Conference back40::soapbox

    re .1
    
    does this esteemed senator think only women do daycare?
    
    or is it that he  realizes that this is a very undervalues(paid)
    profession and most men don't go into it for this reason.  I see no
    reason why male role models aren't available in the child-care center
    which will be needed by working parents (one or both or even three)
    regardless.

    re: .1
    
    Two problems come immediately to mind:
    
    1. Money -- it costs a lot more to put kids in even the worst kinds of
    institutional care than it does to pay welfare
    
    2. Ideology -- in the continuing debate over the rights of children vs
    the rights of parents, liberals have tended to take the side of the
    children if there was a conflict, and conservatives the side of
    parents.  Some conservatives might still find it hard to swallow the
    concept of the state deciding who is fit to be a parent, even if they
    can successfully demonize poor parents as so "other" that the middle
    class does not feel threatened by that kind of state power.
    
    Kit

    >                                                           I see no
    >reason why male role models aren't available in the child-care center
    >which will be needed by working parents (one or both or even three
    
    For a brief time, my wife ran a small day-care center out of our
    home. There was never a time in my life when I was more paranoid.
    I made sure that I was out of the house before the first child
    arrived and did not return home until the last child left. Most
    parents would feel uncomfortable with a male in a day care situation,
    and I lived in constant fear of some meddling psychoanalyst
    getting a kid to "recall" experiences of sexual or physical
    abuse... perhaps you think I was being overly paranoid, but
    the thought of losing everything we had over a few bucks a
    week was not something I was willing to live with... this
    caused great conflict in my home, conflict that has yet to
    be successfully resolved. No thanks to men doing day care!!
    
    -b

> right to enjoy any welfare

PotP

>>    bring them up in a family atmosphere'.  Even if the child in one of
>>    these places has 3,4 or more 'parents' (Councilors who look out for the
>>    child, teach behavior, love etc) they are much better off that being
>>    left with the single parent who is on welfare.
	
	So.....is this person saying that it's not what kind of parent 
	you are, but how much money a parent has that makes the difference????

	As an "orphan" and having been adopted from an orphanage, the 
	thought that keeps running thorugh my mind is "DO THESE PEOPLE HAVE 
	ANY IDEA WHAT THEIR TALKING ABOUT!!!!?"  
	
	sigh...

	Pat

    
    Yes, there is no money.  But that isn't stopping either the GOP
    Congress or the Dem Admin from proposing changes.  Shalala even
    said the Dept had gone to great lengths to make the Clinton proposal
    revenue neutral.
    
    I don't think the legal alien ban on benefits will go through.  The
    Speaker backed off on this the other day, although he WOULD ban the
    benefits to illegals.
    
    I agree with those in here who think the central question is the kids.
    Ask this question : "What is the best way for children of the indigent
    to be provided for ?"  I bet you'd come to the conclusion that it depends
    on the situation.  Surely, there are SOME circumstances in which the
    state has to step in.  What if the parents go to jail ?  etc.
    
     Day care, foster homes, and yes, group care in some cases, just have
    to be thought through.  This isn't the old days of traditional families
    in rural poverty.  It is teenage mothers, raising more of same.  The
    current system is not working - it's perpetuating itself.  Surely we
    can do better.
    
     bb

    	re .6
    
    	I noticed that too.

Well, you know what they say about great minds, Joe . . . 

> Well, you know what they say about great minds, Joe . . . 

They're not found in soapbox?

	I resemble that remark............%^(

    
    They say that great minds think alike, and that fools seldom differ.
    
    ;^)
    

    	I thought the saying was:
    
    	If we both agree on everything, one of us is redundant.

    If having no male role model at home makes male children into
    criminals, I take it that Prager (note .1) will be making a constitutional
    amendment to prohibit America from engaging in military activity in 
    future.  We can't possibly allow all those men to leave the country and
    risk getting killed, creating single parent families.  
    
    If there is one common factor between criminals then it is the instance 
    of childhood abuse, specifically sexual abuse.  One thing that the raving 
    right seems to forget is that when a child is sexually abused it is more
    often a man than a woman who is responsible.  Institutions are more likely 
    to attract child molesters than the single parent home, especially as they 
    will probably offer the lowest paying jobs and do the worst job of 
    monitoring their own workers.
    
    We DO need welfare reform, and we DO need to do a better job of
    protecting our nations children.  But I am concerned by people like
    Newt the Nut who are trying to make it into a crusade against the
    single parent (read that as women) and the poor (again, read that as
    women).  More money would be saved by revamping and cleaning up
    the expensive abuses in the military than will ever be saved by cutting
    welfare, medicare or social security.     

    Re. "great minds think alike"
    
    Well, one quote that I like is from Gen. Patton;  He stated that
    if everyone is thinking alike, then nobody is thinking...
    
    
    No implications here.. just an observance...
    
    Sin-te-da

    Well if the reponses here so far seem to indicate exactly what the
    debate on welfare reform will be like.  the usual liberal group say
    that reducing the defense budget is the answer to welfare reform.  That
    makes a lot of sense.
    
    The basic debate on welfare reform is exactly what is the role, if any,
    of the government in providing assistance to individuals.  I personally
    support a program that recognizes that anyone can run into tough times,
    etc and needs a bit of help.  The current welfare system says that help
    is provided forever, at an increasing rate, and as an individual you
    have no responsibility to affect your situation.
    
    I would like to see any program, and they should minimal, provide a
    very temporary assistance.  If you can not be responsible for yourself,
    i doubt that it is the taxpayers burden to carry you.  If you want to
    marry, not marry, have kids, not have kids that's your choice.  If your
    choice ends up with negative consequences, then that is your
    responsibility.  society can, and maybe should, help for a brief time,
    but then your on your own.
    
    I beleive that the sooner people realize that they must take personal
    responsibility for their choices maybe they will start making better
    choices.
    
    As far as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, etc are concerned, these
    programs have become so overblown that they no longer represent their
    original intent and should be drastically reduced if not eliminated
    entirely.
    

    > Well if the reponses here so far seem to indicate exactly what the
    > debate on welfare reform will be like.  the usual liberal group say
    > that reducing the defense budget is the answer to welfare reform.
    
    Rocush, WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
    
    I just went back and read the previous 16 responses in this topic and
    ONE PERSON (not a 'usual liberal group') said ONE SENTENCE about
    eliminating waste in the DoD (last sentence of .15).
    
    On the contrary, people have mentioned the requirements of childcare,
    the problems of childcare as a lowpaid profession and the problem that
    it attracts sex offenders, other problems with orphanages and absent
    fathers, etc, etc.  
    
    Seems like 'the usual Rocush' response to a 'usual soapbox debate':
    totally non sequitur and frothing at the mouth anti-liberal.  Get a
    grip!
    
    DougO 

I'm somewhat surprised to see no discussion here regarding the masterful
Welfare reform bill overwhelmingly passed by both houses of the PRM
legislature yesterday (and, hopefully, already signed by Gov. Weld today.)

Some of the provisions in the bill as I understand it -

      o	For parents of school age children, new cash benefits are for 60 days,
	by which time you should have found work.
      o If you can't find work, you'll be assigned community service if
	you'd like to continue receiving cash benefits.
      o Lifetime limit of 5 years worth of cash benefits.
      o No cash benefits for teenaged mothers
      o No Cash benefit extensions for additional offspring

Apparently a crowd of over 400 welfare queens and sympathizers marched on
the State House and Gov's office yesterday in protest. 8 arrested
including 1 for assault and battery on a police officer.

When will they learn?

Hopefully, very soon.

	I haven't seen the "specifics" on the bill yet, but hopefully they will
be on the internet at some point. From what I can tell so far, it is a good
bill. If you can work, you will (or community service), or lose benifits. There
is a provision in there that teenage moms will have to either live at home or
in a group home, and will have to finish high school if they want benifits. The
part that will bother me about this is if daycare is not involved. Maybe that
will take place with some of the other mothers who are doing community service.
IF it isn't there, then I don't like THAT part of the bill. 

	Channel 7 took a quick phone poll and found 86% liked the bill, 14%
didn't. 


Glen

I'm sure it's not a problem we should worry about, Bill. Welfare bennies
in NH inhale so badly they don't stay long. Our citizen legislators have
been pretty good about that.  I recall a discussion I had in NOTES one
time with a PRM res. complaining about how "our" welfare cases became
"their" burden, since the exodus was to the south. The answer was, what
the PRM has now just done. Shut em off.

And if you were on about my calling Channel seven on their survey as
a LFOD "weenie" (Geeziz - I never know what the hell you're on about,
Bill), well then, I figgered it was a poll for their viewers, of which
I am one, and thus felt qualified.

	Jack, he may just be upset that Channel 7 doesn't have a laugh track
installed. Their newscast does seem to call for one... :-)

    
    Well, the House subcommittee released the bill yesterday.  Newt's
    gang will slam it through after they get our national security all
    fixed later this week.
    
    In other welfare reform news, New Dumpster guv Merrill is playing
    Weld wannabe by declaring he wants to "end welfare as we know it"
    up in Live-free-or-die land.
    
      bb

>    In other welfare reform news, New Dumpster guv Merrill is playing
>    Weld wannabe by declaring he wants to "end welfare as we know it"
>    up in Live-free-or-die land.

As lousy a program as we now proudly provide, hopefully this means
Steve's found a way to get them to pay _US_!

    
    Does the new welfare reform cut off benefits to drug addicts and 
    alcoholics?    Or is this something seperate because it falls under
    SSI ?  Any comments ?
    

    Whiile putting people to work is a noble goal, I have one question. 
    What is going to be done about daycare for the children of those
    working parents?  The last time I checked the cheapest (unlicsensed)
    childcare I could get was still over $50.00/week.  Liscensed care for
    my youngest is somewhere between 80-120/week, one of many reasons I am
    glad Frank can stay home with her.  
    
    Even school-aged kids need some before or after school care, as most
    school days in the US are less than 8 hours, and you also need to add
    in commute time.  With the munificent payment of 4.25/hour I wonder how
    many kids will be latchkeyed, left in locked cars, or other less than
    satisfactory arrangements made around the children.
    
    Howmuch does a family on AFDC get?  The average in Colorado is
    considerably less than 8 hours of licensed daycare 52 weeks a year.  
    
    meg

    As previously stated, daycare could be provided by other welfare
    parents (i.e. that could be their job.) Providing daycare is a valid
    job in my book.

    Meg:
    
    Also, let's really crack down on deadbeat dads!

    
    I'd like to know more about deadbeat dads.
    I've heard that welfare, as we know it, actually encourages
    the men to leave their families. Is this true?

    AFDC generally requires that the father not be living in the home. 
    AFDC was a safety net for women and children abandoned by divorce,
    seperation or widowhood and having the father in the house doesn't fit
    this.  Presumption again that the father should be working.  There are
    other programs which cover two parent households where niether parent
    works, due to disability.  My personal opinion of "men" who are
    fathering children and not supporting them and what should be done with
    them is niether pacifistic nor pro-choice, particularly those who have
    multiple children by multiple women.
    
    Deadbeat non custodial parents are IMNSHO child abusers.  They are
    denying their children material, and usually emotional and moral
    support as well.  If the custodial parent were found guilty of this the
    child would be taken from the home, and the parent potentially could
    wind up in jail.  
    
    Mark, I applaud parents supplying child care for other parents, but....
    getting a license in some projects for child care will require
    extensive renovation (money), training (money), and enough pay for
    those supplying the care (more money).  Unfortunately I haven't seen
    any provisions in the current "welfare reform" bills that will give the
    seed money to get this started.  this is why I am asking.  
    
    People were horrified by the "facility" where some people were leaving
    their kids in Chicago last year.  Rmember the 19 kids in the two
    bedroom apartment?  My fear is that we will see this repeated and worse 
    when we boot people off the current system without a child care
    provision.   In colorado every year there is at least one case of
    neglect publicized due to a parent who can't find child care leaving an 
    infant in the car on a sunny day.  There have also been cases where the
    oldest reponsible person at home has been a 6-year-old sho is chartered
    to watch his or her younger siblings.  You read about these when
    tragedies happen.
    
    meg

>    getting a license in some projects for child care will require
>    extensive renovation (money), training (money), and enough pay for
>    those supplying the care (more money).  Unfortunately I haven't seen
>    any provisions in the current "welfare reform" bills that will give the
>    seed money to get this started.  this is why I am asking.  

One of the provisions of the MA Welfare Reform Bill is that those desiring
to remain on the dole perform community service if they fail to obtain
employment. One form of this community service could presumably be the
provision of daycare. That would at least take care of the "more money"
aspect. 

    
> One of the provisions of the MA Welfare Reform Bill is that those desiring
> to remain on the dole perform community service if they fail to obtain
> employment. One form of this community service could presumably be the
> provision of daycare. That would at least take care of the "more money"
> aspect. 
    
    In my other life I am on the board on a non-profit daycare center.  The
    state requirements for teacher training and the physical environment
    (to name only two) make this a lot more expensive than just paying the
    teachers.  Running a center costs pretty big bucks.  Even if the state
    provided teachers for free it would costs lots of time and money to get an
    operation up to state standards.
    
    GReg
    

    Start with the infrastructure of the building and make it suitable for
    childcare.  this is serious MONEY, particularly in a downrev public
    housing facility.  Now, I suppose some of the community service could
    include the renovation, but you still need minor thingies, like
    building permits, contractors (and probably subcontractors) and
    training for those doing the construction.  Secondly, for those who
    think daycare workers are only trained by watching their kids (and
    others) daycare workers in LICENSED facilities do take regular
    continuing ed courses to retain their credentials.  So there will be at
    least some early childhood education courses needed (more money) 
    
    It is my dream to see every public housing project have the ground
    floor converted to a daycare facility, that is available 24 hour/day
    for working parents.  This will allow people to do shift work, and
    often the odd shifts pay better.  However, I realize this will take a
    considerable investment and I somehow don't think anyone has considered
    the amount needed, or the effects of adding a large number of children
    to an already overburdened childcare system.  Check other notesfiles to
    find out about problems for people making a reasonable living  in
    finding decent and affordable daycare.  
    
    meg
    
    meg

    Twould be nice if more companies offered daycare as a benefit.  I
    wonder why more companies aren't doing this?

    
    
    
    Because they don't have to, yet.  That meaning that the competition for
    talent out there isn't enough to warrant this as a benefit to attract
    employees.
    
    
    Mike

    Re: .36
    
    >It is my dream to see every public housing project have the ground
    >floor converted to a daycare facility, that is available 24 hour/day
    >for working parents.
    
    I have this fantasy about public housing (my fantasy life seems to be
    sadly lacking...) that's a combination of Jack Kemp and Habitat for
    Humanity and community architecture.  Housing projects are built around
    a square that contains a park.  The lower levels are given over to
    stores and a daycare center.  As with Habitat for Humanity, residents
    invest "sweat equity," doing things like putting up drywall or painting
    or unloading materials.  Depending on the amount of sweat, the family
    gets N% equity in the unit.  At least some portion of their rent goes
    toward purchasing their unit.  The project is actually run as a condo
    development.  The residents get a couple of business advisors to help
    them manage the shop rentals and maintenance aspects.
    
    I have no idea if this would actually fly, of course.

    
    hmm ....
    
    I have a slightly different dream.  I do not like public housing
    projects even with the possiblity of ownership because IMO this
    exasperates the seperation of the haves from the have-nots.  I believe
    some locals, like Minneapolis, have a better approach.  
    
    Minneapolis gives (or at least did give in the 80s) tax break to
    developers that develop housing that is indented to be mixed income
    housing and the tax breaks are contigent on the mix continuing.  In
    addition, Minneapolis subsidizes the rent of the very poor.  The tax
    break and subsidy cost money for sure but they do not have any public
    owned housing.  One more importantly, IMO, this approach guarentees a
    mixing of the classes which I think is especially important to the
    kids.
    
    Greg
    
    

    In N.Y.C. there is a way to buy the building from the city of oh say
    $1.00 get grant money to fix it up. All of the prospective tenants then
    work to get it back into condition. Once it meets all the city req it
    is then split up between those that worked on almost for free.

    I didn't know where to put this, figured this was good as any.
    
    
    Last evening I went with my kids to a small shopping center where we
    could play some games.  As we walked in I notice a very small young
    woman resembling a little girl standing by herself with an umbrella
    stroller loaded with bags and different items.  Everything looked
    fairly new.
    
    Clayton and I played one game of pool together and then we left.  As I
    walked out of the door, she was still there.  Something inside of me
    pulled me back to her [I had already passed her by].  I turned around
    and I said, "I hope you aren't offended, but are you homeless?"  She
    began to weep and said, "Yes we are."  I asked her who "we" was and she
    pointed to a man and a small boy standing at a telephone booth.
    
    She cried and said that they'd been kicked out of their apartment just
    days ago and had vouchers from the welfare department to keep them in a
    motel, but that they had been unable to get the vouchers that day in
    hopes that his mother was going to pick them up.  But his mother never
    appeared.  She ended with she was so ashamed and frightened.
    
    I said,"Well you can't stay out here with a 3 year old boy.  Get your
    husband and your things and I'll take you home with me tonight."
    
    She called her husband over and the boys and I helped them load their
    things into my van and then we all piled in. we were driving we began
    talking and my youngest son said, "Are you a Christian?"  And the
    husband asked me if we were.  Of course I affirmed that we were.  
    
    I asked them if they had contacted Agnew's Shelter and they said no
    they had not.  But that they didn't know where it was.  Guess what I
    just live blocks from it.  I told them that we would try there first
    but that they were welcome in my home should this not be available. 
    Which btw, I doubted would be, Agnews fills up fast.
    
    Meanwhile enroute I told them that God does love them and that today in
    the U.S Christian charity is hard to find due to the enormous amounts
    of violent crimes committed.  That people like me, single woman with
    children would be considered a tad touched to pick up strangers and
    bring them into their homes.  They agreed.  But I told them for some
    reason I couldn't just walk by when I saw his wife.
    
    We arrived at Agnews and I had no clue which building was the shelter,
    yet I drove straight to it.  There were some people outside and they
    were leaving.
    
    He went inside.  The wife told me that she'd been in this country for
    only 5 years, 4 years married.  He was a car salesman.  She just kept
    saying over and over and over again that she appreciated me.  She said
    that she'd never seen a family like mine in this country, since she'd
    been here.
    
    She then told me that she had asked Jesus to be her Savior [her mother
    had become a Christian in the Philipines] about 6 years ago.  But that
    she'd not continued in her faith.  
    
    Her husband returned and said they have a room.  That those people
    who'd left just as we arrived allowed this vacancy for, Byron, Racquel
    and Byron Jr.  Talk about timing! :-)
    
    Clayton asked Byron Sr., if he would ask Jesus to be his Savior.  Byron
    said that he was 2nd person in 3 days to ask him that and he was really
    considering it.
    
    I walked them inside the shelter with their belongings.  As I was
    beginning to leave, they both hugged me so tight I thought I'd break. 
    I gave them the money in my wallet and told them to please use that to
    get a hold of his family and I gave them my telephone number.
    
    As they thanked me again, I told them to thank God as well and that God
    really does love them.
    
    As I left the shelter with my boys, I began to cry I just sobbed. 
    Matthew and Clayton asked me what was wrong.  I said I felt so ashamed. 
    Clayton very angry and confused said to me, "You make feel like you did
    something wrong.  Mom, you did right.  I'm proud of you."
    
    I told them I felt ashamed for I've taken for granted the wonderful
    things God has given us.  And I thanked Him for resetting my
    perspectives.  Clayton didn't understand.  Matthew did and I could tell
    this event was having a profound effect on him.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

    Way to go nance!

    Kudos for living your beliefs, Nanceala...
    

    Nancy,
    
    Now that I've got the tears out of my eyes, all I can say is "Thank
    you".
    
    Bob

    
    
    Nancy, that was very touching. You are truly a person of quality and
    love....
    
    
    jim
    
    p.s. - never feel ashamed of being human. Live with your mistakes and
    learn from them, but never be ashamed to make them.
    
    

    Excellent Nancy...you have taken a step of faith and planted a seed of
    righteousness to be cultivated in their lives.
    
    Which is exactly the point I've been trying to make in the file since I
    started here.  The government has usurped the responsibility of the
    local church and has failed miserably compared to the step of faith
    Nancy took.  If the local church would claim its responsibility back
    from the government it would foster far better relations in this world
    and would be a ministry to those who are in need...instead of an
    entitlement which fosters nothing but dependency.
    
    -Jack

         <<< Note 243.48 by MKOTS3::JMARTIN "You-Had-Forty-Years!!!" >>>

>    Which is exactly the point I've been trying to make in the file since I
>    started here.  The government has usurped the responsibility of the
>    local church and has failed miserably compared to the step of faith
>    Nancy took.  If the local church would claim its responsibility back
>    from the government it would foster far better relations in this world
>    and would be a ministry to those who are in need...instead of an
>    entitlement which fosters nothing but dependency.

Jeez, Jack! Is there NOTHING that doesn't remind you of the evils of 
goernment?!

Government hasn't usurped individual or private charity. Nancy won't get 
arrested for her good deed. The church STILL has a very big responsibility 
to follow its mission of charity, which Nancy recognized and, like few 
others among us, followed through on.

IMHO you demean the divine work Nancy has done by turning it into a 
political statement. Take a break. 

And Nancy...it appears God has blessed you with a wealth of Spirit. You are 
to be envied as much as admired.

Tom

    >IMHO you demean the divine work Nancy has done by turning it into a
    >political statement.
    
     He didn't turn Nancy's act into a political statement. He used nancy's
    act to segue into a political comment. Not the same thing.

    Tom:
    
    Your making it sound like I farted at a quiet moment during a wedding.
    What I stated was that this is a clear example of the benefits of
    privatization of charity...through the local church or private
    organizations.  This is the Welfare Reform string isn't it?  Nancy
    displayed the perfect example of how instead of recipients saying,
    "Thank God for Bill Clinton", They're saying, "You're a Christian
    aren't you."  If you recall Nancy's note, the woman said she hadn't met
    anybody like Nancy in the four years she's been in the US.  That's
    because the people of the US who are supposed to be taking care of the
    orphan and the widow has referred to the big teat of Washington DC.
    
    -Jack

         <<< Note 243.51 by MKOTS3::JMARTIN "You-Had-Forty-Years!!!" >>>

>    because the people of the US who are supposed to be taking care of the
>    orphan and the widow has referred to the big teat of Washington DC.
    
Jack,

Blaming Dollyland DC's size 44s for your or anyone elses lack of charity is 
about as lame as blaming the white middle class for black poverty. Isn't 
that what you call "whining?"

Tom

    Tom:
    
    Please don't misunderstand.  I do blame the church for its lack of
    vision.  The government would be the great Satan here but the church
    fell for it!
    
    -Jack

    re: .42
    
    Thank you so much for your trust and generosity.  This is
    exactly how we can make our world better by passing our
    good fortune along to those who need it.
    
    :-)
    
    Mary-Michael

    Thank you to all for the encouragement.  This event really left a deep
    impression on me, and on my children.  Mary-Michael you also are one
    that helps people in times of need! :-)
    
    Someone wrote me offline and said that people may think that I posted
    this as a "self pat on the back".  This is the fartherest thing from my
    mind, if anything I felt very humbled and put in my place by this
    situation.  I pray that no-one got this from the note.
    
    Nancy

    Tough Love For Sale 
    
    
    AT BEST, Republican efforts to fold several federal nutrition programs,
    including school lunches, and instead award block grants to the states
    is a public-relations mistake. House Republicans have been right to
    push for reforms and limits on welfare entitlements. It's not as if
    these do-gooder behemoths can't be tightened or improved. But the GOP
    leadership's decision to go after poverty programs before the party has
    sicced its scissors on, say, agribusiness subsidies, makes you wonder
    whether the GOP will ever go after deficit-busting corporate welfare. 
    
    Hold onto your wallet. A House Agriculture Committee vote last week
    suggests that the same Republicans who rightly want to reform poverty
    programs won't go after big-business boondoggles. 
    
    The Ag committee vote -- to fold all nutrition programs except food
    stamps into one big block grant -- was a departure from the GOP's
    Contract With America. The contract would have repealed the Food Stamp
    Act of 1977 and consolidated all food programs, including food stamps,
    in the block-grant package. Instead, the committee chose to let food
    stamps remain an entitlement. As a result, benefits, which average $170
    per month per household, would be available automatically to all who
    meet federal eligibility criteria. States would not be able to alter
    the benefit package. 
    
    As a matter of policy, the Ag committee vote was not without sense.
    Chairman Pat Roberts noted that by keeping food stamps as is, while
    ending the entitlement status of Aid to Families with Dependent
    Children and other nutrition programs, voters could be assured that
    ``during the process of returning welfare programs to the states, the
    legislation should provide a federal social safety net to backstop that
    process.'' 
    
    What's more, by not allowing governors to give aid recipients cash in
    place of food stamps, it could be argued that the committee vote would
    prevent a firestorm of fraud. Not that the present system isn't
    fraud-ridden. As the New York Times reported, the Agriculture
    Department's inspector general found 10 percent of food stamp money --
    $27 billion this year -- already lost to fraud. 
    
    But there is no escaping that this defection from block grants was
    instigated by farm-lobby Republicans -- principally Roberts of Kansas,
    Bill Emerson of Missouri and Steve Gunderson of Wisconsin -- who
    developed qualms about block grants and felt compelled to save the
    safety net where agribusiness stood to lose. Speaker Newt Gingrich, to
    his discredit, went along with cuts on families only to demur on the
    hit to agribusiness. 
    
    Oddly, Roberts and other farmers' friends come across as statesmen in
    this saga. They have thrilled Democrats who wrongly brand block grants
    as budget cuts even though the package would be increased by 4.5
    percent annually. As an entitlement, however, food stamps spending
    could grow by a larger amount, despite a promised spending cap. 
    
    Roberts put the block-grant crowd to shame because he at least could
    make a case for his program. The contract hacks, to the contrary, have
    failed to articulate why block grants are more than a pass-the-buck
    mandate. Contract With America, The Paperback, simply states that block
    grants will allow states to distribute federal money ``more freely.''
    The caseload for food stamps grew from 20 million in 1990 to 27.5
    million in 1994, yet the best the GOP could say -- before Roberts --
    was that block grants sound like a good idea? ``No one did the heavy
    lifting to show why it is a good proposal,'' James Bovard, author of
    ``Lost Rights,'' noted yesterday. 
    
    And the Reps are so inconsistent -- they want to end federal mandates
    here, then throw in a mandate there -- that it undermines the cause.
    Lost in the cacophony is the deafening silence of taxpayers. If the
    people really felt these programs were inviolate, the GOP would have
    caved on block grants sooner and not for food stamps only. 
    
    editorial published 3/1/95 in SF Chronicle

    Teenage Moms Get Reprieve From GOP 
    
    
    Washington 
    
    In another shift away from their original ``tough love'' welfare
    overhaul, House Republicans last night backed off plans to ban
    unmarried teenage mothers from the public assistance rolls for life. 
    
    Under pressure from Republican moderates and some GOP governors, House
    leaders agreed to drop the lifetime ban on cash welfare to anyone who
    gives birth out- of-wedlock before their 18th birthday. 
    
    Published 2/28/95 in San Francisco Chronicle

    
    DougO is correct - the Republicans are backing off, and the Welfare
    Reform proposal is going to be watered down considerably.  The
    electorate has little support for these programs, but it is very hard
    to do anything meaningful.  The welfare industry will change, but is
    hardly going to go extinct.  And it remains to be seen if money will
    be saved at all.
    
      bb

	Nancy, while there are times where I have thought you mention certain
things for a Pat on the back (one phone conversation comes to mind), I do not
believe that you put that note in for that reason.


Glen

    .42 An example of the good of Christianity. (There`s too much empahsis
    on the negative side these days).
      
    

    House panel OKs welfare reform bill 
    Republican measure requires recipients to work or lose benefits

    By Elizabeth Shogren

    Los Angeles Times

    WASHINGTON -- The House Ways and Means Committee completed action
    Wednesday on the Republicans' welfare reform plan, a sweeping effort to
    link benefits for the poor with social objectives such as work and
    marriage. The measure would also transfer policy-making power to the
    states.

    The last piece of the GOP plan, which would require for the first time
    that able-bodied Americans without dependent children work or lose
    their food stamps, was passed by a 22-11 committee vote. One Democrat
    joined the 21 Republicans voting for passage.

    ``This witnesses the demise of the welfare state,'' declared Ways and
    Means Chairman Bill Archer, R-Texas, holding up the committee's
    238-page bill.

    The Ways and Means measure will be joined with companion bills passed
    by two other House committees and debated on the House floor later this
    month, according to the Republican timetable.

    Although the omnibus bill is considered likely to clear the House, it
    awaits a less certain fate in the Senate. Senate Minority Leader Thomas
    Daschle, D-S.D., however, sounded a hopeful note Wednesday, telling
    reporters he has seen ``a lot of opportunities for compromise'' with
    Republicans on welfare reform.

    The Ways and Means Committee bill, the most far-reaching of the House's
    three committee-approved welfare measures, would limit families to five
    years of cash welfare benefits and make them work after two years on
    the dole. It would cut off assistance for legal immigrants and give
    states more freedom to tailor welfare programs to their specifications.

    The second measure in the House welfare package was approved in the
    early morning hours Wednesday by the Agriculture Committee, which voted
    to end poor people's entitlement to food stamps and require them to
    work to qualify for benefits.

    A third panel, the Economic and Educational Opportunities Committee,
    voted two weeks ago to replace the federal school meal program with
    lump-sum grants to states. Its bill would also reduce spending on the
    Women, Infants and Children, or WIC, program, which is used by 6
    million people, and combine federal child-care programs into one grant
    for states.

    The total welfare reform package would save taxpayers at least $50
    billion over five years, Archer said, while improving the lives of poor
    children by forcing parents to get jobs and discouraging people from
    having babies they could not afford to support.

    The legislation passed by the Agriculture Committee earlier Wednesday
    would require for the first time that able-bodied Americans aged 18 to
    50 without dependent children work or lose food stamps after 90 days.

    It would also repeal the current formula that ensures that food stamp
    benefits increase at the same rate as grocery prices. Instead, it would
    limit annual increases in benefits to 2 percent.

    Under the Ways and Means legislation, young unwed mothers would be
    eligible for cash benefits in the Aid to Families With Dependent
    Children program only when they reached 18. States would be given
    significant financial incentives for reducing their out-of-wedlock
    birth rates.

    Other provisions of the Ways and Means bill would transfer from the
    federal government to the states authority over foster care and
    adoption programs for abused and neglected children and sharply reduce
    the Supplemental Security Income program. This would be achieved by
    making most disabled children ineligible and by cutting off drug and
    alcohol users.

    Under the plan, cash welfare, foster and adoption services, child care
    and school lunches would no longer guarantee benefits to everyone who
    met standards set by the federal government. Instead, states would be
    provided with block grants and broad flexibility to determine
    eligibility levels and set restrictions and penalties.

    Published 3/09/95 in the San Jose Mercury News.

    THE GOP WELFARE PLAN:

    Here are key elements of the Republicans' five-year welfare reform
    plan:

    -- Child care: Consolidates nine federal child care programs in a block
    grant to the states. Spending would be capped at the current level of
    $1.94 billion per year.

    -- School meals: Combines school lunch and breakfast programs into a
    block grant to the states. Funding would rise from $6.68 billion in
    1996 to $7.85 billion in 2000.

    -- Family nutrition: Combines funding for several nutrition programs,
    including the Women, Infants and Children supplemental feeding program,
    into a block grant to the states. Funding would rise from $4.6 billion
    in 1996 to $5.3 billion in 2000.

    -- Aid to immigrants: Most legal immigrants would be barred from
    public-assistance rolls, with exceptions for refugees, the very elderly
    and those who served in the military.

    -- Food stamps: Holds automatic increases in benefits to 2 percent a
    year. Requires able-bodied people to work.

    -- Cash welfare: Replaces Aid to Families With Dependent Children with
    a block grant to the states. Ends the guarantee of cash aid to women
    and children who qualify; benefits are cut off after five years; and
    unmarried parents under age 18 would not be allowed to receive cash
    assistance.

    -- Foster care: Establishes a block grant to the states to prevent
    child abuse and neglect and care for children who are removed from
    their homes. Funding rises from $4.4 billion to $5.85 billion over five
    years.

    -- Supplemental Security Income: Bans disability payments to drug
    addicts and alcoholics; cuts cash payments to some children with
    behavioral or mental disabilities; replaces cash with medical benefits
    for other disabled children; and allows only the most severely disabled
    children to continue to receive cash.

    -- Child support: Establishes state and national registries of
    child-support orders and new hires to help track parents who refuse to
    pay.

    Source: Associated Press

Published 3/09/95 in the San Jose Mercury News.

>    THE GOP WELFARE PLAN:

one more:

 -- Give the rich more tax breaks

TTom

    
    Well, since all of us who work for Digital are "rich" by the
    administration's definition, it's fine by me.
    
    I am disappointed the GOP is only planning to cut off $50B from
    these bums.  Oh well, it's a start.
    
      bb

Yeah,

Just think how much they could cut off if'n the took up Corporate Welfare
Reform.

TTom

| <<< Note 243.63 by HBAHBA::HAAS "Plan 9 from Outer Space" >>>



| -- Give the rich more tax breaks

	TTom, you mean like the landowners thing? If the economy goes down,
they get a break on the land? 

I like the landowner thang if'n it's linked to being a homeowner.

I don't think that a speculative investor should get the same break as
someone who actually owns a house and actually lives there.

TTom

    Richard Lugar: A Republican who would end the real welfare

    By Richard Cohen

    IN A Republican field of self-proclaimed radicals and revolutionaries
    -- free marketers and lovers of lucre -- it turns out that the real
    radical is the conventionally conservative senator from Indiana,
    Richard Lugar. Alone among the presidential mentionables, he has
    officially proposed the eventual elimination of crop and export
    subsidies -- welfare for farmers.

    To understand the political risks of such a position, consider this:
    Iowa, site of the first presidential caucus, has received a bit more
    than $10 billion in various farm payments in the last nine years. In
    1993, the last full year for which figures are available, the state had
    125,572 recipients of this government largess -- some of them hallowed
    family farmers, of course, but many of them corporations and
    partnerships which, at night, do not sit by the fire and make quilts.
    They make political contributions instead.

    New Hampshire, the state with the first primary, is hardly in Iowa's
    league when it comes to farm payments -- rocky soil and all of that.
    Even so, Uncle Sam has poured $20 million into the state in the last
    nine years. Given that only 175,000 Republicans vote in the primary,
    even a small number of farm program recipients can be critical. New
    Hampshire, after all, is a state where a front parlor, coffee pot and
    half a dozen people is considered a voting bloc.

    With the exception of Lugar, the rest of the GOP hopefuls have plunged
    into Iowa and New Hampshire saying not a word about farm support
    programs. Instead, like the Republican Party in general, we have heard
    lots about the evil ways of Washington (from whence floweth the cash)
    and pernicious and downright immoral social welfare programs. The GOP
    has taken after school lunch programs, welfare recipients and -- until
    cooler heads prevailed -- the food stamp program. But, at least in
    Iowa, farm payments, not the food stamps program, is where the real
    money is -- $661 million for farms in 1992, only $142 million for food
    stamps the same year.

    For Republicans, taking on the poor is like a kids' fight with toy
    guns: Everyone's a hero. Bashing welfare recipients is easy since, by
    and large, the poor are not so stupid as to vote Republican -- or,
    alas, to vote at all. Whatever the morality of this approach -- and I
    concede that getting tough with welfare recipients may well be the
    moral approach -- it is nevertheless easy. Nowadays, no one much loves
    the poor -- especially if they are young, pregnant and unwed. Get a
    job, is the cry, but get out of our sight is the sentiment.

    But the GOP has yet to take on its own constituency. My favorite person
    in that regard is Sen. Larry Pressler, R-S.D., who has yelled and
    screamed about the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which received
    a mere $285 million from the federal government in the current fiscal
    year. Pressler has ideological as well as fiscal problems with the CPB,
    but let's look at his own state and what it got in farm supports
    between 1985 and 1994: $3.4 billion or an average of $340 million a
    year.

    In other words, a single state received more in farm supports than the
    CPB gets for the entire country. The Environmental Working Group, the
    wonderful people who slipped me these figures, estimates that Uncle Sam
    could have bought 30 percent of South Dakota's farmland with the money
    it's spent on farm programs in the last decade. It also calculated that
    while South Dakota's average food stamp recipient got $694 annually,
    the average farm payment per recipient was $7,132. But which program
    did the GOP congressional leadership want to tackle first? Food stamps,
    of course.

    Leading Republicans have indeed talked about ending farm programs and
    letting the vaunted free market work its magic. Among the presidential
    candidates, though, only Lugar has made this an issue. On Feb. 15, he
    announced a plan to phase out both price supports and export subsidies.
    This was no theoretical grandstanding since Lugar is both a farm state
    senator and chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. Needless to
    say, his plan was immediately denounced by farm groups, including some
    of his Senate colleagues.

    In the context of the federal budget, the farm program is no big deal
    -- only about $8.9 billion annually. But its elimination by the
    Republican-controlled Congress might show America that the GOP is
    serious about saving money, no matter who gets hurt -- not just trying
    to balance the budget on the backs of the poor.

    The 62-year-old Lugar is an interesting entry into the Republican
    presidential race. The GOP's foremost foreign policy expert in the
    Senate and a onetime mayor (Indianapolis), his credentials -- although
    maybe not his political charisma -- demand respect. But beyond his
    experience, is an apparent willingness to face an important Republican
    constituency and say that even for them welfare has to end.

    Richard Cohen is a Washington Post columnist.

Published 3/09/95 in the San Jose Mercury News.

    Right, Left Call For Cuts to Corporate `Aid' 


    Carolyn Lochhead, Chronicle Washington Bureau 

    Washington 

    An unusual coalition of think tanks warned yesterday that cutting
    welfare for the poor will backfire unless Republicans also slash annual
    business and agricultural subsidies currently equal to half of the
    federal deficit. 

