David M. Drucker:
House Republicans on the Benghazi select committee aren’t waiting for Democrats to make up their mind about joining, moving quickly to exercise the panel’s expanded powers to review evidence.
While Democrats still mull whether to fill the five slots reserved for them, the seven Republicans appointed by House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, are scheduled to convene later this week for what a House GOP aide described Monday as an “organizational” meeting.
Members began personally examining existing information within days of the select committee’s May 9 formation.
The panel is investigating the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya that left Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans dead.
The committee’s focus is on hiring staff. Phil Kiko, who has a strong legal background and previously served on Capitol Hill, was hired last week as majority staff director, a position equivalent to committee chief of staff. A timeline for when the committee will begin to question witnesses and hold hearings has yet to be revealed. Committee chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, has also gone quiet regarding his strategy.“I’m not going to talk about it for now. We’ll just let the work speak for itself,” the South Carolina Republican said during a brief interview.
But a review of the rules governing committee procedures points to a powerful panel that has the potential to break new ground not already covered by the five standing committees that had been investigating the attacks. The select committee’s key authorities, as established in the House-passed resolution creating the panel, include:
· Granting Gowdy the unilateral power to issue subpoenas and order witnesses to be deposed.
The whole issue here that the lefties fail to understand is that no one in federal service whether they are in the military or other foreign service offices can believe that the US government under Obama or other liberals will have their back when they are assigned a critical job in a dangerous situation. I will not recommend any young man or woman to enlist in our armed forces during this administration. Too many have been killed due to the ROE. If there was a screw up in communication, then that is worth while finding with this committee. If it was a deliberate policy, that too is worth while finding. Our country can not function if those we put into harms way can not trust their own government to have their backs!
@Greg:
I
If you think the number of views between the time it was posted on YouTube and Sept. 11th was more than 100 PROVE IT if you’re so damn smart.
Going thru life as a Progressive lackey is no way to spend your life, Greggie.
@Greg:
Well, one thing’s for sure; no matter what I said to “anger and offend” the Egyptians could piss them off more than Obama has. Or didn’t you notice the signs Egyptian citizens were carrying in their streets bashing Obama for his part in the Muslim Brotherhood takeover of that country?
Seems Obama’s foreign policy is just about as good as your judgment.
@retire05:
I provided a link to a screenshot of the YouTube posting showing it had 1,286,080 as of 12/19/2012. You’re making the ludicrous claim that there had been only 100 views a mere 7 days earlier, and have provided absolutely nothing to back that up.
There’s also the fact of protests in 37 separate locations which included fire bombings, property destruction, mob violence, and multiple deaths. Tens of thousands of angry protesters were involved. The perimeter of the U.S. embassy in Cairo was overrun. You apparently believe people got themselves worked up into a frenzy for no particular reason, even though far more trivial provocations that the video have predictably set them off in the past.
Why would I think the video had something to do with it? Because Muslims said so. Nobody was denying this at the time. It was common knowledge. The denials began later, after republicans decided that their Benghazi narrative would sell better if the video were discounted. They want 100 percent of the blame to fall on the Obama administration.
No, a mere 7 days earlier would have been DECEMBER 12th 2012, not SEPTEMBER before the attack on Benghazi’s compound.
As to
look up your own link, Greg.
http://islamicsystem.blogspot.com/2012/09/a-response-on-movie-innocence-of-muslims.html
This essay lies about the publication of the Danish cartoons as starting riots.
They absolutely did NOT.
For MONTHS, even after an Egyptian paper published the Danish cartoons NOTHING HAPPENED.
Did you not know that an IMAM added in some FAKE cartoons to the original Danish published ones?
You should look them up and see them.
Two of the three are filthy.
One depicts Mohammad bowing in prayer on a rug while a dog mounts him sexually.
The 2nd depicts Mohammad pulling his child bride (Aesha) away from her doll for sex, complete with his excitement fully visible.
A third image, a real photo of a pig caller in a French contest re-touched by computer so as to look as if he was a cartoon sketch of Mohammad, was not sexual but still extremely insulting.
The imam involved has come forward, admitted his part in incitement.
He literally shopped them all around the Islamic world making sure to fire up crowds on his false story.
All the deaths, over 50 people, are on his shoulders.
Your site is pretending not to know this fact.
What else are they lying about?
@Nanny G, #55:
Yes, you are right. I do stand corrected on that point. One of the resident trolls had annoyed me to the point where wasn’t paying sufficient attention. I should really know better than to let insults have that effect that to me.
