How our military has already been cut since 1990

LadyJazzer wrote:

PrintSmith wrote: Individual welfare programs that act as a central clearinghouse for the collection and distribution of the nation's charity that are included in the self labeled "mandatory" spending items created by acts of Congress. SNAPS, Medicaid, unemployment, Section 8 housing subsidies (which are actual subsidies, not tax deductions) and all the rest of the domestic programs that are more properly left to the states in the coordinate power structure promised by the Constitution. We can toss in a few discretionary spending items as well including at least 20%, if not all, of the money spent by the Departments of Education, HHS, HUD, all of SSA, CNCS, NIH, NSF and a plethera of other non-defense agencies.

You are nothing if not predictable... Too easy... Just like feeding the carp at the museum at 4pm... "Here fishy, fishy..."

rofllol

Also nothing if not accurate. Would you not qualify SNAPS and Section 8 subsidies as charity for some reason LJ? If it isn't charity, how would you classify it?

Section-8? Charity?

Oh, sorry...I keep forgetting that I'm dealing with a sociopath who thinks charity for disabled and low-income people is a bad thing...

Why, yes, I do consider it charity... And for the same reason I think "providing for the General Welfare" is a GOOD thing, I'm for it.

Now, why don't go back to your storeroom and count your gold, and freeze-dried rations and ammunition-clips again. You'll feel better....

Never said charity was a bad thing, did I LJ. Nope, not even once. What I have actually said is that collection and distribution of the nation's charity should not be a function of the DC government and certainly not its primary function, which 2/3 of the annual budget makes a pretty good argument it has become over the years.

I think that if Obama truly has "hundreds of thousands of dollars" he "doesn't need" that it would be appropriate and proper for him to take that money and donate it to charities of his choosing rather than seek to have the federal government collect it from him in taxes and distribute it to purchase votes from the people that the government gave it to in the hopes of consolidating still more power within the confines of the DC government.

We don't, after all, want to become another social democracy that views charity as the byproduct of the taxes they pay rather than an individual responsibility to be their brother's keeper, do we? Wouldn't we rather be known as the people who reach into their own pockets to help their fellow man rather than just another group who expect their government to do that job for them with their tax money so they don't have to be bothered?

PrintSmith wrote: We don't, after all, want to become another social democracy that views charity as the byproduct of the taxes they pay rather than an individual responsibility, do we?

Why, yes... WE would....

LadyJazzer wrote:

PrintSmith wrote: We don't, after all, want to become another social democracy that views charity as the byproduct of the taxes they pay rather than an individual responsibility, do we?

Why, yes... WE would....

LJ, is a total uneducated lost cause PS. And not worth wasting any brain cells arguing with. You can see how totally out of touch she is with reality.

I tend to think that a safety net is an absolute necessity and without it, we are no better than many of the third world countries ruled by totalitarians. There are possibly too many ways to work the system here but nobody on the system is getting rich - they are just getting by. We need to spend much less on "defense" and quit trying to police the world. I don't want to hear about how the world is such a complicated place that we need bases everywhere just to keep up. Why in the hell do wee need 750 bases OUTSIDE the US??? I've heard the term "Empire" used to describe this penchant we seem to have with occupying the world - troubles is Empires pay for themselves off of the countries conquered. We are not. We're paying for this with granny's social security. PS, you can rail about how the government shouldn't be in the business of helping its citizens, but I think you are missing a big piece of the puzzle.

I think that sentiment is exactly opposite TM. The big piece that I think you are missing is that the empire building that this nation has engaged itself in for the last half century or so is a direct result of the pressures put on the treasury and the citizens by the DC government attempting to consolidate the governing of not only all foreign but all domestic policy into itself. The empire building that permeated Europe, which is why there were British, French, Spanish and other colonies dotting the western hemisphere to begin with, was the direct result of the largess and corruption of the single central governments that ran those nations. Is it any wonder then that as we have devolved from a system of government that incorporated coordinate powers between federal and state governments into a single central government that our government has become more empirical and corrupt regardless of which party happens to be ruling the DC roost at the time? I don't happen to believe that this transformation is simply coincidence TM, I think it is the inevitable result of putting a single government in control of all governing.