    With school lunches and housing projects in line for GOP cuts,
    Republicans have a political as well as a fiscal imperative to
    terminate financing such as the $2.9 million in advertising subsidies
    that went to Pillsbury Corp. and the $263,000 that Martin Marietta
    Corp. charged taxpayers for a Smokey Robinson concert, these groups
    said. 

    The Cato Institute on the libertarian right, the Progressive Policy
    Institute in the Democratic center and the Center for Budget and Policy
    Priorities on the left produced a long list of special government tax
    breaks, subsidies and trade protections to U.S corporations that
    covered everything from building the multibillion-dollar space station
    to replacing damaged fishing gear. 

    Such ``corporate welfare'' has grown so extensive that nearly every
    member of the Fortune 500 receives some sort of subsidy, said Stephen
    Moore, the Cato Institute's director of fiscal studies. 

    Critics as disparate as Bay Area Democrat George Miller, consumer
    advocate Ralph Nader and conservative presidential contender Phil Gramm
    have all denounced corporate subsidies. 

    Labor Secretary Robert Reich yesterday again challenged the GOP to cut
    what he derided as ``aid to dependent corporations,'' an allusion to
    Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the main cash welfare program
    for the poor. The Cato Institute called Reich's suggestion ``right on
    target.'' 

    Reich said that if Republicans ``want to get people off of welfare,
    they should be equally eager to get companies off welfare . . . if they
    want to avoid the charge of hypocrisy.'' 

    Yet the Clinton administration, seeking to burnish its pro-business
    credentials, has been a leading proponent of many business subsidies,
    mainly high-technology aid and other Commerce Department programs. 

    Last year, the administration subsidized such industry giants as
    General Electric, United Airlines, Hewlett Packard, Caterpillar
    Equipment and General Motors, according to Moore. Reich countered that
    the administration has cut honey and wool subsidies and closed tax
    loopholes for business meals. 

    Republicans may find it difficult to cut subsidies to business, long a
    core GOP constituency. Indeed, many small business owners and farmers
    helped put the new Republican majority in power. 

    But neither are such cuts politically easy for Democrats, said Will
    Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, the ``New
    Democrat'' think tank that President Clinton helped found. 

    The current Democratic strategy is to sit quietly until later this
    spring when Republicans have to propose a budget calling for enormous
    cuts, estimated at $1.2 trillion over seven years, if they want to
    fulfill their promise to balance the budget by 2002. 

    Democrats then will attack the cuts, especially in poverty programs, 
    as heartless and irresponsible. The strategy is already in play. The
    Clinton administration demurred on further deficit reduction in this
    year's budget, and congressional Democrats will offer no alternative to
    the GOP cuts. Both, however, have strongly attacked early Republican
    efforts. 

    Marshall argued that the Democrats' strategy will fail, saying such
    charges have been made since the Reagan administration and now sound
    like ``crying wolf.'' Said Marshall: ``If Democrats resort to the old
    tactic of reflexively defending all government programs, they are
    playing to a shrinking chorus of true believers. There's only one way
    to reduce government programs, and that's to cut them.'' 

    Republicans often argue that welfare harms those it is supposed to
    help, and analysts agreed that subsidies have the same effect on
    businesses, weakening their incentive to be competitive. 

    They pointed out that the most heavily subsidized industries, such as
    steel and textiles, are often among the least efficient, while the
    least subsidized, such as computers and film-making, are often the
    most. 

Published 3/7/95 in San Francisco Chronicle

    
    
    Well the last article is suspect, Doug.  The lie about the cutting of
    school lunches being cut by the GOP leaves the rest of the article to
    be written off.
    
    
    Mike

    More on Corporate Welfare that needs reform...
    
    DougO
    -----

    Crop subsidies aid absentee farmers, study finds
    City slickers receive thousands for land they own but don't till

    Los Angeles Times

    WASHINGTON -- When President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the 73rd
    Congress enacted legislation in the depths of the Great Depression to
    save the American farmer, they did not have Arnold Travis and Eugene
    Veenhuis in mind.

    Yet Travis, who lives in a neighborhood of million-dollar homes in Los
    Angeles, and Veenhuis, with a gated beachfront condominium in Malibu,
    have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal crop
    subsidies over the past several years, all for distant farmland they
    own but others till.

    They are doing nothing illegal. But their cases dramatize how the
    Depression-era farm support programs have evolved over the decades from
    a safety net for millions of starving farm families to a complicated
    entitlement program that includes wealthy, urban Americans who happen
    to own farmland.

    Travis owns 3,300 acres near Blythe that are planted in cotton and
    wheat, qualifying him for annual subsidy payments ranging from $30,000
    to $250,000 over the past 10 years. The land has been in Travis' family
    since 1939 but he has not lived in Blythe for more than 40 years.

    Veenhuis, a tax attorney, bought into a 50,000-acre spread in eastern
    Montana in 1989. He plants 4,000 acres in wheat and barley solely
    because they are among the crops subsidized by the government. He said
    he has received about $350,000 in federal grain subsidies, crop-failure
    insurance payments and conservation incentives over the past five
    years.

    A new computer analysis of Department of Agriculture direct payments to
    farmers under a variety of programs shows that the government now pays
    hundreds of millions of dollars to landowners like Travis and Veenhuis
    who reside in the nation's biggest cities and who are hundreds,
    sometimes thousands, of miles away from the farms the government
    supports.

    The report, released today in Washington, is the first comprehensive
    look at where the $10 billion a year in agricultural support payments
    actually goes.

    All told, about $1.3 billion in farm subsidies flowed into the heart of
    the nation's 50 biggest cities over the 10-year period.

    San Jose, with 562 recipients collecting $8.6 million in subsidies,
    ranked 34th. Fresno, with 1,706 people collecting $103.4 million, was
    No. 1; Sacramento, at 1,054 recipients and $102.8 million, was No. 2.

    The study, focusing on payments in the largest cities, accounted for
    only $1.8 billion of the $106 billion spent on farm support during the
    10 years.

    However, it determined that urban farmers are numerous. And in the
    1990s, for the first time in U.S. history, more than half the land in
    agricultural production is being tilled by those who do not own it.

    Published 3/16/95 in the San Jose Mercury News.

    	Kind of underhanded to include this under the topic of Welfare 
    	Reform.
    
    	While you make a valid statement (corporate welfare) you only
    	cloud both issues.
    
    	This should go with one of the the other balanced-budget
    	discussions.
    
    	All farm subsidies should go.  (Tobacco subsidies should be at
    	the top of the list.)  If it causes food prices to rise, so be 
    	it.  We're currently paying the equivalent of those price
    	increases in taxes to pay not only the subsidies, but the
    	bureaucracy to manage those programs.

    Underhanded?  You're out of touch again.  Look at many past notes in
    this topic which used the phrase long before now....56, .65, .68, .69.
    And while you may like to consider the issue clouded by confluence, I
    consider them quite appropriately paired, as do the left, central, and
    right-wing think tanks referenced in .69.  And Lugar is the one who put
    farm subsidies on the table, finally, see .68.
    
    > All farm subsidies should go.  (Tobacco subsidies should be at the top
    > of the list.)  If it causes food prices to rise, so be it. 
    
    Actually, crop subsidies are in the form of guaranteed floor prices,
    and quota systems (enforced by payments for idled land) to keep them
    from growing too much unneeded crops. Both of those strategies actually
    boost prices throughout the supply chain by reducing supply and also by
    the floor price setting a high minimum price that the government will
    pay if the markets won't.  Both strategies result in higher prices to
    the end consumer.  Eliminating them will actually LOWER prices to
    consumers.
    
    > We're currently paying the equivalent of those price increases in
    > taxes to pay not only the subsidies, but the bureaucracy to manage
    > those programs.
    
    Well, there won't be price increases, for the above mentioned reasons.
    Instead of balancing off taxpayer subsidies against higher consumer
    prices, reducing crop supports will both save the subsidies and reduce
    consumer prices; a double benefit for everyone but farmers, instead of
    a tradeoff.  Farmers only get the single benefit of lower taxes, traded
    off against the lack of price supports and payments for idled land.  If
    Lugar's bill passes.
    
    DougO

       <<< Note 243.73 by SX4GTO::OLSON "Doug Olson, ISVETS Palo Alto" >>>

>    Underhanded?  You're out of touch again.  
    
    	I thought twice about using that term because I suspected
    	you might have taken it as an attack.  Sorry.  I didn't
    	mean it that way.  Perhaps I should have thought three 
    	times about it.
    
    	That the phrase has been used before (corporate welfare) doesn't
    	make it right or prudent.  I still think it unnecessarily mixes
    	two very distinct issues that should remain separate.
    
>    Actually, crop subsidies are in the form of guaranteed floor prices,
    
    	True.
    
>    Both strategies result in higher prices to
>    the end consumer.  Eliminating them will actually LOWER prices to
>    consumers.
    
    	Short-term perhaps.  But they are in place to prevent insolvent
    	farms from going under or being absorbed, preventing cartel-like
    	or monopoly-like situations.
    
    	Regardless our personal viewpoints of the purposes and effects of 
    	farm subsidies, and ensuing bickering over those differences, I'd
    	prefer to enjoy a rare case of clear agreement with you -- that
    	farm subsidies should go -- and not taint it with yet another
    	round of quibbling.  Fair enough?

    Joe,
    
    The cartel farms are what soaks up most of the federal support already. 
    So while some of the federal money trickles down to the "American
    Gothic" image farmers in this country, the majority goes to pay people
    who have far more in common with management than working the land.  
    
    It is much like the grazing permit fiasco.  While there are families
    that graze their own leases on BLM land, many, if not most, of the
    permits are held by people who sublet the permit to others at a much
    higher fee, like close to what private land costs to lease.  This is
    costing you and me twice.  Once for the underfunded fee, and again for
    subsidizing a person who isn't using the land for their profits.  Now,
    if this isn't welfare for the wealthy, tell me what is.  
    
    And timber sales.  Do you realize you and I fund logging jobs to the
    tune of 28K/year/lumberjack?  That is a lot of money, and I doubt most
    of it goes to the actual workers.  It lines someones pocket in
    Corporate America.  
    
    It amazes me that we treat welfare reform as only going after the
    poorest sector and most defenseless people in the country, while
    ignoring the real welfare problem.  Let's get corporations off the
    federal tit, and give them the respect for standing on their own two
    feet we say we want to give to people with limited resources.  
    
    meg

    So if the immigrant gets citizenship status beffore the grace period
    runs out they will stay on welfare?  What will we do with the legal
    immigrant whose partner left her and a mess of kids to persue greener
    pastures?  The kids are citizens.  Are we going to take them away, put
    them all on a slow boat to xdestination, or starve the citizen children
    to prove a point?
    
    Just curious, as I know a couple of women in this position.
    
    meg

    
    incentive is a wonderful thing.

    
    The bill comes out of committee today or tomorrow to the House floor.
    It does indeed cut approximately $60B over 5 years, most importantly
    by time-limiting the benefits to two years, limiting COLAs, and
    ending AFDC cash payments to non-working teenage mothers.  The other
    aspect is that this bill makes most of welfare a block grant to the
    states rather than an entitlement.  House passage, perhaps after
    amendment, is a foregone conclusion.  It will be fillibustered, or
    if necessary, vetoed by Clinton.
    
      bb

    
    	RE .75 - Meg,
    
>    Let's get corporations off the
>    federal tit, and give them the respect for standing on their own two
>    feet we say we want to give to people with limited resources.  
    
    Intersting story in today's Globe: Two Senators were debating
    cuts in government programs that give money to big and small
    business. These programs are the Advanced Technology Program
    and the Manufactuing Extension Partnership as well as the Small
    Business Administration.
    
    The Senator in favor of the cuts was Judd Gregg. Guess who
    was opposed to these cuts - None other than Ted Kennedy!!
    
    

    Judd Gregg and Bob Kerrey are in charge of figuring out how to balance
    the budget by 2002; after having watched them both on TV while in
    Florida explaining their proposals, I have more respect for both of
    them.

    I'll have respect when they deliver, not until.
    
    DougO

    
    RE .last
    
    Doug, does this mean you will not respect anyone for trying?
    
    The Republicans will have a hard time delivering on any cuts
    with the Dems and Clinton fighting them the whole way.
    
    					Ed
    
    

    I mean, I've been watching Congress seriously for nearly twenty years
    and things are even worse now than they were then.  In that time, the
    debt has quadrupled, and interest payments alone on that debt take a
    huge portion of every year's budget.  Each and every Congress has made
    pious noises and delivered nothing of what they promised.  I'm past
    respecting the individuals who sound good as representatives of that
    institution.  I want results.  Until then, they're all tainted, no
    matter their individual merits.
    
    >Doug, does this mean you will not respect anyone for trying?
    
    Trying cuts no ice.
    
    DougO

       <<< Note 243.84 by SX4GTO::OLSON "Doug Olson, ISVETS Palo Alto" >>>

>    Trying cuts no ice.
    
	But payback sure does, eh Doug?

    you noticed, eh?  popsicle for the bright boy over here.  I haven't
    mentioned payback in two weeks at least, yet Joe was bright enough to
    recognize the symptoms playing out on the national scene.
    
    eh, no, Joe, I don't respect them for playing payback games either.
    But I do reserve the right to laugh at all of you in here who were so
    euphoric a few months ago as Newt's Contract comes to an ignominious
    crashing thud-and-blunder end.  Democrats learned to play
    obstructionist politics from the masters.  Too bad now that the GOP has
    put itself in the position of trying to lead solo.
    
    When both sides start trying to reach bipartisan consensus again, the
    country will follow.  When both sides cut the deficit, the debt will
    come down.  When that happens, they'll have earned respect.
    
    Not until.
    
    And those of you who celebrate solo politics are doomed.
    
    DougO

 >   eh, no, Joe, I don't respect them for playing payback games either.
 >   But I do reserve the right to laugh at all of you in here who were so
 >   euphoric a few months ago as Newt's Contract comes to an ignominious
 >   crashing thud-and-blunder end.  Democrats learned to play
 
 I'm still euphoric. We have a house making honest attempts to make significant
 change and keep political promises. They may be aiming hi, but if they didn't,
 there would be no pressure on the senate to produce, and in the end, you have to
 aim high so the resulting compromise will be closer to your target.
 
 The dem leadership has been exposed to the light of day. The focus today is the
 same focus Reagan had, and got shoved down the republicans throat in the 80's.

 All in all, a very refreshing first few months.

 >    And those of you who celebrate solo politics are doomed.
  
 I don't know about celebrating, but with more dems moving over to repubs, and
 many not seeking re-election, solo politics is a real posibility in 
 1996 :-)

 Doug.

    	I still share your euphoria, Doug.  (Er, Doug Fyfe, that is, not
    	DougO...)

    ha!  honest attempts they're making, are they?  they obviously can fool
    some of the people, some of the time, still.  Answer me this, Fyfe: if
    the Senate is saying right up front that they aren't playing Newt-ball,
    then just how "honest" is it for the house to be continue the charade?
    Just how "high" will they have to aim to get term limits of any sort
    through the Senate, mired in early presidential politics with Lugar,
    Dole and Gramm already?
    
    Oh, enjoy your euphoria, boyz- but don't say you weren't warned.
    Your hangover is coming.
    
    If they REALLY get honest and start working on bills that BOTH houses
    will pass, AND that reduce the deficit, then it'll be time for
    euphoria.  Not until.
    
    DougO

    
    Doug,
    
    I agree with much of your saying. However, I think the House
    Republicans have no choice but to pass (that is vote on)
    their Contract even 'though they know that much of what they
    are doing will have no chance to pass. The reason is that if
    they don't vote on the contract the Dems will say "they Lied
    to you" in '96.
    
    Don't worry, it's only 100 days, and some real bills will come
    from it. There will be plenty of time to get down to real
    work for the rest of the term.
    
    					Ed
    
    

    >if the Senate is saying right up front that they aren't playing
    >Newt-ball, then just how "honest" is it for the house to be continue the
    >charade?
    
     The fact of the matter is they promised they'd do N things in the
    house in the 1st 100 days. For them to renege simply because the senate
    is unwilling to do the same would be to hand the democrats a free down
    in the political football game. No, they promised and they should
    fulfill. One certainly couldn't call that dishonest.

    
    Actually, listening to the Senate on the L-I-V yesterday, I'm
    starting to think the Democrats might cave on this.  First, the new
    Dole substitute incorporated half of the Democrats' objections.  Then
    yesterday, they started accepting Democratic amendments except for the
    totally crippling ones.  Yesterday afternoon, Daschle introduced "the
    Daschle substitute", a gutted wonder from a confirmed LIV opponent.
    Even Byrd, who has made a career out of sneaking pork into
    appropriations bills, made compromising noises.
    
    I think the Democrats (by one vote, you recall) made a SUPERB choice
    in picking the Clark-Kentish Daschle over the feisty Chris Dodd to
    support their drunken sailor fiscal policies.  He SOUNDS so mild and
    reasonable and low-blood-pressure while advocating spending trillions
    we don't have.  If the Democrats actually had an agenda, he would be
    formidable.  By contrast the Dodd defiant approach looks tired and old.
    
    Anyways, there are two ways to read the "Daschle substitute", and you
    can't tell which it is.  Either it is a fig-leaf for waivering Dems,
    particularly those up for re-election to CYA, or it is preparation
    for a retreat because he hasn't got 41 votes against cloture.  He is
    very cagey, and of course Dole cannot take the "Daschle substitute"
    as is.  But Dole is no fool, and cannot afford another BBA debacle
    and keep his lead in the 1996 sweepstakes.
    
    I'm thinking there will be some sort of wishy-washy LIV.  I hope so.
    We shall see in the next few days.  If the democrats go defiant, it
    is a HUGE political error for 96, and they know it.
    
      bb

    DougO:
    
    For somebody who keeps complaining about Reagan and deficit spending,
    you sure don't seem willing to anti up!
    
    -Jack

    
    Well, I finally saw a summary of the CBO scoring of this, the first
    Republican item that directly affects life in America, rather than
    Inside-the-Beltway process stuff like BBA/LIV/term limits etc.  I did
    not take notes like I should, so I'm sure Mr. Bill will leap on any
    inaccuraccies.  Actually, I enjoy when he does that.
    
    The "Personal Responsibility Act" (luv those Newtisms) costs $1185B
    over 5 years, a CBO-scoring "savings" of $66B, but these numbers are
    already changed because the House has accepted some Democratic
    amendments.  That's approximately correct, anyways, so it's a "5% cut",
    to a first approximation.  There is no year in the 5 in which the
    increase in spending is less than inflation, and the last year is
    42% higher than the first in total dollars.  But it IS a real cut from
    doing the same-old-same-old.
    
    Some stuff is not cut at all, or even increased, but other stuff is
    cut savagely : food stamp eligibility limited to 2 years, no AFDC
    cash payments to unwed mothers under 18 (there is a figleaf voucher
    allowance to states, for diapers etc).
    
    The bill is not consistent in Block Grants - some things are, some
    aren't.  The Republican response (very imperfect) to the
    anti-stabiliser effect is the so-called "rainy day fund" provision.
    It is easy to see that in the event of VERY severe recessions, this
    would not be adequate and supplementals might be needed.  But it would
    have worked in the last couple of recessions, which weren't that big.
    
    The "unleashing the states" idea is very weakly represented here. 
    There are as many oversight and strings-attached provisions to the
    grants, I'm surprised the governors/mayors are supporting it.  But
    they are.
    
    The rhetoric on both sides of this issue on the floor has to be seen
    to be believed !  All restraint has been thrown to the winds.  Passage
    (with amendments) in the House is inevitable.  What the Senate will do,
    nobody knows.
    
      bb

    
    Did I actually hear a democrat compare the repub welfare reform
    to the holocaust?
    

    
    re, holocaust - Yep.  Unbelievable !
    
    And there was a reference to the Democrats as "stooges for thieves".
    
      bb

    I just find the minds of people who say things like this incredulous.
    
    -Jack

    
    But (according to George) it's the repubs who engage in dirty
    politics.
    
    Anyhow, I found it incredibly offensive and can only wonder
    how a Jewish person would feel.
    
    

    
    Joe Kennedy said the repubs are gonna starve 3.5 million kids
    donchaknow...

    SNARF reform..

 >   ha!  honest attempts they're making, are they?  they obviously can fool
 >   some of the people, some of the time, still.  Answer me this, Fyfe: if
 >   the Senate is saying right up front that they aren't playing Newt-ball,
 >   then just how "honest" is it for the house to be continue the charade?
 
 Yes, an honest attempt. They committed to certain actions if elected and they
 are following thru (in the house). The senate made no such promises.
 And yes, they are playing Newt ball. Although Newt specifics may not be
 the end result - the changes that will occur are the result of Newt direction.
 
 It takes a lot of time and energy to change the course of such a large 
 ship. Newt has garnished a lot of energy to that end. He/They've got two 
 years. So far so good.

 The dems are behaving badly in the house, and the country is watching.
 But what I'm happiest to see is all the democratic hawks in the senate, 
 unencombered by an emasculated democratic leadership, participating more 
 in the last 2+ months than in the last 10 years. The fallout in the
 democratic party has just begun, and if what I've seen lately is any indication,
 the party that emerges from this shakeout will be a far better one.

 The days of 'No cuts unless we can roll them into new/other federal programs'
 are over.

 Doug.

    During the welfare debate the Dems hit the Republicans hard
    for being tough on children and welfare recipients.

    It should be noted that while the Republican welfare bill
    that passed the house is estimated to save (something like) 
    65 Billion over 5 years. The bill the Democrats offered
    not only did not save money, but it was predicted to cost
    more than the current projections.

    By budget rules the Democrats had to specify how they were
    going to pay for the increase. First they were going to
    subject welfare payments to federal income tax. Second they
    were going to phase out the child care tax credit for couples
    earning more than 60K. 

    Of course that wouldn't hurt welfare recipients or children...

    					Ed

    
      The Senate has apparently reached a compromise, and will pass a
     Welfare Reform Bill, shortly (they may have as I type).  It is not
     the same as the House measure, but an amended version of the Dole
     proposal.  The Democrats offered many amendments, which somewhat
     to their surprise, the majority accepted.  It will now go to the
     House-Senate conference.  I haven't seen all the details, but I do
     know the Republicans caved in and agreed to provide $3B for daycare.
    
      bb

    IMO expecting mothers to get jobs while not providing some means of
    obtaining daycare is improvident.

    >> IMO expecting mothers to get jobs while not providing some means of
    >> obtaining daycare is improvident.
    
    Who has provided daycare for all of the other single mothers out
    there in the workplace, though?
    
    Chris

    I get a bit frazzled when I see this banter back in forth about welfare 
    being bad, welfare being good. I have to voice a vocal opinion not to 
    offend anyone, but to vent...figured this was the best place to get 
    CONSTRUCTIVE CRITISM(SP)...
    
    My soon to be husband's ex wife, when she couldn't get enough attention
    from her ex, up and quit, yes folks, just quit, a well paying job, with
    good bennies to go to Back to MASS...guess why...higher unemployment 
    benifits..They have a 5 year old son...the love of my life, who can't
    understand how come Daddy and Shell have nice things and mommy
    doesn't. We try to explain to him, to have nice things one must work
    and work hard. We both have good jobs, well paying and all that..yeah,
    we hate our jobs some days, yeah it sucks to get up early every morning
    and face the same old grind day after day..but there are days I can't
    wait to get up and start another day....but to hear that there are
    people who, for what ever reason, just decide with no thought to the
    future to up and quit there job and go on welfare after there
    unemployement runs out...his ex is Kathrine Gibbs educated...she wasn't
    stupid before, I assume she's still not too stupid..but she has a dumpy
    little apt that we are sure she isn't making rent on, in a seedy part
    of town. (I won't mention the town). with those snot nosed little kids
    that hang on the street corner, looking like they want to start
    trouble. And she doesn't want to work...why should she..she gets her CS
    every week, on the same day, check in hand for the weekend..She used to
    have their son in daycare...it was a good day care and CS paid for most
    of it if not all, and we'd toss alittle extra her way for food and
    such. Now all she does is whine about how she has NO MONEY>>>>>>
    GET A JOB.....Get a job....She finds every excuse not to work. I even
    took her resume and sent it to different places...she either didn't
    respond to the calls or was late or didn't show for interviews. What is
    that....?
    
    Sorry, needed to rant alittle
    Personally, if they pass the new welfare bill and they provide daycare
    for single moms so they can get trained and go back to work..that's
    what welfare should be about...a temporary income until a permanant one
    can be set up. Being a single mom isn't easy. 
    

    
    Concerning daycare. Why not require those welfare mothers who can
    not find jobs to care for the children of those who can find jobs?
    This would cost nothing. 
    
    						Ed

    <--- What a way to have your children motivated whilst you are at
         work..

    
    <-- Providing daycare IS a job.  

    Re .108
>    <--- What a way to have your children motivated whilst you are at
>         work..

    I don't understand. Are you suggesting that most welfare mothers 
    currently provide their children with a lot of motivation and this 
    would be lost if another welfare mother watched them during the day?

    Re .109
>    
>    <-- Providing daycare IS a job.  

    Exactly. This would be their job. If they were caring for the
    children of others, that would be the same as if they were out
    working. Ideally this could be done in a group setting with
    a few professionals providing supervision.

    					Ed

    I wouldn't want some of those people who are the biggest welfare
    problems to get anywhere near my kids.  Other than that, not a bad
    idea.
    
    Actually, considering how much of a problem day care is for everyone
    these days, and considering how important it is for people to learn how
    to care for children before they have any of their own, why not have
    a day care center attached to every high school?
    
    
    The center would be staffed by professionals, and would provide an
    alternative to more expensive private day care.  In essence it would be
    a downward extension of the public school system.
    
    Every high school kid -- both male and female -- would have to take a
    course in parenting before they graduate.
    
    A lot of local help would be needed to assist the professionals who run 
    the facility, so your idea about employing welfare mothers in that role
    would fit right in, and they would have good supervision and be able to
    learn more about good parenting all at the same time.
    
    Cost money?  You betcha.  Cost more or less than not doing all that is
    costing society now?  That's the question.
    

    
    	High school kids?
    
    	Might want to teach them about parenting at 12-13, so that 75%
    	of them will have taken the course before they have their 1st
    	kid.
    

    Good point

    
    
                   Food 
    State   AFDC   Stamps    Medicaid    Housing    Util    WIC    Comm  Total
    
    Ha.     $8,544 $5,064    $3,689      $8,219     $310    $1,730 $180  $36,400
    As      11,076  3,420     4,575       5,677      551     1,370  180  $32,200
    Ct.      8,160  2,304     3,913       8,016      632     1,269  180  $29,600
    Ma.      6,948  2,664     4,533       8,446      417       988  180  $30,500
    DC       5,040  3,240     4,192       8,616      393     1,084  180  $22,745
    NY       8,436  2,412     3,824       5,677      357     1,237  180  $22,124
    NJ       5,088  3,312     3,824       7,960      583     1,021  180  $21,968
    RI       6,648  3,216     3,130       6,682      514     1,171  180  $21,541
    Ca.      7,284  2,568     2,784       6,413      368     1,090  180  $20,687
    NH       6,600  2,772     3,473       5,520      460       959  180  $19,964
    Md.      4,392  3,540     4,192       5,864      293     1,028  180  $19,489
    Va.      4,248  3,480     4,168       5,608      584     1,117  180  $19,385
    
    
    Here's what the matching pretax wages would need to be to equate to the
    welfare that you would get in the above states.
    
    Ha. $36,400
    As. $32,200
    Ct. $29,600
    Ma. $30,500
    DC  $29,100
    NY  $27,300
    NJ  $26,500 
    RI  $26,100
    Ca. $24,100
    NH  $22,800
    Md. $22,800
    Va. $23,100
    
    
    Source: Cato Institute Study-for year 1995

    So, is everyone moving to Hawaii or what?!?

    Re: -.1
    
    Which state is "As", the second in the list?  Is it near AK?
    
    -- Jim

    What state is "Ha."?  The only state I know of whose name begins with
    an H is Hawaii, and its abberviation is HI.

    Alaska

    
    
    RE: .117  Bored, eh Dick?
    
    

    
    	Looks like Tuesday is "nit-pick day" in SOAPBOX.
    

    Every day is nit pick day, it's just that some days are grumpier than
    usual.

    
    	RE: Dick
    
    	abberviation, eh?
    
    	I can't find that word in my dictionary.  8^)
    

    No nit too small to pick, eh, Shawn?

>>          <<< Note 243.121 by POLAR::RICHARDSON "Rogering and IPA" >>>

>>    Every day is nit pick day, it's just that some days are grumpier than
>>    usual.

	that's "nitpick".

	never has there been less of a need to thank me.

    
    	Not when the motive is "payback", no.
    
    	8^)
    

    What I find interesting, is that in the same day the "sweeping" 
    Welfare reform stuff went through the senate and the congressional
    budget "hawks" said it ws too liberal, the same confress-critters voted
    to keep millions of MY tax dollars going to KFC, BK, McD's, Gallo etc.
    for "promotion of our goods overseas"  Somehow I have a disconnect.  If
    poor women and children are not worthy of support, why are
    multi-national companies?
    
    meg

    
    
    Cuz dey hire the poor women and children.
    
    
    

    
    
    It is incredible to hear the dims squealing like stuck pigs over the
    medicare reform.  They are hiring Archie Bunker and the golden girls to
    do adverts about the "evil repubs".  Unbelievable.  Meanwhile, another
    dem comes over to the republican side.
    
    

    It is unbelievable....Archie in bed with the dims?????

>  Meanwhile, another  dem comes over to the republican side.

	Who is it this time?

    >What I find interesting, is that in the same day the "sweeping" 
    >Welfare reform stuff went through the senate and the congressional
    >budget "hawks" said it ws too liberal, the same confress-critters voted
    >to keep millions of MY tax dollars going to KFC, BK, McD's, Gallo etc.
    >for "promotion of our goods overseas"  Somehow I have a disconnect.
    
     Note that the current trade deficit is the highest it has ever been.

    >> It is unbelievable....Archie in bed with the dims?????
    
    Heh, actually Carroll O'Connor has been strongly liberal all
    along.  He played Archie as a *satire* of conservatives.  Note
    that in most episodes, Archie "got his comeuppance", although
    Norman Lear treated the Archie character with far more sympathy
    and understanding than modern-day television's brutal treatment
    of conservatives (e.g., "Designing Women", "Murphy Brown").
    
    Chris

Subj:	C-NEWS: Welfare gone Haywire

********************************
Just a little something I found 
in Reader's Digest  - H. West
********************************

WELFARE GONE HAYWIRE
John B. O'Donnell and Jim Haner
Baltimore Sun 


Every month, Rosie Watson goes to the Lake Providence, La. post office and picks
up nine federal welfare checks totaling $3,893 - tax free income that adds up to
$46,716 a year.  Few working families in this bleak, impoverished Mississippi
River backwater earn more.

Except that Rosie, age 44, doesn't earn it.  She gets $343.50 a month from the
government in disability payments because she was found by a Social Security law
judge to be too stressed out to work.  Her common law husband, L. C. Lyons, age
56, gets the same amount for obesity (he weighed 386 pounds when he qualified
for payments).

Watson has seven children, ages 13 to 22.  All of them have lagged behind in
school and at various times scored poorly on psychological tests.  Under the
government's rules, this translated into a failure to demonstrate "age
appropriate behavior" and qualified them to get $458.00 each.  Welfare payments
such as these are so widespread in Lake Providence and other communities around
the nation that they are popularly known as "crazy checks".

A visitor to Rosie Watson's small bungalow would be hard pressed to find any
sign of high living, however.  The screen door hangs open.  Soaps blare from the
television.  Roaches crawl the walls in the living room; the kitchen is caked
with dirt. The house lacks a telephone, but Rosie does have two scanners to
monitor police calls.  "That's so I know what's going on," she explains.

The welfare program that supports Rosie's family is run by the Social Security
Administration (SSA) and is called Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
Established by Congress in 1974, SSI was originally aimed at providing life's
necessities for poor adults too old, ill or handicapped to work.  Now its 6.3
million recipients include alcoholics and drug addicts who stoke their habits
with the cash; legal aliens; and nearly 900,000 children, 67 percent of whom get
checks for mental retardation or for other hard-to-disprove mental problems.  It
has become the nations most generous welfare plan.

The cost of SSI, now over $25 billion annually, has more than doubled in the
past five years.  It is expected to grow another 50 percent in the next four
years.  Sen Robert Byrd (D., W.Va) calls it a "well intentioned entitlement
program run amok."

Right to Benefits.

Rosie Watson first tried to get aboard this check-writing behemoth at the age of
24.  When SSI was set up, she was an eight-grade dropout with an infant and a
toddler, collecting $90 a month in Aid to families with Dependent Children
(AFDC).  The new disability plan paid even better the traditional welfare based
only on need, and she filed her first application.

She was turned down, but she would persist over the years with 17 more
applications for herself and her family.  The rules permit unlimited
applications and unlimited SSI checks to a household.  She was merely exercising
her right to seek benefits from a government program.

First in the family to be accepted to the SSI rolls was her second child, Sam.
He was four in 1978 when Watson filed for him.  he had just been declared mildly
"mentally retarded" by evaluators at Northeast Louisiana University.  His mother
had told them that he was violent, and a threat to other children.

Relying on that report, Social Security decided that Sam should get benefits.
But then a pediatrician reviewing Sam's file said that his behavior was normal,
for a child.  SSI tossed out his claim.  Watson applied three more times
unsuccessfully for Sam, then gave up - temporarily.

For 27 months she mode no claims.  During that period the SSA underwent a
profound change.  The agency had admitted in 1980 that a fifth of disability
recipients shouldn't be getting checks, prompting Congress and the Reagan
Administration to order a purge of the undeserving.

Social Security kicked thousands of people off the rolls, generating a public
outcry that forced President Reagan to end the crackdown in 1984.  Congress, the
courts and Social Security reacted by opening up the rules, producing a sharp
rise in new cases - including a tripling of the children's rolls between 1989
and 1995.

Bonus Time.

In February 1984, at the peak of the backlash, Rosie Watson filed Sam's fifth
application, again alleging the he was retarded and had behavior problems.  "I
have to keep knives or weapons away from him - he has injured his brother," she
said.  Sam, at age ten, began getting checks.  Now 21 and unemployed, he is
still receiving them.

Not only was Sam the first Watson to win benefits, he was also the first to get
a retroactive "bonus."  because SSI payments are backdated to the day of
application, no matter how long it takes Social Security to process the request,
each successful application gets a retroactive payout.  In 1984 Sam's was almost
$900, covering the three months between application and approval.

Eight years later, Social Security sent Rosie Watson nearly $10,000 after
concluding the Sam really should have been put on the rolls in 1980.  In all,
the Watson family has received over $36,000 in tax-free retroactive bonuses.

By November 1991, six of Rosie's seven children were on the rolls.  Cary became
the last, finally making it in February 1993.  Rosie filed Cary's first
application in 1989 when he was 16.  A psychologist found him "easily
irritated...aggressive and explosive" and noted that he had stabbed a man in
self-defense.  Caseworkers turned him down.  Rosie applied again and got the
same answer.  Then she appealed to a judge.

The appeal was put on hold when Cary went to prison for nearly two years on a
second-degree battery conviction, resulting from kicking his pregnant
girlfriend.  When he was freed, Social Security sent him to Bobby L. Stephenson,
a psychologist in Monroe, La., who told the SSA that he had an I.Q. of 53,
"strong antisocial features in his personality and was volatile and explosive."
And, the psychologist added, "he said he doe not want to work."

A month latter, the judge awarded Cary monthly checks and gave him a $9,694
retroactive payment, excluding his jail time.

Today, mental disability, real or imagined, is the primary diagnosis of 58
percent of the 4.7 million disabled SSI recipients.  In the case of children,
there is no requirement that the money be spent to overcome a disability.
Indeed, there is no requirement that a parent demonstrate that the disability
requires added expenses.

Government Wards.

Start to finish, Rosie Watson's quest for her children took 15 years.  Her  own
pursuit of benefits took 11 years, longest in the family.  She applied five
times before finally persuading the right people that she is disabled.

Her persistence is reflected in the shifting array of physical complaints she
claimed.  In 1974, it was high blood pressure, heart trouble and bad nerves that
prevented her from working.  In 1975: anemia, dizziness, nerves and bad kidneys.
In 1976: low blood pressure and heart problems.  In 1984, she blamed stomach
problems, epilepsy and sinus trouble.  The following year it was epilepsy again,
along with "female problems." A physician who examined her in 1976 wrote, "
Patient is determined to become a ward of the government."

In 1985, after her fifth rejection, Rosie Watson  appealed.  Two days before
Christmas, an administrative law judge wrote that she couldn't cope with the
stress of work, blaming her problems on "her home life" and "lack of finances."
He awarded her benefits and recommended a re-examination of the case "within one
year."  Social Security did review Watson's condition fours years later, in
1989, and concluded that she was still unable to work.  It has not checked her
since.  And as of March 1995, no one from the SSA had visited anyone else in the
family since they began getting payments.  

Ten months after Watson was accepted by SSI, her common-law husband applied,
saying he had a "bad back, swollen feet and bad eyes."  A former logger and
carpenter who still does odd jobs around Lake Providence, Lyons was turned down.
He, too, appealed.  A judge in 1987 granted him benefits, saying Lyons's obesity
automatically qualified him.

"They Need Money."

Sitting in her living room, Rosie Watson offers a sharp contrast to the woman
who emerges from her  SSI records.  In the past ten years she has told case
workers and doctors that she " doesn't know what country we live in," that her
"ability to recall is almost void,"  That she can't handle money or count.  In
conversation now, she is able to recall intricate details of the family's two
decade quest for SSI and is in charge of paying the family's bills.

She pulls a thick wad of bills and monthly payment books from her purse.  After
she cashes the nine checks she receives, she gives Sam, 21, and Cary, 22, their
full $458 and makes sure they pay their bills. (Cary, a father now, has moved
out of the house.)  George, 15, David, 17, Willie, 18, and Danny, 19, all get
allowances.  "Being the age they is and being out there with their little
girlfriends, they need the money," she says.

