who supports right to choose

[LeighaMason 19]

You misunderstand my post, is it deliberate? The government pays the corporations too much.

[pattygreen 5]

But the government IS supporting ALL the corporations through tax breaks and incentives. And for the wall street banks that were bailed out - what don't you understand that that was OUR money (taxpayer money) in the banks that they gambled with? Our government insures our deposits in banks but only up to a certain amount. So corporations and these banks depend on government welfare which is OUR tax dollars.

My taxes and my deposits ARE my business. So AIG got billions in taxpayer subsidies (bailout) after making horrible business decisions with people's money and you are okay with them giving a $100 million dollar bonus to someone?

you still do not hear me. I agree with you that the banks who received help from the taxpayers should not be giving high bonuses to their employees UNLESS they have already paid us back. Then they can do as they please and hand out high paychecks to whoever they want. The private businesses, whether large or small should be able to decide whatever they want about what to pay their employees. This is their business. Maybe you weren't hearing me cause you're not used to me being in agreement with you on anything, but go nback and read my post. I even underlined it.

I said this: If they (meaning private businesses) can afford to be generous, then why does it bother you? If the government is doing that with our money, (meaning giving high bonuses)then we have a right to complain, but private businesses should be allowed to grow and prosper at their own will.

[pattygreen 5]

I agree we should cut our spending, just not at the expense of poor people. There are lots of corporations who receive huge overpayment's for their services. I think we should start there.

This is the post I was refering to. When she said there are alot of corporations who receive overpayments for their services, I didn't think she was talking about government run corporations, but private ones. (The government runs those that we bailed out because they are financed with our tax dollars) Since she was refering to private corporations, I wanted to know why it bothers her what their employers pay their employees. So what if it is an overpayment in your opinion. They can pay their employees as much as they want.

[pattygreen 5]

You misunderstand my post, is it deliberate? The government pays the corporations too much.

What corporations?

[Cleo's Mom 257]

What corporations?

How about this? Halliburton, Enron, Wal-Mart, AT&T, GE, Microsoft, IBM, Citigroup, et al...

Conservatives like giving away government money too, they just do it differently. Whether they are billion dollar sole-source contracts to Halliburton, farm subsidies that benefit California millionaires with a hobby ranch in Wyoming, or the twelve billion dollars squandered monthly in Iraq, conservatives are quite liberal with American tax dollars.

Related Conservative Failures

Quagmire in Iraq

The special government favors that private contractors in Iraq—from Halliburton to Blackwater—enjoy, are like money in the bank to their stockholders—and a drain on the rest of our pocketbooks. read more »

Corporate Wilding

Corporate Wilding Sometimes it’s hard to figure out where corporate welfare ends and outright corporate malfeasance begins. When California privatized its power grid, it was both a gift to energy companies like Enron, and an open invitation to swindle the public. read more »

Failing Hurricane Katrina Victims

After the federal government set up special tax-advantaged "Gulf Opportunity Zones" to help Katrina victims who needed housing, is it any surprise that some of the money ended up with developers building luxury condos hundreds of miles from the storm? read more »

Abandoning Patients at Walter Reed

When conservatives privatize a government function like the management of Walter Reed, they always say it's to make the services better and more efficient. They never call it what it actually is—a giveaway straight from the public purse. read more »

More conservative failures

In the name of individual responsibility, conservatives proudly deny a helping hand to the poor and powerless. Meanwhile they ladle money into the banks of the rich and powerful in the form of tax subsidies or unquestioned contracts.

Free Market Fundamentalism > Corporate Welfare

Free Market Fundamentalism often leads to corporate welfare because deregulated markets often allow corporations to become so overgrown, even to the point of monopoly, that their influence over the government balloons and balloons. They can game the system so that government programs end up funneling money straight into their own pockets.

The giant retailer Wal-Mart has more workers enrolled in many state Medicaid programs—which are supposed to be reserved for poor people—than any other employer. They even hand out guides to help workers enroll in the programs. When the taxpayers subsidize services that companies should be providing to their employers themselves, that's corporate welfare.

Meanwhile, one study found over 240 examples of subsidies from taxpayers to help Wal-Mart build new retail outlets and distribution centers—in fact, 90 percent of these huge warehouses that Wal-Mart claims it needs were subsidized from the public purse. That's corporate welfare, too.

