Republicans block unemployment leaving 900,000 with no income and no where to turn.
Using the filibuster to leave Americans destitute and by the side of the road is WRONG.
Will some older workers need to draw against social security earlier than anticipated?
Will state welfare funds take yet another hit?
Will the foreclosure crisis once again roar with the next wave of destitute homeowners walking away from their mortgages because they have neither found new jobs, nor receive unemployment?
Where are these Republicans hearts and minds? Not with these unemployed workers
Where is the ccc for the new workers, age 18-24 who are stuck in limbo?
Where is the wpa to ensure economic stability for families and to make use of the skills of those willing to work?
Not enough new jobs are being created for those graduating into the workforce, or those who are not yet ready to retire, and have skills and experience but whose jobs have gone overseas due to the economic policies and short sighted corporate policy to maximize short term profit while sucking the USA dry.
Conservatives would say that the role of the state is not to dispense alms and charity. Doing so with tax dollars is coercive. The well-off and altruistic should be able to make their own charity choices.
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p>They’d also argue that the economy and hence the unemployed would be better off if incentives aimed people toward working not remaining unemployed.
I don’t agree with any of that, but I don’t think that it’s purely heartlessness that drives them to make such votes. I’m not sure what making that accusation accomplishes.
The “incentive” argument seems to assume that people aren’t looking for work, or aren’t looking hard enough, or something. But when the statisticians say jobs have gone overseas, or been eliminated, doesn’t that suggest that they’re just gone? Look for them all you want- you won’t find them. I doubt most conservatives really believe there to be am infinite supply of jobs in America. If they don’t really believe that, then perhaps they believe charities are sufficient to sustain unemployed families indefinitely. You think they really believe that?
I don’t. So I’ll go with the fact that a lot of ’em just don’t care, and are in fact greedy, selfish, and yes- heartless.
Uh, conservatives tend to believe rather strongly in the power of the free market and in the power of incentives. Every now and then, they’re right.
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p>I think they have the economics completely wrong about the current recession. (A favorite game of mine is to tease Cool Cal from next door about his year old, dire predictions regarding inflation: Inflation has dropped very low of late.) As Lakoff points out and the Sotomayor fight confirmed, empathy is not one of their central values.
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p>Maybe, maybe, there’s something to the accusation of greediness, but a number of studies seem to show that conservatives contribute more to charity than liberals do. That’s consistent, after all, with their view about the large role of private virtue and the limited role of government.
I get so tired of that trotted out as some example of how much conservatives care, more than communist liberals.
or overestimate their charitable giving for surveys. But I haven’t really reviewed the studies, so I don’t know.
liberals tax for charitable purposes. I’m not sure that I see that much of a difference.
Liberals believe in a public responsibility for the least of these, not just a private one.
Large scale government deficit spending is inflationary, at least in the long term, and could eventually be a concern.
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p>At the moment, of course, the inflationary pressure isn’t causing inflation so much as it is preventing deflation, which would be much, much worse.
but I’d bet a lot of them would say that if it weren’t for The Illegal Alien Menace®, there would be jobs for all. I don’t think they care that those are crappy, sub-poverty-line jobs, because that’s another issue, and we’re just talking about unemployment here.
All that stuff about “the role of the state” is just a rationalization for greed. Jim Crow era segregationists used an analogous state’s rights excuse to rationalize their racism.
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p>I think it’s long past time that we started speaking the truth about what these maroons are about. Blocking unemployment? Apologizing to BP? Get real.
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p>Today’s GOP “policy” is nothing more than a very thin veneer of lipstick sprayed on a pig of racism, greed, selfishness, xenophobia, and hate — all driven by fear, insecurity, and guilt/projection.
It’s an incredibly powerful and attractive rationalization for people who tend to be selfish and short-sighted. They are already inclined to believe that they deserve what they have and more, and that the fact that they have it means anyone must be able to get it. If those people don’t have it, they must not be trying hard enough. Once the selfish accept the rationalization in one area, it seems to apply in many areas. Voila: libertarianism!
Of course, on some of this I agree. The Congressional Republicans appear to have given up on policy altogether in favor of inflammatory sound bites, e.g., their “budget” without numbers. They’re even willing to put forth contradictory sound bites (Government too over-reaching/Obama responsible for Gulf) provided they’re sufficiently inflammatory. Right now, I suspect they’re trying to find the political space where they can be most helpful to their oily friends without jeopardizing their populist cred. Barton’s comments were simply a miscalculation in that cynical endeavor.
