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gnjsdad
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I listen primarily to Tea Party rhetoric.
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Darryl1958
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Culture of entitlement has set in perhaps?
Being poor is no longer considered to be expected as a product of a hard life, but the result of being given the shaft by the man.
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gamewell45
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Perhaps in some people’s minds and in others perhaps not.
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Scoobyshme
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Easy solution. Some of the folks picked up by the “work bus” would be babysitting the children of others who are working. What we’re talking about here is an overabundance of labor, available to make the whole system work.I’ve been advocating this for years.
But, just be warned, you’ve opend up a can of worms. No doubt the bleeding heart liberals will come out of the woodwork and scream “would someone think of the children?!?” Quite simply, the solution to that is to have them do the work while the children are in School and/or offer day care vouchers or day care itself (aren’t the schools coming to that anyways), after school programs, etc.
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colmywaykurtz
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Some percentage of Tea Partiers will split off from the main group over this issue, in all likelihood. What’s interesting is some leftist liberals (like the Just Foreign Policy people) are already putting out the welcome mat to these people, anticipating a larger “defense cuts coalition” to come out of this.
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colmywaykurtz
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My previous post is not meant to mean I disagree with your characterization of the Tea Party. And most of them probably will toe the party line in the end.
Whatever percentage splits off, it’s a pretty safe bet they won’t be voting Republican, if they vote at all…
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colmywaykurtz
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But DO get the (name removed by moderator)ut of the Pentagon and also that of the middle- and lower-levels of the military in the deliberations over WHAT exactly to cut in the Defense establishment.
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ComputerGeek25
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Darryl1958
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And in yours? What say you?
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gamewell45
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Well I certainly don’t think its a culture of entitlement; at least for most people.
I think that values have change from the days of “we, not me” to “me, not we” or at least your seeing more and more of it in society whether its for good or worse.
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Raskolnikov
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I agree. I personally was disappointed but not surprised that the Tea Party didn’t form their own new third party, but just folded right into the GOP. I don’t sympathize with them, but if they’d have really split off, they would’ve at least shaken up the 2 party dominance.
And SamH, if it wouldn’t inconvenience you, I’d be interested in a cite for that statement about crime rates going down during the great depression. Thanks (I was too lazy to go back and look for your post to quote, sorry).
What I do know is that, from what I’ve read, the Great Depression was (along with Prohibition) one of the major events that contributed to the rise of organized crime in America. It was the generations most effected by the poverty of that era, especially immigrants or their children, that would provide a ready supply of gangsters for decades to come. People are not simply honest or dishonest. Many an honest man in dire straits has done things he wouldn’t have done normally.
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Scott_Lafrance
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It is still not out of the question that the Tea Party forms its own party. But, as long as knuckleheads like Sean Hannity continue to try to appease them and cajole them into staying with the GOP it is only delaying the process
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SamH
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I don’t think I posted an actual quote or stat on the crime rates falling. Those are numbers I learned long ago. With just a quick search I found the following refering to the low crime rates of the 1930s andhow people are comparing them to today’s stats.
online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304066504576345553135009870.html
Crime rates were going up throughout the entire 1920s and continued to climb until 1931-1932. Crime then fell dramatically until 1938 but continued to decline at a much slower rate. This decline continued until 1958 when crime rates began to climb until the late 1980s early 1990s when it began another slow decline.
1960s on
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States
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stinkcat_14
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Of course a confounding factor might be the end of prohibition.
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Darryl1958
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That would be a confounding factor for sure, since Prohibition was in the 1920’s.
I assure you though, that the rise in crime rates coinciding with my birth year is purely coincidental.
Falling crime rates in the 90’s likely can be attributed to the effect that abortion and birth control has had. Less young men means less crime. That is a simple one.
Gamewell wonders if poor people are more likely to engage in crime now because of the rise of the “Me” generation rather than a “We” generation that supposedly in the 1930’s prevailed until before the 1960’s, and was overtly referred to during the 1970’s at any rate. While I am still not sure of just how much crime and poverty correlate—isn’t that ‘poor bashing’ to suppose so?—, it is interesting to note that as government takes care of us more and more, that does not lead to better, more honest people. We cant say that it is making us any worse to be paying more taxes, but we can say that it isn’t making us any better.
