Its time we all cut back like Obama has suggested

Ayuh,... In the view of the SEIU, every one of those tasks is a Union position,....

Are you proposing a CCC Union workforce to do these jobs,..?? Dues payin', full bennies,..??

Government employees are the Union's last stronghold, 'n they're gonna protect their turf, to the end....

Work, for the Government, for Welfare, won't be allowed by the Unions,...

Plain, 'n simple....

 

Promissory notes. The money was loaned out and promissory notes were issued to document the debt.

http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/promissory note

In the case of the Social Security Trust Fund, because of the rules associated with the fund by statutory law, the Congress borrowed the money to pay for general expendatures and those notes must be redeemed with funds from the general tax revenues. The notes must be redeemed on demand to fund Social Security/Medicare expendatures as the taxes have already been collected for those welfare programs.

 

The point of this thread for the pin headed liberals in Obama's cult is he is all show and no go!!!!

 

I have to wonder about who these people are. The vast majority of those collecting housing and food assistance are either working families or retirees that don't receive enough in Social Security benefits to live on.

We could raise Social Security benefits so that they at least provided what a minimum wage job would pay but that would require trillions of dollars in new taxation. Or we could privatize Social Security so that the individuals would accumulate enough personal wealth so that they would have adequite income to live on in retirement. Of course privatizing Social Security would take over 30 years of transition and would require an additional $30 trillion in new taxes to pay for the transition which "conservatives" would block. Either way it would cost trillions of dollars in new taxation and "conservatives" refuse to pay the costs of either increased benefits or privatization so the need for this assistance continues.

Working women supporting children are the next largest receipents of food and housing assistance and women are subjected to gender discrimination where they only earn about 76% of what a man earns for working the identical job and are less likely to be promoted into higher paying positions. Of course "conservatives" are generally opposed to Affirmative Action which seeks to address this gender discrimination so the need for this assistance continues.

Perhaps this refers to minorities that are denied equality of opportunity and have been subjected to oppression by the white majority for over 300 years in America. Recent studies have shown that over 1/2 of white Americans are racists or harbor racist beliefs that deny equality to minorities. What is being done to end the racism? When white management won't hire qualified African-Americans then how are they supposed to work for a living? Conservatives live in denial of the fact that most racists are conservatives and until they're willing to address this problem they will continue to perpetuate the problem. We see the hypocracy of statements like, "Get a job but I won't hire you" coming from white American conservatives. Once agian "conservatives" generally oppose Affirmative Action that has, to a very minimal extent, provided jobs to women and minorities because they don't want to give a qualified African-American a job. They won't hire a black man and then complain that the black man isn't working.

Of course spending two to three times more than we need to protect America from invasion, costing hundreds of billions of dollars annually, is something the conservatives support. It's more important to them for the US military to be intervening on the sovereign affairs of foreign nations than for our tax dollars to be used to keep Americans from starving or having a roof over their heads. The United States has not been attacked by any foreign nation since WW II and no nation on Earth presents any threat of invading or attacking the United States today. We could cut our military spending by over 66% and still have the best funded, most well equiped, and finest military on the planet. Why don't we do that first? The United States spends over four-times more on our military than any other nation on Earth when no nation presents any threat to us and that is illogical spending so why do "conservatives" support it?

 

Banned huh? Sorry about that.

I am fascinated at the idea of "Real" Conservatism. I have one test. Pass it and I believe you are conservative. Fail it and you are something else. Conservatism requires that all governments are constrained by written documents, either constitutions or charters. If there are no constraints on what government can do or must not do then there is no conservatism. Then we are arguing our opinions on how much we can plunder our neighbor's property and what to do with the fruits of our various robberies.

Everything else is a detail.

 

I do not normally ask for references. I would love to see the source data for welfare recipients by party breakdown.

Anecdotally the democratic party is the party of big government and big welfare.

Personally, I do not know a single Republican who is on welfare, unemployment or taking food stamps.

 

And those IOU's are not considered true, actual debt in most accounting operations except government.

 

You're limiting "welfare" to its conventional use as helping needy people who for some reason cannot work. However, I know many Republicans who are given lots of money by the government every year for holding jobs where they add no value to your life as a U.S. citizen, even though you're paying for their welfare checks - I mean salaries. They are government employees and defense contractors. Some of them are valuable employees and you should be happy to fund their efforts in making your government function. But there is a disturbing number who simply pull a paycheck for doing essentially no work (not to mention the ones receiving military pensions while also pulling a second-career paychecks as government workers). Lots of them. They wear nice clothes, live in nice houses, drive nice cars; and while I don't have hard data, I can say having worked with them for many years that anecdotally, the republican party is the party of white-collar welfare.

