Czuch: Um, I was simply commenting on the blanket statement that drugs are a cause of poverty. There is a bit of a difference between a debate and a discussion.

I don't fall into one of your cute little labeled "liberal", "conservative" boxes.

Czuch:It's both in my view.  Clearly, some who are well off, but get involved in drugs, can find themselves in financial ruin (not to mention the physical toll drugs take on a person).   Others, who are depressed for whatever reason, self medicate through the drug of their choice.  I'm not sure of the stats on poverty and drugs. 

While I believe there is a connection between drugs and poverty, I don't think there is necessarily a causal relationship.  Except in some cases, one does not give birth to the other.  They are more like cousins.

The single most common factor to poverty is single parenthood.  A single mom has a 60 percent (it may be higher) greater chance to live in poverty than she would if she stayed motherless or was married. 

I'd have to look it up but somewhere I read that in many of the poorer homes, nobody works outside the home.  In many of these cases, the persons were capable of working, but chose not to work.  Instead, they relied on the government to fix things and take care of them.

Poverty is a huge problem around the globe.  All of us who are able should do what we can to alleviate the suffering of others.  Businesses and community should do everything possible to help the needy in our neighborhoods.  I'm not fully against some (read that limited) government assistance but I'm sure that it should NOT come from the Federal government as they waste money - it's better off out of their hands.  Perhaps State and local governments can help but the bulk of caring for the needy ought to come from the people in the community voluntarily.  (And people who can work, need to get a job, maybe two.  When my kids were young and I needed to make ends meet, I worked THREE jobs.  Suck it up, roll up your sleeves, get your fingers dirty and earn your bread!  That's always been my attitude.

The last thing the government should do is to saddle its citizens with oppressive taxes to support the life style of others.  I'm sure we all know or have known people on government assistance that clearly didn't need the help.  They were milking the system.  And we also know that our "representatives" will spend our money very easily - and they can't be trusted.  Even if they could be trusted, "spreading the wealth around" amounts to theft. 

Yes I recognize that there are people in our communities that need help and could fall through the cracks.  But limited assistance seems better than the crazy entitlement system we currently have.  It's out of  control spending that we can't afford and money we don't have.  But now I'm preaching to the choir.

Cheers~

Czuch: I think in reality it has to be a combination of both. But we can't overlook the role of the drug-pusher, whether of illegal drugs or legal ones. There is an insidious process of seduction going on, on TV and the street corner. Nor can we ignore the drug-pusher's sources & channels, not only illegal cartels but also the CIA.

rod03801: I think the point of debate here... Is it the drug abuser who brings himself down because of his drug abuse, or is it the person who is already down, who turns to drugs?

Seems like liberals are going to say that drug abuse is a symptom of a depressed life, and the conservatives are going to say that drug abuse is a cause of a depressed life?

rod03801:higher fuel prices also are a major contributer to poverty

(V): Right. It's the user who needs to be first blamed, not the drug. I know people who smoke marijuana who are quite responsible and successful. Though really, its a different class of drug.

I think Bwild has a point with some of the harder drugs. It's probably pretty rare that users of those are successful. But I still say it's the person, not the drug.

(V): Right on.

Bwild: Yes... and in chemists as well So? There is an old saying amongst the wise.. "only the abused abuse themselves"

Cause... symptoms are just the evidence, and drug abuse is one of the symptoms.

(V):I've seen many go into ruin over drugs...drugs that are readily available on the street.

Bwild: Which ones? The legal or illegal or both? And that's moving onto blaming rather then stating the obvious... There is a problem with some people that is a carried down 'burden' which leads to people just trying to survive.

Drugs are not the cause, they are just an evident result of the cause.

(V):here in the states, a major contributer is drugs

Cause of poverty...... Greed. As one description says ...an empty hole in the persons or governments heart or policy that looks only to the glitter of gold that only fills such holes or lack of wisdom for a short while and new fillings are constantly required.

