Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Can you explain children who die due to social services inefficiencies ? Why veteran care is so poor? Why doctors can't pay their overhead if they took only Medicare patients? How the IRS makes errors and destroys people's lives through Leon's, garnishings, etc? If private corporations made these mistakes, heads would roll. And do. Government? Not so much.

I can say that FEWER children die, for any reason, now than at any other time in history. A lot of it is improved nutrition (WIC, food stamps), a lot of it is improved medical care (medicaid). Tax collection has ALWAYS been a source of potential corruption, and a source of great loss when abused. It is better regulated now than it ever has been.

Am I saying that everything is great and we should just leave it all alone and our work here is done? Hell no.

Are you saying that an institution that doesn't function at 100% effectiveness and perfection should be abolished, whether or not there is something better to replace it? Yeah, it kinda sounds like you are.

I'm saying adding to it while acknowledging gross inefficiencies is completely irresponsible. A private corporation would soon go out of business with that model

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, administrative costs in Medicare are only about 2 percent of operating expenditures. Defenders of the insurance industry estimate administrative costs as 17 percent of revenue.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Can you explain children who die due to social services inefficiencies ? Why veteran care is so poor? Why doctors can't pay their overhead if they took only Medicare patients? How the IRS makes errors and destroys people's lives through Leon's, garnishings, etc? If private corporations made these mistakes, heads would roll. And do. Government? Not so much.

I can say that FEWER children die, for any reason, now than at any other time in history. A lot of it is improved nutrition (WIC, food stamps), a lot of it is improved medical care (medicaid). Tax collection has ALWAYS been a source of potential corruption, and a source of great loss when abused. It is better regulated now than it ever has been.

Am I saying that everything is great and we should just leave it all alone and our work here is done? Hell no.

Are you saying that an institution that doesn't function at 100% effectiveness and perfection should be abolished, whether or not there is something better to replace it? Yeah, it kinda sounds like you are.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm sorry folks are piling on and using unkind language in response to your post. I will be polite, but I must take issue with this:

Anonymous wrote:
I see that the larger government becomes, the less efficient it is.

It's factually, objectively untrue. "The Government", by every measure, provides more services to more people and institutions at a lower cost than at any time in its history. I won't even get in to subjective judgments like "better" or "safer". I'm talking strictly about the quantifiable elements.

My concern is, when you write something like that, which is so clearly an unsupported soundbite, that the rest of your argument is probably influenced by politicians and pundits who have the stated goal of stalling the work of the nation, of increasing the burdens the poor carry, and of increasing animosity among an already fractious crowd (by which I mean Congress).

You can state that your belief system rejects the provision of services to people by government, but you can't say what you said and not set off some alarm bells.

Can you explain children who die due to social services inefficiencies ? Why veteran care is so poor? Why doctors can't pay their overhead if they took only Medicare patients? How the IRS makes errors and destroys people's lives through Leon's, garnishings, etc? If private corporations made these mistakes, heads would roll. And do. Government? Not so much.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I'm tired of paying for other peoples' mistakes.

Me too, that's why I am angry about all the money that was dumped into the Iraq war.

+1000

And all of the dead and disabled soldiers.

Anonymous wrote:Those jobs were not intended to support people. They should be starter jobs or supplemental income for working moms/dads. Going to work is a skill in itself.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let me get this straight, tea partiers hate handouts to pathetic poor people who just love living on welfare but handouts/bailouts to huge corrupt selfish corporations are awesome? Do you also have a 22 million dollar mansion in the Hamptons that you bought from profits while laying off employees and taking tax payer money?

Don't forget: It's the republicans who mostly oppose any increase in minimum wage. Not only do they want the unemployed to starve, they want the least-skilled-but-still-working to get very, very thin.

You want to talk about work ethic?? Try getting up and going to McDonalds six days a week for $8.25 an hour, for years, with no paid vacation, no hope of promotion. THAT'S some hard work, right there.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a conservative, not Republican or Tea Party.

I am all about spending. While Obama is bad on the issue (and a lot of others) Bush wasn't great on it either.

Bush "wasn't great"?

Anonymous wrote:I am a conservative, not Republican or Tea Party.

