WHere is our Tax Money going??

reply to post by IAttackPeople


The bottom line is this i feel....if ANY public funds go towards the national debt then that in of itself is unethical and should be looked upon as misappropriation of public funds. We did not vote for the deficit, we did not vote for the war and yet are expected to pay for the debt however small the contribution? Regardless...it is a fact that federal income taxes are used mostly on the military and that my friend is wrong, just plain wrong. Why dont they just sell heroin and crack like they did during vietnam? Why do they have to take my money? If it was used exactly what it should be used for then dont you agree that the following would happen? Social security would not be in danger of going bankrupt. People would be able to get the medical attention they need because medicare would be bailed out as well (especially if the income tax is abolished under HR51). Every highway would be as safe as possible. The publci school systems would have much much more money than they do now and certain schools wont have to cram 50 students into a class for 30. Our bridges wouldnt collapse!! How about that one though? Another one fell in ohio....did anyone estimate how long these structures would last without the proper maintenance?

You call the goverment's own report a "myth" ?? Sounds like a conspiracy then.

I'll tell you whats the myth here, those numbers you keep hanging your argument onto. The goverment has always been able to manipulate numbers to say anything they want.

For example, unemployment statistics are a bold-faced lie by our goverment to keep us from rioting.

You lose your job and apply for unemployment benefits = recorded as unemployed by the goverment.

You lose your job but arent eligible for benefits = you dont exist

You lose your job and cant find work before your unemployment benefits run out. You fall off the system = you dont exist.

According to the goverment, unemployment hovers around 5% which is complete nonsense. Yet the goverment uses these bogus numbers to make us feel okay about things.

Unemployment actually is around 20-25% and another 15-20% are underemployed (meaning they took a part-time job at walmart).

35-45% of this country has no job or a low-paying part-time job which is a shocking fact. Go to places like Detroit where its even higher.

The facts are this...

1. the 16th amendment passed in 1913 the very same year that the Federal Reserve Act was passed. It is well established that the 16th amendment came about because they knew the central bank would need to be paid since it would charge interest on the money it printed.

2. The top economic minds in the country spent 2 years studying what the goverment spends its money on. They concluded no money collected from federal income tax pays for civic services but goes to the fed.

The only myth here is that we need a federal income tax. Our country managed just fine before we had a central bank and will manage just fine once Ron Paul is elected and abolishes those's SOB's out of this country

reply to post by admriker444


Blah blah blah.

Way to avoid my question. Do you know what "Federal Government contributions to transfer payments" are?

Quit side-stepping.

Originally posted by GUICE2
The bottom line is this i feel....if ANY public funds go towards the national debt then that in of itself is unethical and should be looked upon as misappropriation of public funds. We did not vote for the deficit, we did not vote for the war and yet are expected to pay for the debt however small the contribution?

You know those people you elect to send to Washington DC to represent you? They approve the federal budget and other appropriations on your behalf. If you don't like how you're being represented then elect someone else to represent you or run for office yourself.

As for the spending policies of our various governing bodies, national and local, everybody has a complaint. Welcome to civilization.

reply to post by GUICE2


The government is audited - continuously. Local governments are required to be audited by federal law, and the states require themselves to be audited. The federal government requires itself to be audited. These audited findings, produced by third parties that are unaffiliated with the government, are published in the form of completely public financial statements. Occasionally they catch a mistake, and when they do that too becomes public information. I have seen several stories on the local news about how various local governments are occasionally caught, although so far its usually one government official who is up to no good - and they are quickly fired and forced to pay back every dime they take.

The accounting rules used are public information, and all governments must abide by them. The Government Accounting Standards Board sets and publishes the rules for all public agencies, and the rules are MUCH stricter and force complete visibility when compared to the generally accepted accounting principles that private business follows.

Also, there is good reason why top government officials get paid good money. Individuals qualified enough to hold those positions could be paid two or three times as much by working in the private sector. High pay (although much lower than what they could get) is required to ensure qualified people actually apply for the jobs.

For example, I hold a Master of Public Administration Degree and am generally qualified in the areas of strategic management, performance measurement, and business process reengineering. In the private sector, jobs requiring those skills and a graduate degree with 3-5 years of experience pay 80-90k a year. In government, jobs requiring those skills pay 30-45k a year. Of course I am in graduate school again right now, so I make much less than even that. Regardless of what people like to think, government pay sucks and generally qualified government employees flock to private industry when they can.

[edit on 19-12-2007 by LightinDarkness]

Money is a lie, it's worthless.

Stop using it, stop keeping the elite in control.

If you don't like your government, then don't vote at all.

