How do you predict Romney's latest remarks that 47% of Americans rely on government and pay zero income taxes will affect his campaign?

”...it’s always going to be shocking to watch a presidential candidate for what’s supposed to be a mainstream political party call nearly half the country freeloaders and treat housing, food and health-care programs as the ridiculous demands of entitled parasites.”
I read that this morning, and I thought it couldn’t possibly sum up my own reaction any better. I would love to say that it will have a profound effect on his campaign, but I don’t believe that is the case. I bet there are plenty of people who will hear that and emphatically agree, not much of a deterrent.

It’s consistent with his constituent’s belief system. Republicans have been saying similar things for years. That doesn’t make it true, but if you say a number over and over, people begin to believe it is correct.

That specific part of the schtick is nothing new from Republicans. They’ve been spouting that line (which is false btw, when you take payroll tax into account the number drops to around 18%) for years.

The harder implications is that he sounded very much like someone who doesn’t care about those poor people. He basically labeled them all as free loaders and wastes of life, just mooching off the system. While that may be true for some of them, most of those people on the lower rungs are working very hard to just eek out a living.

Many of those people may have already been voting Obama, but this may have the effect of motivating them to turnout or help the Obama campaign. It may also switch some undecideds in those economic brackets into Obama’s column (though I think that effect will be much smaller).

In reality, we won’t know whether this will be a lasting issue until next week. If we’re still talking about it then, then it hurt Mittens’ campaign.

I always want to know if the 47% includes 5 year olds? Are they counting all Americans? Or, all income earning Americans? Or, all adult Americans?

All that means is that Romney expects to win by 53%. Very few people are undecided. In the U.S. about 22% are hard-core far right, there are an additional 20% or so that will vote for a Republican over a democrat, no matter what.

On the left there is a wide ranging “herd of cats” that are far left and ranging to moderate that will always vote democrat or Green Party.

The vote will be split between Republican, Democrat, Libertarians and Independents that could vote for either side.Mitt’s 5–7% figures a probably accurate on that group.

Personally, I don’t think it matters how you vote because the neo-cons have got stealing elections down to a science. They have successfully limited the voting democrats in 26 states (mine included) and they have control of the computerized voting machines. Exit polls in the last election showed that discrepancy. I would bet that exit polls, this time, will show ever greater differences. I hate to say it but I believe that the election is effectively lost and the R&R robber barons will be our next regime and with corporate “personhood”, we have seen the last days of an American democratic republic. Next is a fascist dictator president. .

Like this guy wasn’t losing this election fast enough…

What’s funny to me is that a lot of those supposed 47% “freeloaders” are elderly people… a demographic that typically votes Republican.

The same can probably be said for a lot of working-class people who pay no fed. income tax (because they’re too poor) but who nonetheless pay payroll taxes. I wonder how they’ll like being called freeloaders and victim-dependents.

@JLeslie lol, those damn freeloading toddlers.

I just saw a clip from the fundraiser. I really don’t think Romney said anything horrible. He was talking about strategy to get elected. He said the independents will really matter, maybe he wanted to impress upon those people that being a little moderate on some issues might help? I don’t know.

If Obama said in a fundraiser….35% of the country is Evangelical white people, we can just ignore them, because they will never vote for me (I have no idea if that stat is accurate, I made it up for an example)...would we see it as any more than just a strategy talk?

I think the media took this video and twisted it, typical media bullshit.

How will if affect Romney’s campaign? Hopefully negatively (and it should if undecided voters are paying attention). I highly doubt it’s the end though, this was a message targeted at his supporters, that is to say in the mind of his camp it’s what people at this particular fundraiser expect to hear. I doubt it will have much push on Republicans, in fact I suspect they’ll likely either agree or rationalize it sufficiently to support it, and of course he’ll claim it was taken out of context or poorly worded as if it that was somehow a viable excuse.

However “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax… my job is not to worry about those people. (Source, WP fact check) sounds pretty clear to me. With luck, to undecided voters it will only serve to support his “out of touch” and “against the poor” images.

@JLeslie, you don’t think it’s horrible to lie about (or ignorantly mistate) the actual tax burden of nearly half of the country’s citizens, and to characterize nearly half the country as parasites?

I think the statement is sociopathic and reflects the worst of the Republican party. This coming from a guy who had to subside in college by “selling his parents’ stock” and who won’t release his own tax returns.

He’s a bastard.

@Qingu I think it is very sad that so many educated people, including politicians accept statistics just as they are sold to them with no question. The ignorance and stupidity is unbelievable! I questioned the stat in my first response. I actually read a little more and it does seem they say all Americans, which would include 5 year olds. So, yes it bothers me that statistics are thrown around without questioning them and used to create hate and fear in the country.

The other stat that bothers me is one I mentioned recently on another Q about the top 10% of the country paying 80% of the taxes. What I pointed out was we have to know if they are earning 80% of the income before we say it is unfair. People are stupid, what can I say. The 80% example was written on my facebook by a facebook friend of mine (the father of a very dear friend of mine) the guy is a Republican and an Engineer! Engineer, you would think he would analyze numbers more, but no. He is actually fairly moderate to liberal on social issues, so he is not some mindless right winger going along with the church. When I pointed out that the stat means nothing without the other piece of earned income info, he said the stats don’t matter we just have to get rid of Obama.

It bothers me lies are told, and bad statistics are just accepted. But, do you think Romney believes the statistic? I think he does.

Theoretically, now that it’s September, more people are paying attention to the campaigns. So the news now will get to many people who are just tuning in. People who are in the 47% will probably be pissed off, and that may motivate them to make a greater effort to vote, since they may fear their benefits will be cut if Romney is elected.

For those in the 53%, independents who understand the beneficial role of government in helping people get on their feet when they don’t have a job will have it reinforced that Romney believes there should be no public help of those in trouble. They should turn to Obama, if they understand the message of the Democratic convention that we are all in this together.

Wealthy liberals, of course, will shake their heads dolefully, and reach into their pockets to give more money to Democrats. They may give more in Congressional campaigns, which is where our attention should turn now. I would expect to see a bump in fundraising for Democrats in tight races.

I think it will increase the dismay within the Republican ranks. It will make them less likely to want to spend more money, especially now that it looks pretty clear Romney has lost. It will make it harder for Romney to raise money from now on. We may see more evidence of infighting. Romney may even fire his campaign staff. Hmm. I’m not sure if I remember right, but didn’t McCain do that, too?

From the choice of Ryan to the radical right wing rhetoric of the campaign, it seems like Romney has learned nothing from McCain’s example. The next big thing, barring more unexpected news, will be the debates. Romney has been preparing like crazy. But one has to wonder—with gaffs like this, is there any way he can muzzle himself in a debate without seeming like a stiff?

My prediction? First debate—Romney will look overprepared and unnatural. Second debate, he’ll let loose and shoot himself in the foot. Third debate…. oh who cares. It’ll be over by then.

Worst case, it shows that he is a snob, rich, elitist completely out of touch. Best case scenario is it shows he is truly ignorant of tax law and demographics. The man is seriously ‘dis-ing’ his red states that traditionally support him, in actual fact. http://taxfoundation.org:81/sites/taxfoundation.org/files/UserFiles/Image/Fiscal%20Facts/20100524-229-nonpayers-map-.jpg

Here is the pie chart that Romney was so inelegantly misinterpreting.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/09/17/who_doesn_t_pay_taxes_.html

@JLeslie, here’s the breakdown, per a blogger I like:

Of the 47% of Americans who pay no federal income taxes:

28%: do pay payroll taxes
10% are elderly
7% are non-elderly but make less than $20k

So it’s just complete bullshit. It’s bullshit that every single one of these 47% is “dependent” on government—most pay payroll taxes. It’s bullshit that every single one of these 47% are Obama voters—many are obviously Republicans.

And it’s bullshit that a man who was born into utter privilege, who lived off his daddy’s stock options, and who pays less than many middle-class families in taxes for the 1 year he actually released his returns and who knows how little he paid during the rest—would speak so condescendingly about the tax burdens of nearly half the country’s citizens.

@Qingu What does that 28% number mean?

@Qingu And speak so condescendingly about “handouts”. What is his entire legacy (financial and political) but a handout? Would he have any of what he has if he were born to a different father?

I wonder how much money Romney has gotten from the Federal government due to tax handouts breaks?

@JLeslie, most working people pay payroll taxes, which your employer takes out of your paycheck. They pay for social security and Medicare (which, together, make up most of the US government’s budget responsibilities). On top of that, there are state taxes that come out of your paycheck, and of course everyone pays sales taxes.

So the point is that these people still pay significant taxes, even if they don’t pay federal income taxes. Federal income taxes are just one part of a person’s total tax burden.

Most have already decided. Many decided years ago, before Romney was even nominated. I don’t see this changing anything.

@Qingu Oh, ok, so they are talking about medicare and social security. I wanted to make sure it was not talking about income taxes that are taken out, but later refunded in April. People seem to be easily duped about payroll tax withdrawals, all excited they get a refund, not realizing you pay tue same amount in the end no matter what. Not you, I just am talking about stats and language being thrown around. State taxes are a separate issue of course, and sales tax we all pay, the poor disproportionately, so I agree with you on all that.

The EIC is not even mentioned, where basically the poor get extra money at tax time, it’s welfare in the end. Not that I am against it per se. You probably have seen that my big gripe is with low wages in the first place.

Michael Bloomberg thinks everyone should pay taxes, even if it is just $1, so they are contributing to the country and the tax base.

I still say he was talking strategy. People who identify with paying federal income taxes, and those who are in the lower tax brackets or who are not paying taxes.

I don’t know, statements like this seem to go beyond just media-made headlines; he’s intentionally mischaracterizing at least large chunk of the population (based on Some 44 percent of those who do not pay income taxes are because they benefit from tax benefits aimed at the elderly, while another 30 percent benefit from tax credits for children or for the working poor, according to a paper published by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.) speaking erroneously to their views, and stating that his job “is not to worry about those people.” scarier since some percent of those are very likely Republican voters. Yes it’s a strategic statement, and that last part is strategically correct to an extent, but gaining support (and possibly obligation) though such remarks should concern everyone including his supporters. Clearly it doesn’t since it seems more and more the foundation of politics.

Bloomberg is a tool. I can’t stand this obsession with moral hazard and “skin in the game” that conservatives and privileged super-wealthy people like Bloomberg have. As if poor people would somehow care more about their country and try harder to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps if they had to waste their time paying a dollar to Uncle Sam.

