On Thu, 25 Aug 2011 17:27:36 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

On Aug 25, 6:28*pm, "Stormin Mormon"
wrote:
If you hadn't noticed, the behaviours you list are performed
almost exclusively by the Dems.

You seemed to miss the best part here. Robert claims he's a
registered Republican? That's just laughable. Dem maybe.
Socialist more likely. Commie, possible. But Republican?
Given his posts here, no way. Unless it's on some whacky
theory to try and screw the Republicans by voting in their
primary.

I used to do that. Then I grew up and became one.

On 08/25/11 06:29 pm, Stormin Mormon wrote:

Not at all!

Dems take MY money by force, so they can give it to
illegals.
Repubs offer to reduce how much money is taken by force.

Not the same, at all.

Please give me some examples of the govt. giving money to illegals. In
my application to become a *legal* resident I acknowledged that I
understood that I was not entitled to benefit from any govt. welfare
programs. Indeed, on one occasion where we put my name on an application
for a home-insulation upgrade funded (partly, at least) by the feds.,
the application was denied, and we had to resubmit under my US-citizen
wife's name instead.

Perce

In article ,
"Robert Green" wrote:

"Vi
Dems buy votes with welfare, Repubs buy votes with tax cuts. It's all the
same tactic, basically. "Vote for me and there's money in it for you."
Reminds me of the Romans keeping their unruly citizens in line with bread
and circuses. Now we have foodstamps and the Internet. And it looks like
we're heading for the same place in history.

--
Bobby G.

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the
system, but too early to shoot the *******s."-- Claire Wolfe

--
People thought cybersex was a safe alternative,
until patients started presenting with sexually
acquired carpal tunnel syndrome.-Howard Berkowitz

"Percival P. Cassidy" wrote in message
On 08/25/11 06:29 pm, Stormin Mormon wrote:

Dems take MY money by force, so they can give it to
illegals.
Repubs offer to reduce how much money is taken by force.

Not the same, at all.

Please give me some examples of the govt. giving money to illegals.

The silence is deafening, isn't it, Perce? Slogans are easy to sling but
facts are much harder to ferret out.

In my application to become a *legal* resident I acknowledged that I
understood that I was not entitled to benefit from any govt. welfare
programs. Indeed, on one occasion where we put my name on an application
for a home-insulation upgrade funded (partly, at least) by the feds.,
the application was denied, and we had to resubmit under my US-citizen
wife's name instead.

Very interesting - clearly the Feds are trying to limit "payments to
illegals." So much for the cartoonish world of "Democrats *always* bad,
Republicans *always* good.

While I am sure that somewhere, illegal aliens are getting benefits they
don't deserve because THEY committed fraud, I also know that the Treasury
takes in a lot of withholding tax paid by illegals using someone else's
social security number. Attempts to reduce the current set of problems to
sound bite size will always fail. The issues we face are incredibly
complex.

--
Bobby G.

On Aug 25, 9:49*pm, "Percival P. Cassidy" wrote:
On 08/25/11 06:29 pm, Stormin Mormon wrote:

Not at all!

Dems take MY money by force, so they can give it to
illegals.
Repubs offer to reduce how much money is taken by force.

Not the same, at all.

Please give me some examples of the govt. giving money to illegals.

You're not serious are you? Illegal immigrant families
are receiving welfare. Illegals go to the hospital when sick
or injured and receive free treatment. Ilegal children get
a free education at public schools and in many states
they later qualify for reduced tuition at state colleges.

In
my application to become a *legal* resident I acknowledged that I
understood that I was not entitled to benefit from any govt. welfare
programs. Indeed, on one occasion where we put my name on an application
for a home-insulation upgrade funded (partly, at least) by the feds.,
the application was denied, and we had to resubmit under my US-citizen
wife's name instead.

Perce

Apparently you just don't know how to work the system
correctly.

On Aug 26, 12:10*am, "Robert Green"
wrote:
"Percival P. Cassidy" wrote in message

On 08/25/11 06:29 pm, Stormin Mormon wrote:
Dems take MY money by force, so they can give it to
illegals.
Repubs offer to reduce how much money is taken by force.

Not the same, at all.

Please give me some examples of the govt. giving money to illegals.

The silence is deafening, isn't it, Perce? *Slogans are easy to sling but
facts are much harder to ferret out.



It's not silence you here, it's the empty sound of your own skull.





In *my application to become a *legal* resident I acknowledged that I
understood that I was not entitled to benefit from any govt. welfare
programs. Indeed, on one occasion where we put my name on an application
for a home-insulation upgrade funded (partly, at least) by the feds.,
the application was denied, and we had to resubmit under my US-citizen
wife's name instead.

Very interesting - clearly the Feds are trying to limit "payments to
illegals." *So much for the cartoonish world of "Democrats *always* bad,
Republicans *always* good.

While I am sure that somewhere, illegal aliens are getting benefits they
don't deserve because THEY committed fraud, I also know that the Treasury
takes in a lot of withholding tax paid by illegals using someone else's
social security number. *Attempts to reduce the current set of problems to
sound bite size will always fail. *The issues we face are incredibly
complex.

--
Bobby G.

"HeyBub" wrote in message news:-
Robert Green wrote:

stuff snipped

Hey, how about volunteer IRS agents? When you hire the lowest bid
contractor, you get low caliber employees who aren't afraid of losing
their jobs. That's not a good thing in many cases.


Giggle.

Have you ever even HEARD of a government employee getting fired?

Plenty of times. As RicodJour said "Your selective memory switch needs to
be toggled." Again.

You do remember your hero, Ronald Reagan, firing the 11,345 striking air
traffic controllers?

Giggle right back at you. A wasted mind is a terrible thing.

--
Bobby G.

"Vic Smith" wrote in message

stuff snipped

By your own math, Obama had 13 months where the Dems
had the WH, Senate, and House AND they had a fillibuster
proof Senate.

No. July 7th,2009 until Feb 4, 2010 is not quite 7 months.
That's the ONLY time there was a filibuster-proof Senate
during the Obama administration.

As you've made clear, when the lines are very closely drawn, having the
numbers doesn't mean there won't be cross-overs, defections, back-door deals
and more. I think it's sad that we've come down to arguing about "which
side has the right to ram something down the other's throat."

In theory, the filibuster serves as a useful "check and balance" of the
system. It allows people who *really* believe their opposition to a bill
has merit to at least delay passage of a bill. But of late, it's become a
reflexive method to impede majority rule at nearly every turn. It's overuse
is an anti-democratic tool and will eventually need to be addressed.
Perhaps when Congressional approval reaches minus 23%. (-: There's a
reason that their approval rating has plummeted.

This last budget showdown was a mockery of our form of consensus based
government. I liken it to a head of household going around the neighbor
telling all the merchants how deeply in debt he is. It's stupid and it's
part of a dangerous trend of creating crises for hopeful political gain.

What fascinating to me about filibusters and cloture is that changing the
rules of the Senate requires a two-thirds majority, so once even a bad rule
gets in play, it's not likely to soon vanish. In real terms it means that
41 senators, whose combined states could represent as little as 13% of the
U.S. population, can thwart the will of the majority of US citizens. It
should be noted that famed civil rights "deactivist" Strom Thurmond set the
filibuster record in a failed attempt to block the passage of the Civil
Rights Act of 1957.
We have entered the age of the squeaky wheel where small, vocal special
interest groups can exert a disproportionate effect on the government by
playing the imbalances in the system. Right now, relatively few
battleground states "count" when it comes to deciding who is President.
It's a serious fault in what should be an equally representative system of
government. Some people's votes clearly count more than others.

Not your original 24 months, and not your "new" 13 months.
You're welcome to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Your month count is now at 186% instead of 343%.
Keep at it.

Aw, go easy on Chet. He tries very hard. It's not easy to try to make
recent Republican actions look reasonable and not obstructive. Clearly it
involves creative accounting. Even when one side or the other seems to
have a majority, occasionally some officials still vote their conscience,
not their party line like Olympia Snowe. That, and folks like Scott Brown
make declarations about who "controlled" the House or Senate on date X a
little hard to quantify in meaningful terms.

What worries me more is that we've come to accept that only bills which are
"mom and apple pie" stand a chance of passing without being dragged down by
procedural trickery. There are times when the Congress has to hold its nose
and do unpleasant or unpopular things for the good of the country.
Unfortunately, those times are becoming more and more rare. There's less
"horsetrading" and lots more "my way or the highway" posturing. I think it
bodes very poorly for us as a country.

I find it remarkable that so many people believe the Feds react instantly in
action, payment, etc. The Federal government runs on incredible momentum,
like a supertanker, and changing direction just because one party or the
other won an election or a majority in Congress occurs glacially. It's hard
for people to conceive that the bills for two "wars of choice" will still be
coming in until 2050 and beyond.

We may very well need another Constitutional Convention because I don't see
much else breaking some of the incredible gridlock that has arisen in the
system.

--
Bobby G.

"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
wrote:

think serious and severe campaign funding laws are the only answer to
refocusing politics on people and the real issues facing society. But
getting Congress to rein in that system is like getting welfare
recipients
to vote against welfare. Ain't gonna happen.

Part of my on-going effort for a truth in naming act from Congress
is that every campaign finance law be titled the Incumbent Full
Employment Act.

