Support children whose parents aren’t in need, remember?
I wanna take part in the longest Pit-thread too. 
Anyway, I just wanted to post that I think people should lay off the whole disability thing. There are plenty of illnesses that would make it difficult to hold down a job, while still making it possible to post on the Internet and once in a while take a long drive. I have a chronic illness that leads to me being away from work 3-4 days a month, in addition I need to have flexible hours in the morning, because mornings are often the worst time and I’m not always able to do anything before the painkillers kick in. Somedays I’m well enough to go to work, go for a run after work, make dinner, do housework etc. Other days I can barely move from the bed to the bathroom.
My employer is nice about it, it probably helps that I do a really good job when I’m at work and that the government pays for my sick days. (the Norwegian government considers that a better deal than having people like me on welfare, I tend to agree :)) However, in an at-will state or with a brand new employer where I hadn’t proven myself yet, people like might have a hard time holding down a job.
So I don’t think Curlcoat’s disability claims are all that inconsistent. Her “It’s not welfare if you paid taxes at some point, children take all my money, playgrounds are evil” is where the insanity lies. Please get back to the hating children thing. It’s what I love about this thread. 
Oh, and by the way, I really like kids, don’t have any of my own, don’t mind paying for others’ kids through my taxes and don’t get overly annoyed when they cry. I don’t get a migraine from them laughing either, if I did we’d have to move as we live next to two kindergartens.
Two forms of arthritis - rheumatoid and osteo. I was Dx’d with the RA in high school and the osteo is the result of using healthy joints to compensate for bad ones. By now I don’t have any joints I can count on. I also have the fatigue that goes with RA, as well as IBD due to the drugs I’ve had to take most of my life. Every year my life gets narrower, choices fewer. I am in pain every minute of every day and when it is really bad, I drug it to death. Employers don’t want to put up with any of that.
You are going to have to quote the post that you have misunderstood. The closest that is to the actual truth is that I have had two service dogs over the years, both of which I trained. I currently have one service dog and one young dog. If they required a bunch of care that disabled people couldn’t handle, there wouldn’t be much good would they? I also have a husband ya know, to do the heavy lifting.
But then, you are just proving once again you don’t know diddly about the subject.
A condition of accepting any sort of aid would be accepting a contraceptive shot. Don’t want the shot? You don’t get the money, then. Anyone turning up pregnant, or found to have impregnated someone, is disqualified for assistance until the child is 18.
Exactly. Nobody’s forcing them to take the contraceptive, but if they don’t they can’t force the government to give them money. Didn’t mean to ignore Rubystreak, I think I got distracted by somebody else. I would apply this to anyone on unemployment compensation or disability as well–sorry, can’t work to support yourself you can’t work to support more kids either. But I’m cold-hearted like that. Myself, I’ve been on Depo since I was 18. It’s effective and convenient, plus it eliminates all that nasty endometriosis shit.
In a perfect world, I’d totally agree with you. In fact, in theory I do agree with you. What stops me, is that when you’re denying the child the essentials they need to survive.
I hate that people keep bringing children into the world that they can’t afford. It pisses me off when I know some good people who work hard to keep their heads above water and don’t have insurance, but some woman will have a child and automatically get a health card for her and her child. But, I’m also glad that at least this part of our population gets the help they need. Hell, ALL of us deserve healthcare and I hope the President can accomplish that. Still, that’s another thread.
Not everyone has a safety net to fall into. If I were unable to support myself and got pregnant and actually kept the kid (fat chance!), I have a family that would help me every step of the way. Not everyone has that. There are a lot of marginalized people in society, people who almost don’t stand a chance. We have to protect children who don’t have responsible parents. No matter what the parents have done and no matter how stupid the parents are, the child is innocent.
Denying support to someone who got pregnant while receiving welfare would punish the child. Just the thought of it really being like that makes my stomach flip.
And no, we can’t just take those kids away from people to support them and not the parent. That would cost as much (if not more) than the welfare they’d receive for having one more child.
First of all, I’d like to point out that I’m one of those people who works their ass off and has no insurance. I’ve been responsible. I’ve graduated high school, got married (and then separated), stayed on birth control. I own a house and a car. I work in food service for about $1000 a month. That covers food for myself and 8 animals, utilities, internet access, a cell phone, and car and homeowners’ insurance. Health insurance? Nope. Life insurance? Nope. Cable? Nope. Anything else at all? Nope. I haven’t had any new clothes in over a year. I don’t get nice new things like the latest phones or ipods, I don’t buy cds, I don’t eat out, I don’t go out to the clubs because I never have the 10 bucks to get in. I’m not eligible for a pell grant, medicaid, food stamps, or in fact any type of government assistance. If my car breaks down tomorrow, I walk to work. Because I am responsible and I take care of my shit, I get nothing.
