This is one area where I consider myself pretty conservative.

When I was in college 16 years ago, I knew a girl who was on welfare. The government paid for her apartment, daycare, and college. This was all because she got pregnant and the guy didn’t want to marry her.

After seeing the benefits she received, having a baby to get the same benefits looked really tempting. I wonder how many girls had less common sense than I did, and actually did have a baby so they would be all set.

I also had a relative who had a child every four years to stay on welfare. They all had different fathers, and she had five of them. She had started out around 20 and had the 5th one around 40. She seduced a teenage guy in her neighborhood for the last one. She probably should have gone to prison.

What is even more sad, is boys need fathers as a roll model. Some times they need someone to give them a kick in the butt. There are exceptions to every rule, but I have known many people with step parents: including my mother and my husband. In most cases they step parent treated them like a third class citizen. They didn’t love them the way they loved their own children.

I believe if you are going to have a child, the most important thing in the world you can do is raise that child well. It is our civic duty to raise our children well. The rest of society will have to deal with these people. There are exceptions to every statistic, but I do think this is something liberal people tend to downplay to the detriment of society.

Family values has nothing to do with religion. It has everything to do with logic.

This is an interesting video by Pat Condell. I do believe Pat is wrong on one issue. Stating no-one has ever commed injustice against people from the Middle East just is not true.  Of course that does not give terrorists the right to invade our culture or blow us up.

Pat Condell

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Pat makes some interesting points about Immigration that people in the United States should consider. I don’t believe people from Mexico plan to kill everyone. I’ve never heard of a Mexican plan to make every woman wear burkas, but there may be violence from abroad that spills over into the US.  Beheading on the rise in Mexico per NPR. This NPR story points out how Rape in Mexico tends to go unreported because of culture and police looking at the issue as being “the woman’s fault”.  There’s also the planned take over of U.S. by sheer force of numbers.

You can’t really tell what the crime statistics are for illegals from Latin America in the US because the data is collected, but not published.

CIA World Factbook Ethnic Groups

white 77.1%, black 12.9%, Asian 4.2%, Amerindian and Alaska native 1.5%, native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander 0.3%, other 4% (2000)

note: a separate listing for Hispanic is not included because the US Census Bureau considers Hispanic to mean a person of Latin American descent (including persons of Cuban, Mexican, or Puerto Rican origin) living in the US who may be of any race or ethnic group (white, black, Asian, etc.)

Nearly every business in the US now offers duel services in English and Spanish. The second highest source of revenue for Mexico is illegals in the US sending money back to Mexico. The New York Times Published: March 30, 2006:

Remittances from the United States to Mexico exceeded $16 billion last year, the nation’s second-highest source of revenue, after oil. Migration also serves as an escape valve that takes pressure off a government unable to create enough decent-paying jobs for its people.

What incentive does Mexico have to change? I’m sure they couldn’t pull it off. The richest man in the world is now from Mexico.

This is one area I where I believe the Democrats are being totally hypocritical, and making their own worst enemy. They claim to represent so many groups of people that are totally contradictory to each other, yet people keep supporting the same politicians. The Democrats support illegal immigration, yet claim to support the poor in the US. Every blue collar worker in the US has his job threatened by illegal immigrants.

The Democrats claim to support African Americans, but turn a blind eye to the African Americans who have lost their jobs to illegal immigrants. Liberal Secularists often support illegal immigration, yet they have a growing fear of the radicalized Evangelical Right.

I assert the radical left has a hand in creating the same people they fear.

By not giving a damn about the poor blue collar people, the radical left is fueling the radical right.   The radical left is creating a group of people that have absolutely no hope for the future.  The people that comprise the radical right have absolutely no hope for the future, and are much like Muslims.  They only have the afterlife to look forward to. This is what Chris Hedges says he’s talking about in American Fascists.

Chris Hedges on American Fascists

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Next we have the Republicans. Republicans have aligned themselves with the religious right. I believe religion can do great things for people, but it can also be used to control people: Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

There is a total contradiction going on within the Republican Party. I support a free market. Government welfare for the people is Socialism. Government welfare for corporations is fascism. Tax breaks, government subsidies, and eminent domain on behalf or corporations is not a free market. Somehow conservatives appear to be confused over this issue–although I have seen Democrats support such robbery on behalf of corporations as well.

When I listen to Michael Reagan, or Sean Hannity, I hear people people who act like total nationalists on behalf of corporations. How is pledging allegiance to corporations patriotic when they are sending every American job they can over seas? How does the Bible support exorbitant tax breaks for the rich, but not for the poor Matthew 19:16-26?

Matthew 19:16-26 tells us the rich should–not be selfish–and give up all they own to help the poor. I have read sermons that claim that’s not what this passage means, but I’m not buying it. I’m sure that makes wealthy congregation members very happy. Matthew 19:16-26 does not mean you should take from the poor and give to people who are poorer either.

No I’m not saying we need to confiscate money from people against their will. What I am saying is the poorest people of the US are being sacrificed. People are saying we should be charitable to people from Mexico, but what they’re actually doing is bringing in cheep labor, so the rich can become extremely rich. If this is really about helping the poor of Mexico, then why aren’t the rich donating to the United Way or World Vision, instead of sacrificing the poorest people in the US?

This goes beyond illegal immigrants from Mexico. This extends to the factory jobs being lost to people in China paid as little as $19 per week, or the IT jobs being lost to workers in India who make as little as $200 a month–that’s what someone from India told me at least.

How does supporting US corporations support family values? Prior to 1913 when the income tax was instated, taxes were gathered by tariffs. That means they were collected by business transactions, not by taxing the people. If these US companies are sending all their labor over seas, they are no longer US companies and should be treated as such. Giving tax breaks to the rich is insane when all they do is send more jobs overseas. That idea no longer works in a global economy.

In the film Orwell Rolls In His Grave they state:

According to the nonpartisan congressional Budget Office: between 1979 and 1997, income for families in the middle rose 9% from $41,000 to $45,100, while income for families in the top 1% rose from $420,000 to $1,016,000 — a 140% increase.

Why has the response to a rise in inequality been a drive to reduce taxes on the rich?