Senate Dems back pre-surrendering strategy on budget
Read this from from the national journal and tell me if you don’t see the hand of Tom Carper stabbing seniors in the back.
Senate Democrats think they’ve hit on a formula that could work again: Hang together and make the message clear from the start. “I think Democrats showed that by sticking together we can push the Republicans, if not to come to the table, at least we can push them to drop their demands for concessions every time we go into another crisis,” said a Democratic Senate aide. “The theory that sticking together and holding firm would break them out of this cycle has been proven.”
Sounds pretty good so far, right? Stick together, hold firm… etc. Don’t get too excited.
Buoyed by that notion, Democrats have begun to telegraph a possible path forward in the coming budget conference, suggesting a possible compromise that would include trading a relaxation of the sequester for “permanent structural changes to mandatory programs,” according to a Senate Democratic aide. The thinking goes: Republicans could argue that they traded budget cuts that last only until 2022 for permanent changes. Just what Democrats would accept in terms of changes to mandatory programs is still murky, though; Democrats are being deliberately vague about what they might be willing to swallow.
“I know that Democrats are willing to compromise to get a deal, and I’m hopeful Republicans will as well,” Murray said recently.
Jesus H. Christ! Is it possible that the Senate Democrats suck this much?!?! If “changes to mandatory programs” don’t include raising (or doing away with) the income max – then this Democratic caucus is the worst thing since smallpox blankets.
Mr 330, the link doesn’t work.
Mr 330 wrote:
I assume by this you mean the fact that Social Security taxes are capped after $113,700 of income, but there is also a maximum benefit, $2,533 per month at full retirement age, or $3,350 if you wait until age 70 to start receiving Social Security benefits. If benefits are going to be capped, why shouldn’t the income level that is going to be taxed be capped?
Because it’s Social Security, not Social Windfall.
“If benefits are going to be capped, why shouldn’t the income level that is going to be taxed be capped?”
Because fuck the rich, nitwit. Also, fuck the morons like you who stand with them.
Or, more succinctly, fuck you and the rich you rode in on.
Jason’s link, for Dana:
http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/why-harry-reid-gets-to-set-the-nation-s-agenda-20131024
Mr Geezer wrote:
Why, thank you, Mr Geezer, for being so very honest in your statements; I very much appreciate it!
In other words, you are saying that Social Security is not a form of retirement program, but you want it to be an income transfer, to take from those who have earned more to give to those who have earned less. Welfare is the shorter term.
Neither is it a personal annuity. It is social insurance and always has been.What part of “fuck the rich” did you not understand?
No, welfare is not the shorter term. Everyone on the program who lives long enough gets more out than they paid in. And those who die before turning 60s don’t get their money back. You get welfare immediately.
Hey, you’ve been honest all along — you want people who can’t afford health care to die. I’m not saying my shit doesn’t stink, but it doesn’t stink like yours.
When the shooting starts, I’ll save a bullet for you.
hm. havent seen a death threat on here in a while.
Or were you just being ‘hyperbolic”? “I wasnt threatening to kill him!!!!!! im just saving him a bullet to protect himself!!!!!!!!!!!” Glenn Beck wanna-be hack.
“When the shooting starts.”
Did you have problems reading that part? Or were you too busy jerking off?
No, but i had no trouble with the “i’ll save a bullet for you” part. I suppose that meant so he could use it against someone else? Why not just admit you got a little to spittle-raged and accidentally threatened to shoot a stranger because of something they said online?
and good job giving a spin-out hack answer just like I expected.
although I guess I should back off, lest you “save a bullet” for me too? hack.
I’m all upset now because you think I’m a hack. Boo hoo. I didn’t say anything accidentally. I said once the shooting starts, I’ll save a bullet for him.
What part of that don’t you understand? Just a little Second Amendment banter with a bullethead. Sorry your tender liberal sensibilities couldn’t take it. Pussy.
I wonder. What would have to happen in my life for me to become an outright stooge for a monied elite? How could I identify with a group that has nothing but contempt for me? I suppose I’d have to imagine myself to be a member of the “winning team” by virtue of some nonsense like my race. Huzzah, I’m white! Or maybe my grandparents country of origin? Huzzah, I’m a Swede!!
Anyway, I’d have to work hard to keep the reality, that I’ve been played for fool, at bey. With Fox News and Rush Limbaugh on 24/7, I could probably pull that off.