>From the rest of the $3,893 a month the family gets, Rosie pays bills, including
car payments, utilities, cable TV and insurance policies, that total about
$1,300.  Loans, including payments for furniture, a washing machine and
storm-damage repair, cost another $300.  She spends $700 a month on food,
supplemented by a back-yard garden.

She need  not budget for medical expenses.  Each member of the Watson family on
SSI automatically gets Medicaid for health care.  Potentially that could cost
taxpayers as much as the SSI payments do.

Coached to fail.

Critics claim that among the worst aspects of SSI is the encouragement its
recipients receive to lead unproductive lives.  And Shirley S. Chater, The
Social Security commissioner, acknowledges concern about labeling children
disabled.  That "could be a self-fulfilling prophecy," she has said.

Willie Lee Bell, principal of Southside Elementary School, across the street
from the Watson house, is a man who despises SSI.  He knows poverty first hand
too.  He grew up with ten brothers and sisters in a four-room sharecroppers's
house on Epps Plantation in West Carroll Parish, where his father worked 12
hours a day.  Broad-shouldered and soft-spoken, Bell has failed kidneys that
would automatically qualify him for disability payments from Social security if
he chose not to work.

He has watched the Tidal wave of SSI applications up close.  For each pupil who
applies, he gets a questionnaire from Social Security.  Echoing complaints made
in other states, he and his staff say parents are encouraging, some say caching,
their children to perform poorly and misbehave in school to get SSI checks.
"The children don't want to fail," he says.  "They are doing what Mamma wants."

Mike Baummann, who makes disability decisions in Shreveport, where the Watson
cases were decided, says, "The kids are being told that their worth is in
sucking off the government teat, that their worth is in not achieving,"

Social Security says that coaching is not widespread, and federal investigators,
thwarted by privacy laws, have been unable to document its dimensions.  But, as
June Gibbs Brown, Chief investigator in the Department of Health and Human
services, wrote last October:  "If Congress intended that the SSI program should
help children overcome their disabilities and grow into adults capable of
engaging in substantial gainful activity, then changes are needed."

Meanwhile, the history of SSI suggests that the Watson will remain permanently
on the program.  "I've got nothing to hide,"  Rosie says.  "SSI has done a lot
for my family.  We're not able to work, and it's the best income."


-------

    
     Hey Jack Martin!!!
    
    Better not comment on this one, cause sure as shootin' somebody (hint..
    hint.. wink.. wink...) will come stalking you!!!

    Of course...but not to worry...I'm used to it! :-)
    
    wink...wink!

<----hey you two.... take it to the gay topic!!!

    
    Concensus will be find out at next year election time.
    Republican strategy is to block out all the information until
    the last minute.  By the time we know the details, they alreay
    pass it and trying to push down Clinton's throat.
    
    In short, Republican's welfare reform is just to make poor people
    poorer and rich people richer.  Look out the tax cut bill coming
    soon.

    
    Boy Jason, are you swallowing this hook-line-and-sinker! I
    give you more credit than that!
    
    -b

I'd really love to see Jason provide us with a politico-economic
strategy for the country which he believes will work.

    
      Jason, you may be right in your political predictions.  I fear
     that actually paying for things will not be popular.
    
      But what you advocate is nuts.  We owe 5 terrabucks.  What do you
     think we should do about that, leave the IOU's to the kids ?
    
      bb

    >  But what you advocate is nuts.  We owe 5 terrabucks.  What do you
    > think we should do about that, leave the IOU's to the kids ?
    
     And grandkids, and great-grandkids, etc.
    
     I think the standard response is, "who cares? Let someone else deal
    with it after I die."

	Weldd wants to take anyone who is unwed and under 18 off from welfare 
benefits. I think this is a mistake. Cardinal Law believes so too. Weld thinks 
this will make these children think twice about having sex. I don't think too
many of them are thinking about welfare at that age. This is a dumb law that is
going to hurt more than it could ever help. (imho)


Glen

    <--- if they are under 18, they should be living at home.  We should
    not be training them to fail at such a young age, IMO.
    

    Glen, I can't believe you're as blind as that idiot Cardinal Law.
    
    What we have here is a bunch of minority youth churning out babies 
    for cash -- plain n simple -- and WE are paying for it!!
    
    I support the Weld program 110%.  Cardinal Law is blind to what's
    *really* going on in society these days.  Maybe he should spend less
    time flirting with the altar boys and more time tuning into 90s
    America.       
    

	Buck, if it were people over 18, I would agree with you. I believe more
kids are influenced into having sex then there are kids having babies for
money. But they are kids, not adults.



Glen

    <--- And they are their parents responsibility, not the government's.

     One of the reasons that these kids are having children of their own is
    because the gummint will set them up with an apt, provide food and
    healthcare and generally let the kids play house- it allows kids with
    nothing much to look forward to to feel important. They have a child to
    feel good about themselves, especially since someone else is footing
    the bills. Listen to these girls- "I wanted someone to love me, and my
    baby loves me." This is the mentality that we are dealing with. What
    kind of life do you think this baby has to look forward to? A mother
    who dropped out of school in 8th, 9th, 10th grade who has no skills and
    no ability to provide for her family and no father. Recipe for success?
    Or a breeding ground for the underclass?

	Steve, your way works 100% of the time.... when the kids have parents
who actually care...... 

    ZZ    In short, Republican's welfare reform is just to make poor people
    ZZ    poorer and rich people richer.  Look out the tax cut bill coming
    ZZ    soon.
    
    Once again...
    
    Jason:
    
    Tax hikes stunt economic growth, the growth of jobs, the growth of the
    GNP.  John F. Kennedy recognized this and manipulated the tax code
    accordingly.  Tax cuts bring in more receipts for the gubmit!

    I will believe that Republican Welfare reform is meaningful when they
    remove Tobacco subsidies, Cotton price supports, Sugar tariffs, Peanut
    import restrictions, make mining companies pay for the public land they
    despoil at a rate greater tha 2.59/acre..........
    
    And a host of other welfare for large corporations
    
    Until then I believe their reform is punitive and aimed at children who
    can't vote.
    
    meg

     Well, they are hacking aggie welfare, so I guess you can change your
    tune, then.
    
     Not to mention that this "corporate welfare" provides an awful lot of
    jobs for the little people, not just gold linings for bigwigs' pockets.

    Mark,
    
    They retained the cotton subsidy, just for starters.  I haven't seem
    them hack tobacco subsidies yet, but that is Jesse's sacred cow.  
    
    Subsidizing loggers jobs to the tune of 14K/year from taxes that you
    and I pay is significant welfare, or is it because these people are
    rough and ready and "working" for a living that you find no problem
    there.  
    
    As for mining and employing little people, come try to fish the Alamosa
    River coming out of Summitville in Colorado, and remember this water is
    also irrigating crops people eat.  BTW the corporation went "bankrupt"
    after pulling severakl millions of dollars out of the mine, so you and
    I are paying for the cleanup.  The same players are now mining in
    Brazil and are also responsible for the damage to a river in Guyana. 
    They also got the mining claim in CO for virtually nothing, as it was
    on public land.
    
    Check out the riparian areas on many BLM grazing leases, and also find
    out who is really grazing the cattle there.  Amazing how many of the
    original "family ranchers" are subleasing at market rates, the same
    land that they say they have to have at 1/2 market to survive in the
    cattle business.  
    
    I expect some token cutbacks to say "See we are doing something" but I
    am willing to bet the holy cows will be allowed to continue as before.  
    
    meg
    
    meg

    Meg
    
    Sources for $14,000 per logging job please...?

    take what the Forestry service spends on setting up logging roads and
    leases, subtract what the lumber comapnies pay and divide the remainder
    by the number of loggers working for companies that lease National
    Forest logging areas.  It is no secret that the logging leases have
    been a losing proposition for the NFS for sometime.  
    
    Sierra Club did the math several years ago.  It is probably even higher
    now.  
    
    meg

    I treat ALL numbers/stats as suspect until proven to my satisfaction.
    You have proven nothing.
    
    Remember "one in eight women...."      Big-o lie
    
    Do you know people who still use that number? Do you? Do you correct
    them?
    
    

    	re .149
    
    	Great.  Throw out what will generally work simply because there
    	are exceptions... 

| <<< Note 243.157 by CSC32::J_OPPELT "Wanna see my scar?" >>>

| Great. Throw out what will generally work simply because there are exceptions

	Joe, who said anything about throwing out anything? Not I. How did you
come to the above conclusion? 

	Would it be better to go with a plan that you feel will generally work,
or to improve the plan to include the others? Considering this is not a law
yet, one could actually fix the problems before it becomes a law. I mean,
wouldn't that be responsible politics? (I know, the 2 words are an oxymoron)

    .156
    
    You didn't ask her to prove it, you asked her for sources. She provided
    you with sources. If you don't feel that it's been proven to you and
    wish to remain blissfully unaware until someone provides you with a
    notarized copy of the USFS yearly budget, feel free.

                  <<< Note 243.158 by BIGQ::SILVA "Diablo" >>>

>	Would it be better to go with a plan that you feel will generally work,
> or to improve the plan to include the others? 
    
    	Improving the plan to include all exceptions is tantamount to
    	throwing it out.
    
    	Since you seem to support the addressing of all exceptions, you
    	are in essence calling to have it thrown out.

| <<< Note 243.160 by CSC32::J_OPPELT "Wanna see my scar?" >>>

| >	Would it be better to go with a plan that you feel will generally work,
| > or to improve the plan to include the others?

| Improving the plan to include all exceptions is tantamount to throwing it out.

	Bull..... it isn't put into action yet, so the obvious flaws can be
taken care of now. 

	Btw, why did you quote the above by me, and change it to all exceptions?

| Since you seem to support the addressing of all exceptions, 

	Your words..... not mine.

| you are in essence calling to have it thrown out.

	As usual, your logic is flawed.....

                  <<< Note 243.161 by BIGQ::SILVA "Diablo" >>>

>| > ... or to improve the plan to include the others?
>
>| Improving the plan to include all exceptions ...
>
>	Btw, why did you quote the above by me, and change it to all exceptions?
    
    	What are "the others" other than all exceptions?

>	As usual, your logic is flawed.....
    
    	Seems pretty straight to me.

re: LABC::RU   Title:  It's time to throw out Republican!


>    Concensus will be find out at next year election time.
>    Republican strategy is to block out all the information until
>    the last minute.  By the time we know the details, they alreay
>    pass it and trying to push down Clinton's throat.
 
Although the actual bill has not been provided early on, the discussions and
plans have been in committee for months. Yes, there are dems in those committees.
The Dems have had access to all of the information. That's why they are
in such an uproar! There is no secret about what the repubs want to accomplish.

>    In short, Republican's welfare reform is just to make poor people
>    poorer and rich people richer. 


What part of a 5 trillion dollar debt, a $200b yearly deficits, medicare
being the largest and fastest growing part of federal expendetures don't you
understand?  Where would you spend the $200b in interest payments alone if you 
didn't have a debt?

What makes you think that $170b annually should not be enough to cover those 
who need medical attention? What makes some of you fools believe that medicare
will be dismantled with such a large outlay?

Have a clue Ru, the only folks on capital hill that take this countries fiscal
problems seriously are the repubs. The dems are just, as always, positioning
for turf. You complain about an untimely republican bill when you should be 
complaining about the lack of a viable democratic alternative. 

In short Ru, you must love the taste of the bait the dems are putting on their 
hooks these days.

Remember always, that penalizing wealth makes it harder for anyone to obtain
it, including the poor.

Doug.

| <<< Note 243.162 by CSC32::J_OPPELT "Wanna see my scar?" >>>


| What are "the others" other than all exceptions?

	Reread the note you quoted from. It's there.

    	You gave a non-answer, Glen.  Obviously I didn't understand
    	it the first time if it was there.  What makes you think I
    	will understand it the second time.
    
    	Humor me.  Answer the question.
    
    	What are "the others" other than all exceptions?

    .148
    
    How right you are!
    

> You complain about an untimely republican bill when you should be 
>complaining about the lack of a viable democratic alternative. 

Saw a press conference last night where the dems have put a plan together 
to balance the budget in 7 years with $100b more in savings that the repub 
plan. No tax cuts, some up front cuts instead of one year delay, little/no
block grants to the states.

As I see it, the rebubs want to push money back to the states and the dems
do not wish to see this happens. I hope the repubs give this plan
a proper examination and borrow/conmpromise on its merits (if it has any).

Doug.

    
    >>  Oh no !!!  Replying to my own note ???
    
    Yes, You provide the answer.  Dems has the plan to cut around $100B
    each on Medicare and Medicaid.  No tax cuts(great for the rich!) and
    balance the budget in 7 years.   Wonderful plan!  But it won't pass
    the Republican controlled congress.  The only thing we can do is vote
    Republican out of congress next year.
    
    I saw the report that for each office visit in Medicare, the doctor
    is getting around $13 now.  If the Republican cutting it more, it
    will be $10?  Do you really think the doctors will cut their average
    pay of more than $150,000?   I don't think so.  All they have to do
    is raising the fee of you and I(those with company health plan)
    paying now.  
    
    
    Jason

    
    
    Jason,
    
    
    Try reading up on what the legislation is instead of just listening to
    the soundbite commercials that the left is propagating.  Especially the
    part about tax breaks for the rich and cuts on medicare.  Also read
    about jurisdictions which have privatized functions that used to be
    government run, see how much money it has saved.  $13 for a medicare
    visit?  Where'd you get that figure from?
    
    
    Mike

   ZZ     The only thing we can do is vote
   ZZ     Republican out of congress next year.
    
    Oh...God help us!  Yes, that's just what we need.  More of the symbolic
    nonsense we were given in 1992.  No thanks!

    Jason:
    
    Were you by chance hired into Digital by a well meaninged wonderful 
    woman who unfortunately has clinged to Great Society ideologies?? :-)

>    Yes, You provide the answer.  Dems has the plan to cut around $100B
>    each on Medicare and Medicaid.  No tax cuts(great for the rich!) and
>    balance the budget in 7 years.

   No, I don't provide the answer. I provide the soundbits from a dem press
   conference designed to put the best spin on their plan. Just as you have
   complained about the repubs lack of specifics, the dems also had no 
   specifics, but you seem ready to jump on the dem band wagon
   regardless. Why do you figure that is Jason?

>  Wonderful plan!  But it won't pass the Republican controlled congress.  

   A wonderful plan without specifics? 

>  The only thing we can do is vote Republican out of congress next year.

   We are finally getting some real fiscal leadership for the first time in
   20 years and you want to vote them out!!! How do you think we got in this
   mess in the first place? Oh ya, you probably blame Reagan like every other
   dem fool out there who doesn't understand which branch of the government
   has control of the purse strings.


>   I saw the report that for each office visit in Medicare, the doctor
>    is getting around $13 now.  If the Republican cutting it more, it
>    will be $10?  Do you really think the doctors will cut their average
>    pay of more than $150,000?   I don't think so.   

   What cuts? The repubs are increasing the budget and dismantling the
   monopoly on elderly care which has been artificially inflating the
   price of that care. The increase in costs should decline or reverse
   itsel once a little competition for the business is in place.

   And if you think that a doctors sole income is from a patient visit
   you've got a lot to learn about the medical profession.

>   All they have to do
>    is raising the fee of you and I(those with company health plan)
>    paying now.  

    Perhaps to some degree. Perhaps not. At any rate we are already
    paying for it. The question is whether or not funding through a
    government monopoly is most efficient. The answer is clearly NO.
    There is rampant fraud and abuse that will never be elliminated by
    the feds but that will not be tolerated by individual providers. The number
    of second third and forth opinions will drop dramatically, and the abuse
    on prescriptions will be curtailed at least to some degree.
    Doctors that bus in the elderly for fraudulant claims will be far easier
    to identify. 

    Wake up Jason.

    Doug.

	2/3rds of tax cuts proposed by the repubs is in child deductions.
        What! Only the rich have children??? The more children, the more money
        you'll have to support them with (which is where the money belongs).

	The other 1/3rd is in the form of reduced capital gains which allows
        everyone, including the small minority of rich, to keep more of what
	they earn. For the vast majority of average folks, this means less 
	debt and greater opportunity for savings, two things this country
	greatly needs. For the truely rich, it means they have more capital 
	to invest which benefits all of us.

	So RU, as you can see, this 'Tax cuts for the rich' bull<r.o.> doesn't
	wash.

	But keep those dem blinder on if it makes you feel better ...

	The rest of us have seen where the dems have taken us.

	Doug.

    doug,
    
    what are the plans the Republican congress has for the earned income
    credit, (which for lower income families is sizably larger than the
    500/child credit.)
    
    meg

    
    Re .167 - Hi Doug,
    
>Saw a press conference last night where the dems have put a plan together 
>to balance the budget in 7 years with $100b more in savings that the repub 
>plan. No tax cuts, some up front cuts instead of one year delay, little/no
>block grants to the states.
    
    This is not *the* Democratic plan, but rather a plan put out
    by 20 or so conservative Democrats. The Democratic leadership has
    come out against this plan.
    
    						Ed
    
    

    
    Re .174 Meg,
    
    If doug does not answer, could you provide one. I've heard a number
    of complaints about this but I have not seen any figures myself.
    
    I do know the Republicans are trying to get the earned income tax
    credit "under control" as it is the fastest growing item (in %) in the
    federal government. I also hear claims that it is becomming one of
    the most abused federal programs.
    
    						Thanks,
    
    						Ed
    
    

    
    
    The dems are imploding.  Clinton is not a leader but a follower.  The
    repubs come out with a plan, then the dems come out with a plan doing
    the same thing, only a little "kinder and gentler".  It is a joke, the
    dems should be ashamed and embarassed.  Clinton is the best thing that
    ever happened to the Republican party.
    
    Mike

 >   what are the plans the Republican congress has for the earned income
 >   credit, (which for lower income families is sizably larger than the
 >   500/child credit.)
 
  Meg, what does this have to do with the 'Tax cuts for the rich" lie that
  I was addressing?  Feel free to address any portion of the republican plan
  which you find distasteful, but please don't blindly follow the dem lies
  in the process.

   I would hope the earned income credit would be reduced by at least an 
   amount equal to what the per-child deduction would provide.

>    This is not *the* Democratic plan, but rather a plan put out
>    by 20 or so conservative Democrats. The Democratic leadership has
>    come out against this plan.
 
   True, but the name of this group was something like "conservative committe
   for the administration" and there were hints that the admin had requested 
   their participation. It doesn't surprise me that the dem leadership has 
   rejected it (which may push more dems to the repub side :-).

	Doug. 

    Doug,
    
    Simple, if the plan is to completely do away with the earned income
    credit, then this is another tax increase on the poor, and a tax cut
    for people of less modest means.
    
    My understanding is that this is the case.
    
    meg

  >  Simple, if the plan is to completely do away with the earned income
  >  credit, then this is another tax increase on the poor, and a tax cut
  >  for people of less modest means.
   
   If the plan is to " completely do away with the earned income credit" I would
   ask what will be replacing it, if anything, and to what extent on average, and
   how does that average compare with the current average for the current
   credit. Only then could I make a reasoned determination as to the effect of
   such a change. 
   
 >   My understanding is that this is the case.
 
    My understanding is that this is just a piece of the overall package.
    to claim that this one change is a tax increase on the poor without
    understanding the impact of the rest of the package is dishonest (just like
    the 'tax cuts for the rich BS).

    The dems may ride these little tidbits in their 10 second soundbites 
    for their own benefit, but that doesn't mean we have to swallow their bait.
    Much like this millionaire running for president as a Republican, when 
    he says "Dole cancelled the vote on term limits, I think he's wrong", 
    implying that Dole does not support term limits, this is a form
    of lying very prevelant in our politics today. If you haven't learned
    to read between the lines to see the lies, then you'll continue
    to believe you are supporting one thing when you are actually supporting
    something very different.

    Doug.

    re .179

    Meg, the Republicans do not plan to do away with the EITC. They are
    proposing some changes to try to restrain the growth of the program
    and to reduce some loopholes that people have discovered that allow
    them to abuse the system.

    I do not know exactly what the plans are. In listening to the Democrats
    one might actually believe they plan on eliminating the program. I
    was hoping that you would actually know the facts. 

    The Dems are "crying wolf" at everything. This may cost them when
    the Republicans actually do make a significant cut in a program.

    For example the Clinton's plan "cuts" Medicare about 70% of what
    the Republicans are proposing. Yet the Democrats are saying that
    the Republicans are "decimating" Medicare. 

    Of course some people actually believe everything the Democrats say
    without looking for the facts. This is unfortunate for our country.

    					Ed

NPR reported this morning that the republican plan would cut an average of $321
per family filing from their earned_income tax credit calculations. This tax 
credit is targeted at those folks who income is less than 28K. Repubs are
claiming, and Dems generally agree, many folks who are not poor are benefiting
from a program designed to help the poor. Lots of fraud which the dems say the
IRS had made good strides at curbing last year.

Sorry Meg, but this doesn't sound anything like the ellimination of EITC. And
if the average family has just one kid they'll be ahead of the game with the
per-child tax credit.

Doug.

    Let's explain for a moment what's going on here.
    
    The EITC was a *refundable* tax credit.  If your exemptions etc
    resulted in you owing $0.00 to the Federal government (*VERY* common
    among the working poor) because the EITC is a *refundable* tax credit,
    you got a check in the spring from the government.  Conservatives
    claim that this was a "welfare payment" and further entertained us
    with annecdotes of poor families taking the EITC check and buying a
    TV with it.
    
    Given that these people *already* *WITH* *EXISTING* *CREDITS* owe no
    federal income tax, increasing the *CREDIT* results in them owing no
    federal income tax.  A change of zippo.
    
    Take away the EITC, and now you *INCREASE* the tax on the working poor.
    
    (Oh, before you say but but but but but since they didn't owe any tax
    they shouldn't get a check, you ignore that the working poor do pay
    federal payroll taxes.)
    
    
    Some brain dead liberals are against the EITC, claiming (incorrectly)
    that it is a business subsidy.  (You all can do the math, it's
    entertaining at best.)
    
    								-mr. bill

    >The EITC was a *refundable* tax credit.  If your exemptions etc
    >resulted in you owing $0.00 to the Federal government (*VERY* common
    >among the working poor) because the EITC is a *refundable* tax credit,
    >you got a check in the spring from the government.  Conservatives
    >claim that this was a "welfare payment" 
    
     Of course it is. It's a relatively cheap one, however.

    Sorry if this is a repeat (I don't follow this topic), but radio
    news is quoting some study that calculated welfare-equivalent-incomes
    or some such name... reportedly the average single mother with two
    children on welfare in Massachusetts, taking advantage of all
    available programs and benefits, "makes" $14.66 an hour.
    
    Chris

    
      I have no fundamental philosophical objection to some sort
     of EITC.  For that matter, I have no fundamental objection
     to lots of the government's expenditures which I think should
     be cut now.  It's a question of what you can afford.  For example,
     I loved the old IRA's.  But the USA just didn't have the money
     for it.  I love the B2 bombers (which Congress should have cut).
     It's a great weapon, but we should have cut it anyway.
    
      If the Dems were actually taking something else out for
     everything they want put back in, there could be a budget
     compromise, I think.  But they are sworn to defend the deficit,
     so the only balanced game in town is a very GOP-oriented package.
    
      And from a GOP point of view, the EITC isn't going to voters they
     can win.  Given the pressures on them from groups they CAN win,
     bought-and-sold Democratic constituencies are getting little voice.
    
      bb 

    I noted that the "evisceration" of the EITC program amount to an
    average reduction of $281 (SF paper's numbers) per recipient. And they
    expect us to believe that the world is going to stop turning over that.
    They are screaming about the 20% being cut, and ignoring the 80% that's
    being left. Typical.

    
    
    Republican has proposed to repeal the nursing home regulation.
    This will cause deterioration of nursing home condition.  If
    you have parents in there, beware of that Republican also cut
    1/3 of various nursing home support.  It is very possible that
    you and I can't or won't let the parents stay in nursing home
    anymore because of poor/abuse condition there.  The only option
    is keep them at your home.
    
    I am not against budget/deficit cut.  But I am against cutting
    to support tax cut for those who don't need them.
    
    J.

>    Republican has proposed to repeal the nursing home regulation.
>    This will cause deterioration of nursing home condition.  If

oh yes - if it wasn't for big mother government telling those nursing
homes how to run their business by giving them a bunch of red tape to
deal with (thus increasing their business expenses) then those same
nursing homes are just gonna turn back into the poor/abusive buisiness
they were before...

>    It is very possible that
>    you and I can't or won't let the parents stay in nursing home
>    anymore because of poor/abuse condition there.  The only option
>    is keep them at your home.

Um... why on earth would a nursing home want to be poor/abusive??? They
are a business, and that's certaintly not good business... As you say,
people won't take their business their and that nursing home will go under.
But most will be freed from expensive red tape and be allowed to run their
business how they see fit in order to satisfy their customers... 

Do you really think that without mother government that all businesses 
would be bad and evil and poor and abusive??? Come on... give me a break...

/scott

   ZZ     It is very possible that
   ZZ     you and I can't or won't let the parents stay in nursing home
   ZZ     anymore because of poor/abuse condition there.  The only option
    
    Imagine that.  And all these years I thought the staff at the Sunshine
    Nursing Home were sweet, friendly, wonderfully staffed caring
    individuals of their own free volition.
    
    Thank God for the federal government.  Without them, these wonderful
    staff people and Nursing Home owners become maniacal wretched
    psychopaths! 
    
    -Jack  

Re:  RU's last ...

Another example of how you swallow the dem bait and are incapable of balancing
any argument that isn't spoon fed to you.

Keep up the good work.

Doug.

              <<< Note 243.189 by UHUH::MARISON "Scott Marison" >>>


>oh yes - if it wasn't for big mother government telling those nursing
>homes how to run their business by giving them a bunch of red tape to
>deal with (thus increasing their business expenses) then those same
>nursing homes are just gonna turn back into the poor/abusive buisiness
>they were before...

Yep. You can bet on it. Not all of 'em. Not even most of 'em. But a lot of 
'em. But hey, what's a few thousand casualties in the war for "less 
government?"

>Um... why on earth would a nursing home want to be poor/abusive??? They
>are a business, and that's certaintly not good business... As you say,
>people won't take their business their and that nursing home will go under.
>But most will be freed from expensive red tape and be allowed to run their
>business how they see fit in order to satisfy their customers... 

This turns out to be a classic example of why free market worshipers are 
dreamers, not rationalists.

I used to work in a hospital, and I'd hate to tell you how many elderly 
patients we got from nursing homes who arrived with bed sores so large and
deep you could see their vertabre. These people were *abused* by neglect. 

Why?

Because it made the home more profitable - at least in the short term. And 
for some, that's all the term they're interested in. These victims also 
tended to be without family, or any family that visited or showed any 
concern for their care. So who's to know? Who's to tell the next poor slob 
that this particular place is a bad buy? And if the good homes cost too 
much for SS + Medicare, what choice do the poorer elderly have?

Sure, you can say exposing and prosecuting these criminal establishments 
will get rid of them and the market would take care of the rest. But it 
wouldn't. That was the way it was *before* regulation. It didn't work. As 
long as there's a quick buck to be made, there'll be someone willing to 
throw their principles aside to make it. In the meantime, a lot of people 
are going to suffer - and suffer horribly. All to convince ourselves that 
an unfettered market is the way to go? 

I don't think so.

>Do you really think that without mother government that all businesses 
>would be bad and evil and poor and abusive??? Come on... give me a break...

And you folks accuse the left of distortion?

Tom

>Yep. You can bet on it. Not all of 'em. Not even most of 'em. But a lot of 
>'em. But hey, what's a few thousand casualties in the war for "less 
>government?"

>This turns out to be a classic example of why free market worshipers are 
>dreamers, not rationalists.

Hey - of course in reality people will still get hurt, killed, abusied, 
ripped off, etc., etc.... But are you claiming that when government gets
involved it solves the problem? Are you saying that when you worked in
the hospital their was no government regulation or nursing homes? And
that when that regulation started, all those hospital cases stopped?

Give me a break! No matter what we do, there will ALWAYS be someone getting
abused or hurt by whatever system we live by... but I would venture to say
more troubles are caused when the government gets involved in places where
it can't and shouldn't be in... when it regulates in such a way that might
be fine for some places, but others it just makes things more costly...
I've seen it too many times...

Just look at something that should be very simple... goverment reg of cable
TV... they got involved, said things would be cheaper... what happened? 
My bill increased, like most others!

>>Do you really think that without mother government that all businesses 
>>would be bad and evil and poor and abusive??? Come on... give me a break...
>
>And you folks accuse the left of distortion?

That was the impression given in the previous note, that if the government
regulation was stopped, all hell would break loose and we'd have no place
to put our elderly except in our homes...

/scott

Re: Davis


>I used to work in a hospital, and I'd hate to tell you how many elderly 
>patients we got from nursing homes who arrived with bed sores so large and
>deep you could see their vertabre. These people were *abused* by neglect. 

What !!!  Given the protections of the almightly US federal government
Welfare and Medicare? How can this be???  What will RU ever do about this???

Yes Mr Davis, these are surely tragedies and travisties and should be
addressed in the legal system. This behaviour has nothing to do with who's
footing the bill, it has to do with how the business is operated. Those that
cannot operate properly should be out of business regardless of who is
footing the bill.

Laws protecting the helpless I can support. The idea that money solves all
evils is not something I subscribe to.

Doug.

              <<< Note 243.193 by UHUH::MARISON "Scott Marison" >>>


>ripped off, etc., etc.... But are you claiming that when government gets
>involved it solves the problem? 

Solves? No. Ameliorates sometimes, though. And that's better than nuttin'.

>Are you saying that when you worked in
>the hospital their was no government regulation or nursing homes? And
>that when that regulation started, all those hospital cases stopped?

No. I'm saying that when I worked in the hospital (1968), there were 
virtually no regulations applied to nursing homes, and since then there are 
more regulations and fewer abuses. Sorry, I don't have stats to back me up, 
so don't ask. Look them up, if you're interested.

>Give me a break! No matter what we do, there will ALWAYS be someone getting
>abused or hurt by whatever system we live by... but I would venture to say
>more troubles are caused when the government gets involved in places where
>it can't and shouldn't be in... when it regulates in such a way that might
>be fine for some places, but others it just makes things more costly...
>I've seen it too many times...

That's the gospel of the right, but I've yet to see a definitive study 
showing more abuse and waste in government than in the private sector.
Funny, how you can so easily say "throw out the bad apples but don't touch 
the economics that helps them flourish" and yet, when it comes to 
government programs say with equal vigor "Don't fix the abuses, just 
dump the program."

TV... they got involved, said things would be cheaper... what happened? 
My bill increased, like most others!

>>>Do you really think that without mother government that all businesses 
>>>would be bad and evil and poor and abusive??? Come on... give me a break...
>>
>>And you folks accuse the left of distortion?
>
>That was the impression given in the previous note, that if the government
>regulation was stopped, all hell would break loose and we'd have no place
>to put our elderly except in our homes...

I stand corrected.

Tom

    
> No. I'm saying that when I worked in the hospital (1968), there were 
> virtually no regulations applied to nursing homes, and since then there are 
> more regulations and fewer abuses. 
    
    Also there is a lot more litigation now than there was in '68.  IF the
    nursing homes started doing that again, they'd get sued soooo quick,
    it'd make your head spin. (IMNHO, YMMV)
    
> Funny, how you can so easily say "throw out the bad apples but don't touch 
> the economics that helps them flourish" and yet, when it comes to 
    
    see above...
    

>>ripped off, etc., etc.... But are you claiming that when government gets
>>involved it solves the problem? 

>Solves? No. Ameliorates sometimes, though. And that's better than nuttin'.
    
    How much do we have to pay to assuage your guilt? It comes down to a
    matter of money versus benefits, and for the majority of the american
    people, we are past the point of diminishing returns. We're just trying
    to get back down to the knee of the curve, so our money can do more
    good elsewhere.

	The final debate on the medicare bill was on C-span last night.
	Interesting, if not predictable behaviour by both sides.

	The highlights included:

	A Dr. who is now a republican representative describing
	how medicare has worked in the past, what was wrong with it, and how
	this bill addresses most of the problems (although it isn't perfect).

	One democrat actually had a reasonable case of well thought out
	skepticism (mildly entertaining).

	Not one democrat would acknowlege that the richer seniors will be paying
	significantly higher premiums nor that many seniors now paying dearly
	for medication would be able to join programs where meds are covered and
	thereby saving them money plus many other points they choose to ignore.

	Gephart looked the fool (again). All he wanted to do was scare seniors
	and nothing more.

	The republicans did a good job of detailing the budget, budget 
	comparisons with previous democratic plans, and that the medicare
	budget problems would exist whether there was a tax cut or not.

	But the best was a democrat turned republican who was embarased for and
	chastised what once was a great party for the people that he used to 
	belong to.

	RU, Do you receive C-span???

	Doug. 
	

    
    
    If Clinton vetos the bill, what are the chances of an over-ride??
    

    MIKE BARNICLE: Maximum Bill is on a roll

    
    (c) 1995 Copyright The News and Observer Publishing Co.
    (c) 1995 The Boston Globe

    BOSTON (Oct 20, 1995 - 02:36 EDT) -- Let's hear it for Maximum Weld,
    who is finally getting tough on all these slob welfare recipients who
    break the state and are a total embarrassment. The Massachusetts
    governor's marvelous idea is to fingerprint the lazy heifers in order
    to prevent them from grabbing checks with fists so fat you can't see
    their knuckles.

    Food and sex! That's what welfare is all about. These morons go on the
    dole and immediately pack on more pounds than a Hereford, stuffing
    tuna, lobster and shrimp down their throats like some harbor shark in
    Key West, Florida.

    And if they're not stuffing their faces with free food, they are
    between the sheets, procreating an entire new spring line of social
    sponges, born to take from us.

    Thank goodness for Maximum. His fingerprinting thing is great. It will
    prevent the no-good layabouts from getting hard-working white people
    angrier and angrier.

    And, by the way, it is also terrific politics. I mean, do you care now
    that Maximum spent more time this summer at his fishing camp in the
    Adirondack woods than a pine cone?

    Of course not. He is back and taking no prisoners. Can't you see him on
    the Channel 7 Lightning-Bolt News, holding the teeny hand of a
    2-day-old born to an unmarried welfare mother who can't wait to get
    pregnant again because that's where true riches lie, in giving birth.

    It will be incredible theater: Maximum will be on TV, holding the
    infant's little limb in his big Episcopalian paw, urging the child to
    gently roll its thumb over a glistening ink pad.

    "There," a triumphant Maximum Weld will announce. "This is one little
    bastard who won't grow up to steal from us."

    It will be huge. In addition to sound economic policy, it is also
    shrewd electoral strategy. What, you think Maximum is some ignorant
    stooge who would suggest fingerprinting simply to reduce fraud? If that
    were the case, he'd have the entire Legislature printed, too.

    You wait. Maximum will quickly realize he didn't go far enough to
    appease taxpayers, sick of waiting in line at the Deli Counter behind
    some moose getting filet with food stamps.

    He'll figure, "Why not make them wear dog collars? Have inmates turn
    out mood rings that could be attached to the skulls of welfare children
    so the good kids at school would know not to make friends with thieves
    of the public purse?"

    And Maximum isn't just going after these miserable cheats who prevent
    the rest of us from owning second homes and three cars or sending our
    kids to private schools like Andover or Groton where they can play tag
    in cold-water showers with their teachers.

    Maximum even had the stones to fight Cardinal Bernard Law. Last week,
    the cardinal suggested that taking money from pregnant teen-agers might
    not be the wisest social policy in the long run. What does the cardinal
    know? The man thinks of "the long run" as heaven or maybe second
    collection at Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. But "the long run" for
    Maximum is next fall's contest for a seat in the United States Senate.

    You think Maximum is going to be pushed around by a cardinal? Not him.
    He jumped right on TV to rebut the leader of a few million Catholics
    without even mentioning him by name; called him "a religious
    conservative" instead.

    Of course, there are still some who think Maximum's fingerprinting is
    as low as a man can go. Yet they simply don't know how the poor have
    become so despised and such a drain that the only thing left to do is
    either herd them into a pen where they can be accounted for or kill
    them.

    Apparently, either option is swell with Maximum because he does not
    know anyone on welfare, has never met poor people unless they were
    lined up at a campaign stop, like servants. He is so isolated and aloof
    he doesn't realize that most on welfare want only to get off, not get
    more.

    However, Thursday night, at the McKeon Post in Dorchester, people from
    the Pine Street Inn are having a time for one of their counselors,
    Jimmy Campo. He is 31, married, with four small children and this
    morning he is in Brigham & Women's Hospital battling leukemia.

    Jimmy Campo's annual salary does not equal one of Maximum Weld's
    annuity checks. And Campo and his wife, Donna, have worked hard to
    hurdle several obstacles; welfare and Section 8 housing are only two of
    the items they conquered.

    The evening would be a terrific opportunity for Maximum to actually
    interact with the working poor. It could even be kind of a twofer: If
    he bumped into any welfare clients, he could fingerprint them on the
    spot.

    Hey, Maximum, watch out for the middle finger. That's the one anybody
    with brains, heart or common sense would hold up to you today.

    
    
    Nice little diatribe.  wordy, the mule and mr bill must be very proud.

    note that Barnicle never offers any solutions to the problems; he only
    complains about the solutions other people come up with. Such is the
    easy life of being a critic- you don't have to actually produce, you
    only have to be able to criticize. Tough job. I mean, he actually has
    to go into some of the bad sections of town to find people whose
    heartbreaking stories fill his pockets...

    Sounds like a liberal Rush.   

>The thieves in welfare are not the receipients -
    
     Well, I'd agree that not all the thieves in welfare are the
    recipients, but some of them certainly are...

    
    > Thank goodness for Maximum. His fingerprinting thing is great. It will
    > prevent the no-good layabouts from getting hard-working white people
                                                              ^^^^^^^^^^^^
    Why'd he use this phrase?  Is he implying that whites are the only
    people who work?

