BREAKING: Perry disqualified from Va. primary ballot

washingtonpost.com ^ | 12/23/2011 | Anita Kumar

[kabar]

Gingrich Says He Doesn't Regret Supporting Medicare Drug Plan Which Is Now a $7.2 Trillion Unfunded Liability

Just watch and listen to this video and tell me Gingrich is a conservative. His history on health care is one of Big Government solutions. He supported the government mandate and he helped establish the “sustainable growth rate” — or SGR — formula in 1997 that now needs a "doc fix" every year to postpone it. Its flaws became apparent by the end of 2001. Through a series of complicated calculations, the SGR formula in effect means that if spending due to increased use of services by Medicare patients rises faster than the nation’s gross domestic product, Medicare must compensate by cutting reimbursement rates for physicians enough to bring spending back in line with GDP growth. The cummulative amount is now 27.4%

To credit Newt with taking down the Soviet Union when he only joined Congress in 1979 is ridiculous. He was a back bencher under Reagan. Gingrich became House Majority Whip in 1989, the same year the wall came down. He replaced Dick Cheney in that job. FYI: There never was a balanced budget and surplus under Clinton.

The Clinton Surplus Myth

[SatinDoll]

I don’t regret that drug plan either. My father benefits from the Medicare drug plan as do millions of other elderly on the brink of poverty. Without it he wouldn’t have the money to eat.

You’re raving - poor dear, you sound like a Paulinista.

[gleeaikin]

In a more recent posting about Newt’s failure to also meet the 10,000 requirement I made the comment below. I should also say that when discussing how many signatures we need to get for our candidate, I was told we should try to get 50% to 100% more than we need because a lot of mistakes get made on the petitions resulting in valid disqualifications. I think the suggestion that only 10% percent more signatures would get the job done was wildly optimistic and almost guaranteed failure for both Perry and Newt.

It doesn’t matter who the Person who qualifies the signatures is if they don’t fill out the forms properly. As stated in the continuation, some 2,000 are missing the address of the signer so they cannot be verified. Also one of the circulators was not eligible to do so.

I am currently seeking signatures for nominating petitions. To be valid, people must print their name and address clearly to have it found, and then sign it to be verified and date the signature. At the end the person collecting the signatures must swear that they witnessed each signature and that they are eligible to circulate the petition. They must be over a certain age, and a resident of that state. There is a fine and possible imprisonment for falsifying anything on the petition.

It is really important to have good staff supervising and training the circulators. Newt got a late start, and part of his staff walked out on him. Not a good management situation.

[mylife]

Its almost 3 AM here and I just found that they disqualified Newt on Christmas Eve?

FUMR!

[mylife]

So Newt and Foamy are all we have in this Nation?

There is something VERY wrong here.

[mylife]

Edit~ Mitt and Foamy

[hocndoc]

That’s the most boring “video” I’ve seen in a long time. The guy needs caffeine and to introduce himself.

[mylife]

We tried to warn these chumps.

[xzins]

Thank you, Ed. I had it right in my original post, and wasn’t thinking in this one. Don’t know how the one morphed into the other, but it did. I guess I don’t have a gerry-mandered mind....yet. :>)

[xzins]

My contention was that they were irrational....unreasonable.

There is no sense to it, and a case could be made that they’ve over-reached on the far side of unreasonable.

New Hampshire, I’ve read, that doesn’t have too many candidates, charges a $1000 bucks.

[hocndoc]

In contrast,both my parents and my in-laws were fully insured by pension plans. Mama had a $5 copay. Their insurance forced them into Medicare D, and it cost them much more.

[CharlesWayneCT]

I agreed with you until every conservative candidate failed to accomplish the task here in Virginia (yes, even Gingrich has failed, as I assume some other thread says).

You know, they don’t even have to compete. The committees don’t compete — people on the committee will circulate petitions for everybody.

If all the minor candidates had gotten together and paid for a petition drive, they could have had people collecting 4 sets of signatures. If Every Perry, Santorum, and Gingrich signature had been put on all three petitions, I’m sure all three would have qualified.

Instead, none of them did, and apparently our contest is Romney and Paul (although I STILL have not seen a validation e-mail for Ron Paul).

The Gingrich e-mail came out at 2:50am, so they’ve been busy.

I will say this, now that all the real candidates except Romney are gone, maybe the legislature will do something. They are in session before the election. Of course, in the senate the democrats won’t help, and the tie-breaker is Bill Bolling, who works for the Romney campaign.

Anyway, I don’t think Ron Paul has a chance to actually win here — he never gets more than 10-20 percent support, so he would have been better off if there were votes to be split.

With only two candidates, I don’t see how Romney fails to get a majority and therefore all the delegates. Unless someone fixes things.

[Jonty30]

The only real issue I have with Virginia is getting 400 signatures in every single county. Even a state as small as Virginia is, that’s still a lot of counties.

I think that’s far more time consuming than becoming qualified should be.

That’s the only issue I have, offhand.

[ak267]

It’s NOT that difficult!!! The rules are clear.

Get 10k signatures (with at least 400 per congressional district). Presto! End of story.

It comes down to...

1. Organization
2. Boots on the ground
3. Organization
4. Money

If you’re doing this by the “seat of your pants”, you’re gonna have a few flubs.