And implicit in all this is the idea that the market is this neutral and objective arbiter, sort of like God. That wealthy people are successful because they objectively deserve it, and poor people are poor because they’re not trying hard enough. This is how people like Bloomberg and Romney look at themselves in the mirror—they live under the delusion that they have somehow “earned” their vast wealth in a vacuum, as a just and moral reward for their hard work and gumption—rather than by relying on a vast infrastructure of class privilege and (in Romney’s case) outright aristocracy.

Since this statement is something that the Republicans already believe, it will probably not do him any harm. The Republicans already have the idea that they are better than the average American & that they are far better than the Americans who live in poverty. Personally, I cannot envision how anyone who actually works for a living could identify with the Republicans. I am a senior citizen, & to me it appears that Romney is a sociopath who has no empathy or compassion for the average American – his only goal is wealth & power. I can only hope that this tape of him expressing his total disregard of half of Americas peope might anger enough people to actually go out & vote.

@Linda_Owl, I think a challenge (for Obama’s campaign) will be to show that many independents and Republicans are part of the hated 47% percent of supposed moochers.

@Qingu I have never heard Bloomberg state such things. He certainly is not like the rest of the right wing. He believes strongly in education and public education, and of course he is liberal on many social issues. But, I didn’t want to get on a tangent about Bloomberg really.

I don’t remember where you live, but I can tell you the right wing has a warped perspective because so many live down here in the south. There simply are too many examples of people working the system, having numerous babies, generations of government dependent people. Don’t get me wrong, I partly blame the right wing thinking for keeping these people poor. Everything from not giving a shit about their education to the pro-life movement. I also think the whole pull yourself up by your bootstraps is pie in the sky for the most part. People need a leg up, a break, some help, and opportunity, and to be treated fairly. And, I don’t think the majority of people are working the system, I think it is a minority, but you witness it too often here, so it makes an impact.

Bloomberg is a social liberal (he has to be in New York) but his economic views line right up with the plutocratic wing of the Republican party. His political base is Wall Street—like not in the metaphorical sense, literally Wall Street in New York. So while I appreciate that he doesn’t despise gays and Muslims, screw him nevertheless.

As for people working the system, I find the alleged “welfare queens” far less troubling than the people on top who work the system. People like Romney who literally make money simply by having money, but who nevertheless are able to engineer insanely low tax rates for themselves.

In general, every complex system, every ecology—economic, biological—whatever, has “cheaters.” It is a given that cheating should be minimized, but you have to prioritize, and there are different kinds of cheaters with different effects on the system. The Republicans’ obsession with the poor cheaters is, I think, a direct descendent of flat-out racism. “The blacks are taking my money with their welfare.” Maybe modern conservatives don’t actually think of it this way anymore because it’s become so coded, but that’s the ancestor.

@Qingu I have to agree that the rich working the system disgusts me more than the poor. I also agree there will always be a percentage of people working the system. I also agree there are racist undertones.

I was talking to an acquaintance and she got on the topic of multiple babies born out of wedlock, using the system, and she said it was mostly the blacks, and I said everyone I know personally in Memphis who has unwed babies or teenagers with babies are white. That is a fact. At work I saw it with our black patients, but friends of mine, or acquaintances with grandchildren because their unwed children got pregnant—all white. The irony is the same woman, her daughter had a baby out of wedlock in her early 20’s (the father is a total loser who has impregnanted 5 girls, but she was the first not willing to abort supposedly) and the child has some developmental problems and is of course getting help through the state. She had said during the conversation she is one to talk, so she knows she sounds like an idiot having her own daughter in the same predicament, but she still had it in her mind it is the black people making most of the bad decisions on that front.

I think it is an example of how people can be doing something exactly the same as the people they criticize, but still see themselves differently. A very close friend of my neighbor is one of those right wingers, hating government, taxation, and even that social security is taken from her paycheck. When her husband died rather suddenly, she found herself at the social services office seeing what help she could get. Another person I know is pro-life, but when the baby they had desperately wanted wound up to have no brain in utero, they wanted it removed ASAP. Can’t get the baby aborted here past 14 weeks, so she had to travel 2.5 hours away to a different city and state.

My whole point with this is Romney, and the rght wing politicians in general, play to what their voters think they are, how they perceive themselves, good, christian, self reliant people.

This 47% spin Lie has been a mainstay GOP talking point for over a year. It is true that 47% of Americans now do not pay Federal Income Taxes. It used to be about 35% but thanks to the GOP’s ideology driven wrong-headed handling of the economy, George Bush’s Great Recession drove it up to 47%.

Who are these people, and are they, as Romney said, hopelessly dependent on the government and disinterested in working? Well, they are retirees. They are the working poor who make under $20,000 a year. You do not start paying Federal Income Taxes till you earn more than $20K in adjusted gross income. They are students who are in college and if working at all, only working in the summer or part time. They are the masses that Bush’s failed economic policies threw into long-term unemployment. They are people who are disabled and truly cannot work. And there is a small percentage among them who actually are deadbeats and will ride the Welfare Bus for the 5 years they are allowed to stay on it before workfare kicks in.

Now, where are Romney and the GOP talking point’s litany of lies in this? First, it’s absurd to say these people pay “no taxes.” They pay FICA withholding tax to the Federal Government. In addition, they pay sales tax, gasoline excise taxes, excise taxes on alcohol if they drink, on tobacco if they use it. They pay property taxes if they own housing and through a portion of their rent if they live in rented housing. They pay taxes to their state in the form of licensing and registration fees if they own a car. They pay their city in fees tacked on to basic city services. The truth is that most of the working poor pay a far greater percent of their income in taxes than multimillionaires pay. Most certainly pay more than Mitt Romney pays as a percent of income.

And yet the GOP largely believes exactly what Romney said. In the alternate, non-fact-based universe they inhabit, only the 53% who pay federal income taxes are workers. Garbage collectors, sewer cleaners, guys that pick up their litter for them to keep their parks clean and maids that sponge their crap out of their fancy hotel toilets are just lazy bums sucking off the public teat. When they were pushing their “47% pay no taxes” Big Lie last year, they actually coined the slogan, “We are the 53%.”

How “Christian” or in this case, “Mormon”. Help yourself. The poor got what’s coming to them.

I don’t see what’s wrong with entitlements. I have paid Social Security all of my working life (so far that’s 50 years). I have paid the Medicare deduction since its inception. I AM ENTITLED to those benefits because I damn well paid for them! I am getting extremely tired of people calling me a freeloader or future freeloader. I haven’t applied for SS yet but I expect to get the max when I finally apply and there is nothing wrong with accepting insurance benefits for which you paid.

People drawing unemployment deserve it because they have been paying for it on every paycheck. People are still on the Welfare to Work program. Most would like jobs but entry level jobs and even jobs for experienced people are rare. So what should they do, cancel their benefits and live in the street?

Too many people worry about what other people have and don’t attention to what they should be doing. Right wing Christians, especially, seem much more concerned with increasing laws that put people in jail than increasing opportunities to put people to work. I can’t understand the Christian that urges their lawmaker to stop state and federal projects that put people to work. Seems very un-Christian to me!

@Ron C You deserve your SSI because you’ve paid in and worked for those benefits. The problem is all the people who want to sit around in low-income housing that they $15 a month for while drinking and smoking pot and having child after child for the tax dollars and food stamps they’ll get. I know Liberals won’t usually admit it, but there is a lot of fraud perpetrated by people in the US as far as assistance programs. I’m with Mitt on this one, but then again I’ve worked hard since I was 12 yrs old so that may be the difference.

@KNOWITALL, what percentage of Americans do you believe fit your description of the pot-smoking welfare moochers?

@Jleslie “There simply are too many examples of people working the system, having numerous babies, generations of government dependent people.” And they seem to be doing so well with the leg up they already receive.

@cheebdragon, who is “they”? Can you quantify these statements in any way?

Maybe it’s just because I’ve never met one of these fabled welfare queens personally, but I’m not convinced that the problem is nearly as big as you guys are making it. Some data would sure be nice.

The statement will likely hurt him but not because there is anything wrong or erroneous in it. 47% do not pay federal income taxes. That’s true. He did not say that they were freeloader or worthless just that they would not be enticed by his plan to lower taxes. That makes sense, if you don’t pay then the rate won’t affect you. @Qingu‘s issue that they still pay other taxes is irrelevant since it is the income tax that Romney wants to lower.

I’m sure Obama will make a lot of hay with this with the aid of the media but I don’t think it will make a big difference. No more than Obama’s comment about ‘clinging to their guns and religion’. But it will give the liberals a lot of hoots and hollers.

@KNOWITALL social services definitely need reform in everything from funding, benefits, distribution, and fraud prevention. But listening to Republicans, I’ve seen nothing that wouldn’t inspire me to trust them to do it even if they paid me to. Short of funding the military, which they’re willing to do, and continuing to lower the recruiting bar (even though that’s the opposite of what we need) how exactly do they think these same people who are “living off government handouts and tax dollars” going to become more employable? Magic? Cutting benefits to incentivize work may be a good way forward if done carefully, however it can’t be done ham-fisted and it will require serious short and middle term spending increases because it must be done in conjunction with education, training, and placement of all the people who fall into the able-on-welfare category.

@Quinqu A lot more than you seem to think. When I have asked officials about this issue they say there is not enough manpower to investigate the fraud. I have seen several instances in my area of people not getting married and living together and having children so they can defraud the system. One just got caught because she accidentally forgot to list her parents address on some forms and lost her food stamps. They were drawing two seperate food stamp claims while living unmarried in the same house (my mother-in-laws rental) so together they had about $800 each for 2 adults and 2 children. The children were both on free school lunches as well.

Some of our friends kept inviting us over to eat until we found out they were on food stamps and that’s why they had so much more food than us, again unmarried with two children and the state didn’t know the boyfriend was living there. They also bought all new furniture and big screen tv with their income tax check and did that consistantly every year, some major purchase. It’s like Christmas in February around here for all the leeches.

The same girlfriends brother weighed over 300 lbs and had no children but was eligible for food stamps even though he continually got fired or quit his jobs due to his own idiocy and addictions.

I can go on and on, but I think you will catch my drift from these true life examples. A lot of people here know how to do it and they do it very well.

@Jaxk, he didn’t say they were freeloaders in those words. He did say they were “dependent” and saw themselves as “victims.” Seems similar enough, but maybe there’s some nuance I’m missing.

