So, in short, they're Democrats? You outline a passel of issues that would fall into the mainstream of the Democratic party, with a few outliers, but almost none align with the republican party of today.

The federal gas tax (a whopping 18.4 cents/gallon) goes to the highway trust fund to pay for highway construction and maintenance, so if enough people move onto alternative energy vehicles, we'll have to find another mechanism to pay for said roads. It's hardly some sort of nefarious plot.

The statutory rate in the US is 35% and is high when compared to other industrialized countries, but pretty much no-one pays that. The effective corporate tax rate in the US is closer to 27% due to various loopholes and deductions, which is right about average. All that Obama was talking about doing was eliminating the loopholes/deductions and dropping the statutory rate to keep it revenue neutral. The "highest in the world" line sounds good, but is hugely misleading.

I agree that the "negotiation" was incompetently handled, but while conservative Democrats were themselves causing trouble, the focus was on making the bill (sufficiently) bi-partisan. That's what the whole "gang of six" (3 dems, 3 reps) charade was about. Since the lineage of the proposal was essentially republican (heck, it's nearly identical to the 1993 republican plan), it wouldn't have been unreasonable to presume that with some concessions that it could garner republican support. Of course, these are hardly normal times.

Now, it's possible that if this bill failed, we'd get a saner revamp of our healtcare system, but I don't see any evidence that might happen. This bill was just about the least that one could do which had a chance to impact things.

Finally, they're real treasury bonds, and like all treasury bonds, the money that they're purchased with is used by the government when they're purchased. That's hardly some sort of nefarious scheme; it's how all bonds work. They get paid back, with interest, over time. Now, since we control the SS administration, we could presumably give the bonds to the treasury or some such, but it'd still be a transfer of real assets. Of course, that'd be the blatent theft of trillions of dollars that were expressly paid by workers into the program, so I guess that it's important that said workers are properly misinformed so they don't notice.

That would be bad, but alas the bonds are real ones that pay interest and everything. The Social Security administration even has a FAQ and everything that cover this, though that'd take actually looking for yourself and perhaps not listening so much to people who're seeking to mislead you.

http://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/fundFAQ.html

The entire watered-down bill was a result of a year long attempt at good-faith negotiation with republicans. That, of course, was a repeated exercise in futility where the republicans would demand concessions, get said concessions and then move the goal posts. All the while, they used their media mouth-pieces to scare and misinform the public about the bill ("death panels, anyone?") to drive down it's public support.. Once it became apparent that republicans were negotiating in bad-faith, the bill had to further be hacked up to be able to be passed under reconcilliation, which was required to get past the de-facto 60 vote requirement that republican abuse of the filibuster created. So, I think that it's fair to say that the GOP had more than a little to do with the compromised bill.

Buying treasury bonds doesn't count as saving? Should they just stuff the Social Security surplus under the world's largest mattress?

I'd say that it's more logical to assume that the insurance corporations are acting as the sociopathic "persons" that they are. They want to make more money and see an opportunity to do so and thus are. For them, there's the added benefit that our generally worthless press coverage will muddy the waters enough that they'll able to blame the rate increases on the ACA, and so add pressure (along with the industry's prodigious lobbying dollars) to repeal the parts of the law that might cut into their profits. It's a win-win! (well, aside from society which loses, but some "persons" are more equal than others of course)

I have one and agree with this. It's really cool, but it's so dangerous that I don't break it out much at all. I went to the beach earlier this year and it was pretty cool to use it over the water. Back home, there's a non-trivial risk that I'll hit someone/something if I use it much outdoors.

I'd hardly consider cutting off their funding sources as "not taking any action", and further, that the U.S. didn't assassinate him doesn't mean that they're not behind the efforts to legally harass him. I realize that the U.S. seems to "reach for the stick" as a solution to most of it's problems nowadays, but it can be a bit more subtle than that when called for. They don't need him dead (heck, that'd likely be counterproductive), they just need to render him ineffective and make an example of him to anyone else who'd choose to be a nuisance in the future so they'll think twice.

Sure, if we just steal the money (they're real treasury bonds) or default on our debts it'd make things better in terms of held debt, but it'd be wrong to do so. Sure money is fungible, but SS income doesn't go into the general fund. The SS administration invests any surpluses in treasury bonds, like many pensions, since they're the safest investment around. The bonds fund government deficits, just like all bonds, but that they're held by the SS administration doesn't make them somehow unreal.

What you seem to be missing is that the deficit that the bonds are sold to pay for exists regardless of whether the education department (in your example) or Social Security (in the actual case) buys some of them. So, if SS weren't buying bonds, they'd have just been sold to other investors. If you're creating a hypothetical where the bonds were issued simply to soak up a surplus, then it's nothing similar to SS, where the debt would be the same regardless but just held in other places.