The General US Politics Thread

Good God, are they trying to look like a James Bond villain organization?

Probably.

Facing a $1 billion budget deficit, Arizona’s Republican-led Legislature has reduced the lifetime limit for welfare recipients to the shortest window in the nation. Low-income families on welfare will now have their benefits cut off after just 12 months.

And thus those people will spend less, further damaging the revenue of businesses serving their communities and forcing more people out of work, with a net negative effect on tax revenue. Meanwhile the politicians will be patting themselves on the back for upholding "moral values" and "responsible government".

edited 21st May '15 11:00:44 AM by Fighteer

Plus likely raising crime and medical bills, etc. It's just a bad scene.

With the rising non-religious in the US, the articles bemoaning it are showing up. One complained about a poll showing that more Americans would vote for a gay president than an evangelical one. It said this stupid crap:

I didn't even click the headline to load it, since the sheer stupid in the blurb was enough. "A growing belief that moral boundaries are becoming increasingly unacceptable"?!?! No, dumbass, it's because people realize that being attracted to the same sex is not a choice, that gays want to marry because they actually want to settle down with a singular partner and raise a family (showing they're pretty damn serious about marriage), and there's nothing wrong with it. It has nothing to do with people thinking moral boundaries are bad. It has to do with people thinking being gay has nothing to do with morals one way or the other.

If the fundies isolate themselves in their little bubble and convince themselves of things that aren't true, they'll only be more and more shocked that their views are unpopular, while they're too damn lazy to try to find out the real reasons why. I give credit to the author of "The Cross in the Closet", because he, an evangelical Christian, tried to honestly figure out how gays lived and what they were like.

You can't live in a bubble forever.

Well, you can until you die. Then hopefully your children are smart enough to move on.

hehe. You guys heard of that preacher who was outed on Grindr for his sex chats with other guys?

he is a priest at some church and is married and has like 2 kids and has spent his life preaching against homosexuality.

That is probably their plan to fuel the prison-industrial complex and the insurance industry

Acceptance is a hard thing. Especially if you believe you'll go to hell.

On a related note, my area's biggest paper published an Op-Ed about Government-run charity (aka social programs) vs. Church-run charity, bemoaning the "takeover" of it.

My biggest thought regarding it boils down to this. Yes, government-run social programs have strings attached, but it's uniform across States, and largely similar across the Nation. Church-run charities can vary wildly both in terms of how much/many resources are available, and what standards those accepting such charity are held to. Most churches are happy to help those down on their luck, but there are others that would happily tell people that they need to attend services, or "repent their wicked ways", or other such Moral Guardians quips before they can be given charity.

The problem with private charity isn't that it's inherently less efficient than government transfers; it is not, in most cases. However, as you noted, it varies so widely in terms of coverage, strings attached, and various forms of cheating/corruption, that you can't rely upon it as a uniform solution.

Although I have to offer here that government-run transfer programs tend to have overhead in the 3% or less region, whereas private charities can have overhead that's anywhere between zero and 99%.

Mostly because some private charities are straight-up scams. Not many, but enough to spoil the pot on the idea that outsourcing to the charitable sector is a good idea.

I'm reading about the story behind Silk Road.

Unsurprisingly, the founder of Silk Road is a frigging Austrian economist.

Annnnd this is the genius who ended up creating a place where people bought and sold illegal drugs and faked passports and IDs and crap. My anarchist cousin wanted to go to that site and wanted me to give him one of my bitcoins (in exchange for money) so he could buy from it. Shortly before it went under and its founder was arrested. The whole "state has a monopoly on force" thing came from my brother's mouth.

Ho boy.

Oh, there are definitely charity scams out there. I got a phone call from one, and the person on the phone was very bitchy and kept repeating my first name again and again. I finally asked her for a website address so I could research it and donate there instead. She gave it to me, and I looked up what people were saying about them online. Surprise! They only donate like 4% of their money to their alleged cause.

edited 21st May '15 1:07:04 PM by BonsaiForest

I think we've covered how the Austrian mindset is a cult for all intents and purposes.

If there were some way to guarantee that private charity operated fairly and without corruption, it would be fantastic, but at a certain point you blur the line between public and private programs.

edited 21st May '15 1:09:04 PM by Fighteer

"Is" a cult? Or spawns lots of them?

Yes.

Ideally, that pattern should be changing in the future as people who donate to charities become better informed; however, that effect will only work for those who specifically want to spend money to make a difference.

Worth noting that a lot of the apparently-scammiest charities aren't scams at all (at least, on the charity's end) so much as tax shelters. Rich people get to write off their taxes and make a big deal about how they donate to poor kids in Africa, and then the foundation turns around to provide lucrative jobs to these people's friends. This isn't going to change barring the IRS suddenly turning on them, and these charities shouldn't really be counted in the "helping people" department.

Robert Gates,former defense secretary and now president of the BSA, announces his intent to get rid of the Boy Scout ban on gay leaders. Good for him. And while he's at it he should toss out about half of the pointless ceremonial shit. I was in the Scouts for years, and the troops,in both Boy and Cub Scouts, worked best when they had the air of a club of friends who sometimes went camping together, but just in general hung out. Then our leaders decided they had to go "back to basics" and about half the troop quite.

I never thought of the ceremonies as 'pointless'. They were tedious, yes, but they had the same purpose as any other ceremony - to celebrate the achievements of Scouts in our troop. Of course, they could stand to separate Scouting from the need to be religious, to be more inclusive toward non Christians

edited 21st May '15 8:28:57 PM by Xopher001

I'm a big fan of Boy Scouts (and an Eagle Scout myself), and I'm glad they're finally coming to terms with the fact that All Gays Are Pedophiles isn't actually true. That said, my understanding is that their anti-gay stances were mostly pushed by Scouting's Mormon financial backers (which... really sounds like a bad movie plot), so I wonder what's changed to allow them to take that stance without the money drying up.

They started allowing gay kids in because the money they were losing from people that disliked their anti-gay stance was more than the money they would lose if they took a pro-gay one. Something similar could have happened again.

edited 21st May '15 8:35:01 PM by Kostya

I didn't know BSA had Mormon financial backers

IIRC, the organization was founded by a Mormon.

EDIT: After a quick look at The Other Wiki, it seems I was wrong three times over.

edited 21st May '15 9:12:26 PM by TrashJack

I don't know about that but I'm pretty sure the current head is a Mormon.

I'm not sure about the leadership, but I do know that most Mormon churches have Cub/Boy Scouts integrated as part of their youth programs, which makes for a whole lot of Mormon Scouts. This is not as awesome as it sounds for scouting, since it most of the parents don't put the same effort into fundraising, and they prohibit any activities that would take place on a Sunday (ruling out any weekend activity) unless it's run by a member of the Mormon priesthood^note which means that doing multi-troop events, like summer camps, tend to leave out the Mormons, or they show up and leave early. They also aren't nearly as responsible with keeping their Scout leaders properly trained^note there are numerous safety trainings that leaders have to do, the most basic of which is how to protect kids from being abused; the Mormon scout troops are usually among the least-compliant with training, at least in my district, which presents a whole other set of issues as well.

Like many others, I am happy about this turn of events.

Indeed, Baden-Powell wasn't a Mormon.