And it’s true that Romney doesn’t want to lower these people’s taxes. In order for his tax plan to make arithmetical sense he needs to raise these people’s taxes. People like middle-class families with children who qualify for the earned-income and child tax credits, for example.

@Wondering Why Or like the rest of us, they can simply get off their arses and get a job. Even working at McDonalds or something would allow them to pay bills without govt assitance. It’s not about what they’re qualified to do with the people I referenced, it’s about being willing to work, instead of expecting checks each month for doing absolutely nothing and not even making attempts. I know it sounds harsh but it is reality, most are simply lazy and work the system for decades. This may sound nuts, but one of my best friends has been on govt assistance for years, she’s a great wife and mother and a good friend, but she has worked the system for so long she doesn’t even try to work. It offends me because I work very hard for what I have but she’s always got handouts from daddy then the govt. I know why they do it, but it doesn’t make it easy to take.

My mother is also disabled but works as much as she can (Missouri is a pay to work state) which is almost the max income allowed on disability. She hopes that even with terminal breast cancer she can be off of disability some day. That is the American spirit I long to see in my friend and others.

@KNOWITALL, your examples sound absolutely horrible… and completely unverified and circumstantial. I believe I asked for data, not anecdotes?

I actually think you’re being dishonest. You have these “friends,” who you refer to as “leeches,” who invite you over for dinner on their food stamps? Uh-huh.

I’d also love to hear how exactly you think people should “get off their asses and get a job” when there is 8% unemployment, 15% underemployment, and no job openings? I mean any jackass can tell unemployed people to “get a job.” What happens if you can’t get a job? Seriously—what do you think the government’s responsibilities are towards people who are not able to find employment and cannot support themselves?

@cheebdragon I am pretty sure all states have some form of welfare and medicaid available to residents, and of course federal policies are available to everyone. You want to simplify to handouts killing their spirit or something, but if you look at the poorest states in the country they are mostly the southern states, so maybe we should look at what is going on there? What are they doing differently that people are not getting ahead? Not able to pull themselves up? It is much more complicated than you want it to be, and I don’t have a simple clever answer for it either, just what I observe is most people in the middle and upper classes here where I live in the midsouth don’t give a shit about educating the poor urban kids, and they feel good about themselves paying stingy wages and then doing some sort of charity work for the poor.

A close friend, his mom was proud to give money to St. Jude’s every year (a fantastic research and medical center that I myself give money to) but she wouldn’t help her son pay for college. He never did finish. It’s culturally different than what I am accustomed to. I don’t know for sure if that affects poverty, but I think it does. Teens having babies seems to be a cultura thing too, and that makes it really hard to get out of poverty, or can throw you into it.

I ahve told this story before, my dad was very very poor as a kid. His education was good, had options in the public system to excell, and he went to college for free. Undergrad and for his PhD. All government subsidized. He has paid back in taxes probably hundreds of times the amount he took from the governemnt for his education. I don’t believe in everyone getting a college education, but I do believe in educating the population so they can be productive citizens, and if a poor person shows incredible promise academically, I certainly don’t want him unable to get a higher education, because his parents are poor.

@Qingu As I said above I think it is a small number that abuse social systems, but there is enough that it sticks with people, especially those who look for it. I have friends who worked with people who say things like, “I can’t work more hours, because then I can’t get my benefits.” I believe that sort of thing happens, especially if their earnings are close to what they make on piblic assistance, it is a tricky thing to set up the system so it won’t be abused. I go back to faulting low wages. People who work full time should not be living at such a low level. I also believe at @KNOWITALL about her friend, why would she lie? I’ll try to find some statistics.

@Quinqu Oh yeah why would I lie, why would I express disgust with my own friends to prove a point to an online stranger in an anonymous forum? Get real. I wrote earlier that there is no manpower here to investigate fraud, what do you want me to do, make up statistics so you can call me a liar again? Just live in your liberal utopia with your unicorns and ignore reality.

There are jobs here, McDonalds is always hiring and this is a college town.

http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/fraud-and-abuse

With such a huge array of handouts, the federal budget has become victim to large-scale fraud and abuse—that is, people taking government benefits to which they are not entitled. Just about every subsidy program suffers from fraud and abuse, and we illustrate the problems here with discussions of Medicare, Medicaid, housing programs, student aid, and farm subsidies. Losses to federal taxpayers from fraud, abuse, and other types of improper payments are in the ballpark of $100 billion a year or more.2

I don’t buy into this welfare queen bullsh*t. I’m not gonna get into the argument here again, because I’ve already had it with @KNOWITALL and a few others on another thread.

Suffice to say everytime I’ve had someone I know tell me about a “welfare queen” in the last 6 or so months, I’ve dug deeper and found out more about the person. Only to find they were incredibly deserving of the welfare they were getting, were working hard, my friend had exaggerated the story, etc, etc. It’s not worth arguing on here because nothing anyone can do will actually show me their personal stories, so I can’t affirm whether they are lying or exaggerating or simply ignorant of the facts, or if the fabled welfare queen really exists in their case.

I do want to point out that it is actually false that 47% pay no taxes. When you add payroll tax into that estimate, it drops to about 18% of the population… and that estimate is also including the elderly, who are retired, and the infirmed who can’t work.

The Cato institute is an extreme right-wing think tank, @KNOWITALL. Do you have a neutral source?

And I bet McDonalds is not always hiring in your college town. What town is it, and what McDonalds? I’ll check.

@tedd See, I thought we left it at an agree to disagree-type of respectful discourse after we discussed your mom and you schooling (see I remember you very well.) You may not buy into it but it’s not bs and I’m happy we’ll finally will have a President who will help the ones who help themselves and not the leeches and a lot of the rest of the voters in this country who work hard.

@Quinqo – Do your own research for God’s sakes, I’m trying to keep my job you know.
I’m in Springfield, MO, home of the liberal leeches.

@tedd But, social security is not the same as the taxes we pay in terms of tax bracket. We can’t say anyone gets away with paying zero tax, because almost everything is taxed, but as far as federal income tax, if we take out medicare and social security then is the statistic correct? That is what I wonder. I don’t think it is. Otherwise it is like a word game. What does federal tax actually mean? Ya know? If each side is defining it differently no stat is reliable.

@KNOWITALL Ok, let’s cut all the handouts. Now what. They just went from government supported and unemployed to unemployed. What percentage do you think are going to find jobs, with sufficient hours and pay, quickly enough to pay their rent?

You’re friend is a fine example, how much of a job market is out there for her that she actually has reliable access to? Can she get a job in 30 days, 60?, 90? Care to put some odds to that? How about when everyone in her shoes is competing for those same jobs? What happens if she can’t get a job or one that doesn’t pay the bills? And let’s not forget until the job market picks up your going to continue to see people who wouldn’t normally compete with her going after those same jobs. Sure they’ll move on as things get better, but I’m not hearing a lot of “waiting around” in Republican rhetoric.

There are people who live off welfare. They see no reason to work because the checks they receive from the government give them the basics and then some if they learn to work the system. I’ve got no problem whatsoever cutting people off. But if you do it suddenly, and without providing sufficient means to ensure their employment and employability you’re just trading one problem for another. Same with addressing fraud. I’ve no issue clamping down hard on fraud, but if you do it without making false positive resolution very easy and very quick it’s simple to see how this can be a problem if not done carefully.

You say “There are jobs here, McDonalds is always hiring and this is a college town.” Perhaps that’s true there, but it’s hardly true everywhere, and to top it off how many people is McDonalds hiring? Two? Four?

To quote Romney from the source of the OP statement “Fifty percent of kids coming out of school can’t get a job. Fifty percent. Fifty percent of the kids in high school in our 50 largest cities won’t graduate from high school. What’re they gonna do?” Besides the fact he’s counting underemployment as “cant’ get a job”, what is it cutting benefits is going to do for them? Particularly if McDonalds isn’t hiring?

@KNOWITALL I’m pretty sure we’ll have a president Barack Obama :).

Doubtful tedd, but you can ‘hope’ of course.

Oh WW, most of our job losses were in the construction industry and hospitality, our office jobs and manual labor are still doing decent and here most are willing to train. So do it slowly, but do it, cut them off A-D, E-G, something to get it started.

@KNOWITALL, sounds like you agree with Obama’s policies.

Um, not at all. That was a pretty low blow Quinqu and nothing I have said sounds like anything that dingbat would say.

Obama has consistently supported job retraining programs.

Or maybe I misread you, and you believe the private sector will magically invest in retraining in a depressed economy. If that’s the case then I apologize.

@KNOWITALL You aren’t really accounting for the working poor. An embarrassment for the country in my opinion. Anyone who works an honest days work 5 das a week should be able to live on the earnings in a reasonably safe neighborhood. Not the case in most of our country. Even for a single person, forget a family. We take the dignity away from our labor by paying them crap. Not all businesses, some pay decently, but many don’t, and they overwork the employees who do work for them, especially now when unemployment is high, because they know people are desperate for work. It lacks integrity.

@KNOWITALL

Just to help support your case here’s an easy example of fraud by federal workers to get additional benefits. If it is this easy to defraud the government systems, it is hard to believe it is not widespread. The problem is that our government simply doesn’t look for fraud so the abuse gets widespread. As it says in the article, the government uses the ‘Honor System’.

@JLeslie Only five? I barely keep my head above water and I do >40/wk. Two of the guys in my shop are still on food stamps. And since access to contraception and prenatal healthcare are privileges, poor people aren’t even allowed to have sex. But so long as Romney pays a smaller percentage of his income in taxes than I do, that is allegedly okay.

@Jaxk Investigation and enforcement requires money and people. Neither you nor I want bigger, more expensive government.

@jerv 40. I said an honest days work 5 days a week. That would be 40 hours.

This is the part that really pisses me off… “I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

All of the other stuff can be ‘reasonably’ defended (typical political spin bullshit), but that particular statement shows just what an asshole Romney really is.

Personal responsiblity is what this country was founded on and why people like me vote Republican, do you think all the pioneers relied on govt handouts? They sank or swam on their own. It’s ridiculous that our country is so lacking in the spirit that once made this country great. What a shame.

Instead of relying on my SSI, I have a 401k that I pay in to while working my job, paying all household bills and paying back $300+ a month in medical for my husband who is unable to work. You tell me who’s going to make sure I have a roof over my head or food on my table if I didn’t work…..I’m not waiting on BHO to pay anything of mine, nor do I think he would. I am the working poor and I’m dam% proud of it.

@quingo Yes, I believe Americans want to help other Americans. Every job I’ve had has had special training and special computer systems, it’s not what you learn in college, it’s your ability to learn now.

