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Posted by: Justice4All 5 months, 3 weeks ago
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Justice4All5 months, 3 weeks ago
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I'm not sure what should be called a basic human right.
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Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those are OK.
Access to food shelter and health care sound like basic human rights.
But what about the right to demand that others provide food, shelter and health care to those who are too lazy to work? Does someone have the right to take my home or hard earned money because they feel entitled to it?
I have a right to eat, but do I have the right to demand that someone provide food to me? And if I do have the right to demand that food shelter and health care be provided to me then why do I bother working for a living?-
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hyperbola5 months, 3 weeks ago
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That is all well and fine, but is it really what we are facing?
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I would claim that for far too long in America those simple arguments have been used as a propaganda "theme" to cover up a political/governmental system that increasingly transferred the wealth of americans to the super-rich, that functions more as a "rich-boys-welfare-system" than anything else, is increasingly corrupt and increasingly distorts our country in ways that make it difficult for many to "get ahead by hard work".
The Crooks Get Cash While the Poor Get Screwed
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/07/06/the-croo...
Tearyan Brown became a father when he was 16. He did what a lot of inner-city kids desperate to make money do. He sold drugs. He was arrested and sent to jail three years later for dealing marijuana and PCP on the streets of Trenton, N.J., mostly to white kids driving in from the suburbs. It was a job which saw him robbed at gunpoint and stabbed in the chest. But it made him about $1,400 a week.
Brown, when he got out after three and a half years, was done with street life. He got a job as a security guard and then as a fork lift operator. He eventually made about $30,000 a year. He shepherded his son through high school, then college and a master’s degree. His boy, now 24, is a high school teacher in Texas. Brown would not leave the streets of Trenton but his son would. It made him proud. It gave him hope.
And then one morning in 2005 when he was visiting his mother’s house the cops showed up. He saw the cruiser and the officers standing on his mother’s porch. He hurried down the block toward the home to see what was wrong. What was wrong was him. On the basis of a police photograph, he had been identified by an 82-year-old woman as the man who had robbed her of $9 at gunpoint a few hours earlier. The only other witness to the crime insisted the elderly victim was confused. The witness told the police Brown was innocent. Brown’s friends said Brown was with them when the robbery took place.
...He refused the plea bargain offer. He sat in jail for the next two years before getting a trial. It was a time of deep despair. Jail had changed since he had last been incarcerated. The facilities were overcrowded, with inmates sleeping in corridors and on the floor. The gangs taunted those who, like Brown, were not affiliated with a gang. Gang members knocked trays of food to the floor. They ****** on mattresses. They stole canteen items and commissary orders. And there was nothing the victims could do about it. ...
He had a trial after two years in jail and was found not guilty. The sheriff’s deputies in the courtroom said as he was walking out that they “had never seen anything like this.” He reaches into his baggy jeans and pulls out his thin brown wallet. He opens it to show me a folded piece of paper. The paper says, “Verdict: Defendant found not guilty on all charges.” It is dated Jan. 31, 2008.-
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hyperbola5 months, 3 weeks ago
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But innocence and guilt are funny things in America. If you are rich and guilty, if you have defrauded banks and customers and investment firms of billions of dollars, as AIG or Citibank has, if you wear fancy suits and have degrees from elite universities that cost more per year than Brown used to make, you get taxpayer money. You get lots of it. You maintain the lavish lifestyle of jets and spas and million-dollar bonuses. You live a life of unchecked greed and have too much in a world where most have too little. If you are moral scum in America we take care of you. But if you are poor, if you are, say, Tearyan Brown and African-American and 39 years old with four kids and no job and you live in the inner city, you are in trouble. No one comes to help you. You don’t get a second chance. This is what being poor means. ....
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.....Brown found that life had changed when he got out. He had lost his job as a fork lift operator. And there were no new jobs to be found. He had faithfully paid child support until his arrest but, with no income, he could not pay from jail and now he was being hauled into court by the state every few weeks for being in arrears for $13,000. The mother of his three youngest boys goes to court with him. She explains that he paid regularly while he had work. She explains that when she works on the weekends Brown takes the kids. She asks that he be forgiven until he can get a job and begin paying again. But there are no jobs.
“I would not be in arrears in child support if I had not been incarcerated for something I didn’t do,” he says. “I will never get above ground owing $13,000. How can I pay $120 a week when I don’t have a job?”
