Texas Mom's 'Thanks a Lot' letter to Obama goes viral

I question the validity of this e-mail and the intelligence of those forwarding it.

ManFromEurope
What is better:

(a) To pay some money monthly now?
(b) To pay a LOT of money as you grow older and get health problems forcing you to visit the hospital?

Both is a lot of money alltogether, and maybe, just maybe you would never need to pay a larger hospital bill in your lifetime.

"Waste not want not."

End of life care is a racket. We all lose everything towards the end. Well most of us will anyhow. This will never change. Insured or not!

One would hope that the more insured we have the lower the costs, but if we use any other example of subsidized programs only the opposite will occur.

Like a carrot in front of a mule the insurance companies will find ways to just milk the system. The average person will still pay the same for care and the completely crooked medical industry which marks up pharmaceuticals 500% and enjoys billing 100K for procedure that would run you only a few thousand in other countries will enjoy the windfall the same.

You can't fix this by feeding the beast! Limiting the profit margins enjoyed by the Medical industry would have been a lot simpler and more in tune with American values than imposing a harsh tax on every man woman and child. The real winner here is the medical industry. When you realize that policing the medical industry is the peoples prerogative, and that taxing every man woman in child to benefit a crooked and out of control industry speaks only to corruption and tyranny you will have come a long way to seeing what is wrong in America today.

All you have really done is further limits a person's ability to pull themselves out of poverty. It is already bad enough that if you do well you can expect the Fed to come for up to 35% of it. Now a person must endure the added penalty of being forced to pay for insurance as well, God forbid you have a family of 6 and make too much for any breaks. Obamacare is great if you never aspire to jack #, and plan to stay in the gutter!

None should be forced to purchase any product! A population should not bend to the will of a corrupt industry but rather that industry should be bent to meet the people's needs!

If you support Obamacare its either because it will be free for you, or you are a #ing Nazi #!

They don't care about us. They, meaning Republicans or Democrats, only care about making it through the next election, paying back their financial backers, getting special deals with insider trading. How is it that so many go into office moderately well off, but filthy rich when they finally leave? If they were really serving us, then why do they exempt themselves from the very laws they pass? Follow the money and will see how corrupt ALL of them are. Not one of them is worth a nickle, and I for one believe this whole system was Shang-heid decades ago, and it's all designed to crash.

You know Michael Jackson pissed them off with this song, it should be played ever day:

reply to post by ManFromEurope


cost of vacations mentioned

articles.mcall.com...

In 2011 Obama's travel expenses were $1.4 billion.

4.40251572327044 per american

now keep in mind 2.5 avg children

so with a population of
318 mill divided by 4.5 people in housholds(house holds.. wild guess adjust it as you see fit.. it will only raise cost)


70666666.66666667 is the number of households

1.4 bill (cost of vacations) divided by 70666666.66666667

19.81132075471698 per household paid for someone to go golfing...
visit and chat..


What could you have spent the twenty on...

let me see

At alti

1 large 18 count eggs- .99
1 big jar of peanut butter- 4.96
2 Bread- .99 so 1.98
1 pack of cheese- .99
10 pizzas- .99 so- 4.95

13.86


18.175675 I took out the taxes ahead so I just did the numbers



4.31 left

1 can of green beans - .49
1 can of corn - .49
1 gallon of milk- 1.99

1.34 left
1 butter .99

35 cents left

remember aldi's.. You have the quarter in the buggy
walk out with 10 cents
get quarter out of buggy

now in case I am wrong and your cost is less

1.64 in taxes back
gives you 1.99

1 jar of jelly- 1.98

Now with a family of 4.5 ( the man in the house is pregnant)


say forty slices total
Breakfast is eggs, toast, and milk (if your lactose intolerant you drink water)

You should use about.. 10 eggs.. - eight eggs left - 8
eight slices of bread- leave about 24 slices
one forth of milk
( may be jelly toast)

Lunch
PB and J
two sandwiches a piece- 16 slices- leaves 8

Peanut Butter- one fifth
jelly- one fifth


Dinner-
Kids get
Grilled cheese
8 slices of bread (two loaves gone)
eight slices of cheese

Can of peas
Can of corn

adults
Omelettes-
eight eggs
Last bit of cheese

(you can eat the corn and peas with it if you want..)



