Tag: politics

thisisntgoodbi:

wetwareproblem:

pining-for-bluebonnets:

radioactivecallista:

clarawebbwillcutoffyourhead:

askawelfarecaseworker:

jmyers241:

askawelfarecaseworker:

seagreen-seeblue:

jmyers241:

seagreen-seeblue:

askawelfarecaseworker:

jmyers241:

askawelfarecaseworker:

jmyers241:

awesome

If you’re THAT pressed about it, I will personally refund you the $1 that comes out of your check for welfare programs.

Also, even if no taxes were taken out, someone working 40 hrs/week at $7.25/hr would still be in poverty, so I don’t even know what you’re on about right now.

Got no problem with welfare for people that need it. How many people are taking advantage of the system? How many of them CAN work but choose not to work? Lazy Americans.

There are actual statistics on that if you decide to stop being A Lazy American™ and go look them up.

What’s so funny is people thinking they know what other people need.

So a 20year old healthy capable young man decides to claim a disability so he can get a check from the government instead of going out and working. This is okay?
Seriously, do you guys think this is okay?

What program are you referring to?

Clearly he is referring to the all-encompassing Welfare Program administered directly to Lazy Americans. No application process necessary, just show up and say “I have the disability, hand me some cash” and voila! It’s lobster & prime rib time.

Kinda feel like you still think I’m talking about the entire welfare system and all of the recipients. I am not.

No, I think you’re talking about Strawman McMythpants of Welfare Cheatsylvania. Especially since you’re opining about How Many Lazy Americans Refuse to Get Jobs, but you’re refusing to cite any sources beyond “This Totally Exists Because It Exists”, published in the journal of It Feels True So It Must Be.

It totally doesn’t exist, welfare is difficult to access and doesn’t even offer enough money to the minority of people who are able to get on it but tbqh if some 20 yr old who is totally able bodied and otherwise equipped for life (what does that even mean) somehow scammed the system (and what does that even mean) into giving them the pittance that welfare is

SO FUCKING WHAT?

Do you know how much food stamp money is unused every year? How many billions of dollars go to war jnstead of schools? I don’t give a goddamn about anyone who might be scamming welfare, that is barely a drop in the “unethical things money goes to” category. I don’t even think it should be unethical tbh.

“So a 20year old healthy capable young man decides to claim a disability
so he can get a check from the government instead of going out and
working. This is okay? “

Getting disability money is not easy. Simplified, there are two kinds, SSI and SSDI Both require that you actually have medical documentation of disability, so if they’re faking, they have to put a lot of effort into faking over a long period of time. SSI is only available to those who are disabled and very, very poor – “poverty line” isn’t low enough on its own – and it’s not much. Getting money through other benefit programs ends up reducing your SSI payments and you HAVE to apply for all of them to qualify for SSI. It’s tough to get and pays out little. SSDI has a higher income limit, near the poverty line. To get SSDI you have to have worked for the equivalent of 10 years full-time over your lifetime with five of those years within the last ten, with some age-related exceptions (if you’re 20 obviously they don’t expect you to have 10 years’ worth of full-time work, but you’d have to have some, unless you were documented as disabled while still a minor; not sure exactly how much work is needed though). So that’s not really an option either for a lot of people who just want to be lazy.

Even if he did manage to game the system, he’d have only $1000 or so monthly. In a low cost-of-living area that will pay for rent (in a crappy efficiency apartment, not renting a house or a nice two-bedroom apartment), utilities, a cheap phone plan, and essential groceries/toiletries. With little to nothing left over. He’ll have to be stingy with heating and cooling to keep the electric bill affordable. He won’t be able to afford a car, or going out for entertainment with friends, or even ordering a pizza more than a few times a year. Not unless he gets a part-time job (full-time would usually make him lose his benefits). Say goodbye to clothes shopping at the mall, you have to go to Goodwill, and only buy what you really need. Etc. He’ll get enough money to survive but he’ll be in poverty or very close to it. That’s not a huge reward even if it works, which it usually doesn’t.

