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Why Law Makers will never stop the bleeding

4K views 27 replies 13 participants last post by  Harmless Drudge 
#1 ·
I was listening to a politican yesterday talking about how he's fighting for his district by bringing federal dollars back to "help" the people of his district.

All I could think of was "this is what's wrong in America" this is why we are in the mess we're in. This is how these people think. This is why they will never fix the cash fire in Washington and will raise the debt to 100 trillion and more.

There is zero political will to do the right thing....we're doomed!

This is why TS will HTF and there is nothing we can do


tell me how I'm wrong...please!
 
#2 · (Edited)
I think the problem starts with politicians "helping" in areas where they shouldn't be involved in the first place (and which, incidentally, invariably requires the vast expenditure of taxpayers' dollars). The flip side of that same problem is the belief held by many (read: most) people that the government NEEDS to be involved.

And it's not limited to America, either....the same "government needs to do everything" mentality is pervasive in most countries. :mad:
 
#3 ·
exactly,

I would love any politican to say" Look we are trillions in the hole, we are living a credit card lifestyle that must end Day 1#. I will cut spending every chance I get, the free ride is over. You have a right to pursue happiness and we will no longer provide happiness at the expense of other people"
 
#10 ·
exactly,

I would love any politican to say" Look we are trillions in the hole, we are living a credit card lifestyle that must end Day 1#. I will cut spending every chance I get, the free ride is over. You have a right to pursue happiness and we will no longer provide happiness at the expense of other people"
I kinda thought so too...but it turns out he's a big Pork-Barrell spender too

http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2007/07/ron-pauls-personal-pork-projects.html

Paul says he only votes for spending authorized by the US Constitution. But when it comes to using his Congressional position, to request pork for projects in his own district, apparently anything goes. Whether the spending is Constitutionally legitimate, or no,t Paul brings home the bacon.

According to the Houston Chronicle, Paul:

...leads the Houston-area delegation in the number of earmarks, or special funding requests, that he is seeking for his district. He is trying to nab public money for 65 projects, such as marketing wild shrimp and renovating the old movie theater in Edna that closed in 1977 — neither of which is envisioned in the Constitution as an essential government function.

Paul’s arguments for using pork barrel projects in his own district is that, “if they take it, we should ask for it back.” Of course, on that basis, there is little spending which is not justified.
I do not think you are wrong.

However what do you expect?

They are elected to represent their districts, not the US as a whole. Their job is to bring tax dollars back to their constituents and make sure their voices are heard in DC. THis is why I am skeptical when I here rants about them not doing what "we" want them to do. How do "we" know? For ever call to not vote for the health care bill there could have been two call asking to support it. Remember, people are mostly stupid, or at least uninformed.

If you want this to change you will need to have a complete paradigm shift in the working of our system of government.
 
#11 ·
States have been taking money from the Feds( and have been subject to them, based on those funds) for so long, they have inflated their budgets to reflect those funds. When the funds are not there, they go into a deficit.......they say they are broke....when the hog dries up, it's time for the little piggies to find food elsewhere. Even RP says that it's our tax money, we should get some of it back, but I say, if there's extra tax money, lower the taxes. Even with that money back are strings attached. The States must do the Feds' unConstitutional bidding. This is wrong.
 
#12 ·
As a follow-up:

Let It Burn
By Demosthenes

For the past hundred years, America has been slowly moving away from the principles of its founding. The ideals of liberty, individual achievement, limited government, and the equality of opportunity have been slowly supplanted by calls for security, class warfare, excessive regulation, and the equality of outcome. The passage of stimulus acts, bailouts, government takeovers of two U.S. automakers, and the health care overhaul prove that our movement away from 1776 has accelerated.


Passage of the health care bill has sparked a revival of small-government thinking, causing many to predict significant Republican gains in Congress this fall. But despite some short-term success, this small-government revival is doomed to fail. The depressing truth is that the only way to regain the full measure of those freedoms proclaimed in our Founding Documents is for our current federal government to completely collapse under the weight of its own excesses.


