Subject:
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Re: How many things need to stack up before we throw this jerk out?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 16 Jul 2003 15:35:37 GMT
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Viewed:
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552 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Mike Petrucelli wrote:
> Nothing, however for the 1 person like her there are 100 that are just
> leaching off the system.
I dispute that statistic as non-representative of reality. Do you have a
citation? Alternatively, if you're just making a rhetorical specultion, that's
fine, but you need to disclaim it as such.
And again, let's distinguish Federal assistance for the impoverished from
Federal-take-all-you-want grants for corporations and the super-wealthy. I
really don't care if 1000 lazy jerks each get $500.00 in Federal aid each month,
because Halliburton (for example) receives a $500,000,000 friend-of-the-VP
contract without even bidding for it. You seem to be complaining about the
nickels and dimes, while well-positioned corporations are sucking billions out
of the system.
> I read an article in the paper a few years ago about a different aunt, how
> she was so bad off and she couldn't feed her kids and they gave her close to
> $500 in groceries. All the while oblivious to the fact that she collects
> over $3000 a month just from child support, rent, and alimony without even
> working! To top it all off she is the one that is the alcoholic and was
> cheating on her husband. She is lazy.
I can't speculate about family politics, but even if the newspaper-aunt
recieved $10K per month in child support and alimony, how do either of those
payments affect Federal aid programs? You don't mention whether she recieves
such aid, nor do you specify whether her rent is paid to a private
landlord/leasing company or to a government-assisted living. Even if she lives
in "the projects," there's a good chance that it's state-funded rather than
Federal; in that case, she's really irrelevant to the issue that you and I are
discussing.
> Well the original source was one of Walter E. Williams columns
> I am fairly certain we can trust his credentials and assume the fact was
> legitimate.
I'm afraid that I'm not willing to take his correctness on faith. I'm not
summarily dismissing him as biased (because I'm conscious of my silent
audience!), but I note with interest that he displays a serious misunderstanding
in this article that you cite:
http://www.creators.com/opinion_show.cfm?columnsName=wwi
Specifically, this bit:
> When we had warm winters and oppressively hot and dry summers, one could
> hardly turn on the television without hearing some politician or reporter
> whining about global warming and our need to sign the Kyoto agreement.
> Winter 2002-2003 saw extreme cold conditions. In the Midwest, the daily
> temperature was 4 degrees Fahrenheit cooler relative to the 10-year average,
> the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic roughly 3 degrees cooler. I wonder why
> reporters aren't tracking down Bill Clinton, Al Gore and the environmental
> wacko brigade to query them about global warming this winter and spring.
That's a fine demonstration of fallacious reasoning by anecdotal evidence, not
to mention a smug dismissal of the overwhelming majority of scientists who agree
that the planet is warming (though I grant that there is disagreement about the
*cause* of the warming). To write them off as a "wacko brigade" reveals that
Williams has at least one kind of deep-rooted bias.
It's also interesting that he refers to Fox News, the Drudge Report, and Talk
Radio as "alternative news sources." Alternative to what? And why doesn't he
include a single left-leaning or centrist news source? It seems clear that he's
trying to paint right-wing media as some kind of disenfranchised, kept-down
bastion of correctness, which is absurd in the extreme.
I accept that you don't have access to the original "98%" quote, so let me
phrase the question differently: Are you able to paraphrase (semi-accurately)
what Williams calls the "Democrats definition of 'rich'" so that I can
understand how this applies to 98% of Americans?
Dave!
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