The Republican Thread

[ChiSox_Sonix]

Great. So where are you putting the kids? In that huge pool of foster families that are out there, right? So now the kids are getting bailed out by the government, the foster family is getting paid by the government to take them, and you're angry because your tax dollars are going to deal with other people's problems and because the kids are still being taught that the government will bail them out if they screw up.

 

Ideally, and I'm aware this would not always be the case, but in that particular situation the hope would be the children receive proper motivation and support from the foster parents to have a succesful life and put themselves in the best possible situation to succeed and better their situations.

 

 

[Balta1701]

I think you guys are missing a lot of the other negative consequences of your actions. No matter how good foster parents are, you're still ripping apart a family, which is traumatic for both children and parents on its own, and which of course in a lot of cases winds up correlating just as much with another generation of substance abuse, crime, and government interventions.

 

You're hating doing anything that would give people a governmetn bailout, like health care or a roof over their heads, but what do you think is going to happen to those people when you put them out on the street? You're going to be footing an even larger bill for them once they get locked up in jail. You're talking about being much more aggressive in taking children away from parents, which is a very difficult thing for the government to do at any level, because having the government declare people unfit parents is a pretty major step.

 

Heck, statistics show it also doesn't work, to a staggering degree

Children who stay in troubled families fare better than those put into foster care. Those who:

 

Were arrested at least once:

• Stayed with family: 14%

• Went to foster care: 44%

 

Became teen mothers:

• Stayed with family: 33%

• Went to foster care: 56%

 

Held a job at least 3 months:

• Stayed with family: 33%

• Went to foster care: 20%

 

All this because you feel angry about your money going to poor people.

[Jenksismyhero]

I think you guys are missing a lot of the other negative consequences of your actions. No matter how good foster parents are, you're still ripping apart a family, which is traumatic for both children and parents on its own, and which of course in a lot of cases winds up correlating just as much with another generation of substance abuse, crime, and government interventions.

 

You're hating doing anything that would give people a governmetn bailout, like health care or a roof over their heads, but what do you think is going to happen to those people when you put them out on the street? You're going to be footing an even larger bill for them once they get locked up in jail. You're talking about being much more aggressive in taking children away from parents, which is a very difficult thing for the government to do at any level, because having the government declare people unfit parents is a pretty major step.

 

Heck, statistics show it also doesn't work, to a staggering degree

 

 

All this because you feel angry about your money going to poor people.

 

I think I speak for most Republicans when I say I'd just rather they all die so me and my fellow white males can play golf and smoke cigars in peace. Also, they dirty my shoes. I do not like it.

[Balta1701]

I think I speak for most Republicans when I say I'd just rather they all die so me and my fellow white males can play golf and smoke cigars in peace. Also, they dirty my shoes. I do not like it.

Minus the sarcasm, which do you prefer. Paying more to put people in jail or paying less to put families on welfare?

[ChiSox_Sonix]

I think you guys are missing a lot of the other negative consequences of your actions. No matter how good foster parents are, you're still ripping apart a family, which is traumatic for both children and parents on its own, and which of course in a lot of cases winds up correlating just as much with another generation of substance abuse, crime, and government interventions.

 

You're hating doing anything that would give people a governmetn bailout, like health care or a roof over their heads, but what do you think is going to happen to those people when you put them out on the street? You're going to be footing an even larger bill for them once they get locked up in jail. You're talking about being much more aggressive in taking children away from parents, which is a very difficult thing for the government to do at any level, because having the government declare people unfit parents is a pretty major step.

 

Heck, statistics show it also doesn't work, to a staggering degree

 

 

All this because you feel angry about your money going to poor people.

 

You just can't help yourself...

 

[Jenksismyhero]

Minus the sarcasm, which do you prefer. Paying more to put people in jail or paying less to put families on welfare?

 

Since I don't think either are the ONLY results in these situations, I'll choose neither.

