THERE'S NO CON LIKE A NEOCON

There's leprechauns, pecans and neocons. Only one is dangerous to your health and freedom. There's is nothing new about the neocons. And the last three letters of their name is the only accurate part of the appellation.

A good number of those who resent Trump and his bid for the White Shack in Washington are neocon Republicans. But neocons are not exclusive to Republicans. There's more than enough in the Donkey Party to go around. One of the neocons' favorite cons is NATO, an over-expensive, over-budgeted archaic 19th century relic that should have had Taps played over it a score and five years ago.

The idea that the U.S. taxpayer should still be paying for the cost of protecting Europe after all this time would be hilarious if it weren't so pathetically stupid and so pitifully costly. It's part and package of the industrial-military complex neocons love.

At a time when heavyweights like billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller of hedge fund fame is attacking entitlement programs like social security and such complaining that a disaster looms by 2030, there are some questions here. We don't know Druckenmiller, we respect his well-known track record and we followed his career long before he became a household name in the investing world.

The man worked for years for George Soros. Though some might disagree, we find it difficult to believe one can have worked for so long for another without sharing some of that other person's political,social and economic views. He was present during the doing-in of the British pound many years ago. No crime, just a statement of fact.

Who made all these entitlement promises, Democrats or Republicans or both? Or was it just the now dead ones? The other larger question here is U.S. foreign policy or the lack thereof a coherent one. And where does responsibility for this looming mess get placed? There was supposed to be peace dividend when the Berlin Wall crumbled.

Keeping troops billeted half way around the world in numerous far-flung places is costly. And just whose retirement assets are they protecting: yours or those of Goldman Sachs, Blackrock  and your friendly Congress person? A recent blurb out says one retiring Congress lady will receive around $800,000 annually in retirement.

This is what this election is all about, the failed two party system. One presidential candidate in this miasma was recently on television pointing her finger at the crowd saying if she gives her word, she will keep it. That sounds like a promise to us ensconced therein more entitlements..

Neocons love also to pound the war drums. Jingoistic is their middle name. One of the first Republican neocons was Teddy "Rough Rider" Roosevelt. He was a guy who believed there wasn't anything the government couldn't do including starting wars. And there still at it. Good ole Teddy.

Everyday people don't need the Stanley Druckenmillers to tell them a disaster awaits. And telling them they need to plan for their own retirement, though true, is the Big Lie. The first Keogh plan for self-employed if memory serves appeared in the early 1970s. Since then IRAs of numerous stripes have been created from individual SEPs to Roth ones, all government concocted.

But the same government in their greed has made them so complicated with regulations and arbitrary changes that financial planners have a hard time keeping up.When 49 of the 52 state attorneys generals several years ago stuck a portable rocket launcher in the ribs of tobacco companies, evil or not evil in your eyes, and collected billions of dollars none of that lucre found its way into many severely underfunded state run retirement funds.

Just recently until the governor there changed his mind, ( That should tell you about the power of high people in high places.), the state of Connecticut threatened to tax Yale's rich endowment plan. Endowment is about planning for the future just like your retirement plan. Trouble is, you have don't have any heavyweights fighting to keep yours from from thaose octopi in Washington and state capitols.

If you want to know about underfunded state retirement funds, just ask the mayor of Chicago or the governor of California. The greedy governments, federal and state, can't wait for their cut until the retiree dies, so they cooked up RMD, required minimum distribution. It awaits you in the future, should you be lucky or privileged enough to get there.

Look it up if you want to know more. Meanwhile, your ever so prescient central bankers have made it next to impossible to live on whatever funds retirees have, in their zeal to playoff the immediate against your future with their insane policies. We don't know about you, but that sounds like more folks, not fewer, will be looking at the government for help.

Now back to the neocons. There is a place for them. It's the same place you might want to look if you're trying to find one of Ford Motors greatest mistakes, the Edsel.