Hey, for about ten solid minutes I thought the Village People were just doing a costume shtick like Paul Revere and the Roadies. A band with policeman, a construction worker, and an American Indian…OK, the American Indian looks a lot more like Screamin’ Jay Hawkins than Crazy Horse…
“Are you Siouxish? You don’t…look…Siouxish?”
You know what? Fuck Bunning and people who think like that. I want social welfare to continue until 100% of the people suffering and trying to get out of poverty can. If even ONE person is suffering in one of the wealthiest countries on earth, then it is one too many. So take as much taxes out of our paychecks as you need, government, until poverty is eliminated.
Refer to post 193 for my comments on that.
PS I don’t like the term welfare queen. It implies that living on the dole provides some kind of luxorious existence, which flies in the face of common sense. However I believe that humans can get used to a vast number of living circumstances, and being supported by the government for years, indeed decades, can (and is) viewed as a reasonable ‘career path’ by many in our society (and not just urban/ghetto culture).
No, I suspect that’s what many liberal politicians think. Do I have some kind of Lefty Constitution on my harddrive, signed by Reid, Pelosi, Clinton, and whoever else you feel is head of your party, stating such? Nope. I’m relying on logic here (something that the emotion-driven lefties here might try sometime).
Even if it’s not a conscious effort, even if it’s not part of some illumaniti-inspired conspiracy, it’s tough to deny the results. Much like the ill-fated efforts of the ‘war on drugs’ hasn’t wiped out drug use/abuse, Johnson’s 'war on poverty’hasn’t done much either… in fact, it’s performed pretty much as I’ve suggested:
Liberals or liberal politicians think that way only in the same way that Conservatives and conservative politicians think that the best way to run a country is to give all the money to their wealthy friends, crush dissent, and end up with a tiny minority living like kings rolling in their money pits, while the rest of the serfs toil in the fields doing the bidding of their masters.
That is to say, not at all.
A tip: when you post over the top hyperbole about what the other “side” is secretly thinking/planning, don’t be surprised when you are called on the B.S.
Your opinion that it’s BS/hyperbole. My opinion that some liberal politicians do think that way. And there’s a lot of people who agree with me, based on just a few of the links I put up there. In any case, as I posted last and evidently you missed, they certainly act that way, with concordant results.
When your opinion is over the top, ridiculous hyperbole, and you purport to know the evil thoughts that others are thinking…
You should perhaps consider keeping your opinion to yourself, lest others see you as a caricature of a right wing ideologue.
And cites from right wing ideologue bloggers who agree with you and chirp out the same hyperbole really does not bolster your argument that liberals actually WANT people trapped in a cycle of dependency.
Well, since our asshole-jerk Guido recently started attacking the Hartz-IV receipents (welfare, unemployed and others) with history-fail about Roman debauchery, I have the recent numbers for Germany:
Percentage of those Hartz-IV receivers able to work* where the official agency reduced their money after they turned down job offers:
** 3 % ** I’ll repeat that for you: THREE PERCENT.
Percentage of Hartz-IV receivers who the offical agency took to court or fined because of “abusing the system” - which could be receiving more than one benefit from different cities, or with different identities, or failing to disclose all assets **, ranging from outright cheating to simple mistakes with the damn paperwork
1,8 %
** under the new Hartz IV system, unlike the old unemployment system, you have to use up all your assets, including nest eggs, until you are properly poor, before you receive assistance from the state. And the law is incredibly strict each time a Hartz-IV person gets money from elsewhere, they cut the benefit. So if some grandparents give their grandkids 50 Euro for a special birthday, or 100 Euros to go on vacation once that would otherwise not be possible - the agency cuts the benefits to the parents. When the govt. raised the Childrens’ money *** recently on 10 Euros, the agency cut the Hartz IV money for the parents.
*** A small sum that all parents, regardless of how rich, receive, to help with raising a child, both because of values, because it’s written in the constitution that the state helps the families, and because future taxpayers and citizens have to come from somewhere, esp. if immigration is unwanted.
Now, contrast these real figures with the over 90% of Hartz IV people who desperatly need money from the state so as not to sleep on the street, who are generally considered as couch potatoes abusing the system, too lazy to work and so on. Of course, for the liberatarians it’s favourite to hit on the poorest who can’t defend themselves to score points with the dumb populist portion of the population.
