 years in McKinney, Texas. That sale would never take place on schedule, however, because the day before she was supposed to close, a SWAT team destroyed it. Baker was out of town on July 25 of last year but her daughter was home when a distraught construction worker — who had worked on the home before — decided to invade the home. Wesley Little, 50, had holed up in the home along with a 15-year-old girl he had abducted. When he came in the home,...
Idaho Cop Arrested For Repeatedly Raping Immobile Cancer Patient
In one of the most disturbing instances of police sexual misconduct we’ve reported here at the Free Thought Project a retired police corporal was arrested this week for repeatedly raping a woman so sick with cancer that she couldn’t fight back. Scott Wayne McMikle, 58, turned himself at the Ada County Jail Wednesday night and has been charged with nine counts of rape. The alleged rapes happened over ten years ago, when McMikle was still gainfully employed as a police officer, according to prosecutor Brittany Ford. Ford explained that police launched an investigation in December after...
Exile For James Comey
Comey, McCabe, Strozk, Page, Brennan, Clapper, Mueller, Rosenstein, Weissman and all their families should be stripped of their property and banished from the United States of America forever for their treason against the American people and U.S. Constitution. (Don't give me Lysander Spooner, these men all did owe allegiance.) The Federalist: ‘Trump Was Right’: Explosive New FBI Texts Detail Internal Furor Over Handling Of ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ Investigation Newly disclosed internal FBI notes and text messages detail the extent of the FBI's desire to take down Trump and his associates at...
Pennsylvanians Pushback Against Overbearing Coronavirus Lockdown
As in the rest of the country, life in Pennsylvania has been greatly disturbed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the chaos that has resulted from the state government’s attempts to handle the situation. On March 16, Governor Wolf ordered that all “nonessential” businesses be closed for at least two weeks. They are still closed today, and as a result, 1.8 million Pennsylvanians have filed for unemployment. At the end of December of last year, the state estimated that there were roughly 6 million employed persons in Pennsylvania. If we set aside all the workers whose incomes have been reduced...
Pandemic Hospital Layoffs Reveal the Prevalence of Wasteful Healthcare Spending
Aside from a few hotspots like New York City or Detroit, hospitals across the country are at such low capacities that many are laying off staff and seeing their bottom lines threatened during the current coronavirus pandemic. For instance, in my home state of North Carolina it was reported “After hospitals and doctor’s offices across North Carolina canceled nonessential procedures and in-person appointments because of the coronavirus pandemic, many nurses and medical staff were laid off or had their hours reduced.” “It’s definitely not the situation you might think would happen during a...
States Lifting Regulations to Help Business During COVID-19 Shows How Useless These Laws Are
From the start of the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States, state and local governments responded in various ways from issuing emergency orders—citywide shutdowns to school closures and beyond—but it’s the suspension of various laws and regulations that is exposing the unnecessary regulatory web that burdens businesses. As often happens during emergencies, governors and mayors across the country have used executive power to waive laws and bypass regulations. This allows goods to get to the public quicker at lower cost, more service providers to enter struggling industries, and the...
My Path to Patient in a Direct Primary Care (DPC) Practice
I recently wrote about my new Type 1 Diabetes diagnosis, the quest for affordable meds and supplies, and the subsequent financial savings found through transparent pricing outside of my insurance plan. I summarized that health care “coverage” is very expensive, whereas medical services may be found much more affordably. My next step was to establish an ongoing primary care physician relationship. I contacted one of the large medical groups that my insurance plan covers and found that before meeting with the internal medicine physician, I would be required to have two visits with a...
6 Things We Learned from Prohibition
Just over 100 years ago (October 28, 1919), the National Prohibition Act became law. Better known as the Volstead Act, it outlawed the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States. Prohibition failed to end alcohol consumption and was repealed on December 5, 1933. In a book on prohibitions, John Meadowcroft of King’s College in London offers several “generic lessons and implications.” The United States’ experience with Prohibition illustrates them all. 1. Interest Groups Are Crucial to Prohibition There was no great clamor for Prohibition. Instead, it...
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