    > It will be incredible theater: Maximum will be on TV, holding the
    > infant's little limb in his big Episcopalian paw, urging the child to
                                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    Is this an ethnic slur?  What if Bill Weld were a Jew?  Would he say
    "big Jewish paw"?  Some how I think not.

    > If that were the case, he'd have the entire Legislature printed, too.

    Now there's an idea....

    > these miserable cheats who prevent
    > the rest of us from owning second homes and three cars ....

    Or first home, or a car that will actually start on the second or third
    time.

    > Maximum even had the stones to fight Cardinal Bernard Law. 

    As if that were a bad thing.  I'll bet that the author would have a
    hissy fit if the government went along with what the church wanted on a
    regular basis.

    > What does the cardinal know? 

    An interesting question, does the cardinal pay income tax to the state?
    Has the cardinal ever tried to buy a house for his family?  Has he ever
    had to worry about where the money to pay the bills was coming from this
    week?

    > He jumped right on TV to rebut the leader of a few million Catholics
    
    "alleged" leader if you please!

    > Hey, Maximum, watch out for the middle finger. That's the one anybody
    > with brains, heart or common sense would hold up to you today.

    Now THERE is an educated statement.  Now I remember why I don't buy the
    Globe.

    :-P

    >> Thank goodness for Maximum. His fingerprinting thing is great. It will
    >> prevent the no-good layabouts from getting hard-working white people
                                                              ^^^^^^^^^^^^
    >Why'd he use this phrase?  
    
     Because he makes his living by driving a wedge between rich and poor,
    white and black, etc. What a little fomenting of bigotry and
    intolerance if it keeps the coffers full?

    
    	I must say, that Glob article took the cake. It's been a long time
    since I've since a piece of garbage that extensive and convoluted
    (except for the last HCI mailing I received).
    
    	I saw a bumper sticker the other day that read "Don't buy the lies,
    don't buy the Globe". Wonder where I can get one?
    
    
    jim

           <<< Note 243.209 by SUBPAC::SADIN "Freedom isn't free." >>>

    
>    	I must say, that Glob article took the cake. It's been a long time
>    since I've since a piece of garbage that extensive and convoluted
>    (except for the last HCI mailing I received).
>    
>    	I saw a bumper sticker the other day that read "Don't buy the lies,
>    don't buy the Globe". Wonder where I can get one?
    
That was a *column*, Jim, not The Globe per se. You *can* see the 
difference, no? HTH

Tom

    
    
    	piss off Davis. I'm not in the mood..
    
    
    

>That was a *column*, Jim, not The Globe per se. You *can* see the 
>difference, no? HTH
    
     One presumes you are unable to conclude anything at all by the
    prevelance of columns of that nature vs columns carrying a less left
    leaning slant.

    
    	Coincidentally, they must have all been too long to be included,
    	and were left on the editing room floor.
    
    	Strange how these things happen.
    

    
    I don't watch C-span.  I hope I have the time to do it when I retire.
    Who knows when I can afford to retire.
    
    I agree to criticize is easy.  I have a lot of ideas to solve the
    problem also.  The difficult thing is to convince other on what I
    believe.  So the only thing I can do is making 'comment'.
    
    J.                                                     

    Jason:
    
    Why don't you run for congress?  

  <<< Note 243.212 by WAHOO::LEVESQUE "shifting paradigms without a clutch" >>>

    
>     One presumes you are unable to conclude anything at all by the
>    prevelance of columns of that nature vs columns carrying a less left
>    leaning slant.

One would be wrong. If one were really smart, one wouldn't have to stack 
right vs left columns on a balancing scale to figure out where the 
publishers of the Globe stand; just read the newspaper's editorials.

Of course that has nothing to do with the truth of its news, which Sadin's 
beloved bumper sticker seems to criticize. Which, coincidentally, was my 
point.

>    I agree to criticize is easy.  I have a lot of ideas to solve the
>    problem also.  The difficult thing is to convince other on what I
>    believe.  So the only thing I can do is making 'comment'.

    Jason, repeating the democratic spin is not making comment. 


    
    
    

    >Of course that has nothing to do with the truth of its news, 
    
     One can learn a lot about a paper's leanings without reading a single
    editorial by looking at what news makes it into copy, what news is on
    the front page and what news gets buried on p43. And by reading the
    headlines. And by careful attention to bylines and sources. The Boston
    Globe is not without bias in its reporting of the news, and that's
    what's at issue. 

  <<< Note 243.218 by WAHOO::LEVESQUE "bon marcher, as far as she can tell" >>>

>    Globe is not without bias in its reporting of the news, and that's
>    what's at issue. 

But are they guilty of lies? Or 'misplaced' emphasis?

    
    
>But are they guilty of lies? Or 'misplaced' emphasis?
    
    
    	severe bias would be a better term. selective news reporting maybe?
    
    

    >But are they guilty of lies? Or 'misplaced' emphasis?
    
     Some would claim there is such a thing as a lie of ommission. Some
    would claim that selective editing could be construed as a lie.

    
    	I know that they reported my father's birthplace incorrectly
    	at least once, and I know of one other lie.  Whether the lie
    	was intentional or not, I do not know, but it certainly wasn't
    	a truth.
    

    	Re .167
    
>Saw a press conference last night where the dems have put a plan together 
>to balance the budget in 7 years with $100b more in savings that the repub 
>plan. No tax cuts, some up front cuts instead of one year delay, little/no
>block grants to the states.

    There was a vote on this Democratic budget last week. It did balance
    the budget in 7 years with no tax cuts and much lower "cuts" in
    other spending. 
    
    The bill was soundly defeated. I believe most Democrats, including
    the entire leadership voted against it. In Massachusetts, 
    Marty Meahan(sp) was the only Democrat who voted in favor.
    The bill did receive some Republican support.
    
    Sooo..there should be little doubt that the Democratic leadership
    as well as most liberal Democrats, have no intent to support a 
    balanced budget.
    
    					Ed
    
    

Yes, my understanding at the time of it's submission was that the leadership
would not support it because "it wasn't their plan".

No wonder the repubs are ignoring them .....

Doug.

    
      It was such a total sham, nobody took it seriously.
    
      It didn't balance anything, according to CBO.
    
      The Prex just had his economic advisors draw up a rosy scenario,
     which made the deficit go away by itself.
    
      bb

re: .-1

We were not talking about the presidents budget (which is/was a sham) but 
a budget put together by a small group of conservative democrats against the 
wishes of the democratic leadership. This budget did use CBO numbers, 
did balance the budget in 7 years with very different priorities than 
either the repub or dem plans.

Doug.

    
      Oh, yes, Thaaaaaat one.  Sorry, confusion.  You are correct, they
     did have a balanced one.  If think Marty Meehan was one of 'em ?
    
      Actually, theirs did make quite a bit of sense, as I recall.
    
      But politically, it's a tough situation for them.
    
      bb

    
      Well, the conference committee Welfare Reform bill passed the
     House and is probably going to pass the Senate today.  Clinton
     has reportedly changed his mind again, and will veto it.
    
      Unless he changes his mind again today.
    
      bb

    Yo, Dave Flatman...
    
    If you have something else to say about Welfare, why not place
    it here.  (The Welfare rathole has gone on in the Abortion topic
    way too long already.)

    RE: .229

    Well, the tie in to the abortion topic was rather obvious, but I agree
    that we should move the discussion.

    After more research last night on the subject, I've decided to change
    my stance ... to abolishing AFDC as we now know it.



    From "Fifteen Minutes with Eloise Anderson" subtitled "Abolishing Welfare",
    _National Review_, January 29, 1996 page 4; reprinted without
    permission.

        Eloise Anderson has become the most controversial figure in
    America's welfare-reform debate.  Why?  Because Anderson, who runs
    California's welfare system, went on 60 Minutes a few weeks back and
    called for the "complete abolition of welfare."  And Americans
    listened.
        According to 60 Minutes, Anderson's 15-minute segment "generated
    more mail than any story in the history of the show."  In the first
    week alone, CBS received a record 330 letters, only three of which were
    negative.  Anderson's critics, who call her heartless, are baffled by
    this response.  But there is no secret to it:  she makes good sense.
        "You are perfectly capable of taking care of yourself ... We don't
    think you're helpless...  incompetent ... stupid.  We think you're just
    like us," Anderson told a group of welfare recipients who for years
    have been treated like mindless children instead of capable adults, it
    is as unfamiliar as the dignity the welfare state has taken from them.
        Anderson's most controversial proposal is to end welfare cash
    payments known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children.  "AFDC traps
    people in poverty and breaks their self-reliant spirit."  Consider how
    the program works for a 15-year-old girl:  as long as she doesn't get
    married, doesn't work, and doesn't take responsibility for herself or
    her children, the government will provide her with free money, free
    food, and a free apartment.
        "Welfare is better than a husband," according to Anderson, "because
    it pays better than being married to a man with a low income.  Welfare
    pushes men away from women and their children."  A new study by the
    Cato Institute shows that a welfare mother with two children living in
    California receives the equivalent income of $11.50 an hour -- 270
    percent more than she can earn with a minimum-wage job.  Why should she
    work or get married?
        The most insidious effect of AFDC has been illegitimacy.  By
    automatically increasing cash payments to women who bear additional
    children out of wedlock, AFDC has funded -- at taxpayers' expense -- a
    social catastrophe.  About 40 per cent of children in California go to
    sleep in homes in which their fathers do not live.  And according to
    the U.S. Department of Health, these children are "five times as likely
    to live in poverty, compared to children living with both parents." 
    Anderson understands that she cannot address child poverty in
    California without addressing its most powerful determinant: 
    fatherlessness.
        Anderson's plan which she intends to push through California's
    legislature with Governor Wilson's support, is to eventually cut off
    all cash payments to able-bodied adults, except in "crisis" situations
    such as domestic violence and medical emergencies.  She would retain
    food-stamp and child-care programs.  But she expects welfare recipients
    to get jobs -- even those who have never worked before.  "What about
    people who find it too hard to work?"  CBS's Lesley Stahl asked her
    during the 60 Minutes interview.  "I don't understand 'finding it too
    hard to work,'" Anderson replied.
        Anderson understands poverty and hard work.  Born to a poor family
    in a poor neighborhood, she once had to rely on food stamps to feed her
    own children after her husband abandoned them.  But she refused to take
    cash assistance.  Instead she got a job pumping gas.  That is why she
    is particularly troubled by recipients who refuse to take low-paying
    jobs -- the type of jobs where so many Americans have learned basic
    skills of showing up on time, being pleasant to customers and
    respectful to the boss, and persevering to get the job done.
        "Will you not concede,"  Stahl asked her, "that you have a large
    number of unemployable people who are on welfare?"
        "No," Anderson replied.  She told Stahl that plenty of low-paying
    jobs exist, but most recipients refuse to take them.
        "But we're talking about sweeping floors?"  Stahl asked.
        "That's employable."

        During the interview, Stahl insinuated that Anderson, a middle-aged
    black woman, was being manipulated or used by conservatives because of
    her race.  Stahl told Anderson that she "had heard" that "if you were
    not African American, that you could not get away with what you're
    saying."  Anderson rejected the notion:  "I don't believe that." 
        "If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets
    as well as Michelangelo painted ... He should sweep streets so well
    that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a
    great street sweeper who did his job well."  The man who spoke these
    eloquent words -- Martin Luther King, Jr. -- would surely subscribe to
    Eloise Anderson's traditional American morality and take offense at
    Stahl's liberal elitism.

    by Tom Lowe, director of communications at the Claremont Institute.

    I wonder if those are Stahl's personal beliefs or the
    questions/assertions she was told to ask/make.  I sincerely hope it's
    the latter, but sadly suspect it's both.
    
    Bob

    "Between 1965 and 1994, welfare spending has cost the taxpayers $5.4
    trillion in constant 1993 dollars.  The cost of the War on Poverty has
    thus been some 70 percent greater than the price tag for defeating
    Germany and Japan in World War II, after adjusting for inflation ...
    nearly equals the entire cost of the private sector industrial and
    business infrastructure of the U.S.  For $5.4 trillion one could
    purchase every factory, all the manufacturing equipment, and every
    office building in the U.S.  With the leftover funds, one could go on
    to purchase every airline, every railroad, every trucking firm, the
    entire commercial maritime fleet, every telephone, television, and
    radio company, every power company, every hotel, and every retail and
    wholesale store in the entire nation."
        -- Robert Rector and Will Lauber, "America's Failed $5.4 Trillion
        War on Poverty,"  The Heritage Foundation

re: .232

	Garbage.  

		In 30 years there was spent an estimated 
                and adjusted 5.4 trillion on welfare and
                it was enough to buy the USA.

  The quantity barely exceeds the loans on the nation.  The insurance industry
alone was what $800B in revinue last year.  It would probably cost more than
that.  Between healcare, oil, cars, computers and ... the cost of this nation
dwarf the 5.4trillion.

    "During the 1950s, AFDC rolls rose by 110,000 families, or 17 percent
    -- but during the 1960s the increase was 107 percent, or 800,000
    families.  About three-fourths of that increase occurred from 1965 to
    1968 alone, during a time of general prosperity and diminishing
    unemployment.  Slicing the numbers a different way, the overall AFDC
    population increased from 4.3 million in 1965 to 10.8 million in 1974."
    		-- Marvin Olasky, _The Tragedy of American Compassion_

    You guys are just heartless, depriving children of their place at the
    public trough like that...
    
    re: Stahl's questions
    
     Actually, it's good to work the opposing angle during an interview, to
    hit some of the points that critics would ask. It has to be balanced
    with "friendly" questioning, too, however. Both sides of issues must be
    thoroughly examined lest we risk propaganda...

    RE: .233

> The insurance industry alone was what $800B in revinue last year.  

    Since I'm providing my sources, it's only fair that you provide yours. 
    By the way, the insurance industry was listed in the what could be
    purchased.

    -- Dave

re: .234

	How many of those 800,000 families added from 1965 to 1968 to AFDC were
added because daddy got shot in Vietnam? 

    "the world's wealthiest nation seems caught in a paradoxical trap: 
    the more the U.S. spends on the poor, the greater the need seems to be
    to spend still more."
    		-- Time magazine, 1971

    
    	Absoulte max would be 50K, or 6%.
    
    	And that's if every family of a Viet Nam casualty went on welfare.
    

re: .236

	I think the source of the approximate $800B was from CNBC and they
quoted the Annual Insurance Industry Report.

	The point is that the $5.4T is a large number but is not anywhere as
large as the author of "The Tragedy of American Compassion" would lead us to
believe.  From numbers in today's "USA TODAY", the annual GDP is running about
$7.1Trillion this year.

    RE: .240

>	The point is that the $5.4T is a large number but is not anywhere as
>large as the author of "The Tragedy of American Compassion" would lead us to
>believe.  From numbers in today's "USA TODAY", the annual GDP is running about
>$7.1Trillion this year.

    The GDP contains more than the manufacturing and other sectors of the
    economy listed.  The GDP also doesn't reflect the sale price.  Using
    GDP figures versus what can be purchased is comparing apples and
    oranges.

    -- Dave

    In this election year, one of the big stories is the angst of the
    middle class.  "Most families can't afford to live on one salary."
    "We want one of us to stay home with the kids, but having a fulltime
    homemaker in the family has become a luxury and a status symbol for
    the middle class."  "We live in danger of lay-offs and jobs going
    overseas."  "The middle class is overburdened and almost at the
    breaking point."

    Most/many families in the middle class can't live on one salary
    even though they have these advantages if the dad works and the
    mom stays home (or if the mom has a very good job and the dad
    stays home):

    		1. A man's wages (Higher than women's wages, usually)

    		2. FREE daycare (Mom stays home)

    		3. Credit (Unless they've blown it)

    Most families still can't manage on one salary.

    Welfare mothers are EXPECTED to be able to do the very thing that most
    of the middle class CAN NOT DO:  raise a family on one salary.

    Welfare mothers have these disadvantages:

    		1. NO man's wages (With less education/experience, they're
    				   likely to be paid low even among women.)

    		2. NO free daycare (No parents left at home to care for kids.)

    		3. NO credit (Or at least they are unlikely to have credit
    			      when they start out.  Living hand to mouth
    			      after being employed won't help much.)

    Some in the middle class must think Welfare mothers are a lot smarter 
    and more self-sufficient than the middle class will ever be.  While
    the middle class continues to claim they can't live on one salary, some
    are utterly convinced that Welfare mothers with little or no education
    or job experience can (and WILL) do this.

    Further, they think that Welfare mothers will be inspired to do this
    by being thrown out into the streets.

    I wonder...  If you take a family which can't survive on one salary,
    would they suddenly be ABLE to survive on one salary just fine if
    we pitched them out into the street (after taking away both their
    jobs and every penny they have?)  While we're at it, let's make them
    toss out their resumes (so that it looks as if they have no experience
    and little education, too.)

    Perhaps this is the solution that the middle class has been seeking
    to solve the problem of not being able to exist on one salary.  Let's
    throw all such whiners out into the streets for their own good (so
    that they will have the successful and rewarding family lives they've
    always wanted.)

    Let's start right away (so these middle class families will be helped
    as soon as possible!)  I'll rent the first moving van.

re: .241

	I misunderstood the sentence in the first note.  I thought it said that
you could buy all the factories, stores ... and the entire nation.  The
statement made in the book from the Heritage Foundation (a conservative
political organization) is still Elephant Dung.  I am assuming that the net
values of the buisnesses are based on the value of their assets, their revinue
and their profits.  At first I thought it was just an error in calculation, but
now I think it is being misused for political reasons by the "Heratics
Foundation".

    RE: .242

    Your entire premise for .242 boils down to:

>    Most/many families in the middle class can't live on one salary
>    even though they have these advantages if the dad works and the
>    mom stays home (or if the mom has a very good job and the dad
>    stays home):

    Where's the note from EDP regarding what is necessary to live and not?

    How many times a month does a person need to eat out?  How many TV's
    does a person need?  VCR's?  CD players?  CD's?  Microwave ovens? 
    Nikes?   Reaboks?  Dishwashers?  Clothes washers and dryers?  Cars? 
    Sofas?  Love seats?  Coffee tables?  Dinning room tables?  Give you a
    free hint:  it's less than 1.

    Eliminate a lot of these unnecessary "necessities" and most of your
    middle class families that claim to need two incomes only need one.

    -- Dave

    re.242
    I know may single parents that are making it fine and I also know many
    couples that exist on one salary...  They just don't go on as many
    vacations ect.
    
    Dom

    RE: .244  Dave Flatman

    > Eliminate a lot of these unnecessary "necessities" and most of your
    > middle class families that claim to need two incomes only need one.

    So, this middle class complaint is mostly a pile of crap, right?

    Then why should we listen to those who keep insisting that Welfare
    families would be helped by being thrown out into the streets?

    The same error in judgment which makes them think they CANNOT survive
    on one income is telling them that people with fewer advantages than
    they have WILL survive being thrown out into the streets.

    By the way, we already have a substantial population of people who
    do live in the streets.  We've had a fairly large homeless population 
    for the past 15 years or so.

    Has anyone done studies to show that homeless people end up being
    successful *as a direct result* of the experience of being homeless?

    Is it something to recommend for anyone who needs a lift in his/her
    career?

    RE: .246

>    So, this middle class complaint is mostly a pile of crap, right?

    If you're referring to the complaint regarding requiring two incomes,
    then it boils down to a lifestyle choice.  In order to maintain a
    middle class lifestyle (the CD's, cloth washers, etc.) then they may
    very well indeed require two incomes; but maintaining the middle class
    lifestyle is not equal to making it ... which you claim that single
    mothers can't do.

>    The same error in judgment which makes them think they CANNOT survive
>    on one income ...

    See above.

    -- Dave

    We're heading for a survival of the fittest society once again. There's
    nothing we can do to stop it. It will be tragic, but unless we can
    invent replicators and viable space travel and terraforming, there's no
    way to avoid it.

Not so much survival of the fittest as getting the fit off the public
dole ...

    RE: .247

    Well, you're certainly being retentive about this homeless bit aren't
    you?  The only person who's advocated tossing anyone onto the street
    was me (and my older sister, but she's not here so I'll take full
    responsibility for the comment) and that only applied to my younger
    sister.  Given my younger sister's world view, being tossed on the
    street for six months or so would indeed give her a greater
    appreciation of responsibility and would do her a world of good in the
    long term.

    Now, let's see what your current welfare system (yours because you're
    defending it) is doing to people on welfare:
        --  encouraging men to leave their wives/girlfriends and children
        --  taking away dignity (they're too lazy, stupid, or incompetent
            to make it on their own; they need our government enforced
            charity)
        --  destroying the work ethic (why work?  you can make more on
            welfare)

    -- Dave

    Well, if our society was geared towards digging ditches then yes,
    getting the physically fit of the dole would work really well. Survival
    of the fittest is never fair.

re: .244 and .245

	I just did the calculation for Mass.  Yep,  The median income in Mass.
could sustain a family and allow them to save maybe $25 a week.  That means that
about 1/2 of the middle class families can live on 1 income if they cut out 
your "unnecessary necessities".  That also means that most of women head of
household families are NOT sustaining.  There is a broad level of data to
support the argument in .242 (poverty statistics, homeless statistics, savings
account statistics, income statistics...).

Is the osterity and downward spiraling of wealth the American Dream that all
good conservatives want?

    40% of the homeless that inhabit local shelters are women and their
    kids already.
    
    There is a two year waiting list for subsidized housing and 1 minimum
    wage job will not pay the rent for a deficiency apt, let alone
    something that a family can live in without fear of someone deciding
    that the kids are being abused or endangered.  
    
    Employers here may be complaining about not getting "qualified
    entry-level people" but they are not willing to pay a wage that will
    feed, clothe and shelter anyone with more responsibilities than your
    average MC teenager living at home with an adult housing and feeding
    them.  Unless you are willing to cover the expenses of Daycare, helalth
    care, home and hearth that are not covered by  salary, all you will do
    is effectively throw children out on the streets.  While this will be
    advantageous for states that have cold winters, those who have warmer
    ones will probably suffer an influx of p[eople with kids, begging in
    the streets.  I like to think we are better able to care for our own
    than, say, Mexico where begging, theiving street urchins are the norm
    in many cities.
    
    meg

    RE: .253

>	I just did the calculation for Mass.  Yep,  The median income in Mass.
>could sustain a family and allow them to save maybe $25 a week. 

    Well that settles it.  I guess we'll just have to take it on blind
    faith that whatever calculations you just did are accurate and
    meaningful.  (please note the heavy sarcasm)


>Is the osterity and downward spiraling of wealth the American Dream that all
>good conservatives want?

    Is a permanent welfare underclass of people trapped in a vicious cycle
    of social welfare dependency what the liberals want?  Do the liberals
    want to shove as many people out of the middle class via taxation that
    severly eats into their disposable income?  Do the liberals want to
    encourage men to leave their wives and children via making it
    fiancially attractive?

    Yeah, I thought so.

    -- Dave

    
      It's a shame all you welfare-state types don't have multi-media
     in the 'Box.  You could accompany your tales of misery with the
     music of tragic pathos.  Tchaikovsky's ninth, perhaps.
    
      Alas, the paying customers don't buy it, so your liberal dreams
     of spoonfeeding the downtrodden register no sale.  Put 'em to work.
    
      bb

    RE: .251  Dave Flatman

    > Given my younger sister's world view, being tossed on the
    > street for six months or so would indeed give her a greater
    > appreciation of responsibility and would do her a world of good in the
    > long term.  

    ...if she managed to avoid being raped and murdered (along with her
    children), of course.

    It isn't all that safe in American HOMES anymore (which is why so many
    people want to preserve their rights to defend themselves with firearms),
    but the streets are downright horribly, horribly DANGEROUS.

    So you think it'll be a cool experience to throw your sister and her
    children into this kind of danger.  You're such a prince.

    > Now, let's see what your current welfare system (yours because you're
    > defending it) is doing to people on welfare:

    Aside from feeding and housing children and their mothers, you mean?
    (You forgot to mention this.)

    >    --  encouraging men to leave their wives/girlfriends and children

    The men aren't being paid to leave.  They're simply taking the
    opportunities to be 'let off the hook'.  If the mothers and children
    were thrown out into the streets, would they suddenly become 
    responsible people??  Want to risk the children's lives to find out?
    I don't.

    >    --  taking away dignity (they're too lazy, stupid, or incompetent
    >        to make it on their own; they need our government enforced
    >        charity)

    This is the kind of crap that JERKS say about them (as a way to justify
    throwing them out into the streets.)  "Hey, we have more respect for
    you than those other people do.  We are going to KICK YOU OUT with
    the confidence that you'll survive.  Isn't that nice of us???"

    >    --  destroying the work ethic (why work?  you can make more on
    >        welfare)

    Welfare is still WAY below the poverty line, though.  Big thrill.
    Being destitute is so MUCH more fun than being able to live well,
    right?  It's a thrill a minute (especially when you have so little
    to look forward to in the future.)

>    Now, let's see what your current welfare system (yours because you're
>    defending it) is doing to people on welfare:
>        --  encouraging men to leave their wives/girlfriends and children
>        --  taking away dignity (they're too lazy, stupid, or incompetent
>            to make it on their own; they need our government enforced
>            charity)
>        --  destroying the work ethic (why work?  you can make more on
>            welfare)


	This is what CONSERVATIVES are DOING WITH the welfare system.  The
welfare office isn't making people feel stupid, lazy or incompetent, the
conservative political mantra is.  The "your on welfare so your lazy and
stealing my money to live better than me" dung.

	Yes there are problems with the system.  Yes, they need to be fixed.
But that is not a justification for dumping the system or any of the mantra
from above.

>      It's a shame all you welfare-state types don't have multi-media
>     in the 'Box.  You could accompany your tales of misery with the
>     music of tragic pathos.  Tchaikovsky's ninth, perhaps.
>
>      Alas, the paying customers don't buy it, so your liberal dreams
>     of spoonfeeding the downtrodden register no sale.  Put 'em to work.
>

	What "welfare-state"?  That slogan has been used by conservatives to
describe something that does not exist!  You may want it to so you would
really be fighting an "evil empire" but it does not.

	So conservative would just toss people out on the streets!!  The crazy
thing about this idea is that it would save money.  The reality is that it
would cost more than just leaving em on welfare.  You can be cold and
heartless if you want, but for once think of the consequences.  America has a
debt that is already large enough due to half baked conservative ideas.

    RE: .255  Dave Flatman

    > Do the liberals want to shove as many people out of the middle class 
    > via taxation that severly eats into their disposable income?  

    This is the most revealing thing you've said so far.  This is what
    the anti-Welfare rhetoric is all about.  (Money for the middle class.)

    Shove the people on Welfare into the streets ('for their own good,'
    of course!) so that people in the middle class can pay less in taxes.

    AFDC payments are less than 1% of the Federal Budget, but somehow the
    anti-Welfare arguments have people on Welfare getting enough money to
    buy the whole doggone country (or whatever.)

    Isn't it shocking!  Surely we must throw these people out in the
    streets ("FOR THEIR OWN GOOD", of course.)

    
      You lie, Stacy, why do you lie ?
    
      There is indeed a welfare state.  It taxes those who work, to
     pay those who don't.  It isn't secret.  It's all public.
    
      But then, if I had as poor arguments for the government transferring
     resources away from the productive to the unproductive as you do,
     I guess I'd decide shotgunning big lies would be my most promising
     tactic also.
    
      bb

    RE: .261  bb

    > There is indeed a welfare state.  It taxes those who work, to
    > pay those who don't.  It isn't secret.  It's all public.

    'Welfare State' is a coined phrase (WORDS), that's all.

    Most of the civilized countries in the world do something to provide
    a safety net for their poor.

    Other countries have millions of people living in garbage dumps (where
    they often die of diseases like cholera), or else they have people
    dying all over their streets.

    A little over 100 years ago, we had babies, toddlers and young children
    living in the streets of big cities (without grownups) by the thousands.
    They prostituted themselves, begged and died together.  (Children were
    often raped and murdered, and they also froze to death and starved to
    death.)

    If this is the society you want, then let's declare ourselves a third
    world nation and get it over with.  Perhaps we'll be lucky enough for
    a civilized country to bring us troops and supplies to help our poor.

    RE: .257

>    ...if she managed to avoid being raped and murdered (along with her
>    children), of course.

    Nice distortion.  Is this true of all of your other stated "facts"?  As
    was pointed out under the abortion topic, her kids never would hit the
    street, but without the kids hitting the street it just doesn't tug at
    the old heart strings as well I guess.

>    So you think it'll be a cool experience to throw your sister and her
>    children into this kind of danger.  

    We've already pointed out the fallacy of your statement regarding the
    children.  As far as being "cool", no.  I've never said that.  I've
    also never said that it would be cool to have open heart surgery, but
    sometimes it is necessary.

>    You're such a prince.

    Thank you, I try.

>    >    --  encouraging men to leave their wives/girlfriends and children
>
>    The men aren't being paid to leave.  They're simply taking the
>    opportunities to be 'let off the hook'.  

    You're right.  The men aren't being paid to leave, the women are being
    paid to have the men leave.  Your system (again, you're defending it)
    pays the woman over $11 per hour to have her husband/boyfriend take
    off.  Even if he's making $10/hour she's better off financially with
    him gone (and that doesn't even account for the resources that he
    consumes).

>    >    --  destroying the work ethic (why work?  you can make more on
>    >        welfare)
>
>    Welfare is still WAY below the poverty line, though.  Big thrill.

    It's also above what two kids without or with only a high school
    education can expect to earn.  Take any two 20 year old people with 2
    kids and guess what ... they'll be below the poverty level.

>    Being destitute is so MUCH more fun than being able to live well,
>    right?  

    Living well is basically not an economic option for two 20 year-olds
    with two kids.

    -- Dave

    I don't think you see any of us liberals saying the current Welfare
    system doesn't need reform, however, we look at things from a different
    point of view.  i don't consider most of the women and children on AFDC
    as shiftless and lazy, they have landed in a situation that is
    foreign to many who should thank their lucky stars that it hasn'\t
    happened to them.  
    
    I agree that able-bodied people should work for a living, but I have
    one question.  What are you going to do with the kids?  You have 9
    million children, most of whom are not school age that have got to be
    supervised while the parental unit goes to work.  Priced daycare
    lately?  It isn't cheap, in fact at 100-135/week/kid you can see where
    a big chunk of that money will go pretty darn quick.  4.25 * 40 = 170
    before taxes, ss, etc.  With one kid in full-time day care you have $70
    at most to pay rent, utilities, buy formula (remember some of these
    working mothers will have infants) buy groceries and pay for some
    laundy and clothing needs.  
    
    Anyone know where you can rent a deficiency for 280/month? You can't
    get a residential hotel room with kitchenette in the off-season for
    that price here.  
    
    so if we are going to expect people to work for this, we will wind up
    subsidizing employers by allowing them to pay less than a living wage.
    
    meg

    RE: .260

>    This is the most revealing thing you've said so far.  This is what
>    the anti-Welfare rhetoric is all about.  (Money for the middle class.)

    Ah yes, let's take one point and claim that that's what the whole thing
    is about.  Applying your logic the other way I suppose we could make
    statement like "the whole point of welfare is to support poor people's
    crack habit."  Of course this statement wouldn't be true, but then
    neither is yours.

    -- Dave

Ah, so now we're blaming the failings of the great society on conservatives.
How convenient.


Be real, It took both sides to build this house of cards ....

And how convenient it is that know one is talking about the scores of people
who have made living under the welfare umbrella their lifestyle choice.

Many folks live quite well, and well ABOVE the poverty line, after collecting
all that is allowed.

When people begin to understand that there are scores of people who
need not be collecting, that these people are taking money and resource
away from those who really need the help, then perhaps this notestring of
dribble will turn to something more constructive.

In the meantime, just keep throwing mud at each other  :-(

Start looking at what your welfare dollar is being spent on and ask yourself
if the money is being used wisely. While anyone can find specific cases where
it is indeed necessary, the general picture is one of gigantic waste.

Meanwhile, people are being taxed into lower lifestyles and they are
rightfully angry at the gross abuse/fraud/waste that sucks their pockets
dry. None of these people want to see mothers and children on the streets,
but they demand that they get a reasonable bang for the buck.

Why block grant the money to states? Becuase it becomes much harder to
hide the waste/fraud/abuse in the system when the money is being
spent closer to home. 



Doug.

    
      People should work.  That is the ticket.  Homeless or not.
     Poor or not.  Single or Married.  Male, Female.
    
      They should contribute work if they expect benefits.
    
      Work is good.  Provision for the working poor of various kinds of
     assistance seems reasonable to me.  As for the nonworking poor,
     they should be found jobs first.  There are plenty of floors to mop
     and burgers to flip.
    
      bb

    RE: .264

>    Anyone know where you can rent a deficiency for 280/month? You can't
>    get a residential hotel room with kitchenette in the off-season for
>    that price here.  

    Not that I'm advocating you start sending your poor to my town, but
    there are apartments for rent here that go for $280 a month or less. 
    One of the guys I worked with last year paid about $260 a month.

    The town itself is relatively safe, only three murders in the last five
    years (with all victims being known by the assailant).  It's a bit hot
    in the summer time (annual fry-an-egg on the sidewalk contests), but
    it's a "dry heat".

    -- Dave

    doug,
    
    I live in a neighborhood where I do see where my tax dollars are going
    every day.  frank and I both bvolunteer time at our local elementary,
    we know where our tax money is going and know many of the kids and
    parents.  they are not the faceless fraud perpetrators so many people
    paint them as being.  There are a few people who are not working at
    getting away from being subsidized, a few who are and a few with
    small children they are nursing or sick children that require lots of
    care.  
    
    Can you tell me what you plan to do with the small kids while their
    mothers are working at less than 5 dollars/hour?  I really am
    interested in your answers.
    
    meg

    RE: .263  Dave Flatman

    >> ...if she managed to avoid being raped and murdered (along with her
    >> children), of course.

    > Nice distortion.  Is this true of all of your other stated "facts"?  As
    > was pointed out under the abortion topic, her kids never would hit the
    > street, but without the kids hitting the street it just doesn't tug at
    > the old heart strings as well I guess.

    Fine - so she'd have to avoid being raped and murdered HERSELF.  Your
    concern for her life is underwhelming.

    > As far as being "cool", no.  I've never said that.  I've
    > also never said that it would be cool to have open heart surgery, but
    > sometimes it is necessary.  

    It would be necessary to put your sister's life in danger?  Why?
    To teach her a lesson?  (Why don't you throw her off Niagara Falls
    instead.  It would be a lot faster.)

    > Your system (again, you're defending it) pays the woman over $11 per 
    > hour to have her husband/boyfriend take off.  

    The typical Welfare mother has two children and receives $380 per 
    month from AFDC.  This is significantly less than $11 per hour.

    > Even if he's making $10/hour she's better off financially with
    > him gone (and that doesn't even account for the resources that he
    > consumes).

    Yeah, $380 per month goes a long way.

    >> Welfare is still WAY below the poverty line, though.  Big thrill.

    > It's also above what two kids without or with only a high school
    > education can expect to earn.  Take any two 20 year old people with 2
    > kids and guess what ... they'll be below the poverty level.

    So ONE parent with two kids is even farther below the poverty level.
    (You do realize that it gets more and more difficult to live when
    people move farther and farther below the poverty level.  At some
    point, they can't maintain the family at all.)

    >> Being destitute is so MUCH more fun than being able to live well,
    >> right?  

    > Living well is basically not an economic option for two 20 year-olds
    > with two kids.

    So, Welfare would only be attractive to the very, very, very poorest
    people in this country and not Americans in general. (Exactly my point.)

>    Can you tell me what you plan to do with the small kids while their
>    mothers are working at less than 5 dollars/hour?  I really am
>    interested in your answers.

Simple.  Some work as daycare workers for the children of the rest.

    RE: .269

    I wonder if any of the enterprising young mothers could take care of a
    few of their friends kids while the friend goes off to work?  

    Let's see, you consider the woman to be worth $4.75/hour in the job
    market, that works out to $190 a week (before taxes of course).  She
    would just need to charge about $32/kid/week and watch 6 kids or
    $47.50/kid/week and watch 4 kids to make the same while staying home
    with her own kids. 

    Her friends of course also benefit by not having to pay your
    100-135/kid/week.

    -- Dave

    RE: .265  Dave Flatman

    >> This is the most revealing thing you've said so far.  This is what
    >> the anti-Welfare rhetoric is all about.  (Money for the middle class.)

    > Ah yes, let's take one point and claim that that's what the whole thing
    > is about.  

    Remember, though, it was YOUR POINT (not mine.)

    > Applying your logic the other way I suppose we could make statement 
    > like "the whole point of welfare is to support poor people's crack 
    > habit."  

    This would be YOUR OWN STATEMENT, though.  How on Earth would you
    expect to use this to summarize MY argument?  (I used *YOUR* own
    statement to summarize yours.)

    > Of course this statement wouldn't be true, but then neither is yours.

    If you're going to allow ME to sum up your argument with a single
    statement (that I've written myself), it would be far worse than
    anything you have actually said, too.

    I summed up your argument with your own statement.  Hopefully, you
    are intelligent enough to see the difference.

    RE: .270

>  (Why don't you throw her off Niagara Falls instead.  It would be a lot
>   faster.) 

    You really must enjoy exagerations and distortions as much as you
    practice them.  Surviving 6 months on the street has a higher survival
    rate than going off Niagra Falls, also going over the falls would not
    give her a grasp of reality that she desperately needs.

    By the way, I'm convinced that she wouldn't spend more than maybe one
    night on the street (the first).  The second night she might bum out at
    a friends house before getting a job (ooohhh, novel concept) and
    getting her own apartment.

>    The typical Welfare mother has two children and receives $380 per 
>    month from AFDC.  This is significantly less than $11 per hour.

    Very good.  You're only looking at AFDC and not the entire welfare
    package that is available.

>    So, Welfare would only be attractive to the very, very, very poorest
>    people in this country and not Americans in general. (Exactly my point.)

    Bzzzt.  Wrong again.  With the various caveats, welfare pays better
    than working, therefore it is more attractive than working.

    -- Dave

    RE: .273

>    Remember, though, it was YOUR POINT (not mine.)