... Education and the showing of self worth and that gold is not all that glitters.

And less war... It's a waste generally of money, especially in causes that are no-brainers.

Bernice: I like it too. Thanks for posting it. :o)

The source, force, and course of living are all tied to giving.

Lieutenant James Walsh: "The [north tower] didn't fall the way you would think tall buildings would fall. Pretty much it looked like it imploded on itself."

Assistant Commissioner Stephen Gregory: "I thought . . . before . . . No. 2 came down, that I saw low-level flashes. . . . Lieutenant Evangelista . . . asked me if I saw low-level flashes in front of the building, and I agreed with him because I . . . saw a flash flash flash . . . [at] the lower level of the building. You know like when they demolish a building, how when they blow up a building, when it falls down? That's what I thought I saw."

FDNY Captain Dennis Tardio: "I hear an explosion and I look up. It is as if the building [south tower] is being imploded, from the top floor down, one after another, boom, boom, boom."

Wall Street Journal reporter John Bussey: [in his WSJ office] "I . . . looked up out of the office window to see what seemed like perfectly synchronized explosions coming from each floor. . . . One after the other, from top to bottom, with a fraction of a second between, the floors blew to pieces."

Beth Fertig (of WNYC Radio): "It just descended like a timed explosion--like when they are deliberately bringing a building down. . . . It was coming down so perfectly that in one part of my brain I was thinking, 'They got everyone out, and they're bringing the building down because they have to.'"

Naudet brothers film clip:
Fireman 1: "We made it outside, we made it about a block . . . ."
Fireman 2: "We made it at least two blocks and we started running." He makes explosive sounds and then uses a chopping hand motion to emphasize his next point: "Floor by floor it started popping out . . . ."
Fireman 1: "It was as if they had detonated--as if they were planning to take down a building, boom boom boom boom boom . . . ."
Fireman 2: "All the way down. I was watching it and running. And then you just saw this cloud of s**t chasing you down."

Paramedic Daniel Rivera: “It was a frigging noise. At first I thought it was---do you ever see professional demolition where they set the charges on certain floors and then you hear 'Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop'? That's exactly what--because I thought it was that. When I heard that frigging noise, that's when I saw the building coming down.”

Firefighter Richard Banaciski: [South Tower] "[T]here was just an explosion. It seemed like on television [when] they blow up these buildings. It seemed like it was going all the way around like a belt, all these explosions."

Deputy Commissioner Thomas Fitzpatrick: "We looked up at the [south tower] . . . . All we saw was a puff of smoke coming from about 2 thirds of the way up . . . . It looked like sparkling around one specific layer of the building. . . . My initial reaction was that this was exactly the way it looks when they show you those implosions on TV."

Firefighter James Curran: "When I got underneath the north bridge I looked back and . . . I heard like every floor went chu-chu-chu. Looked back and from the pressure everything was getting blown out of the floors before it actually collapsed."

Battalion Chief Dominick DeRubbio: [South Tower] "It was weird how it started to come down. It looked like it was a timed explosion."

Firefighter Kenneth Rogers: "[T]here was an explosion in the south tower. . . . I kept watching. Floor after floor after floor. One floor under another after another and when it hit about the fifth floor, I figured it was a bomb, because it looked like a synchronized deliberate kind of thing. I was there in '93."

Firefighter Christopher Fenyo: "At that point, a debate began to rage because. . . many people had felt that possibly explosives had taken out 2 World Trade, and officers were gathering companies together and the officers were debating whether or not to go immediately back in or to see what was going to happen with 1 World Trade at that point. The debate ended pretty quickly because 1 World Trade came down."

(The 9/11 Commission did not hint at the existence of these testimonies in its official report.)

Bernice: War is a great cause of poverty, especially to those who are ravaged by it. So this really is a continuing of the theme I have been speaking on....

It is also a cause for poverty at home, because it diverts valuable resources & money that could otherwise be used to alleviate the poor here.

