Virginia Gun Owners Forum - VGOF

A lot of people will simply dismiss anything on NPR as liberal bunk, but in addition to some of the local programming, I like listening to All Things Considered because of the wide variety of topics they cover. A few stories from today's show did make me want to reach my hands through the radio and slap the people on the other end like “are you freakin kidding me?”

The first story that got me boiling was part of their poverty series they have going this week and today's story talked about the safety nets poor single moms need to get by. They talk about how children who grow up in poor families tend to end up becoming poor adults. The focus of the story is a 29 year old single mother who is fighting the good fight and trying to beat the odds! She has three kids from three different fathers (!) two of which are in prison. She has a full time job at a local non-profit but she's stuck because after eight years of working there she's maxed out in her position at only $9/hour. So she takes night classes twice a week and if she gets good grades her employer will help with tuition. If she graduates she can get a raise.

So her kids get subsidized round-the-clock day care while she's getting subsidized tuition, her employer also pays half the rent of her three bedroom apartment, she also gets food stamps, and medical aid for her kids. All with her $9/hour full time job. Boo hoo she has it so tough.

So after airing the story they have a mouth piece in the studio from the dept of Health and Human Services talking about the struggles of single mothers and how they need so much help. The interviewer asked why they tend to have so many kids and the answer was along the lines of “they have kids for many reasons, but whatever the reason is we should support them. Think of the children!”

You gotta be freakin kidding me. I'm 32 and my wife is 31 and we don't have any kids. This lady is younger than we are and she's already pumped out three kids. Part of the reason why we've chosen not to have kids is because THEY'RE A HUGE RESPONSIBILITY. Not that you have to be rich to raise kids, but they do come with a high price tag and we're not going to rely on government programs to subsidize the cost of raising kids. And what lessons are these kids being taught when they're either at school or round-the-clock day care because Mom isn't around while she's working or in class?

http://www.npr.org/2012/07/11/155103593 ... safety-net

Next story was part of a series about “What is the American Dream”. That's cool. They had some Korean families on. Oh neat, the perspective of immigrants about what they think the American Dream is. Makes sense. So the dream for these Korean families is to have their kids educated in US schools. So they move to the US (story doesn't go into whether they're illegal or not, schools don't check status either), and plop down in a community to get their kids through elementary school. Then they'll move to a community with a good middle school. Then they'll move to a community with a good high school. Go to college then high tail it back to Korea where they'll have a better social status there because they've lived in America.

In some other countries, like New Zealand, goose families are charged to attend public schools. Cooper says she wouldn't want to see that in the U.S.

"It doesn't sound like a very American way to go," she says. "It's a free country with a free public education, and if you start charging people, they're going to start feeling more like visitors. They're not going to be invested in the school and the country in the same way."

Guess what lady? They're not invested in the school or the country anyway because they pick up and move back to Korea when their kids graduate. My goodness, this is crazy.

http://www.npr.org/2012/07/11/156377938 ... in-the-u-s

End rant.

Familiar story. These women are insulated from the immediate adverse consequences of their irresponsibility, so any disincentive is minimized. At best, we don't discourage it; and at worst, we actually encourage it. Seems to me the root cause of a lot of the failures of liberal policies is the assumption that everybody will be noble and not take advantage of a free ride and/or exploit an opportunity at the other side's expense. Applies to everything from subsidizing illegitimate babies to welfare fraud to the consequences of unilateral disarmament.

My wife and I, despite there being no problem feeding and raising more kids, elected to stop at three because of the enormous responsibility attendant to raising them properly, shepherding them through all the activities they need to grow up the right way, educating them as well as we possibly could, and finally, having the means to leave something fairly significant behind for them when we die so they can in turn give their own children a better life. We'd both have liked to have one or two more kids, but made that decision for the benefit of the ones we already had.

