Dumb & Dumber

Scuttlebutt
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[QUOTE=c.captain;142285]while y’all piss and moan about how social welfare spending is destroying the US, look at where all the money goes and try to tell me how the money we give the poor (even with all the fraud and abuse inherent in the system) that what we do spend on the poor is what is bankrupting the Nation? All combined, it is not even 10% of the Federal discretionary budget.

It is the extreme spending on the military/industrial complex which is driving us to bankruptcy…not social programs! WAKE THE FUCK UP[/QUOTE]

This is one of the rare times I agree with you c.capt. However I would apply the same logic to your KP rants.

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[QUOTE=Fraqrat;142291]I don’t see your guy stopping any wars. Did he close any of the torture prisons down yet? Wanna talk about waste? Why is ISIS shooting at people with our weapons? Billions of dollars worth of gear we just leave behind? WTF? We paid for it why do we leave that shit behind? In another thread we talk about LCS’s yet te program is still going. New Joe Boss same as the old Joe Boss. [/QUOTE]

never said for a minute that Dems were clean when it came the the military and war…they are just not as filthy as was President Darth Cheney, John “Dr. Strangelove” McCain, Mitt “take it all to China” Romney, John “Hell No you Won’t” Boener, Mitch “the Turtle” McConnell or my favorite Paul “Eddie Munster” Ryan. If they had their way, we would be in wars for eternity and taking money from every other possible source (including the poor) to .pay for them or better still, just borrowing money endlessly to fund our nefarious foreign adventures. Don’t try to say that the Republicans are not for war and all the obscene profits it funnels to the corporations!

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[QUOTE=Robert;142294]This is one of the rare times I agree with you c.capt. However I would apply the same logic to your KP rants.[/QUOTE]

KP is only a very small hair sticking out of a red swollen pimple of the immense butt of Federal budget waste, but it is a one I like to highlight as endemic of misguided spending priorities. Time to look at every Federal programs in the light that we do not have the money anymore for them all and prioritize them based on real needs in 2014. It is not 1954, 1964, 1974 or even 1984 anymore. Our tax base is smaller, our potential enemies are not the same and what is needed to keep the USA vibrant and healthy requires a new approach so that it can he healthy and vibrant in the future. Quit looking at the past. What was important then it irrelevant now.

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I’m not defending republicans either. My point is you’ve bought into the whole left right thing. We are getting fucked by both sides because they’re one and the same. The word defense in the budget is misleading. It should be labeled war budget instead of defense. Let’s spend some of that money on border defense.

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I disagree, during the '30s and '40s many more people than today did their part to support the government. Whether it was New Deal Programs such as the CCC, WPA, and the TVA in the 30s or factory work, rationing, drafting, and warbonds in the 40s. In the end it all had to be payed for by the people of the nation in taxes. Some could say they were socialist, but I’d say it all brought about a great prosperity that lasted through into the 60s. Public welfare, when done right, works! And it’s sad to think that a lot of policies from the 70s and 80s harmed our nation by putting our politicians in the pockets of big business and short term profits and thinking.

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not that I am one who would normally [quote Breitbart.com](Default http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm…-on-U-S-Policy) but since you did Frag, I’ll go along

Study: You Have ‘Near-Zero’ Impact on U.S. Policy

by Wynton Hall 12 Aug 2014

A startling new political science study concludes that corporate interests and mega wealthy individuals control U.S. policy to such a degree that “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

The startling study, titled “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” is slated to appear in an upcoming issue of Perspectives on Politics and was authored by Princeton University Professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Professor Benjamin Page. An early draft can be found here.

Noted American University Historian Allan J. Lichtman, who highlighted the piece in a Tuesday article published in The Hill, calls Gilens and Page’s research “shattering” and says their scholarship “should be a loud wake-up call to the vast majority of Americans who are bypassed by their government.”

The statistical research looked at public attitudes on nearly 1,800 policy issues and determined that government almost always ignores the opinions of average citizens and adopts the policy preferences of monied business interests when shaping the contours of U.S. laws.

The study’s findings align with recent trends, where corporate elites have aggressively pursued pro-amnesty policies despite the fact that, according to the most recent Reuters poll, 70% of Americans believe illegal immigrants “threaten traditional U.S. beliefs and customs,” and 63% believe “immigrants place a burden on the economy.”

The solution, say the scholars, is a reinvigorated and engaged electorate.

“If policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened,” conclude Gilens and Page.

I CANNOT AGREE MORE! THE MEGA RICH AND THEIR CORPORATIONS DO CONTROL IT ALL!

that’s why I say…SOAK IT TO THE RICH FUCKERS AND BURN ALL THEIR EFFING MEGA YACHTS!

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A book on the subject:Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer–and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class (Google eBook)

Paul Pierson, Jacob S. Hacker
Simon and Schuster, Sep 14, 2010 - Political Science - 368 pages
24 Reviews
A groundbreaking work that identifies the real culprit behind one of the great economic crimes of our time— the growing inequality of incomes between the vast majority of Americans and the richest of the rich.

We all know that the very rich have gotten a lot richer these past few decades while most Americans haven’t. In fact, the exorbitantly paid have continued to thrive during the current economic crisis, even as the rest of Americans have continued to fall behind. Why do the “haveit- alls” have so much more? And how have they managed to restructure the economy to reap the lion’s share of the gains and shift the costs of their new economic playground downward, tearing new holes in the safety net and saddling all of us with increased debt and risk? Lots of so-called experts claim to have solved this great mystery, but no one has really gotten to the bottom of it—until now.

In their lively and provocative Winner-Take-All Politics, renowned political scientists Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson demonstrate convincingly that the usual suspects—foreign trade and financial globalization, technological changes in the workplace, increased education at the top—are largely innocent of the charges against them. Instead, they indict an unlikely suspect and take us on an entertaining tour of the mountain of evidence against the culprit. The guilty party is American politics. Runaway inequality and the present economic crisis reflect what government has done to aid the rich and what it has not done to safeguard the interests of the middle class. The winner-take-all economy is primarily a result of winner-take-all politics.

In an innovative historical departure, Hacker and Pierson trace the rise of the winner-take-all economy back to the late 1970s when, under a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress, a major transformation of American politics occurred. With big business and conservative ideologues organizing themselves to undo the regulations and progressive tax policies that had helped ensure a fair distribution of economic rewards, deregulation got under way, taxes were cut for the wealthiest, and business decisively defeated labor in Washington. And this transformation continued under Reagan and the Bushes as well as under Clinton, with both parties catering to the interests of those at the very top. Hacker and Pierson’s gripping narration of the epic battles waged during President Obama’s first two years in office reveals an unpleasant but catalyzing truth: winner-take-all politics, while under challenge, is still very much with us.

Winner-Take-All Politics—part revelatory history, part political analysis, part intellectual journey— shows how a political system that traditionally has been responsive to the interests of the middle class has been hijacked by the superrich. In doing so, it not only changes how we think about American politics, but also points the way to rebuilding a democracy that serves the interests of the many rather than just those of the wealthy few.
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