    And remember it was only ONE point of mine.  You're the one who changed
    it to "what the anti-Welfare rhetoric is all about."  

>    If you're going to allow ME to sum up your argument with a single
>    statement (that I've written myself), it would be far worse than
>    anything you have actually said, too.

    But I reject the idea that you can pick ONE of my statements and then
    claim that it summarizes ALL of my statements.  However such
    distortions on your part seem to be common.

    -- Dave

>Note 243.261                     Welfare Reform.                      261 of 266
>GAAS::BRAUCHER "Welcome to Paradise"                 12 lines   7-MAR-1996 15:45
>                         -< speaking of fertilizer... >-
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>      You lie, Stacy, why do you lie ?
>
>      There is indeed a welfare state.  It taxes those who work, to
>     pay those who don't.  It isn't secret.  It's all public.
>
>      But then, if I had as poor arguments for the government transferring
>     resources away from the productive to the unproductive as you do,
>     I guess I'd decide shotgunning big lies would be my most promising
>     tactic also.
>

	Bill,  have you been using the phrase "welfare state" so long that you
think it is on the map somewhere?  I did refer to it as a slogan.  Look up the
word slogan, it fits.  I did not lie.


	Now for the rest of it.
>Transfering from productive to unproductive

	I don't suppose you mean the large transfer of wealth from the low and
middle income families to the wealthy that has been fostered by conservatives
over the last 20 years.  No, I didn't think that is what you meant.

	Let us assume that ALL people on WELFARE have been there forever and
will be there forever.  They are all you say they are.  They are lazy,
uneducated, unmotiviated, unmarried, have children ... whatever you say.
Throwing them off welfare is not going to change anything overnight.  So now
their on the street.  They are desperate too.  Now they are commiting
crime, you have to pay for more prison space (you are tough on crime aren't
you?), you have to hire police, the insurance premiums go up because of the
crime, you buy a home security system and put bars on the windows....  It
would have been cheaper to leave them on welfare.  Ok, let's
assume they get a job. There they are, in your group.  The lazy, uneducated
people you threw off welfare to save money are now preventing your group from
meeting it's goals. You need to train them and that impacts the division and
corporation.  ...  You don't get the raise you would have gotten if they had
not been working for the company.

	Now for reality.  Most people on welfare don't fall into the lazy,
thieving category.  Some are quite educated.  Most don't stay on it forever.
It helps and has helped a lot of people.  It needs some work and needs to
be fixed.

>shotgunning bug lies

	Yep, I shoots em when I sees em.

  >  Can you tell me what you plan to do with the small kids while their
  >  mothers are working at less than 5 dollars/hour?  I really am
  >  interested in your answers.
  
  The problem is that the system is so far removed from the target. An efficient
  system will require local community support and organization. This will NEVER
  happen as long as the checks come from federal level.

  Family is as important as community. I would hope to stop some of the 
  existing practices of cutting off benifits when the target takes on a 
  part/full time low wage job, cutting off benifits when the father is
  living in the home, and a whole host of other braindead rules.

  You cannot provide affordable daycare without community envolvement.
  I think state sponsored daycare supervised by one or two professionals 
  with the help of several targets is a great way to start. The cost is 
  low and the targets are investing in the system that supports them.

  And in the end, I would set a reasonable limit on the length of time
  a target can collect. This gives them a clear goal of making choices in 
  their lives that will get their situation in gear. After that, they're
  done barring special circumstances. 

  If they are unable to properly care for their children after that, the
  state gets involved just as it does today.

>  I live in a neighborhood where I do see where my tax dollars are going
>  every day. frank and I both bvolunteer time at our local elementary,
>    we know where our tax money is going and know many of the kids and
>    parents.

   Good for you. Ask yourself what it is that you don't see. The fact that
   there are examples of money being well spent does not mean that even
   a small minority of the money is being spent well.


  Doug.

  

    RE: .274  Dave Flatman

    > Surviving 6 months on the street has a higher survival
    > rate than going off Niagra Falls, also going over the falls would not
    > give her a grasp of reality that she desperately needs.

    If you're looking to put her life in serious danger, the toss over
    Niagara Falls and the toss into the streets fall into the same
    general category:  A SERIOUS RISK TO HER LIFE.

    > By the way, I'm convinced that she wouldn't spend more than maybe one
    > night on the street (the first).  The second night she might bum out at
    > a friends house before getting a job (ooohhh, novel concept) and
    > getting her own apartment.
                    
    Check on the statistics involving the homeless.  Do they usually leap
    into a job and an apartment after one night on the streets?

    When I first started working for Digital (a few years after receiving
    my first Bachelors degree), my son and I lived in a garage because we
    could not afford the 'first and last month's rent PLUS deposit' that
    was required for actual apartments in the area where I was working.

    Later, I rented a room in a house (where my room had a lock and I shared
    the kitchen and bathroom with two other women I did not know) as a single
    woman with NO kid.  My son and I had to pretend that his father had
    custody and that he was 'visiting' every time the landlord dropped by
    to do the yard work.  The room was small - we both slept on the floor
    and we kept our cats' litter box in the closet.  (They were always
    'visiting', too.)

    I was a college graduate working as an engineer at Digital at the time.
    (This was 14 years ago.)
    
    After 18 months of this, I transferred with Digital to an area where
    we could afford to live (and I got a promotion in the process.)

    What if your sister doesn't just 'pop' into a job and an apartment?
    What if she never makes it back from the streets alive?

    >> The typical Welfare mother has two children and receives $380 per 
    >> month from AFDC.  This is significantly less than $11 per hour.

    > Very good.  You're only looking at AFDC and not the entire welfare
    > package that is available.

    AFDC is the only part that comes as CASH.  Everything else might as
    well be seen as 'infrastructure'.

    >> So, Welfare would only be attractive to the very, very, very poorest
    >> people in this country and not Americans in general. (Exactly my point.)

    > Bzzzt.  Wrong again.  With the various caveats, welfare pays better
    > than working, therefore it is more attractive than working.

    Only if you're extremely poor already.

    RE: .278

>    If you're looking to put her life in serious danger,
    
    Ok, you may enjoy them, but I am getting tired of your complete
    distortions, but I'm sure that won't slow you down any.

>    When I first started working for Digital (a few years after receiving
>    my first Bachelors degree), my son and I lived in a garage because we
>    could not afford the 'first and last month's rent PLUS deposit' that
>    was required for actual apartments in the area where I was working.

    And you're claiming that you should have received AFDC during this
    time?  If not, what's your point?  Is it that life's hard?  That you
    have to work and forego some of life comforts to make it in this world? 
    That sacrificing early on can provide benefits later in life?  WELL, NO
    KIDDING.

    And by the way, I suppose that if you and your son could rent out a
    garage to live in because you couldn't afford first/last/deposit, then
    my sister should be perfectly capable of the same.  No reason that she
    needs to rent out a townhouse nor have a live in maid.

>    AFDC is the only part that comes as CASH.  Everything else might as
>    well be seen as 'infrastructure'.

    And the infrastructure is of no value?  The "infrastructure" doesn't
    cost anything?  I guess we should eliminate it completely then.

    -- Dave

    RE: .279  Dave Flatman

    > And you're claiming that you should have received AFDC during this
    > time?  If not, what's your point?  Is it that life's hard?  That you
    > have to work and forego some of life comforts to make it in this world? 
    > That sacrificing early on can provide benefits later in life?  WELL, NO
    > KIDDING.

    The point is that it's NOT THAT SIMPLE to suddenly have a job and an
    apartment (especially when you have kids, and MORE especially if she
    tries to do it directly after living in the streets.)

    It only sounds simple if you're not the one who has to do it.

    > And by the way, I suppose that if you and your son could rent out a
    > garage to live in because you couldn't afford first/last/deposit, then
    > my sister should be perfectly capable of the same.  No reason that she
    > needs to rent out a townhouse nor have a live in maid.

    Sure - she's got AT LEAST the personal resources of an award-winning
    college graduate who has just started working as an engineer at Digital, 
    right?  :)

    Finding the garage (and the room later) was very, very tough.

    >> AFDC is the only part that comes as CASH.  Everything else might as
    >> well be seen as 'infrastructure'.

    > And the infrastructure is of no value?  The "infrastructure" doesn't
    > cost anything?  I guess we should eliminate it completely then.

    Think of it like a nice, new freeway.  It makes your life better, but
    you can't hold the freeway funds in your hands (nor use the money to
    buy food.)

    The cash part of AFDC is pittance - along the lines of $380 per month
    for a family of three.  The mother only gets $11 per hour if you want
    to count her use of the 'freeway' as if it were money in her hands.
    (It's not.)

    RE: .280

>    Sure - she's got AT LEAST the personal resources of an award-winning
>    college graduate who has just started working as an engineer at Digital, 
>    right?  :)

    From the sounds of one of your recent note, that shouldn't be too hard
    (implying that you started with no financial resources; and if we're
    specifically referring to my sister, she's no dummy.  She did skip two
    grades but that's another story).  You're also assuming that she's in a
    high rent district similar to where you were living.

    By the way, the type of apartment that you described with shared
    kitchen facilities et al goes for around $160 to $200 a month in the
    city where she lives.  Not everyone needs to live in L.A., N.Y., or
    Boston.

>    The cash part of AFDC is pittance - along the lines of $380 per month
>    for a family of three.  The mother only gets $11 per hour if you want
>    to count her use of the 'freeway' as if it were money in her hands.
>    (It's not.)

    But she still gets to use the "freeway" (did you mean to pick such an
    appropriate sounding analogy), and the "freeway" includes things like
    rent-subside and medicxx.  So yes, the recipient doesn't get to choose
    to spend the money on crack or cigarettes, but that doesn't reduce the
    value.

    -- Dave

    RE: .281  Dave Flatman

    >> Sure - she's got AT LEAST the personal resources of an award-winning
    >> college graduate who has just started working as an engineer at Digital, 
    >> right?  :)

    > From the sounds of one of your recent note, that shouldn't be too hard
    > (implying that you started with no financial resources; and if we're
    > specifically referring to my sister, she's no dummy.  She did skip two
    > grades but that's another story).  

    Sure - presume that your sister has the same chances to live on her
    own (coming directly from the streets) as an award-winning college 
    graduate who had already acquired a job as an engineer with Digital.

    Assume that ALL people on Welfare are college graduates who already
    have jobs waiting.  (This would certainly make it seem a lot less
    dangerous to dump such people out into the streets, wouldn't it.)
    
    > You're also assuming that she's in a high rent district similar 
    > to where you were living.

    No, I'm just saying that it's not that simple to leap into a job and
    an apartment (especially when you have kids, and especially if she
    tries to do it directly after living in the streets.)

    > But she still gets to use the "freeway" (did you mean to pick such an
    > appropriate sounding analogy), and the "freeway" includes things like
    > rent-subside and medicxx.  So yes, the recipient doesn't get to choose
    > to spend the money on [FOOD OR NECESSITIES], but that doesn't reduce the
    > value.  [Correction made in your statement. SEC]
    
    The recipient is still receiving pittance (which is nowhere even
    close to $11 per hour.)  

    It's pittance which doesn't last long enough to keep someone going
    until the next check comes (according to the people I've known who
    were on Welfare briefly.)  It's a very tough way to live, but not
    as life-threatening as being dumped into the streets.

    RE: .282

>    > rent-subside and medicxx.  So yes, the recipient doesn't get to choose
>    > to spend the money on [FOOD OR NECESSITIES], but that doesn't reduce the
>    > value.  [Correction made in your statement. SEC]

    Does this mean that I'm allowed to start changing words while quoting
    you?  Sorry, I'm sufficiently tired of your distortions and
    misquotations that I think I'll stop playing for now.

    -- Dave

    RE: .283  David Flatman

    >> rent-subside and medicxx.  So yes, the recipient doesn't get to choose
    >> to spend the money on [FOOD OR NECESSITIES], but that doesn't reduce the
    >> value.  [Correction made in your statement. SEC]

    > Does this mean that I'm allowed to start changing words while quoting
    > you?  

    My change was a more neutral characterization (of a group of people who 
    are not here to defend themselves) than your original statement was.

    > Sorry, I'm sufficiently tired of your distortions and
    > misquotations that I think I'll stop playing for now.

    Yeah, I feel the same way.

    You have definitely confirmed my darkest suspicions about what the
    attacks on Welfare are about (and the deep contempt held for the poor
    by those who say, "We want to help them by freeing them from the
    trap of Welfare" out of one side of their mouths, while referring to
    Welfare recipients as immoral crack-buyers out of the other sides of
    their mouths.)

    It's been interesting.

RE: S_COLON - several
    
    You're way out of line ....  It's clear enough that you do not at
    all understand the situation Dave is portraying.
    
    >Fine - so she'd have to avoid being raped and murdered HERSELF.  Your
    >concern for her life is underwhelming.

    It is precisely the concern for her life that his family is willing to
    take on the child while she figures out how to stand on her own two
    feet. There is only one person who can do that, and that person has
    shown a great reluctance to be self sufficient. She needs to be
    pushed (HARD) out of the nest into the real world.  Your insistance
    that she will be in imminent danger as a result is rather pathetic.
    
    >It would be necessary to put your sister's life in danger?  Why?
    >To teach her a lesson?  (Why don't you throw her off Niagara Falls
    >instead.  It would be a lot faster.)

    Don't you think you're making some very large assumptions here?
    This sure does sound like the "let us take care of you" kind of
    dribble that encourages people to avoid self-sufficiency.
    
    >The typical Welfare mother has two children and receives $380 per 
    >month from AFDC.  This is significantly less than $11 per hour.

    The typical welfare mother can make well over the poverty line
    in many parts of the country through all the public assistance
    programs. I know of several folks doing quite well, raising their
    children at taxpayers expense, living far better than hard working
    members of my own family.
    
    >No, I'm just saying that it's not that simple to leap into a job and
    >an apartment 
    
    Especially when you're not even trying and that is the whole point.
    Help those that help themselves.
    
    >(especially when you have kids, and especially if she
    >tries to do it directly after living in the streets.)

    But his sister would not have to worry about the kid! She would
    only have to worry abouyt herself. I'm sure Dave's family is well
    aware that it will take her a long time to become self confident,
    self reliant, and a contributor to her childs well being. 
    
    Nothing Dave has entered gave any indication that his family
    is intent on putting his sisters life in danger.
    
    This journey to self reliance has to start with a first step.
    
    Doug.

re: Note 243.284 BSS::S_CONLON 
    
    
>    You have definitely confirmed my darkest suspicions about what the
>    attacks on Welfare are about (and the deep contempt held for the poor
>    by those who say, "We want to help them by freeing them from the
>    trap of Welfare" out of one side of their mouths, while referring to
>    Welfare recipients as immoral crack-buyers out of the other sides of
>    their mouths.)

    Me thinks you had this firmly implanted long before you entered
    this dicsussion. The bias combined with the wild assumpsions in
    your notes is a clear indicator of this.
    
>    It's been interesting.
    
     Not really.
    
    Doug.

    If there's one single issue that can rip this country apart, this
    is it.  
                                              
    The divisive elements of this issue include:

    		1.  racism       (The 'stereotype' of the Welfare mother
    				  is a lazy black woman who pops out 
    				  babies like cash cows, even though the
    				  majority of Welfare mothers are white.)

    		2.  classism     (The poor have little money and even less
    				  power in this country.  The only political
    			  	  entities who try to protect Welfare families
    				  at all are those who have a better chance
    				  promoting their other important issues.)

    		3.  misogyny     (Is it any accident that the big guns are
    				  aimed straight between the eyes of the
    				  program which helps 5,000,000 mostly
    				  unmarried women & their children?  It's
    				  called 'family values' to want to make
    				  sure that women get married when they
    				  have children, but entire FAMILIES with 
    				  unmarried mothers are clearly the targets
    				  of the effort to abolish AFDC.)

    		4.  religion     (Religious fanaticism, to be more specific.)

    		5.  crime        (While many or most Americans arm themselves
    				  inside their homes to defend their families
    				  and their property, 14 million women and
    				  children would be subjected to the dangers
    				  they'd face outside during the dismantling 
    				  of the American safety net.)

    		6.  MONEY	 (Any money perceived to be saved by ending
    				  AFDC is supposedly going directly to the
    			  	  disposable income levels of people in
    				  the middle class.  Nothing like raising
    				  the stakes if you want popular support
    				  for your message and your party.)

    We'll be lucky (as a country) to make it to the next century if this
    issue actually comes to a head in the next few years, IMO.
    
    At some point, those who can afford it may begin to wonder how long
    they should wait before leaving.

    RE: .285  Doug Fyfe

    > You're way out of line ....  It's clear enough that you do not at
    > all understand the situation Dave is portraying.

    Um, I think you missed the part where he said that his sister is
    married with two children.

    > It is precisely the concern for her life that his family is willing to
    > take on the child while she figures out how to stand on her own two
    > feet.

    Why is she supposed to stand on her own two feet while she's married
    with two children?  Isn't marriage a partnership?
    
    > There is only one person who can do that, and that person has
    > shown a great reluctance to be self sufficient. She needs to be
    > pushed (HARD) out of the nest into the real world.  

    Pushed out of her marriage?  Does she get a choice in any of this?

    > Your insistance that she will be in imminent danger as a result is 
    > rather pathetic.

    Would you send your wife or daughter out to sleep in the streets in
    the 1990s?  (I wouldn't send my 6'3" SON out to sleep in the streets
    in this day and age.)  It is dangerous out there.

    > This sure does sound like the "let us take care of you" kind of
    > dribble that encourages people to avoid self-sufficiency.

    No, it's a "If there's a problem, let's find a solution OTHER THAN
    throwing a young wife and mother out into the streets on her own."

    > But his sister would not have to worry about the kid! She would
    > only have to worry abouyt herself. I'm sure Dave's family is well
    > aware that it will take her a long time to become self confident,
    > self reliant, and a contributor to her childs well being. 

    Again, does she get a choice in being taken from her husband and
    children?  (Does the husband get a choice about taking custody
    of the children in her absence?)

    > This journey to self reliance has to start with a first step.

    Taking her away from her husband and children (in order to throw
    her into the streets alone) is definitely a new twist on the
    'family values' theme. 

    re: .258
    
    Now there's a twist. 

    re: .259
    
    That's a nice  bit of revisionism in your first paragraph.  In the
    second, you seem to be arguing a against a bogeyman of your own making.
    
    Let's stop with the "toss them out into the streets" mantra, and
    discuss welfare reform. 
    
    
    -steve

    re: .260
    
    
    More "toss them out into the street" red herrings.  Oh my, am I ever
    surprised [not].
    
    
    -steve

    re: .262
    
    
    Safety net = charity.
    
    What we have today is indeed a "welfare state". 
    
    
    -steve

    The private charities many people blather on about being able to take
    care of the underclass in this country have already said they CAN'T do
    this.  
    
    I agree with Suzanne, how can you say you are pro-family (and in many
    cases how women should be married and have husbands to take care of them
    and stay home,) and yet want to break up families, put poor women and
    children at risk, and not make any provisions for training, education,
    rehabilitation (one article last year pointed out that 30%+ of women on
    AFDC also have one or more disabilities that would prevent them from
    earning a living wage, I think it may have been in the NYT) and
    especially child care and medical care?  
    
    There is a valid reason why many state "independance" programs for AFDC
    families don't start until the children are in school full-time.  Take
    that 380/month for a woman and two children.  Now figure what the
    full-time day-care costs are for two kids in a licensed facility.
    150-300 dollars a week is the closest estimate I can come up with. 
    This means at minimum you are going to need to subsidize another
    700-1200/month while covering daycare expenses for someone in training. 
    Then add in tuition, books, apprenticeship fees, transportation.....
    Oh, and you will still be paying for subsidized housing (if available)
    nutrition assistance, and medicaid during the training period. 
    Suddenly, that 380/month looks pretty darn cheap to me.  
    
    The pilot program in our state covers two years of assistance as seen
    above.  While it is moderately successful, the pilot program is also
    EXPENSIVE, and the focus has still been on traditional women's jobs
    which historically are paid poorly as they have been historically
    considered to be the second income to a family or the jobs that women
    take when single with no dependents.  Since those jobs also are less
    likely than non-traditional jobs to have benefits, you still have a
    family that is one catastrophic illness or injury from winding up back
    on AFDC.  Seen it with two families that I know.  On while getting the
    surgery and treatments needed to fix a problem, and then back off again
    once the rehab period was off, until another disk blew out, or a the
    other retina detached and then back on for another year or two. 
    Neither of these women are lazy, shiftless, or making babies like
    bunnies, but neither can get private insurance to cover their
    conditions and neither makes enough to afford the states "high risk"
    insurance pool which charges 125% of the high-end premiums for
    catastrophic coverage.  They both prefer to work to support themselves
    and their kids.  
    
    I really think some of you should get to know the bulk o AFDC people,
    instead of the media hyped people on television.  All in All, I think
    you might be surprised to see how hard many are working to get out of
    the trap, but they need jobs with real incomes, and real benefits,
    something we all take for granted.
    
    meg

    re: .293
    
>    The private charities many people blather on about being able to take
>    care of the underclass in this country have already said they CAN'T do
>    this.  
 
    Bull.  Just the churches of this nation alone are capable of taking
    care of everyone on welfare.  Maybe they can't do this indefinitely (as
    the welfare state seems to encourage), but if each church supported 3
    families, welfare would not be needed.  The state can help to support
    the special cases, such as those who need special medical attention for
    extended periods of time.  
       
>    I agree with Suzanne, how can you say you are pro-family (and in many
>    cases how women should be married and have husbands to take care of them
>    and stay home,) and yet want to break up families, put poor women and
>    children at risk, and not make any provisions for training, education,
>    rehabilitation (one article last year pointed out that 30%+ of women on
>    AFDC also have one or more disabilities that would prevent them from
>    earning a living wage, I think it may have been in the NYT) and
>    especially child care and medical care?  
 
    Like Suzanne, you seem to be arguing against a bogeyman.
            
    
    -steve  

    Steve,
    
    If the churches are capable of this, why are so many of them saying
    they can't?  The US largest religious charity (the Catholic church) has
    come out against this sort of reform.  Given that one "pro-family"
    group here in the Springs can't be bothered to pay its workers enough
    to support their families, and yet encourages large families (no this
    isn't the RCC) and these families are dependent on MY TAX DOLLARS for
    nutrition aid and school lunches, not to mention soaking other churches
    food and clothing pantries, I fail to see how this is going to work.
    
    No I don't see a bogey man.  I do see women and children (you know
    those wonderful things inside a womb, but parasites outside) being
    potentially hurt and children being worse off than they are now.  If
    this is family values, I think I will remain Immoral and "anti-family"
    
    At least I do believe in supporting BORN people, as well as improving
    the nutrition for women who are pregnant with those you consider
    "pre-born"
    
    meg

    
      Work.
    
      Think work.
    
      Start with it, end with it.  Do not think about saving money.  In
     fact, initially, it can cost money.  Put people to work.  Reward
     those who do, punish those who don't.  Nag people - call them each
     morning - are you going to work ?  Never ever give anybody a check
     without asking about work.
    
      It's been tried, under federal waivers.  It works - the welfare
     load declines.  Yes, it works even better with daycare.  Sometimes
     training helps, but this is less important.  The best training is
     a job.  If they want training ALSO, that can be subsidized.
    
      But then, with Clinton's veto, it won't happen.  Business as usual.
    
      bb

    bb
    
    Clinton did propse something like this, but it never made it out of
    committee.  Now the 104th has something that is punitive, as well as
    encouraging people to work.  They want to cut the education and
    training and daycare subsidies at the same time wanting women to work,
    while also wanting to completely end AA.  A waitress job is not going
    to pay all of these things or care for a sick child.  I know from
    personal experience.  it took 18 months of concentrated training and a
    luck into a job at digital to handle it all.
    
    meg

    Ugh.  I wonder how many different ways I can say the same thing, over
    and over and over and over and over again???

    
      The possibilities are unlimited, haircut.
    
      I predict DougO will now step in and explain Clinton's veto as
     against his campaign promise to end welfare as we know it.
    
      Man, is Sliq an embarassment.  Compare his effectiveness with
     other Democratic prexies, like FDR, LBJ, etc.  Clinton leads
     the league in fumbles and interceptions.
    
      bb

welfare reform on a snarf! Just work, people...

    Is that like Limburger on a Ritz?

>.296                     Welfare Reform.                      296 of 301
>      Work.
>
>      Think work.
>
>      Start with it, end with it.  Do not think about saving money.  In
>     fact, initially, it can cost money.  Put people to work.  Reward
>     those who do, punish those who don't.  Nag people - call them each
>     morning - are you going to work ?  Never ever give anybody a check
>     without asking about work.
>
>      It's been tried, under federal waivers.  It works - the welfare
>     load declines.  Yes, it works even better with daycare.  Sometimes
>     training helps, but this is less important.  The best training is
>     a job.  If they want training ALSO, that can be subsidized.
>
>      But then, with Clinton's veto, it won't happen.  Business as usual.
>

	Are you talking about the rich again?  No? :)

	Yes, the way to correct welfare is to put in the mechanisms that help
people get gainfull employment.  That is NOT what the REPUBLICANS gave
Clinton.  They need the tools and support to get the jobs.  If they don't have
the tools or they can't use them, then they can not get a job.  A large number
of the people on welfare are children.  A 3 year old can not get a job.!.!
There are no tools they can use.  Yes, it could cost more in the begining, and
that is what most of your leaders and comrades are upset about.  I believe
the conservatism you show here is brightly showing common ground and goals
to find a solution.  Unfortunately, the other conservatives don't share them
with you.

	Are you turning liberal? :)

>Yes, the way to correct welfare is to put in the mechanisms that help
>people get gainfull employment.  
    
    Note that this includes an environment that is not hostile to business.
    The more expensive you make it for a business to operate, the less
    money it has to spend on employees. No employers = no jobs. Funny how
    this side of the equation is mysteriously ignored by those who crow
    about mechanisms and tools...

re .266
BRITE::FYFE

>Ah, so now we're blaming the failings of the great society on conservatives.

	Conservatives have been running full speed away from any level of
responsibility for any program they have ever done.  If it's a snail, then
call it a snail, and if it is caused by conservatives then they should take
the blame.


>Be real, It took both sides to build this house of cards ....

	I have been real but am rarely dealt with in the same way.  All I ever
hear from conservatives is "LIBERAL ..." and it's the "____ fault" not the
conservatives.  REALITY IS THAT WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER! WE ARE ALL
AMERICANS!


>When people begin to understand that there are scores of people who
>need not be collecting, that these people are taking money and resource
>away from those who really need the help, then perhaps this notestring of
>dribble will turn to something more constructive.

	Scores (20's) of people? There are probably a few more than that.  :)

	AGREED that there are cheets.  I will go a step further than you and
suggest that we should give those people room and board for a set period of
months (prison).


>if the money is being used wisely. While anyone can find specific cases where
>it is indeed necessary, the general picture is one of gigantic waste.

        I believe this is where we keep arguing.  I don't see it as a waste
and you do.

>dry. None of these people want to see mothers and children on the streets,
>but they demand that they get a reasonable bang for the buck.

	This in NOT what most of the statements from the right have been. I
believe you even suggested this course of action.  NOT A REASONABLE BANG for
the BUCK.  (did you know that term originally related to sex with a
prostitute?)


>Why block grant the money to states? Becuase it becomes much harder to
>hide the waste/fraud/abuse in the system when the money is being
>spent closer to home.

	Again this is at the heart of the debate.  I contend that you are
absolutely wrong!!  Do you know of any place where this has been done and
really worked?  I've been down this before.  Since this is YOUR IDEA and
you believe that it is so wonderfull, you get to make your case first.

re: .303

	I not not ever contended that buisness should be burdened heavier than
the general public.  This has never been missing from any substantive discussion
I have ever heard.  In general, the discussion has always been, what mechanisms
and tools do we need so that these people do the work that buisness needs done.

    > I predict DougO will now step in and explain Clinton's veto
    
    You're doing about as well as Binder this week.
    
    DougO

BRAUCHER,

	You have not replied to .276.  Sorry I forgot the smiley face after the
shotgunning statement.  Do you really believe that "Welfare State" is anything
more than a slogan placed on the welfare program.  Would it be fair for me to
say that the conservatives want the USA to be a "Military State" because that is
where they want the majority of the spending?  You called me a liar for this.  I
don't think it was fair.  But I am really curious about what you guys think
"Welfare State" is?

    RE: .287

>    		1.  racism       (The 'stereotype' of the Welfare mother
>    				  is a lazy black woman who pops out 
>    				  babies like cash cows, even though the
>    				  majority of Welfare mothers are white.)

    Gee, I've never once thought that my sister was anything but white. 
    Thank you for telling me that I think she's a "lazy black woman." 
    (Please note the strong sarcasm.)

    RE: .288

>    Why is she supposed to stand on her own two feet while she's married
>    with two children?  Isn't marriage a partnership?

    Maybe she AND HER HUSBAND are supposed to stand on their own two feet
    (well, four if you do the math).  Maybe its being advocated that BOTH
    of them get tossed out into life to learn how to deal with reality. 
    Somehow I doubt that my parents would ever consider kicking my sister
    out of their house while letting her leech of a husband stay behind.

>    Pushed out of her marriage?  Does she get a choice in any of this?

    Nice twisting.  Where was this ever stated?  Oh, you made up another
    fact.  How interesting.  Wrong, but interesting.  With a talent for
    distroting your oppositions' point of view and creating "facts" to suit
    your needs, you really ought to be in politics.

    -- Dave

    
    	Shades of the "penultimate" tete-a-tete, I think.
    
    	In a week or 2 she'll start to twist her own words around and
    	claim that she meant exactly what you have been saying all
    	along.
    

    <chortle>

    RE: .308  Dave Flatman
    
    >>    	1.  racism       (The 'stereotype' of the Welfare mother
    >>				  is a lazy black woman who pops out 
    >>				  babies like cash cows, even though the
    >>				  majority of Welfare mothers are white.)

    > Gee, I've never once thought that my sister was anything but white. 
    > Thank you for telling me that I think she's a "lazy black woman." 
    > (Please note the strong sarcasm.)
    
    You said your sister was NOT on Welfare.  Even if she is, do you
    think that YOU in particular are being described whens someone makes
    a general comment about our society?
    
    > Maybe she AND HER HUSBAND are supposed to stand on their own two feet
    > (well, four if you do the math).  Maybe its being advocated that BOTH
    > of them get tossed out into life to learn how to deal with reality. 
    > Somehow I doubt that my parents would ever consider kicking my sister
    > out of their house while letting her leech of a husband stay behind.
    
    Why have you picked on your sister so much if both she and her husband 
    are having problems making it on their own?

 ayyyyyyyyyyyiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee......

    
    	Suzanne, this is part of Dave's 20.4283, which you will notice
    	is directly related to the welfare/AFDC problem.  In danger of
    	having a financial problem?  Have a kid, or another kid, and
    	you're all set.
    
    >It's also interesting to note that she dropped the first one because
    >she knew that if she got pregnant that she would have free room and
    >board.
    
    	And this was only the 1st kid ... she had another after this
    	1, yes?  What sense is there in that if she can't even afford
    	the 1st?
    
    	Geez, NOW we're back to the birth control discussion!!
    

    RE: .311

>    Why have you picked on your sister so much if both she and her husband 
>    are having problems making it on their own?

    I don't know.  Maybe because she was given the same opportunities in
    this life that I was.  Maybe because our common genetic heritage
    doesn't predisposition either of us to attention deficit disorder or
    any other disorder that would prevent us from being productive members
    of society.  Maybe because she would be intelligent if she didn't act
    so stupid.  Maybe because she had encouragement in academics and was
    given the opportunity to continue on with her education after high
    school but decided not to.  She's where she's at because of her
    choices.

    With all I know about my sister's background, I know comparatively
    little about my brother-in-law's.  I do know that his parents didn't
    value education.  He's a high school dropout that requires three more
    years to get a diploma.  I don't know if that is his fault or his
    parents.  He does have ADD.  I know he has no concept for the value of
    a dollar.  His creed is a dollar earned is a dollar spent.  Other than
    that I don't know anything about him.  In the four or five years
    they've been married I've met him only two or three times and usually I
    spend the time trying to figure out a reasonable excuse to leave.

    My mother has a habit of trying to thrash all of her children-in-law. 
    Because of that I try not to blast my siblings-in-law ... not that I
    always succeed mind you.

    -- Dave

    RE: .313

>    	Geez, NOW we're back to the birth control discussion!!

    Luckily in my sister's case they finally got her husband fixed ... of
    course they did it two kids too late.

    By the way, as a taxpayer I would be willing for my taxes to pay for
    a free vasectomy for any man that has even one child on AFDC. 
    (Assuming of course that it isn't the ultra-new laser surgery one that
    costs 10X what a normal vasectomy costs.)

    -- Dave

    RE: .314  Dave Flatman

    >> Why have you picked on your sister so much if both she and her husband 
    >> are having problems making it on their own?

    > I don't know.  Maybe because she was given the same opportunities in
    > this life that I was.  Maybe because our common genetic heritage
    > doesn't predisposition either of us to attention deficit disorder or
    > any other disorder that would prevent us from being productive members
    > of society.  

    She's not your identical twin.  Siblings don't always grow up to have
    the same (or very similar) lives.

    > Maybe because she would be intelligent if she didn't act so stupid.  

    If she's treated as 'stupid' in your family, maybe she no longer
    believes she can be intelligent.

    > Maybe because she had encouragement in academics and was given the 
    > opportunity to continue on with her education after high school but 
    > decided not to.  

    Give her the opportunity again.  It's never too late to go to college.

    > She's where she's at because of her choices.

    Help her make new choices (better ones).  It's better than throwing
    her out into the street.

    > He's a high school dropout that requires three more years to get a 
    > diploma. 

    He can study and take a GED test within a matter of months.  (GED does
    not require 'n' years in a classroom.)

    > I don't know if that is his fault or his parents.  He does have ADD.  
    > I know he has no concept for the value of a dollar. 

    What does he do for a living (or doesn't he work?)  What about job
    counseling?  What about helping them set up a budget?

    Have any of these things been tried?

    > My mother has a habit of trying to thrash all of her children-in-law. 
    > Because of that I try not to blast my siblings-in-law ... not that I
    > always succeed mind you.

    If your sister and her husband get THRASHED in your parents' house,
    they may be truly miserable.  This isn't the best way to get them
    on their feet (even if they feel they can't do a thing without
    your parents' roof over their heads.)

    Find a counselor (non-judgmental) who can advise them on a step by
    step basis about how they can proceed.  Taking a GED in a few months
    would be a good step in this process.  Going for job training for
    the husband (and a second opportunity for college for your sister)
    might still be possible.
    
    There are constructive ways to go about this.

    
      Stacy, ya said there's no welfare state.  It's a lie - there is.
    
      The USA takes money from poor and middle class people who work,
     and gives it to people who don't.  That's what a welfare state is :
     from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,
     to quote Karl Marx.  History has demonstrated better than I can
     that this concept is fatal.  Eventually, as in the last days of
     the USSR, the economy falls apart and nobody works.
    
      We all know of cases (the blind, for example), in which society
     has to chip in to help those struck by some bad luck.  I can even
     stomach a brief period of help for the able-bodied, in a pinch, so
     long as it is ALWAYS geared towards work as soon as possible.
    
      It is an obscenity that welfare recipients get the equivalent of
     over $10/hour, open-ended as to timeframe, with no work commitment
     and no sign of disability.  That's what a bookkeeper gets.  It's
     almost twice what a dishwasher gets.
    
      As to the liberal Democrats ever reforming the system, hah !  For
     forty years they built it, because they hate workers, hate families,
     and seek control.  Since the welfare-reform issues became prominent,
     coming from Governors first, they have done nothing but obstruct
     and falsify with scare tactics.  Nothing will ever change with the
     liberal Democrats running the welfare state, except maybe their
     rhetoric around election time.  They made all these things
     entitlements for a reason - to thwart any attempt to undo their
     social engineering.  Thus today we see a powerless majority, who
     are prevented from ever undoing this very harmful approach, because
     any change to entitlements requires the president's signature or
     2/3 to override his veto.  They haven't yet got either.
    
      bb

    Most civilized nations provide for their poor.

    The countries who don't provide for the poor have far worse problems
    than we have (including diseases like cholera, which spread in highly
    unsanitary conditions.)

    If you want to live in a country where the poor have been abandoned,
    I can name a few.  Be prepared to spend a lot of money on a fortress
    around your house (and place of employment) in these countries.

    You don't want to be unprepared when a million destitute people notice
    how well you're living (when they have nothing to lose by trying to
    take some of it away.)

>================================================================================
>Note 243.317                     Welfare Reform.                      317 of 317
>GAAS::BRAUCHER "Welcome to Paradise"                 34 lines   8-MAR-1996 13:37
>                              -< pants on fire ? >-
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>      Stacy, ya said there's no welfare state.  It's a lie - there is.
>
>      The USA takes money from poor and middle class people who work,
>     and gives it to people who don't.  That's what a welfare state is :
>     from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,


	Whoa!  Hold yer elephants back bucko!!  Under that misleading
definition we are also in a military state, corporate state and a banking
state.  Read the note again.  Get a grip and get yer dictionairy.  You KNOW 
FULL WELL THAT YOU USE THE SLOGAN WELFARE STATE TO ATTACK THE CONCEPT OF
WELFARE.  I am NOT the liar.  Either to myself or to you.  You on the other 
hand are either fooling yourself or a liar.  As far as that Marxist sh*t goes,
it appears you know it pretty well.  How does that saying go  "it seems you 
complain too much".  Should we read something into that. 


>      As to the liberal Democrats ever reforming the system, hah !  For
>     forty years they built it, because they hate workers, hate families,
>     and seek control.

	GET A REALITY CHECK!  I AM NOT SPREADING THE HATE AND MOST THE
LIBERALS ARE NOT SPREADING THE HATE.   YOU LIE !!!


Now isn't getting somewhere with both of us calling the other is a liar.



