Congratulations to Gov. Paul LePage for his efforts to rein in welfare fraud. He is to be commended, along with the current legislators, for their efforts to correct the many failings in welfare.
One has to only look at Detroit, Mich., to see what runaway entitlements can do to a once proud city. Detroit plummeted from 1.8 million citizens to 912,000 today. It has descended into the abyss of crime, debauchery, gun play, drugs, school truancy, car-jacking, gangs and human depravity. Hundreds of thousands today exist on federal welfare, free housing and food stamps. It was and is entitlement gone wild. Total chaos prevails.
The liberals scream about helping the needy, but it has gone way beyond reason or the state's ability to pay for it. I thank Gov. LePage for seeing the end result and putting on the brakes before the state's taxpayers are all destitute.
It is not a matter of ignoring human needs but rather of trying to restore human dignity in those who have become entitlement junkies. You can give a man a fish or you can teach him to fish for himself. The latter better serves all and is more like the old Maine Yankee who was too proud to ask for help.
It is obvious that government cannot be all things to all people and each should care for their own. The fact that the state is about to go bankrupt is a major red flag that LePage recognizes and is trying to prevent.
George A. Fogg, North Yarmouth
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So where's all the Jobs that the
Wealthy were going to create with the series of tax cuts they were given under Reagan and both Bushes??
All the middle class has received is one big hand job.....
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Unemployment was 7.3% when oBAMa took office. The current rate of umemployment, for some strange reason, does not seem to reflect all the jobs that have been created since he's been in office. How so?
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that were headed for the shidter under Bush.
Unemployment claims really headed up during Bush's watch - then down under Obama. So it was under your 'Buddy' that all this malfeasance took place, and big business won't part the two trillion they are sitting on to create jobs.
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Yes, but unemployment was 7.3% when he took office and it is now over 9%. You can't alter that.
"Big business" is sitting on the 2 trillion bucks waiting for the lid to blow off of the oBAMaCare kettle.
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They've got Two Trillion to prime the Pump......
They can't bad-mouth Govt. and stand by while Rome burns.... They are more than complicit. "Big Business" is the reason 'ObamaCare' was necessitated. We are the only country in the world that does health care the FUBAR way we do it. That's why it is more that about 17% GDP while in other countries around 10%.
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Understood. It is my belief, however, that obamacare was necessitated by the Govt's unquenchable lust for power and complete control of our lives. If our FUBAR way of doing health care is so bad, why do so many Canadians and people from other countries (who can afford it) come here for their health care needs?
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With Aid to Dependent Children, minority women birthed eight to 10, and in one case, one woman birthed 24 children as reported by the Detroit Free Press, all on American taxpayer dollars.
A new child meant a new car payment, new TV, and whatever mom wanted. I
saw Lyndon Baines Johnson's 'Great Society' flourish in Detroit . If you give money for doing no thing, you will get more hands out taking money for doing nothing.
Mayor Coleman Young, perhaps the most corrupt mayor in America , outside of Richard Daley in Chicago, rode Detroit down to its knees... He set the benchmark for cronyism, incompetence, and arrogance.
And Detroit has had Democratic leadership all this while. Hmmmmmm!
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links to substantiate any of his allegations.
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A paper written by Congressman Randy Forbes in April of 2008, "The Challenge of Giant Entitlements", states that "Entitlement spending, or government spending that takes place automatically every year without any action from Congress, is currently 62 percent of our overall federal spending."
Federal State and local governments combined spend about 5% of GDP on means tested welfare (for the poor), with over half going to medical care and less than 1/4 going to cash benefits. Total taxes are about 30% of GDP so about 1/6 or 16% of the Federal State and Local taxes you pay goes to welfare.
Projections welfare for YE 2012 are as follows in billions:
Fed. Gov. State Local Total
Welfare 495.6 -35.1 155.2 87.1 702.7
Family and children 107.2 0.0 10.5 9.0 126.7
Unemployment 134.8 -4.8 4.8 0.0 134.9
Housing 69.4 -30.3 7.0 38.2 84.3
Social exclusion 176.6 0.0 52.8 39.8 269.2
Three quarters of a trillion dollars is a lot of money!
