The recent news coming out of New Orleans raises two very disturbing examples of what is wrong with this country. First, the tearing down of public housing has created protests from those calling the housing projects "home". It's easy to see why this would be disturbing. On a very fundamental level, there is something wrong when people feel so entitled that they refer to their publicly funded housing as their "home" as though to give it a permanent place in their lives. Worse yet, even those who are not of them that see themselves as bound to entitlements are encouraging this mindset by converging from all over the country to join in the protests. From California and New York they come, chanting the need for socialist sympathy among state corporatist and political elite. There are law professors among the protestors, lending their expertise to the cause of entitlements. The systems of both public and private entitlements must be abated. It is draining the life out of the economy by 1) removing purchasing power from citizens in the form of taxes, 2) shifting the focus of intellectual capital from creating need-based enterprises to pursuing government contracts and the state-centric agenda, and 3) removing the economic incentive for achievement from those who are presently here legally as well as those who desire to take part of the system illegally.
Now, I'm not a Constitutional scholar, but I know abuse when I see it. These two examples show a fundamental issue within our country and reveal that the theories behind states' rights and individual responsibility are ever eroding behind the ivory columns of federal bureaucracy. The belief in the normalcy of these types of entitlements and federal intrusions is so saturated in the collective national thinking that these issues remain without discussion. Only in places such as the LVM Institute can these issues find a place for open discussion. And if open discussion is lost, then our country, the great democratic experiment, is also lost.
I agree with you in principle, but I think looking at this issue as an entitlement issue is a bit backwards. For me, whenever there is a conflict, I can usually tell what side I'm on by seeing what side the police are on. In this case, they tasered and gassed the protestors, so my sympathies lie with the protestors. I agree with you 100% on the states rights issue (although that one's been over for a long time de facto), but on the entitlement issue, I have to confess, my heart is not in it. The residents of New Orleans are the victims of federal abuse, and have been for most of their lives. The government, through taxation and regulation, impoverishes the population in general, and exacerbates inequality. Through minimum wages, unions, and the justice system, it puts large numbers of people out of work involuntarily. Is it wrong to then give these people handouts? Of course it is - but why base a critique on that? Why make it appear that the people you are criticizing are the recipients of handouts, and not the government which gives them the handouts after making it impossible for them to survive without?
JAlanKatz: I agree with you in principle, but I think looking at this issue as an entitlement issue is a bit backwards. For me, whenever there is a conflict, I can usually tell what side I'm on by seeing what side the police are on. In this case, they tasered and gassed the protestors, so my sympathies lie with the protestors. I agree with you 100% on the states rights issue (although that one's been over for a long time de facto), but on the entitlement issue, I have to confess, my heart is not in it. The residents of New Orleans are the victims of federal abuse, and have been for most of their lives. The government, through taxation and regulation, impoverishes the population in general, and exacerbates inequality. Through minimum wages, unions, and the justice system, it puts large numbers of people out of work involuntarily. Is it wrong to then give these people handouts? Of course it is - but why base a critique on that? Why make it appear that the people you are criticizing are the recipients of handouts, and not the government which gives them the handouts after making it impossible for them to survive without?
Concerning the police, I don't foresee an incident that would ever have me taking the side of any law enforcement agency. After all, the framework of legality has been skewed by a system controlled by racists and elitists. Tasers, the new toys for law enforcement, should be challenged as cruel and unusual punishment in that their use general use is punitive vice preventive.
Byzantine: This begs a crucial question. How do millions of people nonetheless prosper in the US without these handouts? I think you're talking about a basically unemployable group of folks.
Those millions of people are not members of groups marginalized by the federal government, and/or have not been prompted by moral hazards to make themselves unemployable. Don't tell me "well, others manage ok" when we're talking about someone who, for instance, has been arrested on false charges, threatened with the piling-on of charges, if he didn't plea bargain, so then plea bargained, and now is unemployable because of background checks.
Byzantine: Who would this be? Again, the vast majority of Americans do fine despite the minimum wage, hyper-aggressive law enforcement, and unions. From what I've encountered of public housing residents, they are simply not employable.
