Patong2021

Give it a rest. You have demonstrated an anti Israel bias for some time, just as you have been a cheerleader for the murderous thug from Russia named Putin. You are attaching all sorts of evil deeds to people you call Israeli. As the Thai government has stated, there are 84 or less Israelis in Pai on any given day. Hardly a number sufficient to be running wild through its streets. The town has never attracted the highest quality of people. It has had a history of problems for years. My introduction to Pai came in 2008 when the Thai cop Uthai Dechawiwat in an alcohol fueled rage fatally shot Leo Del Pinto, 25, a Canadian backpacker in the face and chest. At the time, the deceased was made out to be a dope smoking criminal. He was no angel, but he wasn't a criminal and the undeniable fact was that he was brutally murdered. It seems that in Pai, it is survival of the fittest in some areas. People have gone missing in Pai, but we never hear of the outcome. It often involves running afoul of the locals or of predatory foreigners. The event in the news involves Israelis, everyone's go to group to hate this year. Last year it was probably Brits, and before that Germans, and before that Australians, and so on . A year doesn't go by when we don't have hear about some incident with the knuckle draggers trying to blame a nation for the actions of a small number of idiots. Give it a rest. And for the rest of the Euro and Australian trash living out their fantasies of attacking juden and Israel, just remember that it is your own country people who are acting up in Phuket, Koh Samui and Pattaya. The people now in Thai jail for drug and criminal offences, and the creepy child sex pervs are your own people. And surprisingly enough, it's not the Chinese or even the Indians who are getting involved in those predicaments. Even the Gulf Arabs manage to stay out of trouble. And yet so many of you are quick to pee all over them as bad visitors. How about cleaning your own house first?

Poor people pay minimal tax and receive far more in benefits and services than they contribute. In effect they already get an almost free ride. The income tax burden is carried by a relatively small number of taxpayers. People complain about the wealthy, but the majority of them pay more than their fair share of income taxes.

A lot depends upon how critical the patient is. It may not have been a full crisis. The pilot will have spoken with the medical consultant on the ground and been told where to go and what to do Note that the runway length at Surat Thani is 2100 M The (posted) recommended minimum airport length for a loaded B777-300ER is 2,701 M The distance needed is influenced by tarmac conditions (wet or dry, weight of the aircraft and weather conditions) Even if Surat Thani could take the aircraft, it might not have been able to service the aircraft. This would have been a hard brake with a heavy load so tires might have had to be checked and serviced. The terminal is not set up for a B777-300ER and it would have been a nightmare to try and manage all these people, especially if there was no immigration capability. Passengers would have had to be put up in hotels if the plane was damaged on landing, and Surat Thani can't easily do that. The aircraft was approx. 20 minutes away from an orderly descent into BKK. Had there been a landing at Surat Thani, additional time would have been needed to safely descend from 40,000 such that it really would not have made much of a difference.

In effect the document had no legal validity. It was a useless document that facilitated false declarations by some people. There was no reason to continue issuing a document that had no legal standing.

That is not acceptable. Someone logging in is not acceptable. This isn't even acceptable for basic banking activity. An electronic record of the activity must be retained. This would necessitate authorizing a representative of the consulate logging in from their own work station and accessing CRA data. Canadian privacy laws restrict access. The amount of work and effort required for a relatively small number of people does not justify the activity. And as others have stated the likelihood of dishonest and false statements is significant.

Biden did not have the legal power to write legislation, nor have it made into law. Only Congress can pass laws and the Republican factions did their utmost to block any changes.

Not exactly. It means that it is reasonable to have conditions on the payment such as no COLA adjustments if not resident in the USA. I have made clear that anyone who has paid in has the right to live where they choose and to receive the benefits that they have paid for. There is no denying that beneficiaries made contributions which have earned compound interest. The issue is whether it is fair to the US taxpayers that the benefits be topped up by the US taxpayers and that excess to be spent outside of the USA. The adjustment can be accomplished either by eliminating access to adjustments for inflation, as some countries do, or by introducing a small witholding adjustment. If a beneficiary has not contributed funds sufficient to cover the payout, and taxpayers are forced to make up the shortfall, then the taxpayers should have the right to require that the amount they are covering be provided only if spent in the USA. How can you justify forcing taxpayers to subsidize the lifestyle of some retiree in an exotic foreign locale? Let the retiree spend the money in balmy Alabama or sunny Arkansas where the cost of living is low if cost of living is that important.

