I'm disabled on Social Security Disability and Medicare. I have a motorized wheelchair, 24/7/365 caregiver. I wasn't born disabled, so I'm bitter about losing my health. I had spent the summer in in Truro Beach, a short walk south of Provincetown, Massachusetts. It was a summer filled with love, salt-spray roses and walking barefoot in the cool sand while digging for clams. Then I had a mosquito-bite that led to the ER, blood tests, and the shocking realization that I was very sick with Lupus-Scleroderma.
I was surprised to find out that I had a safety net. Out of college I began working as an ICU RN at U of Chicago to an administrator at Charter-Barclay a private psychiatric hospital.
I had paid into Social Security for 40 quarters, so I qualified for SS Disability. My award was calculated on my highest-earning 4 quarters. So my monthly disability was awarded to me on the basis of my earnings as a hospital administrator, not as a staff RN.
This year, Social Security will not give me the modest cost-of-living increase that they had in prior years. Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein and other financial thieves with their GOLDEN PARACHUTES eroded my SOCIAL SECURITY SAFETY NET.
This year I would have gotten approximately $70 dollars more a month from my Social Security Disability monthly disbursement. But President Obama said that since there wasn't enough money in the treasury and there really wasn't any inflation last year, no increase for me! They call Social Security and Medicare, entitlement programs.
Okay, but what do they call the 100 Million Dollars that Lloyd Blankenfein thinks he's entitled to after he and his company Goldman Sachs sucked the money out of the American taxpayer? A 'golden' entitlement?
I remember a book by Bolles, "What Color is Your Parachute". I was a student aide for a college dean who had Bolles speak at our college. Bolles later went out to lunch with a few of us and Bolles urged us to pursue careers in politics.
I went into nursing. Clearly I did not go for the job with the golden parachute. When I had to bail out of my job, all I had was a safety net, the safety net of Social Security and Medicare. Social Security and Medicare are funded by taxpayer contributions, including my contributions. Because I pitched-in as a taxpayer, I got a safety net paid for by my fellow taxpayers.
Lloyd Blankenfein has a golden parachute paid for by the American taxpayer. I didn't know that that my government had that kind of safety-net, a golden parachute, that was worth millions - 100 million dollars.
I wonder how much Blankenfein and Goldman Sachs paid in taxes to have entitled themselves to millions and billions of American tax dollars? I wonder what kind of 'needs-based' formula was applied when the American taxpayer saved Blankenfein and Goldman Sachs.
Blankenfein's and Goldman Sachs' golden parachute has eroded my monthly disability. I want to know why. Anyone know why?
This is a tale of two entitlements. One for the elites and one for the common man. That's the way it's always been, that's how it will always be. I should have grabbed the brass ring when I had the chance, then I'd have a golden parachute instead of my being worried about my safety net eroding. Hindsight is 20/20.