Crime and Punishment: Oklahoma (& Texas) style!

[GIThruster]

your position is pretty clear and insulting me doesn't change that.
I noticed you didn't address the data though.

Geesss. . .you really are a moron. I have already told you I do not hold the position you are ascribing to me, so there is no point in me reading your rubuttle., It would be a waste of my time.

I stand corrected in thinking you weren't as stupid as you seem.

[Stubby]

Too I don't think "fault" is really the issue. Men don't get paid for getting women pregnant. Women do get paid for getting pregnant. It is however pretty hard to say just how many are doing it for the pay.

Who do you propose is paying them?
You brought this up amidst a debate that welfare is paying for teenage pregnancies.

And as for welfare 'paying' for pregnancies thus promoting promiscuity, that is nonsense given the pittance the agencies pay out.

Still trying to find TANF data to complete the picture. However there time limits for these funds, 60 months being the maximum.

EDIT
From a New Mexico TANF site

EXAMPLE:

Consider a family of four.

1.Let's say their net countable income is $100 per month.
2.The amount they will get is the Standard of Need for their family size ($539 for a family of four) minus their $100 net countable income ($539-$100 = $439).

3.They will receive a TANF cash payment of $439 a month.

[Diogenes]

Acknowledging that part is easy, few would disagree...the question is what would you do now today to fix the problem, not whose fault you think it is that it happened in the first place. I have said what I would do, what's your idea?

This has been much discussed in the past on this website. I personally think affixing blame is very important to the solution, because if you don't understand how we got into this mess, how are we going to prevent getting back into the mess the same way? As for solutions, I have long pondered how things can be made better. I generally fall back to basic principles which have been known to be successful. The first thing which needs to be done is to Stop giving money to people who do not know how to manage money.

Years ago I worked as a stock and check-out boy in a Grocery store. Day after day I saw people using food stamps to by crap they should not be buying. Candy, soda, chips, Ice Cream etc. and then abusing the system to buy cigarettes. They would buy a piece of bubble gum and then pay for it with a food coupon. The store would give them the difference in cost in actual change, which they would combine with change in their pocketbook to buy cigarettes. I saw many abuses and much fraud. The general practice was to sell food stamps for cash at a 2 for 1 ratio. ($2.00 of food for every $1.00 in cash.)


This system is far too convenient for the users of the system, and far too prone to abuse. However, the politicians like the system because it gets them votes, and the grocers like the system because they get their product bought and it requires little effort to process it. Grocers don't want to be food police for welfare recipients, they just want to make money.

Welfare recipients NEED food police. They need someone to prevent them from engaging in food stamp (nowadays EBT) fraud, and they need someone to prevent them from buying crap that is not a basic food commodity or that is excessively extravagant. The system is too easy for them. There is no incentive to get off the system, and many find it perfectly comfortable to continue using the existing system. The system needs to be inconvenient to the users, and it needs to be as efficient at feeding people as possible without permitting indulgences. One possible idea could be a weekly food truck where staple foods could be delivered directly to families in need, but without frills. The staple foods could be bought wholesale by the state, and delivered to individual families that need them.

The point is to feed people but not make them comfortable in their usage of the taxpayers money. It is SUPPOSED to be unpleasant to remain poor. Without an incentive to get a better life, too many people are content to just linger in poverty and let others foot the bills for their needs.

[Diogenes]

If I recall correctly how sex works, there is a second party. Funny how digot never seems to blame the second party for anything. it is always unwed mother this or promiscuous teen that. Always seems to be the female's fault.

If you are going to criticize some comment I made, it would be helpful for you to quote it so I would know what the H*ll you are talking about. I believe I used the term "Fatherless" extensively, and perhaps to your ear this does not imply any blame on the part of the male, but rest assured, it is not my intention that anyone should regard these males as blameless.


I personally believe in chasing them down and making them pay (at least financially) for the children they have fathered. As someone who has had to personally put out my own money and time to deal with the consequences of worthless bastards who run off and leave their kids, (and as someone who has personally dealt with a worthless father running off and leaving myself and the rest of the family) I can assure you that I hold such people in great contempt and fully support efforts to make their life a living hell until they do the right thing.

(This is one of the big failures of the Libertarians argument; the notion that someone should escape the consequences of having irresponsible sex in which an unwanted child is created.)


That being said, it is the females that are the limiting factor on both the reckless sex and the production of children. To refuse to acknowledge this is ignoring the obvious. Convince the females to refuse consent and the bulk of the problem takes care of itself. No need to worry about children that didn't get created for someone's entertainment.

