Former Social Security Administration employee has reasonable ideas to keep the program solvent

As a recent retiree from the Social Security Administration, I am able to speak from my experience. When I was first hired, Social Security was going broke in 10 years then. It is 35.5 years later and it is still around.

What Congress needs to do is to leave the basic benefits for workers alone. It is the family benefits and totalization benefits that it needs to trim or in some cases eliminate.

For example, it is no longer necessary to provide at all the $255 lump sum benefit, which is a joke in this day and age - it does not pay the rent or put food on the table.

Divorced wives and widows in the 1980s were lowered on the marriage requirement from 20 years to 10 years - it's time to raise it to at least 15 years. These days more aged exes have substantial pensions and Social Security work records.

Now is the time for the feds with the new technology to demand and pay for DNA tests before paying illegimate children.

In the '80s the formula was changed for family benefits to pay less on disability, so do it for retirement family benefits too.

A huge upcoming drain is the totalization benefits for foreign workers who only work 1.5 years (six quarters of coverage) to get a SS check by using their work in foreign social security systems. Since the rest of the U.S.-born citizens must work 10 years (40 quarters) to get a check, why should foreigners and citizens who left the U.S.A. get a break that pays out far more than it takes in?

Our state, municipal and federal workers who are not covered by Social Security must work 10 years. Do we value our government workers and citizens less? One argument that the government uses for totalization treaties is that it is unfair to have someone work here and pay SS taxes and taxes to their foreign pension system, so we should give them a check. This is false reasoning.

Before 1978, we had treaties with the same countries to have those workers either pay in our system or theirs - not both. Now India not only wants their workers to come here for a couple of years and take our jobs, but then get a check and stress our Social Security protection for our long time residents!

These are only a few of the many ways to trim the benefits of other than our disabled or retired workers. Any rank-and-file SSA retiree can tell you.

GEORGE SINCAVAGE lives in Massachusetts

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann staff continues to quit on her. Her fifth chief of staff and her finance director bailed on her on Tuesday

Two top staffers to Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann left their jobs Tuesday, leaving the confrontational congresswoman without a chief of staff in her House office or a finance director for her reelection campaign.

Ron Carey, a former chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party, becomes the fifth chief of staff to leave Bachmann's office since she was first elected just four years ago.

"Congresswoman Michele Bachman thanks Ron Carey for his service to her and to the district and wishes him the best for his future," Bachmann spokeswoman Rachel Horn said in a statement. Bachmann's office also announced that Andy Parrish, a Minnesota AARP official who has worked for Bachmann before, will rejoin her staff as a senior adviser.

The news of Carey's departure came just hours after Zandra Wolcott, Bachmann's top fundraiser, said she was leaving her post at the campaign, offering only a vague explanation for the move.

"I am leaving the campaign," said Wolcott, a successful Minnesota operative who was a lead consultant for President George W. Bush's campaign in the state.

"It's just time to move on, I have other things to do here in Minnesota."

Wolcott would not say whether she decided on her own to leave the job or if the campaign asked her to leave.

Bachmann is running against Democratic state Sen. Tarryl Clark in a race that's quickly becoming one of the nation's most expensive. Bachmann has raised more than $4 million for her campaign and Clark has brought in over $2 million, including $910,000 in the last quarter.

Fox News' senior legal analyst: Bush should have been indicted for torture and spying on Americans

Fox News' senior judicial analyst made some surprising remarks Saturday that may go against the grain at his conservative network.

In a interview with Ralph Nader on C-SPAN's Book TV to promote his book Lies the Government Told You, Judge Andrew Napolitano said that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should have been indicted for "torturing, for spying, for arresting without warrant."

The judge believes that it is a fallacy to say that the US treats suspects as innocent until proven guilty. "The government acts as if a defendant is guilty merely on the basis of an accusation," said Napolitano.

Nader was curious about how this applied to the Bush administration. "What about the more serious violations of habeas corpus," wondered Nader. "You know after 9/11 Bush rounded up thousands of them, Americans, many of them Muslim Americans or Arabic Americans and they were thrown in jail without charges. They didn't have lawyers. Some of them were pretty mistreated in New York City. You know they were all released eventually."

"Well that is so obviously a violation of the natural law, the natural right to be brought before a neutral arbiter within moments of the government taking your freedom away from you," answered Napolitano.

"So what President Bush did with the suspension of habeas corpus, with the whole concept of Guantanamo Bay, with the whole idea that he could avoid and evade federal laws, treaties, federal judges and the Constitution was blatantly unconstitutional and is some cases criminal," he continued.

"What should be the sanctions [for Bush and Cheney]?" asked Nader.

"They should have been indicted. They absolutely should have been indicted for torturing, for spying, for arresting without warrant," said Napolitano.

"I'd like to say they should be indicted for lying but believe it or not, unless you're under oath, lying is not a crime. At least not an indictable crime. It's a moral crime," he said.

This isn't the first time that Napolitano's comments have veered away from the standard talking points at Fox News. He has predicted that Arizona's controversial immigration law will be blocked by the court. Napolitano also said Arizona's governor would "bankrupt the Republican Party" fighting for the law.

Watch the C-SPAN interview here: http://c-spanvideo.org/program/id/225457