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Are they lost in the 'Fogg of War' George......
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... is reaching record levels. Detroit was destroyed by Republicans?! That's a remarkable stretch even for Albrecht. It's obvious Jon doesn't get out of Dixfield very often.
Detroit was descending into the toilet by the mid-70s at the latest, directed by unions, Democrats (but I repeat myself) and hack politicians who couldn't get an entry-level janitorial job in the private sector. Detroit is where the unions drew a line in the sand - if they couldn't get their demands, they would happily destroy the companies and throw all their members under the bus. The bus was made in Japan. Detroit served as a model for the doom of manufacturing across the country.
BHO "saved" the auto industry by printing a mountain of money and screwing bond holders and non-union employees. Nothing was fixed, nothing was changed. The industry will need another transfusion soon, as long as the unions have their poisonous talons sunk this deep.
No Albrecht post would be complete with at least one ad-hominem attack, and he doesn't disappoint.
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GM record profits. Employment up. Opening new plants and re-opening old plants. Developing new car models every bit as good as made anywhere in the world. Not one fact in Mr. LeBanc's empty attack on unions. BHO did not save the auto industry by printing a mountain of money. In fact, the US taxpayer will make a significant profit from saving. First, we didn't have to pay unemployment for at least a million workers for several years. That's about $30 billion a year. Best case scenarios place the profits from the sale of GM stock at a small profit; worst a small loss. The rescue of the auto industry added about .3% to the GDP. That's about 42 billion dollars in salaries, sales, profits which would not be their except of the rescue.
Detroit before the rescue is the poster child for Republican economic policies.
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Can you tell me which union it was that told Detroit to start selling junk people did not want to buy? What? It was management? Guess we better give them some tax cuts, that'll teach 'em.
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The junk was built by union workers in compliance with federally mandated specifications, requirements and restrictions.Cars in the 60's and 70's were crap. All built by overpaid union labor.
Have you forgotten the Carter years, Lil?
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Actually, it was management that came up with the concept of planned obsolescence. And the union workers built exactly what management told them to.
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You're right on that point. It was a sorry time in America for people who liked good cars. Falcons, Pintos, what a bunch of junk. There are more,but the names escape me. The common thread was that they were all crap.
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... can answer a stupid question like that. I'll help you. With the unions' ever increasing demands, the companies had a choice: increase prices so much that no one would buy; or scale back on size, quality, ... They chose to scale back to try to stay in business. It didn't matter what they chose, the result would have been the same: hand dominance to non-union Japan. They could have retooled to make the same stuff Japan was making, but they would have lost the competition because Japan could always under-cut the prices.
The story is always the same with rabid unionism. The union bosses make out like the bandits they are, the companies get marginalized, and the former union members wind up on the dole.
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Mr. LeBlanc, actually its even stupider for them to point out the auto industry....didn't the current president spend lots of money to bail them out...hmm wonder where all that moenby went if the problesm in Detroit are truly because the auto industry is failing. Some of the liberals on here actually make it easy to prove them wrong simply by opening their mouths.
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The American Auto Industry actually got it's shidt together.....
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debauchery? What is this the 17th century.
First, Detroit is a perfect example of what happens when Republican policies of destroying unions and the middle class, on which stability and economic growth are based, are followed. The auto industry was almost completely destroyed by the Bush recession and their economic policies. It took President Obama to save it, the US manufacturing sector, and the US economy.
Second, teaching a man to fish when all the fish are extinct does him no good (you can use your own far fetched analogy to answer the author's silliness)
Third, entitlements (welfare) are not a significant part of any budget. In fact, they are so small they don't even get mentioned by Republicans anymore. They want to destroy Social Security and Medicare because they are significant.
Fourth, most welfare fraud is committed by providers not recipients of welfare like our current House Speaker.
Fifth. The state is not about to go bankrupt. By any financial measure Maine is in better shape than two-third of the states in the United States.
