Politics and General Debates Thread

[RedCowboy]

People DO complain about medicare !

Government agencies have the ability to modify regulations that carry the weight of law without a public vote and they interpret existing law using Chevron deference meaning they can read the law to mean something different and enforce it.

Before we empower government to do anything more we need to fix some serious problems.

Parents are angry that public schools are doing things with their children that the parents don't approve of, that's the problem with socialism, government provides but government also controls.











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[RedCowboy]

Georgia is investigating illegal ballot harvesting in the 2020 election and Senate runoff said to be a large organized cheating operation.

I still can't believe Purdue lost to Ossoft, a carpet bagger interloper from the West and in the wake of a Biden " win " No I expect with the national implications of the Ga. Senate runoff that Purdue was forced into after being pushed just under 50% to 49.85% at the very end, which was still the highest vote total, I can't believe Ga. moderates would vote Ossoft in against Purdue who was greatly favored, I'm sure Purdue was cheated and I sincerely hope the cheating comes to light because it can't be allowed to happen again.

Georgia Opens Investigation into Possible Illegal Ballot Harvesting in 2020 Election - Tennessee Star

Georgia authorities have launched an investigation into an allegation of systematic ballot harvesting during the state's 2020 general election and subsequent U.S. Senate runoff and may soon issue subpoenas to secure evidence, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger confirmed to Just the News.

tennesseestar.com

 

[RedCowboy]

Except a handful of people died violently. But, yeah, other than that and the fact that the legislative branch of government was almost overthrown by the executive branch, I guess I can agree about Jan 6th.

The BBB is another one of those things that sounds good to a lot of people on paper, but we know from experience that the more stuff you hand over to government control, the more bureaucracy and inefficiency creeps in. Look at the ACA - at the time, plenty of people were going without insurance, so it seemed to make sense to get them together on a public insurance policy, but what actually happened was an insurance mandate that just ended up racking up more expenses for people, and then the insurance companies still had no incentive to pay out claims, so very few people benefitted from it and far more people ended up worse off.

I remember Hillarys people pulling out all the stops after her loss to Trump, they even attempted an electoral college coup trying to get EC voters to overturn the election.

Hillary started this accusation of cheating ordeal and pushed to deny Trump his victory, then we had 4 years of Russia-gate which Hillary manufactured against Trump.

Politicians are far too reckless with what they say and do, I hope we can get back to quick peaceful concessions after an election.

 

[bostjan]

I remember Hillarys people pulling out all the stops after her loss to Trump, they even attempted an electoral college coup trying to get EC voters to overturn the election.

Hillary started this accusation of cheating ordeal and pushed to deny Trump his victory, then we had 4 years of Russia-gate which Hillary manufactured against Trump.

Politicians are far too reckless with what they say and do, I hope we can get back to quick peaceful concessions after an election.

Remember the time Hilary organized an angry mob and promised to march with them down to the capitol building, where they struck a police officer with a fire extinguisher, and a bunch of people died? Remember when Hilary threatened a Georgia state executive if he didn't "find votes" in order to overturn the election results? Because I don't remember any of that ever happening. I guess Hilary was just super good at covering stuff like that up.

Don't get me wrong, I dislike HRC as much as I dislike DJT, but if you want to make these sorts of false equivalencies here, I can't help but point out how ludicrous it sounds.

The facts are that A) Hilary Clinton conceded the election the day after, and B) Trump has yet to concede the 2020 election. Also, C) There were more faithless electors bound to vote for Clinton than there were for Trump in 2016, and D) Trump whined about the 2016 election being rigged, even though he won.

With regard to Trump's controversy, he managed to fuel that himself without any help from democrats.

• Trump continued to run his businesses through his sons during his presidency, violating the US Constitution
• The personnel turnover in the White House during Trump's tenure was record smashing
• Mueller, a republican, determined that Trump had obstructed his investigation into election interference; the report he published, which Trump supporters refuse to read based on the proven-false allegation that Mueller was a democrat plant, provides ample evidence of such
• Trump extorted political favours from a foreign leader to try to secure re-election, and it was documented in real time during the phone call that Trump either didn't know was not private or didn't care
• Weeks before the Jan 6th uprising, several intelligence agencies were aware that Trump's camp (whether with Trump's involvement or not, Trump certainly did nothing to discourage them) was planning a coup

Hilary Clinton had nothing to do with any of those things.

I'm not going to tell you Trump's presidency was all bad, but it was certainly the most controversial presidency since, like James Buchanan. Maybe Biden is also a pretty bad president, and maybe Clinton would have been worse than Trump, but whatif's are iffy and whatabout's are usually just red herrings.

If you'll actually look at my post you'll see that I said no one complains about Medicare. My point was that government agencies are not the bad guys here. The ACA also had many people enroll in it this year too.

Medicare sucks.

There you go, >0 people complained about Medicare.

