I am SO disappointed.

[trof]

A youngish professional woman in my neighborhood sent me the outraged "No Social Security for illegal aliens" email 'petition' which has been making the rounds for some 3 years now.

You can read it, and all about it, here:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/petition.asp

I usually just delete these.
But this time I couldn't
I thought she was more intelligent than this.
:-(

She evidently did send it to all on her email list.
:eyes:
I replied.

"I rarely 'reply all' to these things because I don't want to embarrass the person who sent it to me. And I don't now, either.

But at some point (this one, I guess) I have to draw the line and try to help folks understand how these things work.

Maybe most important is that online petitions to politicians are a waste of time. And bandwidth. Politicians ONLY pay attention to petitions from voters in their districts, and then only if they are on paper with verifiable names and addresses.

Next, PLEASE check these out with www.snopes.com or some other fact checker of your choice. I've found snopes to be very accurate and up to date with their research. Some right wingers think they're left wing, and some left wingers think they're right wing, so I think they're probably getting it right.

According to snopes:
"This item is a textbook example of the worst aspects of Internet petitions: It treats a non-existent issue, and suggests dealing with it in a largely ineffective manner.

This petition is an updating of one which first began circulating in mid-2006 ("President Obama" substituted for "President Bush"), and thus the referenced Senate action took place not "last week" but back in May 2006. Moreover, the Senate did not vote in May 2006 to "grant Social Security benefits to illegal aliens" — as we covered in a separate article, back then the Senate tabled a prospective amendment that would have prohibited former illegals who had since gained legal status from being given credit for payments they had previously made into the Social Security system."
http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/petition.asp

Peace, y'all.
(trof)
:shrug:

[SharonAnn]

1. Good for you! Most of my friends (and even acquaintances) know that

if they something like that to me, they'll get and answer sent to "Reply All".

I rarely get these anymore. They may have stopped this kind of crap, or maybe they just took me off their email list.

[monmouth]

2. I thought that meme died ages ago...Well, you did the right thing...n/t

[liberal N proud]

3. It matters not how many times you prove these emails as propaganda

They will keep sending them. All you can do is respond with the truth.

[colorado thinker]

4. I did the same thing to the same bogus email

two days ago. I sent it reply all.

It amazes me that all the educated people in this country who forward this crap over and over again apparently are incapable of opening Snopes and checking this stuff out before they hit "send" to their address books.

Don't we teach people to read anymore? Or is it just the thinking part we no longer teach?

Sad state of affairs. It is up to those of us who are capable of critical thinking to challenge this stuff every time we see it and send it back "Reply All".

[stuntcat]

5. good on you!

I would have chickened out.. well I wouldn't have been able to respond that well anyway.

[EFerrari]

6. The irony is that undocumented workers who put into SS and can't draw

are likely keeping it afloat.

It's a good thing people only have one nose they can cut off.

[depakid]

7. A LOT of undocumented workers actually pay into social security

that they'll never receive.

[cilla4progress]

8. Inappropriate forward

My daughter's teacher sent it to me from her SCHOOL email! I thought that was entirely inappropriate. I replied, "did you send this to me in error?" Of course, idiot that she is, she replied "no! :) ". GAWD.. I thought I could bust her bigtime with school administrators, but it would have been bad payback for my daughter, so I decided to hold my fire...this time.

[noiretextatique]

9. i respond to them all the time

don't send me ignorant shit, please. you will be called on it.