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p>However, not all Republicans are in Congress and not all Republicans are wealthy. I seem to recall we have states like Utah and South Carolina. Many of those folks seem happy to support people whom we’d characterize as pro-greed.
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p>I doubt it’s politically useful to assert that conservatives are abhorrent moral cretins. After all, conservatives often seem to find liberals self-indulgent, pro-dependency, and lax on all kinds of security questions — i.e., the feeling is mutual. Political questions almost always reduce to moral ones.
I have no problem with conservatives accusing me of being “self-indulgent, pro-dependency, and lax on all kinds of security questions.” Such criticism forces me to reexamine my views, and occasionally even spurs me to modify them.
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p>I think it’s long past time that we started calling an elected minority who block needed unemployment benefits what they are. I didn’t say “moral cretins”, that’s your turn of phrase.
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p>I wrote “racism, greed, selfishness, xenophobia, and hate – all driven by fear, insecurity, and guilt/projection”, and I stand by it. I think that’s an accurate characterization of these elected representatives, and of the electorate they pander to. I hope that there are some conservatives left who react the same way. Such garbage wouldn’t be put out there if at least some of the electorate responds positively to it — that portion of the electorate needs to be criticized, regardless of the political consequences.
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p>I think that when those of us who know better keep silent when we hear these abhorrent attitudes being expressed on the floor of the Capital, we only enable them.
You put words in my “mouth” – I called no one heartless but rather queried as to what values were demonstrated and, in another fashion “What WERE they thinking”…
Not being a mind-reader, I cannot tell you for sure.
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p>Taking some of them literally, they believe in some happy combination of what Krugman calls “freshwater economics”, libertarianism, and Reaganism. The paper cited by HesterPrynne below points to some of the policy arguments those guys are making.
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p>We have reached an odd point in our national debate where each side thinks the other’s theoretical framework is a thin tissue of rationalization.
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p>Conservatives certainly seem to think that neo-Keynesian economics is nonsense and only serves as an excuse for us Democrats to lavish money on our constituencies.
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p>Any liberal with half a brain finds their peculiar faith in the free market hard to take seriously too. For example, the idea that an unregulated market for health insurance would give us better health insurance runs smack into obvious objections. (Think adverse selection.) Alan Greenspan’s former belief that fraud requires no regulation because the market would take care of punishing it seems as detached from reality as it is ideologically pure.
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p>Even if their policies are objectively greedy, one could debate whether they are misguided (brain) or greedy (heart).
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p>It’s hard to say.
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p>But why do not so well off Republicans continue to vote Republican?
We had the savings and loan crisis in the 1980s, and the government picked up much of the tab.
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p>In the Great Recession, we have the government saving “too big to fail” financial outfits, with alleged conservatives leading the charge.
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p>I happen to agree that intervening to prevent a complete meltdown was the right course of action, but where were the ideological purists then? They’re awfully quiet when market interference benefits large corporations at the expense of everyone else.
were intensely controversial on the wings of both parties, on the left for benefiting rich people and corporations, and on the right on anti-interventionism grounds.
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p>Thank goodness there were moderates in both parties who were willing to do thing right thing, ideology notwithstanding.
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p>Republican incumbents are falling to Tea Party people this season because they supported TARP. The guy from Utah, in particular.
and I felt TARP was the best we could get and it was necessary and was relieved it passed. And yes, there was a lot wrong with it.
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p>The problem, in my mind, is not extremism so much as those occasions when populist impulse leads to bad policy.
I don’t necessarily view you as an one devoted to follow ideology, wherever it may lead, which I why I read what you write here.
railing against the bill in October 2008.
Of course, I agree with you. The markets aren’t really free. Nor should they be. I happen to like drug regulation, food safety, OSHA, the SEC, and the 5 day work week.
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p>There were plenty of Republicans who objected to TARP and were unwilling to vote for it. Likewise there were conservatives who favored running the huge social experiment of seeing what happens when our financial sector is destroyed.* To them, the brisk tonic of business failure could only strengthen our decedent economy.
*There were populists on the left open to the same experiment.
the well off and altruistic usually make decisions about the perceived quality of those who need the help and make their donations accordingly, leaving out multitudes of people who deserve help but the well off disapprove of.