 

[paul1598419]

Medicare, like much of the Federal government, works very well for the people that have it like myself. I have known people all of my life that have Medicare and have known not a single person who would give it up. Like Social Security it is a rescue to many people who didn't have the resources to pay for the the hospital bills that would bankrupt people before it became law. When FDR got Social Security passed the elderly were starving and getting those funds helped vast numbers of people. It was Ronald Reagan who sought to make people believe that government doesn't work for Americans and he, like many Republicans, tried hard to make it so. That is the actual fact of the matter. Republicans do try to make the government fail so they can say, "see, I told you so."

 

[bostjan]

Medicare, like much of the Federal government, works very well for the people that have it like myself. I have known people all of my life that have Medicare and have known not a single person who would give it up. Like Social Security it is a rescue to many people who didn't have the resources to pay for the the hospital bills that would bankrupt people before it became law. When FDR got Social Security passed the elderly were starving and getting those funds helped vast numbers of people. It was Ronald Reagan who sought to make people believe that government doesn't work for Americans and he, like many Republicans, tried hard to make it so. That is the actual fact of the matter. Republicans do try to make the government fail so they can say, "see, I told you so."

Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. It relies on more new people coming in to pay for the old people collecting. It simply doesn't work if the population of one generation is less than a prior generation. We are about to see that first hand in the next decade or two. It has nothing to do with presidents who died over a decade ago or left office in the 80's and everything to do with simple mathematics.

Many Republicans do indeed want to wreck the ship into an iceberg to prove that they are correct about ideological things, but there is also no shortage of Democrats who revel in our nation's failures as well. It's not a healthy mindset, but neither is the polar opposite mindset of sticking your head in the sand and trying to convince yourself that everything is okay whilst the world around you burns. The problem with all of the programs that borrow from the future to pay for the present is that they screw over future generations. Whether it's climate change or fiscally irresponsible government programs, the results are similar.

 

[paul1598419]

Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. It relies on more new people coming in to pay for the old people collecting. It simply doesn't work if the population of one generation is less than a prior generation. We are about to see that first hand in the next decade or two. It has nothing to do with presidents who died over a decade ago or left office in the 80's and everything to do with simple mathematics.

Many Republicans do indeed want to wreck the ship into an iceberg to prove that they are correct about ideological things, but there is also no shortage of Democrats who revel in our nation's failures as well. It's not a healthy mindset, but neither is the polar opposite mindset of sticking your head in the sand and trying to convince yourself that everything is okay whilst the world around you burns. The problem with all of the programs that borrow from the future to pay for the present is that they screw over future generations. Whether it's climate change or fiscally irresponsible government programs, the results are similar.

Actually, politicians took money we had for SS to pay for things they had no money for, so it is disingenuous to say that we never had the money or this was bound to fail from the start. Tax breaks for the wealthy were passed taking monies from SS and Medicare to pay for them. If we could get the taxes raised on the wealthy to only a part of what they paid in the 1960s we would have more than enough money to overcome any problems you think we have.

 

[RedCowboy]

My Grandfather worked for 6 dollars a week, my father went to work for 50 dollars a week, today 10 times that isn't really enough.

How many times has government stolen everything, how many hours of work has the government stolen, not taxed, but flat out stolen by printing money they don't have, not counting our current 30 TRILLION of debt. ?

We are wage slaves not because of lack of socialism but because of government spending.....over spending.

 

[RedCowboy]

 

[paul1598419]

Today is the anniversary of the attack by Trump supporters on the Capital of the U.S. Nancy Pelosi held a moment of silence on the House floor for the Capital police officers who were killed or injured because of that attack.

 

[bostjan]

Actually, politicians took money we had for SS to pay for things they had no money for, so it is disingenuous to say that we never had the money or this was bound to fail from the start. Tax breaks for the wealthy were passed taking monies from SS and Medicare to pay for them. If we could get the taxes raised on the wealthy to only a part of what they paid in the 1960s we would have more than enough money to overcome any problems you think we have.

Those two statements are not mutually exclusive.

SS Tax is a tax on wages/earnings. It doesn't apply to rich people who already have all of the money they need. If the tax code was written properly, maybe we could have a debate about whether it would work long term or not, however, it'd be a silly argument, because that's not how the US SS tax code was written. They way it was written it was set up to fail. And also politicians keep raiding the cookie jar. If SS was supposed to be idiotproof, then we'd have needed to have written the tax code in such a way to prevent them from doing that, which we didn't do.

Yes, it's pretty silly of me to point at it in hindsight, after it's started falling apart and say "look at this thing that was bound to fall apart," however, it's far more silly to point at it and try to defend it the way it was.

The other funny thing that might be a no-brainer to most, and I can also say this as an actual observation as someone who lives in Vermont, but, when you raise taxes on the people who have lots of money in order to pay for tons of social programs, the people you rely upon to pay these huge tax rates simply move away. It's happened in Vermont and it's well documented, but also, it's happening right now in California. The people paying the most taxes are moving elsewhere in droves.