You as an american gave up a days worth of eating so the President could go on vacation

Note in fairness to both parties
I am pretty sure it cost a lot more meals when you count congresses perks

Vp's
Cabinets
Scotus




So yes.. BTW enjoy carrying your groceries home.. it can be raining ect.. gas is not free

edit
Pizza's are for next days meal for the kids

You can be picky and choose different items you have 4.95 if you want

more cheese (.99)
or ramen noodles (.12)
hot dogs (.99)
Mac and cheese (.33)

how ever it makes it two days worth of food taken off your plate

what a stupid "letter", which i have a feeling was written to make people angry and to feed an already poisonous view of a voted in president.
does anyone know how the government works in this country? or how the ACA works? no it seems not, if you believe this sob story should be taken seriously.

lots of people suffer just like the claimed person in this letter, and they are smart enough to know that this letter is BS piled on BS. oh it feels good to point fingers, but pointing fingers at singular individuals.

if "she" wants to point fingers she can go look in a mirror too, because she is just as much to blame for the mess as the president, whether through how she voted or by who she supports, we sadly all are.


she shouldn't be thanking obama, she should be thanking the morons blinded by pipedream philosophy and imaginary economic systems like trickle down economics. of course she could thank congress for being a bunch of greedy idiots who are more concerned about elections than doing their jobs.

thank you america, you screwed yourselves over, but thankfully it is fixable if we try. the ACA was an okay attempt but special interests screwed that up and now it's just a mechanism for big business to make money. of course to fix this, a lot of americans need to a new worldview...but i have a feeling that will never happen.

reply to post by snarky412


It's always been like this.

It's the same here in S. Africa.

That letter could have been written to our prez, Zuma, about a local subject (like 'e-tolls' in Jo'burg)

They truly do not give a flying chicken-wing about the 'other half' that go to sleep at night, starving for an iota of the lavish life which they fart into the wind (and no less, using our hard earned cash to blow-out!).

WE are part of the problem for not stopping these sadists and enforcing our requirements of the state.

Something I think about after reading that letter; Presidents and politicians are not rock stars - government salaries should speak to their worth as a citizen and their contribution to society.

The average income of an American household seems to be around $50,000/year (+-$10,000, up or down)
Obamas income? Over $400,000. wow. I'm sure a prezzie needs a lot of cash; protection, meetings, etc. But I'd love to see that break down.

I don't know, I really don't, but it feels like gov salaries should be at most twice, maybe three times that of the average. Travel, entertainment, etc. should be separate and shared by percentage of expected use per government position.... with balances brought forward annually, with any sum exceeding the budget (eg. travel budget) being appropriated to other societal necessities.

I'm thinking too much again, and I'm more than likely wrong in my ass-umm-tions.

Regardless, this woman's letter serves to more wakefulness. Right on!

reply to post by Jimjolnir

Something I think about after reading that letter; Presidents and politicians are not rock stars - government salaries should speak to their worth as a citizen and their contribution to society.

One of the main problems here is that many of the legislatures are what I call 'Career Politicians'...
They pretty much have a job for life because the people keep voting them in. I guess they are afraid of change....although it can't be any worse than the change Obama promised us.
A simple solution to that would be term limits like for the president, but that won't never happen.

The average income of an American household seems to be around $50,000/year (+-$10,000, up or down)
Obamas income? Over $400,000. wow. I'm sure a prezzie needs a lot of cash; protection, meetings, etc. But I'd love to see that break down.

I can't say for certain what the average household is other than what I find out on Google, but I do know many couples where it takes both parents working to make ends meet, where as before, the Mom stayed home and took care of the kids while the husband worked.
The cost of living is higher now than ever before and add to that the Obamacare rip off, well, it puts many middle class families on the border line to poverty level.
Scary thought....

And as for the perks that goes with being the president, well evidently there's no ceiling limit to that.
Kinda like our budget deficit....

What irks many Americans about that issue, we are all aware of the severe dilemma that our country's economy is in, but Obama is like on another plane of existence, in his own little fantasy world.
Now talk about misleading and empty promises. Ugh...
Ah hell, don't get me started!!



As I told elysiumfire, I like hearing views and opinions from other countries.

Appreciate your comments

Thanks~
snarky

Obama wants to be a king, and live like one but unfortunately he knows nothing about being a king and all he does is use up more money than he has in the treasury. At least kings of the middle ages used the money they had in the treasury from taxes instead of getting a loan beyond payment. Sure, the people lived miserable and it was a two-tier system but it's not at all different than it is today. The only difference is that if democracy was introduced at that time, there would be no debt and people would start to live better off rather than what can happen today since there's really nothing that can be done. The king took all the money, he borrowed even more than the kingdom is worth for well over a decade, and there's now a two-tier system in the making where if you're rich, you live happily and if you're poor, then you live miserable.