I see. so it’s ok to talk to THEM like that. I’m aware of the right wing lust for a new civil war…. I’m also aware that the way you can ensure people go through with threats like that is to threaten them back.
You, being the alpha-popular kid probably dont have much experience deflecting bullies, but trust me on this one killer, your chest-thumping is exactly what “they” want. But please, go ahead. ya seem well-prepared for the “shooting to start”.
hey, where’d all my witty comments go?
Oops. I tried to move all of the gun rights comments to the right thread and accidentally zapped them. If you want to comment on this post, feel free to do so.
Where we left off was…I wonder. What would have to happen in my life for me to become an outright stooge for a monied elite? How could I identify with a group that has nothing but contempt for me? I suppose I’d have to imagine myself to be a member of the “winning team” by virtue of some nonsense like my race. Huzzah, I’m white! Or maybe my grandparents country of origin? Huzzah, I’m a Swede!!
Anyway, I’d have to work hard to keep the reality, that I’ve been played for fool, at bey. With Fox News and Rush Limbaugh on 24/7, I could probably pull that off.
The alpha-popular kid? You’re joking, right? Not hardly.
I don’t like their attitude, so I throw it back at them. Your tactics may vary. If there was a planning meeting on how to respond to them, I missed the memo.
Gotcha. we’ll im bored with it now anyway. Dana isnt in any real danger so, despite the lick-spittle “not threat”, it’s done.
As far as how to respond to right wing gun-nuts… some bullies are paper tigers, others are rabid dogs. I see the baggers as more the latter.
It wasn’t lickspittle. It was spittle-flecked.
Getting back to the topic at hand, Mr 330 wrote:
You seem to have forgotten an important point: Social Security taxes are levied only on salaries and wages, where people are paid for working for a living. Earnings from investments or capital gains — much of what the “monied elite” have as income — aren’t subject to Social Security taxes.
The “monied elite” have respect for the working man, because it is the working man who helps them to make money. If I own stock in Ford, the Ford Motor Company employees manufacturing automobiles are making money for me, too.
More, the “monied elite” got that way because someone — perhaps not them, but their ancestors — went out and worked and earned that money. Further, the “monied elite” appreciate the fact that working people are taxpayers, not just tax consumers. But, perhaps you know an unrepresentative sample of the monied elite.
“The “monied elite” have respect for the working man, because it is the working man who helps them to make money.”
I have seldom found this to be true, and I’d bet that I know a lot more of the monied elite than you do. Unless by “respect” you mean something besides money. In which case, who cares about their “respect”?
The problem with your narrative is the notion that because a certain amount of money is paid in certain fields, that means the money was “earned.” Like many conservatives, you seem unaware of the activities of the monied elite at getting the government to enact rules that preserves both the money and their elite status.
You show admiration for people who have “won” without considering that they wrote the rules so they could do so.
You made my point.
Care to supply proof for that and other random assertions about what the monied elite respect? Of course not.
I think you’ve answered my question though.
Thanks.
So, according to Dana, to become an outright stooge for a monied elite and identify with a group that has nothing but contempt for me, I’d have to somehow equate wealth with virtue. Moreover, I’d have to really have a deep faith-based attachment to that idea. Otherwise I would probably be overwhelmed by cognitive dissonance upon seeing so many clear examples of wealth NOT behaving virtuously. I’d literally need to live in an alternate reality.
Do you work for a living, Jason? If so, why would anyone have contempt for you for that? I certainly don’t.
Everyone who is wealthy needs working people. Some might no longer be in a position where they depend upon working people for their own money, but the wealthy employ working people, to do things for them.
The contempt comes in the paychecks — c.f. Walmart paying minimum wage and adjusting hours to be sure they pay as little as possible. Also too– providing instruction to workers on how to get Medicaid since walmart can’t spend its amazing profits on insurance.
I’ve got it. Today’s wealthy are good and virtuous like the Pharaohs of old. Stories to the contrary, are just the liberal media trying to sow confusion and misery among otherwise happy working people.
Working people’s wages have been largely flat for 30 years — even though they’ve contributed an amazing amount of productivity to the economy. They don’t get paid the value of that productivity — wealthy people do.
So whom do you have contempt for, Dana — just the moochers who are cheating the system? How do you determine which people those are? Or doesn’t that matter?
Cassandra wrote:
That’s smart business sense, whether you agree with it or not. Walmart’s management is maximizing its profits, which is what management is hired to do.
