Am I hateful if I ask...[a bunch of questions from Glenn Beck?]

[Clothahump]

Am I hateful if I ask:

- Our unfunded liability for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is close to $100 trillion. Is there any way to pay for these programs without bankrupting America?
 
- We are in so much debt, why spend more borrowed money on cap-and-trade and healthcare programs before we stop the flow of red-ink?
 
- The stimulus package funneled billions of dollars to ACORN. How does giving billions of dollars to ACORN stimulate the economy?
 
- If it was so important for congress to pass the stimulus bill before they even had time to read it why has only a fraction of the stimulus money been spent 6 months later?
 
- Bush said he had to abandon free market principles in order to save them, how exactly does that work?
 
- Why won’t member of Congress read the bills before they vote on them?
 
- Why are citizens mocked and laughed at when they ask their congressman to read the bills before they vote on them?
 
- Was the cash-for-clunkers program meant to save the earth or the economy? Did it accomplish either?
 
- How did Van Jones, a self-proclaimed communist become a special advisor to the president?
 
- Did President Obama know of Van Jones’ radical political beliefs when he named him special advisor?
 
- The Apollo Alliance claimed credit for writing the stimulus bill—why was this group allowed to write any portion of this bill?
 
- If politicians aren’t writing the bills and aren’t reading the bills, do they have any idea what these 1000 page plus bills actually impose on the American people?
 
- If the ‘public option’ health care plan is so good why won’t politicians agree to have that as their plan?
 
- If town hall meetings are intended for the politicians to learn what’s on our mind—why do they spend so much time talking instead of listening?
 
- Politicians are refusing to attend town hall meetings complaining, without evidence, that they are scripted. Does that mean we shouldn’t come out and vote for you since every campaign stop, baby kiss and speech you give is scripted?
 
- Why would you want to overwhelm the system?
 
- Is using the economic crises to rush legislation through congress what Rahm Emanuel meant when he talked about not letting a crises go to waste?
 
- What are the czars paid? What is the budget for their staffs/offices?

I think these are reasonable questions, don’t you? They are most certainly worth discussing, don’t you think?

Oh - and for you liberal types that complain about him constantly, Glenn Beck asked every one of them.
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/29631/
Are they still reasonable questions now that you know the source?

[BobLibDem]

Not hateful, just ill-informed.

Billions to ACORN? Puh-leeze. ACORN is not even mentioned in the bill.

Since the source is Glenn Beck, don’t expect me to take it seriously.

[treis]

I don’t think your hateful. It just makes me sad that you get your information from Glenn Beck, and even sadder that you believe him. I’ll tackle one:

How did Van Jones, a self-proclaimed communist become a special advisor to the president?

A self proclaimed former communist. He got to be a special advisor to Obama about green jobs by writing a book about creating green jobs and founding a NGO to encourage that creation. Seems pretty reasonable to me.

[wierdaaron]

Hi, if you’re going to source a 400-word, 30 line post from figures pulled from Glenn Beck’s ass, could you say so at the top, not the bottom, so I can leave sooner?

[Lobohan]

@Clothahump

Am I hateful if I ask:

- Our unfunded liability for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is close to $100 trillion. Is there any way to pay for these programs without bankrupting America?

At some point in the future we need to lower benefits or raise taxes. Probably both.

• We are in so much debt, why spend more borrowed money on cap-and-trade and healthcare programs before we stop the flow of red-ink?

We need to deal with health care because it’s more than doubling every ten years. If we don’t deal with it now it employers will soon stop offering health care. Also, Republicans don’t want to change the system, so it has to be done now, while the government is in democratic hands and they have the clout to have it done.

• The stimulus package funneled billions of dollars to ACORN. How does giving billions of dollars to ACORN stimulate the economy?

Whoever told you this is either lying to you, or simply misinformed. Oh, Beck? He’s lying.

• If it was so important for congress to pass the stimulus bill before they even had time to read it why has only a fraction of the stimulus money been spent 6 months later?