That is unfair. What is your solution? How do you expect the Canadian consulate to verify the income statement? It does not have access to annual CRA filings and it does not have access to the person's bank accounts. What's your methodology to allow the consulate to issue an accurate declaration?

All that because the Canadian embassy no longer wishes to be part of a sham?

How do you know there are 3,000? The government states that there are only about 83-84 Israeli tourists staying in Pai daily. Where did the 3,000 come from?

Sure you did. Why not just say you dislike them without making up an obnoxious story. Israelis have been avoiding Argentina since 1994 when the Iranians and Hezbollah bombed the historic jewish cultural center murdering 85 and maiming 300. Argentina had hostile relations with Israel under multiple Argentine governments. The former corrupt President Krichener was held responsible in 1998 for her role in covering up the Argentine complicity by covering up the Iranian responsibility in the bombing. Try harder. What's next, the liberation of the Falklands from the Argentine military junta was an Israeli plot?

I believe many of the stories have been planted by foreign actors. There is an active disinformation campaign underway in multiple countries.

Yes deductions are distinct. However, the stability of the social security funds are guaranteed by the US Government which in effect is guaranteed by the US taxpayers. In respect to your reminder, how about this reminder first; The Social Security Trust Fund is required by law to be invested in non-marketable securities issued and guaranteed by the federal government. Excess funds are used by the government for non-Social Security purposes, creating the obligations to the Social Security Administration and thus program recipients. The current benefit payments are supported by the current payroll taxes. However, once the available funds can no longer cover the benefit payment obligations, the Treasury instruments will need to be sold creating a debt repayment obligation. The excess funds that were allowed to be used for other purposes will no longer be available, resulting in a budget funding deficit. And another reminder, the problem for social security is that the value of the social security payment obligations is not funded by the value of the beneficiary original investment and compounded interest. The debt obligation would inevitably have to be covered by the taxpayers.

Many of your concerns are understandable, and I am not discounting their importance. The loss of contributions at death can seem unfair. The counter argument is that while the money may not be refundable, there are survivor benefits that will continue to benefit the spouse, divorced spouse, child, or dependent parent of someone who worked and paid Social Security taxes before they died. That is more than fair. In respect to the amount available to beneficiaries, the stark reality is that people will collect more than their contributions over time are worth. I think it is self evident that the current model is not sustainable. According to 2022 data, the United States (US) Social Security Administration (SSA) paid about 6.1 billion US dollars (USD) in benefits to 760,000 beneficiaries outside the country (LaPonsie, 2024). That is crazy. In respect to your argument that beneficiaries move elsewhere to get more "bang for the buck", that is their personal choice. If a beneficiary is only receiving what they contributed, then yes, you are right that the beneficiary should be able to live wherever they wish. it is their money. However, if someone is receiving more than they contributed, then it is reasonable that the funders be able to set a condition that funds be spent in the nation providing the additional benefit. Why should taxpayers be supporting a person in a foreign land? If the money paid to such people is spent in the USA, then there is an indirect economic offset to their financial burden. Social security payments were intended to assist destitute elderly and as as an income supplement for retired workers. It was never intended as a means to fund the retirement of people foreign lands, nor was it intended as a replacement for prudent retirement savings planning. FDR and the SS planners did not consider the impact of beneficiaries living outside of the USA.

That's nice. However, the reality in the USA is that the vast majority of social security beneficiaries will receive far more than what the actual value of their contributions is actually worth. If they were only receiving what their contributions were worth at the time of payout, you would have a reasonable argument. A small number of US citizens carry the income tax burden of the USA. 0.02% of federal taxpayers contribute 12.6% of federal income tax. 54% of US income tax is paid by 30% of the taxpayers,. In the USA, around 110 million citizens pay some federal tax, and for most it doesn't come anywhere close to paying for the value of goods and services they receive from their government. And that's the problem of social security: The beneficiaries don't understand basic math and don't want to accept that they are being paid far more than their small contributions could ever generate. This is why social security contributions must either increase, and/or the amount paid out per beneficiary be reduced over time by changing the qualifying age, and or no longer be adjusted for inflation.