@KNOWITALL I’m not saying that personal responsibility shouldn’t be encouraged, or isn’t something to be proud of… I’m just saying, how fucking dare he imply that these people don’t have it, and don’t ‘care for their lives’. So condescending, and utter bullshit to boot.

Sorry, I disagree. You can’t have it both ways. If I lose my house it will be for me not working hard enough to pay my bills. Help is one thing, especially for the working poor. As I said earlier, my mother (who was a single mom all my life) with terminal cancer can work, so lame excuses will not sway me. My husband took a job making about $10 less per hour than his previous construction job to pay the bills, and he did it gladly. I just don’t buy the victim mentality or that the world owes me jack, it’s not my reality or Romney’s apparently. To me it’s called common sense not condescending bs, sorry.

Sorry if I offended you Augustian, I gotta go. Message me privately if you want to discuss more. Thx.

I’ll tell you what, @KNOWITALL… here’s my story. See what you think:

My husband has worked hard, all his life. A blue collar worker in a physically demanding job, who worked his way up into management. He is about to turn 54 years old. In the last four years, he has been laid off 4 times, because his industry is particularly hard hit in a bad economy. As of today, he has been unemployed for 13 months, and has been trying to find a job for all that time. Thank goodness, he is able to receive unemployment benefits, or we’d have lost our home by now. By the way, the payments he receives are far less than half of what he made while employed. It is the maximum amount allowable, and nowhere near enough.

I am 45, and started working when I was 14 years old, and have paid my own way since I was 15, including paying my (poor, single) mother rent while I still lived at home. After working for 15 years, I took 14 years to be a stay at home mother to my three children, during which time I developed several chronic illnesses, including kidney disease. Fast forward a few years… I end up divorced and back in the workforce again. Had to have major surgery and was let go from my job because of it.

Re-married by now, I then spent the next 2 years looking for a job, and could not even get an interview, let alone a job… not even for a cashier’s position at Walmart. (I had been an office manager, but couldn’t get an interview anywhere, for any job.) Finally, I was lucky enough to work my way up to being the community manager here at Fluther. As an independent contractor, I had no access to health insurance. Prior to “Obamacare”, no insurance company would touch me, not for any price. I finally have health insurance again, for the first time in 8 years, thanks to the PCIP. It costs me ~$250 a month, but is still better than my medical expenses while uninsured. Just one of the Rx medications I take (and I take a shitload of them) costs over $300 a month.

I have just had my salary cut by 90%, through no fault of my own. I am not eligible for unemployment benefits. I am now scrambling to find work, again. We’ve already gone through our meager savings. Meanwhile, we cannot pay our bills.

Do you honestly think we are lacking in personal responsibility, or do not ‘care for our lives’? Do you not see how many other people can be in this same situation?

BTW, I’m not offended, I just think you are truly clueless that stories such as mine are not at all rare.

@KNOWITALL, but you’re simply incorrect. You may personally know about a few jobs that offer training, but with the labor market is there are no incentives to do so in a broad sense. Employers can simply be picky and demand the requisite skills—there’s plenty of qualified unemployed people out there.

And this applies to pretty much everything you’ve said on here. It all seems to be based on personal anecdotes and gut feelings. No data, no stats. When challenged, you seemed to have frantically googled and then simply cited the first right-wing source you found. What do you think this says about your worldview?

@JLeslie Five 8-hour days is the theory. I pulled a 17-hour shift last week, had to do a couple of hours Saturday, and racked up another 2½ hours OT yesterday. Still less than the five 10+ hour shifts I used to work in a warehouse, or the rolling shift schedule at the paper mill that had me work 7 days at a stretch and having my 8-hour shift go to 12 hours if either of the people on the other shift were out. Rarely in my life have I worked a normal 40-hour week.

@KNOWITALL So, we are responsible for making our own jobs because the rich people who were supposed to take that extra money and invest it to create jobs didn’t do their job? Not everybody can be an entrepreneur, just as not everybody can be a CNC machinist.
It’s my fault that I was unemployed for 13 months despite going after every job I was able to find because I was literally the thousandth person to apply for a single position? Sorry, but if you want to play that “personal responsibility” angle then you have to blame them as well. You can’t have it both ways either. You also have to realize that there is more to reality than myopic idealism.
I agree with you insofar as I feel people should work for luxuries, but I do not consider food, or health to be “luxury items”, especially not since our healthcare costs far more than anywhere else in the world yet is worse than even some Third-world nations. I do not believe in handouts, but I believe in a hand up. If you seek to deprive people who are perfectly willing to work of the things they need to do so, then you are just sadistic. Or a Republican; hard to tell the difference these days :/ What’s even worse is when those words come from a hypocrite like Romney.

By the way, the pioneers did receive government handouts.

And in any case, I doubt you’re being sincere. I doubt you want to go back to the period of American history without social security, Medicare, or unemployment insurance. I think it’s very easy to say that, when you have a job and savings. It’s easy to call people who are less fortunate than you “lazy.” And it must feel good, too. It reinforces the fiction that you’ve earned everything you have all on your own, by your own hard work, without relying on others or on the government. But like I said, I’m sure there’s a part of you that realizes this is all bullshit.

@Qingu ~ Don’t you know that having to sell some of your stocks to stay in college is so much worse than having to not eat for four days in order to avoid eviction? That deciding between vacationing in Paris or Bermuda is a more difficult decision than choosing between keeping your electricity on or seeking medical attention for that broken hand? It’s tough at the top!

I was wondering; What this 47% comment fiasco Romney’s ‘Let them eat cake!’ moment?

@KNOWITALL I am glad to know that you personally feel that a large percentage of the Republican base are feckless parasites. Or were you unaware that most of the states that voted for McCain in 2008 were the poorest states in the nation, solidly Republican, and home to the highest percentage of those who pay no Federal Income Tax.

@KNOWITALL Ponder this. You mention 401k’s and SS. Well, you have to pay into SS to get the benefit. You have to work a minimum of 40 quarters (so basically 10 years) or be married to someone who has, to get the benefit, it is not a “free” handout. You have a 401k and that is great, but let’s hope you don’t live longer than you expect after retirement and run out of money. A really big percentage of America has no savings or is in debt. I am talking about Americans who do make decent salaries, but choose to overspend. They need a government that forces them to put money aside in my opinion, because they are not future oriented, and I don’t feel like seeing them out on the street when they are 80, and I don’t want to have to pay for them as a tax payer when they literally have zero money, because they sucked at financial planning.

Self employed people don’t have a company offering a 401k. The self employed plumber or electrician or pick any profession has to decide to put money aside in an IRA, or use other tax shelters that they don’t easily necessarily know about, it doesn’t feel as compulsory as a 401k as when you work for a company (even though it is not required of course). I am talking here again about people who actually have means, not the poor or the disabled. Athough, the poor and disabled also have to pay into the system to receive social security specifically. What are we going to do, let everyone save for themselves and then when they run out of cash when they are elderly just turn our backs and wait for them to drop dead? Americans have proven to not be very good at saving and sacrificing for the future. Republicans and Democrats.

@jerv I realize many people work more than 40 hours, I did when I worked in retail. My only point was someone who works a minimum of 40 should be able to live.

Worst case, it shows that he is a snob, rich, elitist completely out of touch. Best case scenario is it shows he is truly ignorant of tax law and demographics. The man is seriously ‘dis-ing’ his red states that traditionally support him, in actual fact. http://taxfoundation.org:81/sites/taxfoundation.org/files/UserFiles/Image/Fiscal%20Facts/20100524-229-nonpayers-map-.jpg
Here is the pie chart that Romney was so inelegantly misinterpreting, as @ETpro mentioned.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/09/17/who_doesn_t_pay_taxes_.html

@cazzie Thing is Republicans lower class, middle, and upper, say the same stat. I don’t think they perceive it as a snob’s statement.

@Jleslie, exactly. But he is seriously dissing them. In my mind, he is saying, ‘let them eat cake’ in many ways.

@cazzie I understand. My point is, facts don’t matter, and the red states don’t feel dissed. I know a lot of democrats who are saying Romney has screwed himself now, because the working class Republican will feel offended. I don’t think they feel offended. If he offended some democrats, so?

Man this is worse than “let them eat cake.” Antoinette’s sin in saying that was naivety; her royal privilege blinded her to the fact that a luxury good like brioche is even more unobtainable than bread for poor people. At least the princess was trying to be empathetic.

If Antoinette had said “They’re out of bread? Well fuck them, moochers—not my problem!” then it would be a more apt comparison to what Romney said.

@JLeslie Understood. And my point is that there is a difference between “should be” and “is” that the idealistic/delusional amongst it’s are utterly incapable of understanding. Those who understand that difference rarely vote Republican.

@cazzie If we were talking about sane, rational, educated people then you would be correct. But we are talking about people who are blinded by either ignorance or ideology, and are thus incapable of being offended by anybody who had a chance to remove a Democrat from office, especially a Kenyan Muslim.
So long as you think those people care about facts and fail to understand that they consider logic and truth to be tools of elitists who hate God and America, you’re going to have difficulty understanding the base of the current iteration of the Republican party.

@KNOWITALL ” I’m happy we’ll finally will have a President who will help the ones who help themselves and not the leeches and a lot of the rest of the voters in this country who work hard”. Great, I’m going to vote for Obama too.

@Ron_C Me three :)

@cazzie If there is one thing Mitt Romney is definitely NOT ignorant of, it is tax law. One of his friends and business associates quipped once that Romney is the only guy he knows who reads the Federal Tax Code at night for pleasure. Fact is, he is probably so woefully ignorant and out of touch on other matters precisely because he has spent so much of his life figuring out how to earn millions and pay no taxes.

BTW, CNN Money Reports that there are 4,000 Millionaires abd 14,000 with incomes between $500,000 and a million in that 47% who pay more taxes. Regardless of what lies Romney tells about his tax cut intentions, the truth is he wants to put a lot more high income earners into that 47% and remove a lot of the working poor by increasing their tax burden so he and his cronies at the Country Club can get a free ride.

@ETpro, I’ve always thought Romney, if nothing else, was very smart. But there are some odd and surprising gaps in his knowledge. A while ago, for example, he mentioned that he supported cold fusion in his energy policy and that people at the University of Utah had “solved that problem.” I think it’s entirely possible that he’s simply ignorant of the nature of the 47%. He seems to live in a bubble and he’s certainly deluded about a number of other important issues.

