I did.. You said it wasn't directed at me.. but I figured since I believe in what you were saying.. I should spell out my qualifications to speak on the subject.

Granted, I've never been homeless or lived out of a box, or in the bathroom of a closed store.. but I have had some relatively difficult times. But at no point did I think the government should be required to pay for me or my family.. and it took many months, and to the point we literally couldn't afford food for day to day eating.. before we finally went and got on the WIC program.

I think like you in that way Tex.. people shouldn't speak about what they don't know.. so I felt the need to explain myself.

Much like this war in iraq... for example..

But-- the government is US.

If I pay in taxes, I'd damn well better receive a benefit. I happen to be a taxpayer who thinks I've been screwed in that regard by my so-called representatives. I think the income tax system is counter-capitalism anyway but I already explained why.

And I disagree about the Iraq war, because that's not in the same vein as what we're talking about above (personal experience). We have every right and indeed a DUTY to protest what we see as malfeasance and ineptitude on the part of our elected officials, and I defy anyone to try to take that right away from me. I will respond with the same vigor as those decrying 2nd amendment infringement.

lol.

When the facts you are using are coming from the media.. I file a serious grievance. I've seen first hand the lies and BS that get's spread on our so-called "news" stations.. the bias, both ways, and the jumping to conclusions and non-fact verifying stories that they run..

And too often I get into arguments and debates with people that seem to think their local FOX anchor knows everything and he said Bush was a crack job.

Not to mention people trying to tell me what the iraqi people think of us. By raise of hand.. how many people on this forum have actually walked through the streets of iraq shaking hands with the people that have lived there for the past half-century?

I've been thanked more times than I can count.. had tears on my uniform from grateful women and children.. and even got the god-send opportunity to save a few.

I refuse to be told that anything I endured wasn't worth it.. and that includes if the price for it had been my life. Hell, half the time I think the people I met over there were more grateful to me for my service in the united states military... than the people in the united states.

ETA: And regarding the tax thing.. I don't think taxes should be used to benefit individuals. We already got into this discussions.. I think the Government needs to butt out of the things that go on within our walls, and pay more attention to those outside our walls. Taxes should be for things that benefit every person in the US.. not a handful here, and a handful there. I'd even go so far as to say that street taxes might be pushing it.. sure, most people get use out of a well maintained road - but some people don't drive. I live on the west coast now, but did live on the east coast where toll roads were common. I don't like tolls.. but a toll road makes more sense to me than a mandatory tax that supposedly helps keeps the community roads fixed... that never happens to be my communities road..

You can get at facts, even in the "media". It just takes more effort (that includes broad coverage, an open but critical mind, and some education) than most Americans seem to want to expend. It definitely requires reading objective, analytical pieces rather than the populist hype (search for the Smithsonian article "Iraq's Unruly Century" -- that should be required reading for every adult American who can read it IMO).

And you seem to misunderstand what I'm saying about taxes and individuals, but we tend to agree with certain caveats. But I already went into all that.

Thanks Tex... I'll take a look.

Try to not live on credit. For a mortgage I can understand it (provided you're able to pay for it) and ironically I don't see it that different from renting, but beyond that I feel little empathy for people who live in credit: you save up until you can pay for what you'd like to buy. E.g. a car. And then you buy it. Not before. I hope the current 'credit crisis' (as it is called here) opens the eyes to some who live on credit... but I don't hold my breath...

fatasaint, Where did the money for WIC come from? Who paid for the coupons you got? What if you hadn't had parents to borrow from?

Take away those support systems and how would your story ( thanks for sharing it, don't mean to pick on you really) have evolved do you think? And why do you feel the empathy for the Iraqis and apparently not Americans?

Like Texrat said, we are tax paying Americans. It always ticks me off when I hear about tax cuts. I pay about 6k on a net income of about 25 k. Gee, do you think we could cut a bit of slack for me and folks like me in case things don't work out quite right?

I'm not talking about sitting around wanting the government to pay my bills while I play my piano. I'm talking about a safety net. Something to grab onto for a breef time while we work to make needed improvements. This, ironically, is exactly what you discribe in your post. I think the problem is that , as usual, the spin machine and echo chambers churn away dayly from the likes of Rush Limbah talking about how lazy Americans want socializm so they don't have to do any work. That is far from what I am talking about.

I give you my work life as an example. I wash windows as a self employed guy. This is a part time job. It's very seasonal. At the moment I have no work on my schedule because of the time of year. As a self employed person I can work for whoever I like and just ignore people I don't. I can work as much or as little as I like. And this sort of thing can be started by anyone capable of doing the work or even someone who is not if he or she can employ others. But when I was homeless and living in my car I couldn't believe how hard it was to get any kind of support. As I said in an earlier post, the most I got was a small amount of food stamps and a few food bank visits. This is the type of support we need to be willing to give our citizens imo. Short term support that is easier to access when truely in need. And the same could be done as a micro loan to help people start very small businesses like I did.

The thing is, I was lucky I made it through all that without much worse happening. I was very fulnerable and it was mostly because I was young and had good energy ( and I was honest, that's important because people need to trust you) to be able to persist and keep fending for myself. But it did take three years to get to the point I could get an apartment. Back then an apartment was $160 a month. These days, well, way more than that.