My brother, on the other hand, dropped out of school, moved in with his girlfriend and subsequently knocked her up. He works part time in a department store for minimum wage and has dropped out of community college classes as well. They are now eligible for section 8 housing, medicaid, WIC, food stamps, and grants to go to school. Because my brother was stupid, he gets everything handed to him.
I suppose you can understand that I’m a little bitter.
However, I do see where you’re coming from. It isn’t my niece’s fault that her parents did something irresponsible. That doesn’t mean we have to give them money though. We can house them and provide food in the form of actual food that they would pick up at a designated location. We could give them a debit card that only works at gas stations. We could give them clothes/diapers/toys/etc. that again, they pick up at a designated location at a designated time. Free healthcare for the kid, but not for them. We provide daycare and career counselling and education to get them back on track and require that they remain on birth control until they are no longer utilizing any government assistance. It’s not hard to support the kid without just giving the parents a free ride, we just have to crack down and actually do it. It would be expensive at first, but as more and more people see that the government isn’t going to coddle them for 18 years if they have a kid, they’ll start thinking twice about having another kid.
Won’t someone please think of the children… who I hate… fuckin’ stupid little snot-nosed twerps…
Maybe you need to spend a little more time proving you ARE disabled. The government doesn’t believe you are and they’re the ones calling the shots.
curlcoat I am still waiting for these answers …
Hey, I took my birth control for 20 years like a good girl, no unwanted babies, and it pisses me off to see how little people regard the responsibility of children. I totally understand and I’m right there with you. However, if you force poor people to use birth control as a condition of their support, you’d get people crying “Eugenics!” and discrimination. You’d also probably get religious people screaming their heads off, because they do no believe in birth control, and definitely would not be OK with mandated use of it. Hell, they don’t want us to talk about it in school, they think it’s promoting sexuality. Go ahead, start a thread on it, you’ll see what I mean. It’s just not going to happen in this country, no matter what a good idea it is. I think that’s the bottom line, all the “in a perfect world” stuff aside. So, we are stuck with these kids, who, through no fault of their own, drew these parents in the cosmic lottery. If we help them as much as we can, maybe they won’t turn out like their parents. To me, that’s the best justification for spending money on kids-- the hope that they will grow up to be good citizens and good people.
But it’s not eugenics at all, or at least not on purpose. My answer to them would be go back to school, get a better job, find a better place for yourself in life, then have all the kids you want. I’m surrounded by poverty and I know personally how hard it is to pull yourself out of it. But I’m not going to be poor forever. My in-laws told us that we were never going to be able to afford kids, we’d just have to have them anyway. Fuck them. If we were still together we’d have finished renovating the house by now, and both have safe cars and stable jobs and our bachelor’s degrees by now. We could be paying back our student loans and planning a family right now if we wanted. Apart, it’s taken that much longer but that’s not the point–you can pull yourself out of the cycle. I’m doing it right now, slowly but surely. But if I had a kid, I’d only be digging myself further in. We need to stop people from digging themselves further in. If the religious nuts wanted to pitch a fit and refuse the b/c, they wouldn’t get welfare. Simple as that. At some point, they’d just have to stop fucking.
That’s what I think sometimes when I’m stuck in a crowd. I say, Godfuckingdamn this is a lot of people! This kind of shit wouldn’t happen if people would just stop fucking.
We don’t need to hand out welfare checks and food stamps to the parents. We need to hand out instructions for writing resumes and community college applications. A hand up rather than a hand out, as it were. We can directly give them food and clothes for the kids they do have, and let the schools have a few extra bucks to supply paper, pencils, calculators, etc. Giving the parents a free ride just because they broke a cheap condom won’t help those kids grow up to be good citizens. We can help the kids just fine without subsidizing the parents meth habits, is all I’m saying.
How did I get dragged into *this *thread? Holy hell, kick *one *toddler and you’re labeled as a kid-hater for life!
starwarsfreek, I think you should start a thread about your idea. I’d be interested to see what people say. Start it in GD though, not the Pit.
This strikes me as awfully hard-hearted. I doubt that as a society we are quite ready to accept the sight of people actually starving in the streets for the crime of reproduction, however laudable the social goal.
I am sure that the many religious and political organizations who are against birth control would be more than happy to take these people in and feed and clothe them. After all, these people were doing God’s will by getting pregnant/getting someone pregnant.
They say they are, but the orphanages are still full of kids who are less than ideal adoption candidates.
If “religious charity” was the answer to our social problems, welfare wouldn’t be necessary at all.
You’re right, of course, it’s just that I still have a bitter taste in my mouth about “faith based” organizations getting government money for doing social work formerly done by the government.