I especially like how she has completely forgotten that she got all bent out of shape a few pages back when people tried to ask about her supposed ‘volunteer work’:
So she doesn’t have to prove anything and we should just assume that she is a great person who does lots of nice things. But if you don’t want to give all the specifics about your charitable giving, well then you clearly have something to hide.
Don’t be so sure. Any proposal to “scrap” the system that would terminate her own monthly slurping of the government tit would not, I suspect, be met with thunderous applause from curlcoat’s direction.
Oh no, if that happened we’d be treated to endless whinging about how much she’s contributed to society and how much she’s paid into the system. Never mind that by her own admission she was earning less than minimum wage for a good chunk of her ‘career’, so I’ve got to wonder how much tax she ever did pay in.
Apparently she can be sure that absolutely none of the children or parents aided by government programs are ever going to go on to contribute to society or pay in in the form of taxes. I suppose this is related to her belief that most welfare families stay on welfare for multiple generations, which doesn’t seem to be based on any facts at all.
Uh, mentioning it twice is not “fixated”. I just find it telling that you insist that I pay for something that you are not doing more than the bare minimum for, particularly since you claim you are making a bunch of money. I also find it interesting that this is all you chose to respond to out of my whole post. You do this a lot.
That wasn’t even close to “bent out of shape” - note the lack of cuss words for example. It was exactly what I said it was - I am completely unconcerned with my “public perception” WRT folks like you.
No, again, it is exactly what I said. I volunteer mostly in matters related to dogs, and to a smaller extent, cats. Which I know you all wouldn’t consider to be “a great person who does lots of nice things” because it has nothing to do with things that you find important. So, if anything, I am simply too lazy to list out these things when I know all you all are going to do is say something along the lines of “none of that counts!”.
[QUOTE=Vinyl Turnip]
Don’t be so sure. Any proposal to “scrap” the system that would terminate her own monthly slurping of the government tit would not, I suspect, be met with thunderous applause from curlcoat’s direction.
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Since I’m not doing that, it wouldn’t affect me at all. OTOH, if a proposal included our paying significantly less taxes, I wouldn’t have a problem with losing my SS.
Could you show me, please, where I make any claim whatsoever regarding my charitable contributions, or even hint at it one way or another?
You dodged the subject three times.
Oh, I forgot - you are not allowing Idle Thoughts to have his precious last word!
I wasn’t aware “that’s private information, and I don’t care to divulge it” was a dodge.
It wouldn’t be, if you’d actually said that.
Look, this is getting ridiculous. It really looks like you are making shit up and you avoid responding whenever it looks like I’ve caught you on something. Or throw insults. If you actually want to address the subject, then do so. If you just want to act like a, er, kindergardner you’ll be doing it on you own. Children bore me.
I did address the subject. In the absence of data concerning how many children are ACTUALLY born in the circumstances you are concerned about, I am content in my twin beliefs that A) it’s actually rare as hell, and constitutes a miniscule number of the children on welfare, who are themselves a small (but not small enough) number of the total children in the US, and B) you’re a shrill, petty little woman who cares more about a percentage point of her income than the welfare of children.
Well, when I read the first part of that, I was willing to spend the time to find the cites again and show you that various people, organizations and even the government are seeing a link between children born into poverty and on going problems with crime and continued welfare use.
But forget that. First explain to me why you feel that I should ignore my future by continuing to pay more and more in taxes to support children that their parents were irresponsible enough to have when they couldn’t afford them. Why is it that you feel that any random child, who may or may not have even been wanted by it’s parents, should be more important to me than whether or not I outlive my retirement funds?
In other words, why does your love of children mean that I am required to place these kids above my concerns for the well being of me and mine? You don’t care about us, why do you demand that I care about strangers just because you say you care about them?
If you really do care about children other than your own, educate yourself on the last three or four decades of welfare.
My taxes, both in nominal percentage and in actual percentage, have been steadily dropping for the last two decades.
Enrollment in welfare has been steadily dropping for the last 15 years.
So seriously, what the HELL are you worrying about?
Considering that health care (more of the funds go to seniors than welfare recipients) and pensions (most of which are in the form of social security) make up 34% of the federal budget, and welfare a mere 11%, I don’t think you need to worry too much. The social safety net is supposed to be for everyone.
What was it Idle Thoughts said earlier? Ah, here it is - “In other words, you got nothing.”
The thing with Medicare and Social Security is that almost all of the people who are getting those benefits paid into them while they were working and contributing to society. Yes, the social safety net is supposed to be for everyone, but the growing problem are those who don’t view it as a safety net but as a way to make a living.
Plus, you’ve got welfare at 11% but that doesn’t include the funds that go to Medicaid which would be part of your 34%. Also, those numbers don’t seem to cover food stamps, subsidized daycare, subsidized education and other things that seem to have slipped my mind (too many pain pills today). But even if it was just 11%, if we had a tax cut of 11%, we would have paid almost $2000 less in income tax this year. I could use an extra $150 a month now, and when my husband retires in four years, that extra might end up being very important.
If by “nothing” you mean, “I, curlcoat, have not proven my assertions, and am worried about the opposite of what is actually happening in the country today”, well, you’re free to redefine the words as you want.
Maybe you should have planned better, if so little money is going to cause you problems. 
No, I mean you Zeriel have once again ducked answering direct questions from me.
