Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread

[Owlman]

So basically nobdy blieves that Hack, who shops at a bargan grocery store, sees people using food stamps every time he goes to the grocery store.

That's not what he said. Details, details, details.

[crashcourse]

I'm just glad a lot of those peeps with food stamps have flat screen TV's, cell phones with all the gadgets, 150 cable tv channels, and gaming systems

be that as it may I don't have a problem supporting 5-10% of america. I'm having a problem watching the top 2% continue to amass a greater proportion of the wealth every year.

The middle class enemy is not supporting the poor its the rich

[TheBigMook]

A friend of mine's mother was on every sort of federal assistance including food stamps. They did not live extravagently, even though she was also supplementing her welfare by working off the books as a cleaning lady and sealing drive ways and small parking lots, and most likely stealing from the coffers of the cub scout troop she was den mother for. She also voted and canvassed for every Republican there was. Using Hack's process, I can discern that all welfare recipients are cheating asshole morons.

Of course, when I was young my family was on government assistance too (not sure if we were on food stamps or not, but we definitely went to dental clinics, health clinics, definitely had bricks of government cheese once, etc.) But as the older kids went off to college and moved out combined with my dad going from a journeyman carpenter working on site to business agent for his union we were solidly middle class by the time I graduated high school. So I guess all people on government assistance are just hard working folks that need a little help so that there kids don't have to die from diseases that there are vaccines for.

I don't know its so confusing. Wait, I know, I can use my brain and realize that annecdotal evidence is worth shit. Whew, that was a close one, my head nearly exploded.

[bluetick]

So basically nobdy blieves that Hack, who shops at a bargan grocery store, sees people using food stamps every time he goes to the grocery store.

Why is that hard to believe?

It's not hard to believe. It may be hard to swallow, but it's not hard to believe.

Heh. Wrong diagnosis, BOJ.

Hack made the announcement that nearly everybody at his grocery store was using food stamps..and unlike himself, buying top brands. On it's face it seemed like sort of a callous assessment of the people he lived among and shopped with.

It took AA to flush out the tidy detail that Hack was intentionally by-passing the stores catering to his neighbors.. in favor of the store that caters to people in serious need of thrift. That bit of context would have been useful in the beginning. "I went to the thrift store and it seemed like nearly everybody was using a food stamp card." My own reaction to that would have been "No shit, Clouseau."

Any-aways. We're all on the same page now.

[TheBigMook]

heh

[Owlman]

I don't mind protests, but I hate protests that involve assault and/or battery or that target the children and their schools

Here is an attack against Murdoch today (HOW he got in doesn't make any sense). But the main thing I like is the wife. That would have been my wife going to kick ass

[youtube]VG5Xr6t6zBU[/youtube]

[Jungle Rat]

Crazy Brits.

[Jungle Rat]

Reminded me of this and why I laugh at all you politic junkies.

Hacks wife?

[youtube]o5RDwnoIOvI[/youtube]

[Professor Tiger]

If you were really poor or working class you'd be a democrat.

That is bullllshit

Show me a traditional blue blood country club Republican Party (not Tea Party) rally and I'll show you a group with <1% poor people. And any working class people there are probably chauffers.

[AlabamAlum]

So basically nobdy blieves that Hack, who shops at a bargan grocery store, sees people using food stamps every time he goes to the grocery store.

Why is that hard to believe?

It's not hard to believe. It may be hard to swallow, but it's not hard to believe.

Heh. Wrong diagnosis, BOJ.

Hack made the announcement that nearly everybody at his grocery store was using food stamps..and unlike himself, buying top brands. On it's face it seemed like sort of a callous assessment of the people he lived among and shopped with.

It took AA to flush out the tidy detail that Hack was intentionally by-passing the stores catering to his neighbors.. in favor of the store that caters to people in serious need of thrift. That bit of context would have been useful in the beginning. "I went to the thrift store and it seemed like nearly everybody was using a food stamp card." My own reaction to that would have been "No shit, Clouseau."

Any-aways. We're all on the same page now.

I do not want to defend Hack. And he probably asked for some of it being stubborn and protesting everyone's correction, but I would have never called him on his welfare claim. It read like straight hyperbole, like when someone says, "every girl under 30 has a belly-button ring and a tramp stamp" or "All politicians are felons and liars" (well, that last one may be a bad example).

To call him on that bit of hyperbolic rhetoric was poor form. It teetered too close to pedantry, IMO.

On the other hand, Hack not clarifying or saying someone to the effect of, "It was a bit of hyperbole, Neidermyer" was poor form too.

In the end, two poor forms make the endless bludgeoning of a dead equine okay, I suppose.

[Toemeesleather]

Coca-Cola Co.'s income rose 18 percent in the second quarter on stronger sales overseas. The world's largest beverage maker raised some prices to offset higher ingredient costs. Coca-Cola's stock was up more than 3 percent.


