Free lunches at school

[rebeccajo 14]

I want HBO, Cinemax and Showtime, for free!

playboy channel?

I don't care about that. We have our own playboy show live at our bedroom.

i gots my own playboy bunny

Get a room.

[smoke20 0]

Marc, I am sorry I didn't read this entire post.. But your hate was enough for me after 2 pages. I agree here with fancypants. You'd have to be a heartless ####### to do this. I am not saying your are heartless, nor a #######, nor either of these things, nor b0th of these things, but the position you are taking is quite sick and disrespectful. Disrespectful to your fellow human, and really just very self-centered. Which I can assure you, being greedy, self-centered, or very arrogant is NOT a good thing.

how do you really feel?

[Ban Hammer 13,310]

I want HBO, Cinemax and Showtime, for free!

playboy channel?

I don't care about that. We have our own playboy show live at our bedroom.

i gots my own playboy bunny

Get a room.

[eric&gen 0]

You can get all the free cable you want in jail.!!!

[Nessa 23]

Do they have HBO in jail?

[eric&gen 0]

Dont know i never been in jail lol. I here stories they do get cable lol.

[Nessa 23]

Dont know i never been in jail lol. I here stories they do get cable lol.

[KevandKiki2 0]

Wow.....

taking food out of hungry, low income children's mouths.

What a worthy cause you are fighting for.....thank God there aren't more constructive things you could be expending your energy on.

When you look back at your life, I'm sure this accomplishment will make you very proud........instead of helping people in need, you fought to make life jsut that much harder for them.

Good job.........

Edited to add: This is Kiki....my husbands login was still up on the computer.

Edited August 27, 2007 by KevandKiki2

[SteveLaura 0]

If anyone is really concerned about abuse that affects their tax dollars, maybe they would interested in starting here.

The biggest tax scam on earth has a very innocent sounding name. It is called “transfer prices.” ... Abuse of transfer prices is a key tool multinational corporations use to fool the U.S. and other jurisdictions to think that they have virtually no profit; hence, they shouldn’t pay any taxes...

U.K.-based GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, together with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced that GSK will pay $3.4 billion to the IRS to settle a transfer pricing dispute dating back 17 years. The IRS alleges that GSK improperly shifted profits from their U.S. to the U.K. entity...

For companies in certain businesses, such as pharmaceuticals, it is very easy to simply “invent” the price a company charges their U.S. business for buying the company’s product which they manufacture in another country. And if they charge enough, poof; all the profit vanishes from the US, or Canada, or any other regular jurisdiction and end up in a corporate tax-haven. And that means American and Canadian tax payers don’t get their fair share...

Many multinational corporations essentially have two sets of bookkeeping. One set, with artificially inflated transfer prices is what they use to prepare local tax returns, and show auditors in high-tax jurisdictions, and another set of books, in which management can see the true profit and lost statement, based on real cost of goods, are used for the executives to determine the actual performance of their various operations.

Another industry which successfully exploits overseas tax strategies to cheat us all is the hi-tech industry. In fact, Microsoft Corp. recently shaved at least $500 million from its annual tax bill using a similar strategy to the one the drug industry has used for so many years. Microsoft has set up a subsidiary in Ireland, called Round Island One Ltd. This company pays more than $300 million in taxes to this small island country with only 4 million inhabitants, and most of this comes from licensing fees for copyrighted software, originally developed in the U.S. Interesting thing is, at the same time, Round Island paid a total of just under $17 million in taxes to about 20 other countries, with more than 300 million people. The result of this was that Microsoft's world-wide tax rate plunged to 26 percent in 2004, from 33 percent the year before. Almost half of te drop was due to “foreign earnings taxed at lower rates,” according to a Microsoft financial filing. And this is how Microsoft has radically reduced its corporate taxes in much of Europe and been able to shield billions of dollars from U.S. taxation.

But remember, this is only one example. Most of the other tech companies are doing the same thing. Google recently also set up an Irish operation that the firm credited in a SEC filing with reducing its tax rate...

Unfortunately those of us working and paying tax in the U.S. can’t relocate our jobs and our income to Ireland or another tax haven. So we have to make up the income shortfall. In the U.S. we have a highly educated society with a very qualified workforce, partly supported by our tax payers. This helps us generate breakthrough products. But once a company has a successful product, they have every incentive to move the second generation of a successful product overseas, to Ireland and a few other corporate tax havens.

There is only one problem for U.S. companies with this strategy, and that is that if they repatriate this money to the U.S. they have to pay full corporate taxes. In fact, according to BusinessWeek, U.S. multinational corporations have built up profits of as much as $750 billion overseas, much of it in tax havens such as the Ireland, Bahamas, and Singapore to avoid the stiff 35% levy they'd face if they repatriated the funds back into the U.S.

But of course, Congress, which is basically paid for by our multinational corporations, generously provided for a one-time provision in the corporate tax code, so that they could repatriate profits earned before 2003, and held in foreign subsidiaries, at an effective 5.25% tax rate.

And so the game goes on.