You don’t just walk into the social security office with a piece of paper from your doctor saying “So-and-so is disabled and can’t work.” There’s a LOT more proof and paperwork needed and the process can take a year or two.

This kind of fraud doesn’t happen on a large scale. It’s not non-existent but most people who get SSI and SSDI really do need it. Many of them, though, have invisible disabilities such as severe digestive disease, mental health problems, or disorders causing extreme fatigue varying in intensity day-to-day so when you see them they’re on their best days and feeling almost okay for part of the day. A large portion of people getting disability benefits “don’t look disabled.” But all but a very small percentage are disabled.

Also worth noting: for SSDI, at least, not only does your own doctor have to provide documentation of your disability just to get your application looked at, they also send you to a doctor of their choosing to verify it. And 2/3 of all applicants are denied the first time they apply. So yeah. If you’re dedicated enough to faking a disability that you manage to actually get SSI/SSDI, then by God, you can have that money.

Important note: It is impossible to design any system of any sort where multiple people do a thing together that is impervious to fraud. If it is usable, it is gameable. This is security theory 101.

The question, then, is how to minimize losses to cheaters. The answer, in the case of both unemployment insurance (1.9%) and medicaid (<1%), is “pretty damn well.”

Furthermore, basically all “effective” fraud prevention is only “effective” because they throw the baby out with the bathwater: regulations are already too strict and still getting stricter because the only way to keep out Cheaters™ is by denying everybody who Might Be Cheating.

The reality is that our countries are wealthy enough to just give literally everybody a liveable income for literally nothing, and yet antisocialist hysteria and pure spite prevent even our most needy from accessing resources they need to Literally Not Die, just because “what if someone cheats!!”

Of course I’m not surprised that folks would rather literally kill disabled people than be robbed of their illusion of moral superiority for Helping The Disableds™ by giving aid to someone who doesn’t meet their fetishistic standards.

I have heard of and SEEN FIRST HAND people who NEED DISABILITY and have been denied three times (with six month waiting periods between each) before they were sent to a federal level and then MAYBE they will get accepted for aid. And yeah, if they get approved, they get back pay… but what about those years that it takes to get help? How do they survive at all? IDK about you, but it’s basically impossible to survive with $0 in the bank and $0 coming in unless you have someone else footing the bill. Usually family, who may not be able to afford it themselves, but need to. You know, since their loved ones can’t work… but still need somewhere to live, still need food, still need the MEDICATION THAT MAKES IT POSSIBLE FOR THEM TO EVEN LIVE but WHATEVER RIGHT

I mean yeah I have known people who use the money to buy drugs and pizza hut and let their kids live in squalor but you know 

I would rather pay taxes to help those who need help, even though there will be people who abuse it, than to let the others go without.

Ye Be Warned

caitiward:

Can I just say that I am sick and tired of this gender disparity? 

Tonight I saw a post on reddit where a guy took a photo of a woman’s cluttered counter in her bathroom with the caption “you left the toilet seat up”. I was totally shocked because in the photo, clear as day, is the woman naked in the background; changing.

I thought “Oh my gosh! He doesn’t know she’s in the photo!” I scrolled through the comments, and to my utter horror he replied to people asking if she knew she was in the photo, with “she doesn’t know and you’re welcome”.

I feel physically ill. I have reported it both on my account and on my husband’s account, but honestly – I feel defeated just from reading these revolting comments. From the men who are cheering on this unapologetic pervert, to the responses from him declaring it fine because “for the record, she’s not my gf she’s my fwb” because somehow, on some far off planet or another dimension THAT MAKES IT OKAY. She’s just a piece of arse, so, like, it doesn’t even matter.

I want to spread it far and wide in the hopes that people will report it, but I also want to protect this woman. The argument arose that “you couldn’t see her face so what does it matter?” That question hit me like a ton of bricks. How could you possibly think that just because you can’t see her face, that it’s somehow less criminal? But is it even? Is it against the law? Do we even have laws, aside from the revenge porn laws, to protect women (and men) who are victims to this perversion? 

