From: orpheus@reed.edu (P. Hawthorne)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.usa
Subject: Re: Something Wicked THis Way Comes
Date: 28 Jul 92 23:54:42 GMT
Article-I.D.: reed.1992Jul28.235442.24607
Organization: Reed College, Portland, OR


  mgreen@cs.toronto.edu (Marc Green) writes:
: The Reagan/Bush administrations have spent several trillion dollars on
: social programs. That's enough compassion and caring for the poor.

  orpheus@reed.edu (P. Hawthorne) writes:
: The Reagan era and caring do not belong in the same breath.

  crosmun@mickey.rtp.dg.com (William Crosmun) writes:
: Spending on social program increased in every year of both Reagan and
: Bush's presidency.

  I maintain that you don't cure anything by throwing money at the
symptoms. Compassion and caring for the poor is not a budget outlay, unless
you consider compassion and a welfare state to be equivalent. Revolving
door handouts are perhaps more cruel than caring, because of their
inability to solve the problems that cause poverty in the first place,
while providing the false impressions that have been given above.

  That being said, I shouldn't permit the impression to last that the
Reagan and Bush administrations spent more on social programs because they
wanted to. Like all statistics under those adminstrations, the figures
above are remarkably deceptive.

  Up until Stockman left, the American people were told that the money we
saved by cutting all programs across the board would go to balancing our
budget. Weinberger got it all for a mighty arms build up, culminating in
a deficit which will loom hideously over generations to come. Any budget
that hadn't gone to social services, even the cyclical perpetuation
variety that comprise the bulk of the poverty-related programs, would
have gone straight down a rat hole known in doublespeak as defense. 

  The money the man on the street was supposed to have saved merely went to
the military industrial complex, not to the alarmingly wide range of other
problems we face. Anyone who voted for Reagan for tax relief was had.


  orpheus@reed.edu (P. Hawthorne) writes:
: Ever hear of hatemongering? The phrase, even? I mean, ever?

  crosmun@mickey.rtp.dg.com (William Crosmun) writes:
: Yes. So what's your point?

  The working stiffs of America were told by the Reagan campaign that there
was no hope in trying to improve the standard of living for all Americans
at once. Life was hard enough just trying to bring up your own standard of
living, the Republican party line went, but trying to bring it up for those
less fortunate than you was like trying to tread water for everyone. So
forget the less fortunate, just worry about yourself, was the gist. If you
brought your own standard of living up, perhaps some of your success would
trickle down to the others later.

  This was what George Bush called Voodoo Economics at the 1980 GOP
convention. This is what I call hatemongering. It is the pitting of some
people against some other people for political gain. It was tantamount to
saying, sure, there are those who honestly need help in our society, but
we've got our own problems as the hereditary aristocratic elite. I've got
a beamer to buy, I can't be bothered by starving kids on the other side of
the tracks. In other words, let them eat cake!


  mgreen@cs.toronto.edu (Marc Green) writes:
: What about compasssion and caring for the working stiffs who have have to
: trudge to work every days to support the indigents, so they can stay home
: and have more babies?

  orpheus@reed.edu (P. Hawthorne) writes:
: So the way you see it all, there are two kinds of people: you and them.
: They are a parasitic source of all evil, lazy and manipulating you.
: Indigents live only to breed more indigents, to live off you. It must be
: reassuringly simple to brainwashed like that.

  crosmun@mickey.rtp.dg.com (William Crosmun) writes:
: You talk the talk, but you don't walk the walk.  You make self-righteous
: noises about caring and compassion so why doesn't your care and compassion
: don't extend to the working stiffs who can't make ends meet because funding
: your compassion to everyone else is taking such a big bite out of their
: income.

  Fop! Say, just for the sake of argument, that you can't make the rent. 

  Maybe ends don't meet, maybe you've lost your job at the mill and you
can't find another one that can pay for food for your family, or a roof
over their heads, clothes on their back, or health care when they're sick.

  Maybe your house burns down, taking everything you own with it. On your
pay, you can't afford to stay in a hotel for long. Maybe you need to buy
clothes because you had only what was on your back before the fire. Heaven
forbid anyone got hurt in the fire.

  Maybe you get in an accident, and can't work. Or maybe you get sick, and
need a costly surgical procedure and hospital stay. Or maybe lots of things..

  Would you like to imagine that there was help out there? Would you like
to think that you could feed your family, shelter them, clothe them, get
medical care for them, at least until you could find another job?