I am disappointed to learn of the transfer of the Novotel hotel to Hyatt at the airport. Although the place has become rundown, the pricing in part reflected that. Now that Hyatt has the management contract, room rates have increased and breakfast is now 1000 baht+ per person. This used to be my go to hotel for early morning departures and late night arrivals. No more.

it is not looking down on Thais to point out their habit of littering. There is a soi not far from where I am where flytippers come. Disgusting. people toss their garbage on the beach here and so on. There really isn't a problem with the Chinese. For the most part, I believe that they they have one of the lowest per visitor problem rates for Thailand. How many Chinese do we see or read about getting into fights or shoplifting or murdering people? Have there been any Chinese suicides in the numbers we see with westerners? For those of us who have been around for some years, the claims of crackdown is a tired empty response. It's like traffic law enforcement. On for a few days and then when the coppers get tired of doing a proper job, they revert to their lazy uninterested ways. Where? Be real. The world has changed. Miami Beach it was once the party destination for young people. No more. The city bans the sale of alcohol from corner stores after 10 PM. It increased beach parking rates to discourage some visitors. The Canary Islands and the sun destinations of Spain all have locals harassing tourists and protesting their presence. Venice wants tourists gone. Amsterdam, once the destination for potheads and ravers is implementing visitor capacity restrictions. It wants fewer tourists. And so on. Let's be real, Vietnam and Cambodia have cultures very different from Thailand. As bad as Thailand is, they are worse. The Philippines is a basket case. No partying in Malaysia and Indonesia comes with its own set of dysfunction and perils. Singapore is wonderful, but most can neither afford it, nor are they prepared for the draconian laws. I don't know about that. Whenever I walk by a cannabis shop, the only people I see visiting are 50 + year olds farangs. The Under 30 year olds who smoke cannabis are not coming to Thailand because it is legal. They were smoking cannabis in Thailand long before it was. They are just more visible. Thailand is not as affordable as it was 10 years ago, or even 5 years ago. As a result, the under 30 year olds are not staying very long.

Yes, you are correct. It has always been a delay, delay and let someone else deal with it. No different than the immigration crisis. Decades go by, making the problem a critical mess. I hope the congress members who believe in controlling the deficit are not steam rolled.

The point is that your retirees are collecting far more than they ever contributed. That is not fair. Let them collect the value of what their contributions are worth. You are demanding that they get a free ride. Why should they be treated as a special class while others are denied basic benefits or have their benefits reduced?

There should be, for the simple reason that the people who will pay on the higher limits will never collect the benefit. The majority of US citizens do not pay anywhere near the value of goods and services that they receive from their government(s). It is always the 20% of the population carrying the burden of 80% of the population. How much more burden must they take on?

Yes, but that statement needs context. Although the US federal law states that Social Security can only pay benefits from the funds available from the social security investment fund pool which are held in Treasury securities, this isn't likely to occur until 2035. In the absence of new funding or a reduction in the payouts, there would most likely be a freeze in payments, i.e. no COLA before there were "cuts". And before there were cuts, there might be reduced eligibility, and/or incremental small reductions. A cut is synonymous with a large reduction, and the Social Security program is still decades away from that. More likely is a US debt crisis. In order to pay out the benefits due, the Treasury instruments would have to be liquidated, and this would most likely create a financial crisis in the USA as the USA would not have the liquidity to repay the monies owed to the Social Security fund.

