Well the Merry Xmas / Happy Holidays comments went quite far afield.
You will need to read the comments to catch up, but here were the last 2 comments from Jerry:
Here are some challenges I posed regarding Jerry's proposals.
Heritage Welfare and Single Parent Households
Guttmacher Unintended Pregnancies
You will need to read the comments to catch up, but here were the last 2 comments from Jerry:
I agree that good intentions are not enough, but we must acknowledge those good intentions exist. Both conservatives and liberals want to help the child, but conservatives believe in those parental good intentions and want to help these parents fulfill their willing obligation-- restoring the family structure if possible. Liberals seem to believe that THEY have all the good intentions, and insist that someone else pay for the paving job. They don't seem to care where the road goes.
I like your locution about 2 parents & 1 parents. It is even harder with government as the only parent.
Let me try to be more clear. Yes, people have kids who don't know how to raise them-- NONE of us do. Some people also lack the skills needed to succeed economically, so the question becomes why "we" do not help them to gain those skills, rather than handing them a government check and complaining that they lack those skills?
My favorite liberal, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, said, "The greatest social change of the 20th century was the replacement of a viable economic unit, the two-parent family, with two non-viable economic units." and "The principal objective of American government at every level should be to see that children are born into intact families and that they remain so."What amazes me the most about the whole exchange is that his plan seems very aligned with what I believe to be the Liberal plan. Yet he believes his is very different. Apparently you Liberals are fine with keeping these folks trapped in poverty, whereas the Conservatives care more and are somehow going to do the same things slightly differently and make a huge difference. Thoughts?
Here are some challenges I posed regarding Jerry's proposals.
Remember our favorite saying... The Path to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions...Useful Links from Xmas Comments:
I have no doubt that most people want the best for the sweet little baby that they are holding in their arms. This in no way means that they are mature, determined, capable, responsible, self disciplined and/or knowledgeable enough to provide it.
Especially when they have:
- few academic capabilities or skills
- low paying jobs, need to pay for daycare
- work strange hours/ short shifts / may not find child care
- only one Parent in household
- lack of consistent reliable birth control
As I keep saying, raising kids well with 2 Parents is hard. Doing it with one parent is very hard.
Heritage Welfare and Single Parent Households
Guttmacher Unintended Pregnancies
- "Two-thirds (68%) of U.S. women at risk for unintended pregnancy use contraceptives consistently and correctly throughout the course of any given year; these women account for only 5% of all unintended pregnancies.
- In contrast, the 18% of women at risk who use contraceptives inconsistently or incorrectly account for 41% of all unintended pregnancies.
- The 14% of women at risk who do not practice contraception at all or who have gaps of a month or more during the year account for 54% of all unintended pregnancies. (see graph)."
38 comments:
I especially liked this quote
"see that children are born into intact families"
being posted by Jerry when he is so against making good reliable birth control free and readily available for every adult regardless of income.
This is a pretty interesting piece if you can make it through the whole thing.
Heritage Welfare Reform
And I could see much of that being implemented if the GOP has the power.
Here are some of the important points.
"In the coming years, reformers have their work cut out for them. They must begin by resolutely opposing the Obama administration’s efforts to dismantle the work requirements in TANF, which are the heart of the program and the key to the effectiveness of the 1996 reform. The administration’s changes to the program are not only counterproductive, but unlawful. They must not be allowed to stand.
And to build on the successes of welfare reform and regain the initiative, reformers should pursue a three-part agenda. First, workfare must be expanded to other means-tested programs like food stamps and public housing. Second, the overall costs of all our ballooning welfare programs must be controlled through a cap on aggregate spending. Third, serious attention must be paid to the crisis of unwed parenting that drives so much of today’s poverty."
"These core “workfare” requirements were spelled out in Section 407 of the 1996 law. Section 407 established a three-part mandatory work system, defining who was required to work, how much they were required to work, and what constituted qualifying work-related activities. Under Section 407, around 30% to 40% of the “work eligible” adult TANF caseload (defined as non-disabled adults receiving TANF benefits) is required to engage in “work activities.” (The law nominally requires that 50% of this caseload be engaged, but provides a variety of exemptions and deductions that substantially reduce the effective participation rates.)
“Work activities” are defined very broadly to include unsubsidized employment, government-subsidized employment, on-the-job training, up to 12 months of vocational education, community-service work, job searches (for up to six weeks) and job-readiness training, high-school or GED education for recipients under age 20, and high-school or GED education for those 20 or over if combined with other listed work activities. Eligible individuals are required to engage in such activities for 20 hours per week if they have children under age six in the home and for 30 hours per week if they do not. Subject to the overall participation rate, states are free to determine which recipients will be required to engage in work activities.
