I will have the honor of appearing today as part of the confirmation hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee for Loretta Lynch, nominee to serve as United States Attorney General. Below is my written testimony for the hearing today.
Here is the full list of witnesses appearing today:
Sharyl Attkisson
Investigative Journalist
David Barlow
Partner
Sidley Austin LLP
David A. Clarke, Jr.
Sheriff
Milwaukee County, Wisconsin
Catherine Engelbrecht
Founder
True The Vote
Janice K. Fedarcyk
Fedarcyk Consulting LLC
Stephen H. Legomsky
John S. Lehmann University Professor
School of Law at Washington University
The Reverend Doctor Clarence Newsome
Cincinnati , OH
Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz
Professor Of Law, Georgetown University Law Center
Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies Cato Institute
Jonathan Turley
Professor, J.B. And Maurice C. Shapiro Chair Of Public Interest Law
George Washington University Law School
Washington , DC
The full committee hearing resumes this morning at 10 a.m. in Committee Room 216 in the Hart Senate Office Building.
Here is my testimony: Statement.Lynch Nomination.Turley Testimony.Senate
The Obama Administration hardly investigates any fraud. The more people dependent on “free” money, the more Dem voters.
Sandi, Self employed pay the SS and Medicare for themselves[employee] and then, being self employed, have to pay the employer matching amount as well. So, as an employee, you pay 6.2% SS and 1.45% Medicare. That’s 7.65%. Being self employed, I paid 15.3%. But, that’s just the way it works. When you start your own biz there are a lot of injustices you have to just accept. But, ask most any small biz person, that is one big adjustment. Again, we all paid into it and I NEVER begrudge people getting their SS retirement. It’s the Disability queens and kings that are killing the system.
And it was LBJ that put SS in the general fund so Gore didn’t have a lockbox.
Nick, I had a disagreement with a friend years ago. He believed he put into SS and his employer matched that. And when I explained it was just the cost of you. If the government didn’t take it you might make more money. Well, he thought I was out of my mind until I said:
Then why do self-employed people have to pay double!
http://oig.ssa.gov/report-fraud-waste-or-abuse/fraud-waste-and-abuse
Here it is, feel free to report those who you suspect of defrauding SSDI.
Inga, I passed judgment on no one! I have challenged. That’s because the way the war on poverty turned out has to stop. People need purpose. They need to work. We have 16 hours a day with energy, we must do something. And if it isn’t to improve ourselves, it’s looting, rioting, beating people up, killing cops. I didn’t learn until the past couple of years that this was LBJ’s intention. He actually said something about helping “and we’ll have the niggers for the next 200 years.” This is what he saw.
Well, I see differently and I want kids born in homes like mine where money is tight to go to school, work hard, graduate, go on if you have a goal. And when you get the first job, work hard, be a good employee. You may get more money or find a better job, then keep going! That’s what conservatives see. We also want the government’s who take the money we earn to spend it wisely. They are not spending it wisely. And that must change because that money should be in the private sector for people to spend and create a need, which creates jobs!
My daughter the attorney has a good friend who is an attorney for the SSA Fraud investigation unit in Washington DC. Spinelli, if you think there are people you know of who are not truly disabled and collecting SSDI, I can send you the link to her office.
Paul,
Of course Social Security isn’t welfare, but there are plenty of rightists here who try to make it out to be, until or unless it’s their time to collect it. Then the story changes and they go into long explanations as to why they deserve it, but others don’t.
Inga – I would not call mespo a Republican and he was the one who was claiming it was welfare.
Paul, Us self employed people had the distinct honor of paying double. Welfare are people who collect SS Disability and Medicare when they can work. I read blogs where people ask tips on how to get SS Disability. I read on one blog a woman bragging about her high tolerance of pain, birthing many kids, and never being on pain meds for a back claim. The “experts” all told her to go to her doc and tell him she needs pain meds and muscle relaxers, stat. Now, THAT’S welfare fraud!
Nick – when I was a contractor I paid both sides of the Social Security. It is NOT welfare.
No Sandi. You are mistaken and we have discussed this before. You can refuse Medicare Part B, but would be very foolish to do so. Everyone on Medicare has a supplemental policy Sandi. You rattle off accomplishment in your life as if you are unique or its unique to Republicans. You are not unique , nor are Republicans in doing the things you give yourself credit for.
I give myself credit for helping put my four children college and post high school trade school. I was a single mother, by the way for many of those years. I also have a daughter I helped put through law school. I also have a daughter who has served in the military for almost 13 years now and spent a year of it in Afghanistan, I have a daughter with a degree in Art History, my son is a millwright Journeyman. See Sandi, Democrats and liberals raise families and work hard to save and help pay for their own kids education, and some of them are single moms, like I was who worked full time for 35 years, in my case in nursing. I also took care of my mother before she died, while working full time, I had to make sure I had nursing help for her. Sandi you are NOT unique or special, many people have done what you’ve done and have done it under less than ideal circumstances. And they were not all Republicans.