The US intelligence conclusion was conditional. The conclusion offered by the CIA was; "CIA assesses with low confidence that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting. CIA continues to assess that both research-related and natural origin scenarios of the COVID-19 pandemic remain plausible" You are reading far more into the January statement than is there. Nobody has denied that there may have been a lab incident. It is the origin of the new virus variant that is in question. There is ;longstanding credible and reliable data that shows the link between infectious disease and the Chinese wet markets. They are horrible evil places. There is also reliable evidence that shows that many of the worst variants of avian flus originate in Asia due to Asian agricultural and farming practices. SARS Cov-2 virus is a variant of an existing virus. It is not entirely new. Viruses evolve and new variants are regularly created. This is how the world exists. The general consensus is that the virus originated in China and is linked to the Chinese animal abuse customs and lack of hygiene at their markets. It is plausible that samples were taken of the new respiratory virus once it was manifested in humans, and sent for study at the laboratory. The outbreaks in China occurred at the same time the virus was under study and it may have infected lab workers who then infected the general public. Breaches have occurred at other infectious disease facilities. The virus itself mutates and as the multiple variants that appeared over the past five years demonstrate, shows the same pattern of modification as other SARS related viruses. The medical research consensus does not deny that there were samples of the virus at the lab, nor the regional origin of the virus. Rather, the question that has never been resolved was whether the viruses at the lab were derived from infected patients or whether they were the result of viral engineering. Past experience indicates that the viruses at the lab came from human sampling and that human error or maybe even sabotage allowed the virus to enter the general population. Claiming that the virus was human created, allows a distraction from the underlying ongoing problem of the wet markets, the oversight of the Chinese microbiology facilities and safety at those facilities. The Chinese research facilities do not have the same moral or ethical constraints that western facilities have. Unethical or sloppy research practice can result in catastrophic damage, but does not necessarily indicate or prove that a virus was engineered and then released.

The article doesn't claim Musk will abolish social security. Rather it quotes Republican President Eisenhower. You know, the military military veteran who was an integral part of the defeat of right wing extremism. President Dwight Eisenhower, Republican and war hero, could have been talking about Musk when he warned in 1954 of a handful of “Texas oil millionaires” attempting to abolish Social Security. “Their number is negligible and they are stupid,” he wrote. It is no secret that there is waste at the Social Security administration. The pressure to get money into the pockets of beneficiaries coupled with personnel shortages and an obsolete data management system facilitates mispayments and fraud. It is also no secret that the funding for social security is inadequate. The qualifying age to collect retiree / old age benefits does not reflect the longevity of the beneficiaries today. Medicare and Medicaid benefits are relatively generous for those who qualify, and are structured such that fraud in inevitable. This is what Musk is tasked with investigating and fixing. I am one of those people who believes that the qualifying age for SS benefits should be raised and that the parameters to qualify for medicare and medicaid benefits should be tightened. As such, I support the DOGE initiative. What I do not support is the methodology and the wholesale disrespect of good management practice for the sake of expediency and publicity. On the other hand, if the Republicans were to come right out and say that SS benefits were to be reduced and to be changed, particularly in respect to increasing contributions and/or raising the qualifying age, much of its support in the trailer park and age 50-60 group would disappear. The easiest thing to do is to restrict or reduce social security benefits for non residents. Non residents are not spending their money in the USA and should not benefit from its generosity. Let the beneficiaries collect only what they paid in and nothing more than that.

go to the online publication called the hill and it is opinion/5148448-elon-musk-targeting-social-security/ Or go to your online browser and search for thehill elon musk targeting social security

One of the saddest myths in the USA is that Republicans was the party that single handedly freed the slaves. The promotion of that exaggeration betrays an ignorance of US history, an ignorance so profound, that many US citizens repeat the revisionist history as if it was the truth, when it is a political myth and just not true. The US civil war started on April 12, 1861. Two years later, in January 1, 1863 the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. It was a limited in scope and was intended to harm the economy of the Confederacy. It was a military measure and not an attempt to correct a civil issue. It ONLY applied to the Confederate states that had seceded from the Union. Slavery was still allowed in the states that were still in the Union. Confederate states that were occupied by the Union were allowed to continue slavery. The proclamation permanency was conditional upon there being an absolute Union victory. Yes, eventually the slaves were supposedly freed. However, the Union allowed the south to create a system of laws and regulations that in effect enslaved the negroes again by means of an enforced penury and a denial of civil rights. The oppression of the Afro American was not exclusive to the south and was just as prevalent in the north. The Republican party of the North was a mixing pot of of different political parties and views; the Whigs, disgruntled Democrats, and the Liberty Party. It was the Liberty Party which was abolitionist. The Republican party had the stated position that while itwas opposed to slavery it accepted slavery within the states that allowed it. The party did not have an abolitionist position that would have freed the slaves and protected them from abuse. The Republicans, including Lincoln even offered the South a constitutional amendment that would have continued to allow slavery in the southern slave states. It was the Republican party and Lincoln that embraced the proposal of settling the "negroes" outside of the USA and of specifically excluding their presence in the regions to be settled. The new territories were to be exclusive for whites only.