@Qingu Yeah, I think that is possible too. Most likely he does have a lot of knowledge about certain things, and not others, like all of us, and maybe he is trusting the wrong people to attain information about the topics he is more ignorant on. Maybe now listening to the people closest around him politcially, which canbe a big mistake, while previously he might have taken a more neutral way of doing research. He needs to kind of “cram” on national issues to get up to speed, maybe that is part of the problem? I don’t mean he is totally ignorant of the domestic issues, I only mean he must be getting drilled on various topics and what appeals to certain voters, etc.

I agree that Romney is far from stupid, just as I believe that GW Bush was fairly intelligent despite all of the jokes, but take it from somebody who studied Nuclear Propulsion; intelligent people tend to have blind spots, and that can make them dangerous even when they are not malicious. In fact, possibly moreso due to ego, as they won’t admit to any gaps in their knowledge.

@ETpro I am sure he knows the tax rules, as they pertain to him, but you can still be ignorant of how it applies to large blocks of working (or not working) joes.

@jerv If I know one sad, tragic fact about people, it is that they are stupid and irrational creatures that will always find new ways to disappoint and sadly surprise me. I am under no delusions of that fact. I never said people would understand they were being put down and dismissed as wasters.

Like I said yesterday, to me you’re simply not dealing with reality.

I work for the biggest media outlet in the world and I know they are picky but most people are too educated now.

I don’t have all day to Google or argue because I do have a job I’d like to keep. It’s unfortunate that so many of you don’t realize that some of us do it the old-fashioned way and work. I’ve never claimed unemployment, Medicare of SSI…although if I did, I will have worked for it. From all I’ve seen of my local welfare and food stamp systems, they’re broken.

Mitt to me was simply pointing that out to people like you, believe it or not, I think it was a call to reform.

I was just wondering, @KNOWITALL , could your make your tone any more condecending, dismissive or insulting in any way? (rhetorical question… I am absolutely positive it is within your power to do so.) I worked all day today too, never claimed unemployment, Medicare or SSI, but I never went to an office and applied for that fine high horse you have. Where did you get it?

@KNOWITALL, what call to reform? What reform, specifically, do you think Mitt Romney is proposing?

@KNOWITALL I’m not interested in arguing with you, I’m truly not. I would like your impressions on my “story” up there, though. I specifically posted it to give you an idea of what those in the 47% look like, and to show you that lack of personal responsibility and care for our lives is not the problem. What say you?

@KNOWITALL So how do you explain that all the poorest states with the largest percentage of these, to use Romney’s words—”...47 percent who are with him [Obama], who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it…”—these poorest states are all heavily Republican. And all the states with the least percentage of their population making up that 47% are heavily Democratic. Romney was insulting his own voters. Fortunately for him, most are so ideologically blinded they won’t know he insulted their integrity. They also are blind to the fact that their poverty shows how Republican trickle-down policies are a miserable failure.

Why can’t they see these obvious, glaring truths? The only explanation I can find is that their far-right-wing ideology has GOP supporters so blinded to anything going on in the fact based universe that any facts that disagree with their ideology are simply reversed. Democrats are the deadbeats Romney speaks of even though the truth is more Republicans are. And Romney is probably one of that 47% in the years in which he refuses to release his tax returns. Income tax and capital gains tax avoidance is, after all, why one goes through all the trouble of setting up off-shore bank accounts and dummy corporations that live in PO boxes located in off-shore tax havens.

@augustlan Because you are one of the only posters being semi-respectful and classy, I am happy to respond.

We all make choices for our lives, do we not? Some are wise, some are not, and sometimes we don’t look ahead into the possible consequences of our actions, which I think is the only problem I see in your story.

Your husband worked hard and paid into the system, so he deserves help imo. It’s the people who do not work and are using assistance to get through life when they are physically and mentally able to work that are at issue.

The only thing I’ll say is that it was YOUR CHOICE to stay home and raise your children and not work. Everyone knows that taking that time of, while beneficial to your children, is not good for someone’s resume. So you not being qualified is not a big surprise is it?

Technology changes constantly now, there’s no time for women to take that time off and I’m sorry it bit you in the bootie to do the ‘right’ thing for you and your family at that time.

I’m also sorry about your health, but I don’t know whether your choices for your own body were healthy or sedentry, I don’t know if you allowed yourself to balloon to 500lbs or not, etc…

Let me be honest with you, I chose not to have children, I chose instead to make a career with a 401k, I bust my arse to be good at what I do and make myself. I have been blessed with good health, although I have lost 25 lbs this year so I can feel healthier and not be on cholesterol pills (I hate pills!), exercising on my lunch hour, etc… I can’t say I feel sorry for you when you CHOSE to stay home and not work for 15 years, I was working and not having children all those years, which was my choice.

Good or bad, we’ve both made our beds, I am financially semi-stable (since my husband can’t work) but you are the one with the joys and love of children, only God knows which will work out better in the long-term. I hope you see that I’m not judging you I’m just being really honest with my perceptions of life choices.

@KNOWITALL As you can see, not all of us are deadbeats. I went to school to learn to be a CNC machinist; a skilled trade where demand is relatively high because the small number of people going in is less than the number of people retiring out while demand for machined goods is steady/rising. Was that a poor choice? I spent a few years in the Navy; was that also a poor choice? Until a couple of years ago, my income wasn’t enough to even think of a 401k, so was eating and paying rent instead of looking for handouts a poor choice? I got laid off and could not get back to work for 13 months despite being willing to take any job, even fast food. Was that a choice?

Yes, there are freeloaders and scammers. Yes, there are people who truly make bad decisions. But does that mean that everybody who isn’t well-off is lazy and/or foolish? Your tone implies that you feel it does, hence the hostility. Your last post is different from the others, and from the typical Republican party line in that you seem to acknowledge that some people are just caught up by circumstances beyond their control.

Tell me, how well-off would you be if a combination of medical bills, emergency car/house repairs, etcetera soaked up every penny you ever saved or invested? Would you have enough to retire on? If not, welcome to my world, and remember that I am far more fortunate than tens of millions of Americans. And when you look at the truly lazy and accuse us of being like like them because we are not more successful than them, we get resentful.

@KNOWITALL, out of curiosity, where did you go to college, and how did you afford to do so?

And I’m interested to know more about your husband. You say he can’t work. So you support him financially? How would he support himself if he was not married?

@jerv I’m not sure what you mean in that this post was different, possibly because I was trying to be nice? Um, I never think military service is a poor choice and I would have joined minus the bad eyesight, flat feet, etc…(that makes me sound real attractive doesn’t it? lol)

My husband was recently diagnosed with epilepsy with no medical explanations as to why. This is his second in his life, both were within 5 months of each other, requiring two months with no work and no pay, and six months of not driving (State law.)

I am currently paying back $1300 in unemployment overpayment since he claimed unemployment after the first seizure when he couldn’t work. I have $1500 left for his kidney stones (3x), I also have about $4k for his knee surgeries (3x). I pay a $700 mortgage, no car payments, $50 a month insurance, $200 a month groceries, $100 utilities, $70 water/sewer/trash, $50–100 JC Penney ($150 balance- no new charges), food for 2 dogs and 2 birds $30/month, Gas $60 (my economy car only)...that’s all I can think of now, plus my work pays the majority of my insurance, I also pay my husbands health, dental, vision, etc… Oh and my 401k is matched to 5% only, I put in 5% as well. My Gross is @ $1300 twice a month before deductions.

I feel very fortunate as well that I have a job, and a 401k and I haven’t lost my home. I’m not trying to imply anything by my tone…I’ve been hurting before and I probably will again. I do still think a lot of people commit fraud with assistance programs, but I don’t qualify for any because I make too much, it’s bs.

Quinqo I went to Missouri State, unfortunately I did not finish college because I was working in real estate making good money, and school did not hold my interest. On a positive note I have no student loans to repay! My bio-father’s child support and my family paid some as did I. I have worked at fairgrounds since age 12 (horse/dog shows concessions) and at 16 at movie theatre, 5 years chinese restaurant, then into real estate and so on…

I do support my husband financially at this point. If he was not married, I assume he would do as his brother has done, which is to live in mama’s rental…lol, I really have no idea since he’s a Republican as well. My mother is on disability so she is not in a position to help. We have sold several items, like a boat, a large John Deere tractor, a few of my husbands guns, my Wii and games…we do what it takes basically. Next I would sell my jewelry, my birds, his truck, and if necessary tap into my 401k (Loans are no penalty, cash outs you have to pay taxes on.)

@KNOWITALL Maybe that was it.

You and I are in similar circumstances, so I find it interesting that we seem to have such opposing views on certain things. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that those who work hard get fair compensation, that those who cannot work through no fault of their own are fed, sheltered, and given the tools they need to get back to work (bus passes if they have no car, steel-toed boots if needed, phones so they can get callbacks from prospective employers, etcetera). But many consider those to be “handouts” and therefore evil, and those who rely on them for survival to be deadbeats who deserve to starve and sicken on the streets.

FYI, when I say my situation is similar, I mean that my wife and I gross a bit more (dual-income is a good thing) but our rent is higher ($850; cheap for the area), gas to get to work runs me closer to $60/week, and we are still working off some debt we racked up during my unplanned “vacation”. We just moved a month before I lost a well-paying job (paying almost as much as my wife and I combined earn currently), thus any savings and sellable stuff had already been spent/sold by moving; what we have now are my car, a couple of computers, and two cats. And every time we manage to get a little ahead and stock up some savings, we get something like a blown transmission, ER visit, or something similar.

So, you and I are a lot alike yet very different. I am of the opinion that the vast majority of the people that are labelled “deadbeats” and “parasites” are actually hard-working people like you and I. That shapes my views on “entitlement” programs, as does a childhood that involved a mother not eating for days at a time so she could feed me, and spending part of a New England winter living in a panel truck. I feel that nobody should have to live like I spent the first 5 years of my life, which is why I cannot stand the way many Republicans speak of those under $100k/yr. It’s a really sore point with me.

@KNOWITALL I just want to point out that I am in no way unqualified. I got a job as an office manager easily when I was divorcing, but that was when the economy had not yet tanked. It was only later, in the bad economy that I could not get a job. The problem was not my qualifications… it was the hundreds of other people applying for all the same jobs. I mean, come on… how could I not be qualified to be a freaking cashier at Walmart, for goodness sake? My kidney disease is not something that my choices caused, it is an autoimmune disease that apparently has a genetic component. Not lifestyle related in the least.

So… exactly how did I bring this on myself? Sometimes bad shit happens for no reason, through no fault of your own. Do you really not get that?

