Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

depends on your definition of massive

Also depends on your definition of fraud. 

I absolutely agree that there is massive fraud in SS but that is largely because I consider the "Crazy Checks" that we have discussed upthread to be fraudulent. 

Per the interwebs:
fraud noun:  wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain. 

Well, I consider it manifestly "wrongful" for able-bodied people to collect "disability" checks when their only disability is that they like to drink/get high/smoke meth/shoot heroin/smoke crack, whatever. 

I don't have actual figures for the amount of this because SSI doesn't break down their payments by "things that @medinabuckeye1 considers fraud" and I do NOT think that all disability claimants are fraudulent.  If you are physically unable to work due to some trauma or medical issue that is what SSI Disability is for.  IMHO, it is NOT for people who would simply rather engage in their addictions than work. 

The amount of this is staggering.  Upthread I think it was @Gigem who commented about the prevalence of it in his area.  I can tell you that my wife worked in addiction counseling for a County Health Department and nearly all of her clients were on SSI Disability and they all called them "crazy checks". 

I'm enough of a libertarian (hat tip to @betarhoalphadelta ) that I don't really care too much about drug use PROVIDED that the user is paying for their non-working lifestyle with their own money.  However, it infuriates me that we as taxpayers are forced to subsidize the non-working lifestyle of what have to be MILLIONS of addicts who should be working for a living. 

EDIT to add:
I should have clarified in the last paragraph that not all addicts are non-working.  My wife did have a few clients who were what are sometimes called "functioning addicts".  These folks were addicts but they somehow managed to sober up and work then go back to being addicts.  

The disability part likely has quite a  bit of fraud, I agree.  I was thinking old folks.  

Ed Zachery
Enabling the addition with tax dollars is NOT a solution

I also think that this could be a political goldmine for Trump/Musk.  If Democrats choose to be the party of checks for addicts my guess is that they'll find themselves actually losing seats in the midterm. 

Never underestimate the Republican Party's penchant for crappy marketing and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.  

This probably wouldn't mean anything to you, but regardless of the merits of an issue, if Democrats are Florida's old AD, Scott Foley, then Republicans are LSU's old AD, Joe Alleva.  Could be right about everything and still lose the PR war in a rout.  

Never underestimate the Republican Party's penchant for crappy marketing and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. 

I think really since the Tea Party rise, the Republicans have been MUCH better about presenting a single unified message.

Obama was a good enough politician that he overcame it, but in general the Democrats have been a mess.  One time they won by saying "we get you hate Trump, so give us a sec to figure it out", and then they were like "oh, so run Biden again, and have everyone campaign on not being Trump!"

I'm actually hoping this starts a backlash around running negative, when a whole party ran on a platform that was literally "not him".

I'm actually hoping this starts a backlash around running negative, when a whole party ran on a platform that was literally "not him".

My theory on negative campaigning and I'd be interested in the thoughts of others but particularly @SFBadger96 who actually has campaign experience.  

In a local race I think that negative campaigning is not effective.  The issue is that too many people know both candidates or at least know somebody that knows somebody that knows each candidate.  Consequently, if I'm running against @SFBadger96 for a seat on City Council and he calls me a dirty-rotten-so-and-so, I think that blows back in his face because there are enough people in our local Council Ward that say (basically):

• Hey wait a minute, I met @medinabuckeye1 at the grocery store, he seems like a nice guy, or
• Hey wait a minute, my kids played soccer with @medinabuckeye1 's kids, he seems like a nice guy, or
• Hey wait a minute, my parents go to church with @medinabuckeye1 's parents, they seem like a nice family, or
• etc.  

However, as races become less local, the impact of this is diluted until it becomes statistically irrelevant.  So if I'm running against @SFBadger96 for Congress in a district of ~800k people there simply aren't enough people who know either of us let alone both of us to where there is any significant blowback from negative campaigning.  Also, there are a LOT of people who think that all politicians are dirty so we call each other dirty-rotten-so-and-so's, a nontrivial portion of the electorate thinks we are BOTH right.  

By the time you get to the Presidential level it is possible that a majority or at least a plurality believe that they are both dirty/crappy/whatever so negative campaigning is just a given.  

Negative campaining is the most effective kind.

My proposal is that any political ad cannot use a candidate's name other than the one being supported.

We consistently end up with two flawed (in my view) candidates for public office with occasional exceptions.