What seems to be misunderstood also by right leaning folks, sorry, how else do I say it, is that we who oppose the Iraq thing don't have empathy for Iraqis. We do. And truely I can understand how fatalsaint feels about us not knowing what Iraqis really feel. But there hasn't been much chance for much objective ground reporting to go on there, has there? Ask Kimberly Doshier about that. But I remember feeling a lot of empathy for Iraqi children before we started this war. That's why I wanted us to try other ways to deal with the perceived threat or find out more about it instead of rushing into it. I'm not being revisionist here. This is how I felt seven years ago.

Neil

My arguments dealing with iraq usually don't come into play if two people want to bicker whether or not we should have gone. They can have fun all day.. unfortunately it's a futile argument in the end for two reasons:
A) We did.
and
B) They'll never have all the information that was on the presidents desk when the decision was made. Period. A lot of that was classified at the highest possible security levels. Hell, for all we know Bush went to settle the score Daddy left hanging. :shrug:

My arguments more lean to being pissed off at the arse holes that were standing in front of the military base in which I lived.. holding signs and screaming at us.. and throwing **** at our cars as we left the base every day. It got the point we just stayed home until they left.

And to those that want to just up and bail right now with no thought to the fact that we created a power vacuum in that country that needs to be filled first because it's "not out problem". Bull sh**. They damn well are our responsibility now.. whether it should have happened or not. Whether it was American soldiers that should have been tasked or not.. we were. And I wouldn't trade any of my memories there for anything.

And, IMHO (this is just my opinion), I believe a homeless person on the streets of America has a lot more opportunities, assistance, help, and anything else he or she needs, than your average person in Iraq had before we got there... and even now it's not significantly better.. but it's at least a little.

To address the other points, I do know that I would have been in a seriously worse condition without parents and without WIC. As I said, before I got on we couldn't afford food from one day to the next. But once we were on WIC it was ridiculous. We got something like 2 gallons of milk a week, dozens of eggs a week.. we couldn't eat it fast enough! We actually started giving milk things away.

I already stated this when we debated earlier... I do understand a difference between a "hand up" and a "hand out"... There are already too many loop holes in our welfare system to allow people to do nothing - and get anything. More welfare is not the answer IMHO.. much like a lot of you are saying you don't want to ban all guns - but you want tighter controls?? Well.. I don't necessarily want to completely demolish ALL forms of welfare.. but I do want it regulated and controlled.

Mandatory community service for those on it.. things like that. I know this goes into the area that Texrat was complaining about, the social workers making random stops on peoples door to micromanage what you can and can't do with your food.. etc.. but honestly - the human race as a whole has proved countless times it can't be trusted.

Hell - we just paid 300 billion dollars to give 3 CEO's the severance packages of Bill Gates' wet dreams for crying out loud... and we're about to cough up another 25 billion to greedy car manufacturers. Now that the government is just giving people money.. I mean why the hell not?? It won't take long before every business in the world is going to "require a bailout for the government or we'll file bankruptcy".

This cracks me up: Note: There's a cuss word .

I'm with sungrove: the hell with handouts. The hell with welfare.

What the US needs is a bridge system, that recognizes the reality of a safety net requirement to get laid-off workers from one job to the next. Yes, there are pocket programs here and there, but as I found out a white collar worker is more likely to disqualify than qualify. There seems to be this perception that government services are only for the poor. But for those of us who used to be poor and fought our way up the ranks, we wind up having more at stake when things go sour, and pay higher taxes to boot. Only to be denied a place on the bridge when our jobs are sent elsewhere.

One thing I don't want to hear is how companies don't owe communities. They damn sure do. One clear reason is the tax breaks and subsidies that became the norm starting in the 1980s. But in a more traditional sense, there had been a longstanding tradition that companies benefitted from their communities in myriad ways, including tax-funded education. There used to be an understanding that the payback was along the lines of steady employment (and ultimately pensions) for the citizens who committed their lives to the success of those companies... but in recent times the loyalty became only one-way: the rank and file were expected to fully commit, but company executives no longer had to. Companies grew to international status and became stateless... they no longer had allegience to their own nations much less local regions! I knew the writing was on the wall when a former US employer reincorporated in Bermuda, admittedly to reduce taxes. So they wanted the benefits of tax-funded efforts like education but didn't want to participate in the funding!

That sort of disconnect is what pisses me off. Corporate executives want all the benefits but none of the responsibility-- all the while flipping that around for their employees! ********. And we have allowed it-- this new advent of itinerant CEOs drawing disproportionate salaries, wrecking one company after another only to escape with golden parachutes each time and no real punishment from stockholders or boards. And I'm not just ranting-- that's real. It's like there's now a CEO farm system, a good old boys network looking out for each other but not those working stiffs who enable their egregious lifestyle.

I'm all for capitalism, but dammit, the unregulated market is a failure. Bring back responsibility. Bring back accountability. Bring back due punishment for corporate crimes. Because if we don't, we're just gonna keep stupidly relearning this 1929ish lesson again and again and again.

/rant 2

Yes, the hell with welfare. Just let those kids starve. And those old people. And those disabled people. Let them all die.