How does a company like Wal-Mart get away with it? Partly, by wrapping themselves in a mythology that their history was an entrepreneurial miracle—and that its gobbling up of smaller retailers happened because they did a better job in some kind of open, dog-eat-dog competition. In actual fact, it couldn't have happened without special favors from statehouses and Washington D.C. It takes a lot of ideological mumbo-jumbo to call that a triumph of the free market—but somehow conservatives manage it.

Trickle-Down

Economics

Conservatives’ false belief that anything having to do with business is automatically part of the free market both causes and justifies corporate welfare. Government subsidies—which conservatives teach us rot moral character, but only in the case of vulnerable individuals—get miscast as the operations of this mythical free market. The institutions that end up with the "freedom" always turn out to be big businesses, who throw around their market power to bully everyone else. Ordinary Americans end up less free—and the wealthiest Americans end up cornering the market. Here's how:

Tax Subsidies. The federal government gives tax subsidies to business for particular purposes. Often these incentives are created in hope that the free market will find solutions to our nation’s problems. However, the tax subsidies given to huge corporations and dishonest businessmen are often abused, subverting the free market in the guise of unleashing its dynamism.

The Oil Industry. With fuel prices soaring, oil companies are reaping record profits. Yet conservatives gave them $30 billion in tax subsidies to offset ordinary business expenses such as exploration.

Disdain for Government > Corporate Welfare

Ronald Reagan summarized the soul of modern conservatism in his first inaugural address "Government isn't the solution to our problem,” he said. “Government is the problem.” By erasing government's role as referee, regulator and guarantor of the common good, such dogma gives away the store to already-powerful interests, and leaves ordinary Americans unprotected. Here are some examples:

Tax Avoidance

Big corporations pay staffs of attorneys and consultants to find legal ways to dodge taxes. They incorporate in Bermuda or the Bahamas, or they create fantasy charitable trusts with no tax liability. Meanwhile, as conservatives shrink government, the number of IRS tax auditors has dropped by a third since the 1990’s.

From 2001-2003, 275 large corporations on Fortune’s 500 list earned almost $1.1 trillion in pretax profits in the United States. Had all of those profits been reported to the IRS and taxed at the statutory 35 percent corporate tax rate, then those 275 companies would have paid $370 billion in income taxes over the three years. Instead, the companies reported only about half of their profits—$557 billion—to the IRS. Instead of a 35 percent tax rate, the companies as a group paid a three-year effective tax rate of only 18.4 percent. Loopholes and other tax subsidies cut taxes for the 275 companies by $43.4 billion in 2001, $60.8 billion in 2002 and $71.0 billion in 2003—for a total of $175.2 billion in tax breaks over the three years.

General Electric tops the list of corporate tax dodgers during the study years. It avoided $9.5 billion in taxes from 2001-2003. Other large scale corporate tax dodgers include: Citigroup at $4.6 billion; IBM at $4.6 billion; Microsoft at $4.6 billion; AT&T at $4.5 billion; and Exxon Mobil at $4.3 billion. Other corporations paid NO taxes during the study years between 2001-2003 while reaping huge profits: Principal Group with $2.1 billion in profits; AT&T with $5.7 billion in profits; and Time Warner with $4.9 billion in profits.

Enron

Enron took advantage of lax oversight following deregulation and formed a complicated web of more than 2,800 subsidiaries — more than 30 percent (874) of which were located in officially designated offshore tax and bank havens.

The federal government gives tax subsidies to favored businesses or to favor certain business behavior. In some cases, it can subsidize important advances. In many cases, it’s just a gift. Pay-to-play politics are another example of the fallout of conservative ideologies in practice.

Oil Companies

Oil Well

During a time of record high oil prices and record profits among oil companies, Congress gave subsidies to oil companies worth $30 billion over five years. They receive $5.4 billion in subsidies for exploration and an additional $4.7 billion for the depletion of discovered wells. Yet the oil companies receiving these subsidies have seen huge profits: Exxon Mobil at $36 billion; Chevron at $189 billion; Conoco Phillips at $166 billion; and Valero Energy at $81 billion.

Miscast Morality > Corporate Welfare

Conservatives rose to political power on the wings of a critique of welfare—so long as the entities getting the welfare critique were single black mothers. Ronald Reagan used to chase around the campaign trail telling a story—entirely invented—about a Chicago mother supposedly receiving so many welfare checks off various phony social security numbers she was able to buy a Cadillac. Unfortunately, stories of corporate welfare—unlike Reagan's welfare Cadillac—are absolutely true. And yet you'll rarely hear conservatives getting their back up over them, let alone using them to try to win elections.

Conservatives are great at moralizing when the target is a vulnerable individual. When it's a big corporation that's exploiting the public purse, they're silent.

