FWIW usmc I am not against the military. I am against the flawed reasoning that military jobs are good and the waste in the military is no big deal, but other government jobs are “bad” and the waste is mind numbing. It is a significant contradiction in my opinion.
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
Because certain things, defense for example, require centralized command to be successful. If no national defense exited we would be speaking Japanese or German almost certainly. Hell even the founding fathers understood a need for a continental army regardless of how under funded and under supplied it was it was still paramount to the birth of America. Even if each state individually had centralized defense the revolution would of likely failed. States like America can not exist without some socialization, period. [/quote]
My question was not about a need for centralized command in some areas. I can’t even think of a business that doesn’t have that.
Your last sentence is a great observation. A state definitely does require socialization.
[quote]H factor wrote:
FWIW usmc I am not against the military. I am against the flawed reasoning that military jobs are good and the waste in the military is no big deal, but other government jobs are “bad” and the waste is mind numbing. It is a significant contradiction in my opinion. [/quote]
I’m on the same page as you.
[quote]NickViar wrote:
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
Because certain things, defense for example, require centralized command to be successful. If no national defense exited we would be speaking Japanese or German almost certainly. Hell even the founding fathers understood a need for a continental army regardless of how under funded and under supplied it was it was still paramount to the birth of America. Even if each state individually had centralized defense the revolution would of likely failed. States like America can not exist without some socialization, period. [/quote]
My question was not about a need for centralized command in some areas. I can’t even think of a business that doesn’t have that.
Your last sentence is a great observation. A state definitely does require socialization. [/quote]
Centralized command is effectively socialization.
[quote]H factor wrote:
FWIW usmc I am not against the military. I am against the flawed reasoning that military jobs are good and the waste in the military is no big deal, but other government jobs are “bad” and the waste is mind numbing. It is a significant contradiction in my opinion. [/quote]
I don’t recall saying that government jobs are bad, I think that the waste is huge in most anything the government tries to do.
But if we are cutting the military, then those cuts need to be shared through all levels of government.
Let’s see how anxious congress is to cut across the board.
[quote]H factor wrote:
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
You should not be rewarded for going to prison period. This is a slap to the face of all the people working their asses off to pay their way through college while staying out of trouble. It’s not hard to follow the rules and not commit felonies that land you in prison. I understand people make mistakes (and many learn from their mistake and don’t repeat them) but you shouldn’t be rewarded for making one. The only way this would be remotely ok in my opinion was if there was a guaranteed way the money would be paid back to the taxpayers directly from the inmates who used the program. [/quote]
I don’t think we have people going to prison on purpose so they can get an education.
It is probably infinitely better for society for someone who has served prison time to have opportunities for success once they get out than for them to have no opportunities and potentially be right back on track to go back to prison.
It’s not like we are “saving” tax money or anything. Prison is extremely expensive and wouldn’t you rather people who got out had good opportunities than not? I think fiscally opposing job training or education for prisoners is actually counter-productive.
If we are complaining a 4.35 trillion dollar war machine or an education for someone who screwed up? One is cheaper and in my opinion more moral than the other. Your mileage may vary.
In an ideal world you wouldn’t go to prison in the first place, but we must deal with how humans actually are and not with how things would work in rainbow utopia land.
We also have some quite frankly really shitty laws and sentencing.
I’m not for it don’t get me wrong, but I’m probably more for that than a ton of other government things. [/quote]
But why should someone, who very well may have ruined another person’s life while committing a felony, get something valuable for free that the rest of society has to pay to get? I would rather the government create a job program that hired ex-felons than give them something I had to pay for myself. They could rebuild the roads and bridges the politicians love to talk about or clean up the litter that lines our roads and highways. At least then the taxpayers are getting something beneficial out of the deal.
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
But why should someone, who very well may have ruined another person’s life while committing a felony, get something valuable for free that the rest of society has to pay to get? I would rather the government create a job program that hired ex-felons than give them something I had to pay for myself. They could rebuild the roads and bridges the politicians love to talk about or clean up the litter that lines our roads and highways. At least then the taxpayers are getting something beneficial out of the deal.
[/quote]
So it’s OK for them to take something valuable, a job, from an illegal?
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
But why should someone, who very well may have ruined another person’s life while committing a felony, get something valuable for free that the rest of society has to pay to get? [/quote]
We all pretty much pay for every government backed student loan as it is, lol.
