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The Swiftian satire wasn't appreciated when Rush did it, but now look what New York City is doing:
The Bloomberg administration has quietly begun charging rent to homeless families who live in publicly run shelters but have income from jobs.(Via Memeorandum.) Hey, Vanessa, why don't you explain this problem to the father of your child? It's like Ann Coulter says in Guilty: Nobody is allowed to criticize single mothers. Single mothers have a right to screw around, have babies out of wedlock and stick taxpayers with the bill.
The new policy is based on a 1997 state law that was not enforced until last week, when shelter operators across the city began requiring residents to pay a certain portion of their income. The amount varies based on factors that include family size and what shelter is being used, but should not exceed 50 percent of a family's income, a state official said.
Vanessa Dacosta, who earns $8.40 an hour as a cashier at Sbarro, received a notice under her door several weeks ago informing her that she had to give $336 of her approximately $800 per month in wages to the Clinton Family Inn, a shelter in Hell’s Kitchen where she has lived since March.
“It’s not right,” said Ms. Dacosta, a single mother of a 2-year-old who said she spends nearly $100 a week on child care. "I pay my baby sitter, I buy diapers, and I’m trying to save money so I can get out of here. I don't want to be in the shelter forever."
Say this for the gays, at least they're not trying to bill me for their lifestyle. Beware the hobo menace! UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! It's Mother's Day and Rule 5 Sunday, plus we're also trying to learn the lessons of Dijon Gate and commemorating the fifth anniversary of
You know an economic system whose central conceit is to promote equality by transferring wealth from the have-more’s to the have-not’s has failed when it seeks to transfer wealth from the poor to government.Ditto! BTW, just in case Rush Limbaugh should happen to read this: I am The Other McCain for a reason, so please don't hate me because of Crazy Cousin John. Or, as I sometimes feel obliged to point out: Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Bob Barr! Just to clarify this distinction, check out these articles I wrote for The American Spectator:
- Oct. 7: How John McCain Lost
- Nov. 5: You Did Not Lose
- Dec. 8: It Won't Work
- Feb. 9: It Still Won't Work
"Say this for the gays, at least they're not trying to bill me for their lifestyle."
ReplyDeleteAre you saying there is no taxpayer monies spent on AIDS ? Or are you saying AIDS is not related to the "gay lifestyle" ?
Is "Be nice to an LGBTQ week" coming ?
Now we're seeing solutions to society's ills. And how appropriate that the place is called the Clinton Family Inn. Although few liberals would ACTUALLY share their home or income to house the poor they supposedly care about. I haven't seen POTUS bro George in Foggy Bottom recently.
ReplyDeleteSay this for the gays, at least they're not trying to bill me for their lifestyle.Oh yes they are. Who the heck do you think picks up the tab for treating homosexuals that contract aids (or are HIV postieve)??
ReplyDelete" Hey, Vanessa, why don't you explain this problem to the father of your child?"
ReplyDeleteWell, with the damn shelter taking her money, how can she afford the private detective to find the guy, or the arena to hold all the suspects?
Despite the satiric nature of Limbaugh's recommendation, I'v e always felt everyone should pay income taxes. Even the homeless and "poor". Welfare is income, after all. And even if it's nominal, hell, even if it's $5 or $10, it's the point of it. If 45% of the populace pays no income tax at all, where is the buy in to cut tax rates from that 45%? What do they care? That just means their welfare might go down. But if that $10 might get raised to $18, they will understand the nature of tax hikes.
ReplyDeleteJeff Stone:
ReplyDeleteGay people spend a great deal of money subsidizing the public education of heterosexual people's children and their family healthcare costs. At the end of the day, the balance sheet shows a great outflow of income from gay to heterosexual households.
"Nobody is allowed to criticize single mothers. Single mothers have a right to screw around, have babies out of wedlock and stick taxpayers with the bill."
ReplyDeleteEhhhh... I'm less blindly trusting of the presumptive virtue of the poor and disadvantaged than I used to be, but I can't help thinking that the single mothers who are responsible for their own situations through foolishness or freeloader's greed (and I've no doubt there are a number of them; Nadya Suleiman, the "Octomom", comes to mind) are still pretty much way outnumbered by the ones who are in that situation through no choice or control of their own. The willingness of all too many baby-daddies to walk away without a look back is hardly the mothers' fault.
Given that we will never be able to separate freeloaders from the truly needy with 100% accuracy and fairness, it does seem that erring on the side of protecting the needy - even if that allows a few freeloaders to continue their parasitism - is the preferable option. If it's better that ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be unjustly punished, surely it's better that ten freeloaders be endured than that one desperate and helpless needy person be shut out in the cold?
