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

To: tejek who wrote (626819)	9/3/2011 2:56:19 PM
From: TopCat	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1586027

"45K deaths each year are caused due to a lack of health insurance." So??? That's less than 2% of all deaths annually in the US.

To: tejek who wrote (626819)	9/3/2011 2:57:08 PM
From: i-node	5 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1586027

>> You're probably thinking.......well its probably a black guy who died from the toothache. After all, black people are lazy, don't work and are as poor as church mice. There goes the thread racist, again. It is really tiring. Racism isn't tolerated most places, but for some reason, it persists in your posts. Really, really pathetic, Ted, even though I've come to expect the worst of you. >> 45K deaths each year are caused due to a lack of health insurance It is really hard to say how many deaths are actually "caused" by a lack of health insurance. In this poor man's case, it may well have been from a lack of understanding of what the priority should have been. Perhaps if he understood he could die from the toothache he would have made different decisions.

To: tejek who wrote (626819)	9/3/2011 3:20:02 PM
From: longnshort	3 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1586027

"When his face started swelling and his head began to ache, Willis went to the emergency room, where he received prescriptions for antibiotics and pain medications. Willis couldn't afford both, so he chose the pain medications." oh bullshit, I bet he had a cell phone, cable, x box, TV, bought reefer every night and some ripple the antibiotics were 20 bucks and so were the pain pills. He does win the Darwin Award for choosing the pain pills over the antibiotics, so he has that going for him

To: tejek who wrote (626819)	9/3/2011 4:15:45 PM
From: longnshort	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1586027

Illegal Aliens Receive $4.2 Billion in Additional Child Tax Credit! Posted by Daniel Horowitz Friday, September 2nd at 1:49PM ED Throughout the entire debt ceiling imbroglio, Democrats incessantly regurgitated the talking point about the need for “a balanced approach.” They were so uniform and synchronized that they sounded like the sheep in Animal Farm. Ironically, their idea of a balanced approach was singularly focused upon Oil Company and corporate tax deductions, which are negligible compared to the crushing debt. The targeted oil tax deductions would have brought in $2 billion in annual revenue, while the cancellation of the corporate jet depreciation deduction would have saved only $3 billion over 10 years! Well, it turns out that illegal aliens, most of which pay zero in net taxes, enjoyed $4.2 billion from the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC) last year. That’s more than the annual revenue from the selected oil tax deductions and corporate jet deductions combined! Yesterday, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Collection released a shocking report detailing how illegal aliens are able to utilize a filing loophole to obtain billions in ACTC funds. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and ACTC (unlike the base child tax credit) are totally refundable and can award the recipient with a negative tax balance. Appropriations for the EITC in FY 2010 were $54.7 billion and $28.3 billion for the ACTC. While EITC appropriations are protected from illegals (those who don’t engage in identity theft) because they are only awarded to those who provide a valid Social Security number, the same cannot be said for the ACTC. Here is the punchline of the Inspector’s report: Many individuals who are not authorized to work in the United States, and thus not eligible to obtain a Social Security Number (SSN) for employment, earn income in the United States. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) provides such individuals with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) to facilitate their filing of tax returns. Although the law prohibits aliens residing without authorization in the United States from receiving most Federal public benefits, an increasing number of these individuals are filing tax returns claiming the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC), a refundable tax credit intended for working families. The payment of Federal funds through this tax benefit appears to provide an additional incentive for aliens to enter, reside, and work in the United States without authorization, which contradicts Federal law and policy to remove such incentives. […] Because concerns were raised by Congress, the Government Accountability Office, and the IRS regarding noncompliance with EITC requirements, a law was passed in Calendar Year 1996 to deny the EITC to individuals who file a tax return without an SSN that is valid for employment. As such, filers using an ITIN are not eligible for the EITC. The change in the law was made prior to the establishment of the ACTC. However, the same law prohibits aliens residing without authorization in the United States from receiving most Federal public benefits, with the exception of certain emergency services and programs. Nonetheless, IRS management’s view is that the law does not provide sufficient legal authority for the IRS to disallow the ACTC to ITIN filers. In addition, the Internal Revenue Code does not require an SSN to claim the ACTC and does not provide the IRS math error authority to deny the credit without an examination. As such, the IRS continues to pay the ACTC to ITIN filers. According to the latest employment data, we’ve lost 2.57 million jobs since Obama took office, even though there are 5.1 million additional people of working age in the country. Illegals are not only competing for scarce jobs; they are enjoying billions in handouts ensconced in the tax system, due to willful negligence on the part of the IRS. For most Americans, they are the most belligerent agency in the government, yet they are suddenly indolent in going after illegals. Obama wants them to clamp down on tax deductions for corporations that pay billions in taxes, while blithely allowing them to ignore billions in refundable handouts to those who shouldn’t be here in the first place. Read more: redstate.com

To: tejek who wrote (626819)	9/3/2011 4:23:39 PM
From: d[-_-]b	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1586027

Doctors said a routine $80 tooth extraction could have saved his life. This guy should be on "A thousand ways to die" and is positive proof of the theory of evolution.

