New Unemployment Claims Rise "Unexpectedly"

[guido911]

I'll only say one thing and be gone. Go to the building downtown where food stamps, LIHEAP, unemployment, etc. are processed. Wait in line to talk to a SS employee out east. First make note of the parking lot and its auto salvage appearance. Be witness to the level of humanity displayed. Your remarks may then be received with some credibility. Be prepared for people to stare at you because you cannot hide your station in life no matter how hard you try. They will treat you with more dignity than you have referred to them.

This is about people who are documented thieves of the U.S. Treasury. Sheesh, get off your high horse. As for downtown, don't need to go to see anything. Go to a third world country like I have multiple times and roll up your sleeves if you care to help the truly needy. In this country, I am not at all interested in helping ANYONE rip off the taxpayers. Apparently, you are.

[Teatownclown]

This is about people who are documented thieves of the U.S. Treasury. Sheesh, get off your high horse. As for downtown, don't need to go to see anything. Go to a third world country like I have multiple times and roll up your sleeves if you care to help the truly needy. In this country, I am not at all interested in helping ANYONE rip off the taxpayers. Apparently, you are.

It's time for you to be tasered....not once but twice!

[guido911]

Perhaps we should focus our rage on the investment bankers who ripped us off to the tune of a few hundred billion dollars. It's more fun to focus on the petty stuff, though.

More strawmen. If you want to talk about investment bankers, let's have that discussion over in another thread (maybe like this discussion). But for now, tell you what Nate, please list for all of us crimes you think are too "petty" to either point out that are occurring or that we should not enforce. There is little doubt that welfare fraud is widespread and costs millions of dollars. Here's one story I found googling "welfare fraud cost."

Welfare recipients and their friends and relatives could be defrauding taxpayers of $500 million a year through the county's child-care programs, a grand jury report concludes.

According to the report, released Thursday, some county employees estimate that half of the $1.1 billion in funding for the CalWORKs program is lost to fraud because the Department of Public Social Services doesn't verify that welfare-to-work recipients meet the requirements for child-care payments.

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jul/01/local/me-welfare1

I wonder how many of those types are in those downtown "pity the poor" lines Aquaman was crying over. It really chaps me when people that know absolutely nothing about me and my family's work with the truly poor try to paint me with such a brush of stupidity. Instead of looking at the poor standing in line and fretting, get your damned hands dirty and do something about it.

[Hoss]

This is about people who are documented thieves of the U.S. Treasury. Sheesh, get off your high horse. As for downtown, don't need to go to see anything. Go to a third world country like I have multiple times and roll up your sleeves if you care to help the truly needy. In this country, I am not at all interested in helping ANYONE rip off the taxpayers. Apparently, you are.

So just how high is your horse?

[Townsend]

So just how high is your horse?

Now he didn't say he helped.  Just that he was in a third world country.

No horse.

[AquaMan]

I don't know what to say. I had hoped to make an observation and leave, but I feel personally assaulted by someone who has a keen interest in high horses. Perhaps he owns a low horse and has some sort of high horse envy.

I'm glad to see that there are posters who know what I was trying to say. Interesting Guido that you thought I was referring to you alone. Take much psych in college?

Anyway, I've said this before and I believe it to be true. America is a country of liars, cheats, chiselers and thieves. We pride ourselves on that, we celebrate these traits. We like winning, period. People hire lawyers to successfully use these traits and I'm pretty sure they ain't morally pristine lawyers. BACHMAN ALERT: The folks who threw crates of East India tea into Boston Harbor were businessmen dressed up as INDIANS! They were using the contemporary racist feelings of the time to hide their true motivations.

So, it is no surprise to me that these traits run the gamut demographically from the top of our society to the bottom. To be so incensed that some indigent folks follow the lead of their contemporaries outside their class without understanding this is, well, disingenuous to say the least. Hypocritical even.

One of my professors seemed amused when it was brought up in a class discussion of "welfare queens" way, way back. It was pointed out that so many poor people seemed to spend their money on color tv's and Cadillacs while their homes were small and poorly maintained. "Wouldn't you?", he asked. "They want the same things you do, see the same world you do on tv, and are motivated by the same advertisements. When they get money they consume like the rest of us."

[Teatownclown]

How about cutting funds to the "welfare states" (those that receive more federal dollars than they pay in taxes, that are typically Red states) down to the amount they pay into the federal government? Enough with enabling these true welfare queens whose socialism makes way for paving their roads, for subsidizing their water and their power and communication grids, for funding their school systems, for paying them not to grow food .... the list goes on.

[nathanm]

This is about people who are documented thieves of the U.S. Treasury. Sheesh, get off your high horse. As for downtown, don't need to go to see anything. Go to a third world country like I have multiple times and roll up your sleeves if you care to help the truly needy. In this country, I am not at all interested in helping ANYONE rip off the taxpayers. Apparently, you are.