I’m positive if he were taking pictures up women’s skirts that he’d be arrested – so why is him taking a photo of his unsuspecting woman in this situation somehow less criminal? Somehow less perverted and disgusting? Is it because he has a relationship with her? 9 out of 10 women who are sexually assaulted or violated know their violator. He knew before he posted the photo that she was in it. He ACKNOWLEDGES that she did not give him permission to post it on this global website, yet somehow that doesn’t make him a sex offender? 

What really puts the icing on the cake here, what really truly brings me the farthest down, is that he says it’s her dorm room.
1. It’s her personal space – a space where we, as women who brave the outside world every day, lock ourselves away after exposing ourselves to their evils; from people like him – but he’s in there and he violated her trust, her body.
2. Because of the sexual assault and violence young women face on campuses. Because she stands against the statistical odds of 1 in 4 women on college campuses who will be victim of sexual violence; of rape. Assuming she hasn’t suffered already. 

Because people like that pervert ruin our innocence and stunt our development and humans. They steal our joy, our perspective and vision and hope. Because people like that pervert taint our view of the world and hinder our progress. 1 in 4 women will not become the doctor they wanted to be. The teacher, the scientist, the social worker, the chef, the engineer, the author, the CEO. People like that pervert will unjustly rob those women, and male victims, of their potential, and yet those victims are still the one’s who pay for the rest of their lives. 

I was raped by a footballer when I was 19. I remember thinking I had done everything wrong, even when I had a text from him that said “I am so sorry” – I still counted all the reasons why I had brought it on myself.
Flash forward – after a night on the town, my friends and I crashed at one of their houses and I woke up in the middle of the night with a family friends hands down my pants. Who could I tell? Not my mum, his mum was her best friend. Not my brother – he would either not believe me, or kill the guy. I found out the next day that he’d even more grossly assaulted my best friend. But who could we tell? It would cause a rift in our circle and who’d believe us? We had been drinking that night. We “probably said yes and just didn’t remember”. We stayed silent and never talked about it again. We had to see him any time we wanted to see our other friends.  

I know so many women who have experienced the exact same thing and I feel so helpless for them. You know there’s a horrific inequality when I write the sentence “I know so many women who have experienced the exact same thing” and it’s about violence and assault. I am genuinely aghast. What is happening? 

We’re regressing. For a brief stint, I felt hopeful. Wendy Davis filibustering and empowering men and women everywhere (I know it didn’t end well, but she ignited fire…), marriage equality, Bernie Sanders and his feminism. But now, while we’re busy watching the presidential parade, we’re re-enacting these laws that are strangling our basic rights to health care because we have vagina’s – but we can’t be trusted with them? The terrorist attacks on Planned Parenthood because someone hears a lie that makes them behave erratically and emotionally, yet we’re the ones who are “emotional” and can’t decide for ourselves? 

You may think I jumped from 0-10, but it’s all related. The way we treat women regarding violation, regarding our decision making skills,regarding media, regarding our place in this world. What are we doing? What the actual fuck is going on? We make up HALF the population, but fuck us if we want to have equal rights and to be taken seriously. God damn it. God fucking damn it.

autisticparker:

bogleech:

stancest-sucks:

crednt:

pardonmewhileipanic:

In other news, water is wet

Let the children be themselves

no fucking shit

‘trans kids feel better if they can be themselves’

‘dogs feel good when you don’t hit them’

‘you don’t feel hungry if you eat’

People are making fun but we all know a horrifying number of parents actually do need to be told this and seeing it for probably the first time in their entire lives in an ordinary news outlet can get them thinking.

Considering how many people ONLY believe something once a scientific study demonstrates it, no matter how self-evident or common-sense it may seem, yes, someone did need to do this research and publish it.

Every time a study like this comes out people have this attitude like it’s a bunch of clueless, stuffy old scientists wastefully demonstrating something everyone “already knew” but the truth is studies like these are by people who passionately want to make the world better by systematically debunking common foundations of prejudice.