In all honesty, you are 100%, and without a doubt correct about this.
I guess it comes down to, shit there are worse things to spend our money on, than trying to help a lost soul not be so lost.
Part of prison is paying your punishment for your wrong doing, and rehabilitation.
[quote]NickViar wrote:
[quote]zecarlo wrote:
I call it cannibalism. Whether or not they take your money via taxes or via “voluntary” spending, it all ends up in the same people’s pockets. [/quote]
You wrote “voluntary,” so I’m not sure exactly what you mean by it. Taxes and voluntary spending are totally different. Taxes are taken by force, and the taxed have no say in how their money is spent. Money that is voluntarily spent is spent on something that the spender believes will make him better off than the money he spends on it.[/quote]
Key word: believes. Why does he believe that?
Also, you want an iPad, you buy one, voluntarily. If you don’t it’s OK as Apple got LA to buy iPads for its students. Apple got tax payer money whether they bought an iPad or not. That’s my point. Whether it’s through taxes or voluntary consumerism the money ends up in the same place. Rupert Murdoch owns a company that will sell testing software, for pre-K students, and make over a billion dollars. That money comes from tax payers. His company is lobbying for the testing to take place and Obama is OK with it. People think that govt spending and taxes is somehow about the govt taking your money but it’s more about who they are taking it for. The govt isn’t getting rich. Before anyone calls me an anti-corporate socialist, I am not. I am against corporations literally creating public policy and thus controlling how taxes are spent.
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
But why should someone, who very well may have ruined another person’s life while committing a felony, get something valuable for free that the rest of society has to pay to get?
[/quote]
Why do we have to pay so much to get it in the first place? That’s the real issue. IMO, ease of getting loans has brought the cost of education up. Then someone, somehow, made having a college degree a necessity for jobs that really shouldn’t require a college education. So now you need a degree and the money is there for you to spend. It’s a great scam.
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
Centralized command is effectively socialization.[/quote]
So a small landscaping company is socialized because its owner controls it?
lol. Republicans don’t even touch the top 15, yet they are evil and only work for “rich people”.
hahahahah
[quote]zecarlo wrote:
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
But why should someone, who very well may have ruined another person’s life while committing a felony, get something valuable for free that the rest of society has to pay to get? I would rather the government create a job program that hired ex-felons than give them something I had to pay for myself. They could rebuild the roads and bridges the politicians love to talk about or clean up the litter that lines our roads and highways. At least then the taxpayers are getting something beneficial out of the deal.
[/quote]
So it’s OK for them to take something valuable, a job, from an illegal? [/quote]
Sure. At least the felon has paid his debt to society while the illegal is in the process of breaking the law the entire time he/she is here.
[quote]zecarlo wrote:
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
But why should someone, who very well may have ruined another person’s life while committing a felony, get something valuable for free that the rest of society has to pay to get?
[/quote]
Why do we have to pay so much to get it in the first place? That’s the real issue. IMO, ease of getting loans has brought the cost of education up. Then someone, somehow, made having a college degree a necessity for jobs that really shouldn’t require a college education. So now you need a degree and the money is there for you to spend. It’s a great scam. [/quote]
I fully agree increasing student loan availability was not a wise thing to do. A fundamental law of economics states the value of something decreases when its availability increases. Anyone surprised the cost of a degree would rise as more students went to college clearly wasted their time in college learning anything useful.
[quote]zecarlo wrote:
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
But why should someone, who very well may have ruined another person’s life while committing a felony, get something valuable for free that the rest of society has to pay to get? I would rather the government create a job program that hired ex-felons than give them something I had to pay for myself. They could rebuild the roads and bridges the politicians love to talk about or clean up the litter that lines our roads and highways. At least then the taxpayers are getting something beneficial out of the deal.
[/quote]
So it’s OK for them to take something valuable, a job, from an illegal? [/quote]
If that illegal (who is violating a law just by being here) got that job by stealing somebody’s identity …and ruining their life in the process, then yes its fine.
[quote]zecarlo wrote:
Key word: believes. Why does he believe that?