Oh, I don't want anyone ripping off the treasury, but I'd rather go after the ones who ripped us off for billions first.

[Gaspar]

Anyway, I've said this before and I believe it to be true. America is a country of liars, cheats, chiselers and thieves. We pride ourselves on that, we celebrate these traits. We like winning, period. People hire lawyers to successfully use these traits and I'm pretty sure they ain't morally pristine lawyers. BACHMAN ALERT: The folks who threw crates of East India tea into Boston Harbor were businessmen dressed up as INDIANS! They were using the contemporary racist feelings of the time to hide their true motivations.

That's a sad vision of America you have and one I do not share.  

We are the brightest, most creative people in the world.  The quality of life for even our poorest is far better than most countries.  We respect and believe in our fellow man.  We honor liberty and freedom above all other concepts and are willing to share that philosophy with the world through our example.

In our very short existence we gave the world so many gifts.  We demonstrated that the free enterprise of men is far more powerful motivator than the force of governments on subjects.  We advanced science, technology and medicine further than it had come over the past 5,000 years.

Celebrate the liberty that we enjoy, and recognize that we are a country of innovators, romantics, philanthropists and geniuses.  But be aware that it can only last for a limited time.  We will eventually vote ourselves back into the dark.  Tyrants will rise again by convincing you that without them you will starve.  They will have the audacity to buy your vote with the hope that they alone can ensure your welfare.  You will beg for their chains.

The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves. – Dresden James

[nathanm]

That's a sad vision of America you have and one I do not share.  

Only because you are deliberately blind to the theft that those in high finance are perpetrating from you every single day. You have this strange belief that only the government can steal from you.

[Gaspar]

Only because you are deliberately blind to the theft that those in high finance are perpetrating from you every single day. You have this strange belief that only the government can steal from you.

No, they are just the best at it.

[nathanm]

No, they are just the best at it.

Funny, I thought putting a gun to Bush's head and saying "we need a couple of trillion dollars" was a bigger theft than just about any in history. Goldman literally did this with AIG, which cost us what, $200 billion in one whack?

Read some books, friend.

[AquaMan]

That's a sad vision of America you have and one I do not share.  

We are the brightest, most creative people in the world.  The quality of life for even our poorest is far better than most countries.  We respect and believe in our fellow man.  We honor liberty and freedom above all other concepts and are willing to share that philosophy with the world through our example.

In our very short existence we gave the world so many gifts.  We demonstrated that the free enterprise of men is far more powerful motivator than the force of governments on subjects.  We advanced science, technology and medicine further than it had come over the past 5,000 years.

Celebrate the liberty that we enjoy, and recognize that we are a country of innovators, romantics, philanthropists and geniuses.  But be aware that it can only last for a limited time.  We will eventually vote ourselves back into the dark.  Tyrants will rise again by convincing you that without them you will starve.  They will have the audacity to buy your vote with the hope that they alone can ensure your welfare.  You will beg for their chains.

The ideal tyranny is that which is ignorantly self-administered by its victims. The most perfect slaves are, therefore, those which blissfully and unawaredly enslave themselves. – Dresden James

Everything you say is quite true AND so is what I said. They are not mutually exclusive.

Disregarding the pompous, chauvinist nature of your post, what is left is that you buy into the fictional creations that are driving our politics right now. The fiction that we are a capitalist country. The fiction that the poor deserve there misery and should just pull themselves up. The damaging fiction that the wealthy are job creators that must have their taxes reduced and never raised again. The fiction that everyone else fits my adjectives, but not the reader. Fictions that are being created every day by politicians simply for electability with no regard for their consequences.

We are a great country, but not the only one and our greatness has been borne on the backs of many different classes and races. It is not a sad vision, it is a vision based on reality.

[Gaspar]

Funny, I thought putting a gun to Bush's head and saying "we need a couple of trillion dollars" was a bigger theft than just about any in history. Goldman literally did this with AIG, which cost us what, $200 billion in one whack?

Read some books, friend.

I am always in the market for a good book my friend.  I read far less than I should.  Do you have any you would suggest?

The harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional do-gooders, who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others – with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means. – Henry Grady Weaver, The Mainspring of Human Progress

[Gaspar]

Everything you say is quite true AND so is what I said. They are not mutually exclusive.

Disregarding the pompous, chauvinist nature of your post, what is left is that you buy into the fictional creations that are driving our politics right now. The fiction that we are a capitalist country. The fiction that the poor deserve there misery and should just pull themselves up. The damaging fiction that the wealthy are job creators that must have their taxes reduced and never raised again. The fiction that everyone else fits my adjectives, but not the reader. Fictions that are being created every day by politicians simply for electability with no regard for their consequences.

We are a great country, but not the only one and our greatness has been borne on the backs of many different classes and races. It is not a sad vision, it is a vision based on reality.

I had no idea I was a pompous chauvinist.  You have humbled me.  I just feel sad for your view of my fellow countrymen.  What would it take to improve your impression of the American people?