WOW!! Is this ever true. And those mean spirited conservative beliefs for the least among us while advocating for the big corporations is well represented by you conservatives.

[BJean 16]

Reagan was such a puppet they probably told him the story about the Chicago mother who used welfare to buy a Cadillac and he didn't ask any questions, just bought it hook line and sinker. Like the rest of the lines they fed him and he regurgitated so perfectly.

[LeighaMason 19]

Cleo's mom, Thank you that is exactly what I was trying to say about overpayment of corporations.

[LeighaMason 19]

And for the record, I never said I cared what corporations paid their employees. I said I cared what the government paid the corporations. I am for free markets, however, I am not for government purchases of services and supplies without a bids being taken, this is called force accounts and they are notorious for being given to friends, families, and financial contributers. This results in overpayment for services.

[LapNYC 3]

I consider men's opinions on the topic to be totally irrelevant. If all my children were gay I wouldn't even blink, but if they were anti-choice I might have to kill them!

[Corliss 0]

People who are poor don't always stay that way. Everyone starts out there usually, unless you have wealthy parents who provide for you. I certainly was poor at 19 years old, but I CHOSE to save my money and pay for a CNA class and better myself financially. It took 8 weeks of school and it gave me a $5.00 an hour increase over my minimum wage job. This increase allowed me to CHOOSE to save even more money for other education that bettered my career choices.

Now, you can make fun of that, or you can see the reality in it. Anyone CAN better themselves if they put on their thinking caps and use a little incentive, motivation and brain power instead of sitting on their duff and being comfortable with their situation. Some things in life take a little sacrifice. It doesn't just plop into your lap, although I'm sure you liberals don't think that way. You would love for the government to be your wealthy parents who support you and get you through life without any worries. I understand your need for the government security blanket. But, conservatives want to be able to care for themselves for the most part.

It is ironic that you talk wanting this and wanting that, anything but taking care of themselves, when you story and mine are not that different. I chose to keep a baby at 19 and though I married it did not last and I went from working in a factory to gaining a master's degree by the time my child was 10 years old. It was not easy, it was darn hard and my "rich parents" were elderly, retired and did everyting they could to help me but money was very short. I fortunate enough to access loans and grants and fellowships along with working as a mental health tech, cleaning toilets, baby sitting, and working the census while I was in school. I considered myself darn fortunate and I was also very very tired.

I am luckier than you are because I appreciate the fact that even with the hard work, I couldn't have done it without a hand up from the government. I know too that I was luckier than many because I had a poor but supportive family who did their best to act as a buffer when things got their worst. They would buy medicine if we needed it and if my daughter needed something I couldn't get they usually found a way. All girls in my situation don't have nearly that kind of support. I don't think my parents should have had to do without to buy our medicine, but thank God they did. The world would be such a better place if people were not so selfish that they wanted to see a program in place to give medical care to all who need it.

I am grateful that I am willing to share! That is what being a liberal is, it is NOT about wanting the government to do something for me. Being Liberal is being willing to share and do my part to pay forward!

Corliss

[TN_girl21 1]

I am all for the government helping the unfortunate/unable. But where I draw the line is the people who want a hand out that do NOT want to work at all! If you are unable to work, that's a different story. I love the fact that anybody can go to college off of a government grant and scholarship.

My parents started off dirt poor, and are now very wealthy. They give and give and give so much. I am so fortunate that my Republican parents brought me up to want to give back and share. There is nothing wrong with the government helping people who really do need it and appreciate it. You wouldn't believe the letters my mom gets from random people in our town wanting a hand out or claiming to be related so they need money. Now some of them are legit. My mom has actually sent a child (that she has never met) to college because of a letter sent to her.

The point of my post is...always give back! And not all Conservatives don't want the government to help where needed (I know you didn't say that, nor did you imply it...just saying. lol).

[pattygreen 5]

I do not mind at all when the government helps those who 'need' the help. The problem is waste. There is so much waste of federal funds going on.

Eliminating waste cannot balance the budget. But here’s a start:

1. The federal government made at least $72 billion in improper payments in 2008.

2. Washington spends $92 billion on corporate welfare (excluding TARP) versus $71 billion on homeland security.

3. Washington spends $25 billion annually maintaining unused or vacant federal properties.

4. Government auditors spent the past five years examining all federal programs and found that 22 percent of them–costing taxpayers a total of $123 billion annually–fail to show any positive impact on the populations they serve.

