When Repugs Say To Me "Just Show Me One Government Program That Works" I Tell Them This.......

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the United States federal government agency that collects taxes and enforces the internal revenue laws. It is an agency within the U.S. Department of the Treasury and is responsible for interpretation and application of Federal tax law.

Seems to shut them up everytime.

If we want a government program to work - we can make it work.

The Republicon Homelander Chickenhawk FAIL cronies got their greazy mitts on it for 8 years and FAILED America repeatedly in our hours of need.

Conscious Alliance, a Non-Profit organization brought in more food and relief to New Orleans after Katrina than FEMA did in the immediate aftermath, and they are just a bunch of kids who collect for food and stuff at music festivals. Why is is that charity is so often quicker to act than the very institution that is supposed to do that with our tax dollars? And why is it that this kind of thing always has some corporation jumping in the money chain to skim "profit"? Capitalism is great.. I'm a capitalist, but some things just don't work when profit motive comes before the human heart and its needs.

http://www.consciousalliance.org/

they can move supplies within hours - when they *wish* to.

But it is kind of bloated and corrupt.

that is their REAL gripe.

stick to the gravel and mud roads

Social Security.

The police force.

Any one of those works too.

eyes, there can be no limit of money for the military, the military can do no wrong, whatever the military says is gospel, truth absolute.
But ... don't forget to remind them that the military is a ... SOCIALIST organization. It is about as socialized as can be.
So don't forget to remind them in their worship of the military and dead soldiers that they like, love ... SOCIALISM!
DC

and conservatives wave their Made in China flags in their worship of the military.

They are quite the Americans. The proud patriotic pro lifers who love it when we drop bombs on foreign countries and kill innocent people and children. They're just great.

Doesn't Pro-Life mean ALL life? and "thou shalt not kill" mean, kill anybody anywhere, any time?

the inlaws earlier in the year up in Kansas after Dr Tiller was murdered by a prolifer. I saw a bumper sticker

Abortionists: what part of Thou Shalt Not Kill do you not understand?

They are freaks and I think rightly can be deemed domestic enemies of the Constitution.

How a bumper sticker that said : Tiller Killers: What part of "Thou Shalt Not Kill" don't you understand? I personally don't put political stickers on my VW Buses... it makes them run poorly. Bad Karma

Look at Blackwater...and Haliburton...

Aren't there enough examples?

If it could be assigned a political designation.

Facism is on the complete opposite end of the political spectrum

The US Military is pretty much the definition of Fascism. An emergence of Corporate and Government/Military with complete discipline and enemies created at every turn... Not a lot of difference between how NAZI Germany was run and how the US Military is run..A Supreme Commander that dictates Policy and must be saluted or face disciplinary action. Even Socialism doesn't demand such obedience..as Sweden and Norway show.

A Government Agency if there ever was one, and will the patriotic conservatives disagree or will they "support the troops?" From afar of course.

and UPS and FedEx are not out of business cause they compete with Uncle Sam.

to private companies?

ronbo's team didn't do ANYTHING on the up-and-up.

For me that seems to shut up all but the most hard core wingers. Even Reagan learned to keep his mouth shut about Social Security.

said that they were all badly run and full of fraud. I replied that it was usually private companies, such as Medicare providers or military contractors, that ran the frauds and overcharged. Then he thought that was proof that private corporations made 'better business decisions' than government!

Most of them can't even get that far.

Apparently, the government can put a man on the moon. It's not like everything else is rocket surgery.

The National Parks strike me as pretty well run for their budgets.

Government programs that work (or worked.)

Social Security
Medicare
Medicaid,
The Interstate Highway System
Our National Parks
NASA
World War II (we definitely won that one)
WPA (saved a whole lot of lives during the Depression)
TVA The Tennessee Valley Authority brought a whole region back from economic disaster

I think we can add such things as Hoover Dam, too, and any number of other projects that would never have gotten done by the Private Sector.
Feel free to add.

Went from an astounding 3% administrative cost to about 50% and is an incredible budget strain.

Beat those numbers.

show them a gov't agency that works as intended and they'll just complain that it costs too much, you can never meet their expectation of a gov't agency that does it's job, but does so with a zero budget. if it's not too expensive to them, then it's too slow. the bottom line is they hate our style of gov't and will never concede that they appreciate any kind of program that can in any way be considered socialist.

good ol' 60625.

Fullerton. I guess i should have said. As a whole the postal service is extremely efficient even though individually I'm sure we've all experienced some incompetence and shitty treatment.

i don't know if they still do it- but they had a facility there where you could buy old u.s. mail delivery jeeps.
i always liked the downtown post office there as well.

I guess because it has been around so long it feels like a "real" town. Not manufactured at all. People were really nice as well. Although they're filling up the downtown with national chains.

I don't know if they still do the jeep thing.

Didn't they? They are a great employer for hundreds of thousands for many years. They could get a letter from McAllen Texas to Montpelier in about three days for forty-two cents. Not bad, IMO.