What has driven up the crime rate wasn’t alcohol at least. Maybe it was drugs, maybe it was increasing selfishness as we ventured from a society that took care of itself through churches, and the Elks and Moose and other such volunteer organizations into one that takes care of things through taxes, maybe it is the resentments that arise through becoming a society that feels entitled to benefits as a result, maybe it is many things.
Suffice it to say that as become a society that collectively looks to taxes and making the rich pay to take care of societies problems, we have not become better.
Now that abortion is legal, more abortion means less crime though. I’d wager both my little toes on that one. Selectively aborting boys would bring the crime rate down even further, I am sure.
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colmywaykurtz
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[QUOTEmaybe it is the resentments that arise through becoming a society that feels entitled to benefits as a result
[/QUOTE]
If that were the case, the thirties would have been worse than the twenties. The thirties, remember, was the era of the New Deal. The twenties was the era of Hoover’s Darwinistic-flavored laissez faire.
I tend to think that, previous to the sixties, crime was under-reported, largely because it was confined residentially—to “the other side of the tracks” in the cities, where the “criminal (read “minority”) classes” preyed upon themselves. Murders in east LA and Harlem probably didn’t tend to make the papers nearly as often as murders in Astoria or Shaker Heights. Out of sight was out of mind for the largely-white middle class previous to the sixties.
Enter the era of increased mobility with the creation of new highways and transit lines. Crime began to follow wealth. Crime became “upwardly mobile,” too. When the murders began to take place in Astoria and Shaker Heights, the middle class—and the political and media estates that catered to them—suddenly “discovered” there was a crime epidemic. Nixon and Agnew capitalized on this sudden wave of middle class fear when they unfurled the banner of “law 'n order” on the campaign trail as they stumped for GOP congressional candidates in 1970.
And the perpetrators? Most of them were young people, part of the demographic explosion of the postwar era, for whom society and its institutions were woefully ill-prepared. Crowded prisons were as inevitable at this point as crowded maternity wards and crowded schools had been a few years before.
[/QUOTE]
If that were the case, the thirties would have been worse than the twenties. The thirties, remember, was the era of the New Deal. The twenties was the era of Hoover’s Darwinistic-flavored laissez faire.
I tend to think that, previous to the sixties, crime was under-reported, largely because it was confined residentially—to “the other side of the tracks” in the cities, where the “criminal (read “minority”) classes” preyed upon themselves. Murders in east LA and Harlem probably didn’t tend to make the papers nearly as often as murders in Astoria or Shaker Heights. Out of sight was out of mind for the largely-white middle class previous to the sixties.
Enter the era of increased mobility with the creation of new highways and transit lines. Crime began to follow wealth. Crime became “upwardly mobile,” too. When the murders began to take place in Astoria and Shaker Heights, the middle class—and the political and media estates that catered to them—suddenly “discovered” there was a crime epidemic. Nixon and Agnew capitalized on this sudden wave of middle class fear when they unfurled the banner of “law 'n order” on the campaign trail as they stumped for GOP congressional candidates in 1970.
And the perpetrators? Most of them were young people, part of the demographic explosion of the postwar era, for whom society and its institutions were woefully ill-prepared. Crowded prisons were as inevitable at this point as crowded maternity wards and crowded schools had been a few years before.
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Scott_Lafrance
Guest
Hoover was a laissez-faire capitalist?
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colmywaykurtz
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As secretary of commerce, he admittedly did support government regulation of the commercial aviation and radio-broadcasting industries. In spite of this, he thought that regulations should be voluntary for most other fields of business. He certainly DIDN’T have the adversarial stance toward big business that Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson had before him.Hoover was a laissez-faire capitalist?
And had he seen ahead to the other Roosevelt’s policies, he’d have given birth to a forty-pound plutonium brick!
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OrdinaryMelkite
Guest
I agree with you. Sean Hannity is the biggest shill for the politics-as-usual GOP status quo that I’ve ever seen.
Have you ever seen what the Ron Paul people did to him four years ago when he mocked them on live TV? Heckled the heck out of him until he had to flee for the safety of his hotel room. They actually followed him all the way there. Absolutely priceless moment.
I would have no problem with an Independent Tea Party. I would also hope that Ron Paul makes it in the general election. Go Paul!!!
Great thread, this one. :yup::bounce:
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Raskolnikov
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Half of him was. And the other half a was perhaps a mercantilist, a la the Smoot-Hawley tariff act, certainly among the dumbest pieces of legislation in American history. I don’t think the man even had a consistent economic philosophy.Hoover was a laissez-faire capitalist?
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