Thanks for playing.
Get a reality check.

    re: .318
    
    
    THE SKY IS FALLING, THE SKY IS FALLING!!

    re: .319
    
    Their (the liberals) actions betray them.  Hate may be a bit strong,
    but I have to wonder after trillions of dollars and years of failure,
    why they keep pushing for more of the same.  
    
    At some point you have to admit that said programs have failed, and
    then intelligently reform them out of existence.
    
    [Please note that the above does not mean "toss welfare recipients out
    into the street", as that would NOT be 'intelligent reform'.]
    
    
    -steve

    RE: .316

>    She's not your identical twin.  Siblings don't always grow up to have
>    the same (or very similar) lives.

    Well, no kidding.  And why don't they have the same or similar lives? 
    Once you eliminate genetic defects and opportunity differences, the
    main explanation is because of choices that each person makes.

>    Give her the opportunity again.  It's never too late to go to college.

    Unless the person WANTS to go back to college all you will be doing is
    throwing money away.  That's EXACTLY the reason that she needs a dose
    of reality and needs to realize what life is like without someone
    coddling her.

>    Help her make new choices (better ones).  It's better than throwing
>    her out into the street.

    She's sitting fat, dumb, and happy.  "Helping" her make better choices
    is meaningless until she wants to do something.  That's why kicking her
    onto the street is a worthwhile venture.  It will force her to realize
    that she needs to make different choices.

>    He can study and take a GED test within a matter of months.  (GED does
>    not require 'n' years in a classroom.)

    He did take the test ... and failed.  He refuses to study for it and
    gets belligerent about it if anyone brings up the concept of studying. 
    See comments regarding 'want' above.

>    What does he do for a living (or doesn't he work?)  What about job
>    counseling?  

    He's held various jobs ... usually for about a month.  You also can't
    get him to counseling unless he wants to (and the first step to get him
    to want to?  Stop coddling him and kick him out of the house.)

>    What about helping them set up a budget?

    Why should he care about a budget?  It's not like he can blow the rent
    money on junk food and wind up on the street.  There's absolutely no
    down side for him to not follow a budget.  Which ties in to why he
    should be kicked out onto the street ... so that he would be forced to
    worry about the rent check.

>    Have any of these things been tried?

    Yup.  All of them with the possible exception of job counseling. 


    The bottom line is that before you can get someone to change they have
    to see a need or a reason to change.  They have to want to change. 
    These two don't have one.  They're being housed, kept warm, and fed. 
    They see no reason to change.  And this is the fundamental problem with
    the current welfare system.  There is insufficient incentives for
    people to change.

    -- Dave

    A great many middle class people in this country live paycheck to
    paycheck, such that if they suddenly lost their jobs and their homes,
    they would be in very deep trouble.

    The poor live more precariously than the middle class, obviously.
    If we simply abolish Welfare, Welfare people who can not pay their
    rent will be evicted.  Many of them will have no place to go,
    especially if millions of other people are evicted at the same
    time.

    Evicting people and withstanding the sudden flow of millions of people
    into a 'homeless' condition would cost our society a great deal of money
    and it would be a worse problem than what is happening now.  By far.

    It isn't something that would happen without society suffering for
    it (as well as paying for it.)

    It's easy to say 'We don't like Welfare, so let's dump it' or 'We still
    have the poor, so obviously Welfare hasn't worked' - but the reality is
    that Welfare has kept millions of women and children from being more
    destitute (and homeless) than they would have been without it.

    We had the poor before Welfare.  Other countries with safety nets also
    had the poor before they had the safety nets.  Countries with no
    safety nets have the poor, too, only their poor people live in virtual
    or literal garbage dumps where diseases like cholera run rampant. 

    If we abolish the safety net, we will notice it.  It will cost our
    society more than we're now paying for Welfare.

    The poor won't simply disappear if Welfare goes away.  They will be
    in our streets where we won't be able to ignore them.

    
    >>A great many middle class people in this country live paycheck to
    >>paycheck, such that if they suddenly lost their jobs and their
    >>homes, they would be in very deep trouble.
    
    last i heard, living this was is a choice...so why should it be my
    problem...
    
    
    
    
    
    

    RE: .322  Dave Flatman

    >> Give her the opportunity again.  It's never too late to go to college.

    > Unless the person WANTS to go back to college all you will be doing is
    > throwing money away.  That's EXACTLY the reason that she needs a dose
    > of reality and needs to realize what life is like without someone
    > coddling her.

    You want to force her to do what you think she should do, so you think
    that making her life far more desperate and dangerous will do the trick.

    I disagree.  It's like saying that a person will learn to swim if you
    drop them into the ocean without a life preserver and sail away.  In
    theory, it sounds good because they'll have to 'sink or swim' - but
    what if they just sink?  People do drown at times.

    > "Helping" her make better choices is meaningless until she wants to do 
    > something.  That's why kicking her onto the street is a worthwhile 
    > venture.  It will force her to realize that she needs to make different 
    > choices.

    Worthwhile for who?  You?  Would it really make you happy to think of
    her sleeping under a bridge somewhere (apart from her children)?

    > The bottom line is that before you can get someone to change they have
    > to see a need or a reason to change.  They have to want to change. 

    Putting someone's life in danger is not the best way to inspire 
    someone to change.

    > These two don't have one.  They're being housed, kept warm, and fed. 
    > They see no reason to change.  And this is the fundamental problem with
    > the current welfare system.  There is insufficient incentives for
    > people to change.

    You want to put them in the situation where it would be harder than
    ever to learn to swim.  I don't.

    Over half of the people who go on Welfare stay on it for less than
    two years.  The average stay on Welfare is 2.5 years.  Obviously,
    a great many people are finding reasons to make their lives better.

    I'm not interested in risking the drownings of everyone on Welfare
    because of those who may never be able to swim at all (including your 
    sister and her husband.)

    RE: .324

    >> A great many middle class people in this country live paycheck to
    >> paycheck, such that if they suddenly lost their jobs and their
    >> homes, they would be in very deep trouble.
    
    > last i heard, living this was is a choice...so why should it be my
    > problem...

    It simply means that if many in the middle class would be in deep
    trouble if they found themselves out of their homes and their jobs,
    imagine how much more precariously the poor live.

    Pulling the rugs out from under 14 million poor people (most of whom
    are children) would be a disaster.  They wouldn't simply bounce back
    out of it without a ripple in our society.

    
    sue, i am not knocking what you said.  i agree with you on that.
    there are just some people out there who think that no one has to live
    paycheck to paycheck...they do so because it is a choice that they
    made.
    
    it was an obscure reference to something that went on (and on and on)
    in here a bit back...
    
    
    -raq
    
    

    
    	I remember the discussion, but not the numbers.
    
    	What would be considered "bare minimum" for a family of 4 to
    	get by on?
    

    
    	And Suzanne, why do you have a problem with the $11/hour ref-
    	erence, which includes subsidies?  How can you NOT count the
    	subsidies, even though they're just as good as money when used
    	for their intended purposes?
    
    	If someone gives me $100/month cash, or a $100 rent voucher,
    	that still amounts to a $100 discount on rent.  Etc., etc.
    

    RE: .329  Shawn

    > And Suzanne, why do you have a problem with the $11/hour ref-
    > erence, which includes subsidies?  How can you NOT count the
    > subsidies, even though they're just as good as money when used
    > for their intended purposes?

    Much of this figure involves health care.

    When someone in my family is covered by our health insurance for
    an expensive medical procedure, I don't consider it to mean that
    I made $10,000 or so extra that year.  It was never money in my
    pocket.

    > If someone gives me $100/month cash, or a $100 rent voucher,
    > that still amounts to a $100 discount on rent.  Etc., etc.

    The actual money they receive is pittance.  It doesn't last until
    the next check, for many people.

    Getting a rent voucher is not much more than 'funny money' (where
    you can figure that the cost of rent is probably a rip-off anyway.)

    The bottom line is that only $380 goes into your pocket and it's
    gone before the next $380 comes.  (And no way in hell does $380 per
    month represent $11 per hour.)

    RE: .327  -raq
    
    Oh, thanks.  I didn't recognize the reference - I guess I missed that
    discussion.
    
    Suzanne

    RE: .325

>    I disagree.  It's like saying that a person will learn to swim if you
>    drop them into the ocean without a life preserver and sail away.  

    Close, but no cigar.  To use your analogy, you're on a ship and you
    know it's going to sink.  Everyone has only one choice:  learn to
    swim.  Most people realize that they need to learn to swim.  Some
    people for some reason believe that they don't need to learn.  

    Now you have a choice.  Do you simply do the easy thing, shrug your
    shoulders, and let them continue on or do you push them into the pool
    and let them thrash about a bit.  After they've thrashed about a bit
    you ask them if they think it would be a good idea to learn to swim.

    Motivation is everything.

>    Worthwhile for who?  You?  Would it really make you happy to think of
>    her sleeping under a bridge somewhere (apart from her children)?

    Worthwhile for her.  Otherwise when her current gravy train runs out
    via death then she'll be stuck with no way to support herself.  On the
    other hand if she's made to realize what situation she will eventually
    end up in, she might just decide to do something about it ... and wind
    up with a higher standard of living to boot.  (Not to add too many
    metaphors, but kind of like the ghost of Christmas future illustrating
    that it's time for her to change her ways.)

>    Putting someone's life in danger is not the best way to inspire 
>    someone to change.

    Saying "pretty please" hasn't worked so far.  Pointing out the
    consequences of her actions hasn't helped so far.  Ignoring the problem
    and trying to wish it away hasn't helped so far.  Eventually you have
    to get the person's attention.  

>    You want to put them in the situation where it would be harder than
>    ever to learn to swim.  I don't.

    No.  I want to put them into a situation where they realize that they
    have to learn to swim.  Sitting on the side of the pool isn't doing it.

    -- Dave

    Dave, as for your sister and her husband...

    Your parents could begin the process of getting them out of their
    house without actually tossing them into the street.

    	"Well, you know, you two have lived here with us for five
    	years now and it isn't really convenient for us, so it's
    	time for us to start planning on your leaving...

    	"You might want to sign up with an 'Apartment Finders' agency
    	or look for people who are renting out a basement or a garage.
    	We'll help you look in the paper...

    	"We're going to use your room for an office, so we'll need to
    	get your things out as soon as possible.  We'll move them into
    	a self-storage unit if you need one.  I'm sure you'll be
    	comfortable on the basement floor until you find your own place.
    	The kids can stay in the living room...

    	"How will you afford your own place?  Well, we can look in the
    	paper for jobs, too..."

    They edge them out little by little (making it clear that they won't
    be in the comfortable space they occupy now, but not actually throwing
    them out bodily.)

    Your parents could say they want to sell their house and buy a one-
    bedroom place, too.  :)  (This is a tactic some parents have used
    for their offspring who keep springing back home.)

    Your parents don't have to be judgmental about it.  

    	"Hey, we're getting on in years and it's not convenient for
    	us to keep you all here anymore.  You knew it wouldn't be
    	permanent.  We won't live forever...

    	"Just think of how great it will be for you to not have to
    	deal with us anymore..."

    They could keep mentioning it casually in conversation...

    	"Late next month - you'll be in your own place by then - we're
    	going to have the whole place painted on the inside.  It will
    	take weeks, so we'll probably go out of town.  We'll let you
    	know how it turns out when we get back..."

    It just becomes accepted and understood that the husband and wife
    will be on their own with the kids.  Not bodily thrown out, but
    edged out (and encouraged out.)  And explained out.  And understood
    to be out.

    With best wishes, of course.

    RE: .333

    And once the they call the bluff?  Or are you admitting that eventually
    they wouldn't be provided with a place to stay?

    -- Dave

    RE: .332  Dave Flatman

    >> I disagree.  It's like saying that a person will learn to swim if you
    >> drop them into the ocean without a life preserver and sail away.  

    > Close, but no cigar.  To use your analogy, you're on a ship and you
    > know it's going to sink.  Everyone has only one choice:  learn to
    > swim.  Most people realize that they need to learn to swim.  Some
    > people for some reason believe that they don't need to learn.  

    The U.S.S. America isn't sinking, though.  We aren't in another
    Great Depression (and even if we were, we could still care for
    our poorest people.)

    > Now you have a choice.  Do you simply do the easy thing, shrug your
    > shoulders, and let them continue on or do you push them into the pool
    > and let them thrash about a bit.  After they've thrashed about a bit
    > you ask them if they think it would be a good idea to learn to swim.

    If they're in the deep end of the pool, do you let them drown if they
    can't seem to figure out how not to drown?

    > Motivation is everything.

    Some people panic when they're drowning.  Even though they are motivated
    to save their lives, they aren't in a situation where it's possible
    anymore.

    > No.  I want to put them into a situation where they realize that they
    > have to learn to swim.  Sitting on the side of the pool isn't doing it.

    Consider what I wrote in my last note to you.

    Move them out of their comfortable room, but not out into the streets.
    Let them know (over a period of time) that they will be moving out
    (no ifs, ands or buts about it.)

    Let them dip their toes into the pool and figure out that they have
    time to learn to swim, but it's not an option for them to FAIL to
    learn.

    Just don't push their heads under.  Ok?  :)

    RE: .334  Dave Flatman

    > And once the they call the bluff?  Or are you admitting that eventually
    > they wouldn't be provided with a place to stay?

    If your sister and her husband call your parents' bluff, then they
    will be sleeping on an uncomfortable basement floor (with their
    stuff in storage.)

    Remove the 'comfortable' part, and it has a similar affect as being
    out on the street (but it isn't as dangerous.)

    Something else they could do...
    
    If your sister and her husband eat meals at your parents' house,
    your parents could stop cooking for them (and stop buying their
    food, or else buy them food they don't like much.)
    
    Make it inconvenient and uncomfortable for your sister and her
    husband, and they won't be that anxious to stay anymore.

    At the very least, your parents should make them pack up their
    stuff (so your parents can have the room painted or whatever.)
    
    Then don't let them unpack.  Rent a self-storage for them so they
    don't have their stuff at the house anymore.
    
    They'll be half-way out the door at that point.

    RE: .337

>    If your sister and her husband eat meals at your parents' house,
>    your parents could stop cooking for them 

    How cruel!!  How inhumane!!  You want them to starve?!?  You want them
    digging thru the garbage for a bite to eat?!?  Horrors!  Think of the
    cholera epidemic that will start.  :^)

    -- Dave

    Dave, the point is not to starve them or throw them out, but to make
    it less comfortable for them to be there.
    
    (But I think you knew this.)  :-)
    
    So - does any of this sound feasible?  Would your parents be willing
    to make them less comfortable?
    
    As for Welfare, perhaps something similar could be done.  Once per
    month, recipients have to provide an updated plan of how they intend
    to get off Welfare (with certain milestones expected.)
    
    They're never actually thrown off, but they're expected to be working
    on getting off.  Perhaps some provisions could be made (other than
    denying benefits altogether) if they fail to meet their milestones.

    Actually, if Welfare recipients provided an ongoing 'plan' of how
    they intended to get off Welfare, the case workers could provide
    listings of various other education and training programs as part
    of this effort.
    
    The education and training programs would have to exist, of course.
    
    If it were conducted like a 'Career Development Plan' (where the 
    person states the steps they intend to take), it would be similar 
    to what some companies expect employees to do.
    
    Again, the education, training and jobs would have to exist (not
    to mention access to daycare.)
    
    The key would be that people would not be thrown off, but would
    be given assistance as they move themselves off.

    
>    Make it inconvenient and uncomfortable for your sister and her
>    husband, and they won't be that anxious to stay anymore.


 Precisely what should be done with welfare...make it uncomfortable, make
 it inconvenient, and establish a time table for them to get off.



 Jim

    RE: .342  Jim

    >> Make it inconvenient and uncomfortable for your sister and her
    >> husband, and they won't be that anxious to stay anymore.

    > Precisely what should be done with welfare...make it uncomfortable, 
    > make it inconvenient, and establish a time table for them to get off.

    Welfare families certainly don't need to be treated any worse in this
    society than they already are.  Those who can't get enough of trashing
    such people are doing far more harm than good.

    Dave's parents are in a position to offer a constructive approach
    to their family members, while encouraging these two people to
    accept the fact that they would be going out on their own (even 
    though they would not actually be thrown out.)

    If Welfare offices became more like job counseling services (with
    information about education and training), they could offer a
    constructive approach to finding opportunities for many people
    on Welfare.       

    I don't agree that anyone on Welfare should be simply *cut off*
    from benefits at some specific date.  

 Well, I'd start in on my son and how we tried to handle his situation and
 what finally happened with him when he and his girlfriend were faced with
 being tossed out on the streets (with her baby), but I don't care to get 
 into a 500 reply back and forth, twist and turn battle.  Suffice to say,
 when faced with the reality of that situation, they got off their a**
 and got with the program, as should many welfare recipients.




 Jim

    So, this was a good thing eh?

    Jim, I know you've had numerous problems with one of your sons
    - if this is the same son, I'm glad his situation has improved.

    Threats of being put in far worse situations out in the streets
    don't always work well, and following through with such threats
    can put people in real danger.

    If the real goal here is to make people's lives better (and
    self-sufficient), then let's prove it by making the road 
    to self-sufficiency smoother with education, training, job
    and daycare opportunities.

    Let's knock off the judgmental diatribes against Welfare 
    parents and turn the AFDC program into one which provides
    real opportunities for these families.

    re: .326
    
    I ask again.  Who is suggesting that we "pull the rug from under" 14
    million people?  
    
    
    -steve

    Well, if you aren't in favor of rewarding welfare mothers for
    increasing the number of mouths they can't feed, then you are in favor
    of pulling the rug, etc.

    re: 335
    
    >The U.S.S. America is no sinking, though.
    
    I beg to differ.  If we continue down our current path, I give the US
    another 20 years, max, before the ultimate corrective comes into play. 
    If we were any other nation but the US, we'd have gone bankrupt long
    ago.
    
    How can you rationalize 11% growth, per year, in entitlement (speaking
    of medica**, and maybe a few other programs) spending, when we run 
    deficits every year?  If we can't pay for our current spending, why on
    earth are we increasing it yearly at such a high %?
    
    Sooner or later we gotta pay the piper.  We can make some hard choices
    and start paying today, or we can do nothing and wait until the bill
    comes due, with interest.  When it comes due, the non-working poor you so 
    adamantly defend will not be the only ones out on the street.  They will be
    joined by the working poor and probably a good chunk of the middle
    class.  Then the rich you seem to hate so much will inherit what's left
    of the country.
    
    
    
    -steve

    re: .348
    
    Oh, of course.  How silly of me not to see that.  8^)

| <<< Note 243.347 by ACISS2::LEECH "Dia do bheatha." >>>

| I ask again.  Who is suggesting that we "pull the rug from under" 14
| million people?

	Steve, I believe it was the Sandord Townsend Band, with, "Smoke from a
Distant Fire"! :-)

    
      See this past Sunday's Boston Globe on welfare - big spread.
    
      This is a complicated subject.  The key moves are at the state level.
    
      I think the Sunday Globe is doing a whole series on the subject,
     which needs it.  The most innovative programs are probably those
     in Michigan, Ohio, California, and Massachusetts.  However 27 states,
     including some with liberal Democratic governments, are now operating
     under federal waivers, attempting to reduce welfare populations by
     all sorts of means.
    
      There's too much material here to summarize - for example, they
     interviewed 5 different former welfare families, who disagreed on
     the Massachusetts program.  There were pie charts.  It is interesting
     to note that whites outnumber any minority on welfare, but as a
     percentage of total, Hispanic leads.  Over 90% of recipients are
     female, and 95% are under age 50.  I can't list all the data - read
     the article.
    
      bb

  >  Dave, the point is not to starve them or throw them out, but to make
  >  it less comfortable for them to be there.

  So, instead of the adult daughter manipulating her parents, you advocate
  the adult parents to manipulate the daughter. 

  If the parents are riding these adult children already, I suspect they
  are already uncomfortable. I also suspect that even living on the
  basement floor for a while will result in the inevitable "out on the street"
  choice.

  If they have been offered assistance at bettering themselves for 5 years
  what evidence is there that they would start taking advantage of these
  opportunities now?

  At the very least, the adult children know these options exist, and may 
  actually decide to take advantage of them, once there is no other choice.


  About education ...
  Instead of GED - perhaps a trade school in an area that sparks his interest ...

  Doug.

    
    	Sounds like she's about ready to have another baby, and then she'll
    	be all set for another couple of years.
    

    Her husband has already been 'snipped'.  No more babies.

    
    	But she hasn't been sewn up yet, so anything's possible.
    

    Shawn, I know you mean that as a joke, but again, it's no joke that
    millions of children are mutilated this way each year in Africa.

    
    	That wasn't the point and you know it.
    
    	What's to stop her from having another kid?  She's already had
    	2 kids to avoid the inevitable move.
    

    Shawn, if she has another kid, it would be with some other man.

    Obviously, this could eliminate her current deadbeat husband
    (so her parents may even welcome such an event.)  The new kid
    would probably eat less and be a lot less annoying than the
    husband, and perhaps the new father would have better prospects.

    The point is that the couple has taken a step to stop making babies
    *together*, so they have taken at least this one step to keep their
    situation from getting worse.

    
    	So you're saying that the responsibility for birth control
    	in this case lies with the male, and the female doesn't need
    	to do anything?
    

    
    Ooh yeah, let them ova fly with impunity.
    

    Didn't I just see some flying ova?

    RE: .360  Shawn

    > So you're saying that the responsibility for birth control
    > in this case lies with the male, and the female doesn't need
    > to do anything?

    If one partner is now sterile, the risk for pregnancy no longer
    exists.  Married couples sometimes choose to have one or the
    other partner take this route.  Once they are certain that
    conception is no longer possible, they probably won't use other
    birth control methods anymore.  (So what?)

    If the wife has sex with some other man who is not sterile, they
    both have the responsibility to prevent conception (since it would
    still be possible for these two people to become involved in an
    unplanned pregnancy.)

>					Once they are certain that
>    conception is no longer possible, they probably won't use other
>    birth control methods anymore.  (So what?)

So, only /john can tell us.

Oh, sorry - wrong string.

FWIW, here's a letter from my wife's pen-pal of many years. She's about 23,
married, two kids, one from a previous affair (he ran at the news that she
was knocked up - caught and now pays child support). Her hubby is a full-time
student. She delivers newspapers on 3 different routes, gets about
$650/month.

   Dear Rebecca,

   Hello there. Sorry I took so long to write back. 

   [blah blah blah]

   You know, we don't own our own home, either. We get financial help with
   daycare from Welfare. Right now, we don't have to pay anything, but I know
   we will when we tell the Welfare about my extra paper route. But still,
   we're doing pretty well. Really though, if you don't think you can afford
   it, then of course wait! Ha, ha. Kids are pretty expensive.

   [blah blah blah]

   Did you ever consider Welfare to help you with expenses? If you make under
   a certain amount, you'll get a check from them each month.

   Are you getting any money back on your tax returns? Eric did ours, and
   we'll get back about $3100 - that's because we're married, have two kids,
   and make under a certain amount of money. We're going to pay off some
   credit cards that we don't use anymore, then we're going to buy a
   dishwasher (finally!!!) and an entertainment system.

   [blah blah blah]

   Love,
   Amy

Jeez, we had to scrimp a bit just to buy my wife a new $100 winter coat.

    
    	See, Tom?  If you quit your job and your wife goes on welfare,
    	then you'll be able to easily afford a new winter coat, and a
    	dishwasher, and an entertainment center and stereo system and
    	then a couple kids.
    

    "Why do only fools and horses work"??
    
    

    
    	Because they can, and know they should.
    

    RE: .365  Tom R.
    
    > Her hubby is a full-time student. She delivers newspapers on 
    > 3 different routes, gets about $650/month. 
                                             
    So, he's in school full-time and she works 3 part-time jobs
    doing newspaper deliveries.
    
    It sounds like they are on their way to making a better life for
    themselves.  
    
    Would you rather they simply gave up?

>    Would you rather they simply gave up?

I'd rather that they simply gave up the Welfare. You apparenly missed the
point.

    >Would you rather they simply gave up?
    
     How about they stop defrauding the welfare department and stop trying
    to get others on the system. That would be a start. I suppose that
    would be ripping food out of the mouths of their children though, so we
    can't have that...

    Interesting.

    Those who get Welfare without working at all are lazy deadbeats who
    don't deserve the help ("Let's only help those who are willing to
    help themselves!")

    Those who get some amount of assistance from Welfare while one partner
    goes to school full-time and the other partner works 3 part-time jobs
    are CHEATS ("If they are able to help themselves, then they shouldn't
    be getting any help from Welfare!")

    So people are damned if they do and damned if they don't try to work
    when they are poor enough to qualify for assistance?

    
    Their tax return might be better spent on the necessities that welfare
    is paying for now, imho.
    
    Rent, daycare, and food come before dishwashers and entertainment
    centers.
    
    

    "You know, we don't own our own home, either. We get financial help with
    daycare from Welfare. Right now, we don't have to pay anything, but I know
    we will when we tell the Welfare about my extra paper route."
            ***************************************************
    
    They do plan to tell the Welfare office about the 'extra' (new?) paper
    route.
    
    What actual help are they getting from Welfare besides daycare?  She
    doesn't really say.

    >Those who get some amount of assistance from Welfare while one partner
    >goes to school full-time and the other partner works 3 part-time jobs
    >are CHEATS 
    
     No, those who withhold disclosure of all income in order to retain
    higher welfare benefits are cheats.
    
    >("If they are able to help themselves, then they shouldn't
    >be getting any help from Welfare!")
    
     Those are your words, not mine. I have no problem with assistance
    when reasonable, _especially_ when those receiving assistance are using
    it for support while they seek to better themselves.

    Ms Conlon,you should be a Saint.
    
    

    RE: .373  
    
    > Their tax return might be better spent on the necessities that welfare
    > is paying for now, imho.
    
    If they are actually living on Welfare payments, this tax refund will
    be deducted from their payments.
    
    If they're receiving $3100 back from taxes, they are earning more 
    money than they would be able to get from monthly Welfare checks.
    
    She doesn't say precisely how every penny of this tax refund will be
    spent.  She mentions paying off old credit cards (we don't know what
    was purchased on these cards), and buying a dishwasher (on credit
    perhaps?)  She didn't say.

    >If they're receiving $3100 back from taxes, they are earning more 
    >money than they would be able to get from monthly Welfare checks.
    
     Not necessarily. Undoubtedly they are taking advantage of the earned
    income tax credit, otherwise they wouldn't qualify for welfare in the
    first place.
    
    >She mentions paying off old credit cards (we don't know what
    >was purchased on these cards), and buying a dishwasher 
    
     And an entertainment center. Those are what, ten or twenty bucks?

    How long has she had the 'extra' paper route?  What is the time
    requirement for notifying the Welfare office that she has yet another
    job?  Is she within the required guidelines for letting them know
    about this extra job?  
    
    She didn't say.  She did say that she WILL tell the Welfare office
    about the new job (because it will have an impact on her DAYCARE
    expenses.)  She said she gets daycare free now, but will have to
    pay for it when she reports her extra job.
    
    She didn't say anything about getting less money from Welfare - she
    only mentioned that she would have to start paying for daycare because
    of the new job.  (Is she getting a monthly check at all from Welfare?
    She didn't say.)

    RE: .379  Mark
    
    >> If they're receiving $3100 back from taxes, they are earning more 
    >> money than they would be able to get from monthly Welfare checks.
    
    > Not necessarily. Undoubtedly they are taking advantage of the earned
    > income tax credit, otherwise they wouldn't qualify for welfare in the
    > first place.
    
    They don't necessarily qualify for Welfare payments at all, though.
    (She mentioned daycare.)  They may not qualify for actual payments.
    
    Things like food stamps and daycare are provided by Welfare, but they
    don't necessarily come with Welfare payments.
    
    >> She mentions paying off old credit cards (we don't know what
    >> was purchased on these cards), and buying a dishwasher 
    
    > And an entertainment center. Those are what, ten or twenty bucks?
    
    Would they put this on credit?  She didn't say.

    >They don't necessarily qualify for Welfare payments at all, though.
    >(She mentioned daycare.)
    
     Are there states that give one without the other?
    
    >Things like food stamps and daycare are provided by Welfare, but they
    >don't necessarily come with Welfare payments.
    
     Why do you lump food stamps and daycare together? Why not daycare and
    section 8 housing (aka welfare payments)? Do you have knowledge that
    daycare benefits are available to those who do not qualify for housing
    assistance, or are you using a Johnny Cochranesque FUD tactic to claim
    that we can't really know anything from the data we have?
    
    >Would they put this on credit?  She didn't say.
    
     Oh, so they're going to take $3100 to pay off credit cards and then
    turn around and put several large purchases on credit cards? Yeah, sure
    they are.

    
    	Yeah, food stamps and daycare subsidies aren't actually REAL
    	money so they don't count.
    

    
================================================================================
Note 590.0                    Entertainment Center                    No replies
SOLVIT::KRAWIECKI "Lord of the Turnip Truck"         15 lines  12-MAR-1996 10:47
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    
Andy Krawiecki
SOLVIT::KRAWIECKI
264-0258 (call anytime)
MKO1-1/A10
Home (603) 673-3163 (call anytime)

 Entertainment Center - 49" wide  56 1/2" high  16" deep
 Oak finish press-board
 Will accomodate 28" wide TV.
 Slots for speakers
 Glassed in area for stereo equipment.
 Storage for tapes..etc.
 Good condition. Perfect for family/rec room

 $35.00
    

    Mark, when a family is working (one or both parents) and they still
    qualify for some sort of Welfare assistance, they don't get the
    same assistance that is given to families with no working parents
    at all.
    
    Their takehome pay is deducted from the Welfare payments (if they
    qualify for any payments at all.)
    
    It isn't a binary situation.  There are varying degrees of assistance.
    
    From what I've heard, if they are getting payments at all, then the
    tax refund will be deducted from those payments.  Apparently, they
    are allowed to keep the tax refund, so they probably aren't getting
    anything (or else very little) in the way of payments.  Again, she
    didn't say they were getting payments.  She said she was getting
    daycare help from Welfare.
    
    > Oh, so they're going to take $3100 to pay off credit cards and then
    > turn around and put several large purchases on credit cards? Yeah, sure
    > they are.
    
    She said they were paying off credit cards that they don't really use
    anymore.  (Perhaps they still have credit cards that they DO use.)

 anybody wanna guess how many replies this discussion will generate?

    
    	No.  But thanks for asking.
    

I don't really know much more than you all read in the letter... like I said,
she gets around $650/month from the paper routes, plus child support from the
ex. As far as I know, that's it for real income.

I don't really begrudge them the money. At least her current man is a couple
of steps up from the previous, and seems to be going somewhere.  It just sort
of rubs the wrong way, realizing they're going to college, buying dishwashers
and entertainment centers, all thanks to Ulysses S. Taxpayer, while we had to
replace a rotted out car, buy a winter coat, put a tailpipe and ball joints
and rear brakes on my car (it's old), yadda, yadda, yadda, all on our own
money. Ask me if I could afford to go to college or buy an entertainment
center...

Well, Tom, as Amy suggested in her letter, and, as I'm sure, Suzanne is
about to tell you, it's your god-given right to apply for that assistance
so that you, too, can have the things which dreams are made of.

    RE: .388  Tom R.

    > I don't really know much more than you all read in the letter... like 
    > I said, she gets around $650/month from the paper routes, plus child 
    > support from the ex. As far as I know, that's it for real income.

    So, they do not get Welfare payments.  They do get free daycare,
    though.

    > I don't really begrudge them the money.

    The free daycare, you mean.  (Actually, it won't be free to them
    much longer.)  

    You do realize that without the inexpensive daycare, they wouldn't be 
    able to live on her earnings.

    Wouldn't you rather see them living off their own earnings even if
    they do get a break on daycare while they earn so very little?

    > It just sort of rubs the wrong way, realizing they're going to college, 
    > buying dishwashers and entertainment centers, all thanks to Ulysses S. 
    > Taxpayer, 

    They're earning their own money.  They're only getting some help with
    daycare (so that they can keep supporting themselves with their own
    earnings.)

    How does this amount to the taxpayers buying things for them?

    > while we had to replace a rotted out car, buy a winter coat, put a 
    > tailpipe and ball joints and rear brakes on my car (it's old), yadda, 
    > yadda, yadda, all on our own money. 

    Do you make so little money that you qualify for help with daycare?

    > Ask me if I could afford to go to college or buy an entertainment
    > center...                                                        

    Digital still pays college tuition for employees.  Are you a Digital
    employee?

    
    	Suzanne, a subsidy IS similar to money if whatever it sub-
    	sidizes is perceived to be a necessary expense.
    
    	If welfare offered me "car payment subsidizing" of $100/
    	month that should be considered $100 of "real money" that
    	I now have.
    

>    How does this amount to the taxpayers buying things for them?

They have disposable income to expend on non-essentials while receiving
assistance for some of the more basic needs. If this doesn't work out
the same as the taxpayers buying things for them, then what does?

>    You do realize that without the inexpensive daycare, they wouldn't be 
>    able to live on her earnings.

What? She can't fathom the concept of <gasp> bringing the children along
on the paper route (it's been done before) or <gasp> getting the student
hubby to do some childcare while she's on her rounds? [Last time I checked
there weren't any clocks to punch on paper routes.]

    
    Yeah, the kids could help fold the papers while she drove!
    

    
    	Maybe she could get welfare to buy her a paper folding machine.
    

I have a simple solution to her need for childcare.  Morning papers must
be delivered quite early (I think mine is guaranteed to be there by 7).
Presumably her hubby/boyfriend the full-time student doesn't have classes
that early in the morning (nor is daycare readily available).  So she must
be delivering an evening paper.  She should switch to a morning paper
and let her man look after the kids.

    It seems like the news papers are being given a lot of responsibilty
    here. How about pizza home delivery? What about them?

I'm getting a sense that we have here an advocacy of the concept that
public assistance should not simply be a means of providing subsistance 
level living standards to the truly needy, but additionally it should
be a source of "equalizing" for those who have some source of income
but who fail to meet some "standard" defined within the liberal socialist
(yes, Jim Stacy, I used that damn labeler AGAIN) agenda as being "enough".

If welfare weren't bad enough already due to its demoralizing effect and
its ability to keep a class of non-working folks complacent in their
state of affairs, we now want to extend it so that those who are willing
to work for some minimal amounts (every job needs doing) will be able
to better their lot by getting on the dole at some level, and demonstrate
some hesitancy to push themselves a bit further up the ladder for fear of
the "losses" they'll incur.

That's where the role of private charities does a far better job of social
engineering than the government, since it removes that "I'm entitled to
it" attitude and ends up producing a more marketable product.

    If you want to INSIST that people work if they want to get any
    Welfare benefits at all (such as inexpensive daycare), then they
    are likely to get tax refunds from their earnings since they
    are still poor.

    Without big government stepping in to tell them how to spend their
    tax returns, they may choose to spend this 'windfall' money on
    something they *want* instead of what they *need* their small incomes
    to provide for them all year.

    A tax refund happens once per year.  If they've worked all year,
    having a tax refund is encouragement to keep working.  (Welfare
    payment recipients don't get tax refunds.)

    Don't you want to encourage such families to keep working (even if they
    do spend their tax refunds in ways you don't like)?  Isn't it better
    if they keep trying to work (and to make their lives better in some
    way?)

welfare snarf

Jack, in most places $650/month isn't more than subsistence for a family of
four (OK, she gets some child support, but it's probably not a lot).  I'm
not justifying their spending priorities (unless it's Andy's entertainment
center).

>    Digital still pays for college tuition...
    
    Yeah, that's why I am funding my own college, right?  
    
    Digital will not pay for college classes any more, unless:
    
    a) your job requires it (or it is related to your job)
    b) you are a VP  [ 8^) x 1/2 ]
    
    DEC was good about helping out with tuition, Digital is not nearly as
    tuition-friendly.
    
    
    -steve

    RE: .398  

    > If welfare weren't bad enough already due to its demoralizing effect and
    > its ability to keep a class of non-working folks complacent in their
    > state of affairs, we now want to extend it so that those who are willing
    > to work for some minimal amounts (every job needs doing) will be able
    > to better their lot by getting on the dole at some level, and demonstrate
    > some hesitancy to push themselves a bit further up the ladder for fear of
    > the "losses" they'll incur.

    So, now it's bad for people on Welfare to try to work??  I thought
    people wanted Welfare mothers to be expected to work if they wanted
    to receive benefits at all?
    
    Spending your tax refund any way you want is not demoralizing.  In fact,
    it's one of the most encouraging things about working for a living.
    (People who don't work do not fill out tax returns.)

    The woman in the letter took the 'extra' paper route even though she
    knew she would have to pay for her daycare in the future because of it.

    Do you see how elated she seems to be to be planning how to spend the
    money they will get because she WORKED all year??

    This is encouragement for WORKING.  People on Welfare do not get tax
    refunds that they can use for 'splurges'.

    This woman is working, and just got yet another (additional) job while
    her husband makes himself more employable at college.  Isn't this what
    we want poor people to do?

    (Actually, our society does NOT want people to improve themselves
    at all if it means that someone who gets any sort of assistance from
    Welfare at all can be anything less than totally demoralized in the
    process.  This is the paradox:  "We want you to work hard and improve
    your situation, but only if you're miserable in the process."  Miserable
    people don't improve their situations as well as optimistic people do,
    though.)

Who is paying for this guys tuition while his family is collecting
benefits?

    Maybe he's getting a student loan.
    

    Ronald Reagan supported the 'Earned Income Credit' as encouragement
    for poor families.
    
    They only get it if they actually work.
    
    Do people here really want to discourage people who qualify for
    Welfare from trying to work as much as they can (if it means they
    can choose how to spend their tax refunds themselves?)

And why isn't he working?  Lots of full-time students work part time.

    I wonder how far that $3100 would go towards paying for daycare for a
    year... Sounds like we are getting perilously close to the
    philosophical debate about the difference between wants and needs.

    Maybe he's trying to finish sooner.
    