Liberals tend to support systematic do-gooding. Young, non-teenage, innocent orphans will attract charity. Equally needy homeless, adult alcoholics with unpleasant character disorders don’t look good on posters.
What makes it even worse is that in order for our elected “Democrats” to triangulate against this, they need to move so incredibly far to the right that they make Reagan look like a pinko.
What seems odd to me is the idea that districts represented by Blue Dogs are more concerned about the ineffable deficit than tangible unemployment.
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p>Perhaps the Republicans are greedy, but the Blue Dogs are idiots.
This post gives polling results from Pew, NBC/WSJ, Fox, CBS/NYT, and USAToday/Gallup that all confirm that the public is much more concerned with unemployment than deficits.
This needs to be a major issue. The American people favored passing this by a wide margin. These politicians are being freaking stupid — Nelson and Lieberman, too, not just the GOopers. Ugh.
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p>Harry Reid, if he wants to keep his job, must put this bill through reconciliation. F#$&! the Republicans. And Nelson, too.
Every day I walk or ride a bike over an overpass that crosses the commuter rail and Mass Pike. There’s graffiti everywhere, and tons of litter along the road. There are also weeds growing in the bridge, slowly causing small structural problems.
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p>There are quality of life problems like this everywhere. Some (the bridge) have a slight financial impact; many are pure quality of life with no financial impact.
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p>
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p>If we’re going to pay someone long term unemployment, why can’t we get physical labor out of ’em one day a week? It doesn’t even have to be all of them — someone who is more senior, who has a disability or an illness, etc stay home.
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p>I support unemployment benefits, but I don’t understand why we don’t put those folks to work improving our quality of life if we can do it with little overhead and not interfere with their ability to find a new job (job searching, interviews, training, etc)?
I think this is the reason that unemployment compensation programs must be tied to stimulus payments (from the government’s perspective, not the recipient’s) as matter of good public policy.
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p>In a severe recession (like 2008), the local economy sheds jobs. It takes time for those jobs to be recreated by the local economy. The purpose of a stimulus package is to accelerate that recovery (and the effectiveness is measured by the overall number of jobs), and the purpose of unemployment compensation is to provide a safety net while the recovery is happening. If the period covered by unemployment is shorter than the recovery period of the economy, then workers laid off at the beginning of the recession are screwed.
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p>When the government employs people directly, it essentially competes with local businesses for labor and therefore delays the creation of new local jobs.
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p>This approach is, essentially, the model for the Roosevelt-era CCC. America got lots of great public infrastructure (many of the national and state park bridges, shelters, and lakes were built by the CCC), but — since the government provided the materials, the land, the training, and so on — the CCC generated relatively little stimulus effect on the larger economy.
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p>As I understand the argument, the premise is that a more effective use of the same public funds is to direct government stimulus money to private (and hopefully local) businesses to effect the same end, while also increasing the period of unemployment benefits during a severe recession (with the associated severe loss of local jobs).
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p>In the example you cite, a local company might be contracted to “adopt” the bridge (similar to the way roads are “adopted” and cleaned). The recipient of federal funds markets the newly-restored bridge as a branding opportunity for local businesses (“Eastern Mountain Sports is cleaning this bridge for YOU”). Local businesses pay the bulk of the cleanup. People who need the cash do the cleanup — and get their morning coffee at DDs, their lunches at Tony’s, and so on. The federal funds recipient arranges for supplies from the local hardware store (“Tools supplied by Aborn Hardware”).
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p>The result is that one federal dollar is leveraged into multiple dollars finding their way into the local community, where overall consumption increases and accelerates the creation of new jobs (in the local economy).
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p>In the context of such a stimulus program, increased unemployment compensation then provides the safety net and immediate short-term cash needed for the unemployed to have enough food, shelter, and medicine to survive until the local jobs come back.
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p>The GOP, of course, resolutely opposes both legs of this approach. They oppose the stimulus spending and they oppose the increased unemployment benefits.
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p>I think we Democrats need to emphasize the difference between the two parties:
The Democrats are trying to solve the problem. The GOP is trying to demolish the Democrats.
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p>The GOP claim that it “supports the working people” is, thus, an outright lie — and needs to be exposed as such.