I’m sure a lot of other folks have made similar decisions for pretty much the same reasons. That’s why minorities are quickly becoming the majority in this country. In addition to cultural biases toward large families, in many cases they haven’t got a pot to p!ss in or a window to throw it out of, and neither they or their children have anything to lose in terms of standard of living by having a housefull of young’uns. Throw in the fact that the American taxpayers who have limited their own families then subsidize their fecundity with welfare, food stamps, rental assistance, free child care, and any number of other giveaways. Not only are they (they being the minority free riders) outbreeding us (us being the WASP taxpayers), they’re doing it at our expense. When they’ve bred themselves into a majority (it’s now just around the corner), they’ll elect a whole government in the image of Barack H. Obama.

I don't mind temporary assistance for people in actual need. I do mind excessive subsidies of folks who never have and nevber will support themselves. If that gal in the OP is getting 1/2 her rent paid on a 3-bedroom apartment, that has to be worth AT LEAST $300-$400 a month. (Much more than that in a lot of places.) That's $3,600-$4,800 per year. Round-the-clock childcare is a benefit that just boggles the mind! My daughtewr is now paying a "nannie" almost 30 grand a year for 8-10 hours a day worth of childcare; and that's while sheworks in the same home! So what's 24/7/365 childcare worth? $50K a year, maybe? That $9 per hour she's making now amounts to about $18,720 per year. If the rental assistance is worth $4,000/year and the Child care is only worth $12,000/year, she'd have to get a $16,000/year (or $7.69/hour) raise on her $9/hour pay to equal the "assistance she's getting now. So she's either not going to finish school because she can't afford to lose the freebies or she's going to keep the freebies even if she DOES finish school. At wages and benefits of around $20/hour and no need to watch her own brats, she'll NEVER get off the gravy train. And we'll never finish paying.

thekinetic wrote:Damn right!

**** NO I'm a 29 year old virgin.......

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Can I ride your pet Unicorn sometime?

By the way - I even went backj and read the linked article, and still can't figure out the references to "Goose". Will somebody explain it to the poor, befuddled old guy?

dormin the goose reference is part of the second story about migrating Korean families.

[ Post made via Mobile Device ]

Reverenddel wrote:Which is ANOTHER thing I have an issue. W-8's who are hired by companies then ship half their salaries home, while they're living here in the states...

HOW ABOUT YOU FIND PEOPLE WITH SOME TALENT, AND TRAIN THEM, IN PLACE OF RECRUITING OVERSEAS!?!?!?

You have someone with a VESTED INTEREST in the company, country, and community.

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Because the nonprofit poverty enablers are only interested in training more poverty enablers (like the woman in the posted link)?

Just about all of the federal training programs are set up so that the trainees are taken out of the workforce, frozen in training, and disincentivized to actually go to work and get the hell off the federal teat. Most of the funding is restricted to such low-income families that two parents making the minimum wage can't qualify because they make too much money. (These are really just another welfare program masquerading as job training.) And the so-called training services are only offered during normal working hours so that you can't get training and hold down a job at the same time. The system is set up and run for the benefit and convenience of the staff and management of the "Community Action Groups" (non-profits that operate off the federal grants) that run the programs rather than the trainees. In fact, to the extent that any significant percentage of these folks should ever actually get a real job, the "trainers" would be putting themselves out of work and screwing up their own performance measures. Many "trainees" finish one course of training and immediately sign up for another - frequently for occupations in which they have little or no prospect of becoming gainfully employed. It's all a monumental waste of time, money, and people's lives, IMHO.

ratherfish wrote:Take it from a lot of us who have spent a lot of time working with the government.

this statement;
"Government is many things but stupid isnt one of them."

If an entity can be stupid, the government is.
The smaller it is, the fewer "stupid" things it can do.

I agree with the fish on this one. The government proves time and time again how inept it really is. The less responsibilities and powers we give it, the less we're bound to be disappointed.

ShotgunBlast wrote:
The government proves time and time again how inept it really is.

No, I think that they know exactly what they are doing. People are already starting to believe that the government is all knowing, and never wrong, the answer to all problems, etc. That's never a good sign.