 

Look, I dunno what the best solution is, but here's what I think: I think it's a travesty that the mindset in this country has gone from "whatever hard work I put in, i'll get back" to "hey, hey! it's not fair X person has this. I want it too" without the expectation that people actually have to WORK and be ACCOUNTABLE for their own lives. The entitlement school of thought is ridiculous. The country was designed for equal OPPORTUNITY, not equal RESULTS.

 

Do I feel bad for a single mother with 2 kids? Sure. Probably more for the kids, but whatever. People make mistakes in life and I totally agree that we shouldn't just let people die on the streets. But why create a system where we're basically giving incentives to be like that. I tell you what, growing up, I never once thought that if I failed to get a job, that I could just go down to the local government office, fill out some forms, and get some $$, food stamps, whatever. And that's the way it should be. People should be shocked that society will help them WHEN THEY NEED HELP ON A TEMPORARY BASIS. Can you at least admit that the time that people are on welfare is out of whack?

 

I mean, how f***ing ludicrous is it that YOU have to pay for someones laziness and cheapness for not getting health insurance, despite the fact that its READILY AVAILABLE? Yeah, they might have to give up a cell phone, a text plan, cable, whatever, but so what? It's available.

 

 

[mr_genius]

Minus the sarcasm, which do you prefer. Paying more to put people in jail or paying less to put families on welfare?

 

-20

 

you didn't use the phrase 'brown people' in your post. what kind of liberal are you?

[Balta1701]

Yeah, they might have to give up a cell phone, a text plan, cable, whatever, but so what? It's available.

Your cell phone costs you $25,000 a year?

[kapkomet]

Your cell phone costs you $25,000 a year?

 

 

Oh, does the insurance you don't have cost you that much (despite even with pre-existing most GROUP PLAN insurances let you in six months, I know, details, details...)?

[Balta1701]

Oh, does the insurance you don't have cost you that much (despite even with pre-existing most GROUP PLAN insurances let you in six months, I know, details, details...)?

Mine's $16,000/year, and that's because I'm in a large group plan, not in the individual market.

[kapkomet]

Mine's $16,000/year, and that's because I'm in a large group plan, not in the individual market.

 

 

Wow, I thought the government was paying that tab. Who knew?

[Balta1701]

Wow, I thought the government was paying that tab. Who knew?

No, that's in the UK, and they pay 1/3 as much.

[kapkomet]

Say it ain't so!

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_europe_finan...s_welfare_state

 

LONDON – Six weeks of vacation a year. Retirement at 60. Thousands of euros for having a baby. A good university education for less than the cost of a laptop.

 

The system known as the European welfare state was built after World War II as the keystone of a shared prosperity meant to prevent future conflict. Generous lifelong benefits have since become a defining feature of modern Europe.

 

Now the welfare state — cherished by many Europeans as an alternative to what they see as dog-eat-dog American capitalism — is coming under its most serious threat in decades: Europe's sovereign debt crisis.

 

Deep budget cuts are under way across Europe. Although the first round is focused mostly on government payrolls — the least politically explosive target — welfare benefits are looking increasingly vulnerable.

 

"The current welfare state is unaffordable," said Uri Dadush, director of the Carnegie Endowment's International Economics Program. "The crisis has made the day of reckoning closer by several years in virtually all the industrial countries."

 

Germany will decide next month just how to cut at least 3 billion euros ($3.75 billion) from the budget. The government is suggesting for the first time that it could make fresh cuts to unemployment benefits that include giving Germans under 50 about 60 percent of their last salary before taxes for up to a year. That benefit itself emerged after cuts to an even more generous package about five years ago.

 

"We have to adjust our social security systems in a way that they motivate people to accept regular work and do not give counterproductive incentives," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told news weekly Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung on Saturday.

 

The uncertainty over the future of the welfare state is undermining the continent's self-image at a time when other key elements of post-war European identity are fraying.