Mr Geezer asked:
It does matter, and no, I can’t (always) tell who are the moochers and who genuinely cannot work, but we could tell that if we applied plain, common sense. If a man is able bodied and not addle-pated, he can work, as a laborer if he has no further skills.
That’s part of the problem: there would be little resistance to welfare if there were only a few moochers, and the great majority were genuinely unable to work or support themselves. We used to pretty much accept that there would be some cheating, just to insure that we took care of everybody who really needed help.
Trouble is, the problem of the willful malingerers grew so great, and have so overwhelmed the system, that many people, myself certainly included, are willing to see some of the genuinely needy missed to get rid of the malingerers. We have a system in which we are, in effect, importing foreign laborers when there are able-bodied Americans who won’t do the work; how fornicated up is that?
…”the willful malingerers grew so great, and have so overwhelmed the system”
Proof? Link? Anything other than your gut feeling?
I’m getting the picture that part of feeling a member of the winning team is nursing a contempt toward weakness and defenselessness. It makes sense.
Wait… Huh? Dana understands Walmart and calls their business model smart – a business model that thrives by placing a large part of its workers on government assistance, which he hates.
WTF?
Walmart workers are the craftiest of the willful malingerers.
Walmart’s management is maximizing its profits, which is what management is hired to do.
Not at the expense of the workforce they are exploiting and certainly not at the expense of taxpayers who subsidize these underpaid workers.
“If a man is able bodied and not addle-pated, he can work, as a laborer if he has no further skills.”
There aren’t enough jobs for laborers to make your “plan” work. Indeed, I am skeptical that you’re this ignorant of economics, but if you are I can see one source of your misanthropy.
“many people, myself certainly included, are willing to see some of the genuinely needy missed to get rid of the malingerers.”
Your lack of compassion is, ultimately, your own problem.
Also, too, this:
According to the U.S. Department of Labor statistics website, based on the 2012 IPIA 3-Year average data report, fraud was prevalent in 2.67% of cases. [10] XML and XLS Unemployment Insurance data sheets released yearly available at: http://www.dol.gov/dol/maps/Data.htm
Mr Geezer wrote:
Really? If there have not been enough jobs for laborers, why have we been, in effect, importing laborers from south of the border to do manual labor jobs?
Of course, those illegal immigrants didn’t all stay in the manual labor jobs; go to a residential construction site these days, and you are going to see a lot of Hispanic workers who have moved up from the manual labor jobs to more skilled ones. In the Mid-Atlantic states, on a residential construction job, you are likely to see Hispanic workers in most of the trades: frame carpentry, concrete work, drywall, roofing, landscaping and kitchen installations. It’s only the licensed trades, plumbing, electricity, and HVAC, where they aren’t moving into dominant positions, and even in those you will see Hispanics making inroads.
If I asked you to close your eyes and imagine the face of a typical welfare recipient, would that face have fair skin or dark? I ask because I see that, there is a racial component to the bitterness and confusion required to become a middle class stooge of a monied elite that has nothing but contempt for you. Is there some family lore you could share about some ancestor having been cheated or abused by some dark skinned person, or by racial quotas? We are making real progress here. Please keep going.
The fact that people enter the country seeking such jobs is not evidence of anything in terms of how many such jobs are available.
Since you’re so sharp-eyed, perhaps you have seen numbers of Hispanics hanging around places where day laborers congregate well into the afternoon. There aren’t enough jobs for them, either.
Meanwhile, the link explains that fraud in welfare is about 3%. Let’s, for the sake of argument, say the rate is actually 10 times that. That would mean you advocate taking the aid away from 70 deserving recipients to punish the 30 who are cheating.
What kind of allegedly “human” being takes that position?
“What kind of allegedly “human” being takes that position?” Carl Jung would say that it is a person conditioned by the enlightenment to pursue a smaller and smaller circle of concern. Whereas once we had a national circle, then community of concern, we are now down to the individual and his immediate family being the only real units of social concern.
The odd thing about a specimen like Dana is that he has adopted this one narrow precept of enlightenment thinking.
@Geezer “What kind of allegedly “human” being takes that position?”
I’m guessing he’d be against it even if there was zero fraud. The fraud claim seems to be just an lame excuse.
It is a mechanism for dealing with the cognitive dissonance.
A: I am a good person.
B: A good person would not vilify the poor and add to their suffering.
C: These people are not really poor and/or really suffering.
“C: These people are not really poor and/or really suffering.”
Which is why assholes like John Stossel strut around demonizing poor people for having the unmitigated gall to have TV sets and air conditioners while on government assistance.