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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (180431)	1/14/2004 12:41:15 AM
From: Amy J	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575063

Hi Tenchusatsu, RE: " The budget shortfall is about $14 billion. Obviously every program will need to cut spending. It's only fair. Why focus only on services for the blind and disabled, unless you want to play politics?" No, it's not to play politics. You know I say things from my heart and feel strongly about things. I felt very uncomfortable seeing that item targeted. Doesn't it make you feel guilty to see one group get cut, while our advantaged group doesn't have to pay more taxes? I would feel better, if they had announced a plan alongside it that said, such and such charity would be stepping in that's operated more efficiently than the government. Even if you are not empathetic, looking at this from a business perspective: they are drastically increasing the risk for a backlash by inappropriately creating a negative impression by not increasing taxes on us. RE: "a "cut" is defined as a smaller increase in spending than previously planned" This was a true cut. Someone isn't going to get something they got last year. RE: "Can you find out what the budget was for the disabled and the blind last year vs. what Arnold is planning for this year?" I did. It's online at Mercury News.com. It's a rather large cut. After my post, I poked around their graphs in a different article. It looks like those cuts are actually workers compensation, which actually is out of control - it's two times more per capita than other regions - mathematically that imples to me something fishy is underfoot in the benefit program, which implies the cuts are likely to be valid, if those cuts were workers comp cuts. I'm not sure why the bad companies aren't penalized in the workers comp model - maybe they are but it appears the system gives free ride to the bad companies - it is a per employee fee with no ratio that I'm aware of that would be used as a multiplier to penalize those companies that are bad. It's not clear why the per capita is two times more when other states appear to have a better program to boot. The math (2x) almost implies there exists an abuse of the system or possibly a very bad company creating this unusually high cost. Having a ratio, would fix the later. On another note, Bush apparently stumbled during his speech after the unemployment figures were reported. Frankly, that concerned me - politics aside. Even if I don't agree with his brand of policies, I certainly don't want to see things go downhill. We are all in this together, hopefully for the better. Regards, Amy J