Often, one carefully articulated analogy can succinctly convey a very complex idea. In our case, that analogy is addiction. Over the past hundred years, we have slowly allowed a monstrous system of dependence to develop until nearly every citizen relies upon government money, and thus is an addict. This has come about because the hard logic of the Founders has been replaced by the seductive ease of emotional arguments. All too often, the debate is over not if government should do something, but what it should do. This almost imperceptible shift in our national philosophy is a manifestation of our addiction.


While the citizen-addict is hooked on government largesse, the politician-addict is hooked on something far more sinister: power. Their drug is available in Washington, D.C. Just as a dealer will go to any length to continue selling his wares, politicians will stop at nothing to retain their power. These two groups of addicts are locked in mutual co-dependence, where the politician-addict seeking re-election buys off the citizen-addict with more spending. Then the citizen-addict, seeking yet another free lunch from Washington, reelects the politician-addict. The result is endless, ever-expanding government programs and our current fiscal nightmare.


The persistence of these programs has nothing to do with their success. They continue because we are more concerned that our actions are deemed compassionate than whether our programs are actually successful. If we truly wanted to help people save for retirement, we would not establish a program with a meager 1.23% rate of return while simultaneously supporting a monetary policy of systematic inflation. Yet these and other ineffective or even counterproductive programs continue. Such willful blindness to economic reality cannot be sustained indefinitely. The Congressional Budget Office has recently stated that our national debt will constitute 90% of our gross domestic product -- that is 20.3 trillion dollars -- in just ten years. What is even more shocking is that these debt numbers do not include the unfunded liabilities of Medicare and Social Security, which currently rest at 107 trillion dollars. Sadly, this trend cannot be stopped.


If Republicans take control of the House and Senate, and if they repeal the health care bill, then they will not be able (or likely even try) to reform Medicare or Social Security. These programs alone will bankrupt our nation. Yet they are untouchable because a large number of Americans have come to depend upon these benefits. They have become unknowingly hooked. Senior citizens have organized their financial futures around the twin promises of Social Security and Medicare and will naturally resist any change to either. George W. Bush knew this when he attempted his overhaul of Social Security. That is why his plan to privatize retirement savings was voluntary and would have excluded those over 55. Nevertheless, it was easy for the politician-addicts to scare the citizen-addicts, and his plan was defeated.


"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty or safety." This quote by Ben Franklin is often used by civil libertarians in opposition to government security programs such as the Patriot Act. But this sentiment is equally applicable to those who would give up economic liberty to obtain economic safety. The economic attitude of the nation has shifted. We are no longer a nation of self-sufficient, rugged individualists; we are now a nation of addicts, hooked on a politician's promises of economic safety.


This is why America is lost. Too many Americans are hooked for us to return to a sound economic footing via the normal political processes. Our efforts to moderate the most radical agendas -- welfare reform, for example -- serve only to delay the inevitable. In fact, many of those reforms are quietly undermined as the slow march towards collapse continues. We cannot alter our current trajectory; expansive government, greater entitlements, and ever-increasing taxes are our fate. Attempts by responsible citizens at reform will be only partially successful, not changing the fundamentals of our dilemma.


The addict analogy carries through to recovery. For most addicts, recovery can begin only once they have descended so far in their addiction that they lose everything, a process often called "hitting bottom." Sometimes there is no recovery, and hitting bottom means death. But for others, hitting bottom is a tremendous learning experience, and they emerge as better people. America is addicted. The decline has begun, and now our nation must hit bottom.


Detoxing America will cause social, political, and economic strife of a sort unimaginable, and yet it is a process we must endure. Hitting bottom is our only hope for a national rehabilitation. It is our only chance for a true reacquaintance with those principles that made this the greatest nation on earth: liberty, individual achievement, limited government, and the equality of opportunity.


Demosthenes is a lawyer whose current employment prohibits taking a public position on political issues. E-mail correspondence may be sent here.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/05/let_it_burn.html
 
#13 ·
Well, he's wrong about SS and Medicare........SS is a ponzi scheme where those currently working pay those who are retired.........those who work and pay in are eligible to collect from those who are working, when they retire. The problem is, they put all that money into a slush fund and have been raiding it for many years. Now they say it won't sustain.....well, if they'd've kept their paws out of it, it would be fine.