"...are still pretty much way outnumbered by the ones who are in that situation through no choice or control of their own."
ReplyDeleteOkay, I'll bite.
Explain the mechanics of that for me.
"At the end of the day, the balance sheet shows a great outflow of income from gay to heterosexual households."
ReplyDeleteHogwash. You're looking only at the short-term. In the long term, homosexuals don't have children, so they're not providing the future generations that will do all the taxpaying and purchasing that supports the aging generation. Yes, gays are shown to have higher disposable income, but that's because they're disposing it on themselves, rather than spouses/children. There's no ROI on a person/family who produces no offspring, regardless of sexual orientation. Our investment for education and other benefits given to those who never have children dies when they die, having no lasting benefit for society.
The comment by Darren Leonard Hutchinson and reply by Connie du Toit regards this post point up the problems of universal health care don't they?
ReplyDeleteI seem to remember reading Heritage and Cato studies back in 1995 or so showing a net tax gain for the Fed from cigarette taxes. Seems that smokers tend to die younger, not partaking of Social Security and Medicare as long as others. So, if one were to believe those reports, it would seem that tobacco users were actually subsidizing non-tobacco user lifestyles, health care, etc.
Now, since I don't smoke anymore, if I'm going to be on the hook for everyone else, in terms of a tax for universal health care, I want them to live a healthy life style. We're going to need to put scales in the post office and start taxing according to BMI. Or how about a surcharge for McDonalds? That stuff is in no way good for you. Want to drive fast? How about quadrupling the fines for speeding tickets or reckless driving? Better yet, let's just put a (larger)tax on anyone who drives, since if they did not, their likelihood of being injured in a car accident goes way down. We could go on and on with this stuff.
"Gay people spend a great deal of money subsidizing the public education of heterosexual people's children and their family healthcare costs."
ReplyDeleteNope. They're getting more than they pay for, because those heteros kids will be paying the taxes that pay the gays social security, which on average will be three time what they paid in to the system.
Yours, TDP, ml, msl, & pfpp
“single mothers who are responsible for their own situations through foolishness or freeloader's greed.…are still pretty much way outnumbered by the ones who are in that situation through no choice or control of their own.”
ReplyDeleteWhoa. So single women are too stupid to date a guy for a while, not having sex the whole time (maybe a year or two) until they can discern if he has that right stuff to be husband and father material?
Or they’re not stupid, they just don’t care who they screw and what pops out when, as long as they’re getting taken care of in the moment?
Choices matter regardless of race, age or gender. And these are definitely choices.
The comment about how gays "subsidize" the lives of children when they do not procreate is no different than the statement that people without children should subsidize other people's children. They are not other people's children becuase our young citizens have exactly the same legal (and moral) relationship to the state as you do. This argument is a major red herring, be it that it has a minor ring of truth with the superficial and thus enfranchises such garbage among the unthinking. Our new citizens do not vote themselves into exisitence and the relationship between the born citizen and the State is not in any way, superficially or profoundly, and issue of property ownership. You own your dog, and are responsible for it. You own your car, and are resposible for it. You do not own other people, and neither do their parents. Our young citizens are not table lamps, and the assertion is not only absurd and thoughtless, but in the experience of the world is downright evil. The relationship between a child and the State is based on well founded and painfully learned need to provide education and health for our country, and it inures to citizens to provide for the next generations, whenther they would like to buy a table lamp instead. This is so new citizens can in turn can maintain the society, just as the world you live in and its benefits are not by any stretch of the imagination your work product, but rather that of preceeding generations. It is facile to make such an assertion, and does not reflect well on your ability to reason or your comprehension of the vast benefits that have accrued to you without lifting so much as a single finger. I curse my luck in being born into a world of self-fascinated navel gazers who's spinal column that does not taper at both ends. As a hard core conservative, I find this drivel offensive beyond measure; it is the misappropriation of property that is the evil of what the thug totalitarianism that passes for liberalism these days, but it would be nice to know that at lest consevatives have some grasp of the absolute necessity of the state as a tool to provide structures that provide for vibrant generational survivial and growth.
ReplyDeleteDL Hutchinson said:
ReplyDelete"Gay people spend a great deal of money subsidizing the public education of heterosexual people's children and their family healthcare costs. At the end of the day, the balance sheet shows a great outflow of income from gay to heterosexual households."
