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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (103685)	2/10/2009 11:24:37 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542019

But don't you think by bailing out the States we are allowing them to escape the decisions they have to make? It's my understanding some of those are federal obligations--unemployment insurance and medicaid provisions--that lowered tax dollars because of a severe economic downturn and more demand because of unemployment, the states are simply unprepared to cover. Some of the other money is to help keep states and municipalities from having to layoff workers. Perhaps that's what is troubling you. It's my understanding that the economic pressures on states will be well beyond the "normal" and they will either require additional help or their own layoffs will severely compound the problem. I don't think it has anything to do with just how states have handled their budgets in the past. As for using the octupulets case in CA to characterize the state's safety net, that's simply a classic fallacy, Steve. Using one case to characterize the whole program. As for your point about choices that need to be made, the question is not whether they need to be made but which ones. I favor fully funding the shredded safety net in dire times so people have health care and aren't starving and have some sort of rough over their heads. Not a hard choice for me. If one wishes to treat that as a zero sum matter, then take the money from the most recent revelation of a bloated weapons program at the Pentagon.

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (103685)	2/10/2009 3:48:18 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542019

Steve, re: "what right should California have to get my tax dollar?" I suspect that California is giving you tax dollars rather than the converse. The last time I read on this California was paying more into the fed than it was getting back. Back to your main point, if you believe that the lady with 14 children is the poster child for a welfare system running amuck then you're falling into the same trap as those who view the latest recovery plan through the prism of any tiny part of it that they don't like. The sad fact is that because of our societal values, and our lack of them, we need a welfare system. That system will be flawed, in part because general rules are often inadequate to address complex cases and in part because most people doing most jobs are less than excellent. This debacle probably represents the most extreme case imaginable of poor judgement, a deranged claimant and a fault line in the system. If that shapes your views of our social safety nets, however, that probably says a lot more about you than it does about the welfare system. Ed