Romney has been preparing for this campaign for nearly six years. His staff probably knows the state and county GOP leaders by first name. It’s easy to assume that Romney’s staff has a working relationship with A LOT of precinct captains in each congressional district. With that infrastructure in place, getting the signatures was no problem. He might not be popular with the conservative base, but his network found enough moderate voters to sign up.

This isn’t rocket scientist folks!!! Running a campaign is more than just flashy ads or drawing big crowds. It’s fundamentals (blocking and tackling) and building an infrastructure.

According to rumors, some of the candidates made last second appeals to Virginia Organize-for-Palin groups. If they only approached these groups earlier after Palin said “no” in October and they might of had a different outcome.

[X-spurt]

Texas works! Don’t need no stinkin campaign.

[af_vet_rr]

I will say this, now that all the real candidates except Romney are gone

Anybody voting for Romney might as well register as a Democrat and vote Obama. Romney is just a lightweight version of Obama.

[CharlesWayneCT]

It’s not every county, it’s every congressional district. There are 11 congressional districts, so that covers 4400 of the required signatures.

The only problem this year was that the district boundaries changed, and some might not have known where they belonged.

That’s why it’s so good to collect signatures at the polling places. First, you know they are registered, because they just came out from voting. Second you know they are in the district, because they just came out from voting in the district.

I wouldn’t have thought it was hard, but 6 still-competing candidates out of 8 failed to do it. SO maybe it’s harder than I thought.

(Bachmann, Huntsman, Gingrich, Perry, Santorum, Roemer).

[af_vet_rr]

I wouldn’t have thought it was hard, but 6 still-competing candidates out of 8 failed to do it. SO maybe it’s harder than I thought.

You'd think it wouldn't be hard - Gingrich had 9 months, Perry had 6 months. For Gingrich, that's just over 1,500 signatures a month to collect (for a comfortable buffer), for Perry, just under 2,300 signatures a month.

But apparently Ron Paul and Romney are the only ones that took VA seriously.

Very disappointing.

[SatinDoll]

Same for my dad.

He has a great pension and insurance from his former company, but has had to be in nursing homes and adult foster care the past year. We’ve been down to selling his belongings, like furniture, to pay for his care as insurance and Medicare will not pay for Alzheimer disease.

[kabar]

I don’t regret that drug plan either. My father benefits from the Medicare drug plan as do millions of other elderly on the brink of poverty. Without it he wouldn’t have the money to eat.

If you use the criterion that because your father benefits from the Medicare part D prescription drug plan, then I can understand why you support it even if it means that it represents an unfunded liability of $7.2 trillion. The welfare state is full of good intentions, but the issue is can we afford it and who is paying for it.

Did you know that the premiums paid by individuals for Medicare Part D (and Part B) only cover 25% of the actual costs and that is by law? The other 75% must come from the General Fund, which is why Medicare is consuming more and more of the federal budget, around 13% of non-entitlement spending. With 10,000 people a day retiring every day for the next 20 years, by 2030, one in five Americans will be 65 or older. And by 2030 there will be just two workers for every retiree compared to 3.3 today and 16 in 1950. These are the people who will have to pay the taxes to keep these programs afloat.

I gather you also supported Obamacare and the elimination of the so called donut hole in the costs incurred for Medicare Part D. The US is borrowing 42 cents of every dollar spent. The entitlement programs, other mandatory expenses (food stamps, unemployment, etc.), and debt servicing costs consume all of the revenue taken in. Everything else is funded by borrowing and deficit spending.

Your father will get three times in benefits more than he contributed into Medicare. How long can any system continue to function and be sustainable? Where is the money coming from to support such a system?

This graph shows that the average man and woman (average defined in the study as average income over their working lives and living to the average life expectancy) who start receiving benefits in 2010 get over 3 times more in benefits than they pay in to the system! Of importance, the study accounts for inflation by calculating all past taxes and future payments in 2010 dollars to provide an accurate comparison.

If the notion that Medicare recipients are simply "getting back what they paid in" is false then where is the money coming from? Simply, the excess received is being borrowed from younger generations and the cost is more than we can bear.

The reality is that there has been a massive transfer of wealth from the young to the old with the redistribution of wealth by the entitlement and welfare programs. The ones that will have to pay for these programs are the young and their children. Where is the morality of having them support your father with a program that is driving us deeper and deeper into debt? Since when is it our responsibility to subsidize your father so he can have money to eat? Where is individual responsiblity and your responsibility to see that your father doesn't starve to death? I doubt that would happen with the 46 million we now have on food stamps. What did we do before all these entitlement and welfare programs came into existence?

You’re raving - poor dear, you sound like a Paulinista.

No, I believe in a limited government and one that we can afford. You are certainly not a conservative if you support these huge, unsustainable programs like Medicare. You want society to support your father. You are a statist and socialist. As Margret Thatcher supposedly said, "Socialism is fine, but eventually you run out of other people's money." As someone who has lived 13 years in five European countries, what we are witnessing in places like Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, etc. is the collapse of the welfare state. Governments can no longer keep the promises they have made. We are in the same boat, my dear. Wake up and smell the coffee.