    At the school where I received my second Bachelor's degree, we had
    some students taking DOUBLE the credit hours so they could finish
    as soon as possible.  <shudder>

>    Do people here really want to discourage people who qualify for
>    Welfare from trying to work as much as they can (if it means they
>    can choose how to spend their tax refunds themselves?)

No - I don't think anyone's arguing that. I think what's being said is
that if they have disposable income for non-essentials yet they continue
to receive assistance, then there's something radically wrong. Don't
you see this? Do you actually think that it's equitable for the government
to be forcibly taking YOUR income, to _give_ to someone else while they
have money to spend on things that perhaps you (or others who work, pay
taxes, and don't get assistance) cannot afford? It's not the income tax
refund that's the problem. It's not their decisions how to spend it that
are the problem. It's the fact that they CONTINUE to receive assistance
while having that level of discretion in their financial management.

   > Do people here really want to discourage people who qualify for
   > Welfare from trying to work as much as they can (if it means they
   > can choose how to spend their tax refunds themselves?)

   I'm sure everyone is pleased that this couple is working and trying to 
   help themselves. 

   I think the problem is the "gee, you can get your piece of the pie too" 
   attitude which was displayed in the letter.


   Plus other factors ....
   

    
    
    I'd appreciate it if one of you would send this person over to my house
    to buy the damned thing....
    
    hth... nnttm...wgafra...
    

    
    We shouldn't be surprised if some, or even many welfare recipients
    become skillful, knowledgeable and competent at wringing every last
    dollar out of the system.
    
    

    RE: .408  Mark
    
    > I wonder how far that $3100 would go towards paying for daycare for a
    > year... Sounds like we are getting perilously close to the
    > philosophical debate about the difference between wants and needs.
    
    If spending the tax refund is encouragement for this family to keep
    working towards a better life, then it's a worthwhile investment for
    society.  The daycare subsidy will be temporary.  The poor family
    will become more and more productive members of this society.
    
    If you fix it so that all their work gives them ZERO advantages over
    a family that does nothing but receive a monthly check, then how do
    you develop a sense of optimism in this family about how their lives
    could be if they *kept moving* up the ladder (as they've already
    started to do)?

    >If you fix it so that all their work gives them ZERO advantages over
    >a family that does nothing but receive a monthly check, 
    
     On the other hand, if you fix it so that nobody who is able-bodied
    can "do nothing but receive a monthly check", then there is plenty of
    incentive. 

>                     <<< Note 243.390 by SPECXN::CONLON >>>
>    So, they do not get Welfare payments.  They do get free daycare,
>    though.
>    They're earning their own money.  They're only getting some help with
>    daycare (so that they can keep supporting themselves with their own
>    earnings.)

Seems to me you assume way too much. I don't know any of these things you're
asserting as fact here, therefore neither do you.

If you want my OPINION, I think they MUST get subsidized housing and food
stamps and whatever else "the Welfare" will give them. By "real income", I
meant money they didn't get by holding their hands out to mommy gov't.  Think
about it - they're probably in the zero tax bracket - if they payed $3100 in
taxes, I don't imagine they take in more than ~15k/year. Anyone with tax
tables handy can give us a much more accurate number.

I don't see where you get the idea they paid $3100 in taxes.  They're getting
$3100 back.  This includes the Earned Income Credit, which is sort of a negative
income tax.

    RE: .410  
    
    > I think what's being said is that if they have disposable income for 
    > non-essentials yet they continue to receive assistance, then there's 
    > something radically wrong. 
    
    The tax refund is a 'windfall' which they are placing back into
    society as consumers.
    
    > Don't you see this? Do you actually think that it's equitable for the 
    > government to be forcibly taking YOUR income, to _give_ to someone else 
    > while they have money to spend on things that perhaps you (or others 
    > who work, pay taxes, and don't get assistance) cannot afford? 
    
    They could not work without affordable daycare.  So they get the
    daycare and they work.  Now they have a tax refund (once per year,
    at most.)  The refund is a reward for working.  If they are anxious
    to be consumers more often (and it sounds like they are), then they
    will move up the ladder to be self-sufficient.  (The self-sufficient
    can buy far more in consumer goods than people who are very poor.)
    
    > It's not the income tax refund that's the problem. It's not their 
    > decisions how to spend it that are the problem. It's the fact that 
    > they CONTINUE to receive assistance while having that level of 
    > discretion in their financial management. 
    
    It's temporary.  They are budding consumers with a plan (already
    in motion) to become self-sufficient.
    
    We want to encourage people to take this route, even if it means that
    they will get a 'windfall' in the form of a tax return for a couple
    of years in the process.

    Where's my windfall?

    RE: .419  Mark
    
    > Where's my windfall?
    
    Ask Ronald Reagan.  He was a big supporter of the Earned Income tax
    credit to encourage the working poor.

>    They could not work without affordable daycare.

Horse foofey. There have been half a dozen good suggestions in here this
afternoon as to how they could accomplish child care affordably without
any sort of public assistance.

>    We want to encourage people to take this route, even if it means that
>    they will get a 'windfall' in the form of a tax return for a couple
>    of years in the process.

No - what "you" want, is to pick my pocket in order to provide what "you" think
they should be entitled to. And, again, I'm not talking about the tax refund,
to which I agree they're entitled as long as we abide by the silly tax code 
we have. I'm talking about the fact that they are receiving assistance while
having discretionary funds available to them.

>  <<< Note 243.417 by NOTIME::SACKS "Gerald Sacks ZKO2-3/N30 DTN:381-2085" >>>
>I don't see where you get the idea they paid $3100 in taxes.  They're getting

Based on the over-simplified notion that in the zero bracket, you get back
all the taxes you paid in all year. Which is in turn based on the fact that
this is what happened to me the first year I had a real job.

If you're such a tax whiz, you give us an approximation of what they earned.

    You are missing the earned income credit, which actually provides a
    check _in excess of the amount that was deducted for FIT_ to the
    working poor. 

    RE: .421

    > Horse foofey. There have been half a dozen good suggestions in here this
    > afternoon as to how they could accomplish child care affordably without
    > any sort of public assistance.

    Suggestions from total strangers who don't know if any of the suggestions
    would be feasible....

    >> We want to encourage people to take this route, even if it means that
    >> they will get a 'windfall' in the form of a tax return for a couple
    >> of years in the process.

    > No - what "you" want, is to pick my pocket in order to provide what 
    > "you" think they should be entitled to. 

    We want to encourage those who are willing to work.  It makes no
    sense to beat the crap out of the poor people who DO work hard and
    manage to get a tax refund out of it as a reward for their efforts.

    > And, again, I'm not talking about the tax refund, to which I agree 
    > they're entitled as long as we abide by the silly tax code we have. 
    > I'm talking about the fact that they are receiving assistance while
    > having discretionary funds available to them.

    The tax refund is temporary.  The assistance is temporary.  If they
    are encouraged (with this tax refund) to continue working, they can
    become permanent taxpayers/consumers.  They are already on their way.

> It makes no sense to beat the crap out of the poor people who DO work 
> hard and manage to get a tax refund out of it as a reward for their efforts.

If taking away their assistance, since they can apparently "make it" without
it, is "beating the crap out of them", then lay on, McDuff.

You'll not find any sympathy from this quarter for providing entitlements
to those who happen to fall below your socialistic idea of "enough". 

    RE: .425
    
    >> It makes no sense to beat the crap out of the poor people who DO work 
    >> hard and manage to get a tax refund out of it as a reward for their 
    >> efforts.
    
    > If taking away their assistance, since they can apparently "make it" 
    > without it, is "beating the crap out of them", then lay on, McDuff.
    
    $3100 isn't enough for a family of four to 'make it' without any more
    daycare assistance.
    
    It's just a one-time tax refund.  It's encouragement to keep on working
    (and keep on moving up the ladder.)  I'll bet they make it, too.
    
    > You'll not find any sympathy from this quarter for providing entitlements
    > to those who happen to fall below your socialistic idea of "enough". 
    
    So, people shouldn't get any assistance at all unless they are willing
    to work, but if they do work, then they don't need any assitance at all.
    (Right?)
    
    So it's not at all about helping those who help themselves.

>    $3100 isn't enough for a family of four to 'make it' without any more
>    daycare assistance.

So howcome half a dozen suggestions regarding child care alternatives by total
strangers can be tossed away offhand since we don't know anything about it,
but you've got the inside track on this matter as to what dollar figures
suffice?

Spare me, will ya?

re .422:

Presumably the first year you had a real job was either before the EIC or
you had no dependents or both.

    If you want more of the poor to become self-sufficient, don't
    discourage them by punishing them for receiving a reward for
    their work.
    
    If they're working towards a better life, a temporary 'windfall'
    (in the form of a tax refund) will provide encouragement for
    them to become self-sufficient.
    
    It can provide a taste of what it would be like to have the kind
    of spending power they would never be able to achieve without
    moving up the ladder.  (This money is also being invested back
    into the American economy, which is good, too.)

Well, for the nth time, I don't think anyone said anything about denying
them their tax refund, but if you like talking to yourself, well, have
a great time!

    If they can afford a dishwasher, they don't need assistance.  Nobody
    needs a dishwasher; I don't have one.
    
    Giving them a "windfall" as "encouragement" is no excuse.  To give them
    that "windfall" money, the government took money away from some
    taxpayers who cannot afford a dishwasher or education, or who can just
    barely afford it.  Somewhere in this country, there's another person
    who didn't have kids they couldn't afford and does hold a full-time job
    and does not qualify for earned-income credit or welfare but did have
    to pay taxes they might have spent on a dishwasher or education.
    
    It is not fair to take that person's money to "encourage" others.  It
    discourages them -- and it does so twice, once when you take their
    money and again when you give it to less deserving people.
    
    For "encouragement", let the welfare family look to people who are
    working and who are not feeding at the public trough.
    
    
    				-- edp
                                                         
    
Public key fingerprint:  8e ad 63 61 ba 0c 26 86  32 0a 7d 28 db e7 6f 75
To find PGP, read note 2688.4 in Humane::IBMPC_Shareware.

    
    	I'm trying to achieve a better life, and would also appreciate
    	a temporary "windfall" to provide a taste of what it would be
    	like to have the kind of spending power I would never be able
    	to achieve without moving up the ladder.
    
    	So I'd like the government to buy me a Porsche 911.
    

    People seem to want to deny these people their daycare assistance
    on the basis that they are receiving a tax refund.
    
    They are working towards becoming self-sufficient.  They are doing
    what people keep saying that ALL Welfare recipients should do, yet
    they're being damned anyway (because of their tax refund.)
    
    If they weren't receiving any tax refund at all, would they simply
    be regarded as a family on the move toward a better life (while
    getting daycare assistance temporarily?)

    
    	Oh, and I LOVE it when you say "they are consumers and are
    	funneling money back into the system".
    
    	Drug users are also funneling money back into the system,
    	but that's not necessarily a good thing, is it?
    

    
    	Suzanne, they're receiving a tax refund and are planning on
    	spending it on a non-necessity while they're receiving some
    	sort of financial assistance for pseudo-necessities.
    
    	THAT'S the problem.
    

    Ok, so Ronald Reagan was a dope when he supported the Earned Income
    Credit, eh?

his present wife?

    RE: .435  Shawn

    > Suzanne, they're receiving a tax refund and are planning on
    > spending it on a non-necessity while they're receiving some
    > sort of financial assistance for pseudo-necessities.
    
    The tax refund *is* the problem, then.

    > THAT'S the problem.

    They could avoid this by changing their W4 so that they only
    receive the EIC after filing their income taxes at the end
    of the year.

    If their takehome pay is still low enough to qualify for the
    daycare assistance, then they would avoid having a windfall
    at the end of the year.  (The actual EIC payment isn't much.)

    Or, they could quit writing to Tom's wife with this information. :)

    
    	How much are they getting for a daycare subsidy?
    
    	Why can't they receive ($x - $3100) next year?
    

    So you want to increase the tax burden of the working poor?

>  So you want to increase the tax burden of the working poor?

 No, we want a clear justification for the support and relative
assurance that there isn't any fraud involved.

 

    Do you want to pay for the people it will take to make sure that
    those who request daycare (because they work) really need to have
    daycare?
    
    Obviously, if a person applies for daycare assistance, they are
    there because they say they need it.
    
    Investigating these people to make sure they do need it would take
    extra Welfare caseworkers.

    
    .429
    
    > don't discourage them by punishing them for receiving a reward for
    > their work.
    
    A reward ? A REWARD ? BWAAAHAAAAAAHAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA !

    Gee, what on Earth was Ronald Reagan thinking when he supported the
    Earned Income Credit all those years?
    
    Was he a Liberal??  =:0
    

    .408
    
    Mark,
    
    You were right, this IS a case of needs vs. wants and apparently
    Suzanne has missed that point.
    
    

| <<< Note 243.445 by DECLNE::REESE "My REALITY check bounced" >>>

| You were right, this IS a case of needs vs. wants and apparently
| Suzanne has missed that point.

	Needs defined by who? Let me ask you something. If it was someone who
was not a repub that was in office that did the same thing, would it have been
seen as a need or as a want? I think that is what suz is making a point of.


Glen

    .444
    
    > ...Ronald Reagan thinking...
    
    There's a novel concept.

    RE: .445  Karen Reese

    > You were right, this IS a case of needs vs. wants and apparently
    > Suzanne has missed that point.

    It's not that simple, of course.

    The working poor are taxpayers, too.  If someone can justify putting
    a larger tax burden on the working poor for a moral principle, then
    keeping a large tax burden on the middle class can be justified the
    same way.

    I'm looking at this more from a practical viewpoint.  I think it's
    better for our society if the working poor make their way up the
    ladder because they want to do it for themselves (and not because
    they've been severely and harshly scolded into doing it.)

    If we thump the guts out of their enthusiasm for becoming hardy and
    self-sufficient, we also hurt ourselves (as the ones who would benefit
    from their productive participation in our society almost as much
    as they would.)

>    I'm looking at this more from a practical viewpoint.  I think it's
>    better for our society if the working poor make their way up the
>    ladder because they want to do it for themselves (and not because
>    they've been severely and harshly scolded into doing it.)


 I think we all have the same goal, just different approaches for obtaining that
 goal.

 Should I be able to quit my job so that I can qualify for welfare while I
 attend college full time, when I am perfectly capable of working and attending
 classes nights/weekends?

 While I applaud this mans desire to better himself, I question the choices
 that have been made so that he may pursue that goal. 

 I guess it all depends on how you define "needs".

 Doug.

> (The actual EIC payment isn't much.)

I happen to have an old IRS publication at my desk.  It's from 1993, and no
doubt the EIC has risen since then (since it's indexed to inflation).  Two
years ago the maximum EIC payment was $2,364.

    Re .436:
    
    > Ok, so Ronald Reagan was a dope when he supported the Earned Income
    > Credit, eh?

    Ronald Reagan was a dope long before that.
    
    
    				-- edp
    
    
Public key fingerprint:  8e ad 63 61 ba 0c 26 86  32 0a 7d 28 db e7 6f 75
To find PGP, read note 2688.4 in Humane::IBMPC_Shareware.

    Re .450:
    
    > Two years ago the maximum EIC payment was $2,364.
    
    This year, for 1995 returns, it is $3,110.  That's on a gross income of
    around $8600 to $9000 or so.  That's a tax rate of negative 36 percent!
    And an annual percentage increase of 15 percent.
    
    
    				-- edp
    
    
Public key fingerprint:  8e ad 63 61 ba 0c 26 86  32 0a 7d 28 db e7 6f 75
To find PGP, read note 2688.4 in Humane::IBMPC_Shareware.

    
      Well, I happen to like the concept of the EITC.  The object is
     to get people to work.  Even in the liberal "Kindergarten School
     of Economics" they know people don't work if they get LESS for
     working than not.  If you have a poor person with no skills who
     cannot support themselves and so DOESN'T work, and another poor
     person with no skills who cannot support themselves and washes
     dishes for $5/hour, any rational welfare system must see to it
     that the second is less poor than the first.  Assuming you aren't
     going to outright starve people, and nobody has advocated that
     even though Suzanne lies and said they did, you want a system of
     poor relief that does not disincent low wage work.  Ronald Reagan,
     whose intelligence was not great as Presidents go, was, as usual,
     correct - just as Jimmy Carter, one of our smartest presidents
     yet, was almost always wrong.  Intelligence being about seventh
     on a list of most important qualities in a president.
    
      The Weld program is working very well so far - people are getting off
     welfare by going to work.  They are subsidized in various ways as long
     as they work, but it costs somewhat less than pure welfare.  This is
     admittedly easier to do when there is near full employment, but we
     don't know that it won't work out even in a recession.  Can't tell,
     hasn't happened yet.  And many other states are doing similar, under
     waivers Clinton has signed, while vetoing the welfare bill at the
     national level that would do exactly the same thing.  This is not
     logical from a policy perspective, but Clinton doesn't care about
     policy - he cares about opinion polls.  He will approve waivers in
     high electoral vote states he thinks he might carry.
    
      These local welfare reforms are overwhelmingly popular, and not all
     the states involved are governed by Republicans - see Vermont, for
     example.
    
      bb

    I don't have a problem with the concept of the EITC either. But it has
    to be part of the whole solution, and changes should be made to it when
    the rest of the solution is in place.

Ok gang, here you go... I got more info from my wife. This is based on
nothing but her recollection of previous letters, so don't go milking details
out of this that aren't there. A little too much of that was done with the
last letter.

Amy & family live in a 2 bedroom duplex. My wife saw a photo of it and said
it looked like a typical yuppie condo.

They are receiving food stamps. She's not sure about monthly checks, but that
was implied in the letter I put in here.

They go out to eat at least twice a week.

Amy plays golf with her mother once a week.

Amy's parents live about 1 mile away and adore Amy's kids.

    Re .454:
    
    > Well, I happen to like the concept of the EITC.  The object is
    > to get people to work.
    
    Allow me to introduce to you an astounding concept in rewarding and
    encouraging people to work.  It is called "wages".
    
    > . . . any rational welfare system must see to it that the second is
    > less poor than the first.
    
    All that is necessary for this to occur is for the slope of net income
    (after taxes and welfare are subtracted/added) as a function of earned
    income to be positive at every point.  That can be accomplished by
    reducing welfare by some fraction of earned income.  As long as the
    fraction is between 0 and 1, you will not get any reversals that
    reward people more for not working than for working.
    
    
    				-- edp
    
    
Public key fingerprint:  8e ad 63 61 ba 0c 26 86  32 0a 7d 28 db e7 6f 75
To find PGP, read note 2688.4 in Humane::IBMPC_Shareware.

    
      Well, that works, too, of course, EDP.  The only real reason
     to do it through taxes is that taxes already have a reporting
     system, so you can use your sliding scale there.  The welfare
     people might have a harder time getting the data, is all.
    
      It's very hard to get work incentives passed and signed, at either
     the state or local levels.  The liberal Democrats have 40 years
     invested in a system of spies whose main job is to prevent work
     and break up families, by stopping the checks of only those
     people who do anything productive, or try to keep families intact.
     More than one welfare father sneaks down the fire escape when the
     social worker comes calling.  And under-the-table work is notorious
     in this situation.  The chief argument AGAINST the EITC is that it
     has the highest rate of fraud of any tax program by far.  But then,
     the fraud rate of ANY welfare/poor law program is doomed to be high.
    
      Two years back, a prison warden was caught right here in Mass,
     trying to cash 200 welfare checks from the PRM to his wards.  Under
     investigation, it was revealed he had quite a racket coercing them
     into his scheme.  Any income redistribution or tax program has to
     have some sort of enforcement arm.
    
      bb

    Replace WELFARE by WORKFARE ...
    
    I have nothing against helping people out in their luck, but
    I should get something out of it ... ex: cleaner streets and 
    buildings, less pot-holes in roads, etc.
    
    CHILDCARE is a big issue in welfare, and I don't see why 
    childcare cannot be provided as part of workfare as well.
    (As a matter fact childcare could be sold to non-workfare
    families as well, thus becoming a real job.)
    
    Something like:
    
    If you are in workfare, you expected to study 8 hours a week,
    and work 24. Mothers will children can either provide childcare 
    work or leave then with some other workfare-childcare mother 
    while they work/study/look-for-work.
    
    For example:
    
    Workfare person goes to classes monday, works tuesday tru
    thursday, and looks for non-workfare work friday. 
    
    Gil

    
    	Woah, someone call security!!
    
    	This person is brandishing some SERIOUS logic here!!
    

	Why do I get the impression that a great plan like the one that got
mentioned would turn into a 2000 page bomb if capital hill, or the state house
got a hold of it?

re: .459

	Wasn't that what the CCC and the works projects of the 1930's were?

>243.458
>GAAS::BRAUCHER "Welcome to Paradise"                 24 lines  13-MAR-1996 10:30
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>      It's very hard to get work incentives passed and signed, at either
>     the state or local levels.  The liberal Democrats have 40 years
>     invested in a system of spies whose main job is to prevent work
>     and break up families, by stopping the checks of only those
>     people who do anything productive, or try to keep families intact.
>     More than one welfare father sneaks down the fire escape when the
>     social worker comes calling.  And under-the-table work is notorious
>     in this situation.  The chief argument AGAINST the EITC is that it
>     has the highest rate of fraud of any tax program by far.  But then,
>     the fraud rate of ANY welfare/poor law program is doomed to be high.


	SPIES??  Break up families??  Highest rate of fraud??  Where does all
this come from?  Wasn't it a DEMOCRATIC legislature that passed the EITC for
your hero President Reagan?  Isn't it the democrats in government that are
attempting to streamline the process for the states to get waivers?  The
conservatives won't allow that because they want the block grants with NO
REQUIREMENTS on the money at all.

    I am in agreementwith suzzanne here.  The EITC encourages people to
    work and even RR could see the logic in that.  How someone spends that
    money is their business, it might be to repair or upgrade the family
    clunker, or it might be to buy a stereo, SWTFC?  Being able to buy
    something nice can kick in the good-ole greed factor and encourage
    people to get out and make more to buy more.  
    
    BTW some people might consider a dishwasher to be a luxury.  I bought
    mine used 10 years ago for $35.00 and consider it a near-necessity for
    a working household, particularly from a health standpoint.  The only
    way to really clean dishes by hand uses far more hot water and fuel
    (which costs somebody money somewhere along the line) than my old and
    non-efficient potscrubber does.  ( Source "Consumer's Union magazine"
    from several years ago)  I will be happier when I have finished
    upgrading the house and can put in a built in but until then the
    clunker keeps running.  
    
    As for the workfare someone mentioned on pothole filling.  Your own
    municipal employees have successfully fought this in many communities.  
    
    i have been one person asking for training some mother to do child care
    so others can get out into the workforce, but work on training all so
    they can hopefully get jobs that pay enough to get completely off the
    dole.  The training has been done successfully in many places, but was
    discontinued or gutted to the point of ridiculousness during the 80's
    and some people want to pull even more money out of training and
    education.  Along the way you may need to do some rehab as many
    families on AFDC are headed by a disabled person.  
    
    while I know some won't agree with me, I think nursing women should be
    exempt from full-time work or training for the first year, unless
    provisions are made for expressing and refrigerating breastmilk.  This
    gives the littles an unbeatable health boost in the first year, as well
    as potentially reducing the costs to all of us from breast cancer and
    endometrial cancer and reduces the chances of a second baby within a
    short time of the first baby.
    
    Cracking down on predatory men who impregnate young teenage girls may
    not be a bad idea either.  Many studies have shown that the "men" who
    sired children on the youngest of teen mothers are at least 5 and
    usually 10 years older than the teen.  Enforce the statutory rape laws,
    but rather than prison make these "men" go through counseling,
    job-training and work to support their offspring and their mothers
    while they finish school.  If the are multiple offenders they should
    probably be counseled towards doing something about their fertility.  
    
    Honest peer education for kids to take the perceived glamor out of
    childbearing and raising, as well as reenforcing the idea that both
    sexes are responsible for avoiding pregnancy should drop the teen
    pregnancy and birth rate, and teen mothers are those most at risk of
    being on AFDC long-term, as well as having multiple children while on
    AFDC.  Probably wouldn't hurt for them to have actual videos of births
    including c-sections.  (both sexes starting at about age 12)
    
    meg
    
    

    Re .464:
    
    > How someone spends that money is their business, it might be to
    > repair or upgrade the family clunker, or it might be to buy a stereo,
    > SWTFC?
    
    No, it is not their business; it is the business of the people from
    whom the money was taken.  I care, and the person whose tax burden
    preventing them from buying a stereo or taking that college class
    should be pissed off that somebody else is getting a handout.
    
    
    				-- edp
    
    
Public key fingerprint:  8e ad 63 61 ba 0c 26 86  32 0a 7d 28 db e7 6f 75
To find PGP, read note 2688.4 in Humane::IBMPC_Shareware.

    An interesting discussion, well done all around, at least recently.
    
    If I may quibble?
    
    > The Weld program is working very well so far - people are getting off
    > welfare by going to work.  They are subsidized in various ways as long
    > as they work, but it costs somewhat less than pure welfare.  This is
    > admittedly easier to do when there is near full employment, but we
    > don't know that it won't work out even in a recession.  Can't tell,
    > hasn't happened yet. 
      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    
    I want to emphasize that data point.
    
    > vetoing the welfare bill at the national level that would do exactly
    > the same thing.  This is not logical from a policy perspective, but
    > Clinton doesn't care about policy - he cares about opinion polls.
    
    It is my opinion that letting the states act as laboratories for
    experiments in welfare reform is valuable precisely because we can see
    how different approaches work in a variety of economic conditions. 
    When you admit yourself that such schemes are not fully tested (as 
    in, we haven't had a recession yet) I don't think it so bad for Clinton
    not to experiment at a national level yet.  We need to see what works.
    So his actions *are* logical from the policy perspective that
    encourages experiments and is waiting for fuller results.
    
    DougO

    RE: .458  bb

    > It's very hard to get work incentives passed and signed, at either
    > the state or local levels.  The liberal Democrats have 40 years
    > invested in a system of spies whose main job is to prevent work
    > and break up families, by stopping the checks of only those
    > people who do anything productive, or try to keep families intact.

    Welfare rules which seem to work against people who try to improve
    their situations (by working, etc.) are unfortunate compromises
    to appease those who harbor deep resentment against those who get
    helped in the first place.  Believe it or not, some people resent
    the idea that Welfare families start having more money to spend as 
    they move closer and closer to being self-sufficient.

    The idea is to assure people against Welfare that the system will
    dump anyone who seems to show signs of being able to make it on their
    own (so that only the most desperate people will be helped.)

    As people start to make it on their own (by working, etc.), the system
    makes a point of trying to dump them (which tends to discourage people
    from trying to make it on their own.)

    IMO, it would be more constructive if we allowed a greater transition 
    between Welfare and self-sufficiency, even if it means that some people
    might spend their EIC tax refund on things they want instead of things
    they need.  

    The point is to encourage people to be self-sufficient.  Optimistic 
    people have a better chance of 'making it' than demoralized people.

             <<< Note 243.466 by SX4GTO::OLSON "DBTC Palo Alto" >>>

    >  Can't tell,
    > hasn't happened yet. 
      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    
   > I want to emphasize that data point.
    
    Unsurprisingly, the MA welfare rolls started to decline 
    immediately after Weld announced his Workfare project. They 
    continue to decline to this day.

    Just coincidence?  Don't be silly.

    daryll

    The "Can't tell, asn't happened yet." refers to how things will be
    during the next recession.

           <<< BACK40::BACK40$DKA500:[NOTES$LIBRARY]SOAPBOX.NOTE;1 >>>
                          -< Soapbox.  Just Soapbox. >-
================================================================================
Note 243.470                     Welfare Reform.                      470 of 470
NICOLA::STACY                                         6 lines  20-MAR-1996 14:13
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
re: .468

	Does Gov Carrot also tell you how many people that were on welfare left
the state?  Does "Gov never worked a day since the election" also tell you that
he has had his welfare reform stopped in court?  The numbers don't tell you how
they got there and politicians are not going to tell you where to look.  The
Politicians will only take credit when they can.

re:                      <<< Note 243.470 by NICOLA::STACY >>>

>	Does Gov Carrot also tell you how many people that were on welfare left
>the state?

What possible difference does that make? He has a responsibility to the 
taxpayers of the PRM to reduce the Welfare rolls/payouts. Whether he does
it by getting people to work or to leave is totally immaterial. The reason
we have such low welfare rolls in New Hampshire is because we don't provide
much and therefore make it an unattractive place for trough-feeders to
congregate. By your line of reasoning, that's something to be ashamed of.
Typical, Jim.

re: .471

	Yes is something to be ashamed of!  Very ashamed of!  You've shed new
light on the conservative agenda.  We liberals thought you just wanted to throw
people out on the street.  Now you tell us that you want to throw them out of
the USA.  SHAME, SHAME!

    <guffaw!>
    
     Another liberal's liberal.

-1

	Another irresponsible conservative!

Ah, Jim, yer a treasure, fer sure.

You remind me of a conversation I had in here with another PRM liberal 
socialist several years ago who was trying to tell me that the State
of New Hampshire was in the wrong for providing such stingy welfare
bennies, because the end result was that all the trough-feeders migrated
south to the PRM. He just couldn't get it into his head that the voters
in the PRM had every right to do exactly what Weld finally did to force
the trough-feeders someplace else.

I'll wear my shame in honor, thanks.

re: .476

	I'm glad you will wear your shame with honor.  That would be the first
responsible thing I've ever seen from a conservative comunist republican.

    
    re: .473
    
    >SHAME, SHAME!
    
    get a clue...  You're just pissed off because you have to pay more to
    keep the trough-feeders YOU expect us to take care of!!
    
     Tough noogies!! You got em.. you keep em!!!
    

    
    re: .477
    
    >conservative comunist republican.
    
    
    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA!!!!
    
    
     Count me in with Lucky Jack!! We'll wear the badges, while you get
    your pockets picked!!  Deal???
    

re: .478

	I am not the least bit upset to do what is needed for a better USA.  I
just wish the greedy, self centered, irresponsible, cowardly, comunist
conservative republicans would get out of the way.

    Hey! Can we send our welfare cases packing to the PRM, too?   8^)

    
    re: .480
    
    >I am not the least bit upset to do what is needed for a better USA
    
    
    
    
    No matter how much it costs *me*... right???

    I'll never forget the signs at the Panama Airport...
    
    "Go to Massachusetts....Free Money!"
    
    You sap....you gullible sap you....

    re: a few back
    
    
    Yeah, the conservatives should just get out the way, so government can
    control the tidbits that aren't currently in its grasp.  I don't think
    so.
    
    Sorry some welfare payments do not meet your approval, though.  Maybe
    if we raise taxes another 5%, we can insure that these poor welfare
    victims can have new cars, complete with cellular phone (for safety, of 
    course).  That would be very kind and charitable, wouldn't it?  Of
    course, the rest of us fools who still work, will struggle to put food
    on the table, but that is a small price to pay for insuring our poor
    are adequately taken care of, right?
    
    The problem with the liberal brand of compassion is that it knows not
    where to draw the line.  It is always more compassionate to toss more
    money at a problem, even when experience tells us that this is not
    fixing anything.
    
    On another note, I do wish you'd quit misusing the term "communist" in
    your name calling.  The republican platform may seem greedy to you (amoung 
    the other adjectives you like to use), but it cannot possibly be construed 
    as "communist".  Your own mantra is much closer to communism than anything 
    the Republicans have put to paper. 
    
    Do us all a favor and look this term up in the dictionary.  Thanks.
    
    
    -steve                                                             

re: .484

	The conservative republican way: 

			If lost without a clue{
				Insert big government or
				Insert Socialist Liberal false label
			Then tell everybody what the liberal think
			Then LIE about what conservatives think

Typical, Typical conservative BS.  

	It is that same thinking that put the USA in the 5 Trillion debt.

    Dear Nicola:
    
    Just so you'll have a better understanding...
    
    Reagan makes deal with Tip O'Neil...
    Tip O'Neil fails to come through....
    Congress does not cut spending as previously promised....
    The rest is history.
    
    Hope this helps.

So this Reagan guy, was he stupid or something?

Right wingers have been saying all along what a crook O'Neil was so which
nincompoop figgered this plan out?

And what was Dole's part in all this? 

>	I am not the least bit upset to do what is needed for a better USA.  I
>just wish the greedy, self centered, irresponsible, cowardly, comunist
>conservative republicans would get out of the way.

And your answers for solving this countries woes are?

Woman in Bradford MA has been collecting welfare for the past 3 
years totalling over 31K. She did this by claiming her husband 
was not living with her and their 3 kids when in reality not only 
was he there, but he was working and they had 100K in the bank.
Both are non-US citizens. 

daryll

    You must be a CCR (conservative communist republican) to deny the woman
    the benefits she so richly deserves.

  I'm sure that's an isolated case and nothing to get too excited about.




 

re .489:

Bradford MA?  Does such a place exist?

Bradford is located just south of Haverhill.

    
    Re: .489
    
    Cut it out Daryll. You're being insensitive.
    Stop her benefits and in no time at all we'll be like Bosnia.

 I wonder if they bought an entertainment center and a dishwasher?

    
    
    Will someone please have this woman call me????
    

    Bradford is a nice community.  Houses are fairly expensive.  This is
    where Bradford College is.  

Bradford isn't on my list of Mass towns.  Is it a neighborhood of another
town?  The -ford that's south of Haverhill is Boxford.

	I don't think anyone is saying fraud doesn't happen with welfare. Hell,
it happens in governments (well, once in a great while...hee hee), companies,
banks, colleges, etc. Now the trick is to get it to always be an isolated case,
and not more of the norm.

	I think welfare has a way to go before it loses it's reputation.


Glen

Thanks, but Bradford is indeed just south of Haverhill. Boxford 
is a little further beyond that. Ward Hill Industrial park off RT 
495 is in Bradford.

daryll

    Almost every aspect of life in this country can serve as a target 
    for fraud and crime, especially if it has anything to do with money.

    Would it be a practical remedy for fraud/crime if we eliminated all
    aspects of life in this country that involve the exchange of money
    in any way?

    Or do we simply deal with the fraud and the crime in our society
    as separate issues?

	Suz.... the latter one is what should happen

>Note 243.484 
>ACISS2::LEECH "Dia do bheatha."                      
>
>    On another note, I do wish you'd quit misusing the term "communist" in
>
>    Do us all a favor and look this term up in the dictionary.  Thanks.

	I did look it up in the dictionary.  I am using it in the proper place
and method.  Don't you like the LABEL?  I believe I am using the label more
accurately than those who throw it at me.

Relevant excerpts:

COMMUNIST PARTY: The official state party of the USSR.
communism: Socialism as exemplified in countries ruled by Communist parties.


	The communist party of the USSR had the communist party as their first
priority.  Not the state or the people, but the party.  It was ruled by a rigid
hierarchy that gave benefits to "GOOD" party members that followed the "party
line".   Isn't that why the repubs just picked DOLE?  Wasn't it Mr Knewt that
told Kemp that supporting Forbes would be treason?  Didn't Mr Dole go out
stumping for Mr. North saying that the elected President of the United States
was not the commander because he didn't follow the "CONSERVATIVE LINE"?  The
republicans in the house are supposed to get passes from the party leaders to
be able to vote against legislation.  Dole wants to bring this behavior to the
Senate.  In this notes conference, anything liberal is labeled and dismissed
because it doesn't follow your party line.  In fact the single outstanding
goal of the conservatives here seems to be to get rePublicans in ALL elected
positions.  I don't believe I am misusing the term.

	Communist Coward Conservative rePublicans ( CCCP ) actually fits.
	-         -      -              -

    Communism, from what I understand involves a centralist power base
    where the outer fray of society, the people in this case, are dependant 
    upon the foundation of that power.  
    
    Loyalty to a party is very much a part of both parties; therefore, you
    may as well call both parties communist.  Your argument is a non
    sequitor.  
    
    I think the basic argument between the two philosophies is reaching
    desired result but through two different channels.  We know for example
    that the status quo as far as welfare will NEVER offer prosperity.  So
    it would seem we need to come to dialog on how to reform it.  A drug
    addict needs to admit his problem and put down the needle before the
    next step can be taken.  In our case, the spending needs to come to a
    halt...not a slowing down but a halt.  Otherwise, we are only kidding
    ourselves.
    
    -Jack

re .503:

The old "The sky is blue, and blueberries are blue, therefore the sky is a
blueberry" type of logic.

Now look up "socialism" and explain how it applies to the Republican party.
Also explain the phrase "From each according to one's abilities, to each
according to one's needs" and how this is a Republican idea.

re: .504, .505

So, does this mean the things .503 speaks of are not true?  Or does it
mean it's ok because they're Republicans?  Or does it mean it's ok
because they're better than those darned commie socialist lib'ral
democrats?

Or does it mean that since it's about Republicans you'll just ignore it?

I know where the smart money is.
\john

re .506:

No never said that.

To make it obvious, I'm pointing out the flaw in the logic of .503 which seems
to say "The Communists are a party that cares only about itself, and the
Republicans are a party that cares only about itself, therefore the Republicans
are Communists."

I know perfectly well the Republican are just as slimy as the Democrats,
if not worse.

<---then would it be correct to say that democrats and republicans are
    Communists? Or in Pat Buchanan's case....a columnist. :-)

re: .507

I know what you were saying.

I don't think .503 was trying to dazzle you with a brilliant
display of logic; he was pointing out how STOOPID it is to
be labeling the democrats "commies" by showing how easy it
is to apply the same label to the republicans.

You know darned well the democrats want NOTHING like Communist
Russia/Soviet Union.  DARNED well.  Sure their policies may
be misguided sometimes.  So are the policies of the republicans.
But to constantly smear them as "commies" and "socialists" is
just that, STOOPID.  

If you have arguments, USE THEM.  Labels like commie, socialist,
even "liberal," don't add anything.  In fact, they detract from
what might otherwise be a reasonable discussion of the issues
involved.  Such labels only remind us how shallow the thought
processes of the labeler are.

\john

>I know perfectly well the Republican are just as slimy as the Democrats,
>if not worse.

Of course we're just as slimy. But we ain't communists, whereas the Democrats
_are_ socialists.