 

In other words you have nothing.

Have you served in uniform? I have. Was it pleasant? No. It was interesting though.

I do know some former military people who hold government jobs. For some your description is close. I do not know any who "simply pull a paycheck for essentially doing no work". I do know a few I would never have hired.

Do you object to retired military receiving a retirement check, when it was part of the compensation package that kept many of us on active duty for more than the minimum number of years? I served for twenty years. I visited a variety of interesting places. I went where my government told me to go and did the things my government told me to do. Part of my reason was the medical benefit and the small retirement benefit. My retirement is 1/7th to 1/6th of my income. It is not a lot of money. If I could do it all over would I do the same things? No. But at the time is was enough of a promise to keep me on active duty.

If you know of someone who is not providing a service for the dollars they receive turn them in. There are fraud reporting lines.

 

No I do not. Only pointing out that a good portion of those who receive such a check vote republican.

I'd like to know what you mean by this. You're saying the pension isn't really worth the 20-year career? (Not relevant to the conversation, I'm just curious.)

The people aren't my problem, it's the federal bureaucratic mess that employs them. We put perfectly capable people in ill-conceived positions, remove their decision-making authority, obstruct their creativity with inane procedural crap... Honestly I don't begrudge the people, even the ones double-dipping with their pensions. But we've created a system that pays people to do nothing productive. It's not that the people are unproductive, it's just that we pay them to be unproductive.

And a lot of them happen to vote republican. In that sense, they are as dependent on government as your conventional welfare recipient.

 

If Michelle's victory garden didn't warn you all, well, that's on you. It was going to bad from day one, now we have four more years of this (*)(*)(*)(*)... Good luck ya'll...

 

Earlier I wrote, "Do you object to retired military receiving a retirement check?"

Do you think it may have something to do with the kinds of people who are likely to join the military? In my twenty years I knew only a dozen democrats. Democrats do not serve their country. Republicans do. Maybe it is a values thing? Democrats value systems do not include defending their nation and serving it. Since the vast majority of people who serve are Republicans doesn't it make sense that most who retired, and therefore receive retirement checks vote Republican? I cannot imagine Democrats having what it takes. One must put duty, honor, and country above self. Does that sound like something any Democrat would do under any circumstance?

 

Exactly. If I had gone into engineering immediately instead of spending 20 years in the Army I would be far better off than I am. And the vast majority of people do not care one way or the other. There is a bit of deception that the young won't catch on to until it is very late. If one serves 20 years one receives one-half of one's base pay until death. But one's base pay is a very small part of one's pay and allowances. So yeah, give me the opportunity to live my life over and I will find a way to do without my 20 years in the Army.

 

I agree that military members predominantly vote republican; but serving in the military is not the only way someone can "serve their country." How many people working for non-profit organizations who serve poor, homeless, abused children, etc. are republican? What about journalists? I know mainstream media gets criticized by conservatives for being too liberal, but the majority of people who practice authentic, fact-based journalism are, I think, serving their country by doing often difficult and sometimes dangerous research to reveal to the rest of us what schemes government leaders and private corporations are up to - sometimes even in conjunction with each other!

I think that what makes military service members vote republicans has nothing to do with their willingness to sacrifice for their country - that is what makes them willing to serve much of the time. But I think that many military service members like the authoritarian order and discipline of military hierarchy, the "codes of conduct," the idea of sacrifice of the few for the good of the many... those principles find a better home in GOP positions on issues. I believe that explains the correlation.

 

I love the moving goalposts.

Your original complaint was that many retired military draw a government check and have an (R) by their names. My explanation is that the same people who tend to have beliefs that governments should be small and constrained are also the same kinds of people who are willing to do the hard work of defending her. One finds very few democrats with those beliefs.

If you want to widen the general discussion into what constitutes service to one's nation I would say the single most important group who do amazing service to our nation are the ones who work hard and become rich. We have such a debt of gratitude the least we should do is eliminate all taxes they pay above some small threshold amount. Without them this nation would not be a great nation. Without them this nation would not have had such wealth. Without them we would have poor, miserable lives. Rather than find ways to punish them each of us should seek out some rich person every day and thank them for their enormous sacrifices and thank them for their service.

We may still have a journalist or two out there. Most are democratic party shills and propagandists. They have been traitors and should be scorned and shunned by respectable people. However, in the unlikely event one does come across a journalist who is not a democratic propagandist I suppose one should be pleasant to them.

