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Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee who revealed Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, earlier this year used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live.
After the legislature passed a spending bill in April, Palin went through the measure reducing and eliminating funds for programs she opposed. Inking her initials on the legislation -- "SP" -- Palin reduced funding for Covenant House Alaska by more than 20 percent, cutting funds from $5 million to $3.9 million. Covenant House is a mix of programs and shelters for troubled youths, including Passage House, which is a transitional home for teenage mothers.
According to Passage House's web site, its purpose is to provide "young mothers a place to live with their babies for up to eighteen months while they gain the necessary skills and resources to change their lives" and help teen moms "become productive, successful, independent adults who create and provide a stable environment for themselves and their families."
Sarah Palin apparently wants those unwed mothers out on the street. I guess Bristol is lucky that Levi is going to marry her. Alaska's a tough, cold place for young, single moms.
What is it about "personal responsibility" that you can't comprehend? Teens who get pregnant CHOSE to open their legs to shiftless, unemployed, irresponsible male bums who won't help them out when they get into trouble. Conception is no secret, even to the dumb teens (and not all teens are dumb). Constantly providing a safety net to those who make wrong choices does nothing to discourage making wrong choices in the first place. And furthermore, if you choose to have a child and don't provide for it, then the child should be taken from you and placed for adoption -- there are plenty of infertile couples who can't adopt because there aren't any babies. Sound harsh? Yeah, I mean for it to sound harsh. THE PAIN IS PREVENTABLE!!!! That is why it is not my responsibility, or Sarah Palin's, or anyone else's, to take care of people who make BAD CHOICES.
Furthermore, it is not any prolifer's responsibility (and I am not a prolifer, by the way) to pay for the care and upkeep of children born to unwed teens, as a way to discourage abortion. Whether or not a person chooses to have an abortion, that's up to them (still). A prolifer can assert that abortion is wrong according to their value system and that does not AUTOMATICALLY make them responsible for babies born to stupid people. Get it??
Everything bad that had happened in the last 20 years was either GW Bush's fault, or Sarah Palin. They are an evil pair...
If I were you, I'd call her in January after she is sworn in as VP, and give her a piece of your tiny mind.... Go for it...
What is it about "personal responsibility" that you can't comprehend? Teens who get pregnant CHOSE to open their legs to shiftless, unemployed, irresponsible male bums who won't help them out when they get into trouble. Conception is no secret, even to the dumb teens (and not all teens are dumb). Constantly providing a safety net to those who make wrong choices does nothing to discourage making wrong choices in the first place. And furthermore, if you choose to have a child and don't provide for it, then the child should be taken from you and placed for adoption -- there are plenty of infertile couples who can't adopt because there aren't any babies. Sound harsh? Yeah, I mean for it to sound harsh. THE PAIN IS PREVENTABLE!!!! That is why it is not my responsibility, or Sarah Palin's, or anyone else's, to take care of people who make BAD CHOICES.
Furthermore, it is not any prolifer's responsibility (and I am not a prolifer, by the way) to pay for the care and upkeep of children born to unwed teens, as a way to discourage abortion. Whether or not a person chooses to have an abortion, that's up to them (still). A prolifer can assert that abortion is wrong according to their value system and that does not AUTOMATICALLY make them responsible for babies born to stupid people. Get it??
Chatty
I don't radically disagree with you--personal responsibility matters. A lot.
But without permission, nobody can legally "take away" those babies, and they'll grow up hungry and neglected (literally and emotionally) and then they repeat the cycle all over again.
Places such as Covenant House and Fairbanks Community Food Bank can help break that sad chain of events.
And now, because of Palin, they have fewer funds to do their work. Link
Chatty
I don't radically disagree with you--personal responsibility matters. A lot.
But without permission, nobody can legally "take away" those babies, and they'll grow up hungry and neglected (literally and emotionally) and then they repeat the cycle all over again.
Places such as Covenant House and Fairbanks Community Food Bank can help break that sad chain of events.