That is also so. I think it’s often the case that nothing happens until someone brings what is relatively obscure to the attention of the population that’s most prone to react. That was actually the case with the video. It did remain obscure for months—until the trailer was translated, dubbed into Arabic, posted in accessible locations, and then announced on Arabic language websites. It was kind of like an arsonist throwing a match. That did happen in early September. Excerpts appeared on Egyptian television at around the same time. I think it’s highly probably that someone calculated the anniversary of 9/11 would be the most likely time for a fire to catch. All conditions were conducive to conflagration, and there were extremists on both sides who were only to happy to see it happen. There are lunatics on both sides of the Islamic/Christian divide who get their power from hatred and violence.
Greg
you have to make the difference between those elsewhere in those country,
burned the poster of OBAMA’s face,
AND THE OTHER who brutaly set fire and cease the ambassador,
ending up in a hospital own by ALQAEDA where he died,
you might be disturbed by the repetition,
of what whent on in BENGHASI, we all are, but we have to repeat it as long as there is some with doubt of the enormity of not having even tried to rescue the four who died fighting like heros and expecting help to come any second of their fights,
we will not be silent this time, so it should never happened again, and the next time, the other branch of power which are the MILITARY OF AMERICA, WILL MAKE THEIR OWN DECISIONS AND WONT WAIT FOR OTHER POWER TO GIVE THEM THE OKAY WHICH DID NOT COME IN THIS AWFULL TIME OF GREAT NEED,
AFTER HAVING ASK 17 TIMES FOR HELP IN A MATTER OF MONTHS BEFORE, AND LET DOWN ALONE IN THERE,BY OBAMA,
WHO EVEN REFUSE TWICE THE HEROS
DEMANDING TO GO HELP,
AGAIN LOST PRECIOUS TIMES WAITING AND ASK AGAIN WITH ANOTHER NO, WHICH THEY DECIDE TO NOT OBEY, BECAUSE THEY WANTED TO SAVE THEIR AMBASSADOR,
AS PATRIOT THEY WHERE, AND THAT LOST TIME MEAN SOMETHING THAT COULD HAVE BROUGHT A CHANGE CONCLUSION,
A MESS YES BUT A MESS ENDING WITH DEATH OF BRAVES, WE CANNOT AFFORD,
@Greg:
Ummm, let’s see; I’m a conservative who posts on a conservative blog owned by a conservative. And you are?
Who is the troll here, Greggie?
Yet, when Nic Robertson actually interviewed the organizers of the Cairo protest, which you Progressive keep pointing to, nothing was mentioned about any video. Instead, it was clear that the Cairo protest was a demand for the release of the Blind Sheikh. But that fact does not fit with your agenda (to pimp for the Obama administration) so you refuse to address it.
Why is it, Greggie, that during the whole time the Benghazi attack was going on, Washington, D.C. (i.e. the Obama administration) only talked to Gregory Hicks, the diplomat who was second in command under Chris Stevens, once. One time. Why is it that Obama, who had been telling us Al Qaeda was on the run for months, never mentioned the fact that Benghazi was a terrorist attack for weeks considering Gregory Hicks had relayed to Hillary that it was. Why did Hillary mention a YouTube video in her statement directly after talking to Gregory Hicks?
You cannot, for some reason, bring yourself to admit that the Administration, embroiled in a hard campaign for reelection, did not want Benghazi to be an Al Qaeda action since Obama had been telling us AQ was on the run. It didn’t fit his “look how great I am” mantra.
Perhaps you can someday bring yourself to admit that Obama is a lousy president. He had done none of the things he said he was going to do. Our nation, and its citizens, are in worse shape than when he took over. Perhaps some day you will be able to admit that Obama, one of the biggest narcissist to ever prop his feet up on the Resolution desk, was only acceptable to you because he is a Marxist, and you follow Marxist doctrine.
I have told you before I feel sorry for you. You are like the children of the Pied Piper. You would follow him over the cliff as he laughs at your stupidity. Obama is not smarter than you, he is not more courageous, more intelligent, more moral than you. He is but a man who puts his pants on, one leg at a time, like the rest of us. What he is, is a charlatan.
@retire05, #58:
The fact that someone argues for an opposing point of view doesn’t make him or her a troll. Trolls are defined by their hostile and disruptive behaviors, not by their opinions or by the forums that they frequent. What they generally have in common is incivility. They attempt to disrupt the honest exchange of ideas by provoking emotional response.
The Blind Sheik’s brother has a personal agenda to see that that the Blind Sheik is released from prison. What do you think he’s going to claim motivates the demonstrators, when he’s put in front of a CNN television camera and asked? You actually believe what this guy tells you?
Similarly, the American right wing’s propaganda machinery has an agenda that they’re attempting to further by promoting a useful message: They’re promoting the message of the advocate of a terrorist as a means of attacking the President of the United States. Politics does indeed make for strange bedfellows.