You will have to convince me that most non profits do anything of value for the nation.

 

I have a different view. Many people go into the military for one reason and stay for several others. The military I was in was a meritocracy. There was the occasional political connection that grated on the rest of us. But by and large one got ahead through one's own efforts and excellence. Through training one learned how to do one's job, first as individuals, then as part of small teams. One learned the value of planning centrally and executing locally. One learned that the best way to survive was to obey the orders given. in order to accomplish the missions.

I have seldom been loved by others as I was in the Army. We may have profound differences in understanding what occurs in military units. Authoritarian approaches to leadership were always frowned upon in every unit I was in during my twenty years of active duty. Good order and discipline meant that we would do our jobs to the best of our abilities no matter what in order to accomplish the mission. In my current job this same desire to do the best we can to the best of our abilities is the same underlying reason why we have very low turnover and high job satisfaction. But again, we have very few proclaimed Democrats and there is only one care in the parking lots with an Obama bumper sticker.

 

I'm not complaining about them, only pointing out the narrowness of your view. Now you are the one moving goal posts. You're wrong to assume that republicans - especially the ones with government jobs and pensions - want a small and constrained government. That's my point all along - what if a smaller government means a smaller military? And fewer government jobs? Or lesser retirement benefits? If the government is more constrained, then certainly we need fewer people working in government, right? I suspect more are willing to talk about that than are willing to vote themselves out of a career, steady paycheck, and pension. For me, this is all about your original claim:

The republican party is no different except that their "big government" and "big welfare" come in the form of government employment where the value-added is often questionable at best.

 

Funny you should mention that. "...while the military may be “all volunteer” on the first day, it is thoroughly coercive every day thereafter. In particular, it dictates the jobs, promotions and careers of the millions in its ranks through a centralized, top-down, one-size-fits-almost-all system that drives many talented officers to resign in frustration. They leave... because they believe that “the military personnel system — every aspect of it — is nearly blind to merit.” From a review of Tim Kane's recent book, Bleeding Talent.

Look, I'm not criticizing the military's culture; it's got to be a certain way in order to do what they do. But what works in the military doesn't necessarily work in a free society. I think there is more overlap between military culture and the GOP platform than with the Democratic platform, that's all. You're suggesting that someone's republicanness is related to their patriotism, their self-sacrifice. I'm saying it's not so pure.

Maybe you need a larger sample space.

 

The Military I served in '75-'95 went through many changes, but it is not something that can be described in terms of politics. Politics is a swinging pendulum. The politics of JFK's Democrats were much more aligned with today's Republicans that it is with today's Democrats. Lest we forget Vietnam was a problem started by a Democrat (as was Korea). The majority of Congress were Democrats and voted for the Invasion of Iraq. At no point did someone ask me "Hey, you want to invade Panama? Want to go to Kosovo? Lets all take a ride to Saudi Arabia."

Nor should they have. Are most military members conservatives? Yes. Liberals tend to not last very far beyond the first few months..some actually make it for the first enlistment. You must be dedicated to your cause to last long in the military.

 

What if games are interesting. Maybe smaller is the wrong word. Limited government is more accurate. The kind of Republicans who join the military are not the same kinds as the politicians. A government limited to its Constitutional powers will have the military sized appropriately for its missions.

I completely agree we need fewer people working in government. There are plenty of extra-constitutional places to eliminate. Education and the EPA are my first choices. But there are plenty more right behind those.

 

Agree with this; but I believe a Dept. of Ed. adds value, especially long term, and if it isn't adding value then it's a problem of execution rather than principle. They've barely got 5,000 employees, and while I'm not sure I'd eliminate any federal departments wholesale, I think most are bloated and appallingly inefficient. DHS and DOD come to mind, and USDA has an awful lot of personnel (100,000+) for what they do. Do you know why we have a Food Safety and Inspection Service in addition to a Food and Drug Administration, each under separate departments? I don't. Why does the Treasury Department (also 100,000+ strong) have an Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes and Office of Intelligence and Analysis? Can't they hand those responsibilities over to the FBI, CIA, DHS, DEA, or one of the other agencies with law enforcement duties?

 

Four plus years of near constant vacationing during the worst recession in post-WWII US history is ugly. Those two House of Bourbon wanna-be's are tone death to the suffering.

[video=youtube;Zn93ABppvXE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn93ABppvXE[/video]

 

Why cant you stop talking about bush?

 

Your willingness to match the partiotic commitment to sacrifice of our president, is quite touching..!
And hilarious!!