When the government employs people directly, it boosts the demand side of the market equation thereby creating more activity and more jobs. Government programs are unlikely to include jobs that pay better than private sector jobs.
While it’s true that when the government employs people directly, those people consume more (because they have something to spend). The problem, that I think we learned with the New Deal programs, is that there is essentially zero leverage with that approach.
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p>When government pays a private contractor to hire those same people (through low-interest loans for example), the government funding gets spent twice — once by the contractor (in the various services it purchases) and again by the same worker when that money gets into his or her pocket.
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p>Note that I’m not arguing against extending unemployment benefits (we must do that), I’m instead suggesting that unemployment alone is not enough. The key threshold is the amount of time it takes a recovering economy to recreate the jobs it shed going into the recession. Unemployment gets the workers through the dip, but it is the stimulus that accelerates the job creation rate and thereby shortens the period when extensive unemployment benefits are needed.
Are you sure that these kinds of proposals have been nixed by the Republicans? (I’m not defending republicans; I know how stupid they can be.)
Since President Obama supports them, the GOP opposes them. Right down the line.
But neither is happening, and so young men and women drop out or graduate with no jobs waiting, they make babies, join gangs, and have no where to go – the ccc – note link in post – would take care of this.
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p>Similar – the WPA which gave us oral history archives, murals, walkways in national parks, even sewing classes…the ccc and the WPA were the first “workfare” and didn’t seem to increase the teen birth rate, either.
…is that if the government uses something like this to get work done that would otherwise be done by union labor, the state is probably violating a collective bargaining agreement. I don’t want this to sound anti-labor, because I’m decidedly not, but these kinds of things are very sensitive, yet decidedly frustrating.
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p>Stomv, I’d go even further. I’d love to set up a system by which work like you describe can by done by any high school graduate wishing to earn money towards a college or voc school, providing another gov’t-sponsored option besides military service.
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p>I’m sympathetic to the claim of government basically harming the labor workforce if they can find free or cheap labor elsewhere. On the other hand, it’s clear that there are some projects, like the one you bring up, that may simply never have the funds dedicated to it.
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p>Someone a lot smarter than me should be able to figure out how we strike that balance.
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p>I’d add one other difficulty to your idea. If people earning unemployment benefits are doing construction work to earn those bennies, when do they get to look for a job? And isn’t that assuming that all people on unemployment are young and able-bodied enough to do manual labor? Minor quibbles, and easy to find ways around, but adding to the complications.
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p>How about this qualifier: Find a place to volunteer in your community or in your field, that will provide you the opportunity to learn new skills and gain new experiences that will help you in the changing job market?
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p>2. I don’t know of an International Brotherhood of Crap Thrown out of a Car. It seems that, at the very least, there are some areas which aren’t of the organized labor variety.
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p>3. I don’t buy the argument about competing with private wages (not an argument you made, but one above). This argument makes sense when unemployment is at the so-called natural level — a few percent. Unemployment is way high now; there’s so much extra supply that it can be purchased at almost any price. Furthermore, we’re not talking about making widgets and competing against a private widget making company — we’re talking about doing work that simply wouldn’t get done otherwise and doesn’t have a private counterpart.
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p>4. The CCC had a requirement that the worker send some money “back home” to a family, parents, somebody. This helped insure that some of the wages were injected in the “larger economy” and not just spent within the CCC community.
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p>
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p>Bottom line: we’re paying people to not work at the same time when there’s work to be done — work that requires virtually no skill and virtually no capital. Pick up litter. Plant trees. Wash all the town’s police cars and fire trucks. It just doesn’t make sense, and I believe that the problems folks raise could be sensibly resolved.
competing for the job creation, not wages or employees.
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p>When the government directly funds a job, that’s one less job that private industry creates. If the government cleans the bridge, a private company won’t.
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p>I enthusiastically agree that the bridge needs to be cleaned and that it shouldn’t be hard to find workers to do the job during this period of astronomically high unemployment. I’m just saying that I’d rather see the worker who does the cleaning be doing so in a context where he or she gets a paycheck that somebody at ADP processed, with funds deposited in a local bank where they increase the asset base of the bank, that sort of thing.
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p>My bottom line is that I’m basically nervous about the “workfare” concept — I fear it comes perilously close to using the authority of the government to exploit the weakness of men and women who are already suffering.
with the “work instead of unemployment insurance” idea would seem to me not to be the issue of union competition, or of conflicting with job searching. Instead, it’s the fact that the whole idea of having government conducting massive hiring and oversight of these projects is much more complicated than it sounds.