I think that line of though comes out of a republican fixation on the fact that it was the Obama administration that finally eliminated Osama bin Laden, after over 7 years of failure on the part of the Bush administration. (If I were actually a troll, I would be constantly saying things like that.)
Greg
yes his election was more important than 4 lives of people serving their country
and asking for help way months before the election,
he should have done his duty as a COMMANDER in chief, and put his life and election on the line to save those braves better than him by much, HE WAS TESTED BY GOD HIMSELF,
he could have lost his election,
but conquer the citizens’s respect, FOR LIFE,
NOW HE GAIN NOTHING BUT REJECTION AND DISDAIN FROM THE PEOPLE,
WHAT IS THE GAIN OF CONQUERING THE EARTH, IF YOU LOOSE YOUR SOUL,
THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM, HE IS AMONG THE DAMNED OF THIS EARTH NOW,
@Greg:
Oh, but you do constantly say things like that, Greggie, every time the opportunity presents itself.
But even worse than that, you are saying that the dedicated members of the FBI, CIA and all other terrorism units assigned to find bin Laden, failed their responsibility and that you are placing that failure on one man, George W. Bush. Yet, when it comes to Obama, nothing is ever his fault; not the deaths of hundreds of Mexican nationals due to Fast and Furious, not the death of Brian Terry, not the deaths of 13 Americans at Fort Hood, not the deaths of 264 Americans in Iraq since Jan. 2009, nor the deaths of 1,642 Americans in Afghanistan since Jan., 2009, or the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi. Obama is absolved of all responsibility by you for the deaths of Americans but if one were to read your praise of Obama on killing bin Laden, you would think Obama scaled that compound wall himself.
I can only surmise that because you support Socialism, no amount of American lives should count when it comes to Obama. And no lie from him is so great that you would cease your defense of him.
What a sad little man you are, Greggie.
If you really feel so strongly about socialism, you might want to consider requesting suspension of your monthly Social Security checks and tearing up your Medicare Card. You could also send a letter of protest to Rick Perry, requesting that he repay the $17.4 billion in federal stimulus money he accepted.
GREG
you are beeing dishonest, those where designed way before,
and OBAMA DID NOT INVENT THOSE, THERE WAS HELP BEFORE HIM AND IT LOOK LIKE IT WAS A LOT MORE AND BETTER,
NOW WE SEE IT, THAT LIFE IS NOT BETTER WITH HIM,WAY DOWN,
@Greg:
What a standard Progressive retort. All the while you ignore the facts behind what you say.
Basically, you are saying that a program sold to the American people on a lie (a Democrat tactic) that I was forced to pay into for decades on the promise of a return on my money, is really not what it was promised to be. You are saying that although I invested (unwillingly, I might add) into a program, be it a bank or a company, if that money is mismanaged, I should relinquish my claim to what I paid into it. As to the unemployment “tax”, I never got one damn dime back from that redistributive scheme.
Now, I understand that a) Social Security was never meant to be a “retirement” program for most Americans as they would die before they reached the age of 65 (that’s why FDR, and the Democrat Congress, chose the age of 65) b) it was always a Socialist redistribution of wealth Ponzi scheme and c) the federal government mismanaged our money so we should just cut them some slack and not demand our investment be given back to us. The same applies to Medicare, which every productive, working American pays in to whether they want to or not.
Here’s a thought for you, Greggie; how about giving retirees their money back, with a normal rate of interest, at age 65 and let them manage their own money? Or how about not forcing Americans to pay that money into SS and Medicare in the first place, and they them take their chances? If you wind up living under a bridge because you blew your money when you are 40, so be it. You’re not my responsibility. Find a local charitable organization to take care of you since you have proven you are simply too irresponsible to take care of yourself.
As to your complaint that Texas took $17.4 billion in Stimulus money; how much of that money do you think was the money of Texas taxpayers to begin with when in 2012 alone, Texas paid $219,454,878,000.00 to the federal coffers in income tax? So here is another thought for you; do not collect any money in income taxes that does not pay for only those expenses that are Constitutional? No bridges to nowhere, no funds for shrimp on treadmill studies, no research on hookers in China. Deliver the mail, secure our borders, pay for the military, etc.
Like all progressives, you did not want to respond to the deaths of Americans caused by Obama, instead you go off into the weeds on a totally different subject. The left wing mantra for 8 years was “Bush lied and people died” yet people are still dying and you refuse to admit that Obama, more than any president since Woodrow Wilson, lies.
You Progressives operate not on logic or reason, but on emotions. And because of that, you are destroying our nation, making victims out of irresponsible people who deserve neither my money, nor my sympathy. The victim, in your mind, is not the person harmed by a criminal, but the criminal themselves. What’s up is now down, what’s right is now wrong. You are an Eloi, secure in your mind that you will never wind up on the plate of a Morlock. But when the whistle blows, you will march, willingly and blindly, into the cave.