The recession isn’t over yet. And employment lags behind economic recovery. The stimulus was there to increase the speed of our recovery.

• Bush said he had to abandon free market principles in order to save them, how exactly does that work?

Bush is a fool. But if you think not bailing out the banks would have made us better off, well that’s a little foolish too.

• Why won’t member of Congress read the bills before they vote on them?

They know what’s in the bill, if they make a change on page 43 do you think they need to re-read the whole bill? That would be stupid.

• Why are citizens mocked and laughed at when they ask their congressman to read the bills before they vote on them?

They know what is in the bill.

• Was the cash-for-clunkers program meant to save the earth or the economy? Did it accomplish either?

Is eating a bite of your dinner meant to stave off starvation? It is part of a larger stimulus effort. It succeeded very well. The environmental effects were secondary.

• How did Van Jones, a self-proclaimed communist become a special advisor to the president?

I presume he asked him.

• Did President Obama know of Van Jones’ radical political beliefs when he named him special advisor?

Most likely. Van Jones’ beliefs are far less radical than yours.

• The Apollo Alliance claimed credit for writing the stimulus bill—why was this group allowed to write any portion of this bill?

They weren’t.

• If politicians aren’t writing the bills and aren’t reading the bills, do they have any idea what these 1000 page plus bills actually impose on the American people?

They know what’s in the bills. They also don’t let anyone else write them.

• If the ‘public option’ health care plan is so good why won’t politicians agree to have that as their plan?

Because their coverage is better. If the government gave out bus passes do you expect congresspeople to use them? Also, the public option is an option, it is in no way mandatory and in no way going to be forced on anyone. It will have to be chosen, like any other insurance.

• If town hall meetings are intended for the politicians to learn what’s on our mind—why do they spend so much time talking instead of listening?

So they can inform the constituents about what they have been doing. Do you understand how town halls work?

• Politicians are refusing to attend town hall meetings complaining, without evidence, that they are scripted. Does that mean we shouldn’t come out and vote for you since every campaign stop, baby kiss and speech you give is scripted?

The disrupters aren’t looking for discourse. They are screaming with the intention of not allowing others to hear arguments for health care reform. They are stupid children throwing tantrums.

• Why would you want to overwhelm the system?

Good thing no one is suggesting that.

• Is using the economic crises to rush legislation through congress what Rahm Emanuel meant when he talked about not letting a crises go to waste?

Using it as a lever to open the door to action I’d say.

• What are the czars paid? What is the budget for their staffs/offices?

I don’t know. Do you care what the head of the Dept. of Transportation makes?

I think these are reasonable questions, don’t you? They are most certainly worth discussing, don’t you think?

No, they are stupid questions, asked with the specific intention of riling up ignorant, hateful people. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of current events would know all the answers to these questions, the reason you don’t is you are submerged in the republican echo chamber. Surface and take a breath once in awhile.

[wierdaaron]

How did Van Jones, a self-proclaimed communist become a special advisor to the president?

How did Matthew, a self-proclaimed cheating tax collector become a special advisor to Jesus fucking Christ?

Man, that’s 2 posts where I’ve pretended the bible were real in as many minutes. I need a shower.

[Llama_Llogophile]

@Clothahump

Am I hateful if I ask:
- We are in so much debt, why spend more borrowed money on cap-and-trade and healthcare programs before we stop the flow of red-ink?

I snorted when I read that one - before seeing the source I should add.

My response is, where was this person when we invaded Iraq? Oh, right. He probably doesn’t mind red-ink when it involves the spilling of red-blood as the result of military action.

[Clothahump]

@wierdaaron

Hi, if you’re going to source a 400-word, 30 line post from figures pulled from Glenn Beck’s ass, could you say so at the top, not the bottom, so I can leave sooner?

I think that response pretty much proves the point. You read all the way to the end because you thought the questions were reasonable. Otherwise, you would have stopped before the end. Then you saw Beck’s name and your brain turned off.