It does seem that *every* time they approach the subject that it ends up
being to the benefit of those making the laws. I guess that's the "Golden
Rule" in action. Those with the gold make the rules. It's like Medicare
change. As long as people who are getting benefits can vote about whether
they KEEP getting benefits or not, it's pretty likely we know how they will
vote regardless of funding realities.

Still, short of a top-to-bottom review of the Federal Government ending in a
new Constitutional Convention seems to be the only way that the people can
have a meaningful input into the process anymore. As aemeijers wrote:

And when all the ballot offers up, in most cases, are Tweedledum and
Tweedledee, because the system makes it near-impossible for anyone
else to get on the ballot?



--
Bobby G.

"Kurt Ullman"
"Robert Green" wrote:

Nor can any Democrat be appointed to the Federal judiciary, nor can
anyone
even remotely controversial be appointed to a government post. The
trick is
to stall nominations long enough so that the next president will get to
make
them.

Or any GOP'er when the Dems are in charge. Senator Lugar, probably one
of the best and most level-headed Senators of the last two generations
is catching three kinds of Hell for his life long stance that Advise and
Consent means a certain deference to the person making the appointment
unless there is a clear and overwhelming reason to toss the dude to the
curb.

Agreed, both do it, but - there's always a but - I have been trying to
research which party is the more "filibuster" happy and it's been quite
interesting research. There's some interesting info here that I have not
yet vetted:


http://www.thefourthbranch.com/polit...nate/#more-714

Year Party # Cloture Motions Filed Net Change Approval
Rating
Controlling Senate
2009-2010 (111th) Dem_______75 +11**
28.8%
2007-2008 (110th) Dem______139 +71
23.2%
2005-2006 (109th) Rep_______68 +6
30.3%
2003-2004 (108th) Rep_______62 -10
44.3%
2001-2002 (107th) Dem_______72* +1
55.2%
1999-2000 (106th) Rep_______71 +2
45.1%
1997-1998 (105th) Rep_______69 -13
42.4%
1995-1996 (104th) Rep_______82 +2
32.0%
1993-1994 (103rd) Dem______80 +21
23.5%
1991-1992 (102nd) Dem______59 +22
30.6%

*There were 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans until May 24, 2001 when Sen.
Jeffords (VT) announced he would become an independent and caucus with the
Democrats, giving Democrats a one-seat advantage.

**This figure assumes the 111th Congress will file 75 cloture motions in
2010 (the same number filed in 2009) for a total of 150 cloture motions.

Those numbers suggest (albeit inconclusively) that Republicans used the
filibuster more than Democrats since Clinton's first year in office. Most
of the difference has come with Republican filibusters during the 110th and
111th Congress. That's the trend I am worried about. Purely obstructive
behavior that can easily be seen as an attempt the thwart majority rule and
to even attempt to undo the results of the 2008 presidential election.

And who can forget the Grand-daddy of the filibuster, Strom Thurmond
(R)acist? (Well, not if you consider his half black love child!) I met him
several times - twice before he became so senile they rolled him from one
appearance to the next like that Monty Python skit about the House of Lords
member with the pea for a brain whose wife has to occasionally wiggle his
head to get it back in place. He was the last of his kind. I also got to
meet Claude Pepper, the man who helped make Medicare happen because he saw
how badly the health insurers abused senior citizens. A much more
interesting person, at least to me, who really represented the elderly in a
way that few had done before.

Whatever happened to majority rule? It got lost somewhere along the way
and
replaced by the notion it's the losing party's job to keep the winning
party
from doing anything substantial. The Senate *could* chose to return to
a
simple majority instead of the current idiotic situation but they don't
seem
so inclined.

They only have concerns about running roughshod over the minority when
they are in the minority.

Agreed. When my ultra-liberal friends were whining about Bush firing all
the US Attorneys I kept telling them: "The law SAYS he can. If you don't
like the law, change it!" The problem is, as you say, both parties like the
appointment laws just fine when THEY are making the appointments.

I am more and more inclined to believe that a valid third party will arise
that will throw the current supermajority system into total chaos. It might
even happen this time around. Will it be the "Tea Party?" I don't know.
But it's becoming more and more obvious that people are unhappy with the
choices the current system gives them. The recent debt ceiling debacle
showed how hard it's going to be to get anything done if there are three
parties to contend with.

But the filibuster was in place LONG before
the current situation developed. This is more a reflection of the times
where the country seems to be fairly evenly divided. A lot of this BS
could be taken care of if they just reinstated the rules where you
actually had to talk to filibuster.

Agree here as well. The Senate could easily apply some self-help to the
situation. Noises get made from time to time about the need to update Senate
rules. Few realize that many Senate rules really aren't part of the
Constitution. It's not coincidence that Senate means "group of old men"
with the same root as the word "senility."

In addition to increasing the cost
for filibustering, it also made the filibuster much more entertaining.

Yes, who could forget Jimmy Stewart's filibuster . . . no wait, that was a
movie. (-:

This last little bit of political theater "Do what the minority says or
we'll shut down the government" runs a little too close to the way
terrorists operate to suit me. I think it damaged the US image and
reputation for very little gain, financial or political.

Nah it is just part of the rough and tumble of US politics. Can't think
it damages us any more than revolving premeirships, etc., do in
countries with parliaments, for instance.

We'll see. As I said elsewhere, if I had money problems, I don't think I
would run around the neighborhood telling my local merchants, my landlord,
the taxman and anyone else that could hear me that I was in hock up to my
eyeballs. It seems counter-intuitive. Yes, we have money problems, but we
also have untold trillions in natural resources and an army powerful enough
to take anything we need from anyone, anywhere in the world with relatively
little chance of them stopping us. (-: So what's the problem?

--
Bobby G.

On Aug 25, 11:29*pm, "Stormin Mormon"
wrote:
Not at all!

Dems take MY money by force, so they can give it to
illegals.
Repubs offer to reduce how much money is taken by force.

Not the same, at all.

--
Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
*www.lds.org
.
Clearly, Mormons are not Christians.

I'm not going to do your research, but it happens regularly
in the Democrat controlled state of California. Medical
care, and gosh knows what else.

--
Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
..


"Percival P. Cassidy" wrote in message
...
On 08/25/11 06:29 pm, Stormin Mormon wrote:

Not at all!

Dems take MY money by force, so they can give it to
illegals.
Repubs offer to reduce how much money is taken by force.

Not the same, at all.

Please give me some examples of the govt. giving money to
illegals. In
my application to become a *legal* resident I acknowledged
that I
understood that I was not entitled to benefit from any govt.
welfare
programs. Indeed, on one occasion where we put my name on an
application
for a home-insulation upgrade funded (partly, at least) by
the feds.,
the application was denied, and we had to resubmit under my
US-citizen
wife's name instead.

Perce

On Aug 26, 1:54*am, "Robert Green" wrote:
"Vic Smith" wrote in message

stuff snipped

By your own math, Obama had 13 months where the Dems
had the WH, Senate, and House AND they had a fillibuster
proof Senate.

No. *July 7th,2009 until Feb 4, 2010 is not quite 7 months.
That's the ONLY time there was a filibuster-proof Senate
during the Obama administration.

As you've made clear, when the lines are very closely drawn, having the
numbers doesn't mean there won't be cross-overs, defections, back-door deals
and more. *I think it's sad that we've come down to arguing about "which
side has the right to ram something down the other's throat."

In theory, the filibuster serves as a useful "check and balance" of the
system. *It allows people who *really* believe their opposition to a bill
has merit to at least delay passage of a bill. *But of late, it's become a
reflexive method to impede majority rule at nearly every turn. *It's overuse
is an anti-democratic tool and will eventually need to be addressed.
Perhaps when Congressional approval reaches minus 23%. *(-: * There's a
reason that their approval rating has plummeted.

This last budget showdown was a mockery of our form of consensus based
government. *I liken it to a head of household going around the neighbor
telling all the merchants how deeply in debt he is.

As if all the creditors who buy US debt and all the
rating agencies don't already know exactly what
the US debt is. What's up with you libs? You
think it's a secret you can hide? Why, you should
be proud of it, no?

If you want to liken it to a head of household, here's
the correct analogy. You have a husband who
looks at the budget and realizes they are currently
borrowing 40% of what they are spending. He
realizes that the household spending has increased
by 40% in just 4 years. He knows that this is
irresponsible and will lead to ruin.
So, he wants to make some
reasonable cuts in that spending to just start
reducing spending. He also wants to cut up
the credit cards to prevent this from
happening again. (balanced budget ammendment).

The wife? She insists that unless he get more
income from somewhere, that she won't reduce
spending at all. In fact, to stimulate the economy
in the neigborhood, she wants to go around
spending even more. So, she goes around telling
everyone what a mean, rotten scoundrel the
husband is. How he beats her, is mean to
children and kills puppies. The result? The
husband is only able to reduce spending by
..7%. That's point 7% folks.





Not your original 24 months, and not your "new" 13 months.
You're welcome to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Your month count is now at 186% instead of 343%.
Keep at it.