5. The Congressional Budget Office published a “Budget Options” series identifying more than $100 billion in potential spending cuts.

6. Examples from multiple Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports of wasteful duplication include 342 economic development programs; 130 programs serving the disabled; 130 programs serving at-risk youth; 90 early childhood development programs; 75 programs funding international education, cultural, and training exchange activities; and 72 safe Water programs.

7. Washington will spend $2.6 million training Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly on the job.

8. A GAO audit classified nearly half of all purchases on government credit cards as improper, fraudulent, or embezzled. Examples of taxpayer-funded purchases include gambling, mortgage payments, liquor, lingerie, iPods, Xboxes, jewelry, Internet dating services, and Hawaiian vacations. In one extraordinary example, the Postal Service spent $13,500 on one dinner at a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, including “over 200 appetizers and over $3,000 of alcohol, including more than 40 bottles of wine costing more than $50 each and brand-name liquor such as Courvoisier, Belvedere and Johnny Walker Gold.” The 81 guests consumed an average of $167 worth of food and drink apiece.

9. Federal agencies are delinquent on nearly 20 percent of employee travel charge cards, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

10. The Securities and Exchange Commission spent $3.9 million rearranging desks and offices at its Washington, D.C., headquarters.

11. The Pentagon recently spent $998,798 shipping two 19-cent washers from South Carolina to Texas and $293,451 sending an 89-cent washer from South Carolina to Florida.

12. Over half of all farm subsidies go to commercial farms, which report average household incomes of $200,000.

13. Health care fraud is estimated to cost taxpayers more than $60 billion annually.

14. A GAO audit found that 95 Pentagon weapons systems suffered from a combined $295 billion in cost overruns.

15. The refusal of many federal employees to fly coach costs taxpayers $146 million annually in flight upgrades.

16. Washington will spend $126 million in 2009 to enhance the Kennedy family legacy in Massachusetts. Additionally, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) diverted $20 million from the 2010 defense budget to subsidize a new Edward M. Kennedy Institute.

17. Federal investigators have launched more than 20 criminal fraud investigations related to the TARP financial bailout.

18. Despite trillion-dollar deficits, last year’s 10,160 earmarks included $200,000 for a tattoo removal program in Mission Hills, California; $190,000 for the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming; and $75,000 for the Totally Teen Zone in Albany, Georgia.

19. The federal government owns more than 50,000 vacant homes.

20. The Federal Communications Commission spent $350,000 to sponsor NASCAR driver David Gilliland.

21. Members of Congress have spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars supplying their offices with popcorn machines, plasma televisions, DVD equipment, ionic air fresheners, camcorders, and signature machines–plus $24,730 leasing a Lexus, $1,434 on a digital camera, and $84,000 on personalized calendars.

22. More than $13 billion in Iraq aid has been classified as wasted or stolen. Another $7.8 billion cannot be accounted for.

23. Fraud related to Hurricane Katrina spending is estimated to top $2 billion. In addition, debit cards provided to hurricane victims were used to pay for Caribbean vacations, NFL tickets, Dom Perignon champagne, “Girls Gone Wild” videos, and at least one sex change operation.

24. Auditors discovered that 900,000 of the 2.5 million recipients of emergency Katrina assistance provided false names, addresses, or Social Security numbers or submitted multiple applications.

25. Congress recently gave Alaska Airlines $500,000 to paint a Chinook salmon on a Boeing 737.

26. The Transportation Department will subsidize up to $2,000 per flight for direct flights between Washington, D.C., and the small hometown of Congressman Hal Rogers (R-KY)–but only on Monday mornings and Friday evenings, when lawmakers, staff, and lobbyists usually fly. Rogers is a member of the Appropriations Committee, which writes the Transportation Department’s budget.

27. Washington has spent $3 billion re-sanding beaches–even as this new sand washes back into the ocean.

28. A Department of Agriculture report concedes that much of the $2.5 billion in “stimulus” funding for broadband Internet will be wasted.

29. The Defense Department wasted $100 million on unused flight tickets and never bothered to collect refunds even though the tickets were refundable.

30. Washington spends $60,000 per hour shooting Air Force One photo-ops in front of national landmarks.

31. Over one recent 18-month period, Air Force and Navy personnel used government-funded credit cards to charge at least $102,400 on admission to entertainment events, $48,250 on gambling, $69,300 on cruises, and $73,950 on exotic dance clubs and prostitutes.

32. Members of Congress are set to pay themselves $90 million to increase their franked mailings for the 2010 election year.