 

Large-scale immigration from outside Europe is challenging the continent's assumptions about its dedication to tolerance and liberty as countries move to control individual clothing — the Islamic veil — in the name of freedom and equality.

 

Deeply wary of military conflict, many nations now find themselves nonetheless mired in Afghanistan on behalf of what was supposed to be a North Atlantic alliance, shying away from wholesale pullout while doing their utmost to keep troops from actual combat.

 

Demographers and economists began warning decades ago that social welfare was doomed by the aging of Europe's baby boomers. Some governments had been trimming and reforming, but now almost all are scrambling to close deficits in order to prevent a wider collapse of confidence in the euro.

 

"We need to change, to adapt ... for the sake of the protection of our social model," European Union Commissioner Joaquin Almunia of Spain told reporters in Stockholm Thursday.

 

The move is risky: experts warn the cuts could undermine the growth needed to pull budgets back on a sustainable path.

 

On Monday, Britain unveils 6 billion pounds ($8.6 billion) in cuts — mostly to government payrolls and expenses. The government has promised to raise the age at which citizens receive a state pension — up from 60 to 65 for women, and from 65 to 66 for men. It also plans to toughen the welfare regime, requiring the unemployed to try to find jobs in order to collect benefits.

 

Britain says it will limit child tax credits and scrap a 250-pound ($360) payment to the families of every newborn. Ministers are reviewing the long-term affordability of the country's generous public sector pensions.

 

Funding for Britain's nationalized health care service will be protected under the new government, however, and should rise each year to 2015.

 

France's conservative government is focusing on raising the retirement age. Many workers can now retire at 60 with 50 percent of their average salary. Extra funds are available for retired civil servants, those with three or more children, military veterans and others.

 

A parliamentary debate is planned for September. Unions in France are organizing a national day of protest marches and strikes on Thursday to demand protection of wages and the retirement age.

 

In Spain, billions in cuts to state salaries go into effect next month, and the Socialist government has frozen increases in pensions meant to compensate for inflation for at least two years.

 

"They've hit us really hard," said Federico Carbonero, 92, a retired soldier. He said he was unlikely to live long enough to see the worst of the pension freeze, but had no doubts he would have to start relying on savings to maintain his lifestyle.

 

Spain is cutting assistance payments for disabled people by 300 million euros ($375 million) and did away with a three-year-old bonus of 2,500 euros ($3,124.25) per new baby. It also has proposed hiking the retirement age for men from 65 to 67.

 

Countries in northern Europe have done a far better of reforming social welfare and have unemployment systems that focus on re-employing people instead of making their unemployment comfortable, said Gayle Allard, a professor of economic environment and country analysis at the Instituto de Empresa in Madrid.

 

Denmark and other Nordic countries are known for the world's highest taxes and most generous cradle-to-grave benefits. Denmark has implemented a system known broadly as "flexicurity," which combines flexibility for employers to hire and fire workers with financial security and training to prepare for new jobs.

 

Denmark had a 7.5 percent unemployment rate in the first quarter of this year, well below the EU average of 9.6 percent. Swedish and Finnish unemployment stood at 8.9 percent. Norway, with some of the world's most generous unemployment benefits fully funded by oil for the forseeable future, has Europe's lowest jobless rate, just 3 percent in April.

 

Southern European countries that have not moved toward reforming welfare in the same ways are paying a steep price.

 

After sharp cutbacks imposed as the condition of an international bailout this month, Greeks must now contribute to pension funds for 40 instead of 37 years before retiring, and the age of early retirement is set to 60 at the earliest.

 

Civil servants with monthly salaries of above 3,000 euros ($3,750) will lose two extra months of salary — one paid at Christmas, the other split between Easter and summer vacation.

 

In Portugal, seen as another potential candidate for bailout, the government is focusing on hikes in income, corporate and sales taxes and has avoided drastic changes to welfare entitlements. Unemployment benefits will be cut somewhat and the out-of-work will have to accept any job paying more than 10 percent more than what they would receive in unemployment benefits.

