Krauthammer: US cannot treat illegal immigrants as refugees

*~Tree~* wrote:

They are not all 5 year olds although I realize you want to use 5 year olds to gain sympathy for your agenda of open borders

Again for you

It's not the wars that has run up trillions in debt it social services

But I will tell you, if you have some misconception that I'm in favor of wars you would be sorely mistaken I gave up that thought a couple of years ago because I don't believe in PC wars I'm more of a flatten the enemy out or don't bother person

To be factual, it is the wars.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/19/iraq-war-us-debt_n_2908909.html

And even though one war is over and another is declining, the wars will add to our debt for years to come. VA costs must go up to assist the "wounded warriors" who come home with medical problems. PTSD patients will be receiving assistance for the rest of their lives.

And since over a hundred thousand civilians have died in Iraq, I cannot imagine that we did not make an effort to "flatten the enemy out." Our last few wars have not ended well. It will eventually occur to America that we don't have the capacity to flatten everyone out anymore without using nuclear bombs. And that is an insane proposition to even consider.

Throwing billions of more dollars into the hole in Central America won't help. It'll just be stolen by corrupt governments and not a thing will be done about the immigration issue.

Defense spending includes a LOT of waste, some inspired by politics and some by military leadership who want shiny new toys when polished up old ones will work just as well , if not better when considering the huge waste dump called the F-35 program. One thing that should not be cut back is qualified military members. it takes too long to train them up to be effective.

Oblamer owns this problem now but, as usual, I haven't heard of a coherent plan on how to fix it.

Here is something my wife sent to me yesterday.

Here are six Conundrums of socialism in the United States of America:

1. America is capitalist and greedy - yet half of the population is subsidized.

2. Half of the population is subsidized - yet they think they are victims.

3. They think they are victims - yet their representatives run the government.

4. Their representatives run the government - yet the poor keep getting poorer.

5. The poor keep getting poorer - yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about.

6. They have things that people in other countries only dream about - yet they want America to be more like those other countries.

Think about it! And that, my friends, pretty much sums up the USA in the 21st Century. wrote:

I don't agree with everything said, but I suspect there is truth in this.

My disagreement is with our elected officials. Sure, the populace votes in our politicians, but it is big money from the oligarchy that controls the politicians. Rarely do the politicos bite the hand that feeds 'em.

---

I bring this quote to this thread because we seem to be a nation of freeloaders. Morally, it is right to help the hungry, the poor, and the huddled masses, but we are training generations of poor to rely on the dole instead of them working to improve their own situations.

There are nearly a million civilian contractors employed by the pentagon alone... what do they do that a private couldn't?

Melissa wrote:

I don't think Otter has any puppet masters, unless perhaps it's Pepper.  

I know our Budster is a master puppet master!

Thank you very much

PEPPER RULES!!!!!!
I hope we meet someday at the dog park. Pretty much all the folks that go there know my baby girl by name now. She greets all new  humans at the fence gate and forces them to pet her.


Pepper says more immigrants, more children to pet her.
So I do have a puppet master after all.

WE have a king sized bed that has two mattresses split in the center (so both sides can be raised.) We had chicken and dumplin's yesterday and she had so much boiled chicken leftovers that she decided to bury them in our bed in between the two mattresses. I wish I'd taken a picture.
Not too good for the bedspread though. It's 3 weeks old an full of "pulls" from her burying skills.

Who couldn't love dogs?

PkrBum wrote:

There are nearly a million civilian contractors employed by the pentagon alone... what do they do that a private couldn't?

I agree with you on that 100%. If the military doesn't have members that can perform a certain skill, they might consider altering their pay scale to base it not so much on rank as on skill. Then they could lure the same Computer programmers and other professional people that the civilian workforce has.
Part of the problem with the military is that someone can go in and constantly receive pay raises based on years served rather than on the value of the skills they possess.

It's kind of like a union job if you think about it.