[Lobohan]

@Clothahump

I think that response pretty much proves the point. You read all the way to the end because you thought the questions were reasonable. Otherwise, you would have stopped before the end. Then you saw Beck’s name and your brain turned off.

Did you get to the part where every single on of those questions was stupid and answerable with common knowledge or irrelevant?

[El_Kabong]

In my opinion, the OP is not hateful for posting questions, if he actually came up with at least a few on his own. The OP may, however, be hateful for posting partisan political advertising masquerading as a debate.

[running_coach]

@Clothahump

I think that response pretty much proves the point. You read all the way to the end because you thought the questions were reasonable. Otherwise, you would have stopped before the end. Then you saw Beck’s name and your brain turned off.

I thought the questions were unreasonable and the product of an unsound mind. I was curious as to the identity of the unsound mind as there seem to be so many to choose from.

ETA: And Beck’s brain turned off a long time ago.

[GIGObuster]

I always make a point of checking fist if they are reasonable questions.

@Clothahump

Am I hateful if I ask:

- Our unfunded liability for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is close to $100 trillion. Is there any way to pay for these programs without bankrupting America?

http://www.socsec.org/publications.asp?pubid=496

Recently, the mainstream media have been parroting claims that the federal government, particularly the Social Security and Medicare programs, have dozens of trillions of dollars in “unfunded liabilities.” For example, USA Today ran a long feature in early October 2004 that proclaimed that “the long-term economic health of the United States is threatened by $53 trillion in government debts and liabilities that start to come due in four years.” Many other articles, news reports, and commentary have included comparable numbers that make the fiscal future look not just frightening but entirely unmanageable.

These claims appear aimed at scaring us into making radical changes in our social insurance system for old people. But whatever the motivation, how scared should we be? What is true and what is phony about the alarms that fiscal disaster is looming just ahead?

Here is what is true:

* Medical costs are rising much faster than other costs. If this continues, all future medical bills, including those the government has pledged to pick up, will be frighteningly large.
* In the future, as the population ages, old people will consume a larger share of the income pie, one way or another.

Notice that neither of these facts implies a public sector crisis. The first is a huge challenge confronting the entire society, posed by unmanageable healthcare costs. The second is simply a problem of adjusting our institutions to divide the income pie fairly among people of all ages.

Even the conservative estimates by the Social Security actuaries suggest that, if nothing is changed, the system will be able to meet all of its promised benefits until 2042 and 75 percent thereafter. In fact, the Social Security Trust Funds are bigger today than they have ever been, and these conservative forecasts predict that they will continue to grow for two more decades before beginning to decline (if nothing is done before then).

Playing Chicken

All of the grotesquely huge unfunded liability numbers spouted by scare mongers depend on forecasts that go out many decades, often hundreds of years. Such forecasts routinely go beyond the point where we could have any firm knowledge of what to expect. Of course, it is technically very easy to trace the implications of assumptions about future productivity, birth and immigration rates, labor force participation levels, and various costs over the next 20, 50, or even 1,000 years. These assumptions have implications for the age structure of the population, the rate of economic growth, and the cost of various government programs. Plugging those assumptions into a spreadsheet can tell us precisely how much Social Security or Medicare will cost us, extrapolated to eternity, if we like.

The problem is that over such long time horizons, small differences in those assumptions compound to huge variations in forecasts. If something (say health care costs) is growing faster than something else (say incomes) and we assume that this continues indefinitely, then eventually, what is growing fast will swamp what is growing slowly. That’s arithmetic, not policy analysis.

Over the years, we have responded not to forecasts of what will happen in 50 or 100 years, but to evolving Social Security finances. As it became clear that action was needed, we acted.

Imagine if in 1950, someone had calculated the costs of educating the baby boomers in public institutions through their college years. What an immense, unmanageable burden! And nothing-not a penny-had been set aside by 1950 to cover the costs of public universities in the 1960s and 1970s! Using the logic of unfunded liabilities that has fueled alarmist media stories, public universities should have been closed; education should have been left to the private sector.

