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cb1000rider wrote:I agree, on the surface it seems pretty messed up. Of course, the DA's could just be stonewalling the media as it's pretty clear that the government messed up badly here. Why throw more fuel on the fire?

Can you imagine a corrections / probation system that is understaffed and can't properly respond to offenses due to staffing levels? I think that's pretty likely... Can you imagine a set of taxpayers that don't want to give more money to corrections and probation supervision? I know I can because I'm one of them.

RoyGBiv wrote: Solution? Anyone taking money/support from the government is ineligible to vote during and for 5 years after taking their last government payment. NOT talking about SS or Medicare recipients, or pensioners or other folks (me eventually) that have paid in to receive those benefits.

I appreciate solutions - and a good discussion about them. Your solution would effectively remove the working and non-working poor from the voting pool. Of course, the poor are already effectively opting out of the voting pool by choice (non-partisipation) anyway, so maybe it won't mess things up that much.

What about me? What if I allowed the government to subsidize my solar water heater (I did)? What about my clients who I installed solar power systems for? Is that taking money from the government?

Perhaps you're only taking about those who effectively take more from the government than what they've paid in? And I think you're talking about cumulatively - not yearly - as you're excluding pensioners? That is, tax rebates or subsidization is OK, as long as you're paying in more tax than you're getting out?

What if your medicare costs exceed what you put in? Same question about social security - what if you get out more than you paid in? Or that's OK because you paid *something* in? And now it's OK to be a net negative drag? Perhaps we should consider the value of paid in dollars 20 years ago against what the value is today?

I ask most of this in jest, but it's really hard to come up with defined parameters around a solution like that without leaving someone in a donut hole.