I am all about spending. While Obama is bad on the issue (and a lot of others) Bush wasn't great on it either.

My concern is, when you write something like that, which is so clearly an unsupported soundbite, that the rest of your argument is probably influenced by politicians and pundits who have the stated goal of stalling the work of the nation, of increasing the burdens the poor carry, and of increasing animosity among an already fractious crowd (by which I mean Congress).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:just curious of the reasoning behind wanting to be a part of this mixed bag of nuts

I'm a Tea Party patriot. If I had to put it succinctly, I'd say it's a combination of things:

- I'm pretty angry, because let's face it, I thought I was going to be rich, or that my superior intellect would in some way be recognized by the universe, but that hasn't happened.

- Meanwhile, there's some guy running the country who's probably not even American, has done nothing in his life other than run the Harvard Law Review and organize poor people, and has never had to make payroll. Since our whole society is one big giveaway to racial "interest groups" the only explanation for this is affirmative action.

- I am definitely not a racist. I actually know black people and like some of them. Others I don't like. I just wish the good ones would talk to the bad ones and get them to stop acting in self-destructive ways (i.e. "pull your pants up" says Bill Cosby [who I *love*, btw])

- Politics is confusing, and it's really hard to follow a lot of what's going on. At the same time, I'm the kind of person who really likes to feel like I have expertise in all things. But since I spend all my time reading websites that are light on news, and heavy on fodder for resentment, I don't really have the facts necessary to understand what's going on. But ironically enough, the less expertise one has, the less ability one has to evaluate one's level of expertise.

- I see the country is going in the wrong direction (gay people getting married, VD vaccines for 12 year olds, swearing on TV). You can tell the country's going to Hell in a handbasket, and something has to be done to bring it back in line with values of Real Americans--which means me and my neighbors.

- If we have to make the economy crater to get things back on track, I'm fine with that, because America's already sinking into the muck. And besides, if we have another recession, it's the moochers and takers who are going to suffer. Not hard-working Real Americans like myself.

OMG. I am sitting at my desk unable to hold back the laughter.

Anonymous wrote:Moderate here. My problem with the Tea Party members I know, and this may be my own pet peeve, is that they play fast and loose with the facts to spew the company line and they make these big proclamations that are factually inaccurate. Many of them do not want to acknowledge that GWB is responsible for the deficit, that Reagan raised taxes and the foundantional principles of ACA are GOP ideas. Oh, and while they say they want goverment out of their lives, they want the government to regulate who you can marry. When you add all that up, it leads me to believe that i is all about POTUS.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:just curious of the reasoning behind wanting to be a part of this mixed bag of nuts

I'm a Tea Party patriot. If I had to put it succinctly, I'd say it's a combination of things:

- I'm pretty angry, because let's face it, I thought I was going to be rich, or that my superior intellect would in some way be recognized by the universe, but that hasn't happened.

- Meanwhile, there's some guy running the country who's probably not even American, has done nothing in his life other than run the Harvard Law Review and organize poor people, and has never had to make payroll. Since our whole society is one big giveaway to racial "interest groups" the only explanation for this is affirmative action.

- I am definitely not a racist. I actually know black people and like some of them. Others I don't like. I just wish the good ones would talk to the bad ones and get them to stop acting in self-destructive ways (i.e. "pull your pants up" says Bill Cosby [who I *love*, btw])

- Politics is confusing, and it's really hard to follow a lot of what's going on. At the same time, I'm the kind of person who really likes to feel like I have expertise in all things. But since I spend all my time reading websites that are light on news, and heavy on fodder for resentment, I don't really have the facts necessary to understand what's going on. But ironically enough, the less expertise one has, the less ability one has to evaluate one's level of expertise.

- I see the country is going in the wrong direction (gay people getting married, VD vaccines for 12 year olds, swearing on TV). You can tell the country's going to Hell in a handbasket, and something has to be done to bring it back in line with values of Real Americans--which means me and my neighbors.

- If we have to make the economy crater to get things back on track, I'm fine with that, because America's already sinking into the muck. And besides, if we have another recession, it's the moochers and takers who are going to suffer. Not hard-working Real Americans like myself.