This TANF workfare system is simple and flexible, allowing states a wide range of choices in meeting their participation standards. And the “workfare” approach also yields a number of important benefits for welfare recipients and society at large. The public overwhelmingly believes that able-bodied adult welfare recipients should be required to work, prepare for work, or at least seriously look for work as a condition of receiving aid. In requiring some TANF recipients to engage in constructive activity in exchange for benefits, workfare thus transforms welfare from a one-way handout into a system of reciprocal obligation. Moreover, demanding work as a condition of receiving benefits reduces the relative economic utility and attractiveness of remaining idle on welfare: If a recipient has to work anyway, he might as well hold a job that likely provides more compensation than welfare and allows for self-sufficiency. These improved incentives have resulted in fewer welfare enrollments, shorter spells of welfare dependency, and smaller caseloads across the country."
Of course they include the gorilla in the room that they don't want to help with by making birth control free and readily available for people of all financial groups...
"Third, serious attention must be paid to the crisis of unwed parenting that drives so much of today’s poverty."
Am I the only one seeing a serious disconnect between
"see that children are born into intact families"
and
"making good reliable birth control free and readily available..."
?
If people are too irresponsible to raise children properly (a problem I believe grossly exaggerated), then what makes them responsible enough to use birth control properly? The latter seems like a liberal solution, a' la Margeret Sanger, while the former sounds more like a conservative who still believes in "family values."
The easiest most pragmatic way to promote that children are only born when people / families are truly ready for them is to reduce the costs and barriers to people using reliable birth control regularly. Seems pretty simple to me...
And for you who preaches the unfairness of poor people not being able to take advantage of all the school choices we have available (ie charters, magnets, open enrollment, moving to new neighborhood, etc) because of the expense. And how it is a terrible civil rights issue that they are "trapped" in local schools.
It seems to me that birth control equality would be a slam dunk. I mean why should poor households have to pay a significant amount of their household budget for something that is so critical to them and our society?
Unless of course one thinks that judging people is more important than solving the problem and helping them in a very simple way.
Related reads.
Klugman Family Values / Money
CNS Family Values
"The easiest most pragmatic way to promote that children are only born when people / families are truly ready for them is to reduce the costs and barriers to people using reliable birth control regularly. Seems pretty simple to me..."
Sometimes the simple solution is just too simple. Or maybe not simple enough. But what exactly are the "costs and barriers" that free BC would overcome? Is it the $8/month for the pills at Walmart? Is it the zero cost of giving up casual sex without protection OR commitment? Is it that society frowns on birth control, or is it that society does NOT frown sufficiently on unwed motherhood and casual sex?
Let's try an example. Obamacare supposedly gave many more people health insurance (not care, I reiterate), but most of those were people already eligible for Medicaid but who had not bothered to sign up for it! So, if I give away free birth control, something of far less monetary value, what will those people too irresponsible to use it do, if not ignore it? Wouldn't we do better by curing the underlying "irresponsibility" and helping folks make better choices?
I'm going to let you explain this one: "And how it is a terrible civil rights issue that they are "trapped" in local schools." It seems obvious to me...
"curing the underlying "irresponsibility""
So you want personal freedom and relief from government controls/influences, unless you disagree with what the people are choosing. Then you want government to "cure them'...
It sounds a lot like your anti-LGBT and pro-life beliefs. "I want my freedoms and no government between me and my Doctor... But the government should control those other citizens."
That does sound like the typical Religious Conservative. :-)
Here is a guy for you it sounds like.
The Atlantic Tom Price.
On the up / down side, if the GOP screws this up to make the Religious Right happy, they will only be in control for 2 years...
As for going back to the good old days where women and men got married early, were celibate until the wedding night and felt huge financial / social pressure to stay together through good/bad. I think the Genie is out of that bottle.
Besides, I am pretty sure poor married couples like to have sex... And aren't too excited to pay $15 to $50 per month to have the privilege. And yes it looks like one can get a couple of generics at Walmart for $10/mth... But there is still that yearly Doctor's appointment to get the prescription.
"So you want personal freedom and relief from government controls/influences, unless you disagree with what the people are choosing."
That statement is not even internally consistent. If government is prohibiting people from exercising choice, say in schools, then people are not choosing. If people are choosing irresponsible procreation, then government is not controlling them.
"On the up / down side, if the GOP screws this up to make the Religious Right happy, they will only be in control for 2 years..."
On the upside, it would be next to impossible to "screw up" the welfare-education mess that we currently have. The only people unhappy with reasonable attempts to fix this mess will not be those in the RR, it will be the rabid Leftists insisting that the government take care of these unfortunates, who they believe utterly incapable of caring for themselves.
I agree. Most Religious Conservatives are not internally consistent.