I will agree with you, for the most part, that empires of the past have used the resources of the conquered nations to fund their largess and corruption, but that was out of necessity as they had already plundered the wealth of the common citizen and reduced them to essentially being indentured servants to the single central government. Which, I might point out, would be a pretty good description of the citizens of the states in this union if they are forced to bear a burden of taxation that is double what the current one is in order to fund the ongoing attempts to make the DC government the central collection and distribution point for the nation's charity.

I, too, think that a safety net is not only desirable, but necessary; I just happen to think that this is a state, not a federal, responsibility given that the Constitution is a document that defines and limits the powers of the federal, not the state, government. That goes for education as well, it is a state government task, not a federal government task. If the citizens of the states were not paying so much into a central clearinghouse to fund charity operations, they would have more money to devote to this task within their own state, and the same applies for education. It is not that I think that the principle of Social Security or Medicare are bad, only consolidating operations in a single location. I think we would have a much better opportunity to devise a system that provided that safety net without bankrupting 300 million people and enslaving them to trillions of dollars of unfunded future liabilities if we had 50 entities looking for a way to do that instead of only one. That makes more sense to me. Let's have 50 experiments trying to find a solution, 50 separate laboratories seeking a cure for the problem instead of placing all of the eggs into a single basket and hoping we can keep ahead of all the mistakes before they collapse the system. If one, or even 10 of the states fail, then at least it isn't a complete failure of the safety net and a recovery shared by all would be a much less expensive task. We can look at what works and what doesn't and fine tune as we go state by state, it doesn't need to be, nor should it be, something where a single failure dooms it all. The president should not be able to threaten our seniors by withholding their checks. That one person controls that much power is a failure of all of us to prevent it from happening, pure and simple.

Ending the ability of the DC government to be the central clearinghouse for the collection and distribution of the nation's charity does not mean, as regressives are quick to assert, an ending of that charity. What it means instead is an end to one entity control, a decentralization of the effort so that it is not at so great a risk of disappearing - a return to the progressive ideas of tiered governments where one is not responsible for all or even the majority of governing and self government is a highly prized character trait.

We agree that these things should be state issues instead of federal, but that is a pipe dream. I like to live in the reality that exists and try to bend that to the most favorable outcome instead of trying to rewrite the book.

towermonkey wrote: I tend to think that a safety net is an absolute necessity and without it, we are no better than many of the third world countries ruled by totalitarians. There are possibly too many ways to work the system here but nobody on the system is getting rich - they are just getting by. We need to spend much less on "defense" and quit trying to police the world. I don't want to hear about how the world is such a complicated place that we need bases everywhere just to keep up. Why in the hell do wee need 750 bases OUTSIDE the US??? I've heard the term "Empire" used to describe this penchant we seem to have with occupying the world - troubles is Empires pay for themselves off of the countries conquered. We are not. We're paying for this with granny's social security. PS, you can rail about how the government shouldn't be in the business of helping its citizens, but I think you are missing a big piece of the puzzle.

As I do agree with reducing bases around the world and letting NATO and the worthless UN deal with the issues without us, there is not 750 bases outside the US. Alot of the bases that we did have like in Germany have been shut down. They have been turned over to the Germans. Also in some other countries as well. As for everyone talking about spending much less on defense. I do agree that there is cuts that can be made without effecting manpower, training, and readiness. I do not agree on trying to dismantle the military down to nothing.

People need to get it through their heads that we are more than just warriors waiting to go to war. We also do alot within our local communities also.

Agreed Navy.....and I haven't seen anyone recommend cutting the military down to nothing, and most any comments I have seen support the troops and what they do. I, like many, don't think they get paid enough nor do they get the ongoing support they not only deserve, but have earned. I'm sure, however, that like any large program there are areas that can be cut and/or improved and waste that can be identified.