Another Day, Another Falsehood

If it's not Rush Limbaugh, it's from the right- or the center- about Social Security. Yesterday, it was both, as Rush claimed

The reason why there is no cost of living increase for the second year in a row, first time since 1975, is not a coincidence. Who's president? Obama. The reason why there's no Social Security cost of living increase is 'cause the money is going to the, quote, unquote, more deserving: unions, minorities, others hit hardest by the unfair tenets of capitalism.

Uh, no. It really should not- is not- difficult to figure out. It is a cost-of-living increase, obviously unconnected to unions, minorities, Barack Obama, or any of the other targets of Rush Limbaugh's fanaticism. Rather, according to The Associated Press,

The cost-of-living adjustments, or COLAs, are automatically set each year by an inflation measure that was adopted by Congress back in the 1970s. Based on inflation so far this year, the trustees who oversee Social Security project there will be no COLA for 2011....

Federal law requires the Social Security Administration to base annual payment increases on the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, which measures inflation. Officials compare inflation in the third quarter of each year — the months of July, August and September — with the same months in the previous year.

If inflation increases from year to year, Social Security recipients automatically get higher payments, starting in January. If inflation is negative, the payments stay unchanged.

And as part of the Administration's plot to funnel secret funds to union and minorities,

Social Security recipients got a one-time bonus payment of $250 in the spring of 2009 as part of the government's massive economic recovery package. President Barack Obama lobbied for another one last fall when it became clear seniors wouldn't get an increase in monthly benefit payments in 2010.

Limbaugh's fact-deprived and reality-challenged comment, however, was brilliant. He was able to criticize arguably his favorite demons- unions and minorities- while suggesting a conspiracy with the "jackass" he ridicules as the "little black man-child." He simultaneously claims victimhood for "capitalism," however he may define it. And all the while he infers that he would have liked to have seen elderly people get a boost in Social Security payments, which defies credulity. That's a two-fer, or perhaps a three-fer, for the man with a contempt for unions and workers and who has never met a corporate outlaw he couldn't embrace.

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