Two simple rules of economics at play:

1. You cannot tax yourself into prosperity
2. People who can afford to pay for something that saves them money (in this case moving away from high tax locations) in the long run tend to pay and then reap the reward (in this case no longer paying the taxes).

We are wage slaves not because of lack of socialism but because of government spending.....over spending.

Socialism, capitalism, communism, etc., are all bound to their own faults for the same reason - greed. In capitalist economy, the rich people own the means of production and the poor people are forced to work for them in order to survive. In a socialist economy, the government owns the means of production, but the government is run by the rich people, so, well, it's ultimately the same thing, at least in terms of the outcome for the poor people. In communism, the community owns the means of production and is the government. But we all know human nature. Some people are not willing to speak up and others will simply bully their way into calling the shots. Eventually, the community ends up being run by a very small group of influential people and then everyone else ends up being the peasant class.

We are wage slaves because we are not rich. Simple as that. And there are too many people and not enough resources for everyone to be rich.

 

[Unown (WILD)]

 

[paul1598419]

Those two statements are not mutually exclusive.

SS Tax is a tax on wages/earnings. It doesn't apply to rich people who already have all of the money they need. If the tax code was written properly, maybe we could have a debate about whether it would work long term or not, however, it'd be a silly argument, because that's not how the US SS tax code was written. They way it was written it was set up to fail. And also politicians keep raiding the cookie jar. If SS was supposed to be idiotproof, then we'd have needed to have written the tax code in such a way to prevent them from doing that, which we didn't do.

Yes, it's pretty silly of me to point at it in hindsight, after it's started falling apart and say "look at this thing that was bound to fall apart," however, it's far more silly to point at it and try to defend it the way it was.

The other funny thing that might be a no-brainer to most, and I can also say this as an actual observation as someone who lives in Vermont, but, when you raise taxes on the people who have lots of money in order to pay for tons of social programs, the people you rely upon to pay these huge tax rates simply move away. It's happened in Vermont and it's well documented, but also, it's happening right now in California. The people paying the most taxes are moving elsewhere in droves.

Two simple rules of economics at play:

1. You cannot tax yourself into prosperity
2. People who can afford to pay for something that saves them money (in this case moving away from high tax locations) in the long run tend to pay and then reap the reward (in this case no longer paying the taxes).



Socialism, capitalism, communism, etc., are all bound to their own faults for the same reason - greed. In capitalist economy, the rich people own the means of production and the poor people are forced to work for them in order to survive. In a socialist economy, the government owns the means of production, but the government is run by the rich people, so, well, it's ultimately the same thing, at least in terms of the outcome for the poor people. In communism, the community owns the means of production and is the government. But we all know human nature. Some people are not willing to speak up and others will simply bully their way into calling the shots. Eventually, the community ends up being run by a very small group of influential people and then everyone else ends up being the peasant class.

We are wage slaves because we are not rich. Simple as that. And there are too many people and not enough resources for everyone to be rich.

Of course SS tax is paid differently than other taxes, but that doesn't mean that it hasn't been used to pay for things that it was never meant to pay for. And, it doesn't mean that raising the taxes of the wealthy that have gotten their overall taxes lowered by getting Republicans to lower it by leveraging their campaigns to accomplish this. It is past time that the wealthy paid their fair share in taxes, not SS taxes, but income or possibly a wealth tax.

 

[bostjan]

Of course SS tax is paid differently than other taxes, but that doesn't mean that it hasn't been used to pay for things that it was never meant to pay for. And, it doesn't mean that raising the taxes of the wealthy that have gotten their overall taxes lowered by getting Republicans to lower it by leveraging their campaigns to accomplish this. It is past time that the wealthy paid their fair share in taxes, not SS taxes, but income or possibly a wealth tax.

I think these are three or more different issues.

But what solution are you proposing for these? Plug the loopholes? Increase the steepness of the tax rate per bracket? Bar the legislature from tapping the SS fund to pay for unrelated expenses?

I mean, I can get down with the bulk of that, but, I also don't see how any of it can be accomplished.

 

[paul1598419]

The two McMichaels in the Ahmaud Arbery murder have been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole plus 20 years. Bryant was given life with the possibility of parole plus ten years.

 

[RedCowboy]

WOW.....Biden has floundered so profoundly, that even CNN has stopped cheer leading for him.

" Biden now sports the lowest net economic rating of any president at this point through their first term since at least Jimmy Carter in 1977 "

" Notably, Biden's net rating is worse than his two immediate predecessors, Barack Obama in December 2009 and Donald trump in December 2017. "

Biden's economic ratings are worse than Carter's | CNN Politics

While his approval rating is down on a slew of issues, his difficulties are perhaps most noticeable on the economy. Biden now sports the lowest net economic rating of any president at this point through their first term since at least Jimmy Carter in 1977.

www.cnn.com