Who would this be? Again, the vast majority of Americans do fine despite the minimum wage, hyper-aggressive law enforcement, and unions. From what I've encountered of public housing residents, they are simply not employable.
Perhaps the 1/9 of the American public who have been in prison. I have encounted plenty of public housing residents too, in my work as a paramedic. Sure, plenty were lazy, violent, and not employable. Might not their attitudes be different in a different society? Not all citizens are equally assaulted by the state - those in the worst situation to begin with are harmed more by the state than those in a better situation. The people on the bottom of society might very well be on the bottom of a free society, but might be less marginalized and in a better position to survive than they are now.
I believe I wrote earlier that the of laws of the justice system are written and maintained by persons that are both racist and elitist. Even I have been arrested for resisting arrest when I felt that I had no grounds on which to be arrested. Had I not been a student at Auburn University AND an active duty service member, I could have just as easily had a criminal background that would have rendered my employability as suspect at best. This was due only to the officer seeing a young black male driving a nice car with out of state plates and viewing that, in Alabama, as suspicious and a reason to conduct a routine traffic stop. Abating from further details, the incident was most unfortunate yet it prepared me for being a student for four years in Auburn, AL. I mention that to say that while "the vast majority of Americans do fine despite...hyper-aggressive law enforcement...", the vast majority of America is not the target of those hyper-aggressive activities.
Byzantine:Who would this be? Again, the vast majority of Americans do fine despite the minimum wage, hyper-aggressive law enforcement, and unions. From what I've encountered of public housing residents, they are simply not employable.
The unemployed marginal worker because of unions, minimum wage and hyper-aggressive law enforcement.
The vast majority of Americans aren't affected because they don't happen to be the workers displaced by government interference with the market. Or cause people to profit off the black market because that's their only real job prospect. Or just grow compliant living off the handouts from the state and see no reason to argue with the disutility of labor theory.
The public housing residents might be able to become employable if they could learn some job skills in a low skilled position like almost everyone who isn't lucky enough to have their parents bankroll their education up through college and a skilled entry-level job. But they can't get the jobs because it's illegal to hire them at their true rate so they have no real option to enter the workforce.
If you gave someone the choice between work or starve and were able to legally provide a way for them to work their way up the labor food chain then I think there would be a lot more motivated people out there. Instead we just give up on them and send them their monthly check so they stay out of sight and out of mind...well, except around election time when they become a *big* issue in order to increase the income of the State.
I think that "entitlement" programs are racist from the get-go. Integrated schooling has had a negative (though not intentional on most counts I am sure) effect on minorities. Look at the strides made by blacks in this country in various fields prior to integrated education. Afterwards, those strides seem to have slowed or stalled. Not that aren't SOME outstanding minorities in various fields, but what we saw before integration and what we see now seem to be worlds apart to me "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." Dr. King (whole speech here) I love that speech. But we have gone farther away from the dream and it gets cheered on. We have laws set up that are supposed to level the playing field. But what do they do, except to continue to send the message that a black man can't make it in this country unless a white man says so. "We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by a sign stating: "For Whites Only." But we build housing projects in low income areas. Not in the nice suburbs and on the rich part of town. Sometimes they are even out of town and only connected by a bus line. We let home owners organizations put rules on who can live in what areas. We have a criminal justice system that, if we are to believe it isn't broken, specifically targets minorities. Just look at the discrepancies in the prison populations. Do blacks commit more crime, or do we just keep a closer eye on them? And, as best we can, we buy their compliance off with welfare programs. We teach their kids OUR history, how WE settled this land, how THEY came here as slaves.
But back to New Orleans...
I have never been as pissed off at a public official as I was when I saw the chief of police in NO saying that people who wanted to participate in the discussion about what was going on as, "coming here to be disobedient". I blew a fuse. As opposed as I am to those programs, I feel that everyone has the right to state their position and for a public official to call them "disobedient" for being upset that they couldn't participate, it reaffirmed my belief on the true nature of the cops in the US.