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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sandintoes who wrote (500250)	11/29/2003 12:26:10 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Respond to of 769670

Who is the wacko here? Dearie, "everyone" doesn't eat off your meager contribution to the commonwealth. You are being delusional. But I feel your pain. Just because you can't afford your fifth home, shouldn't be a reason that you put blinders on about what is happening to the former middle class nation called America. For far too many Americans, we are already in a new Great Depression. And all you care about is your greed. Pathetic. You are stupid to think that it is welfare cheaters who are hungry in America. Most hunger occurs among the working poor who are no burden on you, but are being persecuted by policies that you endorse. * Hunger in America, it is a growing problem: knoxstudio.com <SNIP> Scripps Howard News Service November 28, 2003 WASHINGTON - With Uncle Sam defining 35 million Americans as "food insecure" this season, some of last year's donors have become this year's clients, America's Second Harvest says. The nation's top hunger-relief organization reports that: - The Houston Food Bank has seen a 45 percent surge in food pantry requests. - The Greater Boston Food Bank finds demand rising in once-affluent suburbs. - Donations are down 15 percent and requests for help up at least 30 percent at the Food Bank of the Rockies. "We're getting squeezed at both ends," said Courtney Hunter-Melo of the Denver food bank, which supplies 16 million pounds of food a year to 900 pantries in Colorado and Wyoming. Nearly 70 percent of families using a food pantry include a working adult, and half also had help from the federal food stamp program, the Urban Institute reports. **** Even the working poor can't afford food and shelter: secondharvest.org

To: sandintoes who wrote (500250)	11/29/2003 5:26:10 AM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

There is welfare, and foodstamps...everyone eats off my nickle...so get off my back! I'm afraid you are completely out of touch with reality when it comes to welfare. The real welfare queens now occupy the CEO's corner offices in America: Welfare Turns Into a Suite Deal under the GOP, corporate titans are lining up for government handouts November 28, 2003 latimes.com. COMMENTARY . By Rahm Emanuel, Rahm Emanuel, a Democratic congressman from Illinois, sits on the House Financial Services Committee and the Budget Committee. He was a senior policy advisor to President Clinton. Remember when the "welfare queen" was a woman driving a Cadillac? Today, that character has become a CEO riding in the back of a limousine. The Bush administration and the Republican-led House have taken steps toward providing an unprecedented taxpayer-funded handout to private companies. The energy bill, which passed the House and will be taken up again by the Senate in January, contains nearly $30 billion in such benefits, including $11.3 billion in subsidies for oil and gas companies that just had one of their most profitable years on record. That bill also contains $18 billion in federal loan guarantees for private construction of a gas pipeline from Alaska to Chicago; $1.1 billion to build a nuclear reactor in Idaho to produce hydrogen; $95 million to research turning dead turkeys into energy; and funding to construct a rain forest museum in Iowa. This is while Pell Grants - money that sends kids to college - are being frozen for the first time in 10 years. And despite an oft-stated commitment to family values, the Republicans' bill even contains money to build an energy-efficient Hooters restaurant in Louisiana. Now, if Hooters wants to practice energy conservation, fine. But is it really the responsibility of American taxpayers to pay for it? Similarly, the newly passed Republican Medicare reform bill provides billions in federal welfare assistance for private businesses. HMOs and PPOs will receive almost $80 billion in federal subsidies to administer the program. An estimated $139 billion in additional profits will flow directly to pharmaceutical companies. Rather than enabling Medicare to use its market power to bargain for cheaper drugs in classic capitalist fashion, the Medicare reform bill specifically prohibits such negotiations. It also sets the bar so high for federal approval of safe and affordable drugs from Canada that it completely forecloses the free-market competition that might drive down U.S. drug prices by 50%. If an HMO wants to sell insurance, it should. But it should not expect a taxpayer subsidy. If an oil company wants to build a gas pipeline, it should. But it should not expect taxpayers to help. What has happened to the Republican Party that claimed to be the protector of free markets, the true believers in a capitalistic system in which competition would provide the greatest benefit to the greatest number? Judging by the energy and Medicare bills created by a Republican Congress, never has a political party stood for a greater dependency on government handouts for corporate titans. The party that campaigned for years on demonizing welfare has been transformed into a party that espouses the virtues of dependency. I am a Democrat who happens to have worked on ending the broken welfare system and the culture that goes with it. The Clinton administration's reforms were designed to decrease dependence on government and increase personal responsibility. This is a value that now must be instilled in our corporate suites and taught to the captains of capitalism. Just as with aiding individuals on the welfare rolls, most Democrats believe in giving U.S. businesses the tools they need to compete effectively: a solid infrastructure of transportation and water systems, fair trade policies that help to equalize opportunity and, most important, a public education system that can provide American businesses with a well-trained workforce. Government should not seduce companies with public assistance when profit should be their driving force. What today's Republicans have created is a whole new culture of welfare that threatens the very free-market system they claim to champion. It's time to get the new corporate "welfare queen" out of his limousine.