Obama IS the worst president in history, far worse than any other president this side of the world has ever had. In fact, where does Obama rank as the worst "leader" in the history of the world?

reply to post by buster2010

Then that makes it a hundred times More sickening-though not excusable,a rich fatcat that grew up fabulously wealthy,genuinely does not have a concept of what the average person's life is like,same as I cannot imagine the life +hardships of a lifeform on another planet.
But to Know what it is like to battle through life,and Still visit something like the ACA-trainwreck upon the populace you have "ascended" from, to a lofty+wealthy perch,is MONSTROUS.

I have some serious doubts about this letter. I am not supporting or against "Obamacare" in this post, but we should be using truthful and accurate facts when arguing pro or con.

I can tell from her letter, the writer did not go through the entire process to see what her federal subsidy was going to be. It appears she just went to the site and looked up the premiums and wrote the letter.

Federal subsides kick in at 133% to 450 % of the federal poverty level. She claims 2 children this means she qualifies for a subsidy with an income between 25,974.96 to 68,355.00 (350%) a year.

DHS Poverty Guidelines

If she is under the guidelines, the medicaid expansion should cover her family, unless she is in one of the states that refused the expansion and put nothing in its place. I live in a state that turned down the expansion, but expanded one of it's own programs to cover the gap.

The subsidy is paid directly to the insurance company and lowers the premium accordingly. On the low end of the income scale the subsidy can cover the whole premium sliding downward as income is higher.


I see this misrepresented many times here. People just look at the premiums, but do not bother with the subsidy part to see what the real premium would be, and it is kind of a pet peeve I have.

Before the flaming starts, this post is neither pro or con, I just think all the facts should be considered when debating. I feel that the letter is either not being completely honest, or more likely the author does not know all the facts about how the act is supposed to work.

If anything I believe it is a poorly written piece of legislature, but let the debates be fair.
While the debate continues,we should also be trying to educate people on how best to navigate the system so they can at least use the system to their advantage while the debate continues, instead of using their confusion and half truths to muddy up the debate. I believe this will make the process of fixing the issues much easier, whatever it entails.

I feel very bad for this woman and understand her frustration, as my wife has kids in her 6th grade class that live like this. She actually sneaks in food and offers it as token rewards (of course all the kids get to "win" a snack). No one has complained yet.

I am extremely lucky to be working in a very specialized IT sales position with a unique skill set that cannot be replicated overseas. My hope is to stay in another 10 years to retirement. I realize that every day this job could suddenly go away for a variety of reasons.

I read some of the posts that describe days gone by, how it was in the past. Sadly, most of the jobs that existed in the post-war economy, where you could live on wages in your brand-new $4,000 home in 1948 no longer exist, or have been automated, or sent overseas to slave labor. It is really not a fair comparison when you stack the US up against a much smaller country that might have superior health care. Tiny Denmark, for example, has a combined tax rate close to 75% percent. They have comparatively excellent health care. Factor in the cost or providing healthcare in the US with a population of 317,000,000 people. Should a doctor that has invested 8 years of his/her life at great financial expense with a student loan looming be mandated to charge a fixed fee?

If I were trying to figure how to survive in today's bizarro world and much younger, I would work in:

1) Food, everyone has to eat
2) Law/Legal representation, there's still good money in lawsuits

Otherwise, owning your own business and working 24 hours a day might be an option also.

We here on ATS know the president is just a figurehead, propped up by special interests, the mainstream media, dems/repubs it's all a charade. The reality is we, each one of us, is on our own. No one, no politician, state, or organization will save our asses.

g146541
reply to post by snarky412

 

I bet this "Texan Mom" just wishes we could go back to the Bush dynasty, when everything was great.
Cuz Bush and Bush² never did anything wrong.
Bad news everyone, the next president will be just as bad as all of the others before him, maybe worse as we have let them get away with everything else, each next one will become a little bit bolder.

you just put words into that womans mouth and then had a rant about how those made up words are wrong.

Nobody mentioned Bush or anybody else.

reply to post by g146541

Bad news everyone, the next president will be just as bad as all of the others before him, maybe worse

Or may be he will be a she whom desires to be a he.
And is really hell bent because she got married ti Bill Clinton instead
of getting that sex change operation ? And woe unto the earth
when she becomes POTUS and suddenly gets a craving for chocolate.
In acordance to her moon cycle.

