Anti-government people complaining about government budget cuts.

[The Mad Monk]

Who's ignoring it?

[giblets]

You can have a minimum wage job, and still be at risk of becoming homeless.

Where do you live, Manhattan?

[MrFun]

I have seen little over the years on here, people *****ing and moaning about corporate welfare, compared to the *****ing and moaning about welfare for people who need it.

[MrFun]

Where do you live, Manhattan?

That's an extreme example of what I'm talking about. You don't have to live in Manhattan to work at minimum wage, and be at risk for homelessness.

[giblets]

I have seen little over the years on here, people *****ing and moaning about corporate welfare, compared to the *****ing and moaning about welfare for people who need it.

What's your best estimate for the amount of money the government spends on corporate handouts vs. the amount of money the government spends on entitlements?

[giblets]

That's an extreme example of what I'm talking about. You don't have to live in Manhattan to work at minimum wage, and be at risk for homelessness.

It's true that you can't live wherever you want on minimum wage, but it's not like you have a right to live in an expensive location.

[MichaeltheGreat]

I move that restrictions be placed on MtG's further use of the smiley. Also that a more competent liberal debater than MrFun be appointed to argue with him on the subject of welfare. Could be an interesting argument that we HAVEN'T done to death, but I don't have the time.

[MrFun]

It's true that you can't live wherever you want on minimum wage, but it's not like you have a right to live in an expensive location.

I'm not arguing about any imagined right to live in an expensive location. DUH.

[MichaeltheGreat]

What's your best estimate for the amount of money the government spends on corporate handouts vs. the amount of money the government spends on entitlements?

Entitlements as a whole is not a good comparison, and "corporate handouts" is hard to quantify. Some entitlements like SS and medicare are heavily paid into by the recipients, generally for decades before they see a dime. Corporate handouts can be anything from direct payments to loan guarantees to tax credits to other favorable treatment in the tax code vis-a-vis other business activities, to bull**** procurement rules that make government purchased services cost double what they'd cost in a lean private sector setting. Then with both sets, you get arguments about indirect benefits, impacts on future tax revenues, etc. It's not stuff that lends itself well to soundbite analysis - it's all wonk country, so politicians and pundits steer well clear, as it's like Indian Country for the uninformed non-wonk.

[giblets]

I'm not arguing about any imagined right to live in an expensive location. DUH.

If you think people can't afford to live ANYWHERE on minimum wage you're insane.

[Dinner]

The sequestration cuts the rate of growth by 2% when average budget growth is about 6-8%. When Washington initiates cuts like this it is deliberate mismanagement to make people feel the pain.

Lies. The average yearly increase in the budget since 2009 has been 1.4%. That's it. Sure, individual programs may grow or shrink faster but that's the budget wide average. So go ahead and see what a 2% cut does when you're only increasing things an average of 1.4%. That's not just a decrease in the rate of increase but an actual real decrease in spending to the tune of 0.6%. Not massive but an actual cut despite your claims to the contrary.

[MrFun]

If you think people can't afford to live ANYWHERE on minimum wage you're insane.

That's not what I'm saying either.

[giblets]

That's not what I'm saying either.

Yeah. You're not saying anything at all, or at least not anything logically consistent.

[The Mad Monk]

Meanwhile, over at the NIH...

Feds Spend $1.5 Million to Study Why Lesbians Are Fat

By Elizabeth Harrington

The NIH is funding studies to determine why nearly three-quarters of adult lesbians are overweight or obese, compared to half of heterosexual women. (AP Photo)

(CNSNews.com) – The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded $1.5 million to study biological and social factors for why “three-quarters” of lesbians are obese and why gay males are not, calling it an issue of “high public-health significance."

Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Mass., has received two grants administered by NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to study the relationship between sexual orientation and obesity.

“Obesity is one of the most critical public health issues affecting the U.S. today,” the description of the grant reads. “Racial and socioeconomic disparities in the determinants, distribution, and consequences of obesity are receiving increasing attention.”

“[H]owever, one area that is only beginning to be recognized is the striking interplay of gender and sexual orientation in obesity disparities,” it states. “It is now well-established that women of minority sexual orientation are disproportionately affected by the obesity epidemic, with it continues.

“In stark contrast, among men, heterosexual males have nearly double the risk of obesity compared to gay males.”

The investigators say there has been “almost no” research devoted to this disparity, and they have set out to find the biological, psychological, and social factors behind it.

The project is being led by S. Bryn Austin, Director of Fellowship Research Training in the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital. Austin is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard School of Public Health, and an Associate Epidemiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), which is a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School.

BWH first received a $778,622 grant for the study in 2011, followed by a $741,378 grant in 2012, totaling $1,520,000. The project has the potential to be a five-year study.

The grants list a “project end date” and a “budget end date” of June 30, 2016. The researchers said the subject is one of “high public-health significance.”

However, the NICHD said the future of the project is uncertain because of the sequester--automatic spending cuts that took effect on March 1.

"The NIH is currently assessing the impact on funding due to sequestration," said Robert Bock, Press Officer for the NICHD. "It is not possible to say how this (or any other NIH grant) will be affected in the long term beyond the 90 percent funding levels already in place."

"Obesity is a serious public health problem affecting a large proportion of the U.S. population," Bock said. "The study is examining reasons why the risk of obesity varies according to sexual orientation, in order to inform the development of future strategies to prevent obesity."

The researchers said the subject is one of “high public-health significance.”

“It will be impossible to develop evidence-based preventive interventions unless we first answer basic questions about causal pathways, as we plan to do,” they said. “Our study has high potential for public health impact not only for sexual minorities but also for heterosexuals, as we seek to uncover how processes of gender socialization may exacerbate obesity risk in both sexual minority females and heterosexual males.”

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/feds-spend-15-million-study-why-lesbians-are-fat

[MichaeltheGreat]

So? Considering the money that will be spent on state and federal public health programs, we should probably have 10 to 100 times the study funding to identify these causes and trends for any population group with specific disproportionate health issues significant enough to have an impact on productivity or health care costs. The caveat is that we should then actually do something with the data to try and reduce the ultimate impact. Fat lesbians = unemployed lesbians with heart attacks = loss of tax revenue and increased public health costs. We want skinny, healthy lesbians.