33. Congress has ignored efficiency recommendations from the Department of Health and Human Services that would save $9 billion annually.

34. Taxpayers are funding paintings of high-ranking government officials at a cost of up to $50,000 apiece.

35. The state of Washington sent $1 food stamp checks to 250,000 households in order to raise state caseload figures and trigger $43 million in additional federal funds.

36. Suburban families are receiving large farm subsidies for the grass in their backyards–subsidies that many of these families never requested and do not want.

37. Congress appropriated $20 million for “commemoration of success” celebrations related to Iraq and Afghanistan.

38. Homeland Security employee purchases include 63-inch plasma TVs, iPods, and $230 for a beer brewing kit.

39. Two drafting errors in the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act resulted in a $2 billion taxpayer cost.

40. North Ridgeville, Ohio, received $800,000 in “stimulus” funds for a project that its mayor described as “a long way from the top priority.”

41. The National Institutes of Health spends $1.3 million per month to rent a lab that it cannot use.

42. Congress recently spent $2.4 billion on 10 new jets that the Pentagon insists it does not need and will not use.

43. Lawmakers diverted $13 million from Hurricane Katrina relief spending to build a museum celebrating the Army Corps of Engineers–the agency partially responsible for the failed levees that flooded New Orleans.

44. Medicare officials recently mailed $50 million in erroneous refunds to 230,000 Medicare recipients.

45. Audits showed $34 billion worth of Department of Homeland Security contracts contained significant waste, fraud, and abuse.

46. Washington recently spent $1.8 million to help build a private golf course in Atlanta, Georgia.

47. The Advanced Technology Program spends $150 million annually subsidizing private businesses; 40 percent of this funding goes to Fortune 500 companies.

48. Congressional investigators were able to receive $55,000 in federal student loan funding for a fictional college they created to test the Department of Education.

49. The Conservation Reserve program pays farmers $2 billion annually not to farm their land.

50. The Commerce Department has lost 1,137 computers since 2001, many containing Americans’ personal data.

[pattygreen 5]

Citizens Against Government Waste Homepage

This link will bring you to a website called "citizen's against government waste". you will not believe what our government spends our money on!!!

[BJean 16]

TN girl, it's great that your parents are such wonderful philanthropists. Would that all of the wealthy were so inclined.

And there is no doubt that there is a lot of government waste. Thankfully our president is working at cutting government waste already. And he has pledged to not add anymore to that by supporting legislation that will add to our national debt. Everything he comes up with will take that into consideration - and we have witnesed that already too.

Obstructionists would have you believe that all the president and Democrats want is to put the country further in debt. History has shown us that it isn't the Democrats who get us so deeply in debt. It's the Democrats who have to do the job of getting us back to a healthy economy after the Republicans have been in power. Check out previous Republican administrations, even before Bush - which we all know was a disaster economically.

In other words, are you going to believe the hype (Republican rehtoric) or your lying eyes?

[KartMan 58]

I consider men's opinions on the topic to be totally irrelevant. If all my children were gay I wouldn't even blink, but if they were anti-choice I might have to kill them!

Woah, watch it there LapNYC. Totally irrelevant?

You would be hard pressed to find a more Pro-choice male than me. Look back at my previous posts and I think you’ll see where I stand on this issue. But with all due respect, that was a stupid comment for you to make. If what you are saying is that men (especially politicians and the general public) should not have a say on what a women does with her body, I can totally agree with you. However, to say it like you do only serves to alienate men, and that is not something the Pro-choice side should be doing. I believe there are certainly cases in which men DO deserve some say. For example, in a committed monogamous relationship, or in a marriage. I would agree that in the end, a women has the right to choose, I believe after all that it is her body – but in true relationships, a (potential) father should have some rights. I’m not saying I know how to legislate those rights, nor do I believe the fathers rights outweigh the mothers rights, but to say their opinions are totally irrelevant is ludicrous and shortsighted and does a disservice to the Pro-choice cause.

Supposing that you were not talking about potential individual fathers in your statement, I think you are still wrong to say what you said. This important topic obviously is more relevant to women than men. Men have no idea what it means to be pregnant, but to totally discount men’s opinions on the issue would be a huge mistake. That would be like saying that white people have no valid opinions on civil rights or that straight people shouldn’t contribute to issues around gay rights. I myself am a white, heterosexual male and am vehemently supportive of civil rights, am pro gay rights and decidedly Pro-choice – but by your logic, my voice shouldn’t matter in any of those discussions:confused:

I would suggest you rephrase your comment.