Stigma used to serve the purpose of constraining reckless sex. Part of the reason stigma worked is because the community observed the misery women used to suffer from being abandoned while pregnant with an unwanted child. Government funding has reduced the pain suffered from such behavior, and therefore incentivized the behavior.


Pain caused by foolish conduct is a way of correcting behavior. It is an unfortunate condition of life that often people must suffer pain before they will learn better. The government's interdiction of the pain is detrimental in the long run. Governmental attempts at social engineering are usually disasters.

[Teahive]

(This is one of the big failures of the Libertarians argument; the notion that someone should escape the consequences of having irresponsible sex in which an unwanted child is created.)

How many Libertarians you know argue that?

[GIThruster]

Well this has really run way off topic and if people want to argue about welfare I suggest they start another thread. I will own that I don't like Dio, believe there is a way back.

For the last 3,000 years, charity was managed by religious organizations and people. If someone was down, you helped them up. There was a direct accountability for how that person responded to the charity they received and all charitable contact was immediate and personal.

Now we pay administrators to write checks. People get MSW's and sit all day, distributing welfare and don't know any of the personal circumstances of the people they hand money to. This support has no feedback, no personally accountability and is very often abused. I think that's Dio's point, he loathe's the abuse. The question is what is the proper answer?

We live in a secular society. There is no way back. Entitlements take up more government support than defense and although we can look back at when that was not so, this doesn't mean it will ever be again. It won't. Dio is banging his head against the door.

When the Father Knows Best idealism of the 50's was replaced by the self indulgent drug culture of the 60's, the beginning of the end had come. There is no way back.

I'm not saying I think the system we have is better than what we used to have. I don't. I think the system with personal accountability was vastly more efficient, effective, and humane. But what we have is the direct result of secularism and unless you see a way to hold back the tide of the godless, this is what we're stuck with. This is what you get when you make a way for atheists to flourish. This is the "Dust of Death" seeded in Western civilization by Christianity when it laid the basis for separation of church and state. There is no way back, apart from holy jihad.

So even though I may agree with many of Dio's sentiments, I don't think he gets it. The state has become a welfare state. Government pays more for entitlements than every other service it supports combined. Governments primary business is income redistribution. It USED to be defense but that is all done with now. That died when the idealism of the 50's died. Now the game is all take from the rich and give to the poor, and do your best to see the poor stay poor so you can stay in power. The poor are voting for this! There is no way back. It's just a matter of time before the whole house of cards collapses and is replaced by something very different than democracy. It might even include speaking Chinese.

But this needs its own thread. This one is about gun control.

[Diogenes]

(This is one of the big failures of the Libertarians argument; the notion that someone should escape the consequences of having irresponsible sex in which an unwanted child is created.)

How many Libertarians you know argue that?

It would seem to be all of them.

[williatw]

Acknowledging that part is easy, few would disagree...the question is what would you do now today to fix the problem, not whose fault you think it is that it happened in the first place. I have said what I would do, what's your idea?

This has been much discussed in the past on this website. I personally think affixing blame is very important to the solution, because if you don't understand how we got into this mess, how are we going to prevent getting back into the mess the same way? As for solutions, I have long pondered how things can be made better. I generally fall back to basic principles which have been known to be successful. The first thing which needs to be done is to Stop giving money to people who do not know how to manage money.

Years ago I worked as a stock and check-out boy in a Grocery store. Day after day I saw people using food stamps to by crap they should not be buying. Candy, soda, chips, Ice Cream etc. and then abusing the system to buy cigarettes. They would buy a piece of bubble gum and then pay for it with a food coupon. The store would give them the difference in cost in actual change, which they would combine with change in their pocketbook to buy cigarettes. I saw many abuses and much fraud. The general practice was to sell food stamps for cash at a 2 for 1 ratio. ($2.00 of food for every $1.00 in cash.)


This system is far too convenient for the users of the system, and far too prone to abuse. However, the politicians like the system because it gets them votes, and the grocers like the system because they get their product bought and it requires little effort to process it. Grocers don't want to be food police for welfare recipients, they just want to make money.

Welfare recipients NEED food police. They need someone to prevent them from engaging in food stamp (nowadays EBT) fraud, and they need someone to prevent them from buying crap that is not a basic food commodity or that is excessively extravagant. The system is too easy for them. There is no incentive to get off the system, and many find it perfectly comfortable to continue using the existing system. The system needs to be inconvenient to the users, and it needs to be as efficient at feeding people as possible .