 

The government is also stepping up checks on welfare claims, freezing public sector pay and slicing public investment.

 

"There's been a lack of willingness to shift away from welfare as purely social protection towards an approach which has been in much of northern Europe in recent years, which is welfare as social investment," said Iain Begg, a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science's European Institute.

 

Otto Fricke, a budget expert for the Free Democrats, the coalition partner of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, told The Associated Press that no decisions on cuts have been made, but everything is on the table except education, pension funds and financial aid to developing countries. At least one high-ranking CDU member has called for the idea of protecting education to be re-examined, however.

 

German public education, which was virtually free until 2005, when some of Germany's 16 states started charging tuition fees of 1000 euros ($1,250) a year.

 

Virtually all Germany's students pay that much or less to attend state-funded universities, including elite institutions. Education isn't as cheap elsewhere in Europe but the 3,290 pounds ($4,720) per year paid by British students at Cambridge is still far less than Americans pay at comparable schools like Harvard, where annual tuition comes in just shy of $35,000.

 

The idea of cutting education is proving hard to swallow in the face of Germany's promise to contribute up to 147.6 billion euros ($184.5 billion) in loan guarantees to protect Greece and other countries that use the euro from bankruptcy.

 

"I am worried that this crisis will also affect me on a personal level, for example, that universities in Germany will raise the tuition in order to pay the loan they give to Greece," said Karoline Daederich, a 22-year-old university student from Berlin.

 

I love the last sentance - entitlements for all affects ME!!! SAY IT AIN'T SO!!

 

[EvilMonkey]

Apparently the unions can't find money to fund their pensions and want the taxpayers to help them out. Maybe if they stopped donating to political candidates they could actually fund thier own obligations? Screw you, Bob Casey.

 

http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-financ...ension-bailout/

A Democratic senator is introducing legislation for a bailout of troubled union pension funds. If passed, the bill could put another $165 billion in liabilities on the shoulders of American taxpayers.

 

The bill, which would put the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation behind struggling pensions for union workers, is being introduced by Senator Bob Casey, (D-Pa.), who says it will save jobs and help people.

 

As FOX Business Network’s Gerri Willis reported Monday, these pensions are in bad shape; as of 2006, well before the market dropped and recession began, only 6% of these funds were doing well.

 

Although right now taxpayers could possibly be on the hook for $165 billion, the liability could essentially be unlimited because these pensions have to be paid out until the workers die.

 

It’s hard to say at the moment what the chances are that the bill will pass. A hearing is scheduled Thursday, which will give the public a sense of where political leaders sit on the topic, said Willis.

 

Just last week President Obama said there would be no more bailouts.

[Balta1701]

Apparently the unions can't find money to fund their pensions and want the taxpayers to help them out. Maybe if they stopped donating to political candidates they could actually fund thier own obligations? Screw you, Bob Casey.

 

http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-financ...ension-bailout/

Really, you're bashing unions because businesses and states aren't meeting their pension payment obligations?

[Balta1701]

Steve LaTourette (R-OH) on the House floor commenting on the Fox campaign that got Alpha Dog riled up there.

LATOURETTE: They’ve run this diagram and it really is a, I think, blaspheming my good friend Pat Tiberi from Ohio and indicating that there are nine Republicans supporting a bill that will bail out unions. Well, that’s nonsense and I don’t know who the pin head and weenie is at Fox News that decided to put that story together. But the true facts of this piece of legislation are as follows. This bill will save the taxpayers by saying to those corporations that have union pension plans, if you find yourselves in a bind, rather than thrusting that upon the taxpayer, it spreads out over five years the ability to bring those pension plans up to speed. That’s good government, it’s a good bill. It’s a good Tiberi bill and I don’t know what they’re doing at Fox News, but they should stop smoking it and get back to reporting the facts.