Aw, go easy on Chet. *He tries very hard. *It's not easy to try to make
recent Republican actions look reasonable and not obstructive. *Clearly it
involves creative accounting. *

No creative accounting. The Dems had control of the White
House and Congress for 2 years. Any president's dream
come true. And they had a filibuster proof
Senate for 7 full months. Other presidents managed to
do far more with far less. Reagan passed his stimulus
with only marginal control of the Senate. Oh, and his
worked. Clinton was successful working with a
Republican Congress. He even ended welfare as
we know it.

Yet, apparently this bunch is so
lame and stupid that we're to believe it's the Republicans
fault that they did not pass needed legislation. They did
pass what they deemed important and that was the Obama
stimulus and Obamacare. One isn't working and
the other has helped drive up healthcare costs and
further drive businesses into uncertainty and will likely
be ruled unconstitututional in the next year.

So now, being a bunch of whiners, the Dems want
to use the excuse that they needed even more control
and it's all the Republican's fault for their failure.
They passed Obamacare and they could have passed
any other damn thing they wanted to in those 7 months.
I guess jobs just were not high enough on their
agenda to matter.




Even when one side or the other seems to
have a majority, occasionally some officials still vote their conscience,
not their party line like Olympia Snowe. *That, and folks like Scott Brown
make declarations about who "controlled" the House or Senate on date X a
little hard to quantify in meaningful terms.

What worries me more is that we've come to accept that only bills which are
"mom and apple pie" stand a chance of passing without being dragged down by
procedural trickery. *There are times when the Congress has to hold its nose
and do unpleasant or unpopular things for the good of the country.
Unfortunately, those times are becoming more and more rare. *There's less
"horsetrading" and lots more "my way or the highway" posturing. *I think it
bodes very poorly for us as a country.

I find it remarkable that so many people believe the Feds react instantly in
action, payment, etc. *The Federal government runs on incredible momentum,
like a supertanker, and changing direction just because one party or the
other won an election or a majority in Congress occurs glacially. *It's hard
for people to conceive that the bills for two "wars of choice" will still be
coming in until 2050 and beyond.

Typical, now this fake, phoney excuse is going to be
extended and used until 2050 and beyond. Here's the
truth. It's hard for libs to conceive that:

A - Those wars were paid for over the years, so it's
not some Bush bill that suddenly showed up.

B - The Dems had control of the White House and the
Congress for two years. They could have ended either
or both of them, stopped all funding at any time they wanted to.

C - The total bill for those wars since day one is about
$1 tril. total. That's right, 10+ years of two wars cost
$1 tril. Yet the govt is borrowing $1.6 tril a year and
Obama's budget projects deficits of $1tril a year for
the next decade. So, clearly those wars are not the
core of the SPENDING problem.



We may very well need another Constitutional Convention because I don't see
much else breaking some of the incredible gridlock that has arisen in the
system.

--
Bobby G.

I do. It's called the election in 2012.

In article ,
"Robert Green" wrote:


As you've made clear, when the lines are very closely drawn, having the
numbers doesn't mean there won't be cross-overs, defections, back-door deals
and more. I think it's sad that we've come down to arguing about "which
side has the right to ram something down the other's throat."
This has always been an interesting philosophical discussion. I
am not a fan of either the tyranny of the majority or tyranny of the
minority.


In theory, the filibuster serves as a useful "check and balance" of the
system. It allows people who *really* believe their opposition to a bill
has merit to at least delay passage of a bill. But of late, it's become a
reflexive method to impede majority rule at nearly every turn. It's overuse
is an anti-democratic tool and will eventually need to be addressed.
Perhaps when Congressional approval reaches minus 23%. (-: There's a
reason that their approval rating has plummeted.
Yeah, they are not only polarized, but really lousy at getting their
points across. It looks like posturing and gamesmanship instead of
deliberation.


This last budget showdown was a mockery of our form of consensus based
government. I liken it to a head of household going around the neighbor
telling all the merchants how deeply in debt he is. It's stupid and it's
part of a dangerous trend of creating crises for hopeful political gain.
But this is a crisis that has been building literally for decades.
SS has been an unfunded pension plan since it's inception, always using
the income from currently employed to pay those who are retired. In the
80s (in a rather impressive episode of bipartisanship), they increased
taxes, put the "surplus" into non-marketable Treasury securities, and
sorta forgot to find a way to actually payback the securities. They also
tried to rewrite the laws of financial physics by disregarding what
happens when you don't get inputs from outside of a system. Oh, and t
hey took SS off budget so as to hide the effective debt, what is on the
books AND what is owed to SS, Mcare, etc.
Neither side is anywhere near blameless


What fascinating to me about filibusters and cloture is that changing the
rules of the Senate requires a two-thirds majority, so once even a bad rule
gets in play, it's not likely to soon vanish. In real terms it means that
41 senators, whose combined states could represent as little as 13% of the
U.S. population, can thwart the will of the majority of US citizens. It
should be noted that famed civil rights "deactivist" Strom Thurmond set the
filibuster record in a failed attempt to block the passage of the Civil
Rights Act of 1957.
Actually all it takes in real life is a majority. However, since it
is possible by Senate rules to filibuster the change, you are correct in
practice. Interesting bit of trivia according to a friend in a Senator's
office. The rule that sets-up the rule to filibuster, could be changed
with just a majority vote. So, you could by majority vote change the
rule that allows the rule that changes in other rules can be
filibustered. The byzantine rules of the Senate would, if he is right,
allow you change the filbuster rule, once removed.



--
People thought cybersex was a safe alternative,
until patients started presenting with sexually
acquired carpal tunnel syndrome.-Howard Berkowitz

On 08/26/11 01:40 am, wrote:

Dems take MY money by force, so they can give it to
illegals.
Repubs offer to reduce how much money is taken by force.

Not the same, at all.

Please give me some examples of the govt. giving money to illegals.

You're not serious are you?Illegal immigrant families
are receiving welfare.

How? If (as I had to acknowledge that I understood in my application to
become a legal immigrant) non-citizens are not entitled to receive
welfare payments, how are illegal immigrants receiving them?

Illegals go to the hospital when sick
or injured and receive free treatment.

So anybody showing up at a hospital or ER in a Republican-controlled
state has to show proof that they are in the country legally? I carry my
"green card" (hasn't been green for a decade at least) with me at all
times, but how many S citizens carry their passports all the time?

Illegal children get
a free education at public schools and in many states
they later qualify for reduced tuition at state colleges.

In many (most?) cases the children were brought here by their parents
and had no say in the matter. Many know little or nothing of the culture
or language of the country to which they would be deported.

And please get rid of the inscription on the Statue of Liberty.

Perce


In
my application to become a *legal* resident I acknowledged that I
understood that I was not entitled to benefit from any govt. welfare
programs. Indeed, on one occasion where we put my name on an application
for a home-insulation upgrade funded (partly, at least) by the feds.,
the application was denied, and we had to resubmit under my US-citizen
wife's name instead.

Apparently you just don't know how to work the system
correctly.

wrote in message news:2e51556d-9b45-4705-8ecd-

PC Please give me some examples of the govt. giving money to illegals.

RG The silence is deafening, isn't it, Perce? Slogans are easy to sling but
RG facts are much harder to ferret out.

It's not silence you here, it's the empty sound of your own skull.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Ah, Chet. You've once again proven Green's Law. "When you seek to insult
someone else's intelligence, you will most likely reveal your own
ignorance." And you did it in a single sentence. Bravo. It's almost as
elegant as writing "Your stupid."

It's HEAR, not HERE. Talk about skulls and empty sounds. Try being a
reasonable human being sometime and people might respect your opinions.
Especially if you someday find yourself able to keep your personal insults
to yourself. But I won't be holding my breath, waiting for that day.

You've demonstrated why Congress is in such a bad way. They no longer
discuss and deliberate. Like you, they try to score cheap points with
insults and confuse opinion with fact.

I see you've also neglected to back up your apparent agreement with Stormie
with anything resembling a fact. You chose to insult, instead, Chet. And
people wonder why Obama steamrolled McCain.

Thanks for making my day and confirming Green's law.

--
Bobby G.

"Stormin Mormon" wrote in message

I'm not going to do your research, but it happens regularly
in the Democrat controlled state of California. Medical
care, and gosh knows what else.

It's not his research to do. You made the bogus claim:

"Dems take my money by force so they can give it to illegals."

Perce neatly refuted your assertions by pointing out as an alien, he
couldn't even qualify for a tax credit. I challenge you to prove that any
Democrat took your money by force - a concept that has specific meaning in
the law. It's the crime of robbery. Care to prove that? Or is it time to
admit you were being hyperbolic (a very charitable interpretation of your
words)?

Remember Joe McCarthy? He had a list of known commies but he couldn't show
it to anyone.
--
Bobby G.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------



--
Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
.


"Percival P. Cassidy" wrote in message
...
On 08/25/11 06:29 pm, Stormin Mormon wrote:

Not at all!

Dems take MY money by force, so they can give it to
illegals.
Repubs offer to reduce how much money is taken by force.

Not the same, at all.

Please give me some examples of the govt. giving money to
illegals. In
my application to become a *legal* resident I acknowledged
that I
understood that I was not entitled to benefit from any govt.
welfare
programs. Indeed, on one occasion where we put my name on an
application
for a home-insulation upgrade funded (partly, at least) by
the feds.,
the application was denied, and we had to resubmit under my
US-citizen
wife's name instead.

