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ORIGINAL: servantforuse

I just said that it is the parents responsibility to feed their kids and not the government. How many of these poor families have a flat screen tv ? How many have expensive cell phones ? How many of these poor parents are smoking and or drinking ? It's called priorities. As long as someone else foots the bill, they don't have to.

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ORIGINAL: servantforuse

I just said that it is the parents responsibility to feed their kids and not the government. How many of these poor families have a flat screen tv ? How many have expensive cell phones ? How many of these poor parents are smoking and or drinking ? It's called priorities. As long as someone else foots the bill, they don't have to.

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ORIGINAL: tazzygirl

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ORIGINAL: servantforuse

I just said that it is the parents responsibility to feed their kids and not the government. How many of these poor families have a flat screen tv ? How many have expensive cell phones ? How many of these poor parents are smoking and or drinking ? It's called priorities. As long as someone else foots the bill, they don't have to.

Flat screen TV... 100 bucks at Christmas... or free on freecycle

Expensive cell phones? 150 every two years credit.. and Best Buy just gave a 50 credit away for those who were smart enough to snap them up.

Smoking/drinking? Smoking habits are on the decline. Drinking? Its pretty much the only recreation the poor have... but.. yeah.. they could give that up. A case of yingling costs 15 bucks around here. One meal. You do have a point.

And even with t his program, students are still going hungry on weekends.

One organization trying to fix that is Blessings in a BackPack.

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OK, then the government shouldn't make a woman carry a baby she doesn't want to pay for. The only way to support your position is to be pro-choice...
Otherwise the government is forcing a woman to have the baby, then going "OK, you got it, we're outa here..."

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ORIGINAL: servantforuse

The first thing I would do is make sure there is some type of 'means' testing. If these kids really need the meals they should get them. There are millions out for the free handout that should be denied.

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ORIGINAL: kalikshama

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ORIGINAL: servantforuse

I just said that it is the parents responsibility to feed their kids and not the government. How many of these poor families have a flat screen tv ? How many have expensive cell phones ? How many of these poor parents are smoking and or drinking ? It's called priorities. As long as someone else foots the bill, they don't have to.

You tell us. In Florida, only 2% of welfare recipients tested positive for drug use.

Anecdotally, my brother receives SSDI and doesn't own any of these things.

While I believe people should practice Family Planning and not have children when they are not ready for them, which includes having substance abuse issues, I wouldn't want to see the children go hungry due to their parent's shortcomings.

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ORIGINAL: erieangel

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ORIGINAL: tazzygirl

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ORIGINAL: servantforuse

I just said that it is the parents responsibility to feed their kids and not the government. How many of these poor families have a flat screen tv ? How many have expensive cell phones ? How many of these poor parents are smoking and or drinking ? It's called priorities. As long as someone else foots the bill, they don't have to.

Flat screen TV... 100 bucks at Christmas... or free on freecycle

Expensive cell phones? 150 every two years credit.. and Best Buy just gave a 50 credit away for those who were smart enough to snap them up.

Smoking/drinking? Smoking habits are on the decline. Drinking? Its pretty much the only recreation the poor have... but.. yeah.. they could give that up. A case of yingling costs 15 bucks around here. One meal. You do have a point.

And even with t his program, students are still going hungry on weekends.

One organization trying to fix that is Blessings in a BackPack.

My sister was involved (might still be for all I know) this organization or one like it. She lives in TN and we don't talk much. Anyway, she told me at one point that many of the kids she packed weekend meals for weren't from poor at all. Some of the parents were people my sister and brother-in-law actually worked with. They were just too "busy" or uncaring to feed their kids.

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ORIGINAL: kalikshama

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OK, then the government shouldn't make a woman carry a baby she doesn't want to pay for. The only way to support your position is to be pro-choice...
Otherwise the government is forcing a woman to have the baby, then going "OK, you got it, we're outa here..."

Thanks for the segue.

Consequences for Children of Their Birth Planning Status

By Nazli Baydar

Of 1,327 children younger than two in 1986 whose mothers were participants in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 61% were wanted, 34% were mistimed and 5% were unwanted. Planning status is associated with the level of developmental resources the child receives at home: At ages one and older, mistimed and unwanted children score significantly lower on a scale measuring opportunity for skill development and on a scale measuring nonauthoritarian parenting style than their wanted peers; by preschool age, they also have significantly less-positive relationships with their mothers. Measures of the direct effects of planning status on development also indicate that mistimed and unwanted children are at a disadvantage: Those younger than two have higher mean scores for fearfulness than wanted infants and lower scores for positive affect; unintended preschoolers score lower on a measure of receptive vocabulary.

