"JimT" wrote in message

stuff snipped

I try to resist putting people in categories just because they voted for
someone. I voted Rep in the primaries and Dem in the general 2008. I'm
now a registered Rep but only because I tend to lean to the right and
has nothing to do with moral issues. It's the choices I have to make
from a limited field of candidates. I'm all for gay rights, a woman's
right to choose, legalization of 420, and cutting back on military
spending. Oh yeah, I'm agnostic too. :-)

I lean right because I see allegedly disabled people on Judge Judy looking
quite fit describing how they are cheating the Feds, the states, the cities
and their fellow citizens left and right and no one cares. I have a lot of
"lib loon" ideas, but I also believe that if you can't afford to raise your
kids, the state should have the right to adopt them out from under you if
you are a persistent cheat, lawbreaker, illegal alien, etc. Chronic poverty
chains can't be broken any other way. And God knows every do-gooder since
Jane Addams at Hull House

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_House

has tried every charity and government program under the rainbow. A one or
two year old kid, in good health, can be placed anywhere and thrive with
love and attention.

But year after year the family courts buy into this "natural parent over
all" idea. They will place a child back with their natural parent even
though it's crystal clear they can't actually care for them. If this
continues long enough, the children will have spent so much time with a
dysfunctional caregiver that they are very, VERY hard to "reroute" back to
normal. (This idea horrifies many of my left-leaning friends, especially
women who see it was one step short of Nazism.) But the truth is nothing
else breaks the chain.

The worst part is that some of the most outrageously bad parents are so
prolific. There are a lot of lost kids out there, getting more and more lost
by the minute as they learn how to live life at the hands of total
incompetents. Adopting them out early would serve two goals: Society
wouldn't have to pay for their welfare and the rate of adoption of sick kids
from China and Russia would drop substantially, easing the strain on our
medical resources.

Does that make me a Republican or a Democrat or Social Futurist?

I also believe it's the Fed's responsibility to rebuild economically ravaged
areas like Detroit in its capacity as "insurer of last resort" (with an
army!). We can't afford let the equivalent of another Afganistan fester
right in the heart of our country and that's what's happening. We seem to
have quickly forgotten that our second worst terrorist attack came from
within. Yet it's clear from the escalating divisivness that some people are
very, very angry about changes they feel are bad for the country. The Feds
serve as a counterbalance for the things that need doing that bind the
country together and for which there is often no payoff for private
investors - like making sure everyone has electricity and phone/net
connections.

--
Bobby G.