In the end, multinational corporations live in a global world which allows them to pretty much send their money to corporate tax havens at will, and then repatriate this money almost tax free, with the help of the U.S. Congress.

The people left holding the bag are you and me.

Peter Rost, M.D., is a former Vice President of Pfizer. He became well known in 2004 when he emerged as the first drug company executive to speak out in favor of reimportation of drugs. He is the author of “The Whistleblower, Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman" See: http://the-whistleblower-by-peter-rost.blogspot.com/

[Sheri&Carl 0]

And to answer one of the questions that keeps coming up.. How do they do it all summer... Well in my house, when my dad lost his job because of flooding in our area and we went on food stamps, we didn't eat lunch in the summer. We ate a late breakfast that served as lunch and supper, and an early dinner, where my mom and dad always said they where full after some measly little amount so that us kids had enough. And that was WITH food stamps. I never realized that was the case until I was old enough to look back and see what my parents did. And instead of calling them lazy and whatever else you can come up with for people who chose to ask for help (not hand outs by the way... My parents payed taxes for more than 40 years AND my dad served his country in war, which ended up killing him so I think he paid it back 100 fold) So, as I was saying.. instead of calling my parents names I thank them for being smart enough, selfless enough, and having the courage to ask for help.

Edited August 27, 2007 by Sheri&Carl

[eric&gen 0]

I think if parents cant afford to provide lunches for there kids than they better not produce anymore. Practice safe sex on a blow up doll lol.

[Sinergy 3]

And to answer one of the questions that keeps coming up.. How do they do it all summer... Well in my house, when my dad lost his job because of flooding in our area and we went on food stamps, we didn't eat lunch in the summer. We ate a late breakfast that served as lunch and supper, and an early dinner, where my mom and dad always said they where full after some measly little amount so that us kids had enough. And that was WITH food stamps. I never realized that was the case until I was old enough to look back and see what my parents did. And instead of calling them lazy and whatever else you can come up with for people who chose to ask for help (not hand outs by the way... My parents payed taxes for more than 40 years AND my dad served his country in war, which ended up killing him so I think he paid it back 100 fold) So, as I was saying.. instead of calling my parents names I thank them for being smart enough, selfless enough, and having the courage to ask for help.

I applaud you!!! and can deffinatly relate to you!!!

[Sheri&Carl 0]

I think if parents cant afford to provide lunches for there kids than they better not produce anymore. Practice safe sex on a blow up doll lol.

When we hit hard times I was 8, my sisters where 5 and 15. They did not have anymore.. When the flood happened my dad was making good money. Some people abuse the system. Some people keep having more kids when they shouldn't. Hell some people have kids to abuse the system a bit more. But some people are just in need, and they don't abuse it, they don't plan on staying on it forever, they do work hard. No matter what the reason people have it's NEVER the child's fault. Tomorrow when you get up at 6 or 7, eat a piece of toast, or nothing at all.. which is what a lot of these kids do. Then work, or whatever else you do until 3-4. See how hungry you are, how hard it is to do anything.. Then tell me if you want to take free lunch away. Try it for a week if your not sure.

[Sheri&Carl 0]

we didn't eat lunch in the summer. We ate a late breakfast that served as lunch and supper, and an early dinner,

THat should have said "that served as breakfast and lunch"

[Fandango 1,439]

Well, my stance really is that the program is GOOD except for the abuse. I'm not against helping people when they need it. Resources aren't unlimited, so those who abuse the system take away from those who need it the most.

The poster may have been right as far as the WIC guidelines....but ask the questions before you call another poster a possible liar.

But the abuse you are citing is not of the free lunch program. It's of another program entirely.

There was a poster here who works in a school, who told how a majority of the free lunch applicants aren't tested, how they have ipods and whatnot....my lil story was just a spawn off of a conversation that has taken several turns.

Yes but if a parent abuses the system, should the the benefit be taken away from the child? Because this is what I'm reading some are advocating on this thread. I'm not sure you can force them to become responsible parents overnight.

Well that's not what *I'm* putting forth, but I am advocating checking all applicants first. Not like what one poster who works in the schools said - that a small percentage only gets checked.

And then if the child is still hungry, the child gets fed on the program & the money is billed to the family in some form of lien. No one should go hungry...but it is not the gov't responsibility to feed someone who would rather buy an ipod.

A lien on what? You can't get blood out of a turnip.

Bill em, I dunno. I do know that when I was 21, I fell whilst taking down my drapes and I broke my wrist and ankle. Three days off being insured via my then-husband's health insurance. This was before I was a mgr of the salons, and my only job was as a tech. Well ya can't be a tech with a broken wrist, eh?

Anyways, I digress. I did see if there was some program at the hospital that could cover some of my expenses, but was told 'nope'. They did treat me...I didn't have a check or anything to make the payment, so they billed me.

And I paid a little each mo until we got back on our feet, then I paid it off.

Something like that, perhaps.

Now I've never heard of the saying with a turnip, but 'Can't get blood from a stone' is a premise that these people's situations will never change, they will never get back on their feet, etc....