Perce

"aemeijers" wrote in message
On 8/14/2011 8:27 PM, Gordon Shumway wrote:
(snip)

First, by eliminating the cumbersome bureaucratic red tape and the
redundant layers of supervision would streamline the task. Fewer
employees and restrictions equal less cost.

Second, by eliminating the cumbersome bureaucratic red tape and the
redundant layers of supervision would streamline the task. Fewer
employees and committees to get approval from equals faster completion
time.

Third, by eliminating the cumbersome bureaucratic red tape and the
redundant layers of supervision would streamline the task. We all are
aware that the congress critters (all of them) would have trouble
finding their ass with both hands. Therefore, without their meddling,
the finished product could only be more accurate.

In closing, if I am elected president...

That's three bulleted list items that say the same thing. "First (second
and third) by eliminating the cumbersome bureaucratic red tape and the
redundant layers of supervision would streamline the task." Such a telling
error to make when discussing redundancy. It's a clue that private
citizens can be just as redundant as Federal employees.

stuff snipped

In most cases, work has been
contracted out so politicians could get a sound bite that they 'reduced'
the number of government workers. They lied. All they did is sub the
work out. If I was benign dictator, number of employees would be defined
as the number of warm bodies in the building.

Yessir. I've been involved in lots of government contracting (lots of no
bid, special circumstance stuff, too) and I've never seen it save the
buckets of money people claim it will. Worse, still, there's just another
layer added to the process that often works out to confuse and delay the
work being done. Contracting out software is one of the worst areas because
once the contractor leaves or takes another job, good luck getting timely
maintenance from someone who understands the system. Oh, the eff-ups I've
seen with contracted software.

--
Bobby G.

"aemeijers" wrote in message
...
On 8/14/2011 11:03 AM, Han wrote:
(snip)
BS. If you want another Depression with 20+ % unemployment, do go and
cut everything but the pentagon and Congress's expenses.



Pentagon could probably take a 1/3 budget cut with no loss in mission
capability, if they would just get their act together, and cut out all
the duplication and internecine turf warfare. Hell, having one supply
system instead of five, and one set of rulebooks and procedures instead
of five, would probably save billions. They don't even have a DoD-wide
email system, and every service is spending millions to 'develop' their
own. But the Joint Chiefs and Congress prefer the status quo, because it
is a lot of flag billets and jobs and contracts for donors to keep all
those redundant structures in place. Every five years or so, yet
another commission does a study and says the same thing, but it never
changes, I'd love to see a POTUS with the guts to start issuing orders
to 'just do it already', and when Congress gets ****y, go on national TV
and explain it all to the public.

You'll be happy to know that after years and years of infighting we're
finally developing joint strike forces that are actually cooperating in more
than name only. The "stovepipes" of the various services are still very
much standing alone and I can't imagine what POTUS (or force of nature)
would be able to break down the longstanding walls between the Army, Navy
(USMC, too) and the Air Force.

Old timers will argue the dividing lines are necessary to morale and
tradition, but the roles of warfighters now have merged greatly. The Navy
has its own air force, etc. Keeping them all separate has turned into a
giant public works project for 1,000's of flag officiers, DASD's and their
entourages. I was part of a team trying to bring "jointdom" to the
Professional Military Education system (PME). The best we could hope for in
reality is that the Naval War College would take students from the other
services and vice-versa.

The big problems? If you're a Marine serving in a joint billet and you're
rated by an Air Force colonel, it's considered a black mark on your OER and
a meaningless evaluation because it wasn't done to USMC standards. That
kind of attitude presents a very tall wall to climb to achieve true "joint
mission" capability.

--
Bobby G.

http://tinyurl.com/3sw3krz

--
Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
..


"Robert Green" wrote in message
...
"Stormin Mormon" wrote
in message

I'm not going to do your research, but it happens
regularly
in the Democrat controlled state of California. Medical
care, and gosh knows what else.

It's not his research to do. You made the bogus claim:

"Dems take my money by force so they can give it to
illegals."

Perce neatly refuted your assertions by pointing out as an
alien, he
couldn't even qualify for a tax credit. I challenge you to
prove that any
Democrat took your money by force - a concept that has
specific meaning in
the law. It's the crime of robbery. Care to prove that?
Or is it time to
admit you were being hyperbolic (a very charitable
interpretation of your
words)?

Remember Joe McCarthy? He had a list of known commies but
he couldn't show
it to anyone.
--
Bobby G.

On 08/26/11 12:10 pm, Robert Green wrote:

I'm not going to do your research, but it happens regularly
in the Democrat controlled state of California. Medical
care, and gosh knows what else.

It's not his research to do. You made the bogus claim:

"Dems take my money by force so they can give it to illegals."

Perce neatly refuted your assertions by pointing out as an alien, he
couldn't even qualify for a tax credit.

In fact it wasn't a tax credit: it was a "get this work done free if you
qualify" deal -- "qualifying" including both income and citizenship tests.

Perce


I challenge you to prove that any
Democrat took your money by force - a concept that has specific meaning in
the law. It's the crime of robbery. Care to prove that? Or is it time to
admit you were being hyperbolic (a very charitable interpretation of your
words)?

Remember Joe McCarthy? He had a list of known commies but he couldn't show
it to anyone.

Dems take MY money by force, so they can give it to
illegals.
Repubs offer to reduce how much money is taken by force.

Not the same, at all.

Please give me some examples of the govt. giving money to
illegals. In
my application to become a *legal* resident I acknowledged
that I
understood that I was not entitled to benefit from any govt.
welfare
programs. Indeed, on one occasion where we put my name on an
application
for a home-insulation upgrade funded (partly, at least) by
the feds.,
the application was denied, and we had to resubmit under my
US-citizen
wife's name instead.

Perce

On 08/26/11 12:56 pm, Stormin Mormon wrote:

http://tinyurl.com/3sw3krz

I'm glad your church's immigration policy is better than yours.

Perce

On Fri, 26 Aug 2011 12:36:51 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:


That's three bulleted list items that say the same thing. "First (second
and third) by eliminating the cumbersome bureaucratic red tape and the
redundant layers of supervision would streamline the task." Such a telling
error to make when discussing redundancy. It's a clue that private
citizens can be just as redundant as Federal employees.


Duck. There are Department of Redundancy Departments everywhere.

stuff snipped

In most cases, work has been
contracted out so politicians could get a sound bite that they 'reduced'
the number of government workers. They lied. All they did is sub the
work out. If I was benign dictator, number of employees would be defined
as the number of warm bodies in the building.

Yessir. I've been involved in lots of government contracting (lots of no
bid, special circumstance stuff, too) and I've never seen it save the
buckets of money people claim it will. Worse, still, there's just another
layer added to the process that often works out to confuse and delay the
work being done. Contracting out software is one of the worst areas because
once the contractor leaves or takes another job, good luck getting timely
maintenance from someone who understands the system. Oh, the eff-ups I've
seen with contracted software.

Much of the government contracting is pure corruption on all sides.
I saw something - can't vouch for the truth of it - about fed money
going to post-Katrina reconstruction.
The winning bidder - if it was even bid - skimmed about 30%.
Nobody knows how much was kicked back or in what form to the fed
bodies who let the contract.
Call him the "general."
Then he subbed the work to subs who subbed it further, each taking a
cut. The end workers were mostly illegals paid not much more than min
wage.
Googling Katrina contracts can reveal some of it, but I don't much
have the heart for it.
Contracting works well in business or government if there is a
dedicated and honest core staff overseeing it.
I was an IT contractor and I've seen it work.
Probably what the government needs is a Bureau of Contracting Bureau.
And its employees must be made to attend a School of Ethics School.

--Vic

On Aug 26, 1:40*pm, "
wrote:
On Aug 26, 1:54*am, "Robert Green" wrote:





"Vic Smith" wrote in message

stuff snipped

By your own math, Obama had 13 months where the Dems
had the WH, Senate, and House AND they had a fillibuster
proof Senate.

No. *July 7th,2009 until Feb 4, 2010 is not quite 7 months.
That's the ONLY time there was a filibuster-proof Senate
during the Obama administration.

As you've made clear, when the lines are very closely drawn, having the
numbers doesn't mean there won't be cross-overs, defections, back-door deals
and more. *I think it's sad that we've come down to arguing about "which
side has the right to ram something down the other's throat."

In theory, the filibuster serves as a useful "check and balance" of the
system. *It allows people who *really* believe their opposition to a bill
has merit to at least delay passage of a bill. *But of late, it's become a
reflexive method to impede majority rule at nearly every turn. *It's overuse
is an anti-democratic tool and will eventually need to be addressed.
Perhaps when Congressional approval reaches minus 23%. *(-: * There's a
reason that their approval rating has plummeted.

This last budget showdown was a mockery of our form of consensus based
government. *I liken it to a head of household going around the neighbor
telling all the merchants how deeply in debt he is.

As if all the creditors who buy US debt and all the
rating agencies don't already know exactly what
the US debt is. *What's up with you libs? *You
think it's a secret you can hide? *Why, you should
be proud of it, no?

If you want to liken it to a head of household, here's
the correct analogy. *You have a husband who
looks at the budget and realizes they are currently
borrowing 40% of what they are spending. *He
realizes that the household spending has increased
by 40% in just 4 years. *He knows that this is
irresponsible and will lead to ruin.
So, he wants to make some
reasonable cuts in that spending to just start
reducing spending. *He also wants to cut up
the credit cards to prevent this from
happening again. (balanced budget ammendment).

