Tracy from a small town

Lifelong Republican -- prouder of that on the daily. Fear is not a virtue, neither is stupidity. Grandchildren are the reason we have kids. God Bless the USA.

[I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 @ImMeme0]

NYC is jacking water and sewer rates another 6%, pushing the total increase to 35% in just 5 years.

Is it fixing the crumbling sewers that flood subways and streets every rainstorm? Stopping New Yorkers from drowning in their basements apartments? Nope.

This is a stealth tax on every New Yorker. The money flows into the city’s general budget to bankroll communist pet projects, while residents continue dodging rivers of sewage.

Landlords, already the city’s favorite financial piñatas, get hammered even harder. With the latest rent freeze and higher bills mean less money for maintenance and upgrades.

Renters? Enjoy the faster slide into neglected buildings.

[Nazi Hunters @HuntersOfNazis]

Imagine strapping an 8-kilo explosive vest on your 14yo son, promising him Islamic paradise for bravely blowing up Jews.

Then you watch IDF soldiers spot the threat, clear civilians, and calmly talk the boy into letting the bomb squad remove it — because jail is better than death.

Now imagine his family having the audacity to launch a global campaign, outraged that the ‘evil Jewish supremacists’ imprisoned their ‘sweet boy’ under ‘apartheid.’

You don’t have to imagine it. This is the Israeli experience, with far too many variations of it happening to absurd degrees.

[Margot Cleveland @ProfMJCleveland]

I’m old enough to remember when NPR-types beat overpopulation drum. Of course, that was when they wanted to sell birth control & abortion. Alas, now they want to sell open borders. As always “science” is a chameleon that conveniently takes on color of liberal cause of the day!

[Giga Based Dad @GigaBasedDad]

This

[The Rational Animal 🤔 @theobjectivist]

The collectivist says the billionaire exploits the workers beneath him. Ayn Rand answered this completely with what she called the pyramid of ability.

In a free economy, the man of greater ability gives far more to those below him than they give to him. The physicist who discovers a principle hands a gift to every engineer who uses it. The industrialist who organizes production raises the wage and the standard of living of every worker he employs. But the reverse isn't true. The workers could never replace him, and could not produce on their own what he makes possible.

As Rand put it: "the man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him."

So the truth is the exact opposite of the Marxist claim. The able man is not the exploiter. He is the benefactor of everyone beneath him, earning in payment only a fraction of the value he creates and spreads to all the rest.

Envy calls that theft. Reality calls it the gift of genius.

[Justine Bateman @JustineBateman]

I have no respect or patience for these spoiled little rich kids.
Not satisfied with mommy and daddy’s money any longer, they want all of ours.
Tough shit.

[Justine Bateman @JustineBateman]

.@RoyalFamily we understand you don’t comment on “political issues,” but this is not one. This is heartbreaking and horrifying. The girls and women of your country are in terror of having their lives destroyed by rape gangs, continuously.
How can you allow this to go on? How can you represent a country that allows this gross human rights disaster? You must do everything in your power and capacity to stop this.

[Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt]

Communists must first destroy everything so they can remake society from the ashes, in their vision. They cannot let you pick your leaders. They cannot let you have nice things, beautiful buildings, clean streets, prosperity. They ruin your life so you *beg* for govt to step in.

[Justine Bateman @JustineBateman]

I'd like to see the same people who organized marches and railed against politicians in defense of their reproductive rights to organize marches and rail against socialist politicians who want to take far more rights than that away.

[Alice Smith @TheAliceSmith]

Voting to take someone else’s money and give it to a group you like doesn’t make you virtuous or compassionate.

[Hon. Vickie Paladino @VickieforNYC]

We spend more on schools, poverty, housing, and healthcare than anyone ever has in human history. Absolutely vast sums of money.

Israel could disappear tomorrow and the condition of New York would not improve one iota.

That’s just a fact. I don’t care where you stand on middle eastern politics, but reality is that we could miraculously solve all of it and not one thing would get better for us here in New York.