Even many Iraq vets (not to mention Vietnam vets) live on our streets, with physical & other kinds of impairments, and our government brings them no relief.

One cure for poverty, certainly, would be the elimination of wars of imperial conquest.

Bernice:  That was a response to Snoopy.  And it' ok to have side discussions as long as they don't dominate.  See my post below ;)

Snoopy: The photographer who did that lived next to my friend years ago. Very powerful image.

Please note the "hot topic" above (in the description).



didnt last long ..............

Snoopy: Yes, that is a very powerful, and now famous, image. what you can't see from the picture is how the little girl's skin has been burned off her back. The picture is actually a snapshot of film footage.

I wish that each night, on the nightly news, the American people would sit down to such images and film. There is no shortage of them. New ones are created every day. It would move a lot of people to action against the atrocities of war. Unfortunately, our national media is not even allowed to photograph the closed coffins of our dead soldiers.

Please note the "hot topic" above (in the description).  It basically means that that particular topic is the main topic of the board.  It doesn't mean that other pieces of news can't also be posted but it does mean that people should try to keep up with the main topic of the board.  The hot topic should be the dominate topic but other small side discussion are fine as long as they don't dominate.  Hope that makes sense.  If the Hot Topic is blank, then anything (reasonably) goes.

If this idea doesn't work, I'll stop using it. 

The Usurper: this is the image that has always stuck in my mind happened during the Vietnam conflict but
it had a powerful meaning to me has a teenager and still does http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/in_pictures_the_vietnam_war_/img/5.jpg

Nice to see some rules.

Over the Christmas holidays, I was watching some war footage with two of my teenage sons. There was a child in the film, looked to be about 5 years old, sitting beside its dead mother and crying. Then there was a man carrying his bloody and broken child, beyond repair. I started to cry. This was a shock to my kids. It just came.

The only other time I cried in front of them was several years ago, when I learned that a promising young man I knew, also when he was only a boy, had lost his life in Iraq. I picked up the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, saw the headline, and it took my breath away.

So here I was over the Christmas holidays, watching war footage, and though I tried, I couldn’t keep back the tears. This was embarrassing. Then my boys started to cry too.

Am I a softy? Perhaps. Am I a weakling? I don’t think so. I was an Airborne soldier in the Army, and before that a state wrestling champion. But you have to care, I told my boys. You have to care...

Czuch, AD, Bernice, Bwild, Vikings, Lisa G, Snoopy, and anyone else who has expressed disapproval of anything I have posted....I appreciate you guys. I admire your tenacity & toughness.

Artful Dodger: I agree with Tuesday. And sometimes our strongest critics can provide us with our best insights, if we will listen. It always goes both ways....

Tuesday: That sounds right to me. The point you make, that helping is a commandment, implies that help is needed. And you also point out that Jesus specifically indicated it would continue to be a necessity. The only question left is, what kind of help is most effective? Certainly private charity is a wonderful thing. I do not see how public charity is not also wonderful.

Artful Dodger: Great points, Dan.

Some of the historical reasons America has had relatively more abundance are:

1. Geographical isolation from European world powers, especially in America's youth when it mattered most.
2. More abundant, and more easily accessible, natural resources than any other country in history.
3. In more modern times, exploitation of the natural resources of Third World countries.

As to middle-class wealth, this is due primarily to the bit of socialism Roosevelt introduced into our system with the New Deal & thereafter. Your fathers could work down at the plant, work a 40-hour week, own his home, provide for his family. But something happened. What? Answer: Roosevelt's paradigm, mixing socialism & capitalism, has been dismantled one piece at a time.

I dare say that, had the U.S.S.R. grown up on North American soil while the U.S.A. were stuck with Eastern Europe & Siberia, Russia would have won the Cold War.

I can see that Awsome was right about the moderator on this board so I'm going to take a back seat to these discussions and put in my .02 only here and there.  In the meantime, I've decided to go ahead and tighten the parameters around here.  If anyone feels I personally violate the standards I've set, bring it to the attention of a global and they will deal with me. 

