Politics The Big Problem w/ Our Elected Officials

You have a very selective memory friend. No party is blameless but I want to remind you of a few facts:

1 - When GWB became President he was handed a budget surplus, a shrinking national deficit and an economy on the hum.

2 - In spite of 9/11 and the knowledge that war was imminent, GWB passed vast tax breaks and used our budget surplus and a garden variety recession to justify them.

3 - GWB, using faulty intelligence and spurred by Dick Cheney, invaded Iraq without provocation and committed us to spending trillions of dollars to fund the war effort.

4 - GWB institued Medicare Part D to buy the votes he needed from the elderly in order to win the 2004 election over Kerry.....oh yes, and committed us to further debt obligations.

So you can spout your regurgitated propaganda all you want but the facts are a bitch. Democrats are not blameless. Much of the deregulation that led to our economic collapse took place when Clinton was president (i.e. the repeal of Glass-Steagall).

On to another point, the ACA was never a promise to LOWER your insurance premiums. It was an effort to slow the rising cost of healthcare, which it has been successful at doing. You act like your insurance premiums never increased until Obamacare was passed. The whole point of the ACA was to make insurance accessible to everyone and to help keep the cost of healthcare closer to the rate of inflation. The ACA is accomplishing that goal. Quit your bitching....

MLU Tiger has already told you this but it needs repeating: Republicans get a larger portion of the poor vote. It has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with religion. Why do you think the Republicans pander to the crazy religious zealots? Not because they consider them intellectual equals....they need their votes.

 

True that 10 more districts in the heaviest percentage of use (your link to Time) were Republican districts, but you don't mine it down by demographics and population. The business insider lost me when it used the word teabaggers so I don't trust it a bit. Bias much?

http://www.albanyconservative.us/food_stamp_by_race.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/13/10-states-with-the-greatest-food-stamps_n_860233.html

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/11/28/us/20091128-foodstamps.html

Click the demographic tab - Southern blacks did not vote Republican. Also, North Carolina and Florida went for Barack Obama in the last election. The Huffington Post article, hardly right wing points out the smaller population Southern states do use a lot but demographics matter as well. I don't deplore people who need food stamps but dramatically increasing number and making them available to illegals - look at the border maps is not a good thing.

http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-...ng-u-s-food-stamp-program-for-illegal-aliens/

 

Whether we agree or disagree most of those issues are economic. What the hell does gay marriage have to do with any of that? Look, its going to become law in all states even with a supposedly still conservative majority on the Supreme Court. That doesn't make it right. I don't care what they do with each other and I don't think they should be disciminated in the work force but its just plain wrong for two men or two women to be legally married. What's next? If thats legal why can't Mormans have multiple wives? Why can't 3 men marry 8 women or vice versa? Why can't a person marry his dog or his car or his video game console? Why can't Manti Teo marry his imaginary girlfriend? Or a man and his inflatable woman or a woman and her dildo?

If a gay person wants to leave his property to someone he can make a will

 

The masses are pretty stupid and don't seem to realize that they continue to elect folks who don't care one iota about them other than to get their vote and that is on both sides of the aisle.

"Of 534 current members of Congress, at least 268 had an average net worth of $1 million or more in 2012, according to disclosures filed last year by all members of Congress and candidates. The median net worth for the 530 current lawmakers who were in Congress as of the May filing deadline was $1,008,767 — an increase from the previous year when it was $966,000. In addition, at least one of the members elected since then, Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), is a millionaire, according to forms she filed as a candidate. (There is currently one vacancy in Congress.)

Last year only 257 members, or about 48 percent of lawmakers, had a median net worth of at least $1 million.

Members of Congress have long been far wealthier than the typical American, but the fact that now a majority of members — albeit just a hair over 50 percent — are millionaires represents a watershed moment at a time when lawmakers are debating issues like unemployment benefits, food stamps and the minimum wage, which affect people with far fewer resources, as well as considering an overhaul of the tax code."

Republicans have always had the label "party of the rich" but it's as much a misnomer as the alleged war on women. The truth is that "in Congress, the wealthiest among us are more likely to be represented by a Democrat than a Republican. Of the 10 richest House districts, only two have Republican congressmen. Democrats claim the top six, sprinkled along the East and West coasts. Most are in overwhelmingly Democratic states like New York and California.

The richest: New York's 12th Congressional District, which includes Manhattan's Upper East Side, as well as parts of Queens and Brooklyn. Democrat Carolyn Maloney is in her 11th term representing the district. Per capita income in Maloney's district is $75,479. That's more than $75,000 a year for every man, woman and child. The next highest income district, which runs along the southern California coast, comes in at $61,273. Democrat Henry Waxman is in his 20th term representing the Los Angeles-area district.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco district comes in at No. 8.

Across the country, Democratic House districts have an average per capita income of $27,893. That's about $1,000 higher than the average income in Republican districts. The difference is relatively small because Democrats also represent a lot of poor districts, putting the average in the middle."

 

I was just pointing out that the articles you listed implied that Republican voters were the vast majority of food stamp recipients but didn't show the demographics. I didn't say that there weren't any poor people that voted Republican, but you also have to take into consideration the black population that voted overwhelmingly for Obama and Democrat candidates. If they are receiving food stamps, they aren't paying Federal Income Tax and are most likely receiving EIC as a net gain. State taxes maybe. I also didn't say that Democrats bought votes, you did.

 

Here is a nice map that details the number of non tax payers by state that speaks for itself.

 

Red, I haven't read enough to know for sure but when you say, "a lot," is it, really? This map from one of your links, for example, shows Republican's Districts in Louisiana with SNAP enrollment as little as 20% in much of the State, up to 30% . Don 't see that being "a lot."
http://www.statemaster.com/graph/eco_tol_tax_bur-economy-total-tax-burden


Another one of your links speaks of "Republican-heavy-counties eating up most food stamp growth" in a count consisting of 286 people living there- based on 2010 Census. I read that King county was the 3rd least populated county in the U.S.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...y-counties-eat-up-most-food-stamp-growth.html


Another of your links is FEDERAL "Welfare" the States receive. I didn't even check to see if it could be related to the fact that these States are hurricane-prone coastlines, etc.

While I agree with a comment Mastermind made earlier about farm programs, etc. being welfare too, is that really a valid rebuttal to Exile's statement?