Thursday, April 18, 2013
White Pitcher: “Obama Gonna Take Our Guns Away, Man”
(www.politico.com)
“Today’s day and age has gotten so crazy. Shoot man, Obama wants to take our guns from us and everything. You got all this stuff going on; it’s just a little bit insane for me, man. I’m not sure how to take it.”
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< 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 > Last ›De mortuis nil nisi -- ah fuck it, good riddance.
Much to continuous liberal outrage, he's put the chained CPI Social Security adjustment on the table repeatedly, going back nearly 3 years.
Speaking of takers, isn't it well understood that the red states are takers in the form of getting more from the federal government than they give? Aren't 8 of the biggest 10 states in terms of % of food stamp recipients red states?
In short, what's your point?
The right is fixated on the nickel and dime "takers", and largely unconcerned with the hundreds of billions in business costs foisted on the public by business.
Hence the overwhelming vote for the GOP by our corporate 'titans'.
EDIT: Kudos to #207
I gather Colmes has become quite the buffoon (O'Reilly already was, of course), or at least the nonentity, over the last, I dunno, decade or so. Too bad. Back in the early/mid-'90s he had a radio show that I quite liked.
So I guess I just can't leave things be, because I've been wanting to find time to respond to this comment on the first page, that everyone immediately forgot about.
Regarding the "digging holes and filling them in again" trope, that is a variant on Keynes' argument. Keynes was dealing with proponents of the gold standard, who opposed going off the standard in order to increase the monetary supply. They felt that having the government create money out of thin air was "illegitimate" and should not be allowed.
Keynes pointed out that proponents of the gold standard never objected to the expansion of the monetary supply that occurred whenever there was a new gold strike. (In fact, it was the gold discoveries in the Yukon and Witwatersrand in 1897 that ended the depression that followed the Panic of 1893). That kind of expansion of the money supply was "legitimate".
Keynes then came up with a clever logical twist: he pointed out that there was no discernable difference between discovering a new gold mine, and having the government bury a bunch of bottles full of $100 bills and advertising that fact to whomever wanted to dig them up. In other words, the government could, in effect, make as many new gold mines as it wanted to. If discovering a new gold mine was a legitimate way of expanding the monetary supply, then so is burying $100 bills. But there doesn't seem to be any reason to bury the $100 bills rather than spending them on something.
Now, given that expanding the monetary supply is a legitimate response to an increase in demand for money (i.e. in a depression situation), then what ought you to do with the money? Well, as the bottles in the cave argument reveals, you don't really have to do anything productive with it. You could, indeed, pay someone to dig a hole and fill it in again, over and over.
Of course, once you consider it, that's not a very efficient way to put the money into circulation. It wastes a lot of people's time. So it would be better to pay people to do something constructive, whatever that may be. A bridge that may otherwise not be cost-efficient would at least be an improvement on paying someone to dig and fill in holes, true (although one has to take into consideration future maintenance costs). Even better would be to pay someone to do something sorely needed, such as replacing old water mains, or improving decaying infrastructure. And that gets us to Keynesian stimulus.
All this was Keynes' argument that one could not consistently be a proponent of the gold standard and an opponent of Keynesian stimulus spending in a recession. And I think the argument was a pretty good one.
Someone who needs a helping hand may deserve our sympathy. But that is a separate question from whether they are leeches.
But it's not the people who sometimes need government assistance that are the main problem. Well, I mean, cumulatively they are a main problem. But the most significant problem is the people who are habitually on government assistance even though they are of sound mind and body, young, and able to work. And telling them "It's ok, it's ok, you poor baby, you are a victim and are entitled to the assistance" does little to help them. At the very least some straight talk is in order, such as the type Bill Cosby has dished out.
I have never seen a guy use so many exclamation points. Congratulations. You've used a dozen or two of them in the last two pages alone.
Anyway, I'm happy to completely eliminate farm subsidies right now (along with the silliness of the various environmental subsidies such as for solar paneling, and countless others). If you expected me to support farm subsidies, you've come to the wrong place. But at least the farmers are working. So nice job (well, not really) of avoiding the issue.
There are very, very few people like this. Almost everybody who needs chronic assistance has a mental, emotional or physical illness of some sort. Chronic depression can be seriously debilitating, you know, Ray. You're probably the type to just shrug and say "They need to suck it up.", which is fine but it does nothing to address the problem.
Not at all. I just expected you to stop saying demonstrably false things about dependents on government being solely in one party, while the other party disdains the idea of receiving government help. Since that's easily false on both personal and regional scales--best way of predicting Republican voting is by knowing their eligibility for Medicare, best way of predicting a region is by knowing whether it net receives money from the federal government--you should move on to other talking points.