Indians working at casinos are paid more than minimum wage. You say unkind things, and when they are challenged you start again. Lincoln, a Republican, stood up against slavery. Who knows what else he might have accomplished? You seem to think we don’t care about people. We do, we just think differently about how to help them. There was a cartoon years ago with lots of people in a deep hole. Democrats were screaming more money. Republucans were putting ladders down for the people to climb out, yelling more ladders.
I blame the Democratic party and individual choices made by people for the condition of black people living in squalor in northern cities.. Unlike ambulance chasers who make a living blaming others, personal responsibility is still big in the non litigious world.
Mespo, Your McCarthyite accusations show all who you are. Tell me what you don’t believe. Be specific. Make specific accusations and give facts/reasons for them. Otherwise, go to the ER and try and pick up some cases.
Never had an FHA loan. Social Security was the law. You don’t know what I do with it. No student loans. As I said before my husband was in ROTC for four years while getting his college education. He then gave back 4 years on a nuclear submarine. Everybody is forced on Medicare at 65. No choice. I pay monthly to Medicare, quite sizeable. I also pay for another insurance policy. Don’t have a mortgage. Working hard, saving, plus 18% toward IBM stock and 401K (voluntary savings) helps getting rid of mortgages. Have taken deduction on mortgage long ago. It was a bad law, but law it was. The government wanted people to buy houses. Not helping today very much. We inherited nothing. We both had divorced mothers and money was always tight. When Social Security wasn’t enough for them to live alone, they lived with us and we took care of them the rest of their lives.,we paid what Medicare wouldn’t for them. Bought their meds. I also sent money to my Dad and gave my brother money he needed for a down payment on a house. My oldest brother was a career airman. The younger served in AF four years. We give money to Wounded Warriors, they deserve it, and the Salvation Army because 98% of donations actually help people. We also sent Jon’s daughters to college,mand one on to law school. Pay exorbitant CA property and income taxes, and, my favorite, the Feds!
Yep, Paul. That is surely a genocidal technique.
Paul C. Schulte
po – are you aware that Indians were killing off whites and taking their lands. Capturing their wifes and children to enslave them or make them members of the tribe, which is also a genocidal technique?
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Paul, huh?
Is this in reply to something I have said?
Yes, I know that Indians found whites in their ancestral lands and took them over, killed off with their guns, gave them diseased blankets, took them on death marches, slaughtered their wives and children en masse, betrayed their treaties, confined them into reservations, slaughtered the herds of bison to starve them, force-converted them to Christianity, took their children away from them to send them to boarding schools…
po – so, you know nothing about the French and Indian Wars, etc. Well, at least we have a starting point.
Po, it gets very convoluted, meanders every which way, and usually ends up with me wondering why I just wasted all that time. Yep, a bit Twighlight Zone like.
Inga, hope this comes not as mean, but discussions with Sandi are like discussions with Paul, staying on topic is difficult and one ends up never sure what one said or didn’t say.
Sandi, you don’t know what other people did with their earnings either, yet you pass judgment on them and assume they didn’t use their earnings wisely. As for Medicare, you could’ve refused Part B.
Happy, we all suffered indignities in life, all of us, some more than others. Some of us use it to forge more empathy for others, refrain from judging and know that each one of us is embarked upon his/her own journey, and the challenges one encounters in that journey is one’s and one’s alone, and others use it to point the finger at everyone else, using themselves as the barometer, hence the standard.
Everything that ever happened to me taught me not to judge others unless I am in their shoes.
The ability I have to empathize with others allows me to hold them accountable for their actions WHILE at the same time understanding that other factors upon which they have no control played a huge role in their lives. If that makes me Eric Holder, then thank you, I am proud to accept such high praise. (By the way, the idea of Eric Holder being a criminal is only found in the alternate universe of Breitbart and the Daily Caller. I am glad you are liberal, cause your impersonation of the other side got me worried 🙂
You may say whatever you want about what happened to you, but unless you were born black or native american (and no, 1/16th does not qualify) in this country, and carry with you the legacy of slavery, of genocide, of systemic discrimination, of being the product of a structure that is built upon your being a lesser human, you have no right, nor are you qualified to speak for them or judge them.
As no one else can speak on your experience of being a defenseless child abused by others. I would defend your right to feel however you must feel in relation to your history and experience, if that makes me Gloria Allred, then great.
People will get over anything, as long as they have the structure, time and wherewithal to get over it. Native Americans’ problems is just not one of geography, it is akin to saying to people in the ghetto, or poor white people in the Appalachians to just get out.
And go where?
Where they must get jobs, pay rent and struggle with minimum wage until they can hit upon the american dream?
In the ghettos of the next place they move to?
Meanwhile they lose their community, lose their land and become acculturated?
Do you realize that these ghettos that Paul keep blaming on the democrats were a destination place? That black people who served in the war came home looking to buy into those solid white communities? And government policies, along with sharks leaning on those government policies resulted in white flight and those previously havenly places became what we have now?
We can rewrite history all we want and focus on demonizing the democrats as much as we want (and just so it is clear, I voted green party last presidential elections, and will vote 3rd party from now on), but that is indeed a red herring. That is not the topic.
Sandi,
Huh? Of course we all know that the Civil War happened. I don’t recall saying it didn’t. I’m not sure what your comment is referring to.