[Image: photo of a printing in an unidentified newspaper of this article (link)
by Lisa Rapaport with Reuters. Headline: “The transgender kids are
alright”. The blurb highlighted in the next photo reads: “Study shows
they have good mental health if they’re allowed to be themselves”.]

YES.

maxofs2d:

darksnowfalling:

warpedellipsis:

quasi-normalcy:

meariver:

huntokar:

quasi-normalcy:

No, I’m serious, if women all got together and went into electrical engineering or automotive repair en masse, then ten years later people would be talking about how it was a “soft field” and it would pay proportionately less than other fields.

Likewise, if men moved en masse to bedeck themselves in sparkles and make-up, then suddenly you’d get a bunch of editorials talking about how classy they look.

None of these things are inherently masculine or feminine; none of these things inherently elevate you or drag you down. But whatever women are seen to do is automatically seen as being inherently more frivolous than anything men do. And shaming women for not pigeonholing themselves into a narrow range of acceptable “masculine” behaviours is just going to result in the goalposts getting moved once again.

This is literally what happened to basically every field women have entered. The opposite happens when men enter. Computers used to be a “woman thing” until the guys who did it got really mad about how badly their job was viewed and realized they could fix it by forcing out women.

Also happened/ is happening with the fields of biology and psychology….

I honestly wonder how much of the backlash against public education in the last generation has been due to teaching becoming a woman-dominated profession.

Fashion used to be a men’s thing. Then women got involved in the late 17/1800’s, so men went the other way because it came to be seen as “frivolous” and “anti-intellectual” to care about how you looked. Add in the homophobia that arose around that time, bam, staid bland dress. Ditto leggings/tights, that are now called attention-whoring when on men they were required to show you cared about your figure and had the money to pay for such a fitted item. 

People want to say misogyny doesn’t exist, that male privilege doesn’t exist. Look beyond “living memory” and you’ll find that’s what drives the “inexplicable reversals” society seems to make on many things. Hell, just look beyond your own society, and you’ll find out that what’s considered “for men” elsewhere is held in high esteem while here it’s scoffed at purely because it’s “for women”: 

  • Skinny jeans are the height of masculinity in several east Asian societies, rather than being seen as “gay” in the USA because of their association with femininity. 
  • Medical fields in Russia are valued like kindergarten teachers are here, because it’s women who are the doctors instead of men.
  • Love and romance are highly valued in eastern countries, because men are interested in it too—of course they would be, surely you want to share your life with someone? Here, it’s strictly a women’s subject.

The field of anthropology as a whole illustrates this.

Significantly higher proportions of females compared to males are currently entering the fields of archaeology and biological anthropology, and as this occurs, the prestige, funding, acceptance as valid kinds of science, etc, are fading quickly.

This has already occurred with linguistic anthropology and cultural anthropology. Cultural anthropology in particular went VERY quickly from being seen as a manly, scientific discipline (e.g., Franz Boas, Bronisław Malinowski) to being seen as a touchy-feely female thing.

Let’s examine a traditionally male-dominated role that is very well-respected, and well-paid, in many parts of the world — that of a doctor. In the UK, it is listed as one of the top ten lucrative careers, and the average annual income of a family doctor in the US is well into six figures. It also confers on you significant social status, and a common stereotype in Asian communities is of parents encouraging their children to become doctors.

One of my lecturers at university once presented us with this thought exercise: why are doctors so highly paid, and so well-respected? Our answers were predictable. Because they save lives, their skills are extremely important, and it takes years and years of education to become one. All sound, logical reasons. But these traits that doctors possess are universal. So why is it, she asked, that doctors in Russia are so lowly paid? Making less than £7,500 a year, it is one of the lowest paid professions in Russia, and poorly respected at that. Why is this?

The answer is crushingly, breathtakingly simple. In Russia, the majority of doctors are women. Here’s a quote from Carol Schmidt, a geriatric nurse practitioner who toured medical facilities in Moscow: “Their status and pay are more like our blue-collar workers, even though they require about the same amount of training as the American doctor… medical practice is stereotyped as a caring vocation ‘naturally suited‘ to women, [which puts it at] a second-class level in the Soviet psyche.”

