Cutting spending

VA, Pensions, Fram Subs wrote:

They need to cut the VA and turn it over to Kaiser Permanente, close military bas golf courses, halt military retirements, pensions and medical benefits of civil servants, congress, and president, and cut farm subsidies.

How would halting military retirements save money? You would be paying those folks salary and benefits?

In fact, the Air Force just announced that it is cutting 2300 officers (following a reduction of almost 6000 enlisted personnel). A few bases are being closed and operations moved elsewhere (one closing is expected to save just under $1 billion and $430 million annually). Okay, so that will not balance the budget, but you take those little bits and they can start to add up. (As long as military readiness is not compromised).

Justsayit wrote:

I would say that possiblity of NYC being destroyed and radiation pollution for centuries is STILL on the table and being plotted by those bozos hiding in caves.

Nuclear weapons are extremely difficult to build. There is absolutely no danger of Al Qaeda building their own - the only danger is that they'll get a Russian one somehow or other. Probably couldn't do that without alerting Western intelligence.

The GOP proposal is discriminatory and saves their own pensions, health insurance, farm programs, and military spending for themselves and government employees.

Instead, the GOP/Dem congress, president, civil servants, military, safety workings should take the same cuts that the American people have had to take in the past 10 years.

That means slash to ZERO, taxpayer funded retirements, medical insurance, dental insurance, pensions, education funds, etc.

They can still buy their own private pensions, insurance, etc. but they must pay for it out of their own salaries, and the plans must be from the private sector i.e. not managed with taxpayer funds.

The only taxpayer paid benefits the GOP, Dems, President, Civil Servants, Safety Workers, Military should have is Social Security and Medicare.

Closure of the VA and privatizing it to Kaiser, Blue Cross, etc. saves taxpayers billions.

Closure of military and federal golf courses, resorts, health clubs is an absolute.

Closure of domestic PX/BX stores is necessary since Sams Club, etc. is cheaper anyways.

Closure of West Point, Annapolis, Colorado Springs service academies are needed since they were started when the US was a 3rd World Developping country with few colleges, and in today's USA they are an incredible waste of taxpayer's money.

"That is $781 million right there that would not be missed at all. Sure it is less than 1% of the $100 billion, but if the GOP cannot cut these programs, they do not have the balls to cut anything."

You are exactly correct! They don't have the Balls!!! They will talk and talk and talk until 2012. Then elect one of their own and the USA will be most likely done with forever.

So you're a solipsist. Big surprise.

Oh. Tell me something I didn't already know.

Ditto my previous comment.

Not to mention giving corporations the rights of an individual citizen. The checks and balances aren't so incredible (well, maybe literally incredible) when the 2000 presidential election is considered. It's more like collusion between what's basically a 2-headed single party in power, controlled by the M-I complex and its patron corporations.

It doesn't take "balls" to cut any spending, it takes representatives not controlled by corporate pimps. Where was the right wing to stand up to all the military fiascos the Bush 2 administration was signing blank checks for and never checking to see that the money went where it was supposed to go for purposes useful to national interests? Homeland Security, a department that has no real accountability or measure of success, was the biggest expansion of government in recent history. Neither party did its part to try to staunch that in any meaningful way, what tells you that they'd ever make a meaningful cut so long as they are still controlled by the same puppet-strings? Despite the rhetoric that you champion, the government's real role (regardless of Constitutional intentions) at this point in the game (and for a while now) is to perpetuate itself, to expand to benefit its patron corporations. Like a lot of other various issues, this boils down to one thing: campaign funding with corporate money. If all passionate citizens got together to hold politicians' feet to the fire so they'll enact truly meaningful campaign finance reform then we'd have a chance of having a responsive representative government. Until then it's all a bunch of wishful thinking and reshuffling of deck chairs.

Slavery was (and still is since it is practiced in some parts of the world) a horrible thing.

The feds still support slavery and fund it in Israel, Jordan, and Egypt where there are 10 million Semitic Muslims (aka Palestinians) enslaved in ghettos, concentration camps, and gulags since the 1940s.