@KNOWITALL I’m glad to hear you take a tone that gets to a personal level and doesn’t sound like party talking points. I suppose what infuriated me with Romney’s remarks about the 47% who play victim and expect the government to do everything for them is how absurdly false it is, and yet a whole room full of millionaires saw nothing wrong with it. Until just recently, my younger son was one of those 47% Romeny claims are feckless freeloaders. Was it because he is a lazy parasite? No, it was because he was deployed in combat in Afghanistan. Romney has no clue what most of the people in his 47% he won’t represent live like.

In fact, Mary Maitlin was out today to defend it, saying 53% of us are producers while 47% are parasites. My son wasn’t a parasite while he was deployed in a combat zone defending the country.

Then Romney claims Obama seeks to divide Americans while he is a uniter who wants to lift the poor. If that sort of crap tastes good to you, eat it up. I can’t swallow it. It stinks.

Relevant

@jerv Wow, is it ever!

@ETpro The irony will likely be lost on many (most?) Romney supporters.

By the way, I looked up what percentage of Americans are under 18. 23%!. Why are they being counted as tax payers or voters?

@JLeslie take another look at the pie chart. They aren’t counting the kids not working yet under 18. http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/09/17/who_doesn_t_pay_taxes_.html

@cazzie It still doesn’t make sense to me. They keep saying 150 million people don’t pay taxes. If 23% are under 18, that is about 75 million people right there. What category are you counting on the pie chart as the under 18 year olds?

wow… NO part of the pie chart I am linking to is unemployed, under 18 year olds.

they are, in fact, talking about ‘households’ not every individual in the country.
Here; this might help….

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxtopics/federal-taxes-households.cfm

@cazzie It might be that 47% of people who earn some sort of income don’t pay taxes, but that does not equate to the 150 million Americans number being thrown around from what I can tell. I feel like the statistics are not being well defined.

I don’t know who is saying 150 million and where that number comes from. Perhaps someone who works for the largest media outlet in the world might have some idea.

@Jerv Since I also grew up with a single mother who didn’t have a lot, I get it, and tbh that’s a big part of why I didn’t have children. I love them but I am not in a high enough income bracket to feel comfortable having a child, I will absolutely not let a child of mine grow up poor like I did. Even though I had all the love I could ask for it was still tough.

@augustian I was basing my answer on your ‘story’ above as you asked me to. Don’t chew on me for not being a mind-reader k? I know bad stuff happens, did you not see my husband had 3x kidney stones, 3x knee surgeries and 2 seizures this year? Listen before ragging me please.

@ETpro Our military should always be supported period. I have several military ties in our family (Marines) and have heard of a lot of people coming back to be unemployed, depressed, etc… My brother-in-law is struggling with PTSD and has almost lost everything in the last 2 years but hopefully this new job he got will work out.

@KNOWITALL I find it interesting that two of the people closest to you cannot support themselves—that your husband and presumably your mother would qualify as the 47% that Mitt Romney says are dependent and unwilling to take responsibility for themselves.

Let me ask you a question: what is a higher priority to you?
1. To prevent people from receiving social welfare benefits who don’t need them.
2. To prevent people like your husband and your mother from ending up destitute or dead on the street.

I think we agree that neither thing should happen; it’s how we prioritize them that’s at issue, and the issue of the current political debate.

@KNOWITALL I understand that you are saying that not having kids was your personal choice, based on your own circumstances, but try to imagine what America would look like if only people in higher income brackets could risk having children. That is not a free country.

@glacial Given the cost of contraception, even having sex would be a privilege.

@Quinqo My mother and my husband have both worked the majority of their lives, to me that’s a pretty big difference as opposed to a 17 yr old girl who refuses to work who gets food stamps with no children and could move home anytime. My husband was recently diagnosed with epilepsy and has never been in this position before, but I’m handling it.

As I have also mentioned repeatedly, my mother is on disability and pays to work, so she can feel good about herself and also to eventually (hopefully) get completely off of disability. I don’t hear many people doing that and am very proud of her.

My husband has rec’d no assistance except a little unemployment that we are currently having to pay back.

And frankly, I am happy to take responsiblity for both of them but until my mother can be convinced to move in with me I can’t claim her as a dependent or offer her insurance but if I could I would.

I find your statement as insulting as you apparently find Mr. Romney’s. My family will never be destitute or on the streets as long as I draw breath.

@glacial After all the child abuse and neglect, and sad poor children I’ve seen in my area, I am not convinced it would be a bad thing (a little 1984 perhaps though). Just today there’s a story of a 2 yr old in my area who overdosed on Oxycodone due to neglect.

@jerv PP and other community health clinics usually have free condoms available to all for no charge…lol

@KNOWITALL, your family is lucky to have you. But what if they didn’t have you? My point is that there are a lot of people in America who are like your husband and your mother. And not all of them are lucky enough to have a daughter or a wife who will financially support them. What do you think should happen to these people?

@KNOWITALL “After all the child abuse and neglect, and sad poor children I’ve seen in my area, I am not convinced it would be a bad thing”

I think this may be the most horrible thing I have seen anyone say on Fluther. You get that not all poor people are junkies and child abusers, right? So poor people don’t deserve to have children… meaning that poor children do not deserve to live. Thanks ever so much for that, because I was born to poor parents – who were neither junkies nor child abusers.

@glacial, not to mention that her statement applies to her own mother, too. She said that she was raised poor.

It’s almost funny that Republicans like @KNOWITALL don’t really seem to get that their anti-poor, anti-moochers talk often applies to them, or people close to them.

@glacial Gawd, she didn’t say that. She was only talking about the poor who are junkies and don’t care for their children, not that all poor people are junkies. But see, that is my point kind of. The Republican who believes himself tp be a stand up person, who works, but who doesn’t pay taxes, probably does not believe, or see themselves as being part of the 47% Romney speaks of, because they are not like “them.”

And, certainly there are addicts and shitty parents who are middle and upper class. But, I wonder in which class we more often see multiple children born to young or unwed mothers? I really don’t know the answer. I do know being a single parent when a baby is born is more likely to keep or throw a mother into poverty. Probably part of that stat is teenagers who would have been middle class with their parents still living under their roof, but then they have a baby and file for help as separate individuals, or something like that? I don’t know how that works. So, in a way they aren’t really thrust into poverty. Again, I am not sure how that exactly works.

@JLeslie I get that she was making a joke, but my point is that we are having a serious discussion about a presidential candidate’s disdain for the poor. When people say even partly in jest that the poor should not have the right to have children, it fosters the attitudes held by people like Romney for those who have less. It’s not ok.

I’m not so sure it was a joke, I was only saying she was not characterizing all poor people.

Personal, anecdotal evidence is not proof. Please stop. Ladies and gentleman, what do we call drawing conclusions about an entire group of people based on limited experiences or no experiences at all? That’s right! Prejudice and bigotry.

JLeslie is the only person here giving and getting respect. Rather than thanking me for giving you extremely personal information about my family and my finances in order to converse about an important issue, I am repeatedly attacked for simply having a different opinion than you. It’s embarassing and sad.

@Glacial I was only partially joking actually. I grew up poor, you grew up poor, if you could have chosen at a young age to be born to a mom with money, wouldn’t you have done so to be like the other kids, or have what the other kids had? Or not watch your mom go hungry so you could eat? Poor kids grow up faster, they learn that it really is about money sometimes when it comes to eating and shelter.

I have seen kids in 3 day old dirty diapers born to meth addicts, I bathed them at my house and one of the little girls had never even seen bath bubbles. Is that okay with you glacial? For goodness sakes, don’t you want better for the children of our country?

The violence and broken homes are not creating a safe environment, addictions are still rising…it’s not always about Obama or Romney, it’s about fixing what is broken. We will never find solutions that cross party lines with the pedantic arguments and attacks I’m seeing in this liberal forum. sad

@KNOWITALL, I asked this before and I never got an answer:

What solutions do you think Romney is offering, exactly?

How would Romney’s policies, for example, decrease the number of children raised by meth addicts?

And I never got an apology for your rudeness. I guess we’ll both keep waiting.

I’m sorry that I hurt your feelings.

@Qingu , @KNOWITALL drew and fired first. You are so sweet to apologise. I just watched this to remind myself… http://www.collegehumor.com/video/5817726/internet-bridge-troll Perhaps all she needs is a cup of coffee and a friend.

Thank you, I apologize if you miscontrued anything I said as criticism to the working poor or to anyone that is trying to support themselves, that was never my intent. I will private message you so I’m not constantly ridiculed for not being a liberal.

Cazzie, my statements are only inflammatory because this is a liberal forum with immature name-calling commenters. I am happy to go elsewhere where people actually discuss things like our US Ambassador in Libya and why Obama plans no retaliation, and you can get back to Q’s about relationships, shampoo and other important issues that everyone here seems to find so fascinating.

Obama plans no retaliation for the Libyan attack? There are drones hovering over Libya right now. Obama also vowed to bring the people responsible to justice. You are misinformed.

@KNOWITALL your statements are only inflammatory and mostly rhetorical because they are. I have had GREAT discussions with others with opinions that are antipodean from my own, but they were able to discuss things with much less personal bias and prejudice and built some wonderful friendships with those people because they understood something you don’t seem to; mutual respect. You use the word liberal as a pejorative. You referred to your president as a ‘dingbat’. You suggest that you side with Mitt Romney because you have been working hard all your life since you were 12 and that anyone one who doesn’t vote Republican would merrily live with their mother for the cushy life and anyone on welfare is lazy, pot-smoking reproducing for profit.

NOW, the OP is asking about the 47% gaff and we are trying to discuss that with actual facts. When @Qingu asked you to back up your folksy anecdotes with facts you simply told more personal stories. Then, you seemed offended that no one thanked you for sharing so much of your personal life with us. I guess you are new here and are anxious to share and make friends. I hope you do make friends and have cups of coffee. It is a pretty great group of people here,... if you can stand the liberals. (last comment, read sarcasm)

I now realise that you don’t hear the tone of your posts yourself and I will simply adjust how much note I take of you accordingly.

@KNOWITALL @Qingu I’m literally only jumping in to comment on Libya. The President definitely took action. US drones were over the entire area within hours. Two new US warships were deployed the next day to that specific area. And more than likely US special forces or secret services (CIA, etc) are following it very closely.