What this illustrates perfectly is this — women are not devalued in the job market because women’s work is seen to have little value. It is the other way round. Women’s work is devalued in the job market because women are seen to have little value. This means that anything a woman does, be it childcare, teaching, or doctoring, or rocket science, will be seen to be of less value simply because it is done mainly by women. It isn’t that women choose jobs that are in lower-paid industries, it is that any industry that women dominate automatically becomes less respected and less well-paid.

http://cratesandribbons.com/2013/12/13/patriarchys-magic-trick-how-anything-perceived-as-womens-work-immediately-sheds-its-value/

I made a joke about how crappy millennials are (being totally sarcastic because I am a millennial), and one of my co-workers went off on a long rant about how true it was- that all millennials lack social graces, are rude, lazy, entitled, etc. 

And then she realized that I was staring at her and she went “that probably came out wrong.”

and my response was, “the reason we millennials don’t wanna talk out loud is ‘cause your generation is mean and scary.”

and she went D: 

and my other coworker laughed. 

but seriously. seriously.

flaccidrap:

flaccidrap:

If y’all don’t think having Election Day on a random ass Tuesday that isn’t even considered special by anyone’s job or school so you have to take your own time off to vote isn’t a way they disenfranchise certain groups of people, you crazy.

It especially disenfranchises the poor, people who can’t afford to just take off work, and the youth, people who can’t afford to miss school or work. It’s a plus that they’re making it harder to vote absentee now.

On the train ride home, I hear all of these other business professionals complaining about millennials… it’s so very strange… even today:

“and of course they’re gonna hire the damn millennial over me, even though I have the experience! because why have me, the expert, for only five years when they can have him for twenty, right?!”

“ha ha as if they’ll even stay that long, those millennials…”

Pro tip, dudes on the train: they hire the young guy over you because they can hire him for cheap cheap cheap and they know that the job market is such that we are desperate for work and they will put up with just about anything for a couple of years to pay the bills. They leave when they have more experience because they are hoping to find a job that will treat them more like human beings and less like cattle, not because they are inherently disloyal. 

Those companies don’t want to pay anyone what they’re worth. The experienced employees know better, so they take advantage of the youth who have no choice. And when they complain, they’re told that they’re lazy and entitled.

But the truth is that a lot of those companies have no loyalty. Not to their veterans, not to their new recruits. They like to burn out the young ones. Squeeze a couple of years out of them and make their time miserable so they leave as soon as they can. Then they complain about millennials, hire new ones, lather rinse repeat, perpetuating a cycle of distrust and bitterness when it’s really not warranted.

Sanders Admits Health Care Plan will Increase Taxes on the Middle Class

Sanders Admits Health Care Plan will Increase Taxes on the Middle Class

sharpestrose:

sharpestrose:

shadesofmauve:

numb3r5ev3n:

mindgyre:

leembutt:

lavenderharmony:

doomy:

whytestallion:

doomy:

communismkills:

laurababora:

communismkills:

t0natiu:

thechurchofbobsaget:

waterboarding:

communismkills:

The only important thing that happened during the Dem debate.

He is garbage.

but but but the 1%!!!!!!

Ok hold on, I actually just read the article and it actually seems the people who said “oh he’s garbage” or whatever didn’t actually read what they reblogged.

His plan involves increasing taxes, yes, but he’s also planning to do away with private insurance premiums. You’re actually saving money via that plan, so ultimately better off financially. Put simply, private insurance premium going away means all that money back in your pocket. Then, you pay SOME of that money to taxes. Taxes go up, BUT you’re paying less than you’d have paid the private company. So yes, you’d be paying more taxes, but in total your expenses go down by thousands.

Read the things you reblog, dammit.