Inflation is the rise of money stocks and not the rise of prices, yet prices continue to rise.

reply to post by IAttackPeople


Come on seriously havent you seen the HBO documentary "Hacking democracy"? Voting is useless....its more about who has the most money or who is behind the person that has the most money its not about fairness or proper representation. I didnt vote for this idiot bloomberg but he is still making an entire generation of kids illiterate with the new standard of teaching them how to read and write. If you havent heard about it its based on memorization. They give the kids these cards with a word like CAT on it and they just have to remember that whatever looks like CAT is CAT but they dont understand the word or the way it is supposed to be pronounced....its idiocy.

reply to post by Extralien


I posted the don't vote at all thing in above politics asking what if no one voted how would the government then proceed?

at any rate one of the reasons Ron Paul is popular among his followers is his whole plan on taxes and a much smaller government as far as whether I will vote for him or not I won't because I am not voting at all as I have no faith in what any of these people say. I feel like if you can't tell it to me straight then I am not gonna play the game and no one if giving it to us straight..


Respectfully
GEO




[edit on 12/20/2007 by geocom]

reply to post by LightinDarkness


Great....that sounds good in theory that every state and local government is audited and that the accountability is strict but i can tell you right now that it doesnt happen the way its described. You can see this just by walking around your own city. I will give you one example....in my town they built a new parking lot at the train station. AFter the new erection, every time it rains the station floods and all hell breaks loose. Trains are late, people fall, cars get inundated with water....a real mess. The truth came out eventually....they never bothered to update the sewer system!!! Yet they were probably budgeted for it right? I mean they had to be because a large building such as a parking lot needs good sewage so what happend? I dont know what happend and neither does anyone else but from what you said we should knwo beucase local governments are audited on a regular basis right? So where is this money? Where is the story in the paper about how they embezzled it and didnt use it for the project they were supposed to? Its nowhere to be found man!! Who cares about what they say on paper and in theory...its not put into practice beause if it was the entire MTA would be disbanded or fired or whatever happens to civil employees and institutions that misappropriate tax funds.

reply to post by GUICE2


Have you not learned yet that just because you want there to be conspiracy and corruption that it does not exist? I have told you why the government is held accountable. All you have said now is that this isn't true - care to show me why? Where is your evidence? I can find the PUBLIC AUDITED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR ANY GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED STATES. Where is the corruption?

You (yet again) commit a logical fallacy because you assume one event of corruption means everything is corrupt. This is a sweeping generalization. If the corruption was really going on, no one would ever even be caught, and they would be caught in much more frequency than they are now. Your "example" is probably just bad planning, and no, they probably did not budget for the sewer update at all. No evidence of anything. There is no story in the paper about embezzlement because there IS none - don't make up charges you cannot prove. You "proof" of bad planning does not equal proof of embezzlement.

If you wanted to find out what happened, you could easily look at the audited financial statements for the city. But that would be too easy, it would show you that there is no justification for your conspiracy. And you can't do anything that doesn't confirm your own narrow worldview.

You so desperately want to see a conspiracy in everything to blame everyone that its comical. Sometimes, mistakes just happen. Sometimes, there is no conspiracy.

reply to post by LightinDarkness


Hey....so now you are admitting that mistakes just happen right? So then we should hold them to such a strict accountability to their actions that mastercard holds me correct? So how do we "punish" the local government that made this mistake? I understand mistakes happen but from what yo uhave posted on my other thread you beleive that people in debt should be punished by high interest rates and fees because of their "mistakes".....so i ask you now to fullfill your logic and tell me how we should punish the countie's mistakes? HOw? We cant....we cant even object to paying the price for a train ticket based on the fact that the floods cause so many delays. You know what happens if you do? They call the cops and you are labled as a devient when really you dont feel you should pay for a service that isnt working properly right? Whats your answer to that smarty pants? You want to hold people accountable for their mistakes right....so what do we do, and where are all of these public audit records? I would love to review them.....and so would many other people.

Do you not read? They are held accountable. Its called an independent audit, and it is required and performed constantly. If the audit reveals errors, people are fired or in minor mistakes given warnings and told how to improve performance.

As much as you'd like to again take on the victim mentality, it does not work. You entered into an agreement with your credit card companies and you saw the terms and conditions and the fees ahead of time. Government employees do the same. That you do not AGREE with their "fees" for screwing up their agreement does not matter. Not to mention the nature of the relationship is different. Government employees do not enter into a contract with you, because it would be impractical and impossible to manage. They enter into a contract with the government. It is legally two different people, and I know your going to freak out about that - but its just practical reality. Nice try though, yet another invalid comparison on your part.