The wife? *She insists that unless he get more
income from somewhere, that she won't reduce
spending at all. *In fact, to stimulate the economy
in the neigborhood, she wants to go around
spending even more. *So, she goes around telling
everyone what a mean, rotten scoundrel the
husband is. *How he beats her, is mean to
children and kills puppies. * The result? *The
husband is only able to reduce spending by
.7%. *That's point 7% folks.

Not your original 24 months, and not your "new" 13 months.
You're welcome to your own opinions, not your own facts.
Your month count is now at 186% instead of 343%.
Keep at it.

Aw, go easy on Chet. *He tries very hard. *It's not easy to try to make
recent Republican actions look reasonable and not obstructive. *Clearly it
involves creative accounting. *

No creative accounting. * The Dems had control of the White
House and Congress for 2 years. * Any president's dream
come true. *And they had a filibuster proof
Senate for 7 full months. * Other presidents managed to
do far more with far less. *Reagan passed his stimulus
with only marginal control of the Senate. *Oh, and his
worked. * Clinton was successful working with a
Republican Congress. *He even ended welfare as
we know it.

Yet, apparently this bunch is so
lame and stupid that we're to believe it's the Republicans
fault that they did not pass needed legislation. *They did
pass what they deemed important and that was the Obama
stimulus and Obamacare. *One isn't working and
the other has helped drive up healthcare costs and
further drive businesses into uncertainty and will likely
be ruled unconstitututional in the next year.

So now, being a bunch of whiners, the Dems want
to use the excuse that they needed even more control
and it's all the Republican's fault for their failure.
They passed Obamacare and they could have passed
any other damn thing they wanted to in those 7 months.
I guess jobs just were not high enough on their
agenda to matter.





Even when one side or the other seems to
have a majority, occasionally some officials still vote their conscience,
not their party line like Olympia Snowe. *That, and folks like Scott Brown
make declarations about who "controlled" the House or Senate on date X a
little hard to quantify in meaningful terms.

What worries me more is that we've come to accept that only bills which are
"mom and apple pie" stand a chance of passing without being dragged down by
procedural trickery. *There are times when the Congress has to hold its nose
and do unpleasant or unpopular things for the good of the country.
Unfortunately, those times are becoming more and more rare. *There's less
"horsetrading" and lots more "my way or the highway" posturing. *I think it
bodes very poorly for us as a country.

I find it remarkable that so many people believe the Feds react instantly in
action, payment, etc. *The Federal government runs on incredible momentum,
like a supertanker, and changing direction just because one party or the
other won an election or a majority in Congress occurs glacially. *It's hard
for people to conceive that the bills for two "wars of choice" will still be
coming in until 2050 and beyond.

Typical, now this fake, phoney excuse is going to be
extended and used until 2050 and beyond. *Here's the
truth. *It's hard for libs to conceive that:

A - Those wars were paid for over the years, so it's
not some Bush bill that suddenly showed up.

B - The Dems had control of the White House and the
Congress for two years. *They could have ended either
or both of them, stopped all funding at any time they wanted to.

C - The total bill for those wars since day one is about
$1 tril. total. *That's right, 10+ years of two wars cost
$1 tril. * *Yet the govt is borrowing $1.6 tril a year and
Obama's budget projects deficits of $1tril a year for
the next decade. *So, clearly those wars are not the
core of the SPENDING problem.



We may very well need another Constitutional Convention because I don't see
much else breaking some of the incredible gridlock that has arisen in the
system.



All true. But the gov has only one way of paying back the debt. By
tax money.

So,whatever happens, you will all have to pay more tax.
Tough ****.

On Aug 26, 5:36*pm, "Robert Green" wrote:
"aemeijers" wrote in message
On 8/14/2011 8:27 PM, Gordon Shumway wrote:
(snip)
First, by eliminating the cumbersome bureaucratic red tape and the
redundant layers of supervision would streamline the task. *Fewer
employees and restrictions equal less cost.

Second, by eliminating the cumbersome bureaucratic red tape and the
redundant layers of supervision would streamline the task. *Fewer
employees and committees to get approval from equals faster completion
time.

Third, by eliminating the cumbersome bureaucratic red tape and the
redundant layers of supervision would streamline the task. *We all are
aware that the congress critters (all of them) would have trouble
finding their ass with both hands. *Therefore, without their meddling,
the finished product could only be more accurate.

In closing, if I am elected president...

That's three bulleted list items that say the same thing. *"First (second
and third) by eliminating the cumbersome bureaucratic red tape and the
redundant layers of supervision would streamline the task." *Such a telling
error to make when discussing redundancy. * It's a clue that private
citizens can be just as redundant as Federal employees.

stuff snipped

In most cases, work has been
contracted out so politicians could get a sound bite that they 'reduced'
the number of government workers. They lied. All they did is sub the
work out. If I was benign dictator, number of employees would be defined
as the number of warm bodies in the building.

Yessir. *I've been involved in lots of government contracting (lots of no
bid, special circumstance stuff, too) and I've never seen it save the
buckets of money people claim it will. *Worse, still, there's just another
layer added to the process that often works out to confuse and delay the
work being done. *Contracting out software is one of the worst areas because
once the contractor leaves or takes another job, good luck getting timely
maintenance from someone who understands the system. *Oh, the eff-ups I've
seen with contracted software.

Exactly so. Here's $18billon down the spout here.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-st...m-2330906.html

"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
"Robert Green" wrote:

As you've made clear, when the lines are very closely drawn, having the
numbers doesn't mean there won't be cross-overs, defections, back-door
deals
and more. I think it's sad that we've come down to arguing about "which
side has the right to ram something down the other's throat."

This has always been an interesting philosophical discussion. I
am not a fan of either the tyranny of the majority or tyranny of the
minority.

I believe the system is inherently good in that it allows for "passion" - if
someone feels they've got real heartache with a bill, they can filibuster.
However, it depends on good intentions to function correctly. When it
becomes a tool to "ratf&ck" the majority time and time again, then it's
being seriously abused. There could be new limits imposed on the frequency
of filibusters. Like a jury, you get X number of challenges and then you
have to take what you get. I don't know whether the cure is worse than the
disease, though.

In theory, the filibuster serves as a useful "check and balance" of the
system. It allows people who *really* believe their opposition to a
bill
has merit to at least delay passage of a bill. But of late, it's become
a
reflexive method to impede majority rule at nearly every turn. It's
overuse
is an anti-democratic tool and will eventually need to be addressed.
Perhaps when Congressional approval reaches minus 23%. (-: There's a
reason that their approval rating has plummeted.

Yeah, they are not only polarized, but really lousy at getting their
points across. It looks like posturing and gamesmanship instead of
deliberation.

I used to enjoy watching debates on CSpan. I don't anymore for exactly the
reasons you mention. There is very little substantive discussion about the
issues. It's just everyone issuing "position statements" and remaining deaf
to anyone's position but their own. It happens on both sides of the aisle
but I've also noticed it's the young turks who are the worst and the least
collegial.

This last budget showdown was a mockery of our form of consensus based
government. I liken it to a head of household going around the neighbor
telling all the merchants how deeply in debt he is. It's stupid and
it's
part of a dangerous trend of creating crises for hopeful political gain.

But this is a crisis that has been building literally for decades.
SS has been an unfunded pension plan since it's inception, always using
the income from currently employed to pay those who are retired. In the
80s (in a rather impressive episode of bipartisanship), they increased
taxes, put the "surplus" into non-marketable Treasury securities, and
sorta forgot to find a way to actually payback the securities. They also
tried to rewrite the laws of financial physics by disregarding what
happens when you don't get inputs from outside of a system. Oh, and t
hey took SS off budget so as to hide the effective debt, what is on the
books AND what is owed to SS, Mcare, etc.

This is like the flooding that occurs months after the snows fell in the
mountains. We got into this mess in a very bi-partisan way, day by day, and
it's not going to be solved in a partisan way overnight. That's my
complaint.

The rising debt could have been addressed in a more thoughtful manner that
didn't result in a downgrade of our credit rating. How is that a good thing
for us? A lot of special interests on boths sides of the aisle will have
to cave-in to reality if things are to improve. That's not going to happen
in only a few weeks in a divided Congress.

What it will really take is serious analysis. A top-down AND bottom-up
review of all the items in the budget. Cutting willy-nilly will only throw
more people out of work and deepen the crisis. The Feds should be HIRING
investigators, auditors and CPA's to cut fraud and to cut expenditures that
no longer serve the purpose they were intended to.

There are plenty of out-of-work people in those categories that have
tremendous experience to bring to bear. I remember a long time ago when a
large number of Humvees went missing from the National Guard inventory a
very seasoned investigator from DoDIG found them in very short order.
That's because he had seen almost every trick ever pulled by quartermasters
on HQ and could literally smell something amiss.

He was like a narcotics detective I once knew who told me that you can tell
what pocket a junkie who's just scored keeps his dope in because he will pat
that pocket upon leaving the dealer's place. Same thing about executing a
search warrant. The person being searched can't help but cast furtive
glances at the place their "stuff" is hidden. I enjoy watching Cops just
because time and time again it proves those guys right.