Otter wrote:

PkrBum wrote:

There are nearly a million civilian contractors employed by the pentagon alone... what do they do that a private couldn't?

Part of the problem with the military is that someone can go in and constantly receive pay raises based on years served rather than on the value of the skills they possess.

It's kind of like a union job if you think about it.

Only way to do it since the military doesn't make money by position or task. There are bonuses for certain skills if the individual agrees to serve additional time. Incentives.

Since I couldn't hand out pay raises I used to hold a deserving sailor's leave papers until they safely returned from leave then tear it up. Had to use the old noodle to give high achievers some sort of tangible reward other than another letter and medal. They loved it.

nochain wrote:

Otter wrote:

PkrBum wrote:

There are nearly a million civilian contractors employed by the pentagon alone... what do they do that a private couldn't?

Part of the problem with the military is that someone can go in and constantly receive pay raises based on years served rather than on the value of the skills they possess.

It's kind of like a union job if you think about it.

Only way to do it since the military doesn't make money by position or task. There are bonuses for certain skills if the individual agrees to serve additional time. Incentives.

Since I couldn't hand out pay raises I used to hold a deserving sailor's leave papers until they safely returned from leave then tear it up. Had to use the old noodle to give high achievers some sort of tangible reward other than another letter and medal. They loved it.

That was very nice of you to do that. The problem with the military doing the same jobs as civilian contractors though is that  a contractor can make so very much more on the outside even if all of his or her work is done for our military.  Unless the defense department is willing to pay MUCH more based on the skills people have on entry, plus provide some other perks such as reduced basic training, they will have to continue to pay contractors big bucks. There's no logical reason that a computer nerd who is never going to be required to fight on the battlefield should be required to crawl around in the mud and climb ropes for 6 weeks. If other soldiers resent it, there could be an exception to the authority of the worker's rank like there is in the Chaplain service. A Chaplain can be a Captain but can only have authority over others in the Chaplains corps and not over other soldiers.
I was surprised to find that Military Chaplains enter as Captains and don't have the same basic as other soldiers. If they can make exceptions for Chaplains they might think about doing the same for highly skilled workers.

I don't know how military contractors are treated, but in the business world, contractors are used because you don't have to pay for benefits like retirement, leave, medical, etc., AND you can terminate 'em real quickly without having to get HR involved, no severance pay, no wrongful termination suits either because they are not employees.

Eric wrote:

I don't know how military contractors are treated, but in the business world, contractors are used because you don't have to pay for benefits like retirement, leave, medical, etc., AND you can terminate 'em real quickly without having to get HR involved, no severance pay, no wrongful termination suits either because they are not employees.

Contractors work for a company in 99.9% of DoD business. DoD pays a contracted company a burdened rate based on the federal wage scale for position types and in theory those wages are supposed to go to the employee at that rate. Hardly ever works out that way though.

The burdened rate includes taxes, insurance, etc similar to a business employee. As you know a $25 an hour employee really costs about $50 when benefits, etc are added in.

When I was a manager for the State of Florida, it was roughly 50/50 as well.

nochain wrote:

Eric wrote:

I don't know how military contractors are treated, but in the business world, contractors are used because you don't have to pay for benefits like retirement, leave, medical, etc., AND you can terminate 'em real quickly without having to get HR involved, no severance pay, no wrongful termination suits either because they are not employees.

Contractors work for a company in 99.9% of DoD business. DoD pays a contracted company a burdened rate based on the federal wage scale for position types and in theory those wages are supposed to go to the employee at that rate. Hardly ever works out that way though.

The burdened rate includes taxes, insurance, etc similar to a business employee. As you know a $25 an hour employee really costs about $50 when benefits, etc are added in.

I believe cities like streets and highways must do that too. Because all I ever see mostly is people who cant speak English working on road crews.

Some contractors are but many work for corporations like my sister does that contract w/ the govt. They get all those benefits.

Krauthammer is right.