Comment Re: Everyone is a potential criminal in L.A. (Score 1) 405
Why is this modded funny? I thought it was insightful!
Senate subcommittee held hearing on case it described as 'one of the largest fraud investigations' in Army history. The Senate's Financial and Contracting Oversight Subcommittee, chaired by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., held a hearing on Tuesday to address a case involving fraud and abuse in Army recruiting that it has described as “one of the largest fraud investigations” Army investigators have ever handled in size and numbers of people involved. More than 1,200 Army recruiters and assistants are under investigation on suspicion of fraud involving tens of millions of dollars from a program aimed at boosting recruitment during the Iraq war, according to papers released on Monday by a congressional panel. One person, now under prosecution, was fraudulently paid $275,000 under the recruitment program, and four other top recipients received more than $100,000 each, documents from a panel of the Senate Homeland Security committee said.
And the republicans were smart enough to realize it was crap and did not pass it when they controlled all three branches.
Sorry, but the blame lies solely with the democrats on this one.
As misguided as this statement is, even if one were to accept its veracity it at face value, it is a meaningless one. You do realize that republican vs. democrat is a distinction without a difference. There has been, and is, only one party, and that is the party of Big Business. Follow the money and the policies it purchases and it should be painfully obvious.
So we should eliminate all systems that have waste in the government?
Absolutely!
My point was that everyone is so concerned about the cost of their school taxes (which they kind of can vote on) but no has a say about how much federal taxes are thrown away to the military were at least 10x the amount is spent (no one gets a 'say' on this).
We have a representative democracy so the usual "write to your state congressman/senator" advice, for what it's worth, applies if you wish to express an alternative view on how to vote on defense appropriations. I can sympathize however as, in practical terms, it feels like no say at all. Granted school taxes are decided via a more direct democratic process given the smaller and localized scale of government it involves, so one does feel more empowered.
A large percentage of people don't even pay school taxes but almost everyone gets to pay for the military.
That is a false statement. Please see this article for details. In fact, every homeowner, business, and renter (through their landlord) pays property taxes whereas slightly over half the population pays any federal income taxes. While I don't have citations, I'd wager the percentage of the population that is not homeless or living in property tax exempt homes is minuscule in comparison. So the truth is more likely the other way around.
My school district let about a third of the teachers go due to the closure of a business that was paying a 1/5 of the school taxes and is now gone. How do you fill a hole like that? Schools aren't even legally allowed to stock pile tons of cash so what prevents that type of catastrophe? No one is going to move to a school district that is teetering on collapse which only further compounds the problem.
Sounds like a pretty small tax base if a single payer shoulders 20% of the burden. The obvious solution is to increase the tax base and keep your businesses happy though that is generally easier said than done and impossible to prescribe a plan for knowing nothing of your local geography/economy. Are you living in a small and dying rural town perhaps?
Maybe if I could resolve my own town budgets before kicking a dime to the Feds we wouldn't have these issues.
That's wishful thinking and I too wish it were so! We certainly don't get much for our fed tax dollars in return. Somehow I feel that telling the IRS to get bent is unlikely to go over too well.
Throwing money at a problem doesn't magically fix things, but money seems to be the biggest complaint about schools from tax payers yet no one is screaming at voting polls i mass numbers about Federal waste.
Couple things, just cause they're bitching about money doesn't make it the correct solution to all that ails education...parenting & administrative waste are huge factors that may be being overlooked (point I was trying to make in my original post). As regards federal waste, see aforementioned remedy.
Also my original response was to the parent asking for better individual classroom instruction from teachers that let students meet their full potential. My question was how do you do that with less money? What answer did your response have to address that?
Several ways actually in no particular order
These secret conversations and agreements between some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley were first exposed in a Department of Justice antitrust investigation launched by the Obama Administration in 2010. That DOJ suit became the basis of a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of over 100,000 tech employees whose wages were artificially lowered — an estimated $9 billion effectively stolen by the high-flying companies from their workers to pad company earnings — in the second half of the 2000s. Last week, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied attempts by Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe to have the lawsuit tossed, and gave final approval for the class action suit to go forward. A jury trial date has been set for May 27 in San Jose, before US District Court judge Lucy Koh, who presided over the Samsung-Apple patent suit.
What is research but a blind date with knowledge? -- Will Harvey
