Meet Rand Paul
 

http://www.politico.com/magazine/sto...l#.Uy6PS_ldU8c


excellent article

Screw that smarmy little weasel. ;)

I am pretty sure the whole country realizes the only way to fiscal sanity is going to be to tax the money. Problem is those with the money won't tax themselves.

Meet Rand Paul - No thanks, I'm good.

Is that possibly true, that foreign aid accounts for less than 1% of the federal budget?

Yup! It's really always been like that. Frankly, I think it's inexcusable that the richest and most powerful nation on earth spends so little to alleviate suffering in the world and then spends more than everyone else in the world fighting the fires that suffering ignites. It's cruel, immoral and just plain stupid.

John

Exactly. Remember when the Shrub was stiffing the U.N. on our dues ala 'starving the beast'? I wonder if Obama has paid us up?

Now ask what all the entitlements cost.:rolleyes:

Entitlements are what the federal budget should be about. Health care, social security benefits, all the health and human services programs and infrastructure, highways and bridges, are where our tax dollars should be going.

I think it's all well and good that we should be concerned with the suffering in the world. And we should do something about it...after we do something about the suffering, and general safety here. Not that conservatives care much about the poor and middle class...who are paying the highest percentage of their income of any of us, and who are providing all the cannon fodder for our rich man's wars.

Exactly

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dicti...ntitlementFull Definition of ENTITLEMENT. 1. a: the state or condition of being entitled: right. b: a right to benefits specified especially by law or contract

Of course if they want to renege on a contract, but the funny part was when I first came down here they did not ask if I wanted them to deduct FICA from my salary. Oddly enough Mirriam Webster is an American dictionary but I guess Republicans cannot read very well, they probably think black is white.

My feelings exactly. But unfortunately there will always be a need here so you will never have money to send in foreign aid.

The problem with assistance programs in the US is it seems like when you throw more funds at them they grow and are in need of more. You throw more, they grow more. Granted there is a ton of bureaucratic BS that eats up funds as well but why does that happen? Do folks on assistance just get comfy and don't change their lifestyle to get off it? Or maybe can't change their lifestyle to get off it?

Despite what they would have us believe SS is fully fundeed about twenty years out. The problem is that Congress spends all that money on other things and gives SS IOUs in the form of Treasury bonds. Then the stupid Fed sets interest rates at zero so the bonds really earn very very little.

Then the economic activity that low interest rates are supposed to encourage does not take place. And of course retired folk who cannot afford to gamble at that big casino on Wall Street have their money in savings accounts that pay abouut 0.8% interest, so they can't even keep up with inflation.

Because our courts have been bought up allow companies to declare bankrruptcy and robe the funds from their defined benefit pension plans, so people who thought they were set up for retirement find themselves SOL. Then the taxpayer comes along with the pension guarantee program and gives these folks 50 cents on the dollar of what they were supposed to get. As long as this government is run by people like Donahue at the Chamberpot of Commerce then God blass the poor as they will always be with us.

I think there is a lot of politics driven mythology going on with this as well. I work with a lot of single mothers who at some point drew food stamps and/or welfare, usually when their kids were very young. It's not a permanent condition in every case and I'd bet there are fewer lifetime cases than the propaganda machine would have us believe. Those that exist probably do so in impoverished areas where there is little or no work or there is some other reason, physical/mental disability, drug addiction, etc..... However, people do leave the system as situations in their lives change. I saw a few examples of this when I volunteered for Habitat for Humanity.

Dave

+1. Excellent post.

Dave

Dave, it's been a few years since I've done the research, but, at any given time there are 10% to 14% of scammers in the welfare system depending on what state you are looking at. This percentage is a drastic reduction from prior to the welfare reform in 96/97. Also, welfare reform put a cap on benefits.

Social Security has always held nothing but treasury bonds. As long as there's a national debt nothing else makes sense. Why put cash in a 'savings account' when you're paying on debt at higher interest? In any case, the law has said that's what happens from day one of the program.

Funding from the trust fund is therefore an illusion. Always has been. Social Security will, however, always be fully funded as long as the US government can tax and borrow, and Congress chooses to fund it....

What burns my butt is all the politicians of both parties who accuse the other of 'raiding' social security. The raiding has always been 100% and always automatic. And what really burns my butt is the increases in FICA tax that are justified as insuring the 'future solvency' of the program. The money has always been spent immediately, some for current SS benefits, and the rest to help finance the current deficit. The surplus FICA money was never anything but a disguised income tax, and a very regressive one. It never did a damned thing for future benefits.

Politicians sure do lie a lot.

It's call government dependency and is the reason they do it. Governments want a dependent society to hold or gain power. They buy your votes with other peoples money until it runs out. We are getting to that point now and is why we have pushed the tax base out of this country ie: corporations. Now the dependents want to blame the corporations with the prodding of the government.

It's a cause and effect syndrome. The end result governments run out of money and the dependents end up rioting. Then they find out that they need to depend on themselves for there own destiny.

Right the government pushed the good honest happy tax paying corporations out. They didn't outsource jobs in an effort to become even more rich and profitable by taking advantage of dirt cheap labor. We should all be more grateful for the actions of these America loving corporations.

Ugh I can't even say it satirically without being sick to my stomach.

Interesting, Dave. I actually spent the first 6 years of my social work career counseling mostly single mothers in a welfare to work program. This was back in the Clinton years when the new TANF programs were being rolled out. In my experience it was always tough getting a mother to go pick up an entry level job that would be giving her 75 bucks a month less in income than she had on the public aid, that she couldn't afford to lose. But we worked hard on helping her buy in to the possibility of having more income down the road than she would ever have on the TANF.