The problem I have is they have made it mandatory to give them money( in taxes) and then spend it like it's theirs, on whatever they want. Our tax money should NOT go outside this Country for any reason. Our taxes should be to provide security for this COuntry and to run the govt, that's it. Not for welfare, of any kind, bailouts,helping poor countries and rich Corps.
 
#14 ·
DOOM!

THEY DUG THE HOLE AND WE HAVE TO LAY IN IT!

200,000 people are loosing their houses every month and it is not slowing down. $1,400,000 is spent daily by the BIG BANKS to lobby Congress to make things THEIR way; Citibank ws responsible for the new bankruptcy laws. Then there's other MEGA WEALTHY corporations lobbying Congress as well.

Do you really think our Government is going to give up all that free money for us? NO!!!

$250,000 is what a president makes; Obama I hear made $5,000,000. A public servant should NOT be given that much money. A public servant should not be allowed to make a career of it like Congressmen & Supreme Court Justices do.

Just think of all the money that could be saved by limiting what THEY make; 1% of $5mil is still $50k which is more than enough to live off of. We are supposed to make it on minimum wage which is only $14.5k which is only 29% or $50k; less than a third. Here's an idea let THEM that made the rules play by them - put all the Politicians on minimum wage and see how THEY like it!

I read a fiction book where the politicians were selected by a lottery and served a term never to return again to office. No career politicians, litttle corruption. You did your term in office and that was that. Then you had government benefits like medical & retirement.

OK, there's some good people in Government, I suppose. But that is just one drop in a BIG bucket of corruption. It's going to take more than one drop to tix things.

THEY put us here and we let them. I have not voted for many years now because it does NOTHING! What matters, the Senators & President, are not directly elected by the public - the Electorail College does the voting. Anyway there's no one worth voting today.

Until the shooting & killing starts nothing is going to change. EVIL has to be prunned from the dying tree. IMO it's already dead. I just hope we have some good seeds to plant another.

:upsidedown:
 
#15 ·
I once found a good source that laid out which states in the union pay more in federal taxes than they receive back in federal funding, and which get more than they pay in. I spent some time trying to relocate that site, but had no luck.

Anyway, the bottom-line is that if we are paying federal taxes we really DO want to see it come back our way -- not just all leaving your home state to bail out the most corrupt or mismanaged states in the union. Sounds good?

But politicians are elected chiefly by the corporate media, and they're mainly serving corporations in their districts. And the funny thing is that a lot of politicians here in Minnesota are getting out-state money. So it's really hard to say who they really represent, but what remains certain is that "jobs" sounds good, but it's likely that there are other motives -- such as political patronage to those who elected them.
 
#17 ·
The politicians don't do that kind of spending for no reason. They do it because all the dummies in their district vote them back in office time after time for dragging the dollars back home. The people that voted the guy in are just as guilty. They put him there. They alone keep him there!

But then the popular opinion never seems to blame the voters. Its easier and makes everyone feel better but brings about no reform. Here in California we have voters who vote in the majority of bond issues on the ballots. I guess they think the money is a free giveaway.

I am still baffled that we voted for and got prop 13 passed years ago. Lucky people got off their butts for that one otherwise our property taxes would be unreal! Where are all the people that voted for that great law? Sleeping?

The only way that things will change is when people vote only for the people that will get the job done the way it should be done. I surely won't hold my breath waiting for voters intelligence to improve.

Red
 
#24 ·
Any federal money was the people's money to begin with. We need to take the power AND the money back. Id rather money go to a state or states obviously than to the crooks in office now.
The gov is playing a game by using money as a carrot AND a stick, while they offshore the bulk of it. Time that nonsense ends.
 
#26 ·
Well, they claim they're bringing home the bacon to their districts -- but that attitude began in the days when companies/businesses were locally owned. And before local politicians began to get a lot of out-district campaign money (elected with help from outsiders). Now that the big players are all off-shored or multi-national, it's unclear how that plays out. I'm wondering now whether their main job is actually to deny their districts, and fill other/centralized pots instead. Sort of like big insurance companies -- plant agents in territories across the country to generally siphon money out of localities, and push it all to New York, Chicago, or wherever the company is based.
 
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