You are a sad little man.
@retire05, #65:
No, basically what I’m saying is that since you’re most likely going to collect far more from the Social Security and Medicare systems that you ever paid in, you’re not only a moocher by your own definition, but a selfish one that wants those same “socialist” systems to be phased out before the workers currently supporting you can benefit to a similar degree themselves—with the assurance, of course, that people such as yourself continue to receive what’s due to them.
Obviously the necessary funds to continue your own benefits would have to come from somewhere. Should FICA and Medicare taxes be eliminated or substantially reduced so that a significant portion could be diverted into some crack-brained republican private investment scheme, where exactly do you propose the money necessary to keep providing monthly checks and Medicare coverage to those currently eligible come from?
That money can only come out of somebody else’s pocket. Privatization schemes like those republicans have proposed would simply shift costs from FICA and Medicare taxes to general revenue. At the same time, they want to further reduce high end tax rates. Is it just me, or is something not adding up here? Such a proposal could never work out for the average American worker. They would turn the whole thing into another damn con game.
I suggest you tend to your own issues rather than repeatedly making pronouncements about what you imagine mine to be.
The Social Security system has provided a basic level of financial security to generations of American workers who otherwise would have spent their final years struggling and suffering. I don’t care if people fully able to provide comfortable retirements for themselves feel like they’re being unfairly required to subsidize those who aren’t. I do believe that people are to some degree their brothers’ keepers. Those who don’t get this fundamental moral principle will just have to put up with the obligations imposed upon them by a majority who do. I don’t care if taxes are higher on those having the means to pay more. I think they should be. Most of my life I’ve paid higher rates. My rates are lower now but I continue to pay thousands per year, even in retirement. I consider myself lucky to have lived in a country and participated in a system that allowed me so many opportunities. Why should I resent having payed the taxes necessary to maintain that system?
The more success one has in that system, the higher the dues one pays to help maintain it. What’s fundamentally unjust about that? To me, it makes perfect sense. Call it socialism if you wish. I consider it a matter of social obligation, to provide a degree of social justice.
Greg
this has worked before, but with the millions in government paid by the people, the balance has tilted,
you cannot blame any citizen to want to collect in time what they work their buts to contribute,
when do you think it’s time to stop giving after a life time, when? where is the limit for a good charitable citizen to get himself the same treatment?
the ones who die before collecting are loosing their chances, and that money they did not collect return to government,
and government multiply the services needing multiple employees paid not by them, but the citizens,
THE GOVERNMENT SOULD PAY AT THE LEAST FOR THEIR TOILET PAPER, NO THEY DON’T,
the trick should be, when one citizen reach the age of collecting his due, then one public employee should get out of government, and the same on one who die, it should be balance by one public employee leaving, and so on, until less in government than in citizenry,
can you count how many employees elected or not are dependant of the people’s pocket ?
http://www.limitstogrowth.org/articles/2012/09/16/lying-media-liars-libya-update/
The link above includes a Canadian News clip about how wrong it was to blame ”the video,” for Benghazi.
The video is from BEFORE Sept 16th so, less than one week after the actual attack.
Often lost in the Obama Talking Points (it was a video) is the claimed reason: a June drone strike that killed a Libyan-born al Qaeda leader.
At the 1:40 mark is a tour of the Egyptian demonstration showing the poster and billboard about wanting the Blind Sheik freed.
At the 8 minute mark an Arabic speaking person is interviewed who makes it clear that much of the problem is America’s media’s ignorance of Arabic which means they necessarily take Obama’s and State Dept’s word on who said what and when too much.
@Nanny G, #68:
The bomb-head cartoon printed in a Danish newspaper triggered world-wide riots that resulted in over 200 deaths.
On March 20, 2011, Terry Jones burned a Koran after publicizing the upcoming event. The idiot did it in his church’s sanctuary. Riots immediately broke out resulting in the deaths of 30 people, including 7 United Nations workers. The following month 2 U.S. military personnel were murdered. The killer attributed his act to the Koran burning.
Does it make any sense to believe that Innocence of the Muslims—which was deliberately brought to the attention of the Islamic world through Arabic-language websites along with an Arabic-language trailer during the week leading up to the 9/11 anniversary—had no effect?
To me, that possibility seems improbable in the extreme. It defies logic and all past experience. I can’t imagine how it wouldn’t have triggered a violent reaction.
