"The Iraq war was good because it got George W Bush reelected" is an actual argument made here http://t.co/kmtS8Z3ztN pic.twitter.com/bk9nSCrlCv
— Zack Beauchamp (@zackbeauchamp) May 12, 2015
(Note: I clicked the link, so you don’t have to. Amazingly, it’s not the Doughy Pantload, it’s some schmuck named Quin Hillyer ).
Speaking of people who’d never have achieved their current positions if not for nepotism…
Rand Paul tells me that advocates for disabled should come up with ways to cut SocSec disability spending http://t.co/rJx28n6zoL
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) May 12, 2015
srv
Is Zack related to Scott?
Cause someone needs to sandbox that for me.
Origuy
Link to the broadcast here.
Ruckus
Somebody sure is making this stuff up. And they are called conservatives. Didn’t someone say they are afraid of manual labor? Well it can’t be true, they’ve learned to shovel shit 24/7. Amazingly they think it makes them look smart.
Villago Delenda Est
Do you know who else talked about ways to cut spending on the disabled?
ruemara
@Origuy: oh my. How wonderful.
Fred
What he really wanted to say was, “Thank God for 9/11. Without that little miracle Dubaya woulda been toast. If Cheney didn’t set it up he shoulda.” But of course THAT would have been just a bridge too far.
Major Major Major Major
Can we read anything else?
I’ve got my story of course, but there’s also, I don’t know, Principia Discordia.
Seanly
Fuck these assholes. My wife would love to be well enough to work. Until she’s cleared by her doctors’ to work, she’s on disability. She might be well enough in a year or two to go back to work part-time.
Tree With Water
@Ruckus: On the flip side of a shoveling shit story is one told of JFK while he campaigned in the 1960 West Virginia primary. A coal miner asked him if it was true he had been born into great wealth, and had never needed to work a day in his life by the sweat of his brow and the toil of his own two hands. Kennedy admitted that indeed it was true. To which the miner replied, “You haven’t missed a damn thing”.
Ian
We are totally F***ed.
Sherparick
@Tree With Water: Beautiful. And so true.
Danielx
Well, they could try going for the discount cat food for dinner instead of a name brand. No 9 Lives for you, you deadbeats!
Sherparick
It is amazing how blithely immoral these upperclass twits (or wanabes) are for the National Review. Basically, we are all ubermencsh to these people since there is a “Club” and we (and the poor smucks either killed or permanently disabled in Iraq) are not part of it.
satby
Which is more ironic: that people like Rand Paul and Quinn Hilyer think they “work” hard; or that they think people barely subsisting on disability after some catastrophe are living high on the hog?
Germy Shoemangler
Is it true that the meager social security disability payments are taxed? My neighbor told me that’s something Reagan started. Is it still taxable income?
beth
@Germy Shoemangler: Like Social Security payments, it depends on how much other income you have. Last I checked it was something like 25k for single and 32k for married people when benefits began to be taxable. However I am not a tax accountant so this may have changed.
fidelio
One step towards cutting Social Security disability spending might be expanding Medicaid coverage in the places that have so far failed to do so. Healthy people file fewer claims. People who can rely on affordable health care can get preventative treatment and early diagnosis; chronic conditions can be managed so they don’t turn into life-wrecking disasters. In addition, no one would file for disability benefits in the hope they’d get healthcare benefits as part of the package.
But for reasons which are unclear to me, this is The Worst Idea Ever.
Love and kisses, your career disability benefits worker.
Denali
@MajorMajorMajor,
Thank you so much for Principia Discordia. Awesome link!
RSA
@Germy Shoemangler: Further, the SSA tells us that the average monthly benefit to a disabled worker is $1,165.04 and that there are about 9 million such people. Rand Paul apparently believes either that 3% of the U.S. population being disabled workers is evidence of widespread fraud, or that all those people are getting too much money.
Interrobang
As a disabled person (albeit one who works at the moment, and who doesn’t live in the US), fuck Rand Paul. And I hope disability activists send him some nastygrams that scorch his eyebrows off.
Well, also, too, fuck Rand Paul just on general principles.
Mike in NC
@Germy Shoemangler: Yes, and Saint Reagan also came up with the idea of taxing unemployment benefits.
Germy Shoemangler
@Mike in NC: The gubmint giveth and the gubmint taketh away.
Matt McIrvin
The article’s not wrong about it being a net plus for GWB. 2004 was a strange time.
kindness
I gotta brain storm for ’em. Remove the $109K cap on Social Security taxes. Why should the wealthy pay a smaller percentage of their total income than I do?
Howlin Wolfe
@Danielx: Sure, and the disabled will come up with cuts that are commensurate with the cuts to the defense budget that defense contractors come up with.
Stella B
One way to decrease disability payments would be to make sure everybody gets adequate medical care. That way idiots in South Carolina with diabetes won’t go blind and wind up on Medicare disability.
Ruckus
@Tree With Water:
Working hard kept me off the streets, seeing as I fall on that miners side of the wealth equation, rather than Kennedy’s, as the vast majority of us do. And Kennedy was at least honest about his wealth, unlike many/most of the entitled conservatives we hear anything about.
I once made the comment that if we had proper healthcare in this country we wouldn’t need the VA, Medicaid, Medicare, employer provided healthcare benefits……. Of course there would be unemployed people who no longer got to sift through ream after ream of paper/endless computer screens either coding for or denying insurance. Maybe something actually useful/meaningful could be found for them to do.
moderateindy
Isn’t it odd that conservatives always bring out the waste and fraud meme as a reason to cut social programs, and yet they never seem to have a problem with the overwhelming amount of waste and fraud in the MIC. Of course miltary contractors are the makers, and those filthy lazy disabled are just takers.
Tyro
@RSA: the SSA tells us that the average monthly benefit to a disabled worker is $1,165.04
That is less than my graduate student stipend was in 1996.
Villago Delenda Est
@moderateindy: The veterans themselves are just takers.
chopper
@RSA:
and that’s the average, not the median.
Seanly
@Germy Shoemangler:
Yes. You can receive them without the taxes coming out, but 80% of the payment has to be declared as taxable income if the household income is over certain limits (like $32k for a married couple). Some states don’t tax SSI or SSDI.
I’m the primary breadwinner in my family so we did have to pay taxes on my wife’s disability income last year.