Problems, no. Lack of ability to maintain our current lifestyle? Maybe. Again, explain to me why the selfish choices of others should trump what we want to do with our lives.
Everyone pays taxes for things that they don’t personally use. It’s called living in a society. I’m pretty sure that everyone could find something else fun to do with their tax money if they got to keep it, but I’m also pretty sure you wouldn’t really enjoy living in anarchy.
Anyway, if you really are so terribly concerned about that $150 a month you apparently need to keep your little McMansion empire going, why don’t you do something about it? Petition the government, start a letter writing campaign, spearhead a campaign for change, hell, even just vote. If you just want to sit there and bitch without doing anything, maybe you secretly know that this is all bullshit.
Over half those health care costs go to seniors, so you’ve still got welfare under 20%. Welfare, by the way, includes food assistance and housing as well as things that people pre-pay into, such as worker’s comp and unemployment.
How do you feel about the fact that, for every dollar we put into food stamps, over a dollar is generated in the economy? I feel like, even if I wasn’t a dirty socialist who thought that people evolved to help one another and governments were simply a more efficient means to do so, that that would seem to be an excellent way to spend taxes to revitalize the economy. People don’t starve, the people most likely to be victims rather than the perpetrators of an economic crisis are helped, and the economy is improved. I’d prefer my taxes going to that rather than to bailouts to companies who keep paying their executives top bonuses for destroying our economy.
Another question that I have: okay, so you don’t like people who have kids when they are poor. Whatever, we’ll agree to disagree on that point. Why do you want to punish the kids for this? My mom was on welfare, and if she wasn’t, my brother and I both would’ve died as toddlers. I had a ruptured appendix, he had double pneumonia that led to severe asthma. Those are both pretty horrible ways to die, and there’s no way my family could’ve paid for hospitalization, surgery, and the necessary medications. Mom wasn’t getting help from her family, my father was a complete jackass, and the churches and so on around her preferred to judge her for her sins rather than deal with the situation at hand. Should I have died in pain because of my mother? Even without our health problems, my brother and I undoubtedly would have starved, since even on food stamps we were eating ketchup sandwiches by the end of the month because that’s all we had, and I promise that my mother was not buying lobster and steaks. Is it better to starve poor children than to pay slightly higher taxes? Forget about my mother; you won’t say anything about her I won’t get pissed off about, and I won’t say anything that will make you think of her as a fallible human being rather than a horrible leech. What should have happened to me and my brother? Does it change your mind at all that, thanks to governmental help, I’m getting a higher degree, my brother works two jobs and is planning to become a teacher, and my mom is now in the higher quarter of the middle tax bracket? All of which means, of course, that we’re hardworking taxpayers. Even if, by some miracle, we had no health issues and managed to escape starvation, I can tell you now that we would not have managed to get so far without governmental assistance.
I don’t believe that the children in question are actually affecting your retirement funds, because I don’t believe there are enough of them to make up any appreciable portion of the children on welfare.
I don’t believe that you are doing that, because there is no evidence that those kids make up enough of the budget to matter.
You’ve essentially said you have nothing against people who are not perpetually on welfare and not making stupid decisions, you only want to cut off the people who use the safety net as a full-time, long-term crutch. I don’t believe you’ve shown ANY factual data that indicates the latter people even exist in any appreciable quantity, especially since 1996 when welfare at the federal level was specifically redesigned to cut them off.
Wasn’t that obvious? I mean, it’s only been my whole line of argument.
That isn’t even close to the point but thanks for playing.
If I could afford a McMansion and/or an empire, do you think I’d even notice $150?
Huh. I wasn’t aware that venting on an anonymous message board required that I also get involved in politics.
So then you’d need to find out how much of that 20% is worker’s comp and unemployment benefits. Not that it really matters since it is probably something like 15% and that is a hell of a lot of money.
That may be important right now, but during normal times that plus is seriously outweighed by the minus of having so many people living in poverty.
This is a short sighted view - once the economy is back on it’s feet, you still have all these children born into poverty, many of whom repeat the cycle.
This question is, I’m sorry, really stupid. For one thing, I’d think that living so poor that you qualify for welfare at birth, would be plenty of punishment, yet people who support welfare don’t seem to see a problem with that. For another, there are ways to support the children without supporting the women who decided from their own selfishness to have babies knowing they couldn’t possibly bring them up in a half way decent environment. As it is now, we just throw money at them and hope they’ll go away.
I see that your mother’s selfish decision to have two kids with a complete jackass isn’t being addressed here. And then she kept you both instead of giving you up for adoption in hopes that you would end up in a better place? How does the fact that she was able to get welfare mean you ended up with the best possible life?
If you were the common result of growing up on welfare, I wouldn’t have a problem with it at all because now you and your brother are not likely to end up raising kids on welfare yourselves.
That’s nice - I’d love to be able to believe whatever I want. Not that you answered the questions - again.
just another example how the Republican party, supposedly the “good Christian” party, is so devoid of actual Christian values. What did Jesus actually teach? Love your enemies, Violence is wrong, Compassion and Forgiveness - turn the other cheek, Accumulation of material wealth is not the way into heaven, be kind to your fellow man, care for the poor, etc. Sounds like a damn liberal commie to me! And now general “sharing” by 5 year olds is under fire! How on earth do the Republicans get away with claiming to be good Christians? It seems Jesus’ teaching are diametrically opposed to Conservatism. Quite the hypocrisy if you ask me.