@Greg:
As a rule of thumb, Greggie, if you wait until you are 65 to collect SSI, it will take you around 7 years to just break even. That is not accounting for any interest that money would have normally earned over the estimated 45 years you paid into the system. Seven years just to break even. By your standards, if I had invested that money in a simple interest bearing savings account, and then when I wanted to take my money out, I would be a moocher because I also expected to be paid the interest it earned.
Ah, therein lies the problem with progressive thinking. The money I was forced to invest into the Social Security fund was MY money, and was, originally, not to be used for any other government project other than paying MY benefits at the time I reached the required age. But greedy Democrats saw all that money being held by Washington, D.C. and decided to dump it into the general fund to be used as it was collected. The Ponzi scheme that was to be a panacea for the aged became a slush fund for Democrats to waste on treadmills for shrimp.
I personally believe that working adults who have yet to reach retirement age, should be allowed to opt-out of the SS system and be paid their money now, allowing them to invest it as they will. But you Marxists would jump up an down, having screaming hissy fits if anyone suggested that.
And if someone who pays into the system all their lives should die, the government gets to keep their money. How does that square in your mind without admitting it is nothing more now that a wealth redistributive system?
Do you really think anyone can survive on Social Security alone without being on other forms of social welfare? How does a woman age 66 pay rent, purchase food, pay her utilities and her taxes, and manage to buy a new pair of shoes once in a while, on what SS pays? You truly are delusional.
Also, what part of the U.S. Constitution says that the government has the right to take the fruits of anyone’s labor only to give it to someone else?
You should send a letter to Obama explaining that to him since he has seen fit to allow his own family to live off welfare in the U.S. or live in poverty in Kenya.
Moral principals cannot be enforced. If they could, we would never see another murder in this nation. But taxation to redistribute wealth is not moral, Greggie. It is servitude. Governments cannot force charity and you seem to confuse charity with taxation for redistributive purposes.
Then by all means, send the IRS a check, over and above your required payments. Donate to the IRS for the care of others, allowing bureaucrats to decide who to give your money to. If you do not do that, you are no better than any one else who pays only what is required.
If you claim that you have paid more than your legal requirement, I will call you the liar you are.
So you admit that you subscribe to the Marxist theory of progressive taxation. No surprise. Most Progressives, like yourself, are closet Marxists. You are no exception.
@retire05, #70:
As I’m sure you must realize—assuming, of course, that you have at some point actually worked and paid taxes yourself—that the United States has had a progressive tax schedule for many years. I’ve paid higher rates, as opposed to lower rates. I have not paid higher amounts than are required by law.
It isn’t a Marxist theory. It’s a tax schedule, based on simple logic. Those who have more can afford to pay more. They also have benefited more from the societal arrangement that taxes maintain. Rent is higher nearer the top of the pyramid.
@retire05: @Greg:
You are as usual absolutely incorrect. A progressive tax system is precisely what Marx wrote about in his treatise, as a means of bringing down a capitalist society. It is the second plank of his Communist Manifesto. The idea that someone who has worked harder and been more successful should be required to pay a larger percentage of their income in taxes is inherently unfair. Using that logic, someone who is more successful should be required to pay more for a specific item than someone less successful. We should all pay for groceries, gasoline, and everything else based on a progressive scale determined by our W2s. That is the insanity and unfairness of a progressive tax scheme.
My post 72 was directed at Greg, not retire.
@Greg: 66
Greg, you obviously have never put much thought into this subject. I started paying Social Security in 1955. I paid it for 47 years. Had every dime of that been placed into my account and invested at some simple rate of return or stock plan, I would be a rich person today. So no matter how much the governement sends me in monthly payments, they will never be sending me their money, only a small percentage of what I would have had if the government had been honest over the years and taken care of my investment. The money that I invested in a pension plan and in a 401K plan have already returned me severat times what the SS program has sent me and will do so for the remainder of my life. The government will never send me a dime of ‘their’ money, only returning what I paid to them. So there are no workers that are currently supporting me, but there are plenty that benefitted from the money I sent that wasn’t taken care of and invested properly. So, in reality, it is the government that is mooching. Not me.
A simple question for people who claim that higher taxes improve an economy. Why did Toyota just move 5000 jobs from California to Texas? Why is New York State running ads trying to lure business with a 10 year tax break for all new businesses? What is the rate of return on one’s “investment” in social security versus a private 401k?
From the helpful statement I get from the government every year, I will be paid the handsome sum of around $2000/month if I retire at 65 and tbe ponzi scheme doesn’t collapse in spite of my paying into it for 47 years. My 401k, which I will have paid into – limited by the government to 17500 dollars per year, until I hit 59 when I am allowed to put in 23000 per year for the last 6 years I work – the estimate of my monthly pay out will be over $12000, before taxes are taken out. Seems like I would be much better off in my golden years had I been allowed by my government to put the money from my social security taxes into my 401k instead, and wouldn’t need to get a social security check from the government.