Also, you want an iPad, you buy one, voluntarily. If you don’t it’s OK as Apple got LA to buy iPads for its students. Apple got tax payer money whether they bought an iPad or not. That’s my point. Whether it’s through taxes or voluntary consumerism the money ends up in the same place. Rupert Murdoch owns a company that will sell testing software, for pre-K students, and make over a billion dollars. That money comes from tax payers. His company is lobbying for the testing to take place and Obama is OK with it. People think that govt spending and taxes is somehow about the govt taking your money but it’s more about who they are taking it for. The govt isn’t getting rich. Before anyone calls me an anti-corporate socialist, I am not. I am against corporations literally creating public policy and thus controlling how taxes are spent. [/quote]
I have no idea why he believes it, and it doesn’t matter. There is no objective way to determine “better.” What matters is the fact that nobody else CAN better know how to make him better off.
You are headed in the right direction in your second paragraph. There is a huge difference between me voluntarily purchasing an iPad, and a local school system using tax money to purchase them, however. When a person who has earned his own money purchases an iPad, he has improved his situation. When a local school system purchases iPads, it may be better off, but some taxpayers are undoubtedly worse off. Apple may profit in either situation, but there’s another side to the transaction.
Obviously the government isn’t getting rich. The government is kind of a legal fiction. We should not accept what is done with the money that is stolen from us. To those who believe we should accept anything government does because it protects us from strange brown and yellow peoples from other lands, I ask: If you go to the grocery store tonight, buy $100 of groceries, take them to the register, and then watch the cashier start switching the items you have chosen with items he chooses, will you be happy, so long as he leaves one or two of the items you chose?
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
[quote]H factor wrote:
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
You should not be rewarded for going to prison period. This is a slap to the face of all the people working their asses off to pay their way through college while staying out of trouble. It’s not hard to follow the rules and not commit felonies that land you in prison. I understand people make mistakes (and many learn from their mistake and don’t repeat them) but you shouldn’t be rewarded for making one. The only way this would be remotely ok in my opinion was if there was a guaranteed way the money would be paid back to the taxpayers directly from the inmates who used the program. [/quote]
I don’t think we have people going to prison on purpose so they can get an education.
It is probably infinitely better for society for someone who has served prison time to have opportunities for success once they get out than for them to have no opportunities and potentially be right back on track to go back to prison.
It’s not like we are “saving” tax money or anything. Prison is extremely expensive and wouldn’t you rather people who got out had good opportunities than not? I think fiscally opposing job training or education for prisoners is actually counter-productive.
If we are complaining a 4.35 trillion dollar war machine or an education for someone who screwed up? One is cheaper and in my opinion more moral than the other. Your mileage may vary.
In an ideal world you wouldn’t go to prison in the first place, but we must deal with how humans actually are and not with how things would work in rainbow utopia land.
We also have some quite frankly really shitty laws and sentencing.
I’m not for it don’t get me wrong, but I’m probably more for that than a ton of other government things. [/quote]
But why should someone, who very well may have ruined another person’s life while committing a felony, get something valuable for free that the rest of society has to pay to get? I would rather the government create a job program that hired ex-felons than give them something I had to pay for myself. They could rebuild the roads and bridges the politicians love to talk about or clean up the litter that lines our roads and highways. At least then the taxpayers are getting something beneficial out of the deal.
[/quote]
We have a lot of felony’s though that AREN’T about ruining someone else’s life except for the potential for ruin of the person committing the felony say in many of our drug laws. These are people who have committed crimes without victims who may be looking at very serious consequences for those things.
And what is the reason so many of those things are illegal and the sentences so long? Well a big part of it is how much money some people make off prisons. We got a lot of people who are making a tidy little profit off incarcerated Americans.
Not every person in jail has someone who’s life they have ruined.
[quote]zecarlo wrote:
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
NY Governor wants to put taxpayers on the hook to pay for inmates college education. Another brilliant idea from the left.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/cortneyobrien/2014/02/18/cuomo-introduces-initiative-to-let-prisoners-take-college-courses-n1796638[/quote]
Didn’t tax payers pay for AC’s education in prison? Obviously he had the sense to take advantage of it and he, and we, are better off for it. The point being how many inmates are going to take advantage? According to the article it will cost 5k a year per inmate. How much are we already spending per inmate?