(Family Planning Perspectives, 27:228-234 & 245, 1995)

Full article: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/2722895.html

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There is a qualification process and quite frankly, it isn't enough money (which I'm sure you know from your experience with your brother) to make it worth going through the process if you don't need it.

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You ever read the freakonomics thing about how Roe-v-Wade lowered the crime rate 18 years later? They even showed that the crime drop happened earlier in states that allowed abortion before Roe-v-Wade.

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ORIGINAL: thishereboi

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This is indeed a safety net, for many families!

Yes and that is always a good thing.


SoftBonds

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I'm sure one of the resident right-wingers will come tell me I'm a bleeding heart liberal for it though...

Was there a reason you felt the need to throw this in? Is it really that hard to discuss something without acting like a political bigot?

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ORIGINAL: servantforuse

Those on the 'left' just love the idea of having the federal government feed our kids. Isn't that the responsibility of the parents ? Where does all of this end ? Maybe government housing for everyone ? That worked out so well in the past.

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ORIGINAL: farglebargle

Fuck it. Just open the school kitchen after school hours for all comers and eliminate food stamps. Hungry? Head over to the local school and get something to eat.

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

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ORIGINAL: farglebargle

Fuck it. Just open the school kitchen after school hours for all comers and eliminate food stamps. Hungry? Head over to the local school and get something to eat.

Critics will complain that would just create freeloaders and an unsustainable financial burden dragging us to bankruptcy.

Google would call it a business model.

Which group is doing better?

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ORIGINAL: kalikshama

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You ever read the freakonomics thing about how Roe-v-Wade lowered the crime rate 18 years later? They even showed that the crime drop happened earlier in states that allowed abortion before Roe-v-Wade.

Interesting. It just boggles my mind that people who abhor abortion aren't pro contraception. (Statistically speaking; I know there are exceptions here.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_effect

Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago and John Donohue of Yale University revived discussion of this claim with their 2001 paper "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime". Donohue and Levitt point to the fact that males aged 18 to 24 are most likely to commit crimes. Data indicates that crime in the United States started to decline in 1992. Donohue and Levitt suggest that the absence of unwanted aborted children, following legalization in 1973, led to a reduction in crime 18 years later, starting in 1992 and dropping sharply in 1995. These would have been the peak crime-committing years of the unborn children.

The authors argue that states that had abortion legalized earlier and more widespread should have the earliest reductions in crime. Donohue and Levitt's study indicates that this indeed has happened: Alaska, California, Hawaii, New York, and Washington experienced steeper drops in crime, and had legalized abortion before Roe v. Wade. Further, states with a high abortion rate have experienced a greater reduction in crime, when corrected for factors like average income.[3] Finally, studies in Canada and Australia purport to have established a correlation between legalized abortion and overall crime reduction.[3]

The study was criticized by various authors, including a 2005 article by Christopher Foote and Christopher Goetz, in which the pair claim that a computer error in Levitt and Donahue's statistical analysis lead to an artificially inflated relationship between legalized abortion and crime reduction. Once other crime-associated factors were properly controlled for, the effect of abortion on arrests was reduced by about half. Foote and Goetz also criticize Levitt and Donahue's use of arrest totals rather than arrests per capita, which takes population size into account. Using Census Bureau population estimates, Foote and Goetz repeated the analysis using arrest rates in place of simple arrest totals, and found that the effect of abortion disappeared entirely.[4]

In 2005 Levitt published rebuttal to these criticisms in which he re-ran his numbers to address the shortcomings and variables missing from the original study. The new results are nearly identical to those of the original study. Levitt posits that any reasonable use of the data available reinforces the results of the original 2001 paper.[5]

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ORIGINAL: kalikshama

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ORIGINAL: servantforuse

I just said that it is the parents responsibility to feed their kids and not the government. How many of these poor families have a flat screen tv ? How many have expensive cell phones ? How many of these poor parents are smoking and or drinking ? It's called priorities. As long as someone else foots the bill, they don't have to.

You tell us. In Florida, only 2% of welfare recipients tested positive for drug use.

Anecdotally, my brother receives SSDI and doesn't own any of these things.

While I believe people should practice Family Planning and not have children when they are not ready for them, which includes having substance abuse issues, I wouldn't want to see the children go hungry due to their parent's shortcomings.

quote:

ORIGINAL: servantforuse

Those on the 'left' just love the idea of having the federal government feed our kids. Isn't that the responsibility of the parents ? Where does all of this end ? Maybe government housing for everyone ? That worked out so well in the past.