But we couldn’t allow that, since it would deprive leftist politicians the ability to control a big chunk of our income, right?
@Redteam, #74:
I don’t think it’s very likely that the stock market could make everyone who invests in it financially secure. There are winners and losers. Values are presently inflated not because of increased intrinsic value in shares or because of the income they generate, but because of a collective belief in their growing value. That’s commonly known as a bubble. Consider what would have happened to average retirees during the 2008-2009 crash if all they’d had to rely on was the value of their stock shares, and had no Social Security to fall back on.
I’m very suspicious of the entire stock market at present. The social insurance concept strikes me as being more reliable as a foundation for retirement. Tangibles also seem like a good bet–provided you don’t buy when their values are unrealistically inflated.
@Pete: You’re exactly right Pete, fortunately my combined SS (with my wife’s is more than the amount you quoted) but that is from 47 years of investment, but it pales in comparison to my pension and 401k income which I only invested in for about 25 years. If everyone were required to invest the SS amount into a 401k, the government would never have to be involved. NOTE: by the time you consider the amount of income taxes I still pay (and I’m in my 70’s) in effect, I am still paying my own SS benefits, so the governement is making out well on that.
@Greg:
I don’t agree, there are secure funds in the stock market. Anyone investing over a period of 45 years, with part of it in higher risk funds and part secured (guaranteed rates) funds will be way, way ahead of the SS plan.
totally bogus argument. Anyone near retirement at that time(I was already retired) should have had their money in guaranteed funds and would not have lost a dime. It so happened, at the time I still had mine 50% in high risk(return) and 50% guaranteed funds. As soon as I smelled the downturn coming, I simply moved mine (with a keystroke on my computer) to the guaranteed funds. I have continued to have a good return.
But Greg, how much do you think that same money is worth that was all given to the government? Do you think they’ve managed it well? Have we all gotten our money’s worth from it?
LOL, you are kidding, right?
@Redteam:
Red, I feel your pain. I literally work 2 full time physician positions because of the shortage of my type of doctor. The taxes required on the first job would prevent me from supporting my family in anything decent, but adding in the income from the second job has me paying more in monthly taxes than my monthly takehome pay when I was a senior lieutenant colonel in the army with 25 years of service. For what? So the Obamas can spend tens of millions of dollars traveling around the globe? So Obama can play more rounds of golf? So the traitorous bastard Manning can get himself surgically mutilated to feed his delusion that he is a girl? So the democrats can buy the votes of the uneducated and the lazy with more dehumanizing government crack handouts?
Any private company that provided such poor service as the federal government provides would have gone bankrupt and been sued into oblivion, and been criminally charged for rampant corruption. Yet leftists will continue to demand that we have higher and higher taxes taken from us to keep.expanding this corrupt, poorly functioning federal leviathan. It is the height of hypocrisy to claim that the legitimazation of government theft is “social justice”, as there is nothing more unjust than forcibly taking someone’s belongings against their will. It is marxist wealth redistribution at its most vile. What these leftists so sanctimoniously sniff is “fair” is absolutely nothing more than envious theft. The fact that all these falsely compassionate wealthy leftists aren’t giving away all their wealth for the benefit of the poor, but instead demand that everyone else be required to give up what they have earned under the weak camoflage of “their fair share of taxes” shows their complete and utter despicable hypocrisy.
@Pete: Very well said, Pete.
@Redteam, #78:
Nope. Keep in mind, I’m talking about what’s best for everybody as a group—not just those who know when to shift funds with the touch of a button, and happen to be correct in that judgement. Suppose everyone was in the stock market. How could they all come out ahead, to the extent that everyone’s retirement years would be financially secure?
And which investments really are risk free? Who or what is ultimately guaranteeing the values of “guaranteed funds?”
@Greg:
That’s why they make some funds ‘guaranteed’ return. For those that don’t want to have to know when to move their money. You don’t have to worry about being correct in that judgment. If they are in guaranteed return funds. Greg, do you really think that if someone invested a dollar in a guaranteed stock fund 45 years ago, that it would be worth less than a dollar today? Hmmmm…….
@Pete, #79:
Left or right, we’re all subject to the same tax laws.
I could say something similar about camouflaging on the right. Who does it actually serve, for example, to reduce high-end taxes disproportionately, when the government is already collecting insufficient revenue to pay the bills? Essentially this rewards those who have the most to the greatest degree, while shifting the resultant public debt onto everyone equally. Any program cuts that must eventually follow as a result will then disproportionately affect the lower income people who are more dependent upon them, while having minimal effects on those who are wealthy and have no need of them.
