1) Social Insecurity Turns 90

In1935, FDR created a socialist retirement program that has been stealing money from workers and retirees via the payroll tax for four generations.

Bravo to CBS News for this honest headline:

If you need evidence of the financial crash that’s coming to Social Security due to the aging of America, this chart from the Social Security Admin shows the “trust fund” runs out of money in 2034.

Social Security Broke in Nine Years

But Social Security’s bigger problem, as we’ve shouted from the rafters, is that it’s the worst investment workers will make in their lifetime. The rate of return is NEGATIVE for most workers. Young people would be better off taking the money they put into Social Security and burying it in a suitcase in the backyard.

After snatching more than 12% of every paycheck from the day Americans start working until the day they retire, Social Security now pays a monthly benefit of a pathetic $2,000 on average when it should be paying out two to four times that benefit upon retirement.

Baby boomers just now retiring would be getting triple the benefit if they had been permitted to put those dollars into a personal 401k-type retirement plan. Plus they could leave $1 million or more to their kids at death.

Congress should offer the personal account option to all workers today, and we need every young person and their parents and grandparents who care about their future to march on Washington to get this done.

2) Speaker Mike Johnson Thanks UP For Help On Big Beautiful Bill

We’re grateful for the kind words from Speaker Johnson and his unwavering leadership in shepherding this bill through Congress without a single Dem voting yes.

3) A Stroll Down the Aisle of the Grocery Store

Everyone is STILL feeling the sting of higher grocery prices under Biden when the CPI for food surged by almost 25%.

The Hill pounced on Trump for his campaign promise that “I will bring grocery prices down on day one.” He hasn’t (except for eggs) and we squirmed at the time he made that prediction.

But what he has done as the Hill’s own chart shows is stopped the runaway food price inflation. What we want going  forward is STABLE prices and that’s what Trump has delivered.

PostScript: there are two food items that are up considerably in price under Trump. Beef and coffee. Both of those commodities have been hit with stiff tariffs. Coincidence? You decide.

4) Illinois Pols Taking Action to Improve Woeful Education Test Scores

For our "laugh or cry" item of the week, this comes from one of our readers via a Chicago Sun Times headline:

It’s the new math. If kids can’t cross the achievement bar, lower the bar.

5) Biden's Obamacare Expansion Was an Insurance Company Handout

When Biden supersized Obamacare subsidies in the name of COVID, liberals and the media celebrated the huge expansion in coverage. But a new report from our friends at the Paragon Health Institute finds that the main beneficiaries of this taxpayer-funded largesse have been unscrupulous brokers and insurance companies. Millions of the people they signed up to unlock a gusher of federal dollars have not filed a single medical claim, ever.  And may not even exist.

Adjusted to an annual basis, 7.8 million individual market enrollees used no medical services in 2024—an increase of nearly 5.5 million enrollees using no medical services from 2021. In 2024 alone, taxpayers spent billions subsidizing coverage for 7.8 million full-year enrollees who never used their insurance. Every dollar went to insurers and middlemen, with zero benefit to patients.

Keep this in mind as the insurance companies ramp up their lobbying effort to extend these subsidies – paid for with our tax money.

6) No Wonder It's Going Broke

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