Woohoooo! KO was my first direct stock purchase in Sept 1987....thirty days before Black Monday, when it lost 25% of it's value.....Effective purchase price then was about $4.50/share...fixin' to bust $70.


4 More Yearzzz!!

[Professor Tiger]

On the other hand, Hack not clarifying or saying someone to the effect of, "It was a bit of hyperbole, Neidermyer" was poor form too.

[bluetick]

So basically nobdy blieves that Hack, who shops at a bargan grocery store, sees people using food stamps every time he goes to the grocery store.

Why is that hard to believe?

It's not hard to believe. It may be hard to swallow, but it's not hard to believe.

Heh. Wrong diagnosis, BOJ.

Hack made the announcement that nearly everybody at his grocery store was using food stamps..and unlike himself, buying top brands. On it's face it seemed like sort of a callous assessment of the people he lived among and shopped with.

It took AA to flush out the tidy detail that Hack was intentionally by-passing the stores catering to his neighbors.. in favor of the store that caters to people in serious need of thrift. That bit of context would have been useful in the beginning. "I went to the thrift store and it seemed like nearly everybody was using a food stamp card." My own reaction to that would have been "No shit, Clouseau."

Any-aways. We're all on the same page now.

I do not want to defend Hack. And he probably asked for some of it being stubborn and protesting everyone's correction, but I would have never called him on his welfare claim. It read like straight hyperbole, like when someone says, "every girl under 30 has a belly-button ring and a tramp stamp" or "All politicians are felons and liars" (well, that last one may be a bad example).

To call him on that bit of hyperbolic rhetoric was poor form. It teetered too close to pedantry, IMO.

On the other hand, Hack not clarifying or saying someone to the effect of, "It was a bit of hyperbole, Neidermyer" was poor form too.

In the end, two poor forms make the endless bludgeoning of a dead equine okay, I suppose.

Not sure what you're on about. There was no hyperbole. "Nearly everyone" was probably accurate enough.

The crux of the matter came down to locale.

[AlabamAlum]

So, if locale, he was right (but sneaky right) and if it's his local store, it's hyperbole? Okay.

What I'm 'on about' is that this exchange wasn't needed - i.e., it is a touch pedantic to call someone out on those statements made informally on a message board when the average reader (me) assumes rhetoric.

No doubt Hack is wrong many (MANY) times, but I've never known him (or you, for that matter) to lie. Will either of you misstate an argument? Yes. Build giant strawmen? Of course. Only answer the questions that suit your bent? Absolutely. Out-and-out lie? Nah. In fact, I don't know who will draw more umbrage with this statement, but I consider you the left-leaning Hack (or Hack is the right-leaning Tick - take your pick. Plus, you both are devout supporters of Satan's team).

[Professor Tiger]

You consider "Satan's team" to be Tennessee, not Auburn?

I'm hurt.

[AlabamAlum]

Tennessee is Satan's team. Auburn is Satan's little brother. LSU is Satan's cousin. Ole Miss is Satan's retarded nephew that wears a bicycle helmet indoors.

[puterbac]

If you were really poor or working class you'd be a democrat.

That is bullllshit

Show me a traditional blue blood country club Republican Party (not Tea Party) rally and I'll show you a group with <1% poor people. And any working class people there are probably chauffers.

I've been to one political rally in my life and that was an NRA rally in knoxville with lapierre and Heston talking in 2000

Plenty of working class folks everywhere.

[innocentbystander]

what bothers me about the food stamps and section-8 housing isn't that we have these safety nets. this is the price we pay to have a humane, Christian, civilized society. and it isn't even the people who use the benefits when they shouldn't (like the example given to us about the fat lady with the food stamps and the Escalade.) what bothers me is that for so many that are using the benefits, so few seem to get off of them.

For too many people, section-8 and food stamps lasts forever. It wasn't always that way. We've had public housing for more than 150 years, yes before the Civil War. This sustained, multi-generational lifestyle on the public trough has only been the status-quo for the last 50 years or so. Megan McCardle seems to think this was because we added single moms to the safety net.

http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/005244.html

To sketch a brief history of welfare, it emerged in the nineteenth century as "Widows and orphans pensions", which were paid by the state to destitute families whose breadwinner had passed away. They were often not available to blacks; they were never available to unwed mothers. Though public services expanded in the first half of the twentieth century, that mentality was very much the same: public services were about supporting unfortunate families, not unwed mothers. Unwed mothers could not, in most cases, obtain welfare; they were not allowed in public housing (which was supposed to be--and was--a way station for young, struggling families on the way to home ownership, not a permanent abode); they were otherwise discriminated against by social services. The help you could expect from society was a home for wayward girls, in which you would give birth and then put the baby up for adoption.

