ObamacareFollow

No, the 5% is pretty well established in social science research. If I've studied anything this semester, it's been about social service programs.

As far as the court order parents unfit, yes, they need due process. You really want to spend the money to have due process to find someone legally incompetent if they need social services, well you try to figure that out. As for me, it seems like a ******* insane use of resources, whereas there are other types of programs shown to increase the likelihood of people becoming and remaining employed--ones that are much cheaper and more effective.

Umm...Even with enough money to live on, my family was in something close to public housing until I was 16. We were hardly leeches.

You took a decent point, and turned it into ****...

/facepalm

     ^^^^ BLAM

That is not how you spell "lies".

I stand corrected, welfare in Ontario is far more giving than in NS. And we're the welfare culture?


My girl friend was on welfare with 2 kids. She was getting $800/month and that was with the bonus she was getting with having 2 kids. Once child support kicked in, they deducted it all from what she was getting and reduced her to $200/month. I have no idea how your parents had a job and still got $400-600/month.

The most I can find is Ari's comment that he's a right-wing whackjob. Do you want to call him a left-wing whackjob or something?

Which is precisely what I was referring to. :)



No. My point was that the "nutjobs" on both sides of the political spectrum tend to support this idea. The difference is that you're all obsessing on the "right wing" nutjob who's an okra farmer of no particular influence, while apparently completely unaware and/or unconcerned about the "left wing" nutjob with similar opinions who was appointed by the current US President to be one of his advisers.


Don't read more into it then me musing on how people's perception of significance changes based on whether the target is associated positively or negatively for other completely unrelated reasons.


And Joph? Would you be dismissing the significance of the contents of that book with regard to sterilization if the person in question was a GOP appointee? That's the point I'm making here. I'm quite certain given your history that you'd be all over condemning him if say Bush had appointed him instead of Obama. Can you honestly say you wouldn't?

To be perfectly honest Joph? My assumption is that he was listing really scary options to resolve population problems as a means to encourage other policy decisions. Not having read the book, I can't say what those are, but it's not like this would be the first time Liberals would present an horrific future outcome in order to convince people to adopt some other more near term "solution" which would not otherwise be adopted.


Here's the thing though. It really doesn't matter what he personally meant when he wrote it (co-wrote really, but whatever). At the end of the day, a text book he wrote includes that as a listed solution to the problem of overpopulation. It's reasonable to assume that some people are going to be influenced by this and may ultimately make decisions based on it if we find ourselves in that situation.


If someone wrote a survival book and in the section about what to do if you find yourself trapped with no food, states that cannibalism is acceptable, including detailed instructions on how best to go about doing this, and specifically stating that laws against cannibalism are suspended in that case, no amount of insisting that you wrote that section purely to convince people of the need to ensure that they bring proper supplies in order to avoid having to make that decision will really make much difference. Someone who read the book *will* end up in that situation, and perhaps as a direct consequence of reading it may decide to engage in cannibalism where maybe he wouldn't have otherwise. Merely stating it as a viable alternative will increase the likelihood of it happening...


There are many factors which influence policy. I can't say how much this one specific thing matters, but it's more about the mindset. The kind of guy who'll write about secretly dumping sterilizing agents into drinking water to decrease excess population is not the kind of person you really want advising the President of the US. Even if we assume it was a hypothetical, what if the President asks him for advice? Does he provide some ridiculous idea as a hypothetical and *hope* it doesn't become policy? Really? Do we roll those dice?


Fair or not, public figures have been pushed out of prominent positions for far far less.

Taking this at face value for a moment, can you set aside your assumptions for a moment and appreciate the fact that when those conditions (forced abortion and sterilization as a means of population control, among others) were described, China was on the verge of implementing some of them? So in an academic analysis of just how bad population can get, and how draconian the measures may need to become in order to bring it down, would you not expect a discussion of a topical and relevant event elsewhere in the world? Remember that this was a text book, not a policy paper.

Seriously? Your argument for why this is significant boils down to "hey, he might pose a hypothetical to the President, and if both he and the President suddenly develop severe mental retardation, it might be a problem"?

Yeah, really Samira. If you think something is bad the thing to do is never ever talk about it because someone might, one day, make a policy!

Well, I suppose you can talk about it if you're saying how terrible it is. All textbooks should come laden with moral judgments provided by the authors so that way the students will know exactly how they're supposed to think.

You actually think the author was saying "this is how we should handle overpopulation"? I feel like you did not bother to look at the link at all. Why would an academic book EVER use the word evil? You seriously think that adds to the discussion?



I'm sorry that you feel all opinions should be purposefully colored instead of looked at in a "cold" academic manner.

Gosh, your lunacy is about to reach the moon itself. I understand you have a tough time saying "Jeez, I guess I shouldn't have used a snippet of misinformation I heard from conservative talk radio," but to try and defend it after requires some truly staggering leaps of logic I thought impossible for those besides Varus and ThiefX up to this point.