Maybe here's where I'm more lib than you. I realize the monumental task a single mother has of raising a kid while working. I also know what the cost of daycare and babysitters are. So we need to go beyond "help". There needs to be a solution beyond mere "help" that allows her children adequate day care while at the same time she isn't working so much or such hours that she's not available to be with her kids (you know, to help them with homework, cook dinner, etc.).

Yes, we should have the means and if we don't, then I'm willing to have my taxes RAISED! But define your version of having enough to make it. To me, this sounds like keeping people at poverty level. That's not making it.

That's where I part ways with liberals. I want more talk about building better and safer schools. Investing in neighborhoods and after school programs for kids. I want to hear about decreasing fatherless homes and/or making fathers paying their share of child support. When I hear the word welfare, I think of a system which locks people in a perpetual state of poverty and being married to the government in order to survive.

No. I'm not for anyone dying in the streets because they can't afford to support themselves or especially because they can't afford healthcare.

The last sentence is YOUR problem. Not the problem of the people who are relying on assistance to help them get their next meal.

How does this help anyone? Just seems like needlessly punitive busywork.

How many Trump supporters gave a **** about the swastikas and racial epithets that were reported by the hundreds after the elections? By your logic that means they are all in support of it? It's a horrible thing that's going to be used by both sides for whatever benefits they can. Your Pollyanna response is disingenuous at best and pure bull**** at worst.

Swastikas and epithets are quite a bit away from kidnapping and assault. That you fail to make the distinction says everything. This is a hate crime pure and simple. If it isn't treated as such, expect problems.

Well, for one thing, it could save city/state payroll. I know, right? But this might hurt those state employees with their almost impossible to fire jobs and their big fat pensions!

And your thinking that work is punitive says everything. Believe it or not, some people want to feel useful, have a reason to get up in the morning and earn their pay, instead of sitting at home collecting handouts.

What's stopping them? Or is this another meaning of the term "want to" that I'm not aware of?

They are both hate crimes that non-racist *******s find abhorrent. But you're a liberal so you know that... ::eyeroll:: ::triplefacepalm:: ::#notreallyliberal::

these are the same doods who use the n word..moving forward, its a better govt than the continuation of the globalist agenda....
im about moving forward
wiki leaks FTW
you have the duty to be the person who attacks nazis and racsits in y our life
i attack them in my own
hilariously i sometimes have to punch myself in the face
i do not use the work ****** anymore because my large rugby friend taught me not to.

this is an interesting link and an interesting timing to a vacation
alex jones says this is the 4th quarter 3 mins left on the clock
so he is going on vacation?
i smell BS
did they get to him?
why is the guy who would put his life on the line benching himself in the 4th quater with the game on the line?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TpD4_yD-D0

Did my app just have a stroke?

Sure that's certainly a good idea. Our welfare system as it's set up though makes work a requirement for welfare, or limited it based on someone's not working, but it doesn't really encourage work. It just implies by cutting of welfare, then people will be forced to work, which really isn't the case. For instance, to welfare you have to show that you've been looking for work, aka X amount of job applications per week or something, but there isn't anything to help people actually work. There could be, for instance, a check to help someone move if they have a job offer outside of their area. That would incentivize people to move to where jobs are instead of endlessly searching locally.

The other thing is the underlying idea that a lot of Americans have when they think of the welfare system is what's called corporatism. That is, ideally, all income should come through corporations. Walmart is seen as a bad 'corporate citizen' because their workers work and still receive welfare. Receiving welfare from the state is stigmatized, but receiving welfare (healthcare, child care, moving expenses, etc) through your work isn't. Sanders is guilty of this sometimes when he called Walmart and demands a minimal wage because the idea is that a person should be self sufficient solely from the wage they receive from their work. The end result of this is, for a Conservative welfare should be severely limited and for a liberal welfare is unfortunate and only should be used sparingly.

Germany has this kind of system, though because they have strong unions and management and labor buy ins their distribution is much better.

The problem is that management is fundamentally pitted against labor and are incentivized by the market to minimize labor costs. So, in essence, you are depending on a system in which the people who are supposed to provide the substance for people have every incentive to minimize it.

And we see that in the US. Child care benefits, moving benefits, healthcare benefits, etc are all accrued at the top of the employment spectrum where high skill as the most sway, while those who you say could use the benefits the most; the poor, the undereducated, etc are the ones least likely to have them and if they do, it's from a stigmatized source, the State.

Just grunching the last half page or so and not really reading Lestat's posts fully but just want to point out that the focus on Chicago while ignoring the continued plights of Southern red states is an awfully good tell about what sources he relies on.

Man, you're terrible at reading.

I'm sure he will find a connection between right to work and their plight. Oh wait, that is officially part of the gop platform so it's not going to be mentioned.

I posted on what I read about the "plight" of the forgotten rest of America but wouldn't ya know it, that was racist too. So I'll leave my racist Republican alt.right comments for the one place I'm intimately familiar with.

The four African-Americans who assaulted the white disabled person in Chicago have been charged with a "hate crime".

Good.

They are crimes exceeding graffiti only to the extent that they threaten and strike fear into a targeted group as a whole. Same w assault. I doubt this incident with strike fear into whites as a group, but it will definitely be called a hate crime because hey, it's all about divisiveness these days. That, and whites will go crazy because if this happened to a black there would be rioting in the streets.

#hotliberaltakes

This reminds me of the takeaway from Clovis discussion on Dem tactics on the transition thread. The long run matters, but only if you can make it out of the short run first.

I mean, it sucks that middle-class white people are the worst people on the planet, but thanks to court cases we know it's perfectly legal to try to block people voting based on their party. So, all Dems need to do is take a few red states briefly while people are recovering from the great Trump meltdown (hopefully only figuratively speaking) and do whatever they can to stop whites from voting.

As we know, every conservative in this country would be totally fine with that, because they're cool with it the other way around.

OK? Why the "scare quotes?"

If you caught my previous post: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...postcount=1276

You could see that I'm not a big fan the "hate crime" designation. The perpetrators should be charged with assault, battery, and kidnapping. You could say that I believe that All Crimes Matter, not just defined "hate crimes."

I don't think "extra" punishment is necessary because someone attacked someone because they are a different ethnic, racial or religious group.

But that's just my opinion.

Serious question -- do you think that having a harsher punishment based on (a) motive or (b) the victim's demographic is ever OK?

Laws providing for harsher punishments for assaulting or killing police officers, for example, are arguably far harsher than any hate crime legislation because they are dictated entirely by column (b).