The other thing we found in our research was that the "hard core/long term" public aid recipients were often legitimately disabled and should never have been on welfare in the first place. Over 25% of the women in our program who had been on public aid for more than three years ended up being identified through the SS disability determination process as having deficits (intellectual, mental health, physical or some combination of these) significant enough to qualify them for SSD if they had enough quarters of work history, or SSI if they did not.

My work has taken me away from this population for probably a decade now, but I don't suspect that this has changed much. The government isn't interested much in helping identify disabilities, and if you've ever walked a client through the disability determination process you know that the government has gone out of it's way to make the process as difficult as possible for those who need it most. Particularly the people who have a combination of intellectual impairments and mental health problems...and for whom it's impossible to get through the disability determination process without some professional help.

Straight from the lips of Rush Limbaugh. FWIW, everybody who gets a steady check/benefits from the government ultimately depends on it to some degree, from farmers to oil companies to the military/industrial complex to homeowners with their mortgage deductions.

No shit. Although 5 below is calling the perps of this sinister plot "government" so maybe he's including the GOP and teabagger members as co-conspirators. If that's the case...maybe I'll go along with him on this one...but just a smidgen.

Brought to you by the Gipper and Tip.:(

John

You haven't put that clown on "Ignore" yet?:confused:

John

In New York State:I believe the better paid workers, especially those in a union, have consistently beat the system with disability.

It is the Firemen, Policemen and railroad workers. We have had a sordid history of these players. Their doctors and lawyers are a union. :D

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/...icle-1.1700139

Last month a doctor got 8 years for his part in the infamous one billion dollar Long Island Rail Road disability scam

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crim...icle-1.1628516

Yup. It's the same out here.

I don't know.....lowballing firemen and policemen on wages and benefits does not make me feel safe. And it can be a factor in corrupition. I sort of side with paying them well.

Well said.

Goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway...my clients were single mothers on public assistance, most with a HUD housing subsidy, and barely making it. A measured IQ in the 60's is functionally low. A measured IQ in the 70's combined with a diagnosis of clinical depression or anxiety leaves a client with similarly low functioning.

The only help these people had on the case was their clinical counselor or their case manager to get them through the process. Although every now and then when a client had really been fucked with by the people at SSD determination, and their lump sum payout was going to be big enough, we were often able to get a good disability attorney to take the case. Generally when a speci@list attorney is on it, and it goes to a hearing officer, the client is almost guaranteed to get their determination...and the lawyer to get a third of the lump payout.

Exactly.

In fact the revenue generated by the excess Social Security taxes was used an excuse to reduce the Federal Income taxes of the uber rich. A fucking shell game is what it was.

Hey Ike yes they are all one and the same. Why do you think nothing ever changes no mater what party occupies the white house. Regardless what you think Im not on either side there all robbing us blind.

What if the fed had only the reach and power as the constitution states. And our tax to them was maybe 3% of earning. We would not need SSI or any other hand outs because we would save and invest our own money. As it stands now they took the SSI fund and squandered it. I will never see any of that by the time I retire.

Yup. It's the same out here as well.

$260.000.00 - $300,000.00 a year to little?

WTF? Many retire at $1,000,000.00 per year out here. It's a big issue right now.

Meh. You're just jealous. Stop your damn pouting and go plant some trees. It's the only time you're actually good for something.;)

Dave

In New York it was an open secret for many years of what was happening on the disability scene.

However because so many of the scammers were law enforcers the authorities
by and large ignored it. And the mfers became greedy, real greedy and the whole thing ballooned. :D

Here is a reasonable article from last year on the sky rocketing claims for disability in the US.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/11/news...lity-payments/

Bullshit. You lie like a dog. If that were the case we'd hear as much carping and pissing and moaning outta you about House Republicans as we do about Obama. Or at least some pissing and moaning about the GOP...at least as much as you hear about Obama from us on the left who are pretty disappointed with his performance in so many areas. You're fulla shit.

Then go make something out of yourself and don't depend on it. I haven't.

And besides...you're an idiot. You think that the only reason Americans don't save enough money to retire on is because of the "reach and power" of the FED? American's don't save enough money because they're Americans...they want what they want and they want it right now. Do you know how many Americans are making over 6 figures a year and living paycheck to paycheck because they want the house they want and the car they want and the fucking club membership they want and the dinner at Morton's Steak House they want and the $50,000 POS surround sound home theater system they want and don't save a fucking penny?

Jesus you're a waste of bandwidth.

Where the hell are cops or firefighters making that kind of money? dj- $1,000,000 seriously, where do you dream up the shit you post. In NYC if your a high ranking police officer with tons of OT your maybe making 200k, maybe. Are there numerous bad eggs in the disability system; absolutely! Who's fault is that besides the folks who run the workers comp system and should be following up? The one article is all about Long Island rail road employees which last I checked is a separate union and completely different story. There is disability abuse in every profession, every sector. Why is there no followup by the workers comp board?

I get it it's bash the police and firefighters now. Hey dj and 4-2-7 hear that siren, your house is burning with your family inside, but the hell with the firefighters they make too much money.

Add teachers to the list of the bashed Mike, you know it's coming. I sometimes wonder if it's a juvenile response to people in authority or simply envy that government workers have a pension and they don't.