This is definitely short-term thinking. With only Mormons, a few Catholics, fewer yuppie "Christians" having children, just what in the hell is ol' Hutch and his ilk gonna do in a few years when the fertile Islamists impose Sharia Law on Obama's AmeriKa. If gays think they have had it bad in the USA to date, they have another THINK overdue.
Alternative idea to taxing the poor:
ReplyDeleteOnly taxpayers can vote.
About half of American adults pay no tax. They don't really have any skin in the game. The leeches can vote themselves more bennies at the expense of the host animals.
I'm compassionate enough to allow people to bear the costs of their foolish choices.
If sheltermom applies for benefits, the state will hunt down babydaddy including the police escorted paternity test and the enforced child support. The government would rather the sperm donor pay the costs than the state. Of course they skim some off the top for administrative expenses.
I don't know why biodads think everyone else should pay for their hoorish sex lives. LOL
Perhaps we should start looking into a franchise requirement: you must pay more in taxes than paid by the government in subsidies, welfare, and the like (except wages).
ReplyDeleteI also believe that only people who pay income, payroll and/or real estate taxes should be allowed to vote. Verify voting qualifications on an annual basis showing pay stubs, tax return or property tax bill.
ReplyDeleteMake everyone who is allowed to vote have some skin in the game.
For income taxes, make everyone pay quarterly estimated taxes rather than withholding. Make them write a check and FEEL THE PAIN. Withholding is too painless and at the end of the year, the tax refund is viewed as a gift from the government rather than the return of an interest free loan you made to uncle sugar.
Boaz - I'd include wages from the government, and, if your employer makes its money from government contracts, apply the percentage of total revenue from government contracts to the employees' salaries on the subsidy side.
ReplyDelete"Whoa. So single women are too stupid to date a guy for a while, not having sex the whole time (maybe a year or two) until they can discern if he has that right stuff to be husband and father material?"
ReplyDeleteForget that. In this day and age, that's akin to turning water into wine.
How about using birth control until they can discern this?
I guess I fail to see how this is so great. Is not thre result people are not going to be able save anything and thus stay in homeless shelters longer.
ReplyDeleteWHy as a conservative should I be supporting this as a good thing?
> The willingness of all too many baby-daddies to walk away without a look back is hardly the mothers' fault.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure that said mothers are picking said "baby-daddy"s.
According to this post, Bloomberg doesn't seem to be taxing "living in a shelter" he seems to be taxing "having a job while living in a shelter". It looks like those who make all of their drug, cigarette, and alcohol money by panhandling are getting the living quarters free. If you really want to tax bad behavior and reward good behavior then tax the panhandlers and let the people who are working to save up money to get out of the system keep their money.
ReplyDeleteHa ha. Every commenter here who tried to excuse unwed babymommas by blaming her sex partner just proved Stacy McCain and Ann Coulter correct when they stated "Nobody is allowed to criticize single mothers."
ReplyDeleteFace it folks, those babymommas wanted to breed up a baby they could exploit for a love-object and play-house dollie. After all, the babymommas aren't trying to avoid pregnancy - at best all they want from their feeble attempts at birth control is plausible deniability that they went on a sperm-solicitation hunt. You don't really believe those babymommas really want that birth control stuff to work do you?
For those who just can't resist man-blaming, here's probably what you secretly believe is the most powerful contraceptive possible but you're too chicken to actually propose it: mandatory father-only custody.
There really seems to be this amazing assumption that whenever a woman embarks on a sexual relationship with a man she is, or should be expected to be, always (A) 100% capable of telling the worthwhile ones from the venal ones at every stage of the game, (B) 100% in control of her own fertility, (C) 100% in control of how the relationship goes from inception to termination, (D) and if any or all of these conditions fall through it is 100% her fault.
ReplyDeleteMen lie to women in order to get them into bed, guys; some of us are amazingly good at it, and many of them target women way too young to know their own hearts and minds yet. Birth control fails even with the most stringent adherence to instructions. Relationships go sour in ways neither person can expect. This belief that every single mother is there by her own choice strikes me as just as simplistic as the progressivist belief that all single mothers are tragic victims of circumstance.
And even if the fools and the wilful freeloaders outnumber the tragically unlucky, is it right to punish the unlucky so that the freeloaders don't get to freeload? I notice nobody responded to that question.
I'll take the bait. It is perfectly accepable for the state to not provide for anyone in any circumstance. Churches and other charitible organizations can take care of the truly needed without the parisite problem. Govenment at any level has no business taking money from me or others at the point of a gun to give to others.
ReplyDelete