To: tejek who wrote (626819)	9/3/2011 4:34:35 PM
From: longnshort	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1586027

Leveraging a Hurricane The real story behind the political theater over disaster relief. Article Comments (141) more in Opinion » Email Print Save ? More smaller Larger Rahm Emanuel may have decamped to Chicago, but Democrats in Washington still won't let a good crisis go to waste. Their current gambit is to use Hurricane Irene as a pretext to prevent spending cuts to one of Washington's most notorious boondoggles. This week the left-wing press has been attacking House Majority Leader Eric Cantor for holding disaster relief funding "hostage." A more accurate way to put this is that Senate Democrats won't approve new funding for disasters unless they get the funding they want for corporations that make electric cars. Here's the story: In June, House Republicans passed the 2012 Homeland Security appropriations bill, which included an amendment adding $1 billion to the Disaster Relief Fund of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). In a sensible move for taxpayers, the amendment offsets this new disaster funding by cutting spending on the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program. This may ring a bell with readers as the funding conduit for one of Washington's adventures in crony capitalism. In 2009, the Department of Energy announced that it would loan more than half a billion dollars through this program to a California-based company, Fisker Automotive, to make luxury electric cars. About a month after the loan package was conditionally approved, CEO Henrik Fisker and Joseph Biden appeared in the Vice President's hometown of Wilmington, Delaware to announce that Fisker would now be making some of its cars at the city's old General Motors factory. Enlarge Image Close Reuters House Majority Leader Eric Cantor At the event, Mr. Biden described many "long talks" he'd had with Mr. Fisker. The Vice President's office later said that Mr. Biden didn't make any direct appeals to Energy before the loan was approved, but Delaware's chief of economic development told the Journal that Mr. Biden was the state's "secret weapon, except there is nothing secret about Joe Biden." All of this is background to say that the GOP has found the federal program that is arguably the most deserving of a cut to free up funds for disaster victims. But Senate Democrats refuse to pass the House bill and Mr. Cantor has earned their ire this week by continuing to press for cuts in corporate welfare. Perhaps unwilling to defend the indefensible, some have taken to claiming that the Republican bill cuts cherished liberal entitlements. In an email seeking donations for an anti-Cantor advertising campaign, the group Democracy for America exalted, "We're hitting Eric Cantor hard—exposing his call to hold Hurricane Irene disaster relief hostage to more cuts in vital programs, like Medicare and Social Security—with in-district ads all next week." In the Senate, Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin seems unwilling to accept even the idea that the government might set priorities and choose to fund disaster aid instead of other claims on the federal fisc. "If [Mr. Cantor] believes that we can nip and tuck at the rest of the federal budget and somehow take care of disasters, he's totally out of touch with reality," said Mr. Durbin. One reason the House bill has less funding for Democratic priorities is because, even before the hurricane, Republicans had decided that the President's budget didn't have enough money for the Disaster Relief Fund. So they funded it at $850 million above the President's request. Then as they realized that the damage in places like Joplin, Missouri would put additional strain on the fund, the GOP added the amendment that provided still more disaster assistance and cut funding for Mr. Biden's beloved electric cars. The White House hasn't asked for more funding, though White House budget director Jacob Lew wrote to lawmakers Thursday suggesting it could be well north of $5 billion. But so far Mr. Cantor is being blamed for opposing disaster relief because he has been trying to spend more than the President, and to place that above other spending priorities. By the way, this political theater is having no impact on victims in need of help. The MSNBC gang may like to pretend that Mr. Cantor is stealing blankets from homeless flood victims, but the Washington debate is largely about funding for construction projects that may be years in the future. Yes, FEMA has warned that its disaster fund is running low, a warning it issues almost annually. And the agency has said it won't approve new municipal construction projects until it gets more funding. But rebuilding, for example, a bridge in Vermont likely couldn't happen for months or years anyway as the locals debate designs, approve plans and conduct environmental reviews. The agency's emergency assistance—water and generators, or money for new windows or clothing—continues without interruption. To have any hope of controlling spending, Congress has to make choices. That means having the fortitude to give up more corporate welfare to finance more urgent disaster relief.