When you are so out of touch with reality, well vote for Bachmann by the end of the campaign she will be saying that Ronald Reagan founded the country.
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reforming welfare is one of the worst. remember all that talk during the campaign about how there were bus loads of people coming from away and lining up as they got off the bus for welfare,, of course it came out that it was all a lie. but it played well to the fear of many people in our state that people from away are here trying to take something away from us. Dear Maine, people of color are not the bogeymen, they are not here to steal your state. What you should be more afraid of are your sons and daughters that have become hooked on the illegal drugs of our day. Those are our arsonists and murderers that we keep reading about this year.
LePage has done nothing to improve life for Mainers, he has proposed changes to welfare that will have almost no effect. His limitations will hit a very very small number of people. Statistics are showing, here in Maine, that the vast majority of welfare recipients are there is desperate time of need, and for relatively short periods of time.
The way to fix things here is to get Mainers working, and judging by the falling employment numbers of 2011, lePage has done a poor job at that.
LePage uses his lies to convince us that he is changing things, he is not, there was no buffalo count, tire ruts have never been classified as vernal pools, he has no adopted son, his name was on the deed, and you know what, whales and eagles do pay taxes. Indirectly, but they do!
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You don't think they're here for welfare? Take a ride over to DHHS or Lewiston City Hall, second floor, any day of the week. You'll see your welfare dollars at work.
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I've seen the numbers. overwhelmingly welfare recipients are white, and are native born. you can't dispute thos facts. other fact the refutes the lies told by the GOP. more people have left Maine and it's welfare system in the last 4 years than have come to the state to the welfare rolls. also, the vast majority are either elderly, sick/disabled or single mothers, and the vast majority stay on fewer than 3 years. The new regulations do not succeed in slicing the welfare budget, rather the GOP attack on welfare will hit a few undeserving souls, won't attack fraud anymore than it does now, and will devastate the lives of thousands of people who are just looking for a temporary helping hand.
There is no one driving the streets of lewiston with a brand new car and license plate the reads "U BOT IT", there are no busses from Mass dropping people off at DHHS, and I'm pretty sure there are no monsters under your bed, unless you let LePage sleep there
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You were doing fine until you decided to get cute. By the way, I saw the "U Bot It" license plate with my own eyes. It was on a green beat up Nissan Maxima, so you're wrong on that count.
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Are concentrated on 'K' Street in DC. They're known as 'Lobbyists.
The one's Pirate mentions are mere 'pikers'......
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The parrot sez he likes the way you think.
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It's the fault of 'Entitlements?"
Sorry George. Your obvious ignorance of trends in urban history in America doesn't allow you to blame Detroit's issues on 'entitlements' - there is also the somewhat unique and very complicated effects of placing so many eggs in the basket of the American Auto Industry.
But hey, why include any of these factors in your rant concerning entitlements? It's YOUR propaganda and if you wish to portray one boogie-man for the downward spiral of a once grand city while ignoring all the real ones - then so be it.
Just don't assume all readers to be the fool that you are.
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Conservative statement: "It is not a matter of ignoring human needs but rather of trying to restore human dignity". Real world translation: "We're going to take away your food, shelter, and healthcare, but we're only doing it for your own good, because we really care!"
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We had to destroy the village to save it.
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Would you like to respond? Login or create a new account. You'll need to verify your account before you can respond.More whining from the insomniac.
It is obviously very upsetting to the wagon-riding cadre that their cherished policies of redistribution may, for a change, give the wagon pullers a break.
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you failed to mention the $150 million taliban paul gave the wealthiest people in this state. Isn't that welfare upsetting for you, or are you part of that wealthy cadre getting the windfall?
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Another lie by the resident master of the untruth....Governor LePage did not give anything to the wealthy however he did reduce the amount of tax they needed to pay, but that $150 Million affects every Mainer who earns an income in excess of $34,000 a year as thats when the highest tax rate kicks in....so i guess you're saying that most Mainers are wealthy?
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LePage's budget included over $200 million in tax cuts. Of which $150 million or more went to wealthy people directly. More than $30 million went to 100 families with estates of more than $1 million.
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