Didn't they? They are a great employer for hundreds of thousands for many years. They could get a letter from McAllen Texas to Montpelier in about three days for forty-two cents. Not bad, IMO.

the USPS mail delivery service is pretty good, but if you try to do anything other than a first class letter, its a real pain.

There are huge lines, you have to bring packages to the post office, tracking is not very good, etc. Oh, did I mention the huge lines with half the windows closed?

It also has a very high satisfaction rate, and keeps costs much lower than the private health care model.

Ask any veteran on it if they'd be willing to go off of it, because it's "an evil, government-run socialized health care model".

You won't get any takers.

Even Bill Kristol acknowledges how great it is, but the idiot says that only our troops deserve it.


I'm shocked whenever I see those town hall disruptors wearing military hats and shirts, shouting down against government-run health care. It is likely they have gone to a VA hospital or two during their life.

If any veteran or current US soldier states they are against "government-run socialized health care", then ask them if they'd be willing to forego any visits to the VA hospital.

US Immigrations. The EPA. NASA. The Department of the Interior. Department of Education.

They all seem to be working just fine, despite Bush's attempts to totally politicize them.

Then again, my MIL filed her taxes and last fall got hit with a $20k tax bill, plus penalties. The IRS was kind enough to point out the problems.

So she hired an accountant. It came in at $5k, and after consulting with the various people at the she got some issues clarified. The $5k was accepted and the case manager said that that should be that. This was January of this year.

However a few weeks ago the IRS decided to re-open the case and say that actually she owed $11k, that both the $20k and $5k figures were wrong and that interest and penalty would be due, regardless of what was said in January. This time they give no reasons.

This is the same organization that a coworker had to deal with maybe 20 years ago. The ministers at the church we worked at had filed FICA exemptions back in the '50s when such an option was open to them. Then in the mid '70s the then-bookkeeper started to take out FICA taxes and the ministers didn't notice this on their pay stubs until it had gone on for over a decade. Needless to say, they wanted it back.

The IRS said no, unless we could supply the form and the letter saying that it had been accepted. Old pay stubs showing it hadn't been deducted were enough, until, several months later, they were deemed insufficient. Since the bookkeeper had stopped deducting FICA, this quickly became a major wrangle that went on for years. Fairly quickly LC, the bookkeeper, had figured out she wanted to talk to just one person as the process unfolded. After well over a year of exchanges by mail and by phone, in utter exasperation with a notice saying that they'd garnish the church's pathetically small checking account, she asked the IRS agent on the other end of the phone line would *he* do. He paused, and said he'd probably ask if the IRS had followed regs and kept a copy in the ministers' files. "They have files that old?" "Sure." So she responded, "So, did the IRS follow regs and keep a copy in the ministers' files?" The guy paused and said he didn't know and couldn't find out, she'd have to call a different number and inquire there.

She did. It took a few months and a dozen phone calls, not to mention notarized forms, but finally she got a person to pull these files from storage and lo! there were the originals of the forms, and copies of the IRS' letter saying they had accepted them in perpetuity--withdrawing from the SS program was irrevocable. She asked if this person could send copies of these forms to the other caseworker, and was told 'no'--it was against regs. He said the IRS could send copies to the ministers, once the required forms were required, then the ministers could file them with the IRS. There was no way for his division to talk to the other division.

A few weeks later the *originals* of the forms showed up in the mail, and a few weeks after that the IRS refunded the withheld FICA to the church and to the ministers.

A few months later the bookkeeper left and I took over. Soon thereafter I got a notice saying that the ministers and church apparently hadn't paid FICA on the ministers since 1974, and the notice said what the amount due was, with interest and fees. The paperwork had gone to the refunds division, but the people responsible for current enforcement hadn't been notified, and the old caseworker wasn't available. I photocopied the entire file, sent it registered, and spent the next year walking some caseworker through all the paperwork even as I parried threatening letters. He kept raising objections and I kept having to find the right piece of paper and point him to it; I really wished I had numbered them all.

Yeah, it works.

of the corporations they so love.

End of argument.

just like healthcare- when it's a matter of life and death, you don't want the profit motive involved.

SS is a incredibly successful Democratic liberal government program....and unemployment insurance that's always there when the moron sheep Republicans need it and are still using it...even though they are too stupid to understand any of this

Incompetent business corporations, who bankrupt their corporations, need bailouts laid off thousands of workers, good thing the Democrats developed unemployment insurance because the republican & corporations would of left them high and dry with nothing after a laid off....Corporations cut corners for profit at the expense of the consumers are incompetent (just look at how many are going out of business and need government help....and the CEO and heads of greedy corporations still profit, with huge bonuses for their incompetence that could of gone to workers to save their jobs

better before the Republicans fucked it up.

And I am all registered and signed up for Social Security - no problems at all - did it all online!
More money than I expected direct deposit into my Credit Union.

What doesen't work is the GOP.

mark