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p>For example: if we need graffiti cleaned up, how do we decide which unemployed people get those jobs? Administrative discretion? You can imagine the lawsuits that would create. Base it on existing skills? That’s a huge human resources bureaucracy that must be created.
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p>The problem is even more acute with more complicated jobs. Building a bridge isn’t like it used to be in the 1930s — it takes more time and there are more hoops to go through. There’s additional safety concerns to be addressed and things like environmental impact statements that have to be done. The training is much more complicated, which would take months if not years to do, and again create large bureaucracies that are probably not politically sustainable.
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p>The fact is that cutting UI checks is efficient, gets the money back into the economy quickly, and doesn’t entail creating the massive new bureaucracies that would be required to hire, train, and oversee all of these new government workers. While it’s logical to wonder why we can’t simply have people cleaning graffiti and planting trees instead of just receiving checks, I think the real reason we don’t is because the execution of such a program would be much more convoluted and complicated than one might think.
Nick Balzano, president of the local Service Employees International Union, told Allentown City Council Tuesday that the union is considering filing a grievance against the city for allowing Anderson to clear a 1,000-foot walking and biking path at Kimmets Lock Park.
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p>http://articles.mcall.com/2009…
There is a IBofCTinaPark, and in this case they seem to have a legit beef — the city laid them off, then brought in volunteers to do their job. It’s interesting — the Scouts are effectively subsidizing taxpayers rather directly in this case.
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p>So, the question is: could you do a CCC-type program in places where there were no union lay-offs; in fact, where some of the new employment would be union? I don’t know — it’d require threading nautical rope through a needle I’m sure.
is a useful life skill
One argument that opponents of UI make is the self-serving myth that UI acts as a disincentive to work. See, for example, the remarks of Republican Senator Jon Kyn of Texas on March 1 of this year.
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p>
That myth is nicely punctured here.
Here’s what I found in this article.
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p>The stingy critique of extending unemployment insurance is that:
Apparently, both of these points are open to dispute and, in some cases, re-examining the data either diminishes or reduces the results. From my reading, there is something to the second point even if it is overstated: extending unemployment insurance does slightly extend unemployment.
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p>Two things weigh against that, per this paper:
The whole GOP congressional delegation are a bunch of clowns. Say one thing and do the other. We can’t afford to elect another one of these unstable lunatics. Especially not in Masachusetts
I’m not familiar with the specifics of this bill – but typically the federal government loans money to the states for UI. This eventually has to be paid back by businesses that employee people. In practice this means the cost of employing people goes up – as an employer you want to keep your employee count down otherwise your UI contribution goes way up. So if you make the benefits more lucrative – you make employers not want to hire.
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p>
Currently unemployment benefits last for 99 weeks.
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p>Your second point states:
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p>Basically, extending bennies adds one week of unemployment to EVERYONE, including the people that got a job before the 99 weeks were up and never needed them.
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p>The question I would like answered is: By extending the Unemployment benefit for 13 weeks, what percentage of people that surpassed 99 weeks find a job in the next 13 weeks?
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p>I could not find your actual story so I could not see if that question was answered.
That’s the average effect, not the universal effect.
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p>The point is that UI benefits provide an incentive not to work. The question is over whether that incentive is large or small, effective or ineffective.
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p>If it’s really small, it’s not a problem.
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p>If it’s small enough that it’s outweighed by its stimulative effect, it’s still good.
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p>If it’s ineffective as an incentive because there aren’t any jobs, it’s not a problem, either.
Hey guys! We’re out of money! We ran out, can you even believe it? Sssshhh don’t tell anyone because Dems are still flingin Trillions like they were the new billions.
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p>We are so lucky that Europe is ahead of the curve on all this social democracy stuff, we get to watch it collapse just as our leftists were hoping to emulate it!
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p>Another secret: if you want jobs: 1. extend the Bush tax cuts in their entirety, forever 2. repeal the health care bill 3. commit to no new taxes in 2011.
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p>And thats not even to mention the coming entitlements/ deficit / debt explosion, which is just far off enough that we can ignore it for a bit longer.
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p>Boy, wouldn’t that be something!