Please read what I've posted above.  Only feedback to my personal message box will be acceptable for now. 

From this moment on, all posts that aren't on topic may be deleted without notice.  Also, any posts that look like they are simply personal disputes, will also be zapped.

These rules go double for me.

Snoopy: Point taken. :o)

The Usurper: i agree with Bernice on this one
i dont read the very long posts simply because they do get boring after a couple of sentences

Bernice:  I don't think people will really like tighter controls in the long run.  I think it will likely kill the board but we'll see. 

Bernice: Tighter control....that is fitting. Nite now. :o)

Snoopy: Most of my posts aren't this long. I'm sorry if I inconvenienced you.

well goodnight from me and goodnight from my friend (myself) hehehehehe

it is dinner time and must get cooking.......see ya in the morning....play proper people and no attacking each other with knives while AD and I are asleep......

AD....I agree it does need a tighter control, and smaller posts....sorry Surper... LOL

Bernice:  Well, political and religious discussion can bring out the claws in some of us.  I think I'm going to have to tighten things on this board, beginning with myself.  I hope that I don't wake up to a mess.  Today was the first day I considered putting the entire board on approval.  We all have to remember that there is a difference between the issue being discussed and the persons discussing it.

Artful Dodger: hahahaha.....I just wondered if it does have an effect on people......you see some funny turn-arounds on boards here I was wondering :)

Bernice:  They do with the kids at school.  Some even grow hair and howl!

do you think the moon phases have an effect upon ones actions?

Artful Dodger: yes I would assume you are correct....

Bernice:  Read my cut and paste posts, at least they are shorter ;)

Snoopy: I agree with you.....novel type posts are never read.....they become too boring....I would prefer each paragraph posted separate so each could be read. I dont read his posts....cant be bovvered

The Usurper:  Draw your own conclusions on the facts I shared.  But they are facts.  I've asked this before but never got an answer so I'll try again.  There is no system with a better track record for helping bring people out of situations of poverty like the system of free enterprise.  Can you point to even one system where this is not true?  It's certainly true in America and the facts support that.  Even the poor in the USA have riches that the world's poor only dream of.  Redistributing wealth has never worked.  But apparently you know better than the experts.  So where has a system as you describe it worked to create your utopia?

The Usurper: please can you break your post up
its very annoying when wanting to go to another board and having to scroll down half a mile to get there

Czuch: In continuation of my previous post on this topic:

3. The Conservative view is a Double Standard.

It is a double standard because conservatives claim to be opposed to Public Welfare, which they define as aid to the poor out of the public coffers, and apparently any other kind of domestic spending that can be construed, directly or indirectly, as thus benefiting the poor. Aid to the poor is a private matter, they insist, and as we have seen. If given freely in this way to those in need, it is a morally good action. But on the other hand, if a part of their tax-money is used to help those in need, they feel robbed. They are outraged. The money wasn’t freely given, it was taken from them. Furthermore, they were not allowed to choose the recipients of their charitable contributions. Thus they feel alienated from the good deed, in a sense, which perhaps even removes some of its goodness. Not only so, but they feel that perhaps the recipient who did receive the aid wasn’t worthy, in which case the money is wasted. They cannot KNOW this (that the money was wasted), though they are quick to listen to pundits who tell them this is generally the case. And it is certainly true that welfare programs in this country, in the past, have been spotty at best. The truth is, I can understand & even to some degree sympathize with the objections made above by Conservatives. Strictly speaking, what right does the government have to tell us how to spend our money? In fact, what gives the government the right to take this money from us in the first place? As we have already seen, the federal Income Tax is unconstitutional. But it is a part of the modern landscape, and has to be taken into account.

