Games People Play
Woah, the games people play now.
Every night and every day now.
Never meanin’ what they say now.
Never sayin’ what they mean.
While they while away the hours,
In their Ivory towers.
‘Til they’re covered up with flowers,
In the back of black limousine.
Woah.
La-da-da,da-da-da,da-da
La-da-da,da-da-da, da-dee.
Talkin’ ‘bout you and me,
And the games people play.
Games People Play – Joe South (1968)
…..
I think this is the first time I have used the song title as the title of the missive. It is apropos. There is a lot of “never meanin’ what they say and never sayin’ what they mean” going on right now. In this blog, we will rip into a few of these issues in search of the truth. Truth is something you will never find in the propaganda media.
Social Security Trust Fund: I have and will continue to talk about our $2 trillion deficits that exist now and are set to only increase in the future. One of the elements of these deficits is the fact that the money coming into the Social Security Trust Fund (SSTF) is less than the money being paid out to retirees. The Congressional Research Service just released an analysis of what it would take to make the SSTF solvent for the next 75 years, based on current demographic projections. Here is what they said:
· Increase the payroll tax from the current 12.4% to 15.84% immediately. If you wait until the SSTF is completely depleted (2034) than the rate has to go to 16.55%.
· Or, you can reduce benefits by 21.3% immediately on all current and future recipients of Social Security. If you wait until 2034 then you would need to reduce benefits by 25%.
If Congress and the president do nothing, the 25% reduction in benefits in 2034 will occur under existing law. The law does not allow the SSTF to go below zero. The point is that something will need to be done. It is unlikely that a “solution” will involve only tax increases or benefits reduction but probably some of both as well as increasing the eligibility age and perhaps means testing recipients or allowing private accounts.
Both major candidates for president say they don’t intend to touch this issue. In the meantime, the solutions become more difficult, and the “losses” will need to be borrowed.
University Waste: Nothing has increased in cost more in the last 50 years than college tuition. Nothing. Not food, energy, housing, insurance, or anything else. Why is this? In those 50 years (1976 to 2018), the number of students enrolled in college increased by 78%. But the number of faculty increased by 92%. The number of full-time administrators increased by 164%. The number of non-faculty staff increased by 452%.
This is called doing less with more. It is the opposite of efficiency and productivity. Government subsidies and student loans have certainly helped fuel this backwards slide in value for money. If you give money to a university today, this is what you are funding, in addition to DEI and all kinds of leftist indoctrination.
I saw this up close when I taught Political Science for a year at the University of California at Irvine (UCI). I have never seen a more inefficiently run operation with more employees who get paid a lot and work very little. There was one non-faculty staff who combined vacation with paternity leave and took off 4 months in a row. No one did his job while he was gone. He was not missed. Government bureaucracies, and many tech companies often have a similar level of non-productivity.
What pisses me off is when I think about all the people in the private sector working their asses off every day trying to be more productive and do more with less. And they usually do that for way less pay than these tech, government and university elites do.
This is why populism is on the rise. And it should be.
Black Lives Matter, Now at Home Depot: This was a recent headline in the only good part of the Wall Street Journal – the editorial page. The editorial told the story of a recent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruling that Home Depot could not discipline an employee for breaking its dress code by writing “BLM” (Black Lives Matter) on his work apron. He also hung BLM banners around the store. Home Depot has a policy against “displaying causes or political messages unrelated to workplace matters”.
Makes sense. But the NLRB ruled in favor of the employee that “racial justice” is a “logical outgrowth” of labor advocacy and therefore is protected as union organizing would be. The WSJ editorial board suggests that this opens a pandora’s box by removing the ability of employers to keep employee’s messages at work to work related matters.
What the editorial board is missing is how the left manages such things. The acronyms of the left (BLM, ESG, DEI, Free Palestine) are all protected speech in their view because these are all issues relating to “justice”. MAGA, All Lives Matter, Stop Jewish Hate, Jesus is my Savior – these are all “hate speech” and not protected. The original sin here came decades ago when the law started adding “hate” as a crime or an enhancement to another crime. That word can be defined to exclude legitimate political opinions and that is what is being done with it.
Justice Antonin Scalia once pointed out that almost every country including Russia and Communist China have laws protecting “free speech”. Obviously, real free speech does not exist in most of those countries. What protects it here is the devolution of power amongst 3 branches of government and state governments. It is that brilliant construct by the founders that keeps speech opposing a ruling elite from being defined as “hate” and therefore subject to imprisonment. The authoritarian left is trying hard to dismantle that.
I have more “games” to bring to your attention. But there is always next week.
Until then, follow me on X @lookthruchaos. And starting next week, Hugh Hewitt’s producer and my friend Generalissimo Duane Patterson and I will be starting a new podcast called, aptly, look through the chaos.
More info to follow.
I remain respectfully,
Congressman John Campbell
Drive Fast & Live Free