1. raft

   01/30/2009 at 1:07 am

   rude email, weak response.

   pendry complains his military pension and health care are insufficiently generous. well, okay–that’s not exactly an argument against less government spending. pendry also complains that he pays a lot of taxes. well, okay–except his job for 28 years was directly funded by tax money.

   pendry defines a “social program” as “one that provides something to someone who never contributed toward the benefit received.” that’s not actually true, but let’s run with it. Under these terms the U.S. military is a “social program.” People who don’t directly contribute to the national defense (i.e. civilians) are free riders mooching off the government teet. Does pendry support the elimination of this wasteful spending? wait, you say. we all support the military through taxes. True. national security is a vital interest. Also true. Only the government has the capacity to enforce national security. True again.

   Government spending on critical social services such as schools, police, prisons, clean water and food, utilities, transportation, and health care is directly analogous to military spending. a similar (though more controversial) case can be made for the stimulus “social program.” It’s in our collective interest not to let our serious economic disease turn fatal, and we’re willing to collectively pay for the treatment.

   Pendry is right to defend himself against the rude emailer. he is not sucking the government teet. But those who support immense military expenditures (regardless of whether they themselves have or have not served) need to ask themselves, how come i support this government social program but not funding for education, or alternative energy, or health care, or infrastructure? what am i basing this discrimination on? Pendry’s response is inadequate.

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   • CJ

     01/30/2009 at 8:48 am

     THIS is a weak response if I’ve ever seen one. You say that the MILITARY is a Social Program? You say that those of us in the military don’t contribute to our benefits?! Dude, are you serious or just a serious nutcase? I don’t think I even need to touch what we do to earn the benefits we receive. How exactly do we NOT contribute to our paychecks again?

     Secondly, 50% of my company is Civilians and the other 50% are Soldiers. These individuals are nothing close to “free riders” or “mooching” off the government. Just as there are worthless Soldiers, we have worthless Civilians but you’re painting with a broad brush you know nothing about. Apparently, we also have worthless commenters.

     We’ve been through a worse “economic disease” before and didn’t need a trillion dollar “porculus” (as I’ve heard it called) to save us. Markets will rise and fall and every 50 years or so it will REALLY fall. “Creating” jobs by growing government only serves to push us further into socialism.

     Finally, raft, it is NOT the federal government’s job to fund education. It is NOT the federal government’s job to fund your alternative energy hooey. It’s NOT the federal government’s job to fund health care. It IS there job – to a SMALL degree – to pay for infrastructure. All of these issues that you talk about are either state responsibilities or NO GOVERNMENT responsibility at all. Check your Constitution that gives the federal government its power.

     Your response is more inadequate in that all you want is the government to take over everything. You want us to be reliant on government instead of ourselves. If there is a market for alternative energy, then the market will provide it. It is NOT the government’s job to tell what kind of light bulb I need to buy or what kind of car I should drive. It is NOT their responsibility to me what kind of health care I need to buy.

     People that do nothing but stand in a welfare line and sit on their ass in front of their TV collecting paychecks from you and me are the mooches. People that get up at 6 am to go to work doing the business of the American people are not. People that made bad decisions by buying homes and running up credit card debts they couldn’t afford are the mooches. People that give their lives and sacrifice their very bodies for this country are NOT the mooches. The “stimulus” and “bailout” didn’t work the first two times, why would it this time?

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2. raft

   01/30/2009 at 1:49 pm

   you should reread my post. there are 300 million people in the U.S. The military protects and defends all of them. But only maybe ~25 million have ever served in the military (throw in military families if you like); the rest of us get the benefits without doing the work. get it? those welfare mooches who sit on their ass in front of the TV are just as safe from foreign invaders as you are. This is an externality.

   i know you think it’s not the federal government’s role to fund education. The question is why, and on what basis, you think so (and no, the Department of Education is not unconstitutional). You’re willing to spend a trillion dollars on national defense, even though the welfare moochers benefit. Why? Because it’s important for society, right? But having a generation of illiterate kids is okay? That doesn’t have long-term economic costs? Or take health care–we require everyone to get vaccinated. Why? Because we don’t want to get infected with measles from unvaccinated people and die. Government has a LIMITED but CRITICAL role to play in our lives. capitalist free markets work very well for many things but not everything. the experiment in pure laissez-faire capitalism has been tried before; it’s called the mid-late 1800′s, before the reforms of the progressive era. do you really want to go back to the slums of NYC circa 1870?

   okay, maybe that’s not fair. i shouldn’t put words into your mouth. So how about you (or pendry) explain why you support federal spending on the military but not public education. if education is either private or the responsibilities of the state, why isn’t the military also? What are you basing this discrimination on?