The irony is that lower income people will include average republican voters.
@Greg:
That’s because you are a true Frankfurt Marxist. Only one little problem with that theory, Greggie; it has never worked anywhere it has been tried.
Our Constitution made this nation the greatest in the history of the world for one reason; individualism. We have the right to life (which Progressives deny to the unborn), liberty (which is quickly slipping away and you Progressives won’t realize what you have wrought until it is too late and the alligator is chomping on your leg) and the pursuit of happiness. Notice, Greggie, it doesn’t say that you are entitled to happiness, or that happiness should be guaranteed to you. The promise was only that you have the right to pursue that what makes you happy.
And here is where you exhibit your faulty thinking because you don’t add the rest of the story. You cannot get to the top of the pyramid unless you walk to the top. If you are being carried, you already own the top since you can afford to hire those to carry you, otherwise, you have to get to the top under your own power.
There are those of us who are willing to put in the energy and effort to climb to the top of the pyramid. But then, there are those who would prefer to remain lazy, shiftless, non-productive and take the hand out of living at the bottom. Social welfare is a jealous mistress. It requires you sell your soul, so to speak, and be loyal to those who are handing out the checks. It is simply a form of slavery.
I have asked you before, and you have refused to answer, but I still remain curious; when did you become a Marxist?
@Redteam, #82:
I’m trying to project how things like guaranteed funds would work out if there were participation in them to the degree that there’s participation in the Social Security program. When someone says If we all do X with our money we’re all going to get rich, I always question at what point upscaling reveals the flaw in the logic. I might do fine in the stock market. You might do fine in the stock market. But I doubt that everyone could ever do well in the stock market all together. Unlike with social insurance, which finds safety in a formulaic leveling mechanism, some people would become millionaires while others would fall completely through the bottom.
As it stands, we have a social insurance system that’s functional after over 75 years, and people are still free to get rich playing the stock market, provided they have the skills, the luck, and the inclination. This is proved by the fact that people actually do it.
@retire05, #84:
Yeah, you have asked before. I would think you would get tired of asking, since I always tell you that I’m not. I’m a middle-of-the-roader, who believes a capitalist system is best and most sustainable when it’s tempered with mechanisms that keep too much of the total wealth from concentrating in too few hands. This saves nations from the need for extremist solutions. Communist and Marxist states don’t arise where balance exists.
@Greg:
Why are you under the impression that the government is collecting insufficient revenue to pay its bills when we can afford to give money for studies in alcoholism in hookers in China or how fast a shrimp can run on a treadmill? Or perhaps the Billions of $$ that the IRS sends to illegal aliens every year?
Again, a fallacy promoted by those on the left. Not everyone pays “equally” into the tax coffers. Paying “equally” would not mean a dollar amount, but a percentage. 5% for everyone, no matter how much, or how little, they earn would be “equal” taxation.
Ah, yes, the old “from each according to their ability to each according to their need” mantra. Yep, you’re a Marxist. Never mind that lower income people generally pay absolutely NO income tax, at all.
Again, and as usual, you’re wrong. Most low income people vote Democratic, simply because they vote for the guy who promises them the most free stuff, not knowing that all that stuff is really not free. The cost? Their self respect, their honor and their souls.
@Greg:
As did Hitler and Mussolini.
@retire05:
Nope. Most poor people do indeed vote Democratic, for obvious reason. But enormous numbers of low income people vote Republican in every election, without fail. Low income red state workers are very conservative by inclination. Often they’re driven by social conservatism, and give very little thought to the long term personal consequences of Republican economic policy. If it were not for Social Security and Medicare, their final years would often be blighted by extreme poverty.
@Greg:
Greg, it’s clear you don’t have even a basic understanding of the stock market. You seem to be assuming that everything invested in the stock market would be retirement fund investments only. Those funds would actually be a very small part of the market. Most investments would remain as they are today, for making money, not for retirement. The way I see it, there would be funds that were there just for guaranteed retirement funds. Conventional pension funds (such as the pension I’m paid from) had millions of dollars invested in them by the company, enough so that all retirement obligations could be paid from them.. All of those funds were invested in secure investments. A good example of a poor system, is one where a city or county or state or federal government does not invest the money in anything, but just expect it will be paid from new taxes being paid in. Then when everyone moves away (Detroit anyone?) and taxpayers are not there to make the payments, uh oh….or maybe a government has to raise taxes to pay them, Washington anyone? That’s your social insurance system Greg is talking about.
@Greg:
1) define the term “poor”
2) what are the “obvious” reasons
@Greg:
Are you referring to Social Security? It’s not functional at all, it relies heavily on income taxes to pay it’s bills, it doesn’t rely exclusively on the collected SS funds. If it did, it would be kaput.
