From: coolidge@speaker.wpd.sgi.com (Don Coolidge)
Subject: Re: DATELINE: Bush fucks up!
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 92 17:46:51 GMT


John,

Your post is so full of errors I hardly know where to begin...but
if I start at the beginning, I might get most of them  :^)

In article <1992Aug27.232522.22310@midway.uchicago.edu>, wag5@quads.uchicago.edu (john peter wagner) writes:

|> 	You are right. Currently for each single mother on welfare 
|> payments from the government increase with each additional child.
|> (This follows from the increased cost of having more children,
|> but the mother does not have to spend the full increase on the
|> additional child, see?)

First, I may be misunderstanding you, but you say "the" government.
Welfare is administered by the individual states, not the Federal
government. Some states provide considerably more benefits than
others. It's far from monolithic.

Second, since the increment of money for each additional child in
all states is considerably less than what it takes to clothe, feed,
and house a child adequately, your remark about not needing to spend
it all on the child shows a further ignorance of the facts. Check
into it; read some of the relevant laws - or at least neutral
summaries of them. I've done both. But don't base your ideas on 
political lies like Reagan's famous 1980 claim that there was a 
welfare mother in Chicago with thirteen kids and three Cadillacs.
Sure, it's a great story, and lots of people were willing to
believe it because it melded so well with their preconceptions.
Problem is, it wasn't true, and could not have been, neither
financially (in terms of benefits paid vs cost of living) nor
legally (there are legal limits on the property ona can own
while receiving welfare). 

|> 	So, the welfare program provides incentive to create more
|> children out of wedlock. 

Wrong. Figures don't lie (but people do). There is absolutely *no*
incentive to have more children, since each additional child lowers
the entire family's standard of living. Before you make such blatantly
erroneous statements, you might at least check the *facts* (and 
political ads from the Republican National Commitee don't necessarily
qualify as facts).

|> Because there is no limit to this,
|> people who want to support this welfare policy must create some form
|> of limit. Their solution? Abortion.  Yes, much like China, increased
|> population is a threat to central government capital allocation
|> schemes.  It is cheaper to kill someone before they cost a lot of
|> money.

This is utter hogwash. If you had named names, it would have been
libelous as well. NOBODY in this debate is advocating abortion as
birth control, much less the "central government" (or haven't you
paid any attention to the Executive Branch's words and deeds over
the past twelve years?). What pro-choice advocates argue for is the 
right to make their own personal choice about this ultimately 
personal question.

|> 	Now, you respond, 'Aren't they just a blob of cells?' Sure.
|> In the same sense that you are.  What is it that makes killing
|> so horrendous in our eyes?  Is it the act in and of itself?
|> If I never met someone and that person was killed before I had the
|> chance to met them is that killing ok?  Or is it the potential
|> which each human being can provide, a truly infinite concept because
|> of its impossibility due to the murder, which makes us cry in
|> anguish at death?  The baby has much potential-even more than an
|> old man.  If you kill the unborn children, people who know the
|> meaning of life and love will scream in anguish.
|> 	Now you reply, 'What of the mother, who must undergo pain and torture?'
|> My answer-If you kill someone who crashes into your car and wrecks it,
|> leaving you slightly injured, does that give you the right to kill them?
|> Does your injury justify another's death?
|> 	Your answer-"And if the mother's life is in danger?" My answer-
|> your life, the mother's life, is always in danger.  There is always the
|> possibility that a car will hit you, that you will have a heart attack,
|> etc.  If you see a car swerving to hit you, you do your best to avoid it.
|> If you notice that your diet is high in cholseterol, you eat less
|> butter and fat or whatever.  To kill, because there is an 'increase'
|> in risk does not justify the kill.  If she is dead, the argument is moot, neh?
|> And how many of you net-readers have come within inches of a fatal accident
|> involving another person? Would the high odds of your near-death experience
|> have justified your murder of the other person?
|> 	Let us love one another.
|> 
|> 				J. Wagner

The scientific content of the preceding three paragraphs is less than nil.
You are starting frim a religious viewpoint, and systematically disregarding
anything that disagrees with its preconceptions. You are wrong, wrong, wrong,
and no number of strawmen will make you right. If you'd like to know just
how many wrong statements and inferences you made in only three paragraphs,
I'd be happy to educate you via private email - but I won't clutter up 
a.f.d-q with any more pro-choice/anti-abortion crap. Take it to talk.abortion
if you want a public forum for it. 

The Constitution still (thank God) contains enough undiluted provisions
to keep *any* religious group from forcing its beliefs on the public
at large by force of law. Somehow, Our Man Dan has never understood that...

Don Coolidge
coolidge@speaker.wpd.sgi.com
Newsgroups: alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.elections,alt.fan.dan-quayle