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p>Personally, I could not imagine setting out to create jobs while facing the monstrous progressive agenda. Best thing that could ever happen to Obama is to lose both houses in the fall.
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p>
to carve out an intellectual space for conservative thought on this thread destroyed. Oh well.
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p>
We’re out of money!
But extend Bush the tax cuts because we want to be even more out of money!
We’re out of money!
But repeal the health care bill. We’ll just close our eyes as health care costs spiral out of control!
Social democracy caused the problems in Greece, Spain, Ireland
Ignore please the minor matter of the shared currency.
Tax cuts magically cause jobs!
“Demolisher” believes in fairies too!
that cared about such things as debt or deficit. Alas, there isn’t.
for some reason they seem to be throwing in with the Republicans, more or less.
the TEA party is about lower taxes for TEA partiers, and less benefits for non-TEA partiers. Hence the observation that lots of their protesters can afford to show up mid-day on a Tuesday because they’re collecting unemployment or public pension benefits.
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p>Sure, they want a balanced budget — balanced on somebody else’s back.
The New York Times article of a month or so ago indicated that a number of TP activists opposed social security even though they depended on it.
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p>Irrational voting theory predicts that people vote out of principle or altruism because it makes them feel good and because almost no one’s individual vote is decisive.
I personally am not the TEA party expert, but it does seem possible to me that a whole bunch of people could get together for the primary purpose of opposing government spending. Especially when we’re going Trillions on deficit and hyperbolic on debt.
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p>I’m sure there are all sorts of people associated with the TEA party, but, I think you do many of them a disservice with your rather trite generalizations.
the CGS (Cut Gov’t Spending) party or somesuch? Fact is, they call themselves the TEA party. They want lower taxes, despite the reality that for nearly every man woman and child there, taxes are lower than they’ve been in decades.
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p>Don’t identify with the group if you don’t identify with it’s name.
The Democrats definitely aren’t the cut spending party
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p>
you sure can change a subject when you’ve been cornered with common sense.
“cornered by logic” i.e. the name TEA party is not specific enough to mean they want to cut spending? I can’t believe you seriously even assert that the TEA party doesn’t want to cut spending, its a position so idiotic that I – guess – I got cornered by it.
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p>You know what parties do? They put forth platforms, or mission statements, or other principles so that everyone will know what they stand for, and like minded people can join. Here’s the TEA party’s mission:
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p>
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p>But the fact that Democrats love to spend it not a change of subject, it is actually the same subject.
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p>Anyway, you go on fantasizing that they don’t want to cut spending, and I’ll go on being cornered by your “logic”.
But even if so, they’re kooks beyond redemption. I met a fellow at their rally who was quite agitated about the new health care law, because he thought it would mess with his Medicare. No spending reducer, he.
and you found nothing but kooks there?
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p>Do tell, Mr. moderate!
I work about a half block away, and was curious, so I strolled over to see what was up. Yes, I found a preponderance of crazy people.
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p> The aforementioned get the government out of my Medicare guy. Some immigrants cause every problem guys. Guy selling shirts with some reference to “natural born citizens” that I assume to be a birth certificate thing. Some people who were very keen to use the word “socialist” without evident understanding of the definition of “socialist” complete with Obama-as-Hitler photoshops. People who think Glenn Beck “tells it like it is.” All very pissed off about something, they know not what.
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p>If viewing these people as crazy makes me something other than moderate in the eyes of Mr. demolisher and the Massachusetts GOP, I’m content with that. If you think I’m “liberal”, “leftist”, “out of the mainstream”, “socialist”, “communist”, “fascist”, “transcendentalist”, or “flatulist” I’m quite content with that too; I think you are a fucking moron.
Wow, and such hostility, too! I don’t recall ever calling you any of those things, although there are plenty of others here who are.
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p>I think you are taking Beck a little too personally.
And those of others like you, to defend batshit crazy Republican policies (Abolish the fed! Invade Iran! Death panels! We hate deficits, but demand increased spending and tax cuts!) by declaring that anyone who does anything but agree wholeheartedly is “liberal.”
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p>Thus, when a moderate or independent observes that they’re voting Democratic because the Republicans are presently, as a general rule, incompetent, arrogant morons who believe in crazy conspiracy theories, the counter-argument isn’t a defense of Republicans, but an “attack” on the observer: “You’re no moderate, you’re really a leftist.” Thus, I guess, is supposed to establish the non-credibility of the observer, or cow him into keeping his observations to himself, lest people think he is a liberal. Well, bullshit.
