Imagine this scenario..you work for fifty years, faithfully paying your taxes and dreaming of that day when you can retire because you have faith that the system will take care of you. You start planning your financial budget with all of the retirement income that you will have coming in. You faithfully waited until 67 to retire so you could take full advantage of the social security that you receive. Your first social security check comes in the mail and suddenly it is only 75% of the benefits that you were suppose to get. What the hell?
On April 11, 1865, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln spoke to an ecstatic crowd at the White House. In the last speech he ever gave, Lincoln could have waxed poetic about Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s recent surrender and the impending end of America’s bloodiest conflict. Instead, he made a case for stitching the country back together after the Civil War by restoring rebel states to the Union and undoing the evils of slavery.
Members of the first South Carolina legislature after the Civil War. Approximately 2,000 Black men were elected to office during the post-war Reconstruction period, which briefly provided political and social power to formerly enslaved people before a backlash ushered in an era of segregation.
“Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to restoring the proper practical relations between [Confederate] states and the Union,” Lincoln said. “I believe it is not only possible, but in fact, easier, to do this, without deciding, or even considering, whether these states have even been out of the Union.”
Something that I have never understood is how people can be so consumed with self interest that they let it take over their lives to the tune of doing something stupid or blaming the world for the issues. Then again why should we be surprised because we are human beings and unfortunately that is part of human nature.