They say they want small government and increased personal freedom in one sentence. And in the next they say they want to "cure irresponsible behaviors" and promote their beliefs via government policies and programs.
That is why I like this Nolan Diagram the best. It shows the Democrats and Republicans both as below the horizontal line.
Jerry,
So it is not the Religious Right who will be angry at the GOP for making:
- birth control, family planning and first term abortions harder to get for those who need it most and can least afford it.
- going backwards with regard to LBGTQ rights and protections
It is going to be pragmatic fiscal Conservative social moderates like me who will change our votes to stop the religious over reach.
If social moderation, aka destruction of the social fabric, is more important to you than the fiscal sanity of helping people to help themselves, have at it, but I would not call it pragmatic. If on the other hand, you want to be a fiscal conservative first, and deny government the money through which they corrupt the common morality, you could make all of us happy.
I am a big fan of tying the receipt of government funds to people learning, working, improving, etc. And even changing the system to ensure dual Parent households are promoted, and for sure not punished by the systems. These just make good common sense.
However the idea of making birth control, family planning services and first trimester abortions ever harder to get for the poor people of America is decidedly not in the best interests of America. This makes no common sense and is just over reach by the religious right.
I will agree with the first part, though I still believe you are working largely from the "stick" end rather than the "carrot" end. You are correct in a way that the liberals are not, which is there are some people who, offered the incentives of help and the requirement to (modify behavior and ) work for benefits will choose to forsake the opportunity, and those people MUST be cut off from taxpayer assistance. That is the point at which liberals, and many conservatives, even, lose "pragmatism."
On the second, I think you are mis-characterizing the religious right. The vast majority of those folks (in fact a majority of Americans) do not believe that abortion should be unrestricted, and only a small minority object entirely to birth control, unless you are talking about government-FORCED birth control or abortion. If we accomplish the former, of bringing the current "under-class" into the cultural and economic mainstream, the problem of rampant motherhood tends to solve itself. Rich societies and, for lack of a better word puritanical societies, have far fewer unwanted children, or even wanted children.
I am not sure which sticks I am introducing, yet I am pretty sure your sticks are pretty clear. Please remember this.
"First, we hop into our Wayback Machine to Angel2's Mom. When Angel2 was conceived, Baby Daddy2 was informed he was responsible for the financial support of Angel2. They were going to have to work out how to do it, somehow. Medicaid would attend to prenatal care and delivery if they (notice) filed soon. Their parents could help if they wanted and could. The Welfare worker was available to help them find jobs or training or child care and teach baby care." Jerry
We never did figure out how we will ensure babies do not end up homeless or hungry in your "they'll just do it world".
So my simplistic view is that you are happy to continue setting people up for failure. (ie restricted family planning options for low income folks) And less support for the baby when the adults fail to be "responsible".
I assume that is your plan for "curing the underlying "irresponsibility""
"Rich societies" ... "have far fewer unwanted children"
You are absolutely correct, most ensure that every woman no matter her socio economic status has equal access to birth control, family planning and first trimester abortions. Those things that the religious right are against.
I mean their dream is to over turn Roe v Wade... And look at the incredible burdens they are raising in Conservative states. Who do you think they most negatively impact? Well to do women or poor women?
Now you can say that these are reasonable actions to reduce late term abortions. But the reality is that the religious right is very supportive of making abortions a back room illegal activity again.
SCOTUS Strikes Down TX Restrictions
Law Impacts Poor Women Most
Last five years
"I am not sure which sticks I am introducing, yet I am pretty sure your sticks are pretty clear."
Isn't this a big stick? -- "I am a big fan of tying the receipt of government funds to people learning, working, improving, etc. " Isn't this "you do what we say or we cut off your check"?
"You are absolutely correct, most ensure that every woman no matter her socio economic status has equal access to birth control, family planning and first trimester abortions."
The difference is that in wealthy societies people choose these things, and pay for these things, themselves. And with responsible contraception use AND intact families to cover the "oopsies," abortion is rarely needed.
"But the reality is that the religious right is very supportive of making abortions a back room illegal activity again."
I am sorry, but you cannot say that, because you have said often you are NOT a member of the RR but rather a critic. You do not and can not KNOW what the RR supports. I would suggest that most of them would want it "safe, legal and rare." That is far from the current, and IMHO undesirable, situation. When the majority of abortions are non-white children, there is something not-right going on.
From NBC news:
By contrast, Alveda King, a niece of Martin Luther King Jr., calls herself a “reformed murderer” for undergoing two abortions when she was young.
Now an outspoken anti-abortion campaigner, King says the best way to reduce abortions among black women is to dissuade more of them from premarital sex.
“We give free sex education, free condoms, free birth control,” she complained. “That’s almost like permission to have free sex, and the higher the rate of sexual activity, the higher the rate of unintended pregnancy.”
