It has been bugging me

[EC]

every time I hear a Republican use the phrase "entitlement programs" since they say it with such disdain and it isn't an accurate description of the programs...maybe we should start calling these programs by real descriptive terms and start a revolt on that phrase, something like "safety net programs" or "security programs", "protective programs", "life sheltering programs" or "well-being programs". Any suggestions?

[shraby]

1. I have always viewed them as safety-net

programs, knowing the reason most of them came into being..the great depression.

[Betsy Ross]

2. Safety-net has been used to imply Church support.

Thousand points of light and all that crap.

[FromTheLeft]

3. So why no use their rhetoric against them n/t

[Colorado Blue]

5. Entitlement? EXCUSE ME but what about your

CORPORATE TAX BREAKS, your subsidies, your sweetheart deals, your prelet contracts (before war even breaks out - oh GGGAAAGGGG.)

That one particularly gets my goat. Preletting a contract whose completion can only be accomplished by killing people and destroying their cities, their museums, their history and their land.

So the poor, the sick and the old get ENTITLEMENT? Which, by the way, they PAY FOR. And which monies, by the way, go right back into the American economy - unlike YOURS, you corporate freaks, which may well go into an investment in Cambodian brothels or Taiwanese sweatshops, or into a corporation which pollutes, employs people at near slave wages, and not so coincidentally puts tyrants into power.

AND -

What about all the times we bail out sick, dead, dying corporations who really ought to be allowed to die on the vine? That is, if you REALLY believe in FREE ENTERPRISE, FREE MARKETS, and all this other liberty crap.

Sorry about the rant.

[lyonn]

6. good rant C. Blue

Especially "dead, dying corporations", now that is Entitlement as the Repugs know it.

[CWebster]

7. Nice one

and welcome.

[EC]

8. Good rant

now how about a good suggestion for changing this point of view, you should be able to come up with something good, since your rant was very, very good....:think:

[wiggs]

4. Good point

....and this is an example of how the democrats need to reframe the message for every policy area, rather than letting others define the issue.

[donkeyotay]

9. isn't the entitlement really the other way around?

Hasn't the appropriately named Social Security, which is supported by payroll taxes, been generating a planned surplus? And hasn't this surplus been going into the general fund, and hasn't it been being spent on a shit-load of corporate welfare giveaway, Ponzi, fraud schemes?

These crooks thrive on stealing pension funds because people don't generally notice until it's too late.

F**kin self-righteous crooks in suits.

[hughee99]

10. I know I may get flamed for this...

but how is social security not considered a ponzi scheme? It seems to fit the definition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme.

"A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that involves paying returns to investors out of the money raised from subsequent investors, rather than from profits generated by any real business."

ON EDIT: If you check the link, it refers specifically to social security and why it lacks some features of a ponzi scheme, though it still seems to, at least in part, fit the definition.

[donkeyotay]

11. No, no flames

Perhaps I shouldn't have included the word. I think that it's not a Ponzi scheme in the sense that it's more a contract between generations, so there are always new workers coming into the system and thus it is not finite like, for example, swamp land in Florida.

An unfortunate choice of words on my part as it has distracted from my intent, which was to point out that many other pension funds have been looted in various corporate schemes, and thus to my poor, fried brain, I see the raiding of social security funds to be a logical progression and escalation of a corporate crime problem...

:-)

[hughee99]

12. I see what you mean and I agree. n/t