Yet nobody ever claimed in the 1950s and 1960s that the education of the Baby Boomers was an excessive burden our society, or that our public institutions could not afford to accept the challenge. When we needed more schools, we built them. Why should the Boomers’ retirement be unmanageable? We need to strengthen social insurance for old people, and we will be able to afford it.

Ok, unreasonable question, there is very little need to check the rest.

Then I can deal with the source:

Yep, I can say that Glenn Beck is an asshole.

[42fish]

@Clothahump

How did Van Jones, a self-proclaimed communist become a special advisor to the president?

@treis

A self proclaimed former communist.

That just means that he’s laying low, preparing to undermine the US from within to enable the triumph of the Soviet Union. (You know that break-up thing was fake, right?)

Clearly, we need someone to make a list of the current/former/suspected Communists infiltrating the Obama administration. I nominate Senator Iselin.

[Try2B_Comprehensive]

@Clothahump

Am I hateful if I ask:

- What are the czars paid? What is the budget for their staffs/offices?

Nah, I don’t think you’re hateful for asking. I hope you’re willing to consider the answers people provide.

I’m curious for a better answer to the czars questions myself. As I understand the controversy, the czars can wield government authority, yet are not screened by congress. So… are they unconstitutional? If they are unconstitutional, do we have a meeting and then get rid of them, or should we just go ballistic right now?
Maybe they’re just advisers paid by the DNC (or GOP in times past) and it’s all legit. Can’t say I understand the details of executive branch staffing though.

[treis]

@Clothahump

I think that response pretty much proves the point. You read all the way to the end because you thought the questions were reasonable. Otherwise, you would have stopped before the end. Then you saw Beck’s name and your brain turned off.

Hell my brain turned off after Am I hateful? I’m tired of the people who are well off and hold power in society yet still want to feel like a victim.

[cosmosdan]

@Clothahump

I think these are reasonable questions, don’t you? They are most certainly worth discussing, don’t you think?

Oh - and for you liberal types that complain about him constantly, Glenn Beck asked every one of them.
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/29631/
Are they still reasonable questions now that you know the source?

I don’t have to believe everything Beck says is a lie to not be willing to wade through his pile of shit to find one or two valid points. That’s how I feel about a lot of pundits who stress their own partisan ratings boosting crap filled with dishonesty over trying to actually inform and educate the general public.

Sincerely, don’t you think you have an obligation to actually do the research and discover how many of these “reasonable” questions have any part of the truth in them? Why the hell should anyone believe what any pundit said without question? Isn’t that unreasonable?

[DoctorJ]

Oh - and for you liberal types that complain about him constantly, Glenn Beck asked every one of them.
http://www.glennbeck.com/content/art...cle/198/29631/
Are they still reasonable questions now that you know the source?

Is this supposed to be some kind of a gotcha? It’s a bunch of questions clearly written by a right-winger (with a few decent questions hiding among them), and it’s supposed to be some kind of a big reveal that they were asked by Glenn Beck? If the source had turned out to be Rachel Maddow, that would have been surprising.

But to answer your specific question…no, it isn’t hateful to ask those questions. But if you keep asking them after they’ve been answered, or after they’ve been exposed as invalid questions, that’s pretty hateful. And Glenn Beck is hateful even if he spent this morning asking little old ladies if he could help them carry their groceries; he’s said plenty to make that clear.

[wierdaaron]

@Clothahump

I think that response pretty much proves the point. You read all the way to the end because you thought the questions were reasonable. Otherwise, you would have stopped before the end. Then you saw Beck’s name and your brain turned off.

Like others have said, I read through the list thinking “what the hell is wrong with this guy?” and then I got to the end and was, I guess, a little relieved to see they weren’t your words, but those of a crazy man who would say anything in the world if he thought it would make him popular.

[Zoe]

Clothahump, why would you trust this man? Just listen to him for a moment. Does he sound rational?

[Number43]

As for congressmen reading bills, if each congressman read the entirety of every very lengthy bill that came up for a vote, they wouldn’t have any time left to do anything else.