Cooking the books

As you know, Bush by-passed leaders of both sides of the isle in Congress by re-appointing the two independent trustees to the Social Security system whose terms had expired during the Easter recess. Without the two independent trustees, the trustees' annual report couldn't be published, and Bush feared new trustees might not endorse the cooked up books his in-house trustees were preparing.

Sure enough, the new annual report was released today, and as expected it's full of doom and gloom. Naturally, the stenographers in the press simply repeat the government spin without independent analysis.

WASHINGTON - The trust fund for Social Security will be depleted in 2040, a year before expected, and Medicare will exhaust its trust fund reserves just 12 years from now, trustees for the programs said Monday.

Their annual report showed deterioration in the financial condition of both of the government's two largest benefit programs.

The sky is falling, the sky is falling!