 

[southsider2k5]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...0052101854.html

 

It was a convincing story. For a lot of panicky Americans, the prospect of a paternalistic government rescuing the nation from crisis seemed appealing as stock markets and home prices spiraled downward. According to this narrative, government was at fault in just one way: It wasn't big enough. If only there had been more regulators watching the banks more closely, the case went, the economy wouldn't have collapsed.

 

Yet in truth, it was government housing policy that was at the root of the crisis. Moreover, the financial sector -- where the crisis began and where it has had the most serious impact -- is already one of the most regulated parts of our economy. The chaos happened despite an extensive, intrusive regulatory framework, not because such a framework didn't exist.

 

 

More government -- including a super-empowered Federal Reserve, a consumer protection watchdog and greater state powers to wind down financial firms and police market risks -- does not mean we will be safe. On the contrary, such changes would give us a false sense of security, especially when Washington, a primary culprit in the crisis, is creating and implementing the new rules.

 

Much more at link...

[southsider2k5]

http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/judging-ob...obamas-criteria

 

You know, I think the administration's latest move on the border is reflective of a "troubling trend in our society." The plan is "fundamentally unfair," and "invites profiling."

 

It's "misguided," the basis for "real concerns" that make it "fundamental" to a human-rights discussion with the Chinese. I'm pretty sure it's unconstitutional and certainly "unfortunate," and should be challenged with a lawsuit as soon as possible.

 

Protesters should probably get out there and decry the "police state," "fascist," "Nazi" proclivities of the Obama administration, and add some vandalism for good measure (all in the name of civil debate, of course).

 

Sure, I haven't really done any research into the call for National Guard troops, the dangers that necessitated the call, or what their function and limitations will be in enforcing the border.

 

But who needs reading and research when I've already decided something is so obviously racist?

[Balta1701]

http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/judging-ob...obamas-criteria

Shouldn't you be complaining about how an extra $500 million is being wasted on top of the $15 billion a year we're already blowing on the border?

[southsider2k5]

Shouldn't you be complaining about how an extra $500 million is being wasted on top of the $15 billion a year we're already blowing on the border?

 

Shouldn't you be complaining about all of the obvious racism going on here, using of course the key inflammatory race code words to make the situation worse?

[Jenksismyhero]

Shouldn't you be complaining about all of the obvious racism going on here, using of course the key inflammatory race code words to make the situation worse?

 

By rule it's only racist if a white Republican does it

[Balta1701]

By rule it's only racist if a white Republican does it

So, would you be the one who cares to argue that it's a waste of resources? I see 2k5 has no interest in doing so.

[Jenksismyhero]

So, would you be the one who cares to argue that it's a waste of resources? I see 2k5 has no interest in doing so.

 

Oh it absolutely is. It's the same as spending billons on the war on drugs. People will find a way to cross the border whether you send the NG there or not. Heck, build a wall the entire length of the border (another huge waste of money) and they'll still come across.

 

Gotta change the culture. Shore up the jobs (MASSIVE penalties for employers) and they have no reason to be here. No reason to be here, no border crossing. End of story.

[Balta1701]

Oh it absolutely is. It's the same as spending billons on the war on drugs. People will find a way to cross the border whether you send the NG there or not. Heck, build a wall the entire length of the border (another huge waste of money) and they'll still come across.

 

Gotta change the culture. Shore up the jobs (MASSIVE penalties for employers) and they have no reason to be here. No reason to be here, no border crossing. End of story.

So, then let me ask you...why do you think this action is happening? Why do you think that there's also a large chunk of the Senate that thinks that this is 1/12th as much as the President ought to be sending?

[Jenksismyhero]

So, then let me ask you...why do you think this action is happening? Why do you think that there's also a large chunk of the Senate that thinks that this is 1/12th as much as the President ought to be sending?

 

Stupidity?