But I digress. (-:

Sunsetting, an idea that was popular some 30 years ago, seems to have fallen
out of favor. Instead, we have what you've aptly named "fire and forget"
legislation that has no followup or shut-down provisions. We have a
Congress that writes laws like MicroSoft writes code. Bloatedly with the
caveat "we'll fix that in the NEXT release" when a new horde of bugs will
appear to replace it.

Neither side is anywhere near blameless

But perpetuating the blame game serves both sides well because it keeps
people's eyes off the problem with the entire system. They get tricked into
believing "if only you run those *******s out of office things will be
fine!" They never are. Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

What is fascinating to me about filibusters and cloture is that changing
the
rules of the Senate requires a two-thirds majority, so once even a bad
rule
gets in play, it's not likely to soon vanish. In real terms it means
that
41 senators, whose combined states could represent as little as 13% of
the
U.S. population, can thwart the will of the majority of US citizens. It
should be noted that famed civil rights "deactivist" Strom Thurmond set
the
filibuster record in a failed attempt to block the passage of the Civil
Rights Act of 1957.

Actually all it takes in real life is a majority. However, since it
is possible by Senate rules to filibuster the change, you are correct in
practice.

It's a wonderful Catch-22. I just saw an interview with Joseph Heller.
He's one smart but very cynical SOB. He believes that governments will
always do more harm than good in the long run.

Interesting bit of trivia according to a friend in a Senator's
office. The rule that sets-up the rule to filibuster, could be changed
with just a majority vote. So, you could by majority vote change the
rule that allows the rule that changes in other rules can be
filibustered. The byzantine rules of the Senate would, if he is right,
allow you change the filbuster rule, once removed.

Yes, I've read that and went through the PDF from the Senate about the
subject which seemed to confirm it.

http://www.senate.gov/reference/reso...df/RL30360.pdf

(Dizzying reading, to be sure!)

However, the Senate appears in no hurry to change anything they do. As you
noted before, both sides know that their positions could switch, so they
might be hurting their future selves and they simply do nothing. I suspect
they might change if the D's or R's capture an enormous majority one day.
But we've been a fairly equally divided country for a long time now. I
don't see that happening until the Hispanic "boomlet" babies come to voting
age in another decade or two. One thing I think the Republican party
leaders *have* learned is that they are facing a great demographic shift in
the US that could beach them if they do too much immigrant bashing.

For those in AHR that like to assign causation based on temporal proximity,
the big 2008 crash came just months after a renewed crackdown on illegal
aliens. Maybe the ghosts of the Incas and the Aztecs were punishing us.

--
Bobby G.

You're welcome.

--
Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org
..


"Percival P. Cassidy" wrote in message
...
On 08/26/11 12:56 pm, Stormin Mormon wrote:

http://tinyurl.com/3sw3krz

I'm glad your church's immigration policy is better than
yours.

Perce

"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message news:2-
"Robert Green" wrote:

Dems buy votes with welfare, Repubs buy votes with tax cuts. It's all
the
same tactic, basically. "Vote for me and there's money in it for you."
Reminds me of the Romans keeping their unruly citizens in line with
bread
and circuses. Now we have foodstamps and the Internet. And it looks
like
we're heading for the same place in history.

--
Bobby G.

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the
system, but too early to shoot the *******s."-- Claire Wolfe

Yes. It's sad but true. It seems that countries, like people, get senile
and have their arteries harden.

--
Bobby G.

Robert Green wrote:
"HeyBub" wrote in message news:-
Robert Green wrote:

stuff snipped

Hey, how about volunteer IRS agents? When you hire the lowest bid
contractor, you get low caliber employees who aren't afraid of
losing their jobs. That's not a good thing in many cases.


Giggle.

Have you ever even HEARD of a government employee getting fired?

Plenty of times. As RicodJour said "Your selective memory switch
needs to be toggled." Again.

You do remember your hero, Ronald Reagan, firing the 11,345 striking
air traffic controllers?

Giggle right back at you. A wasted mind is a terrible thing.

I stand corrected on the air traffic controllers. Thanks for reminding me.

Now that I think on it, Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox,
Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William
Ruckelshaus.

I wonder whether being a Republican president has anything to do with it?

On 8/26/2011 12:49 PM, Robert Green wrote:
wrote in message
...
On 8/14/2011 11:03 AM, Han wrote:
(snip)
BS. If you want another Depression with 20+ % unemployment, do go and
cut everything but the pentagon and Congress's expenses.



Pentagon could probably take a 1/3 budget cut with no loss in mission
capability, if they would just get their act together, and cut out all
the duplication and internecine turf warfare. Hell, having one supply
system instead of five, and one set of rulebooks and procedures instead
of five, would probably save billions. They don't even have a DoD-wide
email system, and every service is spending millions to 'develop' their
own. But the Joint Chiefs and Congress prefer the status quo, because it
is a lot of flag billets and jobs and contracts for donors to keep all
those redundant structures in place. Every five years or so, yet
another commission does a study and says the same thing, but it never
changes, I'd love to see a POTUS with the guts to start issuing orders
to 'just do it already', and when Congress gets ****y, go on national TV
and explain it all to the public.

You'll be happy to know that after years and years of infighting we're
finally developing joint strike forces that are actually cooperating in more
than name only. The "stovepipes" of the various services are still very
much standing alone and I can't imagine what POTUS (or force of nature)
would be able to break down the longstanding walls between the Army, Navy
(USMC, too) and the Air Force.

Old timers will argue the dividing lines are necessary to morale and
tradition, but the roles of warfighters now have merged greatly. The Navy
has its own air force, etc. Keeping them all separate has turned into a
giant public works project for 1,000's of flag officiers, DASD's and their
entourages. I was part of a team trying to bring "jointdom" to the
Professional Military Education system (PME). The best we could hope for in
reality is that the Naval War College would take students from the other
services and vice-versa.

The big problems? If you're a Marine serving in a joint billet and you're
rated by an Air Force colonel, it's considered a black mark on your OER and
a meaningless evaluation because it wasn't done to USMC standards. That
kind of attitude presents a very tall wall to climb to achieve true "joint
mission" capability.

--
Bobby G.



You're mainly talking operational side, other than maybe one rulebook
for performance evaluations for everyone. I was talking the frigging
housekeeping and support services side, most of which is done by
civilians and contractors these days.

Yes, if I was benign dictator, I'd merge all the military services
together and be done with it. Let them have their separate uniforms if
the want, but one C&C structure, and a combined back office. But I know
it'll never happen in my lifetime.

At work, I work with a lot of ex-military. The old timers that actually
did 20 or whatever, are mostly okay, and behave in a professional
manner, and listen to what I have to say. The relative (to me) kids that
did a hitch or two, mostly give me nothing but attitude, and their stock
answer to anything is 'Were you in the service? No? Then you don't know
anything, so shut up.' I've got boots older than a lot of these kids,
and have worked with all the services for 30+ years. I KNOW how
fubar'd the back end of the services are. Not saying they don't all mean
well, mind you, but the US military has turned into such a freaking
bureaucracy that can't find their ass with both hands, that I would
never (absent clear and present danger to US that required a lot of
bodies) encourage a kid to sign up. The PTB simply can't be trusted.

--
aem sends...

On Fri, 26 Aug 2011 15:19:03 -0500, "HeyBub"
wrote:

You do remember your hero, Ronald Reagan, firing the 11,345 striking
air traffic controllers?

Giggle right back at you. A wasted mind is a terrible thing.

I stand corrected on the air traffic controllers. Thanks for reminding me.

Now that I think on it, Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox,
Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William
Ruckelshaus.

I wonder whether being a Republican president has anything to do with it?


Bill Clinton fired federal prosecutors... not sure how many federal
employees from the lower ranks of the GS scale wage earner....

On Aug 26, 11:56*am, "Robert Green"
wrote:
wrote in message news:2e51556d-9b45-4705-8ecd-

PC Please give me some examples of the govt. giving money to illegals..

RG The silence is deafening, isn't it, Perce? Slogans are easy to sling but
RG facts are much harder to ferret out.

It's not silence you here, it's the empty sound of your own skull.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Ah, Chet. *You've once again proven Green's Law. *"When you seek to insult
someone else's intelligence, you will most likely reveal your own
ignorance." *And you did it in a single sentence. *Bravo. *It's almost as
elegant as writing "Your stupid."

It's HEAR, not HERE. *Talk about skulls and empty sounds. * Try being a
reasonable human being sometime and people might respect your opinions.

Here's a clue. I don't give a rat's ass if you respect my
opinions. In fact, I'd be concerned if you did. As for my
simple mistake, it's obviously a typo as anyone who has
read my posts over the years knows.



Especially if you someday find yourself able to keep your personal insults
to yourself. *But I won't be holding my breath, waiting for that day.

Go **** yourself, how's that for an insult?




You've demonstrated why Congress is in such a bad way. *They no longer
discuss and deliberate. *Like you, they try to score cheap points with
insults and confuse opinion with fact.

It's you who's confused. You're the one claiming illegal
aliens are not getting US taxpayer dollars. That is so
stupid, it's beyond anyone's ability to help you.




I see you've also neglected to back up your apparent agreement with Stormie
with anything resembling a fact. You chose to insult, instead, Chet. *And
people wonder why Obama steamrolled McCain.