Next up ? The bitch from hell !

Just say'in

Look i mean no disrespect to the lady who wrote the letter but i and my wife do pretty much all that she doe, except a few i.e. cry at night and eat leftovers from our children's plate. Not because we are broke, because we aren't, but because we don't see the point in wasting money. I can see her frustration, and i certainly see the bigger picture here but if the rest of the world had the attitude of don't spend, re-use or recycle, this situation really won't be as bad as it is.

On the healthcare thing. I still find it absurd that the US doesn't provide free healthcare as a human right. The NHS may not be fantastic but it is certainly a good scheme and one that i am grateful for.

That kind of complacent attitude is a huge part of the problem in this country. "I don't care" "It's not my problem". There is absolutely no unity among the citizens of the United States,no one cares about anything that doesn't affect them personally. They spend all their time blaming their neighbors and using this "personal responsibility" excuse to ignore the real problem.
What people are going through right now has nothing to do with "personal responsibility",how hard they work,or that they aren't trying hard enough. So instead of blaming your neighbors,you should be unified against this corrupt government because if we all follow your advice,no one will care about you when you start experiencing what a lot of us have been for quite some time. The attitude you have plays right into their plan. They don't want us to stand up for each other because we just might stand up AGAINST them. They want you to not care,they want you to blame each other. So point your finger at those who really deserve it,the politicians and the corporations that buy them.

reply to post by jammer2012



LOL once again, a COMPLETE dodge of PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. We all want to be treated like adults but want the government and the corporations to take care of us like children.

My dream is to adopt a cultural change where our mentality about having children is like having pets. If you cant afford em, cant take care of em, you dont have em. Imagine if poor, single mothers had to pay child rent (like pet rent) at apartments or had to pay cash for all the medical expenses, school, etc.

Once again, I have ZERO sympathy. ZERO ZILCH NONE NADA

And this is not about "helping neighbors" and with that same logic, my neighbors could help me by NOT having children they CANT AFFORD

Where in our constitution does it say "right to have children" "as many as you want" "we will take care of them"

Sorry, but just because you took no responsibility while engaging in the no pants dance, does not mean you get special treatment, special handouts, or sympathy from me.

What a meaningful letter indeed.

To deviate ever so slightly to the UK... of course, things are a bit different here in the UK but people are struggling on a very similar scale. So i can see how this would ring true to people across the entire globe.

It's not just who's in charge of each country. Its the collective cock-up of the entire planet. And we're just taking the brunt of it.

It's sad. It's very sad. And unfortunately, no letter will make a iota of difference. They simply DO NOT care. They can lie, like they all do (i'm pretty sure every few minutes) and say hideous things like - "we're all in this together" But quite frankly, we were never in this together. As a collective planet, we hold the majority. But numbers don't matter anymore... it's money. And we all know who's hands that lies in.

I hate to say this, but is there any point carrying on in a system that fails time and time again? We need to start again........ we're too far gone.

reply to post by snarky412

WTG it's sweet the way the bus backs up lol

reply to post by snarky412


Obama is the worst president in history. I'd rather have Putan, he is a real man.

What else do you expect, when you put a moulan in the white house?

Kangaruex4Ewe
I could have written that letter and most people I know could have written it as well.

She is right. He DOESN'T know what any of that is like. NOBODY in Washington knows what it is like. That's the problem. You really can't get elected to anything if you aren't rich, born in a well named family, or had a silver spoon shoved in your cake hole at birth.

That is why the economy is in the crapper. I have always said that if they put in a blue collar, minimum wage worker to deal with the debt we would see a change for the better. They know how to stretch their dollar for 2 extra nights of groceries and a down payment on their eldest's class ring. They know how to shop around for a better price on car repairs while still purchasing little Katie's inhaler. They HAVE to learn how to do it. Most of them have ALWAYS done it. Those in office have not, so they waste and care not.

We ARE collateral damage.

They don't deal with a lot of the issues most of us deal with daily.

Obama is out of touch. The whole damned administration is out of touch.

edit on 11/18/2013 by Kangaruex4Ewe because: (no reason given)

Uh, he grew up raised by a single mother. You think the guy doesn't know poverty? Think again.

Further if this woman is so poor, why doesn't she get a subsidy. Yeah, just another tea bagger who hates the black guy.