The description of public housing in the fifties is shocking to anyone who's spent any time in modern public housing. Big item on the agenda at the tenant's meeting: housewives, don't shake your dust cloths out of the windows--other wives don't want your dirt in their apartment! Men, if you wear heavy work boots, please don't walk on the lawns until you can change into lighter shoes, as it damages the grass! (Descriptions taken from the invaluable book, The Inheritance, about the transition of the white working class from Democrat to Republican.) Needless to say, if those same housing projects could today find a majority of tenants who reliably dusted, or worked, they would be thrilled.

Public housing was, in short, a place full of functioning families.

Now, in the late fifties, a debate began over whether to extend benefits to the unmarried. It was unfair to stigmatize unwed mothers. Why shouldn't they be able to avail themselves of the benefits available to other citizens? The brutal societal prejudice against illegitimacy was old fashioned, bigoted, irrational.

But if you give unmarried mothers money, said the critics, you will get more unmarried mothers.

Ridiculous, said the proponents of the change. Being an unmarried mother is a brutal, thankless task. What kind of idiot would have a baby out of wedlock just because the state was willing to give her paltry welfare benefits?

People do all sorts of idiotic things, said the critics. If you pay for something, you usually get more of it.

C'mon said the activists. That's just silly. I just can't imagine anyone deciding to get pregnant out of wedlock simply because there are welfare benefits available.

Oooops.

Of course, change didn't happen overnight. But the marginal cases did have children out of wedlock, which made it more acceptable for the next marginal case to do so. Meanwhile, women who wanted to get married essentially found themselves in competition for young men with women who were willing to have sex, and bear children, without forcing the men to take any responsibility. This is a pretty attractive proposition for most young men. So despite the fact that the sixties brought us the biggest advance in birth control ever, illegitimacy exploded. In the early 1960s, a black illegitimacy rate of roughly 25 percent caused Daniel Patrick Moynihan to write a tract warning of a crisis in "the negro family" (a tract for which he was eviscerated by many of those selfsame activists.)

By 1990, that rate was over 70 percent. This, despite the fact that the inner city, where the illegitimacy problem was biggest, only accounts for a fraction of the black population.

But in that inner city, marriage had been destroyed. It had literally ceased to exist in any meaningful way. Possibly one of the most moving moments in Jason de Parle's absolutely wonderful book, American Dream, which follows three welfare mothers through welfare reform, is when he reveals that none of these three women, all in their late thirties, had ever been to a wedding.

I really wish our children spent some real time being taught basic Civics because they might understand these things. We forget the mistakes we have made in our past and it is no surprise we are in the fiscal nightmare we now find ourselves.

[puterbac]

Shocker...

Modern Poverty Includes A.C. and an Xbox

July 18, 2011 10:39 A.M.
By Ken McIntyre

When Americans think of poverty, we tend to picture people who can’t adequately shelter, clothe, and feed themselves or their families.

When the Census Bureau defines “poverty,” though, it winds up painting more than 40 million Americans — one in seven — as “poor.”

Census officials continue to grossly exaggerate the numbers of the poor, creating a false picture in the public mind of widespread material deprivation, writes Heritage Foundation senior research fellow Robert Rector in a new paper.

“Most news stories on poverty feature homeless families, people living in crumbling shacks, or lines of the downtrodden eating in soup kitchens,” Rector says. “The actual living conditions of America’s poor are far different from these images.”

Congress is tying itself in knots figuring out how to cut spending and bring down a $14 trillion national debt. Lawmakers might well take a much closer look at the nearly a trillion dollars spent each year on welfare even though many recipients aren’t what the typical American would recognize as poor and in need of government assistance.





http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/27 ... n-mcintyre

[innocentbystander]

Shocker...

Modern Poverty Includes A.C. and an Xbox

July 18, 2011 10:39 A.M.
By Ken McIntyre

When Americans think of poverty, we tend to picture people who can’t adequately shelter, clothe, and feed themselves or their families.

When the Census Bureau defines “poverty,” though, it winds up painting more than 40 million Americans — one in seven — as “poor.”

Census officials continue to grossly exaggerate the numbers of the poor, creating a false picture in the public mind of widespread material deprivation, writes Heritage Foundation senior research fellow Robert Rector in a new paper.

“Most news stories on poverty feature homeless families, people living in crumbling shacks, or lines of the downtrodden eating in soup kitchens,” Rector says. “The actual living conditions of America’s poor are far different from these images.”

Congress is tying itself in knots figuring out how to cut spending and bring down a $14 trillion national debt. Lawmakers might well take a much closer look at the nearly a trillion dollars spent each year on welfare even though many recipients aren’t what the typical American would recognize as poor and in need of government assistance.





http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/27 ... n-mcintyre

I'll bet almost ALL of that 78% of those in poverty with air-conditioning have central air-conditioning in their unit, and not the box window units (owned by the tenant and not the landlord.) Air conditioning is pretty much as standard with new apartments as indoor plumbing. Its cheaper nowadays.