Yet, there seems to be a greater evil lurking behind Public Welfare, from the Conservative standpoint. This great evil they call “Socialism.” The chief evil of Socialism, say the conservatives, is that it steals from the Haves (the industrious) and gives to the Have-Nots (the lazy); i.e., it is a redistribution of hard-earned wealth. This redistribution is considered to be very inefficient, for two reasons: (1) the lazy man will waste this wealth without substantially improving his lot, therefore will remain a siphon off the industrious man’s wealth; and (2) the industrious man himself will lose his incentive for industry because he is not being allowed to enjoy the fruits thereof. Besides, if men are industrious, they will not be needy. And finally, Socialism is considered simply immoral because, again, it is redistribution without consent. This last argument, by itself, does have merit. In a different world (such as that inhabited by our founding fathers), it might be decisive. The first argument, that it is inefficient, is weak. Its efficiency depends on the quality of its input, as any system does. In any case, it is no less efficient than a Capitalist system which wastes incalculable resources through the destructive results of military expansionism, due to the sheer greed of its owners.

A third argument sometimes made is that Socialism is by its nature God-less. But that is not true. It is an alternative economic system, purely & simply. Contrary to the opinions of some, Capitalism is certainly not ordained by God, no matter how many so-called Christians feel a religious passion for it. The Communist governments of China & the former U.S.S.R. are/were Totalitarian regimes with Imperialistic aims. This has little to do with Socialism, per se. Likewise, the modern form of Corporate Capitalism does not reflect Adam Smith’s beneficent vision (Smith being the “father” of Capitalism, who published his “Wealth of Nations” in 1776). In the modern world, the best economic solution is probably a mixture of Capitalism & Socialism, with clear oversight of both, and provided that modern regimes (such as the U.S.A.) do not squander their wealth on bloody wars of conquest.

Be that as it may, the Double Standard among political conservatives lies in this: that they do not really oppose Public Welfare! That they do oppose it is a complete fabrication contradicted by the facts. That is, they do not oppose the redistribution of wealth which they claim is Socialism, and which they insist is immoral (for which argument, as I have said, I find some merit…but also some flaws). They do not oppose the forceful taking of a citizen’s money, without his consent, and spending it without his permission, in areas wherein that citizen would not have freely chosen to spend that money himself, and even possibly in areas wherein that citizen opposed its being spent. The robbery they rail against on the one hand, they allow & condone on the other. And this, assuredly, is a Double Standard.

What I am primarily referring to is our tax money & government debt-spending going to so-called “Defense Spending.” There are, to be sure, many pork-barrel projects in Washington, both Republican & Democrat, that use up our tax dollars. And not only tax money but, as we have seen, even more so the creation of new money by the Federal Reserve to be lent to the U.S. Treasury, thus devaluing the dollar in your wallet. Most people don’t complain about this because they simply don’t understand it. Yet by this method more wealth is taken from you than by the federal Income Tax itself. And most of the wealth siphoned off from you, either through taxes or inflation, is used for “defense spending,” i.e., it is turned over to the Military-Industrial-Complex.

Conservatives will here remind me that the U.S. Constitution mandates that we provide for the Common Defense. Agreed. But the Constitution nowhere mandates that the United States be an expansionist nation, an imperialist regime, a meddler in the affairs of other countries, or, by any means, a belligerent aggressor against other nations in war, which nations have not first attacked us! Yet this foreign aggressive behavior, as any informed individual knows, is the very essence of the “Bush doctrine.” (Palin didn’t know it, evidently.) It is preposterous on the face of it, if I may say so, to believe that our Founding Fathers envisioned the kind of arrogant assertiveness our nation has come to display upon the world stage (or to believe their arguments morally valid, if they did). But the truth is, they could not have, and did not, foresee the kind of power our Federal Government would be privileged with, once technology and central banking tipped the scales in its favor. Indeed, America is the most powerful country in the history of the world! Which means, by the way, that it also carries the most responsibility. But instead of being benevolent, we behave like the new Rome. The money we spend on the U.S. Military & related industries, making up the Military-Industrial-Complex first warned against by President Eisenhower (a Republican!), is yearly more than the rest of the world’s spending combined. To have the audacity to call this “defense spending,” simply boggles the mind. It is not “defensive,” but clearly “offensive.”