Uhhhh

You literally admitted he says he wants to increase taxes.

oh boo hoo, you pay a little bit more in taxes. how else do people expect shit to get done? -_-

… Really?

oh no my taxes are going to be more

and people nationwide will stop suffering from lack of healthcare 

and maybe ending poverty will take a step in the right direction

and maybe private insurance companies will stop gouging people 

and hey I’ll actually have a net positive after all this since it saves me money in the long run

and hey maybe we’ll be on par with every other 1st world country on the planet

and hey maybe parents will call the hospital when their kids are sick instead of waiting it out because their insurance rates are too much for them to afford

but

oh no my taxes are going to be more

Same rhetoric as obamacare. Premiums are up, coverage is down, but hey. At least everyone….no wait.

Government run healthcare is the biggest croc of idiocy alive today. Medicare, medicaid, obamacare, all failures. All dying. But juuuuuust one more right? This time it will work!

so what r ur opinions on minecraft?

So… The NHS…

Guys, Sanders is asking for a 2.2% health care tax hike to cover health care costs. If your household is earning $70k a year, that’s $1,540 a year in extra taxes.

There will also be a payroll tax levied on employers of 6.7%. Assuming the entire cost is passed on to workers (and I guarantee you it won’t be – customers will also pick up part of the tab), that’s an extra $4,690, bringing the total to $6,230 a year.

Obamacare average household premiums were about $16,800 in 2015, and are still rising. That’s at least 2.7 times higher than the tax hike (a highly conservative estimate), and will probably be higher as health care costs continue to rise.

You will not need to pay for premiums in a single payer system. You’re literally saving over thousands of dollars a year if you’re a middle class citizen, and even more if you’re a working class citizen.

There are plenty of other examples of nations that have implemented a single payer system, and their citizens are paying significantly less than Americans.

Do your research before complaining about taxes.

Sources:
http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/health-insurance-premiums.aspx
http://time.com/4183856/bernie-sanders-middle-class-taxes-health-care/

reblogging for hard numbers

Reblogging for hard numbers. This is what George Carlin meant when he said that the owners of our country don’t want an educated populace – they want people just smart enough to do the shit work, and just dumb enough not to know how badly they’re being screwed over compared with the rest of the civilized world. Everyone who whined “but TAXES” and “he is GARBAGE” is a living example of how this plan is working out for the owners of our society, the 1%.

ALSO. The generally used cut-off for ‘middle class’ in political debates is a person making $250,000 a year. Are any of you even fucking CLOSE to that? ‘Cause I kind of doubt it. By that definition someone can ‘raise taxes on the middle class’ and still not raise the taxes of 99% of the people I know. So when someone mentions ‘middle class’, you damn well need to ask what numbers they’re using. It’s totally possible that they’re not talking about and yours at all. The tax code certainly makes a distinction between those of us making under $50k and those making over $200k, and so would Sanders’ plan!

I live in Australia and I had to have a brain tumor removed a few weeks ago and I know for a fact, because of the research I did prior to my surgery, that if I lived in a country without significantly subsidised health care I would not even know I was sick, because American doctors do not recommend an MRI for people presenting with my symptoms – because of the cost. 

I would literally be fucking dying if not for government run health care. Everyone against it can shut the fuck up forever. 

You know what I’m reblogging this again because I am so, so angry.

I know someone in America who takes a half-dose of their prescription to stretch the pills for longer because of the cost. 

I’ve known someone who has died because they couldn’t afford to legally buy their medication in America and wound up with harmful substitutes sourced from the internet.

If you are against people like them being helped by taxpayer funds to afford safe drugs of the required amount, you are literally a fucking sociopath and I am disgusted by you. 

I’m gonna guess that the people who are pissing and moaning about the taxes are those who haven’t ever had to pay their own insurance premiums or health care. I STILL don’t understand how families can pay $600+ a month in INSURANCE ALONE. The insurance that doesn’t even DO ANYTHING but cover CATASTROPHIC care once the deductible and out of pocket max (several thousand dollars) have been met.

I mean really.

I will HAPPILY pay more in taxes so that EVERYONE in the states can get access health care. Getting rid if shitty insurance premiums is just a wonderful bonus.