Because the problem isn’t that Raytheon is getting money that could be used for schools and welfare, it’s that we’re already spending tens of billions on schools and welfare and getting horrible results.

Billions more won’t help. The money isn’t the problem.

The problem is that our city has been run for decades by progressives who have no idea what they’re doing, and as things have gotten worse we’ve replaced them with even more progressives.

We could devote 100% of the entire federal budget to NYC and these idiots would still manage to waste every dime of it, because their core governing philosophy is rotten. Period.

[Mike Netter @nettermike]

Dont let go of the family at the center of yesterday's Supreme Court property tax ruling.

In 1991, Scott Pung bought a small three-bedroom home on half an acre for his wife and two children. It was their family home. When Scott died in 2004, his wife stayed there. When she died in 2008, their son and his family stayed. Same home, same family, more than two decades.

The whole time, it was their primary residence, taxed at the lower rate Michigan gives a family home. Then in 2010 an assessor decided, wrongly, that they should be taxed as if it were a second home. The family took it to court and won. The tribunal ruled they did not owe it.

The assessor's response, in her own words about the judge who ruled for the family: "I don't care what he says." She imposed the tax again. She left it off the original bill and added it later. When the family came in to pay, they brought a driver's license to prove it was their home, and paid what they actually owed.

It did not matter. Over roughly $2,242 that they did not owe and had already beaten in court, the county foreclosed. A trial court tried to give the home back over a notice failure. The county appealed to stop that. In 2018, after 27 years, the family permanently lost the home Scott Pung bought in 1991.

This is what the property tax can do. Not in theory. To a real family, over a bill that was never owed, because one official decided she did not care what the court said. And the Supreme Court said the Constitution will not make that family whole.

I reached out to the Pung family, and they gave me their blessing to share their story and this photo. My thanks to them, and my respect for the fight they carried all the way to the highest court in the land. It will help families they will never meet.

This is exactly why we are working to end the tax that made it possible.

Photo of Marc and Tia Pung at the U.S. Supreme Court, shared with their permission.

[Rock Chartrand @RockChartrand]

Reminder: China is almost everything American communists claim to hate about America, only amplified.

Extreme inequality. Billionaires. Corporations. Long work hours. Limited labor rights. Political favoritism. Surveillance. Powerful elites.

The difference is that in China, the politically connected also have a one party state behind them.

[MOMof DataRepublican @data_republican]

Watched a good documentary on YouTube called "Minnesota Mao." It's about Tim Walz. It's mind boggling to think we almost had him and Kamala in the White House. We truly dodged a nuclear bomb.

[Spencer Pratt @spencerpratt]

They're not freezing your rent, they're freezing your housing providers' income, while their expenses keep increasing.

The point isn't to make your housing affordable, it's to make providing housing financially inviable, so government(s) can seize the unmanageable properties.

Our lack of financial literacy is going to destroy us.
https://t.co/Eix9fVp1BK

[Glenn Beck @glennbeck]

British police are threatening to ARREST people who use air conditioners?! I didn't realize I was visiting a third world country when I visited the UK last month. This is RIDICULOUS.

@BishopDewar gives an alarming warning about how bad the UK’s dystopian decline has become:

"We're going through what I call 'Texas temperatures' at the moment, because it's like 40 degrees centigrade. That's, you know, 110 plus Fahrenheit. For us in Britain, that's astronomical… Police are turning up and telling people, ‘You either remove your air conditioners, or we'll arrest you.’

We're leading the world in policing thought and policing speech. Now, there are places in the United Kingdom where you can get arrested for praying silently in your head, if you happen to be in what they call an ‘exclusion zone’ around an abortion clinic. And here's the ridiculous part of that law: if I happen to live within the boundaries of an exclusion zone, praying privately in the privacy of my own home, I could now be guilty of a criminal offense as defined by the state. This is what happens when the state thinks it has the right to control every aspect of human life.”

[Miranda Devine @mirandadevine]

Imagine if Hollywood and allied organs like Vanity Fair used their talents and energies to inspire American patriotism, and pride, to celebrate American ideals and achievements, and to elevate the nation's epic history and the courage, sacrifice and ingenuity of its pioneers, builders, and visionaries... instead of elevating every destructive anti-American idea, and burnishing the images of loathsome losers.