I see the anger with people when they have to pay out of pocket or go into debt while inmates will get a free ride but the real anger should be directed at the inflated costs of education. Whether or not a prisoner gets educated won’t change the fact that people are going into debt to pay for college. [/quote]
You are so full of shit. Honestly, what planet do you live on? Please show me the “education” I received in prison. I was barely given access to the library until I was able to get my security classification changed from Maximum to Medium. I was not even given to opportunity to get my GED while I was incarcerated. Build another straw man, asshole.
[quote]NickViar wrote:
[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
Centralized command is effectively socialization.[/quote]
So a small landscaping company is socialized because its owner controls it? [/quote]
Control and command are too different things. 1,000 people might control Microsoft, but only say 5 have command, for example.
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
It’s not hard to follow the rules and not commit felonies that land you in prison. [/quote]
Pretend for a moment that you are sixteen, and your mother’s fourth husband tries to beat the shit out of you in an alcoholic rage (just like the first three did) and kicked you out after you fought back, bleeding, on the street with nothing more than the clothes on your back. Since you are white and in a majority black inner city, there are no “special safety net” programs to help you, nor are the people in these programs particularly motivated to help you, despite your efforts to seek help.
You are eventually arrested for the charge of “rogue and vagabond” for the crime of “sleeping” (not trespassing) and placed in a foster home where some asshole starts touching you in the middle of the night. So naturally you punch him in the face and get kicked out of there too. You run away before you are arrested again.
You are sixteen. You are on the street. You have nothing but the dirty, smelly, bloody clothes on your back. Luckily the weather is warming up so cardboard is enough to keep you warm at night. You have fallen through the safety net that is “supposed” to catch you. You are bombarded by dangerous people who want various things from you, from fucking you in the ass and selling you into sexual slavery to forcing you to mule drugs for them to hooking you on heroin. If you don’t establish yourself soon, somehow, in this underworld cesspool and make it clear that you are not the one to be fucked with, you will most likely be hurt, robbed, kidnapped or killed. You are eating out of a dumpster and find some vials of mid-grade product that someone probably discarded while running from the police. It is the only commodity that you can leverage to survive.
HOW “EASY” IS IT TO AVOID COMMITTING A CRIME?
Now that you have crossed that line and are out of survival mode, how easy is it to stop? You’ve seen people’s faces, know things and have seen things that could be damaging to more powerful people that you. When you get deep enough, there is an unwritten rule or understanding that you probably won’t get out of this “situation” unscathed (death or prison).
Personally, I was trying to get out. I had spoken to a Navy recruiter who had agreed to get me a GED waiver based on my ASVAB scores (it was '92 in the middle of the Gulf war and they needed people). I did recognize that what I was doing was unsustainable and I had begun to take action to get out that would not get me killed. Unfortunately, I got busted a month before I shipped out. Or maybe it was fortunate - if I had joined the Navy I might have been killed in the war, who knows?
I’m not trying to play the victim card here, but statements like the one you made are just plain ignorant, filled with judgement and are just plain unproductive. You have no idea what drives someone to commit a crime. Or what circumstances lead up to it. You are very lucky that you never had to make those choices, but not all of us were that lucky. I broke the law and did my fucking time. I paid my dues. I got stabbed five times while in prison and cut superficially half a dozen times on top of that. I got my skull cracked with a lock in sock. It wasn’t some nice safe place where I could get a free education. Far from it. And for the record, I never hurt anyone physically (some may argue that I scarred them mentally, but I was never jamming a gun in anyone’s face, I was very professional and calm).
Almost twenty years later I’m a model fucking citizen and am in the top 5% income bracket (zecarlo, the taxes I’ve paid just in the last two or three years have MORE than covered my stay 20 years ago). Rehabilitation will serve society FAR more than just small minded, eye for an eye punishment. Most young men that commit crimes were in very similar situations that I found myself in. ANYONE is capable of committing a crime. If life puts you between a rock and hard place, you choices are limited. Most young people convicted of crimes come from homes filled with abuse and neglect and are emotional basket cases - I know I was. Slapping that person with a few decades of prison time vs. a few years of productive rehabilitation is very short sighted and costly. Shit, just getting someone OUT of that environment for short time will allow their thought patterns to begin to change.
I’m also not saying that EVERYONE can be rehabilitated. There are definitely people out there who should be locked up for good. I met them, ate with them and lived with them for almost four years. But that’s not most inmates.
Sorry for the novel.