What they need is to have to work for what they get. As I have stated able-bodied people of working age would get welfare/food stamps etc. in exchange for some kind of work. That is exactly in keeping with my libertarian beliefs. I am not interested in insulating people from the consequences of their own actions or lack of actions. That's not freedom that is license. Whether I approve or disapprove of their poor diet, drinking, smoking, doing drugs we should not be forcing the tax payers to subsidize their bad behavior. If he or she has to work for their benefits, don't particularly care if they use it to buy candy or cigarettes or alcohol, far as I am concerned it would be their "pay check" to spend as the wish. I also have no problem forcing the fathers to pay child support by garnishing wages. Not interested in protecting men from the practical consequences of their indiscrimate sexual behavior, again that is license not freedom. If he/she wants to eat they will work, if they refuse to work no benefits, nice and simple, get us back to limited constitutional government, which most libertarians want. Of course the lion's share of our debt problem isn't welfare or food stamps it is entitlements like SS and Medicare. And public service employee benefits. The fact that the people receiving benefits paid into it is almost irrelevant, since they are getting many times what they paid into it. That pretty much refutes the argument that if people have to pay taxes it will make them more responsible in terms of the benefits they vote to receive, isn't working that way with public service employess or private sector entitlement receiving retirees. That's what killing us, not the poor. Everyone loves to bash and feel superior to the poor on welfare, but their nowhere close to our biggest problem.

[Diogenes]

Well this has really run way off topic and if people want to argue about welfare I suggest they start another thread. I will own that I don't like Dio, believe there is a way back.

I don't believe there is a way back, I believe there might be some survivors in the wreckage after we go over the financial cliff. They need to be aware of what happened and why.

....


Now the game is all take from the rich and give to the poor, and do your best to see the poor stay poor so you can stay in power. The poor are voting for this! There is no way back. It's just a matter of time before the whole house of cards collapses and is replaced by something very different than democracy. It might even include speaking Chinese.

Very well put and I agree on all counts. The existing system is going to be destroyed by overload, and the consequences are going to be death and misery for a lot of people. As Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) is fond of saying, what cannot continue, will not continue.

If there is any hope of salvaging anything, it is by waking people up to the problem so that they can take steps to mitigate the damage and avoid a similar mess should there be a next time.

But this needs its own thread. This one is about gun control.

Agree.

[GIThruster]

Here's an updated list of those backing out of the Eastern Sports and Outdoor show that decided to use a partial ban on things like the AR-15 in response to political pressure. I'm thinking Eastern is 2 days away from recanting its position:

http://www.ammoland.com/2013/01/list-of ... z2Ip4A9DV9

Note that Mossberg, Rugar, S&W and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation are all HUGE. Losing even one of these is a tragedy for Eastern. Expect other big name manufacturers to follow suit today and tomorrow.

[ladajo]

So where is the "Who is left list"?

[GIThruster]

I dunno but of the gun shows I attended back when I lived in Oregon and was a regular shooter and hunter, the shows usually had a core of half a dozen of the major manufacturers show up, and the rest were retailers, a couple hundred total. Losing 4 big names already, this show looks like it's ready to roll over and die. And the manufacturers that don't pull out will have to suffer the kinds of recriminations Ruger suffered back during the Clinton years. That was pretty tough going for them.

And now todays news that we were all lied to about the assault weapon used at Sandy Hook--that it was never used but rather as was first reported, was locked in the car trunk. This whole thing since Sandy Hook is a fabrication. Heads need to roll.

[ladajo]

I saw the Sandy Hook AR-15 thing last week, but have been waiting to see if it breaks mainstream.

I was just poking aorund on CNN and did not see it.

[GIThruster]

My understanding is the coroner's report just came out today, and none of the people at the school were killed with the rifle. The thing is, the police knew this because they found the rifle locked in the trunk of the car. This is what was first reported, and then later covered up so the gun-grabbers could make these complaints about an "assault rifle".

I don't hunt because it's such a hassle in NJ and I don't have any hunting friends here. Also, in NJ you can't hunt with a rifle. If I lived in PA though, or TX (both options I've considered) I would certainly own a Ruger Mini-14 for deer hunting. That is the sort of weapon that people want to ban. Furthermore, I do prefer the bullpup design even when it gives a crappy trigger pull, so I would do the Muzzelite bullpup conversion, minus the high capacity mag since most states you're only allowed 5 shots for big game. All the things that the loonie lefties want to ban are part of that conversion, except the magazine capacity, which would still be nice for target practice. The biggest benefit is, bullpups are smaller and lighter so easier to carry all day. You never hear that when people are talking about the kinds of things they'd like to ban.

[ladajo]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/med ... 22237.html

From 15 December, 2012. Here the Coroner says everyone was shot with a .223 rifle.

What is your source?