To add another data point: A certain amount of Hartz IV receivers do have a job already, a full time one, but earn below what they need, so the state supplements the rest with Hartz IV. If the damned libertarians with their love of the free market above all wouldn’t block it, the SPD wanted to pass a minimum wage law that would prevent those situations.
First, epic fail on calling any Western European nation socialist. It marks you down as conservative or libertarian who has no clue.
Second, there are hard data available, like I cited above, which is what reasonable liberals argue with.
Well, I guess I won’t be changing the opinion of someone whose mind is so closed that they cannot even imagine that possibility; especially when the results of the last 50 years lend themselves nicely to that theory.
As for right wing ideologue bloggers… I don’t seem them as any more or less credible than the left wing ideologue bloggers. But that’s me, an independent/moderate. Those coming from an extreme leftwing position cannot see what seems at least possible, if not obvious, to many.
Constanze, from an American point of view, many Western European governments are socialist. To deny that cashes in all of your credibility chips on this issue, sorry.
Um, no. Just because American conservatives misuse a word consistently doesn’t mean that the new definition gets valid.
Bingo we have a winner.
I can’t imagine that the Time Cube is possible either, but hey, if you want to make up an imaginary history of nefarious liberals scheming to make sure that the peasants are trapped in a cycle of dependency to further their evil schemes, go for it.
Just don’t expect anyone to take you seriously.
You did have SPD chancellors from 1969-1982, and then again from 1998-2005.
Maybe not too many of the lefty extremists here in the SDMB Echo Chamber/Amen Corner, but a huge number of Americans believe exactly that. And the empirical evidence bears it out. And you won’t even consider the possibility. Sad.
No matter. Please, continue your ignorant stance.
PS Bush lied, people died, no blood for oil, Gore really won in 2000, etc.
Show us some empirical evidence, rather than pathetic blog posts then.
Some actual evidence that liberals are trying to make sure that people are trapped in a cycle of dependency, in order to further their political gains.
Saying that you (or others) think that they do is not “evidence”.
Your use of “empirical evidence” to prove that liberals want to keep poor people locked in a cycle of poverty is so devoid of logic I honestly think you are trolling.
Since Reagan started the drug war, the number of blacks in prison has increased 5 fold. Do you concede Reagan wanted to put blacks in prison?
I missed the edit window. I misspoke. I know Nixon started the war on drugs. Reagan heavily escalated it.
Keep the strawmen coming. No, really. I get it, that it’s your only card to play.
I said that many feel that some lefty (or liberal, if you prefer) politicians want to keep Americans trapped in a cycle of dependency through their policies, in a cynical attempt to ensure a constant (or growing) supply of constituents. Lots and lots of Americans believe that this is true. You can paint it as some extreme fringe all you like, but nobody looking at it objectively should disagree with me (or the millions who think like me).
Now, some liberal politicians probably believe that their policies (bigger government, ever more assistance to the great unwashed, etc) actually help to lift generations of people out of poverty. I’m not talking about them; they’re not cynical, just misguided. Few would disagree that LBJ’s war on poverty has been as big a failure as the war on drugs. Has poverty been eliminated since this ‘war’ was begun, in the State of the Union in January 1964? After how many billions of dollars? As Reagan said in a 1988 speech:
You seem to reject out of hand what so many have accepted as doctrine, with childlike demands for ‘proof’ (despite, to borrow a line from a current GD thread, the absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence). How crazy would it be for Dems (and liberal Repubs) to put some kind of manifesto like that down on paper?
At the end of the day, all I can do is to rely upon the logical capabilities of the liberals on this board (which may be a bridge too far, I see that now).
I believe the war on drugs was and is a huge mistake. I’m actually against all criminalization of drugs, at the federal level (states can do what they want). It’s not in the constitution, so the feds have no business putting their jack-booted noses into that issue.
To answer your question, do I believe that blacks were disproportionally caught up in the dragnet of crack enforcement? Sure. Was it likely that some tough-on-crime politicians wanted stricter penalties for crack vs powder coke because it was (still is?) mainly blacks who do crack, therefore the harsher penalties (10-1 worse than coke? someone’s got the link I’m sure) would get Tyrone and Shaniqua off the street and making big rocks into little rocks? Probably.