I would just like to bring this up: A lot of people seem to think of republicans as greedy little moles who never want to share anything, because of how they react to welfare and charity acts in government. For the majority, this is simply not true. The fact is, the government tends to suck at giving out welfare, and plus, a great deal of unemployed people actually choose to be so, simply sitting at home doing nothing productive and receiving checks from the government, for absolutely nothing.

I'm not saying we should get rid of welfare as a country, I'm simply saying that we should have a way for them to earn it. Is that so hard? Welfare should be harder to live off of than regular living for the amount of work you do. This way, people are encouraged to go out and get a job instead of being, for the most part, a drain on federal financing.

That's all I wanted to say. I'm not talking about any other topics in this.

Are you kidding me? I'm really getting tired of this crap. IT ALREADY F*CKING SUCKS TO BE ON WELFARE. NOONE IS ONE WELFARE BECAUSE THEY WANT TO BE. STOP BEING A F*CKING RETARD AND CHECK YOUR GODDAMN FACTS.

You honestly believe that there exists no one that abuses the welfare system?

Someone please wake up Mr. shiznit to reality.

No YOU need to wake up. It isn't "fun" to be on welfare, it sucks. It's very hard to live off of, and you don't get any of the benefits of having a job(like, you know, being able to *buy* sh!t). While it's true that other countries have people who abuse their welfare systems, ours is anything but easy to be on.

My family has been on welfare... so I am awake.

All I am saying is that there are people (in the USA) that like being on welfare and some that even abuse the system. I know some of them.

I know people on welfare, and it's an absolutely miserable existence. Doing anything to make that worse on them is unacceptable to me. As a liberal, I feel it's better to ensure everyone can get what they need, than to stop people who *might* be cheating, at the expense of everyone else. The only people I know of who've "gamed" the system are people with pretty severe mental problems: you know, people who are ok living off pop-tarts and ramen for the rest of their lives.

I'm not saying we reduce the welfare benefits. With the kind of system I'm referring to, there would be more money to go around, and people could get more of what they need. What's wrong with that?

I've seen plenty of examples of people clearly abusing the welfare system, especially food stamps and such. If you're wearing designer clothes and using food stamps, either you're blatantly lying about your income, you're stealing clothes and makeup, or something is amiss. I see plenty of people in supermarkets who are clearly those eligible for welfare buying expensive, brand-name items with no regard for sales, coupons, cheaper and equally good brand-X products, etc.

Making the system more efficient is fine, and if you can weed out abusers without harming those who are already suffering more than enough, great. Just don't make things any harder on my welfare friends who are close enough to suicide as it is.

That's one of the benifits of the idea behind workfare. It almost definitely won't pay off all of the costs of welfare, but that's not really the point: It'll reduce the costs, allowing for more money to go into the program, as well as discouraging potential abusers.

Your original post also misses out on the long conservative tradition of private charity.

Private charity is a joke, end of story. Only a handful of the richest Americans actually donate to any charities, the rest keep to themselves so they buy other companies and acquire even more money and power. By all means, donate to your private charities(and I'm totally cool with tax breaks for people who do donate to private charities) just don't assume everyone is as nice as you. They're not. Generally speaking, people suck. People with money are just able to suck more.

Plus, most private charities get what, 10, maybe 20 percent of donations actually to their cause?

and usually it s only famous people who do it for publicity

I'm sure there's plenty of people who do it sincerely, and I know that many wealthy people contribute to charity for tax breaks as well; I'm sure besides fame, at least some of them are motivated by philanthropic urges.

Please check yours. I have run across many locally that we have offered work to to simply strip out junk cars and they could make some cash, and they started looking around like someone might have heard the offer and they told us 'no thanks, but if my worker sees me working I lose my welfare'

This is happening all over. Granted, there are more out there that would rather be working but can't, because the jobs are no longer there, or they are disabled, but there are plenty out there that could be working but refuse to because getting free money is better. At least for them.

Also, we could take more of your arguments more seriously if you would 1) stop using caps lock and 2) stop with the cursing. It simply makes you less mature.

I'd like to think most people want to help others at some level, and just get wrapped up in material gain. I'd like to think that. But it's probably often not true.



I apologize for losing my temper, but it's getting to the point that, from my perspective at least, it's like you people are insisting the sky is purple. The things you people say, that evolution is a sham because monkeys aren't turning into people, that global warming is a fraud because God says so, that the new deal was a marxist plot that didn't get us out of the Great Depression, are things that infuriate me as someone who aspires to be an intellectual. I want to better understand your views, but it's really really hard when you push me away with stuff that makes me want to gag on a rusty spork.

Also, us crazy old evangelical Christians, who do it to prevent/relieve human suffering and heal broken relationships between humanity, Creation, and God.

Statements like this

make it really hard to take statements like this

with any degree of seriousness.

If you want to understand a movement you need to study it's intellectual origins and historical context, otherwise you just get a bunch of stereotypes. You also need to be willing to understand complex stances in terms of the world-view of the person holding them, and not your own. It doesn't mean you have to accept their world-view, but you have to understand it before you even bother trying to understand the surface level issues.

And I'd love to do that, but when I hear things like 'global warming is wrong because god promised us so' from the future Republican house energy chairman, it makes me want to have nothing to do with those people. It's like an old house that's been in disrepair and has had dead animals, unwashed dishes, and food left out on the counters for years. There might be some valuable things to be found inside for those willing to explore, but until you get rid of the stink, I can't stomach getting near the place.

Really? People are still going on about a global warming problem that stopped back in the 90s sometime? o.O I don't know about anyone else and the places they live.. but it has steadily been getting cooler and cooler here each summer. I think we spent 3 days where it was miserably hot, compared to a few summers back where it lasted a complete month?