  In short, wouldn't you want people who could help to do so? I'm not in
favor of a welfare state. I wish we had the civlian conservation corps back.
But there are a lot of hazards out there, and a lot of people don't realize
how lucky they are. Affluent folks take a lot for granted, including the
severity of the challenges they face.

  I've been the child of a welfare mother, slept outside, lived with addicts,
and been through more things that I ought to describe. For me, it looks
good. I'm out of the poverty cycle. I'm out of Kenton. I may even be able to
contribute something to my country. 

  But for me, and for many of the kids who grew up in the same times, my
life and anything I can do is IN SPITE of the best efforts of the Reagan
Doctrine to eradicate any government help I found while I was growing up.


  mgreen@cs.toronto.edu (Marc Green) writes:
: Again, don't let facts get in the way. The US has the strictest
: anti-pollution and species protection legislation in the world. Bush
: wisely refused to sign a treaty which would have required the US to
: give away huge and unpsecified sums to the Third World.

  orpheus@reed.edu (P. Hawthorne) writes:
: Our President is an oil baron.
 [Goes on to describe first-hand experience with widespread corruption,
  negligence, and resulting paralysis in environmental government agencies.]

  crosmun@mickey.rtp.dg.com (William Crosmun) writes:
: None of this drivel contradicts the fact that our environmental
: protection laws are among the toughest in the world.

  Laws are only as good as the people that enforce them. If we had anybody
enforcing them, they probably wouldn't be reflecting well on our laws.


  orpheus@reed.edu (P. Hawthorne) writes:
: Our watch-dog environmental groups exist to protect industrial interests.

  crosmun@mickey.rtp.dg.com (William Crosmun) writes:
: If so, then they are doing a lousy job.

  That's the kind of off-the-cuff sarcastic conservative joke that really
pisses me off. You haven't got a clue!
  We're talking about industrial interests that would gladly risk the lives
of hundreds of thousands of people to keep from doing miniscule things, and
the toadies that protect them from the average citizen.

  One of the stories we covered in my neighborhood newspaper was a coverup
of a fire at a wood treatment facility bordering the neghborhood. The
facility uses the cellon process, a particularly dangerous and obsolete
process which resulted in the slow and lingering deaths of thousands in
California after a small fire broke out.

  This facility is two minutes from Downtown Portland. They had a fire, but
they extinguished it in time and covered it up. The death toll could have
been like Bhopal, but the local authorities conspired with the company to
hush it up. They were in the habit because they already lied about the
levels of dioxins the plant creates.

  You might be wondering why I would have neighborhood newspaper so keen
on covering industrial pollution. See, I come from a poor neighborhood.
Industry and the poor usually share the land that the affluent don't want.
The poor live with the landfills, the waste burners, the open sewers and
the drainage pipes, because the affluent would never stand for it.


  orpheus@reed.edu (P. Hawthorne) writes:
: Ever actually try and get some toxicity _acknowledged_ by the government?
: I couldn't get them to test the technicolor film growths. They kept on
: testing the puddles hundreds of yards away.

  crosmun@mickey.rtp.dg.com (William Crosmun) writes:
: Is this the same government that you think could eliminate poverty if
: only it spent enough money? How come environmental protection programs
: don't clean up the environment, but anti-poverty programs eliminate
: poverty.

  I never once said that existing anti-poverty programs eliminate poverty.
I've said quite the opposite. Most of the anti-poverty programs perpetuate
the existence of a hereditary underclass. 


  orpheus@reed.edu (P. Hawthorne) writes regarding Marc Green:
: I don't like you very well.
: I know I don't like what you illustrate so clearly.

  crosmun@mickey.rtp.dg.com (William Crosmun) writes:
: This sounds like the symptom of something, but I'm not sure what. Maybe
: the kind of Balkanization and Us against Them mentality you've been
: complaining about.

  I admit that. I've got a major grudge against the affluent who hold trite
and stereotypical views about the poor. Think about it. This is a guy who
holds me and people who grew up like me in harsh contempt for insulting and
grossly sterreotypical reasons. What would you feel?

  If you think I am a good indicator of balkanization, just wait until you
see the results of the last two presidencies. If some honest compassion and
sincere caring for the poor, along with some good insight and direct
effort, is not forthcoming, there are going to be severe repercussions.
For presidencies that wanted to be seen as being for law and order, the
amount of savagery and chaos they have sown is extreme.

  How do you enfranchise people who hate your guts, just for being you?

  Theus (orpheus@reed.edu)