[Grok @grok]

Yes, the post's factual claims are accurate and match the June 2026 Social Security Trustees Report + SSA data:

• ~184M covered workers funding ~71M beneficiaries.
• 12.4% payroll tax (6.2% each side) up to exact $184,500 cap.
• Pay-as-you-go; OASI reserves $2.56T in Treasury IOUs after $160B 2025 shortfall.
• OASI depletes Q4 2032 (78% payable); combined OASDI Q3 2034 (83% payable).
• Worker ratio fell from 5.1:1 (1960) to ~2.9:1 today; ~4.1M turning 65/yr.
• Ida May Fuller: paid $49.50 total, collected $22,889.

No enacted fix. The mechanics and math check out; the "pyramid scheme" label is rhetorical.

[Ethan Brooks @alt_w_v_g]

A deal came across my desk this week

Largest revenue-collecting enterprise in America:
> 71M customers
> 185M people funding it
> Mandatory participation
> No competitors
> No churn

On paper it's the best business model I've ever seen, so I ran diligence

It's Social Security

Put my analyst on the financials:
> He came back in 4 hours
> He did not look well

Started with the revenue model:
> 12.4% of every dollar you earn
> 6.2% withheld from your paycheck
> 6.2% paid by your employer, which is your money taking a longer route
> Applied to the first $184,500 of income, then it stops

That's the collection engine

Then I traced where the money goes

First finding:
> Nothing was set aside
> The money comes in from workers and goes out to retirees the same month
> The surplus got spent the moment it arrived
> The "trust fund" everyone talks about is $2.56T of the government holding IOUs from itself
> It has paid out more than it took in every year since 2021
> Last year the shortfall hit $160B
> I asked him where the actual money was
> He said "it already left, sir"

Second finding:
> The model only works if the people paying in can cover the people cashing out
> In 1960 there were more than 5 workers for every person collecting a check
> Today there are fewer than 3
> In 20 years there will be fewer than 2.5
> And 4.1M Americans are turning 65 every year right now
> The largest wave of retirements in the country's history
> My son was at the table
> He looked at the chart
> He said "so fewer and fewer people are paying for more and more people, and at some point it stops working?"
> I said "that's the structure, yes"
> He went back to his cereal
> My analyst looked up from his laptop
> He said "sir, with respect, this looks like a pyramid scheme"
> I corrected him
> A pyramid scheme is illegal
> This one is mandatory

Third finding:
> The headline says the money runs out in 2034
> Then my analyst found the footnote
> It is not one fund
> The old-age and survivors fund and a separate disability fund, kept apart by law
> The 2034 number blends them
> Un-blend them and the retirement side, the one almost everyone is counting on, goes first
> Not someday. Not a generation from now
> The fourth quarter of 2032
> After that the math only allows it to pay 78 cents on every dollar it promised
> A 22% cut. Automatic. No vote required.

What it would take to close the gap:
> Raise the 12.4% payroll tax to roughly 16.8%
> Cut every benefit by more than 20%, immediately and permanently
> Or some combination of the two

A remediation plan that's actually passed: none.

Pulled the cap table:
> The first person ever to collect a monthly check was a woman named Ida May Fuller
> She paid in $24.75
> Her employer paid another $24.75, which was also her money
> She collected $22,888.92
> More than 460 times what went in

The model front-loaded its winners

My wife read it over my shoulder

She did not argue with any of it

She never does

She just looked at me, then looked at the ceiling, and said nothing

She thinks I take things too far

She also thinks I'm right

Here's my diligence conclusion:
> Took your money for 40 years
> Spent it the month it arrived
> Set nothing aside
> Built a model that runs on demographics it no longer has
> Left a 22% cut to trigger in 2032
> Has no fix that ever passed

In any other deal we'd have a word for this

In this one we call it your retirement

I'm not saying anything

The economic model is saying it

Make common sense common again

Plz fix. Thx.

Sent from my iPhone