Recently, I received my annual benefit amount letter from the Social Security Administration, stating that there would be no cost of living increase for 2010. The decision was based on what the Department of Labor calls a Consumer Price Index. Can you believe that there was no inflation in 2009?

This is nothing but voodoo calculations perpetrated by the Department of Labor to deprive Social Security beneficiaries of an increase during the coming year — a deserved increase, by the way.

The Consumer Price Index should be retitled “The Big Lie!” Watch the shelf price go up, month after month.

Officials of the Department of Labor must think that the general public will accept the deception without speaking up. Well, I’m not afraid to speak up. Those thieves need to be exposed for the thieves that they are.

What can we do about it? Probably nothing much, I guess. But we can vent, can’t we?

I don’t know who the Secretary of the Department of Labor is, but whoever he is, he deserves a lump of coal in his Christmas stocking. Shame on him and all his cohorts.

Marvin Schwartz, Lewiston