This betrays profound ignorance of the way government assistance programs actually work. It's obvious that you don't know anyone actually in this circumstance, and that you simply don't know what you're talking about.
It's been pointed out before that apparently only black people receive or require "straight talk". Nobody has ever said that white people need some "straight talk". Wonder what it is about black people that makes them so unique?
Every single person person getting assistance is 100% worthy? There are no absolutely cheats? All government safeguard measures against cheating always work?
What about Medicaid? No fraud there?
BTW, Ted Williams saw combat.
White man's burden and all that.
?
What a great test. So impartial. And all corporations are 100% worthy and never cheat on taxes or break laws, which of course inspires all the ordinary folk (aka "little people") to be 100% conmpliant with all laws. And thus was Nirvana reached (except for members of the Justice system who are all out of work now).
I've never yet worked in an environment of any size without noting that some were slackers. Public or private, they will always be with us. They should not be used as excuse to not help those who really need it.
If it's efficiency and savings you want -- you're swatting gnats looking at areas like TANF and from the Medicaid/Medicare perspective, beneficiaries... the elephants shitting on the budget are the private enterprises in areas like Defense spending and in the area of Medicaid/Medicare -- the providers.
Go ahead and try to find me instances of Medicaid/Medicare fraud conducted by the beneficiaries... you won't... because that's not how the system works - the fraud is perpetrated by providers because they're the ones who get the checks. It's essentially impossible for a Medicaid beneficiary -- i.e., one of the leeches -- to defraud the system.
Never read comic books I imagine. :)
As 268 points out, that is such a small handful of people that it's not really that big of a concern to anyone who honestly analyzes what is going on. Yes we could clean the system up a little to remove those people, but the amount of savings from doing that is a drop in the bucket compared to the big picture. As a liberal I would have no problem with welfare reform that is designed to fix the flaws in the system, but keep the system intact, but nobody is really proposing that, instead they are painting a picture of vast swaths of people on welfare, sitting at home, watching cable, texting on their smartphones and collecting a check, and pretending that is the majority.
America doesn't care about the big fish fraudsters. Exhibit A: Rick Scott.
This.
I mean, on a personal level - sure, I guess it doesn't exactly sit particularly well with me that there are people out there who certainly are doing those things above.... but I separate that from policy because ultimately, 1)I still wouldn't trade places with such people if I had the choice, and 2)despite all the hand-wringing about deficits, budgets, and taxes -- I know full well that once you cut through the BS and spin -- eliminating those folks from the equation actually isn't going to improve my lot in life (i.e., it's not going to lower my taxes, it's not going to 'fix' the deficit/debt, etc) in the least. In fact, not living in a gated community -- it's more than likely going to have a deleterious impact on my life because presumably, some of those cheats now satiated to sit around and watch TV and eat off of the assistance they 'scam' are going to find alternate methods to put food on the table.... and I'm guessing a good chunk of those alternatives aren't going to be sucking it up with a minimum wage job at mcdonalds.
Well, one of the basic, most common Medicaid scams, IIRC, is to pay fake "patients" a slice of the fraudulent ammount the crooked Dr. claims a payment from the government for his "services". So, that would be fraud perpetrated by the "beneficiaries" as co-conspirators.
The Doctor is the main culprit, I'd agree to that.
Sure I think they are losers, but as has been stated there are not many of them and honestlty I feel more sorry for them than anything else because they (from my perspective) live boring pointless lives and should do something with their life.
Bingo.
And the scary thing - or at least, the thing people should be focused on if it truly IS government spending and debt/deficits - the line between 'fraud' and commonly accepted and lauded (by certain elements) 'financial modeling' is quite blurred in an area like Medicaid/Medicare.
But - inevitably, we'll keep arguing over the pennies (relatively speaking) that go out in checks to individuals while completely ignoring the truckloads that go out to our beloved corporations who are only doing what corporations do, after all: maximizing profit.
I always assumed that there was some kind of tacit understanding amongst most "mainstream" politicians that it was cheaper to pay a tiny minority of people money to sit at home and do nothing than to deal with the effects of a forecast increase in crime if they were to be without resources for basic food, housing, etc. And that assumption went hand-in-hand with the understanding that almost no modern government seriously expects to be able to offer full employment.
In other words, that there was a consensus that 'it may not be fair, but it's cheaper than the alternatives'.
Treder, a "baseball historian", was unaware that Ted Williams saw combat as a fighter pilot. This bizzare knowledge gap is somehow telling,
given Steve's Code Pink politics, and is therefore humorous to me.
What? Babe Ruth grew up in an orpanage?
