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CDC gets list of forbidden words

(www.washingtonpost.com)
382 points js2 | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.404s | source
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tptacek ◴[] No.15937484[source]
If I understand this well, and it's likely I don't, but for the sake of argument assume I do? Then the most important thing to know about this story is that it's about the President's budget document (which is assembled with input from all the Executive Branch departments).

That budget is one of the more elaborate charades in Washington. Congress controls the budget by passing laws allocating funds to departments. The President can't not spend money allocated to those departments. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of the budget goes to stuff that is effectively non-discretionary; for instance, to Medicare and Social Security entitlements spending.

Banning words, and these words in particular, is batshit. I'm probably not alarming many people on HN when I say this is a batshit administration.

But this is about the words the administration is soliciting from a department for an elaborate marketing document. Someone tell me why, apart from the principles and precedents of it all, any of this matters?

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yequalsx ◴[] No.15937941[source]
A nitpick. Social Security and Medicare are not entitlements. One is a mandatory pension plan that people pay into and whose benefits are based on what you put in. The other is a mandatory health insurance plan that people pay into. As such it is wrong to call them entitlements.
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1. enraged_camel ◴[] No.15937984[source]
No, that is the actual definition of the term “entitlement”: people are literally entitled to those things.
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2. yequalsx ◴[] No.15939987[source]
If you don’t pay into SS then you don’t get retirement benefits from it. You are wrong on Social Securty. With Medicare you are entitled to enroll in it when you reach a certain age, even if you haven’t ever paid Medicare taxes, but you still have to pay the premiums. Medicaid is the entitlement.