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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (14457)	12/25/1997 8:03:00 AM
From: Jack Clarke	Respond to of 108807

Christine: Enjoyed your comments. All solutions to the problem we discussed are essentially insoluble owing to the P-word -- POLITICS. No politician in our time will run the risk of doing anything coercive, lest the press make allegations of racism, etc. George Will's comments are always well thought out and his arguments logically developed. But there is a liberal, "bleeding heart" if you will, argument to be made for some incentives for the welfare population (that is not a euphemism for black) to reduce their population growth. Just look at the sad and neglected small children on the streets in some of our communities. Heartbreaking. Unfortunately, demagogues from the African American community often boast that their group will gain in political power just by virtue of their population increase. Sad. Lets consider a ridiculous proposal: A nation decides it would like to increase its rate of violent crime. How would this country go about accomplishing this (absurd) goal? Well, the statisticians would determine where most of the violent crime arises, in what socioeconomic, geographic etc. groups. Who produces the criminals, in other words. Let's see. Most of the violent criminals come from the poor, inner city areas, from young mothers without husbands, parenting skills, without the support of family structure. Throw in some drug use, generations of child abuse or neglect. You get the drift. Now let's figure out how we can increase this sub-group of the population, so that we can have more criminals and therefore more crime. How to accomplish this? It's well known that if the government subsidizes any commodity, that commodity will increase. If we have corn or wheat subsidies, oversupply is inevitable. (Health care, a more laudable commodity, is no exception, but more about that later, as I promised.) So we'll subsidize childbearing for the poor, and their numbers will increase. Yes, poverty is a commodity which we can increase at government and taxpayer expense. All young girls of dysfunctional families want to leave home, and now, thanks to that welfare check, they can. Just become pregnant, and here's your ticket to your own apartment, food, child care, etc. And with the poverty population increasing, our goal of increased crime is sure to follow, as the night follows the day. I don't pretend to have an easy answer to how to stop this. One of the saddest things I notice lately is my own cynicism. So before this gets me down, I'm going to stop and get to work. On call today and I'm a little late thanks to church last night and family things. It's pouring rain here in FL, but warm. Miss the cold Christmas time. A very Merry Christmas to you and yours, Christine. Jack

To: Grainne who wrote (14457)	12/29/1997 3:01:00 PM
From: Jack Clarke	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Christine: Back to the constitutional thing, and especially the forfeiture statutes. Please read the piece in the (Mon 12.29)Wall Street Journal (p.A-11)by James Bovard. It's worse than I thought. There are now >100 federal laws which authorize federal agents to confiscate property allegedly involved in breaking laws on wildlife, drugs, gambling, money laundering, etc. Sorry I don't have a link for the article. I get the print version of the WSJ. BTW, I still owe you an opinion piece on the health care system, but the subject is so vast, and I have such strong opinions, that I don't know where to start. Is there a physical limit on the size of these posts? Hope you had a nice Christmas. Jack