And now, because of Palin, they have fewer funds to do their work. Link
I read the OP's post over again and realize the program for teen mothers is a time-limited program, which is a plus. Also, if it truly teaches job skills and life skills, and has a proven track record of success, then I'm also in favor of it IN PLACE OF handouts. What I am not in favor of are wholesale welfare programs which create public assistance "lifers," which we see abundantly in certain segments of our population. Helping people does not necessarily mean you are breaking the chain, and that chain desperately needs to be broken!
Any problem is best approached by a combination of incentives (to do the right thing) and disincentives (to dissuade from doing the wrong thing). We need to bring stigma back to unwed pregnancy, for both males and females. Any aid should not be given away with no strings attached.
Too much mercy leads to the situation we have today.
I would like to see girls forced to divulge the name of their baby's father, or else risk losing their baby to the state, and then I'd like to see those father's names go into a registry that follows him wherever he goes, so that it can be apparent to whoever accesses the computer that he is either up on his child care payments, or behind in them. SHAME! It's a good thing. Sadly, I don't think there is much of it left in the younger generation.
I have worked in a halfway house for unwed parents. (I say parents, not mothers, because a couple of these people were dads, not moms.)
I agree with you that mostly incentives, not hand-outs, are needed, although these days some people are just plain Hungry and that's why food banks exist.
Some of the residents of the halfway house were no-good bums who had Social Services wrapped around their pinkies, and they bragged about this.
Others took advantage of the services and got the job skills they needed to succeed in life--and responsibly take care of their children on their own.
Either way, all of the residents had to be out of the house after two years.
For me, the saddest thing about this situation is the kids, who are at the mercy of teenage parents and over-extended social workers.
Location: Jonquil City (aka Smyrna) Georgia- by Atlanta
16,259 posts, read 24,756,161 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Hasdrubal
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee who revealed Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, earlier this year used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live.
After the legislature passed a spending bill in April, Palin went through the measure reducing and eliminating funds for programs she opposed. Inking her initials on the legislation -- "SP" -- Palin reduced funding for Covenant House Alaska by more than 20 percent, cutting funds from $5 million to $3.9 million. Covenant House is a mix of programs and shelters for troubled youths, including Passage House, which is a transitional home for teenage mothers.
According to Passage House's web site, its purpose is to provide "young mothers a place to live with their babies for up to eighteen months while they gain the necessary skills and resources to change their lives" and help teen moms "become productive, successful, independent adults who create and provide a stable environment for themselves and their families."
Sarah Palin apparently wants those unwed mothers out on the street. I guess Bristol is lucky that Levi is going to marry her. Alaska's a tough, cold place for young, single moms.
What do you expect?? After all she is a Republican! Republicans only like babies until they are born. After they are born they are on their own. There is no "right to life" so if the mother is homeless and the baby freezes to death in the Alaska winter, the Republicans say "so what". In fact the redneck Republicans up there would probably try to dress the dead baby!
What do you expect?? After all she is a Republican! Republicans only like babies until they are born. After they are born they are on their own. There is no "right to life" so if the mother is homeless and the baby freezes to death in the Alaska winter, the Republicans say "so what". In fact the redneck Republicans up there would probably try to dress the dead baby!
What an angry, ignorant thing to say. This is where the significance of faith-based programs comes in. It was never up to the government to take care of the poor or disadvantaged. The churches used to do all of this, and to this day they do a lot of it. Why do dems with the above attitude protest faith based programs? Because they would take the 'cash cows' away from the dems, who depend on them for their power and position.
The democrat party NEEDS people to be dependent on them, so they try to build that dependence with all their give-away programs. Heaven forbid that people would learn to be independent, fend for themselves, and become self supporting and responsible.
Governments can't curb spending without cutting back on programs or raising taxes. We can't have it all, and have it for nothing. That's something that hasn't been figured out yet. Maybe Obama can come up with that one. How do we get everything for everybody without havaing to pay for it. Now, that would be change.
not only has she done this, who is raising her children? If she is so gung ho to be the vice president who is taking care of her newborn baby when her husband is racing dog sleds across alaska? some mom...no sex education, underage 16 year old kid is knocked up but don't worry they're getting married! This kid looks like a hoot!
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