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p>The tea party people are, at best, stupid, and, at worst, the resurrection of the John Birchers, and a repudiation of the Buckley conservatism of the last 40 years. Any Republican running to appease these morons is, almost by definition, unfit for public office of any kind.
.
See this NYT article
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p>There are no jobs for most of these folks, demolisher.
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p>You want them to just starve by the side of the road aka the Great Famine in Ireland?
You reality based types have been using the starving poor image for so long that you apparently failed to notice that the poor have become generally obese.
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p>While you’re checking out famines, check out the millions who died in Russia due solely to government central planning.
Empathy does not rate highly among conservatives.
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p>To “Demolisher”, it’s just “drama”.
you personally go out and find a starving poor person in America
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p>And I’ll buy them lunch.
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p>Good luck!
Is the moronic nature of this reply designed so we don’t take you seriously? Or is the taunting nature of the reply designed so that we think you’re a creep?
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p>Or do you want us to think you’re a creep not to take seriously?
I think he’s just trolling. I’m ignoring him.
The hunger story – 44% of poverty-level or unemployed residents report choosing between food and heat
you’ve met a starving person in Massachusetts?
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p>Have you?
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p>Tell me about it?
I have been appointed to represent parents who have to choose between feeding themselves – or their children – or paying their rent.
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p>I have been appointed to represent legal orphans who are thrown on the street at age 18 with no income, and only the food available in food kitchens, shelters, or friends houses.
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p>I have been appointed to represent folks rendered homeless not because of criminal activity, but because of actions taken by agencies that I had to fight to overturn – no drugs, no criminal activity involved (all of the folks who fit in this category were teens or young adults).
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p>I have a current case where a client had to choose between food or rent.
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p>I have come to the conclusion, Demolisher, that you must be an ignorant teenager in a wealthy suburb who has no experience of life at all.
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p>I have opened my home to seven young adults, one at a time, who were rendered homeless because their parents died, moved out of state, remarried and the spouse did not like them, etc. I am pleased to say that all but the most recent are now employed and self sustaining – they just needed a home to finish their schooling, or look for work.
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p>What do they need: Jobs, training, and housing and then they will become self-sustaining taxpayers in due course.
that you are a true believer liberal leftist, and also that you practice what you preach, and that (latter part) is great. Many liberals would not open their homes to troubled folk. Most people would not.
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p>But I’m asking you to tell me about someone who was starving.
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p>You’ve seen it, I have not. I’ve met dozens of homeless people, and most were on the fat side. Can you describe the “malnourishment” that you encountered? Were the people emaciated? Was anyone at risk of dying? Has anyone that you have even heard of actually died of starvation anywhere in America during your lifetime?
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p>I hope by malnourished you don’t mean that they ate too much mcdonalds and got type 2 diabetes. We’re talking starvation here.
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p>Might sound trite, but I am basically calling you out on it.
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p>Also, I dont have any stats but I am guessing that most Americans do NOT believe that other Americans are dying or otherwise greatly suffering from starvation. I’d even bet that other people spouting off in this very thread have never met a starving person.
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p>Here is an opportunity for you to educate us all.
Asking random anonymous liberals whether they have met a starving person is a remarkably boneheaded way to look into poverty. Often we tell people that anecdotes do not constitute data, but here you’re complaining that data don’t constitute anecdotes. Most misery happens in private anyway.
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p>Putting that aside, poorer people often get fat because the cheapest food now, the food that costs the least per calorie is industrial crap. Eating an appropriate level of carrots, broccoli, and collard greens is much more expensive than eating fat-laden, overly sugary, salty corn and soy products.
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p>This, by the way, is a well-known phenomenon.
So, once again if I comb through the usual KBusch “value add” I find a few nuggets in there:
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p>First, that you admit you’ve never met a starving person. I guess this is why you couldn’t respond to my post earlier with anything but insults. Let me tell you, though, “ARE YOU A MORON OR CREEP?” is really not a productive way to discuss anything. I don’t ascribe to your silly liberal speech codes and forbidden topics, so either deal with it, or go insult someone who would cares whatsoever about your opinion.
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p>Second, absent any leg to stand on, you did that classic liberal dance: starvation => malnourishment => obesity.