Thanks for making my day and confirming Green's law.

--
Bobby G.

Why would I waste my time on facts for you? I and others
here have given you plenty in the past and it's not changed
a thing. You're a socialist hell bent on remaking America
while claiming to be a registered Republican. If
you want the facts on illegal immigrants receiving
US govt dollars, just do a simple google search.

On Fri, 26 Aug 2011 11:56:17 -0400, "Robert Green"
wrote:

wrote in message news:2e51556d-9b45-4705-8ecd-

PC Please give me some examples of the govt. giving money to illegals.

RG The silence is deafening, isn't it, Perce? Slogans are easy to sling but
RG facts are much harder to ferret out.

It's not silence you here, it's the empty sound of your own skull.
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Ah, Chet. You've once again proven Green's Law. "When you seek to insult
someone else's intelligence, you will most likely reveal your own
ignorance." And you did it in a single sentence. Bravo. It's almost as
elegant as writing "Your stupid."

It's "You're stupid", stupid. ;-)

It's HEAR, not HERE. Talk about skulls and empty sounds. Try being a
reasonable human being sometime and people might respect your opinions.
Especially if you someday find yourself able to keep your personal insults
to yourself. But I won't be holding my breath, waiting for that day.

You've demonstrated why Congress is in such a bad way. They no longer
discuss and deliberate. Like you, they try to score cheap points with
insults and confuse opinion with fact.

I see you've also neglected to back up your apparent agreement with Stormie
with anything resembling a fact. You chose to insult, instead, Chet. And
people wonder why Obama steamrolled McCain.

Thanks for making my day and confirming Green's law.

....and Skitt's.

On Fri, 26 Aug 2011 14:06:40 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

It's you who's confused. You're the one claiming illegal
aliens are not getting US taxpayer dollars. That is so
stupid, it's beyond anyone's ability to help you.

Some numbers mentioned here.

_Welfare in America_

http://nation.foxnews.com/welfare/2011/08/24/dobbs-and-oreilly-investigate-welfare-america

On Fri, 26 Aug 2011 14:44:34 -0700, Oren wrote:

On Fri, 26 Aug 2011 14:06:40 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

It's you who's confused. You're the one claiming illegal
aliens are not getting US taxpayer dollars. That is so
stupid, it's beyond anyone's ability to help you.

Some numbers mentioned here.

_Welfare in America_

http://nation.foxnews.com/welfare/2011/08/24/dobbs-and-oreilly-investigate-welfare-america

Oh, THAT is from Faux News. No one believes them!

just thought I'd get that one out of the way

On Aug 26, 3:09*pm, "Robert Green" wrote:
"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
*"Robert Green" wrote:
As you've made clear, when the lines are very closely drawn, having the
numbers doesn't mean there won't be cross-overs, defections, back-door
deals
and more. *I think it's sad that we've come down to arguing about "which
side has the right to ram something down the other's throat."
* * * * This has always been an interesting philosophical discussion. I
am not a fan of either the tyranny of the majority or tyranny of the
minority.

I believe the system is inherently good in that it allows for "passion" - if
someone feels they've got real heartache with a bill, they can filibuster..
However, it depends on good intentions to function correctly.
*When it
becomes a tool to "ratf&ck" the majority time and time again, then it's
being seriously abused.

You;re the guy calling Tea Party Congressmen terrorists
because they stood up and tried to stop out of control
spending. If that was not good intentions, then I don't
know what was. All they wanted was some reasonable
reductions in out of control spending that has increased
40% in just the last 4 years. And a balanced budget
ammendment to save the country from more reckless
spending. And recognizing that out of control spending
is the real problem, they refused to raise taxes and give
the govt more money to waste. All very reasonable and
with the best of intentions. For that, you and the libs call
them terrorists. And you have the nerve to talk about
good intentions?






I used to enjoy watching debates on CSpan. *I don't anymore for exactly the
reasons you mention. *There is very little substantive discussion about the
issues. *It's just everyone issuing "position statements" and remaining deaf
*to anyone's position but their own. *It happens on both sides of the aisle
but I've also noticed it's the young turks who are the worst and the least
collegial.


Thank God for that. It's the collegial nonsense that got
us to where we are today.





This last budget showdown was a mockery of our form of consensus based
government. *I liken it to a head of household going around the neighbor
telling all the merchants how deeply in debt he is. *It's stupid and
it's
part of a dangerous trend of creating crises for hopeful political gain.

I gave you the correct analogy in a prior post. It's like
a husband discovering that the household is borrowing
40% of what they are spending. His proposal is to
reduce spending in a reasonable fashion. The wife?
She wants to spend more and refuses to cut anything
unless the husband agrees to find more income.
According to you, the husband is the one that is
stupid?





* * *But this is a crisis that has been building literally for decades.
SS has been an unfunded pension plan since it's inception, always using
the income from currently employed to pay those who are retired. In the
80s (in a rather impressive episode of bipartisanship), they increased
taxes, put the "surplus" into non-marketable Treasury securities, and
sorta forgot to find a way to actually payback the securities. They also
tried to rewrite the laws of financial physics by disregarding what
happens when you don't get inputs from outside of a system. *Oh, and t
hey took SS off budget so as to hide the effective debt, what is on the
books AND what is owed to SS, Mcare, etc.

This is like the flooding that occurs months after the snows fell in the
mountains. *We got into this mess in a very bi-partisan way, day by day, and
it's not going to be solved in a partisan way overnight. *That's my
complaint.

The rising debt could have been addressed in a more thoughtful manner that
didn't result in a downgrade of our credit rating. *How is that a good thing
for us? * A lot of special interests on boths sides of the aisle will have
to cave-in to reality if things are to improve. *That's not going to happen
in only a few weeks in a divided Congress.

Yes, the Democrats could have agreed to bring spending
that has grown 40% in just 4 years under control. But
they didn't.


What it will really take is serious analysis. *A top-down AND bottom-up
review of all the items in the budget. *Cutting willy-nilly will only throw
more people out of work and deepen the crisis. *The Feds should be HIRING
investigators, auditors and CPA's to cut fraud and to cut expenditures that
no longer serve the purpose they were intended to.

But your friends the Democrats had 2 years to do that
and they have not done a thing. Why, they couldn't
even pass a budget. They could agree to do that
tomorrow and the Republicans would join them.





There are plenty of out-of-work people in those categories that have
tremendous experience to bring to bear. *I remember a long time ago when a
large number of Humvees went missing from the National Guard inventory a
very seasoned investigator from DoDIG found them in very short order.
That's because he had seen almost every trick ever pulled by quartermasters
on HQ and could literally smell something amiss.

He was like a narcotics detective I once knew who told me that you can tell
what pocket a junkie who's just scored keeps his dope in because he will pat
that pocket upon leaving the dealer's place. *Same thing about executing a
search warrant. *The person being searched can't help but cast furtive
glances at the place their "stuff" is hidden. *I enjoy watching Cops just
because time and time again it proves those guys right.


Yes, you do like to ramble on about nonsense.


Sunsetting, an idea that was popular some 30 years ago, seems to have fallen
out of favor. *Instead, we have what you've aptly named "fire and forget"
legislation that has no followup or shut-down provisions. *We have a
Congress that writes laws like MicroSoft writes code. *Bloatedly with the
caveat "we'll fix that in the NEXT release" when a new horde of bugs will
appear to replace it.

Is Obama in favor of that? Pelosi? Reid? The libs?
Not a Democrat to be found.




* * *Neither side is anywhere near blameless

But perpetuating the blame game serves both sides well because it keeps
people's eyes off the problem with the entire system. *They get tricked into
believing "if only you run those *******s out of office things will be
fine!" *They never are. *Tweedledee and Tweedledum.


It has never been clearer who is to blame than
over the last two months. The Democrats refuse
to just start cutting spending that has grown 40%
in the last 4 years. Has your household spending
gone up like that? And if it did, would your answer
be, hell no, I'm not gonna cut spending unless I
can also raise my income?

On Fri, 26 Aug 2011 17:00:46 -0500, "
wrote:

On Fri, 26 Aug 2011 14:44:34 -0700, Oren wrote:

On Fri, 26 Aug 2011 14:06:40 -0700 (PDT), "
wrote:

It's you who's confused. You're the one claiming illegal
aliens are not getting US taxpayer dollars. That is so
stupid, it's beyond anyone's ability to help you.

Some numbers mentioned here.

_Welfare in America_

http://nation.foxnews.com/welfare/2011/08/24/dobbs-and-oreilly-investigate-welfare-america

Oh, THAT is from Faux News. No one believes them!

just thought I'd get that one out of the way

Ya done good. Cards on the table

Damn shame the link wasn't from ms-LSD!

Dang it.

"Vic Smith" wrote in message
wrote:

That's three bulleted list items that say the same thing. "First (second
and third) by eliminating the cumbersome bureaucratic red tape and the
redundant layers of supervision would streamline the task." Such a
telling
error to make when discussing redundancy. It's a clue that private
citizens can be just as redundant as Federal employees.

Duck. There are Department of Redundancy Departments everywhere.