Direct retaliation against Libya and it’s new government would have been uncalled for and stupid. Libyan “troops” fought to keep protesters and attackers from reaching the US embassy, and they hid the majority of the US staff at a safe house and then later protected them from an attack by known terrorists. Some of those troops even died in the process. Going further than that they’ve already arrested 50 people in their investigation of the riots and attacks.

@KNOWITALL The GOP has been trying to de-fund PP for years. One of their recent arguments was that 90% of their funding went towards abortion services. The actual number is around 2%, but facts don’t get as many votes as hyperbole. And insurance is trying to get out of covering that stuff as well. That means access to low-cost/free contraception is increasingly limited.

On a personal note, I welcome dissenting opinions that are based on actual facts, but have a low tolerance for those who have an overly idealistic worldview that runs contrary to facts. Facts like drug use amongst welfare recipients in Florida was lower than that of general population, and the testing cost far more than was saved by kicking a few people out, thus making it a waste of taxpayer money. Many others here on Fluther have a similarly low threshold on our bullshit detectors; they prefer facts over feelings.

The facts are that most of the people that Republicans think are lazy are people like you and I. The facts are that the problems the Republicans say are caused by Democrats are more prevalent in states ruled by Republicans. The opinion is that those two facts indicate that the Republicans are wrong about many things.

Lastly, don’t take anything I say personally; I’m an asshole to everybody :p

Cazzie, ur so RIGHT!! Obama is God!!

And of COURSE he would retaliate with those unmanned drones that are ALWAYS flying over Libya.

And YES, I love to share my entire financial situation with rude online liberal commenters! If my only intention was to stir the pot, it didn’t make much since to make myself vulnerable and be honest did it?

Factual conversations about the 47% and yet no one has even mentioned the retraction…lol, what a joke.

And generalizations, sure all Reps think PP does radical 9 month abortions on premises…what is this, comedy hour?

I do love coffee though!!

Just remember that the President and Congress have these same issues and unless someone can give a little and we can communicate, none of us will help improve our country. I’m sorry I crashed your liberal GOP-bashing party.

The drones are always flying over Libya, and Obama commanded them to help hunt terrorists who attacked the consulate in Benghazi.

This has nothing to do with the question of course. I just wonder how it is you said something false with such confidence.

@KNOWITALL: You refer to 17 year olds who refuse to work and collect food stamps with no children. I am sorry to break this to you but people of that age and under those circumstances are the responsibility of their parents, at least in the state I work and live in (NY). Now granted, if the parents receive public assistance then it’s likely that the the 17 year old would be covered, but a 17 year old can’t just move out and get public assistance.

@Qingu Because we feel that after Obama’s ‘apology tour’ he won’t do anything.

@ica I legally moved out when I was 17 as do a lot of kids here, as long as you stay in school.

@KNOWITALL Simply using the phrase “apology tour” immediately drops your credibility in my book. Which is a shame because I have been holding you in a higher light than the other conservatives on here.

I know a number of engineers that went back to school to get their MBA’s. It seems that immediately after they get their diploma they lose I.Q. points for anything that doesn’t involve money. The fight R&D spending they lay-off people that we need and eventually bring back after a couple days. They try to downsize so much that the company suffers and eliminate inventory so that everything takes twice as long.

I have seen the “MBA” affect in industries as diverse as hospitals, paper mills, and manufacturing plants. The absolute worst thing that can happen to a factory is that it gets taken over by a vampire financing company like Bain. People are stripped of the jobs, portions are sold off without regard to the harm done to the base company. Then they load it with debt, pay themselves fabulous salaries and leave the remains to the flies and rats.

@tedd I’m certainly sorry you feel that way, but that is the way I feel. Other conservatives… where are they? Any in this forum have told me they no longer bother to even comment anymore because of the rudeness of replies. I’ve been honest, even if you think I’m wrong. I’ve been forthright with my feelings, even if I lack the statistics to back up every word because I am working a demanding job.

I’m not trying to make friends, I’m trying to bridge a gap in parties because neither Obama or Romney appeal to me. I’ve asked repeatedly for Libs to convince me that Obama is the hope for our country and you can see from the above posts what I get in return. I’m just sorry that our country is so extremely divided and unwilling to compromise or to promote understanding.

Again, if we as people are unable to converse respectfully, how can you expect the President and Congress to make any real progress when they get paid to stick to their party lines.

@KNOWITALL, what apology tour? You are referring to his speech in Cairo, in which he apologized not once? Calling it an apology tour is a ridiculous lie.

And I have to say, while I agree that we should try to treat each other respectfully, I think you need to grow some thicker skin. I don’t believe we’ve made personal attacks against you. What we have done is challenge your position and debunk your false statements.

In fact, I think this whining about disrespect is really just a cop-out so you don’t have to defend your positions.

@KNOWITALL I work a demanding job too, but I find a few seconds to hit Google. I appreciate you trying to bridge the gap, and wish more people would make the same effort.

Shit, back to work…

@KNOWITALL I’m not “ragging” you, I’m asking how you can determine that all of the 47% are in bad circumstances due to their own choices. How you conclude that they don’t have personal responsibility? Given that I, and your own family are examples, how can you judge all of the others? You seem to think that we are some kind of special exceptions, but I’m pretty sure we are actually the rule. The ‘freeloaders’ are the exception.

These are from your team:

Mr. Obama told the French (the French!) that America “has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive” toward Europe. In Prague, he said America has “a moral responsibility to act” on arms control because only the U.S. had “used a nuclear weapon.” In London, he said that decisions about the world financial system were no longer made by “just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy”—as if that were a bad thing. And in Latin America, he said the U.S. had not “pursued and sustained engagement with our neighbors” because we “failed to see that our own progress is tied directly to progress throughout the Americas.”

The one time Obama did apologize, it was with good reason: the U.S. military had accidentally burned Qurans in Afghanistan, igniting protests. Even then, right wingers failed to see anything at issue but a display of American weakness. From the GOP campaign trail, Rick Santorum insisted no apology was necessary, and Newt Gingrich called Obama an “appeaser.”

@Quinqu – Am I asking you what your financial situation is like you asked me?
Do I mention anyone in your family in any way for any reason?

Even though I felt you were questioning me for your own purposes, in other words simply to put me down with Liberal think-tank bravado, I still was honest and answered you. I don’t see any of you listing your salary and expenses, or if any of your family is receiving govt assistance. The only one who has admitted they used it at all was tedd and his mom used it, and he used it to get through college and help other people and is now up on his own two feet. THAT IS WHAT ASSISTANCE IS FOR!

Am I logging off? I’ll address anything I feel is respectfully approached. What I won’t do is take time from my day and my job and my family to be called a liar and that my stories of fraud in our govt systems are stories and anecdotes. I don’t find it humorous in any way and neither should any of you imo.

Why don’t some of you come visit here in Springfield, MO. Go hang out outside the low-income housing blocks and see all the nice cars, cell phones and nails – or work at a grocery store for a few months and see people using WIC then buying beer and cigarettes, or buying groceries for their friends and family. How could I make this defilement up?

@augustian Once again I’ll tell you that it’s not people that need temporary help that are the issue, it’s the ones WHO USE IT AS A LIFESTYLE CHOICE——FOREVER. Not everyone would work if they can get a ‘free’ check every month. Where do you people live? Apparently where no one sells drugs, or sells food stamps for drugs/ beer.

@KNOWITALL “Where do you people live? Apparently where no one sells drugs, or sells food stamps for drugs/ beer.”

Perhaps you should recognize from your own statement that your experiences are rare. You seem to be the only person here who thinks that they are commonplace. If you could be convinced that they were rare circumstances, would you change your views on social assistance, and admit that it is not worth throwing the baby (literally) out with the bathwater? I’m not going to throw numbers around, I am just interested in knowing if you could change your mind.

The point I’m making (or trying to), @KNOWITALL, is that Romney characterized everyone who does not pay taxes (and/or has used any kind of public assistance) as moochers, who don’t take personal responsibility for their lives. When I noted how offensive that was, you defended him and said you agreed with his assessment. That is what my whole conversation with you has been about.

See here and here.,

And here is where you flat out say that whatever circumstances we find ourselves in, it is because of the choices we have made.

@glacial I am always willing to listen and be convinced of anything. Maybe it is my area of the country. I know lawyers, mayors, meth heads, people working for DFS, gay people…it’s a college town so we have a lot of diversity. My first real boyfriend was Vietnamese, I’ve lived in the country most of my life where we have one stop light and commute to Springfield for everything else, it’s like a meth head, pill popper, welfare, trailer park community on one side and on the other it’s a little Mayberry, USA….lol

@augustian From what I’ve seen, for the most part I agree with him, I’m certain there area exceptions and when it’s needed as opposed to “I don’t want to work” and later “I think I’ll apply for food stamps” it chaps my ass.

No one in my family, except for my own mother, has received public assistance, and that is due to her poor health and the fact that my dad was an jackass. And as I said even she is trying hard to get off of it, with terminal cancer and paying extra so she can work.

I KNOW WHAT I’VE SAID, I’m not old or infirm and I don’t forget overnight even if I am doing 50 things while typing this, too. Sweet baby Jesus help me keep my patience.

Can we stop rehashing the same statements and move on please? If you think people in your area are on public assistance and aren’t part of the fraudulent “47%” MITT was talking about, please explain your area (no deets required of course) and why you think there is not abuse such as we have here please. To me that would be interesting.

I’m honestly sorry this is upsetting you, but I think you are missing an important point. Romney was not talking about fraud. He was talking about all people who don’t pay taxes or use public assistance.

it’s just frustration, I’m not upset and will put it from my mind as soon as I log off, no worries. Like I told Jerv, my family is divided into Left, Right and the ‘just shut up’ middle, I’ve grown up with political arguments and it wears me down going over and over the same territory when we can agree to disagree, it’s that simple.

And yes, I guess my mom could have prevented it by using birth control until she was married if you want me to be brutally honest about the mother I love. She trusted my idiot father who was 10 yrs older and a deputy sherriff and she thought he loved her madly. So if she were anyone else, I would say she did not take ‘personal responsiblity’ for her choices and the govt had to help her with me because of that choice. Oh and she does pay taxes too.

I don’t think you’ll be satisfied until I agree with you, isn’t that the truth really? So Romney was a bit of an ass to say that, he has since retracted it.

And unfortunately, I could list several lies Obama told as well, such as the whole closing Gitmo campaign promise, how he would end the Bush tax cuts…see we went over all this before. NO NEW WARS! lol….they both lie and I don’t want to vote for either of them.