I do know people who do this, so thanks for playing. For example I have a relative in MA who stopped working 20 years ago and has been collecting disability ever since. He's not actually disabled; he just doesn't want to work. He sits at home watching tv/sports all day.
Except - you have a very hard time finding any beneficiaries who actually "in on it"...
At least, if you're a provider perpetrating this, why in the world would you cut someone else into the loop? If you do so - then you have to 1)cut someone else in the profits, and 2)add another possibly loose lip to your conspiracy.
Almost without exception in such instances -- the 'patients' are just fabricated whole cloth, or, 'real' patients/beneficiaries are used -- but without their knowledge.
The nature of the system is that the beneficiaries are almost wholly cut out of the loop in the reimbursement cycle entirely -- there's no reason to make them co-conspirators.... I'm not a legal analyst, but I do work for a company that publishes heavily in this area and while granted, I'm not reading everything we publish closely -- the next time I see an individual(beneficiary, as opposed to a provider) named in a CMS administrator decision or fraud case -- it will be the first.
So why haven't you reported him?
Ray has chosen to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution, I guess.
As a matter of personal ethics I don't turn in my friends or neighbors for crimes. Do you?
No, but then, I'm a liberal that doesn't really care much about people 'mooching off the system' because I don't see it as a particularly big or worrisome problem that needs solving*.
*To be clear, though - I do very much buy into the 'teach a man to fish' rather than 'give a man a fish' idea... I'm just saying that my policy solutions would always tend to keep providing that fish until I have a proven curriculum and process to teach fishing.
Matt already addressed this, but...
I don't like how the new system is being implemented (and can envision more "free market" and more "gov't driven" approaches that I'd prefer) - and it will have significant redistributive effects, but this is spectacularly wrong.
Well, the official govt rolls of beneficiaries would indeed list these people. And some of them might use the program legit one day,
scam it the next day for a quick Dr.-provided cash payment the next. So it depends on you definition, I guess.
In case you get audited, you stand a chance of getting away with it? It happens. Don't ask me if its a bright idea.
This is actually a decent argument in favor of continuing the Drug War. All the people we're currently locking up are either going to find alternative criminal outlets or remain dependents of the state in a different capacity. They're not going to get jobs writing white papers for NGOs about sustainable energy development. And if you don't live in a gated community, there's a decent chance some of them will come live near you.
I have no problem with this personally, but at the same time, I know that politically that is unacceptable opinion to spouse, so I prefer to drift more towards the middle. But at the same time, that baseline doesn't have to be that expensive, if people want to live like that, we could set up communities(closed military bases) that would provide housing(barracks), food(chow halls), hygiene etc, and would cost a fraction of the amount that we pay them on a monthly basis.
Never heard that before(or if I had, it never stuck) but it does make logical sense.
I know a few people like this, and almost every single one of them is a hardcore Anti-Obama, tea party Republican. They will occasionally work and pretend to look for a job, but anytime they get a job over 20 hours a week, they cry "my disability is acting up" and back down their hours.
Agree with Ray here. If it's not a felony or something that is potentially a danger to someone else, I'm not going to bother reporting them.
Must be genetic.
Ray, I'm assuming you're at work now. Why are you stealing from your employer by posting on a baseball website during work hours?
And I'm a libertarian who leaves people the hell alone, even if they're doing things I don't like. My proposal was to address this from the top and fix the broken policies. But fixing problems is hard to do when liberals deny the existence of the problem because they don't like dealing with inconvenient realities that show their worldview to be false. So they deny the existence of leeches, call them unicorns, etc. Like when liberals deny the existence of voter fraud, this isn't really surprising. They are not mature enough to handle realities that exist in the real world, outside their igloo. (Assuming liberals are unaware of the realities, which actually I don't accept on its face. IOW liberals do know there are leeches and welfare cheats; it's just that liberals see these people as Victims That Have Been Screwed Over By Rich People, so see them as doing nothing wrong.)
Yep, I'm for legalizing pot etc... but at the same time, if you do that, you are talking about releasing a lot of people into the world who don't have jobs, and might have other issues. It's a crappy argument for continuing the war, but it is something that should be considered before any actions are taken.
I'ts an interesting question, probably dependent upon subjectivity. I have a half-aunt whose father tormented my grandmother and mother, after which the aunt tormented and robbed money from my grandmother's estate. My mother, being a better person than I, worked it out with her. If I foudn out right now that she was in the state your relative was in, I'd turn her in instantly. I would also admit, again, the subjectivity and small-mindedness of it. But I'd do it.
For neighbors, or other folks, it would depend on the level of crime, really. A judgement call. But there is definitely a line where I would turn someone in for theivery, I just haven't had to make such a call to this point.
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