(-:

Yessir. I've been involved in lots of government contracting (lots of no
bid, special circumstance stuff, too) and I've never seen it save the
buckets of money people claim it will. Worse, still, there's just
another
layer added to the process that often works out to confuse and delay the
work being done. Contracting out software is one of the worst areas
because
once the contractor leaves or takes another job, good luck getting timely
maintenance from someone who understands the system. Oh, the eff-ups
I've
seen with contracted software.

Much of the government contracting is pure corruption on all sides.
I saw something - can't vouch for the truth of it - about fed money
going to post-Katrina reconstruction.

Yes, I've seen a lot of news reports about absolutely naked corruption in
handing out FEMA money. Still, I'd rather *some* benefits trickle down
unlike Somalia, where the crooks get hold of the relief aid right off the
plane and SELL it to the people who need it. That's just one of the many
ways that corrupt leaders stay in power.

The winning bidder - if it was even bid - skimmed about 30%.
Nobody knows how much was kicked back or in what form to the fed
bodies who let the contract.
Call him the "general."

Skimming - it's a time honored US (probably world-wide) practice. I wonder
how many people ended up buried in holes in the desert after they were found
skimming from Las Vegas casinos. I'm waiting for the day when our officials
treat votes with the same sanctity that LV treats casino winnings. HD CCTV,
polygraphs, honesty testing and the old "Casino" standby: You can have the
money and the saw or you can just walk away. Still want the money?

Then he subbed the work to subs who subbed it further, each taking a
cut. The end workers were mostly illegals paid not much more than min
wage.

I remember seeing more than one story about how it was illegals that did a
lot of the rebuilding. A lot of people believe every illegal immigrant is a
criminal bent on getting on the US welfare teat and never letting go. My
experience is that they are awfully hard, fast and efficient workers. I had
a crew of them knock on my door the day a huge tree branch fell on my front
lawn. Within less than an hour they had cut up the limb and swept up all
the leaves and saw dust, loading the wood into their pickup. For $75 it was
like it never happened. Looks like crooked contractors figured that out,
too - that they could underpay their illegals and pocket the difference.

Googling Katrina contracts can reveal some of it, but I don't much
have the heart for it.

Me neither. I know it happened, I know we paid people to rebuild in the
same f*cking place so that we can pay them again for the same sort of
disaster in the future. Like welfare and unemployment, we do exactly the
WRONG things when we have opportunities to change them.

Though some seem to think I'm a "dirty damned lib" they obviously don't
really read what I've written. They look for buzzwords that set them off
and then go off on rants about how bad one side or the other is. BOTH sides
are bad.

Not many libs I know would FORCE people to relocate to safer ground if they
want any kind of government assistance after a wipeout like Katrina. Free
choice, they rant. Well, my free choice is that I don't want to pay for
idiots to rebuild the very houses they lost and will likely lose again after
the next CAT 5 storm.

Not many libs I know believe able-bodied person should NOT get unemployment
unless they show up every day, dressed and ready for work at a government
unemployment office. Once there they either have to take retraining
(computer classes, mostly), spend the day interviewing for work or washing
and waxing the floors in the building to get a check.

Paying people to sit at home and mope after losing their jobs is the
absolute WORST thing we could do for them and for the country. Once people
(or birds in winter) become used to handouts, they eventually can't live
without them. But it's standard operating procedure and it's dumb, Dumb,
DUMB!!

If you can't feed or clothe your children you shouldn't get a welfare check,
you get them taken away and adopted out PERMANENTLY to those that can.
Sound "liberal" to you? My lib friends certainly don't think so! (-: There
should be no backsies, either. Even if the parents sober up and lead
exemplary lives, once those children are placed in a better home, they are
gone. Records sealed,

Contracting works well in business or government if there is a
dedicated and honest core staff overseeing it.

That's why I believe that the government can work if there's honest
"brokerage" that ensures things are done fairly and by the book instead of
the way you described what happened after Katrina.

I was an IT contractor and I've seen it work.

Me three.

Probably what the government needs is a Bureau of Contracting Bureau.
And its employees must be made to attend a School of Ethics School.

I wonder if that's enough to keep people from acting out their basest
instincts.

--
Bobby G.

"Percival P. Cassidy" wrote in message
...
On 08/26/11 12:10 pm, Robert Green wrote:

I'm not going to do your research, but it happens regularly
in the Democrat controlled state of California. Medical
care, and gosh knows what else.

It's not his research to do. You made the bogus claim:

"Dems take my money by force so they can give it to illegals."

Perce neatly refuted your assertions by pointing out as an alien, he
couldn't even qualify for a tax credit.

In fact it wasn't a tax credit: it was a "get this work done free if you
qualify" deal -- "qualifying" including both income and citizenship tests.

My bad. Thanks for the correction.

Even so, the idea that the money is "taken by force" is still pretty
ludicrous. AFAIK, it's all done quite legally through the tax laws and not
"by force." Don't like those laws, run for office and change them.

It's like all the other sound-bite slogans like the Community Reinvestment
Act caused the meltdown or the birther nonsense. Drill down deep enough and
the bizarre claims disintegrate.

--
Bobby G.

"aemeijers" wrote in message
On 8/26/2011 12:49 PM, Robert Green wrote:
wrote in message
On 8/14/2011 11:03 AM, Han wrote:

(snip)

Old timers will argue the dividing lines are necessary to morale and
tradition, but the roles of warfighters now have merged greatly. The
Navy
has its own air force, etc. Keeping them all separate has turned into a
giant public works project for 1,000's of flag officers, DASD's and
their
entourages. I was part of a team trying to bring "jointdom" to the
Professional Military Education system (PME). The best we could hope
for in
reality is that the Naval War College would take students from the other
services and vice-versa.

The big problems? If you're a Marine serving in a joint billet and
you're
rated by an Air Force colonel, it's considered a black mark on your OER
and
a meaningless evaluation because it wasn't done to USMC standards. That
kind of attitude presents a very tall wall to climb to achieve true
"joint
mission" capability.

You're mainly talking operational side, other than maybe one rulebook
for performance evaluations for everyone. I was talking the frigging
housekeeping and support services side, most of which is done by
civilians and contractors these days.

Blackwater's contract to provide protection for the State Department shows
that even the operational side is being handled by civilians and
contractors. It's a great deal for the US because we don't have to keep
paying them when the war is over the way we have to keep paying career
soldiers.

Yes, if I was benign dictator, I'd merge all the military services
together and be done with it. Let them have their separate uniforms if
the want, but one C&C structure, and a combined back office. But I know
it'll never happen in my lifetime.

I'll go further and say it won't EVER happen in anyone's lifetime. The
services will resist merging to the very end, with the same fervor they use
to fight joint anything. Maybe when there's only one soldier left standing
.. . .

At work, I work with a lot of ex-military. The old timers that actually
did 20 or whatever, are mostly okay, and behave in a professional
manner, and listen to what I have to say.

Yes, I agree. I saw very few loonies beyond the rank of 05. But I must
admit, I've seen more crazy Lt. Commanders in the Navy than I have
equivalent ranks in other services. The Navy finance officers (all failed
ship drivers or nasal radiators, it seemed) were a very, very odd bunch and
highly resistant to change of any kind even though BUPERS was a
****-stomping mess in terms of accurate accounting.

I still remember fondly being sent to New Orleans by the DASD for Readiness
and Training to unravel one of their particularly bad systems that they said
could not produce the reports the Secretary required. Their IT system was
so poorly documented and implemented that the seamen entering basic data had
no idea what they were doing. They had duplicate SSN's in the hundreds,
entries that had no "bounds" checking and fields that had control characters
embedded in them that would stop transfers from tape in midstream. It was
one of the worst personnel accounting systems I have *ever* seen and it was
designed by low-bid civilian contractors whose name I will not mention lest
they try suing me for defamation. I'll give a hint. What would you call a
female sibling who rode unicycles? (-:

The relative (to me) kids that
did a hitch or two, mostly give me nothing but attitude, and their stock
answer to anything is 'Were you in the service? No? Then you don't know
anything, so shut up.'

It isn't just the armed forces that has that problem. Reminds me of the
Simon/Garfunkel song: "The kids have no respect for the law today and blah,
blah, blah."

I've got boots older than a lot of these kids,
and have worked with all the services for 30+ years. I KNOW how
fubar'd the back end of the services are. Not saying they don't all mean
well, mind you, but the US military has turned into such a freaking
bureaucracy that can't find their ass with both hands, that I would
never (absent clear and present danger to US that required a lot of
bodies) encourage a kid to sign up. The PTB simply can't be trusted.

My little piece of that world was bringing the idea of "jointness" to the
fractious armed services. Even with the Goldwater-Nichols Act

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldwat...%93Nichols_Act

it took enormous clubs to beat them into submission. Only serious threats
to a service's funding stream made them sit up and take notice. The
Goldwater-Nichols Act was meant to fix problems caused by extreme
inter-service rivalry, which had emerged during the Vietnam War. Joint
operations, like the catastrophic failure of the Iranian hostage rescue
mission in 1980 were almost impossible to coordinate because of different
communications systems and the insistence that all services "share in the
glory."

Of course, in Iran, they weren't sharing glory, they were trying to stick
someone else with the blame. I can't say for sure, but Congressional
staffers I've talked to say it was the soldier who had to use the public
phone system and a long-distance calling card to help coordinate
inter-service actions during the invasion of Grenada in 1983 that got
Congress angry enough to act.

--
Bobby G.