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   • CJ

     01/30/2009 at 2:20 pm

     raft, are you capable of following complete lines of thought or do you see something you disagree with and immediately start spouting off at the mouth like a surfacing whale?

     Hell no I don’t want illiterate kids and I never even came CLOSE to insinuating such. I was VERY specific that education is a STATE function, not a federal government function. Pick up your constitution and tell me where in there it states that education is the responsibility of the federal government. I’ll wait…

     What’s so limited about what the government is doing with this stimulus? Are you happy having trillions of dollars of your kids’ money wasted to pay for irresponsible spending by an out of control Congress and President? If so, good. Keep sending in those tax dollars. I, for one, will continue to fight to keep every dollar I EARNED through my hard work and sacrifice.

     Federal spending on the military is directly mentioned as a function of the federal government, education is not. There. I explained it. It’s a discrimination based on documents that you apparently can’t read due to your federally funded public school education. A lot of good those tax dollars are doing!! *snark

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3. MIckey

   01/30/2009 at 2:43 pm

   raft, If I have Federal Job paid by the Federal Govt. my pay would be like mooching of the govt. also. Military Personal are hired for a job just the President and any other employee of the federal govt. But the general description of these jobs or servants of the people so that makes all of Federal Employee mooches????????????????

   CJ, this guys is a loco idiot. I think he spends to much time surfing thru life likes one does on the net. I bet he even collects some of that free money you and I have to pay out as that would only FAIR thing to do.

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4. GunnNutt

   01/30/2009 at 2:51 pm

   Good job, CJ. The “general Welfare” phrase has been so flogged over the years that it now means anything and everything. I wish the Founders had been a little more explicit!

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5. JD

   01/30/2009 at 2:51 pm

   CJ, there comes a time when one must apply the idiot rule.

   Never argue with an idiot. He’ll only bring you down to his level then whip you with experience.

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6. MissBirdlegs in AL

   01/30/2009 at 6:25 pm

   Another point about education – throwing money at the problem doesn’t fix it – money isn’t the problem. We need teachers who want to TEACH, who know their subjects and care whether students learn or not.

   Funding social programs does NOT create jobs, it creates power and votes for the politicians. That “stimulus” package is the biggest piece of BS legislation I’ve ever seen. I think people have turned off their brains completely.

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7. raft

   01/30/2009 at 6:54 pm

   CJ:

   1. if i retract my accusation that you support illiterate kids, will you take back your smear that i said people in the military don’t earn their benefits? The whole point is that i said the exact opposite. same goes for MIckey. (i don’t want to make too big a deal of this because it’s petty, but who is the person with reading comprehension problems, exactly?)

   2. The Department of Education is not unconstitutional. you may not LIKE it, but it’s not unconstitutional. the Constitution grants broad powers to the federal government to regulate commerce and promote the general welfare; there are over two hundred years of case law backing this up. whether you think the government SHOULD exercise those powers or not, it has them. Now, in practice, the federal government exerts control over schools by threatening to withhold funds. There’s a good overview of this on the DoE website. well, but the fed only contributes about 10% of education spending, right? what’s the big deal? The big deal is that’s 100 billion dollars. That’s why everyone complies with federal regulations, because schools NEED that money. so, instead of hiding behind hollow legalisms about state’s rights (when it’s established that federal funding of education is perfectly legitimate), why don’t you consider that there is a 100 billion dollar shortfall in education budgets which would have to be made up if the funding stopped. of course it will not and cannot be made up. That’s the practical, real consequence of your ideology.

   3. the so-called federalist and/or originalist position has its merits. it also has its limitations. Most important, it should be applied carefully. it’s wholly within the right of the U.S. government to devolve military power to state and local militias (as it was in the early 19th century). But we don’t do that nowadays because it’s doesn’t make sense for the world we live in. For the same reason, I argue, we don’t do that with education or health care or infrastructure either. Look at the federal budget–20% goes to social security, 13% to medicare, 11% to unemployment insurance and welfare (21% to the DoD plus the War on Terror; relatively insignificant but objectively huge amounts for education, transportation, energy). Not much of that spending can be duplicated by state or local governments. Maybe you don’t think it should be spent period–fine. But then the question again is, why do you think so? Why do you support the national security social program but not a national education social program? Why are you against perfectly legal federal funding for education but not perfectly legal federal funding for the military? What is this discrimination based on? what’s the argument? obfuscating or skirting this fundamental issue doesn’t cut it.

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8. raft

   01/30/2009 at 7:25 pm

   MissBirdlegs in AL:

   education reform is a problem that also needs to be addressed on the federal level; No Child Left Behind was a good but flawed step forward. my point isn’t necessarily that we need to spend MORE money on education (as opposed to more wisely) but that the federal government has a critical role to play in our education system.

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