Brown lives on $200 a month in food stamps and $40 in cash. Welfare will pay his apartment for another four months. He is barely making it. I ask him what he will do when he loses the rent subsidy.
“I’ll be homeless,” he says.
.... The desperation is palpable. People don’t know where to turn. Benefits are running out. More and more people are out of work.
“You see things getting worse and worse,” he says. “You see people who wonder how they are going to eat and take care of themselves and their kids. You see people starting to do anything to get food, to hustle or rob, to go back to doing things they do not want to do. Good people start doin’ bad things. People are getting eviler.”
He pauses.
“All things are better with God,” he says softly, looking down at the tabletop.
He is reading a book about the Bible. It is about Jesus and God. It is about learning to trust in God’s help. In America that is about all the poor have left. And when God fails them, they are on their own.-
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Justice4All5 months, 3 weeks ago
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The systems isn't fair, you are right. The poor get screwed. But in Brown's case the lawyers got paid. The judge got paid. The system made a lot off of him and nobody was ever held accountable for what amounted to a 2 year kidnapping.
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But what can we do to help someone like Brown if we have to help 10 freeloaders too? I work for a living. Never sold drugs. Put my kids through college. And still I have had my problems with police and courts. It's a out of controll system that too many people profit from.
The poor get screwed. But so do the working class.
The rich don't help the poor, they get the working class to help the poor through our taxes.-
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hyperbola5 months, 2 weeks ago
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Sure, you have figured it out.
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Ever since Reagan we have been transferring more and more of American's wealth to the super-rich Remember that half of Americans lost their savings and became net debtors during his administration.
The "theory" advanced by the super-rich was that they would invest it better and Americans would profit from "trickle down". As we now see, our "elite" have proven to be spectacularly corrupt and incompetent and "trickle down" is nothing more than a propaganda slogan. The idea that America would "invest and move up market" was another of the convenient illusions peddled to us. We have been losing high qualification jobs for scientists, engineers, architects, ..... steadily. In fact about the only thing that has increased are "domestic services" (barmen, waitresses and the like). We won't make our way in the world with that kind of economy and one really wonders how Obama is going to pay back to the world the enormous resources he is borrowing.
As Americans lost their accumulated wealth, it became harder and harder for them to retain their independence (that was one of the intended consequences) and harder and harder for them to do things like educate their children well, invest in their own businesses, .....
We have to re-distribute the wealth (not just the income) if we want to recover our democracy.
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Newenglander5 months, 3 weeks ago
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Well then under your guidance we should let people just starve. People who for some reason or other can't fend for themselves should just be left to whither and die. I think most people agree that we don't want to support those that are lazy and refuse to support themselves. I believe that there are many people out there don't fall under the, I'm too lazy to work category. there are children out there who through no fault of there own can't get enough to eat. I think that your statement about them taking your house and giving it to some one who is too lazy to work is absolutely over the top. Your moniker Justice4All is more like me, me, me, only I count. You would appear to be a stingy self centered ignoramus who cares little for your fellow man.
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beavith15 months, 3 weeks ago
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fer crying out loud.
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read what he says.
there's a vast number of different programs that prevent people from starving in the streets. have you ever seen or heard of one?
he's not stingy or self centered if he moans about free riders on the sytem. that's what this context is about. its not about withholding food. sorry hyper. its not even about uber rich or uber poor.
if this whole thread isn't about the tail wagging the dog, i don't know what its about.-
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Justice4All5 months, 3 weeks ago
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Perhaps the right wants to cancel them to get rid of the freeloaders.
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Most people don't have a problem supporting people who need help. But when 10 more show up asking for a handout it get's expensive.
The right would find social programs a lot more aggreable if some effort was put into cleaning up the system. And that means getting rid of the freeloaders.
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Justice4All5 months, 3 weeks ago
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You must know how to read. So why didn't you read what I wrote before responding.
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Your ignorant childish rant sounds like you are someone living off the system. Either too lazy to work or born rich and don't have to work. Just give everyone a handout as long as you don't have to pay for it.
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willottica5 months, 3 weeks ago
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I like that line of reasoning. Access to Health Care, if such is a right, and such access is to be earned by the individual (rather than granted by the state), should be unrestricted. Thus if a citizen wants their health care to consist of using marijuana for pain relief, then it should be their right to grow it and use it for their own health care. Shouldn't it?
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If government starts to tell them that they are NOT allowed to care for their own health in the way they see fit, then government gets into the territory where it has a responsibility to provide an alternative form of care.
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