Note that amongst those 47% are with six/seven figure incomes. I posted the link elsewhere and don’t have time to re-post it, but suffice it to say that that statement was almost funny in how it ignored reality for the sake of propaganda.

And yes, Obama is a politician; lies and broken promises are expected. Thing is, do we want someone who puts their foot in their mouth as often asd Romney to represent us in the world community? I don’t; I’d prefer someone who was at least non-inflammatory. And it would be nice to have a leader that at least pretends to care about the people they rule.

@KNOWITALL: You are misunderstanding me. I am not saying 17 year olds can’t move out of their parents’ house. I am saying 17 year olds cannot, on their own, get food stamps and other government assistance, which is what you wrote in your earlier post. At least in my state they can’t – they’re the responsibility of their parents. Why would you think a 17 year old could move out of their home and be given public assistance and not have to get a job? And then in one of your more recent posts you write that people can get entitlements if they decide they just don’t want to work. Do you really think that people can just get public assistance because they are able to work but just decide that they don’t want to? I work in a government office where people to go apply for public assistance, and believe me, if they can work, they are not just handed a public assistance check.

@KNOWITALL, since you asked, I’ve never been unemployed in my adult life, and my family is middle-class. However, I don’t consider my financial stability solely the product of my hard work and choices. I also realize that I lucked out—with good parents, good schools, graduating in a healthy labor market, etc. And I don’t judge people who are less lucky than me.

As for Obama’s “lies,” you are referring to him failing to achieve his objectives—due to Republican opposition. That’s not lying. If I say I want to build a sand castle, and then when I try to some jackass comes and keeps on knocking it down, that’s not me “lying.”

As for starting wars, I’m not sure Libya counts as “starting,” since the war was already happening when we intervened. As it happens, I also opposed intervening in Libya—but it worked, and in retrospect I’m glad we did.

I get the sense that you are just drawing at straws in your criticism of Obama. You don’t really seem to have any substantive problems with him or his policies. You don’t even really seem to know much about what his policies are. You just want to believe he is a terrible president.

After this, I really am moving on, my interest is waning in the repetitive Q, but I appreciate most of the conversation.

How any liberal, jerv, can talk about anyone putting their foot in their mouths after Clinton, I’ll never understand…lol

@jca I don’t know what to tell you, single people here, even those under 18 can apply and receive food stamps. I’m not one of them so I have no idea how but remember the old paper food stamps, she had them and traded them for pot all the time. She was dating and living with my boyfriend at the time’s, brother.

@Quinqo Good for you, you work and you got lucky. Same with me until recently.
If you are saying Obama had no power himself, I would have to disagree.

….Indeed, the failed effort to close Guantanamo was reflective of the aspects of Obama’s leadership style that continue to distress his liberal base — a willingness to allow room for compromise and a passivity that at times permits opponents to set the agenda.

@KNOWITALL: Not sure about the 17 year olds getting benefits in your state, in the state I live and work in, NY, a 17 year old cannot walk into a “welfare office” and just start receiving benefits.

@KNOWITALL, false. Closing Guantanamo requires Congressional approval. Congress did not approve. Almost entirely because Republicans blocked it.

I’m disappointed that he didn’t succeed in closing the base. I find it dishonest and infuriating that conservatives like yourself are criticizing him for this failure when it’s your own party who is responsible.

You’ve said a lot of false things in this thread. Maybe you should be more reflective about that.

@KNOWITALL I thought Clinton was too busy putting something else in somebody elses mouth :p

Maybe you should realize Obama is not perfect, not necessarily that authoritative, basically he’s a wimp. He didn’t have to renew tax cuts, he didn’t have to push a stimulus pkg, he didn’t have to send our military out again, I mean we can go on and on, but the fact is, he’s just not cut out for the job. I think Michelle wears the pants in that family for sure…lol

“When voters are better informed, they should form natural majorities that will influence Congress. And on issues where the facts are not sufficiently influential for voters to form a clear majority, perhaps the government should stay gridlocked. That’s not always a bad thing.”

Oh yeah, jerv…did you hear she’s back in the news with a ‘tell -all’—-way to wait until no one cares, Monica!

He’s a wimp? I thought he was a socialist tyrant who steamrolls the GOP. At least that’s what the GOP congresspeople say about him.

I personally think all the criticism from the left about Obama’s political strategy and negotiating with Republicans is armchair quarterbacking. It’s not at all clear that a more aggressive stance would have done anything to cause less GOP obstructionism.

And in any case it’s undeniable that Obama has done far more to advance the progressive agenda than any president since Lyndon Johnson, or possibly FDR.

Personally, I agree that he is a bit of a wimp at times, but politics in general is rather delicate, and sometimes compromise is required. Obama is far from perfect, but still closer than Mittens. In fact, I font know anybody who thinks he is perfect the way many Conservatives seem to think Romney, Ryan, and other extremists are perfect.

Your quote implies that we should just abolish government. Most people do not have informed opinions, and most of those that do are stopped by those who make up their own information to form an opinion on. That makes a clear majority impossible, and there is no sense keeping government around is they are perpetually paralyzed.

I’m coming in awfully late to this brawl donnybrook free-for-all * ahem * “debate”, but I’d like to clear up one misconception that I’m seeing here and in other questions on Fluther, as well.

Do NOT use “SSI” when you are talking about Social Security benefits. SSI is an acronym for Supplemental Security Income, which is for disabled adults and children that have no income (and often little to no work history). SSDI is an acronym for Social Security Disability Insurance, which is for those disabled who have paid into the system previously, and are now insured for benefits. SSA benefits are what most of you are referring to: Social Security Administration benefits, for retirement and survivors/minor dependents. Using “SSI” to refer to Social Security benefits that the average worker receives is not only inaccurate, it grates on me (and maybe I’m being just a wee bit picky here, but if you’re going to discuss Social Security, it would be nice to be accurate about it).

As for @jca‘s original question, my answer is that it’s affected his campaign quite a bit, along with his refusal to release his taxes: the amount of time he and his campaign staff have to spend discussing these issues is less time they have to discuss issues that will actually advance his campaign. That might have all been well and good several months ago, but this close to the election they really can’t afford for this to be a headache for them. At this rate, he’s going to wind up a textbook example for the 2016 Republican campaign in how not to operate a campaign.

The real question should be “why didn’t he blame it on a speechwriter?” Clearly, he is not presidential material.

I read through this thread and have decided to refine my answer a little. First of all even if the 40% pay no federal tax, they pay state and sales tax. A no income tax state like Texas, for instance, has an 8% sales tax on everything. . So even if a poor person pays not formal taxes 8% of all his purchases go to the state. Additionally, they pay school taxes and other real estate related taxes. Sales taxes are the most regressive form of taxes. 8% of twenty thousand dollars has a much greater effect than 8% or 20 million dollars.

Romney alienated almost all of the low and middle income “thinking voters”. Unfortunately, the majority of voters don’t think or understand, hence two terms for Bush.

Romney’s tea party supporters are mostly older white males that are actually part of the 47% but are too ignorant to understand that they are supporting a corporate state that will eventually take more away from them than the “freedoms” they receive. No matter how you figure it allowing tea party members and their sympathizers in government will irreparably harm the country and contribute to its rapid decline.

In my opinion, it is a good thing that most of tea tea party membership is made up of old people past their prime and past their ability to breed. Eventually, thankfully, they will fade away along with their ugly political agenda.

96% of Americans have received some form of government assistance.

I guess we’re all deadbeats.

I guess that makes me part of the 4%....? How is that even possible?

@cheebdragon No student loans, never unemployed, brought/bought your own lunch to/at school, always had health insurance or enough money to cover 100% of your medical bills without ANY subsidies (even a sliding scale fee)... unlikely, and uncommon, but remotely possible. As someone who grew up in poverty, has been laid off a couple of times, and required medical attention when I had no insurance or disposable income, I fall squarely in the 96%.

His VP pick recieved Social Security cheques while in high school, so he is in the 96%.

It seems the 47% number was for households, not individuals, so I am assuming that is true for the 96%? My husband would be part of the 4%, but I have received unemployment one time in my life.

But, also I benefitted from public school, I think that should count also. My husband went to American public school for two years.

And, I have enjoyed the national parks, and drive on our interstate system, so many things that our government either initiated or helps to maintain.

@jerv and @cheebdragon The article mentions “submerged” policies, that are “embedded in the tax code”, but doesn’t say what specific policies they’re referring to. It would be interesting to know, and then we really could determine if @cheebdragon is in the 4%. I’m thinking it might include things like the child care tax credit thingy (whatever that’s really called.)

It mentions the deductable payments into retirement funds or the mortgage interest deduction. If she is sticking money in a retirement or healthcare fund or paying interest on a morgage and claiming those as deductions on their income tax return, she is using federal government benefits.

Yep, still one of the 4%.

Well, 1 in 25 is uncommon, but not rare. Congratulations, @cheebdragon for being part of a small minority.

Yay, now I can bitch about all the injustice and shit!

I read this entire post last night from my iPad…but it is too clunky to allow me to comment! So, I’m back at my computer I would like to say a word to @KNOWITALL. I’ve read everything you’ve said and hats off to you! I mean that seriously. You remind me of myself, when there was nothing between my four kids and the street, except me. It’s like you have this giant support beam, holding up the entire house, and the support beam is resting squarely on your shoulders. There is no one to share the weight with and you can not drop it, you can not fall. Can. Not. I admire your strength.

There is just one thing. Before you get too certain in your ability to hold everything up, before you pat yourself on the back too much, just realize that that support beam you’re holding could crack, without warning, at any second. You could go in to work tomorrow to be told your job is being outsourced overseas, or whatever, and your services are no longer needed. The sound of that beam cracking is horrifying…and the weight gets even heavier.

You can’t just say “Look. I’m doing it! Everyone should do like I do!” Well, you haven’t been through all there is to go through, when things get almost completely out of your control, but you STILL have to find a way to stand.

You’ve worked very hard AND you’ve been lucky so far.

@Dutchess_III Great answer, but I should warn you that many people do not believe in. luck. If you lose your job, you are incompetent, if you cannot find another one right away, you are lazy, and if you don’t have enough money in the bank to get you by, you are foolish. In their mind, “luck” is merely an admission that you refuse to accept responsibility.

O, @jerv! I know that mentality first hand! I had to deal with the disgust and disdain for several years. If you were poor, it was because you were stupid. If you had a lot of money, that proved that you were smart.

It’s unbelievable how blind people can be to their own good luck. SO many things could have happened during that time…I could have been seriously injured. I could have become sick. I was lucky that it didn’t happen.