Anti-abortion activist Day Gardner of the National Black Pro-Life Union says many blacks are unaware of their community’s high abortion rate. [about 2-1/2 times the rate for whites]
"So my simplistic view is that you are happy to continue setting people up for failure. (ie restricted family planning options for low income folks) And less support for the baby when the adults fail to be "responsible".
No need to be insulting. My view is that we start helping people AVOID failure, and help them care for their children the way they are inclined to do given the means, by giving them the means-- social, economic, and practical. Yes, at some point we will stop giving them cold, hard cash, ideally, because they will be earning it themselves. The success of welfare, as has been known for many years, is not how many people are on it, but by how many have managed to get OFF.
If you don't want to take my word for it. DB Abortion
"Penny Nance, President of Concerned Women for America, one of the most influential conservative women’s groups in the nation, disagreed strongly. Concerned Women for America describes its mission as “to protect and promote Biblical values among all citizens,” and Nance considers a core part of that work advocating the end of legalized abortion. In an email, Nance wrote: “People who truly believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God and have actually read it cannot honestly conclude that abortion is not a sin that damages a woman’s soul and stains her conscience.” Despite being a survivor of an assault and attempted rape, Nance has remained steadfast in her belief that abortion is the taking of a life and therefore not compatible with being a devout Christian, even though she did stress she believes in forgiveness and redemption. “It is not enough to make abortion illegal,” she wrote. “We strive to make it unthinkable.”"
These are the same Hobby Lobby whackos who fight against the very reliable IUD's because they on a very very rare occasion may allow an egg to get fertilized, and not let it attach to the uterine wall. And they are the ones who fight against the day after pills. For them any fertilized egg is sacred even if it is hours old.
As for people paying for Birth Control in wealthy countries... Try again...
"This map, originally composed by Slate, shows which countries provide the birth control pill for free and which offer a subsidy. The United States now falls in the “partially subsidized” category. Meanwhile, Russia, China and Indonesia have policies ensuring contraception access at no cost."
Contraceptive Use in Europe
Catholic Leader fight free BC in Phillipines
No Prescription BC
The reality is that these folks will not "be earning it themselves" until we help them stop unplanned pregnancies.
"In sum, the prevalence of unintended pregnancies can be attributed to the fact that many teens and young adults lack the motivation necessary to avoid becoming pregnant; that some individuals are well motivated but are poorly informed about how best to protect themselves from an unplanned pregnancy; and that some of those who are armed with good intentions and the proper information contend with limited access to affordable and effective forms of contraception."
Isn't that putting the cart before the horse? According to your article and to common sense, there are many reasons for unplanned pregnancies. But rather than try to remedy that fact by PSAs or some other persuasive techniques, why not try to eliminate some of those reasons? For example, offering kids the hope of a job, and the opportunity to get an education that would land them that job? How about passing on the knowledge that welfare is not going to be a career, or that marriage and family are keys to happiness, not an obstacle? In short, correcting decades of public policy failures that led to the problem. I don't think you can or should "help them stop" because it sounds too much like "make them stop." What you can do is to make the choice to avoid it available and more appealing. You won't do that by offering free sex with no consequences on the one hand and then telling them not to do it on the other.
"These are the same Hobby Lobby whackos who fight against the very reliable IUD's because they on a very very rare occasion may allow an egg to get fertilized, and not let it attach to the uterine wall."
The Hobby Lobby people were fighting against the idea that government could get them to not only "approve" something contrary to their religious beliefs, but to PAY for it for a third party. Seems like a world of difference to me. Only a radical would support denying freedom of religion, or government appropriation of private money to "give," Robin Hood style, to another.
And who are the wackos, here? Is it those who demand a taxpayer-funded abortion for any woman, at any time, for any reason?
Yes oh let's try to undo the free love revolution. When ever fewer people are going to church... And the parent(s) are working full time and getting divorced on a regular basis.
It would be nice to go back to old days where:
- most people went to church
- they lived on separated farms,
- the family struggled together to get by
- most people worked often
- pornography was rare
- men controlled the behaviors of women
- there was little free time for temptation to creep in.
For better or worse, those days are long gone, freedom reigns, and young citizens have plenty of time and opportunity to embrace their passions.
I assume you are talking about that
"very very rare occasion may allow an egg to get fertilized, and not let it attach to the uterine wall"
You keep saying that the Religious Right is reasonable, I am just pointing to proof that they are not. They believe that every sperm is sacred.
The benefit of being a Protestant.
Here are some of those PSA. I am pretty sure they will be no more effective than what the kids are taught in school. Oh I forgot, those lessons are the ones the religious right wants to stop... Because Parents should be responsible, not the government.
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Example 4
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