In fact, modern Conservatism can hardly be called “conservative.” The old conservatives (such as Eisenhower, and more recently William F. Buckley) fully rejected expansionist, essentially colonialist aims, for America. And that is why Buckley, for example, rejected the Bush administration. To be conservative means, for one thing, to keep things “within the budget.” Yet first Reagan, and then Bush Jr., piled up the biggest debts in the history of our Republic. Not to worry, your kids & grandkids will pay of the bill. I care not one whit for Bill Clinton, but at least he did balance the budget. For another thing, the old-time conservatives surely understood the importance of self-defense. But they reviled belligerent nations. That kind of despicable behavior was a characteristic only of evil empires like the U.S.S.R.! Yet America has now proven itself to be just as despicable. And these so-called modern conservatives embrace the evil empire America has become.

Now, to drive the point home, if so-called “Defense Spending” is not really defense spending, but something else, then it is spending for the benefit of some class or classes of people. My argument is that it is essentially spending for the rich. It is handouts to corporations who are part of the Military-Industrial-Complex, etc., at the expense of the poor & middle classes. It is a funnel of money from the poor man’s pocket to the rich man’s pocket. Again, Conservatives have no problem with this, even if they themselves become poorer as a result. Of course, they do not want to become poorer. But when they do, they falsely believe it is the fault of some poor black woman in Mississippi or some irresponsible single mother, and that is what they believe because rich men like Bill O’Reilly, hired by other rich men to misrepresent reality, tell them that. This is not to throw the total blame on Bill O’Reilly and his masters. If this misrepresentation strikes a chord in the average Conservative’s mind, it is because he prefers the Lie to the Truth.

As we see, then, there are TWO forms of Socialism at work in modern America: welfare for the poor, which is woefully inadequate & inefficient in its current form; and welfare for the rich, which runs like a well-oiled machine. Given the choice of these two forms of Socialism, I would choose the form which builds lives, feeds & houses & schools my fellow human beings. But conservatives instead choose the form which destroys lives, here & abroad; which rains Death & Destruction down upon innocents so that the wealthy backers & planners of these atrocities can take their oil…and who will even go to the extent of bombing their own citizens with false-flag operations such as 9/11, in order to provide a pretext for their crimes abroad.

What this proves, beyond the shadow of any reasonable doubt, is that Conservatives are not compassionate, as they claim to be, but rather callous to the suffering of others. At best, Conservatives are willfully ignorant. At worst, they actually take pleasure in human suffering. They do this because they are, deep down, bigots who do not identify themselves with humanity in general, but see themselves as fundamentally superior. Nor is the so-called “Christian conservative” truly Christian. By the modern definition of Christianity, he may be. He attends church. He prays. But notwithstanding this, his own Bible condemns him, as I demonstrated by the quotations I posted a couple of days ago.

I still have not argued my final point, which is, that the Conservative view is Inadequate. Artful Dodger seems to indicate, with his recent copy-&-pastes from the Cato Institute, that poor folks in America live pretty high off the hog. I will attempt to refute that claim, and if I can do so, then draw conclusions from its refutation. But for the time being, this post is already long enough. :o)

Bernice: I pay by cash also. I guess that makes me more conservative than the Bush administration. :o)

Bernice:Many of the poor in America are rich by history's standards and  rich certainly by the world's standards.

Artful Dodger: EXACTLY................but is it paid for?
probably not.....Im glad Im from the old school, because if I want something I pay cash....ALWAYS...no exceptions....I put a new kitchen in last year....cash. I added another room onto my home...Cash. These days it is the norm to have things on "layaway" as we call it here is AUssie. or Time payment, hire purchase etc etc.......I wonder if POOR Usurper comes into any of those categories LOL - he did say he was poor didnt he?