You are not forced to pay for the service. Don't use it if you don't like it - same with everything else in the market. When you buy a car, do you try to take the car and not pay them the full price because you don't agree with how they run the dealership? No? Then why do you think you can do the same thing with the government?

Again, you refuse to look at the public audit records because they would confirm their is no conspiracy. Your victim menality can't handle that. They are easily available online, but you refuse to find them. I'll spoonfeed you like the victim you are trying to be: MTA Audit

Come back when you find a conspiracy in the audit. But you won't - you won't read it, because you cannot possibly comprehend of a world where you are not the victim.

reply to post by LightinDarkness


By the way im going to use your statement....im right because sometimes "mistakes just happen" so the creditors should understand this just like citizens should about how the states spend their tax money right? So by your logic i can make the argument that what mastercard is doing by chargin high interest even after i have been making good payments for a long period of time, is unethical and wrong. Just like it would be for me to completely persecute the county and accuse them for embezzlement because sometimes according to you "mistakes just happen".

reply to post by GUICE2


Already addressed it in the reply above. Invalid comparison, try again.

reply to post by LightinDarkness


Hey lay off me...we posted at the same time.
NO ONE WAS FIRED! the county that i am speaking of did not face any type of punishment nor were any of us citizens compensated for our inconveniences.....but you simply say dont use it? How are we supposed to get to work then? Not everyone can live in a basement apartment down the block from their job and live on water and ramen and choose to be poor and not have a car and walk everywhere. I would have no friends and basically no family. I would be a hermit...these things are just not possible my friend. You say that there are audits and it looks like there was but then i would question the legitimacy of that audit and i dont care if it was carried out by an "impartial" 3rd party because that means nothing. No one was punished, no one was fired and the citizens have to constantly deal with inconveniences.....o but thats no big deal we can all walk to the city right? Seriously dude......get off your high horse and stop beleiveing everthing the authorities tell you. There was an audit and it looks like they found some foul play so then i ask you who is being held accountable? WE ARE because we are going to have to pay higher fairs at the turnstile....but wait i forgot, ill just walk everywhere in this country because i can always choose not to use the service. That is so stupid....not you, the idea is stupid. You cant expect people to just walk everywhere or ride a damn bike!!!

reply to post by GUICE2


Read the audit. Tell me where the conspiracy is. Where is the conspiracy? You seriously should get off the drugs, because everything isn't a conspiracy. You want to claim there is one. There is the audit. Tell me where it is. Its all public information.

I refuse to address anything else you say at this point, you are a broken record. I've addressed it all before, and I am not going to type it out for the hundredth time and try to say it in a different way because you refuse to believe anything that doesn't match your ideology. Stop playing the victim.

[edit on 20-12-2007 by LightinDarkness]

reply to post by LightinDarkness


I will eventually i dont have time right now but let me say this before i go back to work.
There might be an audit but how do you know they actually held someone accountable for any actions that were unethical or fraudulent? We would hear about them right? So for me to find out if im right all i have to do is see if anyone was held accountable for fudging the MTA's accounting books...remember? How do you do that? Do we call the mayor and ask him if he indicted anyone for fraud? Where is that information.....its not exactly public by the way because i contacted the MTA asking for information and all they did was transfer me to the public relations department and all i got ouf of them was "I dont know"

reply to post by GUICE2


Read the audit. I await your finding of conspiracy. Your entire "BUT HOW DO WE KNOW" is a logical fallacy. How do we KNOW that this is not all a dream? How can you prove it's not? Ad ignorantium logical fallacy. Try again.

reply to post by LightinDarkness


Forget about the audit... iread one line and it said that the MTA didnt provide accurate information which means they lied about something. What im saying that where is the proof that they held someone accountable? That wouldnt be in the audit so stop telling me to just read it.

reply to post by GUICE2


See? You refuse to read because you know it would show you that there is no conspiracy. You refuse to look deeper because it won't validate your own beliefs. Because you already see your wrong: OH WAIT - NO ONE IS HIDING ANYTHING - it says that they made mistakes! OH NO! There goes the conspiracy. You also ignore the other part:

The Transit Authority had adequate procedures for recording revenue and expenses. Based on our evaluation of Transit Authority internal controls and our review of its financial records for calendar years 2001 and 2002, we are reasonably assured that revenue derived from MetroCards, tokens, subsidies, and Other Revenue (from advertising, concessions, etc.) were properly deposited in the bank and accurately recorded on Transit Authority books and records. We are also generally assured that expenses incurred by the Transit Authority were appropriate, reasonable, and properly recorded.

Stop with the ad ignorantium logical fallacy. It's invalid, and only shows that you have no evidence and know that your wrong.