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p>Great one.
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p>Just don’t talk about people dying of starvation in the streets, because when you do, you are lying.
The taunting to coherence ratio has now reached a severe imbalance. I’m not sure what you’re saying anymore.
because I was specifically trying to talk to you in language that I thought you would understand.
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p>Maybe its because I said ascribe instead of subscribe
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p>
of misreadings and straw men.
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p>Really not worth responding to. Anyone with a brain reading this exchange can see the obvious fallacies so it’s not worth even explaining.
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p>When you get over trying to argue by anecdote rather than by data, I’ll care more about answering you.
(just.. try and stay there!)
You’re not even taunting well.
In this state, the homeless are far more likely to freeze to death in the street then starve to death. Of course, that’s presuming you actually accept starving to death as a criteria..
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p>I’m still wondering where he’s meeting fat homeless people. Swampscott, perhaps?
Sigh.
most of the homeless people that I have met have been in San Francisco and Atlanta, and to a lesser extent, Cambridge and Boston. I’ve also seen plenty of them in NYC but I don’t recall ever really conversing with them.
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p>In all cases, none of them whatsoever exhibited any characteristics of starvation that I could recognize.
..but who cares about a random group of homeless people you’ve “conversed with?” Or that you think homeless people live on caviar and champagne based on that sample. I can’t wait to read your pithy observations on gay people based on someone you overheard in a restaurant in San Francisco.
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p>You’re apparently too obtuse to realize Amber’s comment about the Great Famine was a dig, but everyone else is discussing destitution, not starvation
and you do the same.
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p>So will I.
The taunting to coherence ratio has now reached a severe imbalance.
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p>I’m pretty sure not even you understand what you’re trying to say. Well except maybe: “Let them eat cake. Or rocks. Rocks would be good. Or dirt. They’re fat and homeless, after all.”
you finally come out of your 3-rating slingin shell and choose to interact – but now, because I asked you to stop speaking for Amber (and contradicting her posts) you throw in with silly KBusch?
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p>Go back to your 3’s, they embarrass you a lot less.
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p>You and KBusch can fawn over each others’ widsom day long, but in the end you’re just reading old chapters from a book that gets repudiated every time the left gains power. Carter, pre-94 Clinton, Obama. The only real question is, will Obama be Carter or Clinton?
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p>Oh yea, starving people. Wait, that was just ironic. Right?
I’ve met 43 starving people in Massachusetts.
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p>Happy?
Because you are lying. I guess that makes you a liar.
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p>Or maybe thats just ironic.
You just want anecdotes. My anecdotes are as good as yours.
because my anecdotes are true. And yours are lies.
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p>Your spokesperson “huh” tries to get you off the hook, this time its sarcasm. OK, great.
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p>But I call you a liar. And you know I’m right.
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p>You lied. Now, apologize.
How do you know I’m lying?
They usually cover the difference in middle school.
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p>I think Amber may be wrong. We’re not dealing with a spoiled teenager; we’re dealing with a know it all tweener.
No one besides you is advocating starving to death as a needs criteria. Amber’s comment was ironic.
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p>What the article says is:
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p>
Oh, really?
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p>If so then Amber could have saved herself a bunch of serious rebuttal by saying something like “J/K LOL I WAS JUST JOKING ABOUT THE STARVATION!”
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p>Like you guys always are when you claim that any Republican ideas / entitlement cuts / cuts whatsoever will have people “starving in the streets”.
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p>If you want to learn about starvation as a direct result of government policy, then read up on Lenin and your glorious communist revolution in Russia. Plenty of you progressives were all about it till they finally opened the archives after the fall of the U.S.S.R.!!!
Do you not find a 23% increase in people using soup kitchens and homeless shelters disturbing?
as an idiot president, congress, and progressive worldview that (despite their intentions) promises nothing but much, much more despair to come.
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p>Can’t we just make a law to force people to create more jobs?
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p>I just returned from running an errand for an elderly friend in South Boston.
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p>To a local food pantry.
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p>FYI, she’s a widowed and physically disabled homemaker on Social Security, whose late husband almost always voted Republican, and who herself worked all her life, and voted for Scott Brown for Senate.
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p>I mention the latter point only to note the difference between populist conservatism and brain-dead sadism.
throwing people off benefits on a seemingly random basis.