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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RMF who wrote (61308)	1/17/2013 12:02:58 AM
From: LLCF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Yea it's still "somewhat" of a good point... sadly those days are pretty much gone... the welfare state is a shadow of it's formal self, not unlike labour unions.... whining about welfare and unions is basically slamming the barn door shut after all the horses are gone. The real issues going forward are the pharmaceutical & medicare provisions, subsidies, interest on the debt, bloated military budget (well, this is THE issue and has been for 40 years)... Wait till rates rocket.... we'll be broke in an instant! DAK

To: RMF who wrote (61308)	1/18/2013 8:18:31 PM
From: greatplains_guy	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

The free cell phones are paid out of the Universal Service Fund. It was started several years ago to ensure that rural people had access to land lines. Obama identified that Republican voters were benefiting so he switched the program to give free cell phones to uneducated inner city people to make sure that his constituents were the beneficiaries. The long and short of it is simply that charity whether private of government distorts markets and generally makes the situation worse. When we send food aid to help in draught stricken lands it underprices local producers which makes them uncompetitive and keeps distorting the local market which makes the problem last longer rather than self correcting like free markets tend to do. Now there is something profound for you to chew on.