Bad news for people who attend games

[HardRightEdge]

Nah, I will just lobby for the tax all to be paid on your part.

That would make you a defense contractor. Great work if you can get it.

 

[AmishMafia]

Just games. Garth is correct in saying they would be flying anyway.

I was just watching the blue angels (or others) flying from my office earlier.

Or some other possible cost savings. Last year we:

Spent $84.5M to subsidize beverage/snack service on Amtrack

We gave the National Science Foundation $325,000 to build a robotic squirrel to see how a rattlesnake would react to it.

Illegal aliens receive almost $3.9B in filing tax returns each year but only pay about $1.6B in taxes. That boggles my mind - how do illegal aliens file and receive tax forms?

Government Auditors estimate 22% of welfare programs show no benefit to the people they are supposed to serve – $123B/year

We provide free cell phones to people who do not work

as mentioned above - 2,717 light armored tanks at just over $3B (these are for Homeland Security – for use on American streets).

 

[13 Times Champs]

For the record, there is a Federal program which subsidies providers who supply cell phone services to low income consumers. There is no Government program to provide free cell phones and services to people who do not work.

 

[HardRightEdge]

Just games. Garth is correct in saying they would be flying anyway.

I was just watching the blue angels (or others) flying from my office earlier.

Or some other possible cost savings. Last year we:

Spent $84.5M to subsidize beverage/snack service on Amtrack

We gave the National Science Foundation $325,000 to build a robotic squirrel to see how a rattlesnake would react to it.

Illegal aliens receive almost $3.9B in filing tax returns each year but only pay about $1.6B in taxes. That boggles my mind - how do illegal aliens file and receive tax forms?

Government Auditors estimate 22% of welfare programs show no benefit to the people they are supposed to serve – $123B/year

We provide free cell phones to people who do not work

as mentioned above - 2,717 light armored tanks at just over $3B (these are for Homeland Security – for use on American streets).

I think it's pretty clear they would not be flying anyway. There's nothing about a flyover that looks like a military exercise or provides any meaningful training. Sure, the pilots log the hours...might as well if you're going in the air...but those hours will be over and above the actual training regimen.

A little money should be channeled to machetes and sharp pencils. Even when they find out programs don't do what was intended or provide the benefits promised, they live on in the budget roach motel.

Please do not get me started on Homeland Security. OK, too late. 1200 contracting companies with facilities in all 50 states. 500,000 - 1,000,000 employees. $100 billion. Airport security, FEMA, and a bunch of spying of dubious merit. Lobby, lobby, lobby, pointless jobs, jobs, jobs, in a budget conveniently constructed with many dark corners closed to most members of Congress. How about re-building a bridge instead...duh.

After 9/11, my town got a pile of Homeland Security money to build a fancy fire station with a $1 million ladder truck because there happened to be a government high rise office building on the Fermi Lab property near by. Yeah...terrorists are gonna target a scientific facility out in some midwestern exerb. I guess there's no paranoia that can't be eased with a pile of money. I guess nobody really cared that the ladder would only go half way up.

 

[AmishMafia]

For the record, there is a Federal program which subsidies providers who supply cell phone services to low income consumers. There is no Government program to provide free cell phones and services.

The program is called 'Lifeline' and pays Cell companies $9.25/month to provide phones to the poor. So you are correct, the government doesn't provide you with a free phone. But they do give cell companies money to provide a free phone. Personally, I don't see much of a difference.

Last year 6 million people participated. An audit revealed over 40% of recipients did not meet the guidelines. The government spent an estimated $2.2B on the program last year.

If you add it up, it doesnt. Should come to about $800M. Where does the other $1.4B go to? Government overhead? Oversight? Lobbyists?

 

[13 Times Champs]

Well I'm bowing out of this thread.

 

[HardRightEdge]

The program is called 'Lifeline' and pays Cell companies $9.25/month to provide phones to the poor. So you are correct, the government doesn't provide you with a free phone. But they do give cell companies money to provide a free phone. Personally, I don't see much of a difference.

Last year 6 million people participated. An audit revealed over 40% of recipients did not meet the guidelines. The government spent an estimated $2.2B on the program last year.

If you add it up, it doesnt. Should come to about $800M. Where does the other $1.4B go to? Government overhead? Oversight? Lobbyists?

I think a program like this makes sense for a poor job seeker who can't afford a phone of any kind. You can't get a job without a phone number to call. Otherwise, I fail to see the point.

 

[jaybadger82]

This is the first time, and hopefully the last, I'll go off topic in this way. I'll use this dead period as an excuse. I'm no tea bagger, far from it, but stuff like this begs the question: "Why should it take a sequester for government agencies to apply line-by-line scrutiny to their costs?" While the sequester is a ham handed way to go about cost cutting, it might inculcate some useful habits. Call me a c*ck-eyed optimist.

If the all-in costs of a flyover are $5,000 or $10,000; that could be one month or ten months of an expensive cancer treatment for a Medicare or Medicaid patient. Or 100 or 200 pot holes. We Americans are spoiled and largely financially illiterate.

No ****.

...And I'm no "tea bagger" either, but it seems a bit ridiculous to denigrate a group trying to raise awareness on government spending in the same post that you advocate more intelligent government spending. It wasn't funny when Rachel Maddow first dropped this crack years ago. I appreciate and agree with many of your comments above, but perhaps part of the reason that political conversations in this country are so touchy is because people can't seem to help themselves from falling into the rhetorical quagmire.

 

[13 Times Champs]

This thread really needs to be moved to the **** can.

 

[longtimefan]

my god people