@retire05: You asked Greg:
Don’t forget the tens of millions given freely to Obama’s cohorts and compadres for un-bidded Obamacare computer systems, Solyndra scams, cash for clunkers, golfing in Afghanistan, Michelle’s vacations, etc….
@Greg:
If that is all they have to depend on, then their final years are blighted by extreme poverty, just as the Dimocrats planned it.
Is Social Security Really Going Broke?
Short answer: No.
@Greg:
1) define the term “poor”
2) what are the “obvious” reasons
@Greg:
Answer the questions I posed to you in #91.
If you don’t, I will understand it is only because the answers make you uncomfortable and will add to the destruction of your claims.
NBC? Really, Greggie? Grasping at straws, aren’t you?
@Greg:
Your logic is, as usual, completely warped.
If you do not have enough money to pay your bills, you must adjust your expenses to first pay for what is NECESSARY, and cut unnecessary luxuries. What you leftists refuse to understand is that taxes are meant to pay for legitimate NECESSARY government expenses, not luxuries. What you further refuse to admit is that when tax rates are cut, allowing people to keep more of the money they earn, the economy is stimulated and the government ends up with a larger amount of revenue. Even JFK understood this basic economic concept, which dems never want to admit. The deficit is not caused because of insufficient tax revenue, but because the federal government insists on more unnecessary spending. The federal government has no business paying for foodstamps, housing, medical care, retirement, or anything else not specifically listed in the Constitution as a duty of the government. Every single o e of those government programs were designed to make the lazy and the uneducated more dependent on government, so such immature and irresponsible people would continue to vote for the lying leftists to keep giving “free” money to the mobs – stolen from those who earned it. If the government wasn’t taking so much from people’s incomes, they would have more money to pay for their own wellbeing. Business would be much more willing to engage in the risks of expanding, which would grow the economy, if they could keep more of their income. Consider the unjust economic insanity of the price of gasoline. The net profit for a gallon of gasoline is 7 to 8 cents to the company that explores for the oil, drills for it, ships it to a refinery, processes it from oil to gasoline, then ships it to your gas station. The federal and state TAXES on that same gallon of gas are over 38 cents a gallon on average, depending on the state. The rest of tbe cost of a gallon of gas are the salaries paid to employees, the cost of regulatory compliance, and the costs of producing and transporting the product. So for all that effort, an oil company makes 7-8 cents per gallon, while the government taxes 4 to 5 times what the company actually doing all the work earns. Then the government taxes the company on top of that for their earnings. Now the ravenous government tax beast is looking for ways to tax us based upon how many miles we drive on roads. That socialist bastard Sanders is trying again to push the bogus carbon tax. Every so-called problem has only one solution according to you leftists….higher taxes. Tbe only government spending leftists ever allow to be cut is defense, which ironically is actually a specific constitutional duty of the federal government, unlike all the other leftist wealth redistribution fiascos.
Charity only works when freely given. Stealing from people, especially when pretending to be operating under the false pretentiousness of “social justice” is evil. If you leftists actually cared about the poor and downtrodden, you would have the honesty to review the impact the progressive income tax, social security, welfare, medicare, medicaid, unemployment, foodstamps and now obamacare have actually had, and what the implications for the future are when we reach the point where no amount of taxation is capable of bringing in the revenue to pay for all these socialist programs.
What has been the effect of the Carter Administration monster, the Department of Education, on the scholastic situation in the US, relative to the rest of the world? Compare our current ranking with our ranking prior to this government bureaucracy. What were high school graduation rates prior to this DOE versus now? Did colleges have to offer the same rate of remedial math and english for incoming students prior to the DOE as we do today? Is this a good use of our tax money?
What was the illegitimacy rate in the US for.whites and blacks, prior to welfare? Compare to today.
What were the rates of annual medical cost increases prior to the socialist programs of medicare and medicaid, compared to now? And what are they now with Obamacare? How much did the proponents of medicare, medicaid and obamacare claim their new government handout programs would cost, versus what they ACTUALLY ended up costing?
If none of these programs have done anything to improve or correct the problems they were devised to fix, then why should we keep throwing good money after bad with no discernable beneficial result? The leftist insistence on continuing to fund expensive failures stems either from delusion, or because they know and want these failures to continue.
@Greg:
And your premise about disproportionate tax cuts is deleriously flawed.
If I am paying 39.5% of my income in federal taxes, and someone making less than me is paying 20% of his income in taxes, that is already, by definition, disproportionate. If you cut my tax rate to the same as someone making less than me, that would be making us pay proportionate taxes. That would be fair. Abolishing the marxist-based EITC would also be fair, rather than the disproportionate tax situation it currently represents.