    If it makes anyone feel any better, the U.S. Democrats are to the right
    of Canada's Conservatives.

>    If it makes anyone feel any better, the U.S. Democrats are to the right
>    of Canada's Conservatives.

???

You're doomed for sure, then.

    re: .503
    
    Your own brand of terminology, as explained in .503, can also be
    used to apply your pet term to the Democratic party.  There is little
    difference in the way the two parties are run.  
    
    I've got to hand it to you, though.  You really do go to great lengths
    to rationalize an untenable statement.
    
    
    -steve

    re: .509
    
    Not quite.  No one but the author of .503 is using the term
    "communist".
    
    
    -steve

    Let's settle this the easier way...
    
    Dems pick the pockets of the people for tactical reasons.  It has not
    solved any poverty problems and never will.
    
    Pubs pick the pockets of the people for strategic reasons.  Subsidies
    to large businesses.  Strengthens GNP and creates jobs.
    
    So we have blue collar welfare vs. white collar welfare.  Which one is
    more noble?  

	Jack, these jobs that are created....what is the salary? I know there
are a ton of jobs out there right now. But the salaries aren't going to take
too many people off of welfare.

    "Communists", "Socialists" etc, are just terms used by one elitist
    political organization to discredit the other, while turning the
    populas away from the real problems. We lash out at the political
    party's ideologies and at each other, while never identifying their
    underlying hoax of sacrificing us to them.

> But the salaries aren't going to take too many people off of welfare.

I wouldn't be too sure about that, Glen. The fact of the matter is that
there is money to be earned and advancement to be had by holding down
a job - any job. And that's what gets folks off welfare.

	You have a point there, Jack. I know when I got out of school I did a
crap job. But I got by. It helped me want to find something better. 

	But if a family has to survive on minimum wage, it might not work out
so well. 

	On a related story, my sister's divorce becomes final today. She gets
the trailor and the kids. She gets about $200/week take home. Her husband will
be giving her $600/month. Glad the cost of living isn't as high down there. If
she didn't have day care to pay for, it would be easier.


Glen

>        <<< Note 243.491 by CSLALL::HENDERSON "We shall behold Him!" >>>
>  I'm sure that's an isolated case and nothing to get too excited about.

Wanna bet?

Amongst the inlaws... he inherited some land, sold it for some 6 or 7 digit
figure, she (his 3rd wife) gambled it all away. He's been making ~$40k/year
for a long time.  Oh yah, she and her kids have been on welfare throughout
all of this. Her kids brag about it.

re: .514 (Steve)

Do you live in a vacuum or something?  Do you have any idea what
.503 is talking about?  Listen carefully: It's NOT about the
Republicans being communists.

If .503 is the only time you've seen the word "communist" in this
conference, you ought to get your connection checked; it's dropping
bits all over the floor.

\john

>Note 243.514
>ACISS2::LEECH "Dia do bheatha."
>
>    Not quite.  No one but the author of .503 is using the term
>    "communist".

	You are technically accurate for the welfare reform string but quite
wrong in you intent. I have NEVER gone into the Coward Communist Conservative
Party ( CCCP) string until AFTER being called a socialist liberal as part of a
conservative argument. ::DELBASO has used that as an argument over and over.
You know it!!

>Note 243.504
>MKOTS3::JMARTIN
>    Communism, from what I understand involves a centralist power base
>    where the outer fray of society, the people in this case, are dependant
>    upon the foundation of that power.

	Are you trying to support the definition of the
Coward Communist Conservative republican Party ( CCCP )?

>Note 243.513
>ACISS2::LEECH
>
>    Your own brand of terminology, as explained in .503, can also be
>    used to apply your pet term to the Democratic party.  There is little
>    difference in the way the two parties are run.


	I hope you aren't really trying to say that the Dems are united,
organized and following a central plan.  How many of them have switched to
the GOP since the last election?   Weren't you and the other Repubs bragging
about how centralized and organized that party is?  Are you saying the GOP
is LIBERAL?  No!  You know your not as does everybody else.

	There are MAJOR differences between the Dems and rePubs.  One of those
differences is where the ideas and decisions come from.  Today, Knewt and the
house leadership are taking the assault gun ban to the floor for a quick vote.
They want to avoid discussion.  They want to avoid modification.  They want
to pass this legislation as part of the payback to the NRA PAC.  That is NOT
DEMOCRACY!!   When Mayor Julianni (sp?) won the election, the RNC decided to
hold the convention this year in NYC.  However, when Julianni broke the 11th
commandment of the rePublican party, the convention was moved to a more loyal
district in Calif.  The specific examples of the central power of the GOP can
go on and on and on.  This does NOT exist in the DEMOCRATIC party.

	It may not be true that the GOP is communist, but the label fits
better to the GOP than the DEM.  As for being Conservative and Cowards, it is
true.

    re: .521 (John)
    
    Is your reading comprehension low today or something?  I said that
    "the author of .503" was the one bringing up the term communist in this
    string.  I doin't care if anyone has used it in the past, I am not
    responding to those notes, nor am I going down the path of a discussion
    on "labels".
    
    His use of "communist" was incorrect, and that is the only point I was
    attempting to make.  The broader issue is irrelevant to my point of
    contention.
    
    
    -steve   

    re: .522
    
    I see you have bought into Schumer's lies.   Sigh.

 Z   Jack, these jobs that are created....what is the salary? I know there
 Z   are a ton of jobs out there right now. But the salaries aren't going to
 Z   take too many people off of welfare.
    
    Glen, I deal with government contracts on a daily basis.  Much of the 
    equipment I sell goes to Lockheed Martin, Loral,
    Northrup, and other government primes.  These companies in turn resell
    or use equipment for government projects and the people I deal with ARE
    NOT minimum wage workers by any means.  I would conjecture that some of
    these projects are a waste of taxpayers money...but it is pork that is
    brought to the region by the likes of Phil Gram and actually even
    democrat Senators like Feinstein in California.  
    
    These White collar jobs are means for a local economy to survive.  If I
    had to choose between the two (white collar vs. blue collar welfare), I
    would much rather see more bang for the buck just as I'm sure anybody
    with common sense would.  
    
    -Jack

re: .522

	Who is Schumer?

re: .523 (Steve)

>    His use of "communist" was incorrect, and that is the only point I was
>    attempting to make.
Steve, it's as incorrect as it is when used as a synonym for "democrat."
Communist can be the policies, the party, the philosophy, the people,
the leaders.  "Comprehension" indeed.

>The broader issue is irrelevant to my point of contention.
Interesting way to phrase it.  I would have swapped halves:

    "My point of contention is irrelevant to the broader issue."

\john

    >	Who is Schumer?
    
     retiring slime-ball congressman from NY, HCI poster boy, liar
    extraordinaire, and King of Smarm.

Note 243.515
MKOTS3::JMARTIN

    Let's settle this the easier way...

>    Dems pick the pockets of the people for tactical reasons.  It has not
>
>    Pubs pick the pockets of the people for strategic reasons.  Subsidies
>    to large businesses.
>
>    So we have blue collar welfare vs. white collar welfare.  Which one is
>    more noble?

	Ok!  Here seems to be a fundamental truth.  The Republicans are the
party of the RICH, and the DEMOCRATS are the party of the common man.  I don't
believe that the Republican party elite would like to agree, but I think you
are correct.  Now we could discuss how cutting the tax rates for corporations
to move operations out of the USA is supposed to create jobs and how wasting
money on the local level for buying trivial stuff like food actually creates
jobs.

    Republicans are the party of those who are willing to work to improve
    themselves. 
    
    Democrats are the party of those who want the government to take from
    someone else to improve themselves.

    Mr Stacy:
    
    What I am pointing out is that the democrat party, while they may not
    be purely socialist, do have more socialist tendencies than the
    Republican party.  When I refer to the democrats as Socialist, YOU take
    it as a perjorative remark.  I am simply stating an observation.  Just
    so I can spell it out more clearly...
    
    		Republican  			Democrat
    
    Proposes:   More power to the states.	More power to the Federals
    		Educating locally		Educating nationally
    		Less regulation overall		More regulation overall
    		Self Empowerment		Fosters Dependence
    		Tendency to cut taxes	   	Tendency to Raise taxes
    		Market driven economy		Economy driven through
    						government intervention
    						(IRS Policies to penalize
    						and other democrat knowhow)
    		
    Any others anybody can think of, feel free.  I know there are alot
    more.
    
    By the way, why are the pubs cowards?
    
    

  ZZ  Ok!  Here seems to be a fundamental truth.  The Republicans are the
  ZZ  party of the RICH, and the DEMOCRATS are the party of the common man.
    
    Actually...fundamentally false.
    
    The democrats are equally rich as far as congress goes.  The entire
    cabinet is comprised of millionaires.  What would you rather have, an
    advocate who says he relates to you but doesn't, or an advocate who is
    rich and has the gumption to admit it?  I choose the former.
    
    Secondly, tax cuts are beneficial to the party of the common man.  Too
    many handouts stifle self empowerment.  Fostering dependency is heinous
    at best.
    
    -Jack

I think you meant "the latter", Jack.

    
    
      >  Ok!  Here seems to be a fundamental truth.  The Republicans are the
      >  party of the RICH, and the DEMOCRATS are the party of the common man.
    
    	A fine example of a lie repeated often enough....
    	As for democrats and the "common man"...no such thing in their
    	eyes as they prefer to classify all of us into neat little
    	sub-groups to be played against one another, all in the name
    	of inclusion of course.
    	

>The specific examples of the central power of the GOP can
>go on and on and on. This does NOT exist in the DEMOCRATIC party.

	Jack, what are the chances of you dealing with someone who was on
welfare without skills? If they would not be on the jobs you're talking about,
then you can't use them as an example. At least if you want to prove a point.


Glen

    Yes, this is true...but what I'm saying is in the overall picture,
    White collar welfare offers more benefits to the economy than does
    blue collar welfare.  
    
    -Jack

	Of those on welfare, what % could be white collar?

    
    	All of them, after generous amounts of Clorox in the machine.
    

    Probably a small percentage.  Blue collar welfare is distributed to
    people and although it takes care of them for a day, it produces no
    revenue or drives a person toward self reliance.  White collar welfare
    is actually given to corporate entities and is used to create unneeded
    jobs.  But at least it employs people and a good or service is being
    produced.
    
    -Jack

re: Note 243.515

        You said it I didn't.  Here seems to be a fundamental truth.  The
Republicans are the party to support the wishes of the RICH, and the DEMOCRATS
are the party to support the wishes of the common man.  I didn't believe that
the Republican party elite would like to agree, and I was right. I still think
you are correct this time :}

re: notes .476 (DELBALSO), .479 (KRAWIECKI) ,
          .481 (LEECH) and .483 (JMARTIN)

	Now, before we can figure out what to do to fix the system, we need to
understand the goals.  It is now clear that there is a fundamental position
that we do not all share.  Per notes .476 (DELBALSO), .479 (KRAWIECKI) , .481
(LEECH) and .483 (JMARTIN) it is clear that these conservatives would not only
like to throw the poor  out in the street but also out of the country.  Also,
based on the comments that lead up to these notes, it is also clear that the
BLOCK GRANTS is the method that they believe will accomplish their goals.  I
don't know if they would be willing to spend any of the savings to change the
inscription on the Statue Of Liberty.  My guess from those same notes is NO.
For reference the notes mentined above are appended below.

re: .454 GAAS::BRAUCHER

	It seems that you do not have much conservative support for your
position.   It also seems that Suzanne tells the TRUTH!

It is also clear from note .454 and the statements from the other
conservatives that Braucher is either out of the main stream of
conservativism or is a Liberal.  Braucher a liberal??

>Note 243.515
>MKOTS3::JMARTIN
>
>    Let's settle this the easier way...
>
>>    Dems pick the pockets of the people for tactical reasons.  It has not
>>
>>    Pubs pick the pockets of the people for strategic reasons.  Subsidies
>>    to large businesses.
>>
>>    So we have blue collar welfare vs. white collar welfare.  Which one is
>>    more noble?


>.454   GAAS::BRAUCHER
>
>>     working than not.  If you have a poor person with no skills who
>>     cannot support themselves and so DOESN'T work, and another poor
>>     person with no skills who cannot support themselves and washes
>>     dishes for $5/hour, any rational welfare system must see to it
>>     that the second is less poor than the first.  Assuming you aren't
>>     going to outright starve people, and nobody has advocated that
>>     even though Suzanne lies and said they did, you want a system of
>>     poor relief that does not disincent low wage work.
>>
>>      These local welfare reforms are overwhelmingly popular, and not all
>>     the states involved are governed by Republicans - see Vermont, for
>>     example.
>
>
>
>           <<< BACK40::BACK40$DKA500:[NOTES$LIBRARY]SOAPBOX.NOTE;1 >>>
>                         -< Soapbox.  Just Soapbox. >-
>================================================================================
>Note 243.471                     Welfare Reform.                      471 of 487
>MOLAR::DELBALSO "I (spade) my (dogface)"             13 lines  20-MAR-1996 14:24
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>re:                      <<< Note 243.470 by NICOLA::STACY >>>
>
>>	Does Gov Carrot also tell you how many people that were on welfare left
>>the state?
>
>What possible difference does that make? He has a responsibility to the
>taxpayers of the PRM to reduce the Welfare rolls/payouts. Whether he does
>it by getting people to work or to leave is totally immaterial. The reason
>we have such low welfare rolls in New Hampshire is because we don't provide
>much and therefore make it an unattractive place for trough-feeders to
>congregate. By your line of reasoning, that's something to be ashamed of.
>Typical, Jim.
>
>           <<< BACK40::BACK40$DKA500:[NOTES$LIBRARY]SOAPBOX.NOTE;1 >>>
>                          -< Soapbox.  Just Soapbox. >-
>================================================================================
>Note 243.476                     Welfare Reform.                      476 of 487
>MOLAR::DELBALSO "I (spade) my (dogface)"             12 lines  20-MAR-1996 15:43
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Ah, Jim, yer a treasure, fer sure.
>
>You remind me of a conversation I had in here with another PRM liberal
>socialist several years ago who was trying to tell me that the State
>of New Hampshire was in the wrong for providing such stingy welfare
>bennies, because the end result was that all the trough-feeders migrated
>south to the PRM. He just couldn't get it into his head that the voters
>in the PRM had every right to do exactly what Weld finally did to force
>the trough-feeders someplace else.
>
>I'll wear my shame in honor, thanks.
>
>           <<< BACK40::BACK40$DKA500:[NOTES$LIBRARY]SOAPBOX.NOTE;1 >>>
>                          -< Soapbox.  Just Soapbox. >-
>================================================================================
>Note 243.479                     Welfare Reform.                      479 of 487
>SOLVIT::KRAWIECKI "Lord of the Turnip Truck"         12 lines  20-MAR-1996 15:58
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>    re: .477
>
>    >conservative comunist republican.
>
>
>    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA!!!!
>
>
>     Count me in with Lucky Jack!! We'll wear the badges, while you get
>    your pockets picked!!  Deal???
>
>           <<< BACK40::BACK40$DKA500:[NOTES$LIBRARY]SOAPBOX.NOTE;1 >>>
>                          -< Soapbox.  Just Soapbox. >-
>================================================================================
>Note 243.481                     Welfare Reform.                      481 of 487
>ACISS2::LEECH "Dia do bheatha."                        1 line  20-MAR-1996 16:03
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>    Hey! Can we send our welfare cases packing to the PRM, too?   8^)
>           <<< BACK40::BACK40$DKA500:[NOTES$LIBRARY]SOAPBOX.NOTE;1 >>>
>                          -< Soapbox.  Just Soapbox. >-
>================================================================================
>Note 243.483                     Welfare Reform.                      483 of 487
>MKOTS3::JMARTIN "Madison...5'2'' 95 lbs."             5 lines  20-MAR-1996 16:15
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>    I'll never forget the signs at the Panama Airport...
>
>    "Go to Massachusetts....Free Money!"
>
>    You sap....you gullible sap you....
>           <<< BACK40::BACK40$DKA500:[NOTES$LIBRARY]SOAPBOX.NOTE;1 >>>
>                          -< Soapbox.  Just Soapbox. >-
>================================================================================
>Note 243.484                     Welfare Reform.                      484 of 487
>ACISS2::LEECH "Dia do bheatha."                      30 lines  20-MAR-1996 16:41
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>    re: a few back
>
>
>    Yeah, the conservatives should just get out the way, so government can
>    control the tidbits that aren't currently in its grasp.  I don't think
>    so.
>
>    Sorry some welfare payments do not meet your approval, though.  Maybe
>    if we raise taxes another 5%, we can insure that these poor welfare
>    victims can have new cars, complete with cellular phone (for safety, of
>    course).  That would be very kind and charitable, wouldn't it?  Of
>    course, the rest of us fools who still work, will struggle to put food
>    on the table, but that is a small price to pay for insuring our poor
>    are adequately taken care of, right?
>
>    The problem with the liberal brand of compassion is that it knows not
>    where to draw the line.  It is always more compassionate to toss more
>    money at a problem, even when experience tells us that this is not
>    fixing anything.
>
>    On another note, I do wish you'd quit misusing the term "communist" in
>    your name calling.  The republican platform may seem greedy to you (amoung
>    the other adjectives you like to use), but it cannot possibly be construed
>    as "communist".  Your own mantra is much closer to communism than anything
>    the Republicans have put to paper.
>
>    Do us all a favor and look this term up in the dictionary.  Thanks.
>
>

re: .509

	John, you were correct in your note and I just wanted to let you know
that.

    re: .541
    
    What is "clear" is that you have no understanding of conservativism.
    What is "clear" is that you do not understand the notes you reposted.
    
    So tell me, how is it clear that I (or any of the conservatives in the
    box) am wanting to throw welfare families into the street, or out of
    the country.  All the conservative notes in this string seem to be
    saying basically the same thing..."quit throwing MORE AND MORE of our
    tax $$ into failed programs".   No one has yet suggested, or inferred,
    that we should toss welfare folk into the street.
    
    
    -steve

>             <<< Note 243.543 by ACISS2::LEECH "Dia do bheatha." >>>

>    No one has yet suggested, or inferred,
>    that we should toss welfare folk into the street.

	bzzzt.  at least one person has inferred it.

	

    Am I confusing you?  I'm sorry...we're on different planes here.
    
    To clarify, I said the pubs espouse to white collar welfare...or,
    corporate America...THE VERY BACKBONE OF QUALITY LIVING for the common
    person.  No job...no money...no money...little prospects of a quality
    life if that is what one is after.  Therefore, I submit to you that the
    republicans are helping to provide YOU a means to create and make your
    destiny.
    
    So you are wrong, the pubs are FOR the commoner...via the private
    sector.  The dems are offering a hollow shell because it produces
    zilch.
    
    -Jack  

| <<< Note 243.540 by MKOTS3::JMARTIN "Madison...5'2'' 95 lbs." >>>

| Probably a small percentage.  

	Exactly. So it does not deal with the majority of the welfare issues.


Glen

    
      um, Stacy, if I could make a suggestion ?  I know you think I'm
     saying this because of your views, but I don't think I am, because
     I've done this with people I agree with as well.  It can be true of
     notes by anybody, of any views.
    
      Your notes give the appearance that you are not interested in
     exchanging thoughts.  Perhaps you ARE actually interested in others,
     but the appearance is that you are not, for several quite specific
     reasons.  And because of that, you aren't very convincing, and will
     not change anybody's views here.  This is NOT because of what you say,
     it's HOW you say it.  Specifically :
    
      (1) You put far too many things, spattered machine-gun like, into
     one reply for anybody to respond.  Shorter, more focused replies
     work better.
    
      (2) You engage in far too much handwaving, and don't present any
     real data, quotations, or sources for what you say.  It amounts
     to calling people names.  I never saw anybody of any views convinced
     of anything by being called a name.
    
      (3) You bait people, and they fall for it at first (as I did here),
     by firing off angry replies they don't actually mean, and wouldn't
     have said if they weren't so angry at your insults.  Then when they've
     made a mistake, you leap on it and hound them for it till they leave
     the topic.
    
      (4) Never once, when challenged on any statement, have I ever heard
     you admit you were wrong, even though you were called on it and
     given sources.  One gets the impression you don't actually know
     how Welfare is (and has been) administered here in the US, don't
     know what the various state and federal proposals actually contain,
     don't know, or care, about the RESULTS, but only about which political
     party wins elections.  But elections are ephemeral - in the long run,
     both parties get their turns.  What matters is the details of how
     our country is run, and that will always be a mixture of proposals
     from various quarters.
    
      (5)  You never respond to a point.  Repeatedly, people have asked
     for what you think should be done, and you always duck.  You did
     this over in the HMO note, as well.  Here, the point was raised
     by lots of people, that a sifn of "goodness" in poor laws was the
     presence of some form of "work".  This is an important point even
     if you disagree with it.  But you never actually respond to points
     raised, but race on to some gross analysis of the orientations of
     the parties, which isn't even relevant to the topic.
    
      For the above reasons, your notes become so tedious, fewer and
     fewer people are willing to make the effort to respond, so as the
     interest flags, you step up your level of hyperbole, till it just
     gets childish-looking.  A better approach, if you really want to
     criticize (for example) the Weld plan, would be to first, find out
     what it does and know the facts both pro and con, and then make a
     careful reasoned arguement about a specific provision.  You would
     then know that the Weld plan has, for example, a specific defined
     and limited childcare benefit for recipients who work, that the
     work requirement starts when the youngest child reaches a certain
     age, that eligibility runs out after a specific period.  If I felt
     that you actually knew the benefit, the age, and the period, it
     would make a meaningful discussion appear to be possible.  As it is,
     I get the impression the discussion is pointless.
    
      bb 

Jack,

The fact that he's ignored .531 is no coincidence....

daryll

    Glen:
    
    Well, you're right...it doesn't solve the tactical problems of feeding
    children who need food today.  
    
    Somehow there has to be a concensus that welfare in its current state
    is not good as a whole and needs to be gutted and rebuilt into a
    workable program.  It also needs to be understood that welfare IS NOT
    an entitlement, it is NOT required under the constitution in its
    current form and that anybody on welfare should be trying above all
    things to get off of it.  Unfortunately, many on welfare feel this way
    but are getting a bad rap because of the abusers.
    
    

	Jack, they would be right, too. 

	Welfare does need to be reformed. If it is done in a reasonable manner,
then fine. Workfare would be good due to training. How can you go wrong?


Glen

    re: .544
    
    In this recent string?  Where?

    Glen:
    
    One stipulation....the Federal government should have a very minimal
    role in it!
    
    

>    In this recent string?  Where?

	stevie, baby, don't mind me - i was just being pedantic.
	"speaker implies/listener infers" thing.  you know.

    Oh, nevermind then. 

	Jack, I know you got this thing about the government..... but who is
asking the big dig $$$$ flow to be stopped? Massachusetts? Nope. The gov.....
Fed money left in the hands of the state do not mean that waste won't happen.
And remember, Weld is a repub.....


Glen

Glenn, I'm sure you have a point, but what is it?

| <<< Note 243.557 by BRITE::FYFE "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without." >>>


| Glenn, I'm sure you have a point, but what is it?

	Richardson is being dragged into EVERYTHING! :-)

	The point is simple. State run does not mean that it will be good. If
Federal money comes into play, then they should have a say in what is done. The
harbor tunnel is a good example at a state running something that has gone over
budget 11 fold. (1 billion to 11 billion...so far) And that is with a repub
governer. 



Glen

 
Oh, I was unaware that the Big_Dig == harbor_tunnel ...

	Maybe I should have said big waste.... :-)

>Note 243.547
>GAAS::BRAUCHER

	Mr. Braucher.  When I read this topic I hope to learn something and
sometimes I do. I helped with some of the poor in Indiana and learned about
how a state can really abuse a system.  There are a lot of things about
Welfare that I do not know.   There are also a few things I do know.


	In this note topic, I have responded when the numbers were something I
did know.  I've attempted to stop the labeling and get to the subject.  I even
take the caustic edges off my notes.  In response I get called a socialist,
told of democrat spies, told what I "really think" ...


	With respect to the rest of your note, I'll try to keep it short by
not responding to each issue.  I do try to think about a response before I
make it so they are not really fast.  I agree with getting people off welfare
and into gainfull employment.  With reguard to the HMO note, I spent several
hours going through notes and articles last night to try to find the information
I SAID I WOULD LOOK for.  I will continue the hunt this weekend.  I didn't start
even reading this conference until about 4 weeks ago and didn't expect that I
would need them.

>							I didn't start
>even reading this conference until about 4 weeks ago and didn't expect that I
>would need them.


SURPRISE!!!!

re: .562

	Truely a surprise!!  I've articals that have been around for more than
10 years.  I recently started tossing em out since I never used em.  

    
      Well, actually, I know NOTHING about poor laws in Indiana.  When
     was this ?  Who was governor and ran the legislature ?  I was very
     surprised when I drove through it to discover that it seemed to be
     largely farms.  I also discovered that the Time Line is messed up
     there.  One town was an hour behind the other.
    
      I DO know something about welfare in Massachusetts, but not
     everything.  The new plan, although closely associated with Weld,
     would not have happened, in fact, without considerable support
     among Democrats here.  It is hardly punitive as reform plans go.
     For example, Weld just a few days ago extended the childcare benefit
     to the 200 women who did NOT go to work, but got accepted to 4-year
     colleges instead.  Basically, the administration decided that was
     good enough.
    
      Welfare is, in the worst cases, intractable.  You have people who
     are marginally disabled, or special situations of various types.
     As long as the emphasis is on work wherever possible, and the
     government constantly moves in that direction, it will be better
     for everybody, and maybe eventually we'll save money.  The one pattern
     that we just have to break for good is the single teenage mother
     living alone with no means of support, so the state subsidizes her
     in a project, and gives her food stamps and a check.  This is a
     disaster - what happens isn't pretty, and is well documented.
    
      By the way, you get only partial payment for childcare, you are
     exempt from the work requirement with kids below 6, and the time
     limit to find work is 18 months.
    
      bb
    

>In response I get called a socialist,
>told of democrat spies, told what I "really think" ...

If you look back I think you'll notice that this was in response to the broad
brush and (apparant to some) erroneous information that you post without 
giving any consideration to other information that had been presented in 
contrast to your views.

It's difficult to give any such responses with any amount serious contemplation.

Welcome to Soapbox.

Doug.

>			It is now clear that there is a fundamental position
>that we do not all share.  Per notes .476 (DELBALSO), .479 (KRAWIECKI) , .481
>(LEECH) and .483 (JMARTIN) it is clear that these conservatives would not only
>like to throw the poor  out in the street but also out of the country.  Also,
>based on the comments that lead up to these notes, it is also clear that the
>BLOCK GRANTS is the method that they believe will accomplish their goals.

No. You've got it wrong again, Jim. Or is it, "still"? I didn't say anything
about throwing them out of the country (although I'm not opposed to that
philosophy, necessarily, if you'd like to propose it :^). What I said was
that it's reasonable and desireable for a State to limit what they provide
in terms of welfare bennies. If, as a result of that, the trough-feeders
choose to move on to better pastures, of their own volition, mind you, no
one is "throwing them" anywhere, then so be it. That's their choice, to go 
where they can most easily suck the public teat. You were the one who twisted
that into a conservative plan to remove them from the country.

And as far as block grants go, you haven't been reading very closely. I'm
adamantly opposed both to the concept of block grants, and the concept of
giving the money to the Feds by which to provide block grants. The money 
should be kept in the states to begin with to be used as the people of
the state see fit. Likewise the town, and county. I've said at least a sagan
of times in here that this entire notion of paying federal taxes so that
Washington can give them back is utter madness.

It is you, and the rest of your liberal socialist cohorts who desire to
pick the pockets of the producers and then decide how to spend their money
on your own pet programs.

>Note 243.564                     Welfare Reform.
>GAAS::BRAUCHER "Welcome to Paradise"
>
>      Well, actually, I know NOTHING about poor laws in Indiana.  When
>     was this ?  Who was governor and ran the legislature ?  I was very


	My experience with the welfare system of Indiana was in the early
80's.  I hope it has changed since then but know nothing of how it is run
today.  The system was an old one and I do not know who or when it was
initiated.   The money for welfare was collected at the state and federal
levels.  The funds were distributed by locally elected officials called
"Trustees".  The money to the poor was augmented by local charities and
church groups.  The local charities and church groups is where I was involved.


	The "Trustiees" were elected officials.  The checks on these people
were the elections.  They decided who, when, how and how much was needed to
help  the poor and how it was to be distributed.  There was a great deal of
corruption that existed in this particular system because of the lack of
accountability except by voting.  One trustee required that people show up at
his house at a specific time, not early, not late.  And then they were met
by mean dog guarding the yard.  Again, if they were late, they got no
assistance.  Other "Trustees" were found to be giving assistance to friends
and neighbors who didn't need the money but did vote.  Since the standards
were so loose, it meant that how assistance was done in Gary was considerably
different than in Mill Creek or Peru.


	The local charities and churches augmented the trustee system.
However, the local organizations found that there were some people who would
go from charity to charity and get far more than their fair share.  The
result was that they banned together into a single reliefe outlet that all
the charities contributed to.  There were still problems, but not as many.
The outlet also began acting as advocates for those in need and supporting
their attempts to get aid from the limited funds the "Trustees" had.


	I did get one very important lesson from this time.  There are 4
things that everybody needs to get off public assistance. One is an address
and another is a phone.  These don't have to be where they  are staying, but
it does need to be a place they can be reached at.  Then they need a shower or
bath.  Can you imagine going for an interview or your first week of work
without cleaning up.  And they need a clean change of clothes.  Anybody that
recomends any changes to aid that cut the availability of these 4 things will
only make things worse in  the long term.

re: .565

	If you look back, I believe you'll find I wasn't involved in the
exchange until after the "spies" and all comments.  I think you had better look
back on the notes that I have put in.  I only respond harshly AFTER being
attacked.

>	If you look back, I believe you'll find I wasn't involved in the
>exchange until after the "spies" and all comments.  I think you had better look
>back on the notes that I have put in.  I only respond harshly AFTER being
>attacked.

Well, I looked back - all the way to Mar 7 (the first Stacy entry in 
this string).

What I found were statements containing "heritic foundation" and accusations
of the conservatives being the root cause of all that is bad with the welfare
system (as you view it).

You're generic response to any information provided that contradicts your
position/belief has been to trash the conservatives and mis-represent
their positions/beliefs.

You've been disagreeing, not discussing. The results are predictable (especially
in the 'box)

Yup, I'd say you were throwing your fair share of fuel on the fire ...

Doug.

from alt.support.foster-parents:

Subject: Frustrated with the system

Hi.  I am new to foster parenting and to this board, but I am so glad that
I found it and you all.  I am struggling right now, and could use some
insight.  We are fostering a 20mo who was removed from her home for
sub-stand. housing, (I can only imagine!), med. neglect, (the child has a
lot of special needs that mom couldn't meet for financial reasons), and
suspected abuse (SCF was called in by a physician whom boyfriend took the
baby to after he "discovered" mysterious bruises on her face, head and
thighs).  It took three months for this case to finally be heard in court
and their verdict was (as the boyfriend bolted after he took the baby to
the MD), was that there was no evidence that mom, who was at work when the
 shelter order took place, had ever injured her baby, and in fact a lot of
people spoke up for her mothering ability.  The court ordered fast track
reunification.  It's been 3 weeks now, and baby is spending 1/2 the week
w/us, 1/2 with mom.  I see that it is difficult on the baby, and wish that
the process would complete.  It is also emotionally difficult for us, too,
as we attach/detach, never knowing if today is the day she will really go
home.  (I have 2 kids under 7yo myself, and this is impacting all of us in
this enlarged extended family.  My concern now is that the caseworkers
seem to be creating a catch 22 for mom.  They won't release the baby to
her until she has stable - not transitory - housing.  She is a teenager
who was court ordered back to school, so there is really no way she can
support herself without AFDC.  However, she can't get AFDC until she gets
the baby back, which she can't do until she gets a home.  We asked the
case worker if she could stay with us until she gets the AFDC, and he
said, No, that would be transitory, and they need to see how she's living
before they return the baby. . .
I'm not saying that mom is the ultimate great mother, but I see the love
she and her baby have for each other, and I see her trying to jump through
all the hoops.  Family of origin is not a good source of support, and live
out of state; she's really trying to do this on her own (and the
caseworker  supports her decision after meeting the bio. family).
However, something has to happen here. . .this stalemate is having
negative impacts all the way around.
Besides improving my boundaries, does anyone have any suggestions on how
to cope with this?
Thanks.  God Bless.

>Note 243.531                     Welfare Reform.                      531 of 569
>MKOTS3::JMARTIN "Madison...5'2'' 95 lbs."            26 lines  22-MAR-1996 11:16
>
>    What I am pointing out is that the democrat party, while they may not
>    be purely socialist, do have more socialist tendencies than the
>    Republican party.  When I refer to the democrats as Socialist, YOU take
>    it as a perjorative remark.  I am simply stating an observation.  Just
>    so I can spell it out more clearly...
>
>    		Republican  			Democrat
>
>    Proposes:   More power to the states.	More power to the Federals

I'll agree in general.  However, they have increased the federal roles in our
personal lives.  Per recent legislation giving the branches of government,
other than the ATF, the OK to do illegal searches.  Also, the RICO (sp?) and
the obscenity laws.  There are some things that are better done at a federal
level.

>    		Educating locally		Educating nationally

I'll disagree but plead ignorance on the specifics of this stance.  I
don't know of any democrat recomending more than certain federal guidlines
mostly along testing, and of funding aid for specific programs.  The
republicans want us to start praying in school.

>    		Less regulation overall		More regulation overall

No agreement here.  The democrats do tend to regulate industries more than
people.  They tend to do this because there is a broad impact on the lives
of more people from what the industry does.  As an example: Humans can not
live if the air is polluted, so regulate the companies that pollute the air.
The republicans tend to regulate people more than buisness.  I haven't got
a clue why or what the benifit is.

>    		Self Empowerment		Fosters Dependence

No agreement again.  Unless you mean something else, fend for youself with
no support is not self empowerment.  Giving aid for periods of time does
not foster dependence any more than we are all dependent on each other for
the continuation of our society.  Yes, I know some of the programs need
repair work, but some of them do pretty good.  I went through school on
loans, paid them back directly, and paid many times more in taxes.

>    		Tendency to cut taxes	   	Tendency to Raise taxes

YEP, I'll agree.  However, the republicans have a history of running up the
charge card at the same time or of shortchanging the infrastructure needed
for growth.  Also, the tax cuts go mainly to the few or the corporate.

>    		Market driven economy		Economy driven through
>    						government intervention
>    						(IRS Policies to penalize
>    						and other democrat knowhow)

NOPE!  Corporate welfare defeats that assertion.  I'll agree that the Dems do
get involved.  That is why GM, Intel and Fed Ex, among other companies, exist
today.

Here is a few I'll list:

		Tendancy to accumulate debt	Tendancy to pay for programs

		Personal Conformity		Personal Choice

		Market driven economy with	Market driven economy with
		uncontrolled aid to corps.	aid in infrastructure and
						startups.

> There are some things that are better done at a federal level.

Hardly. Aside from protecting us from foreign agression and setting foreign
policy (most aspects of dealing with other countries), there is almost nothing
that can be done better at the federal level, and very little that should
be done there.

>Here is a few I'll list:
>
>		Tendancy to accumulate debt	Tendancy to pay for programs

Liberals don't have _ANY_ history of paying for programs other than through
increased taxation or debt growth. Don't delude yourself. To hear you tell
it, the democrats have held bakesales to pay for the non-Great Society.

re: .571

Geez!  I agree with you on the tax issue and you make it sound like I didn't.
	I am a little hungry though.  I could use a cookie with a liberal amount
	of chocolate chips.

	LJ, I don't think the states do any better with the money. I think we
should just keep the tax money for ourselves. :-)

>I'll disagree but plead ignorance on the specifics of this stance.  I
>don't know of any democrat recomending more than certain federal guidlines
>mostly along testing, and of funding aid for specific programs.  The
>republicans want us to start praying in school.

    The federal government manipulates the local school systems by
    providing money for programs, then threatening to take that money
    away if the programs aren't expanded, then threaten again if certain
    guidelines aren't followed, and on and on ... Certainly sounds
    like the dependancy cycle mentioned earlier. 
    
    As for prayer in school, all they are saying is that it is not
    unconstitutional to allow it, and it should be an option.
    It's an attempt to correct the mis-interpretation of separation
    of church and state. Let me know when you see a federal bill 
    mandating prayer in school.
    
    
>    		Tendency to cut taxes	   	Tendency to Raise taxes

>YEP, I'll agree.  However, the republicans have a history of running up the
>charge card at the same time or of shortchanging the infrastructure needed
>for growth.  Also, the tax cuts go mainly to the few or the corporate.

    If you check your history books you'll find that the dems are quite
    capable of running up the debt and the repubs are quite capable
    of investing in infrastructure. If you're talking about the eighties
    in particular, please note that the dems reneged on their commitment
    to cut spending (with the speaker of the house stating publicly that
    no spending cuts would occur unless that money was put to new/other
    government programs) which is why the debt grew so quickly. Both
    sides are to blame.
    
    Doug.

    Welfare must be eliminated because it creates an underprivileged
    class. The underprivileged class today exists for two reasons: 1) The
    economy offers us a fraction of the wealth we could all enjoy,
    and 2) big government and its messenger, the liberal media,
    survive via an underprivileged class. You see, only through an
    underprivileged class can big government build a big welfare
    state. Big government needs a big welfare state to regulate the
    economy. Indeed, a big underprivileged class is big business for
    big government. With its messenger, the liberal media, big
    government convinces young black minds, for instance, of a life
    doomed to victimization. That belief in victimization hardens as
    the innocent child grows into a young adult, and that belief
    eventually convinces him he is a victim of racism. The
    underprivileged today not only have limited access to advantages,
    but limiting beliefs. Indeed, they are captors of their
    neighborhoods as well as their own brainwashed minds, as Malcolm
    X tried to tell them. Racism, real or perceived, will go away
    when big government goes away. Until then, the underprivileged
    class is really a slave class to big government.