Boston globe magazine article about welfare mom heroin addict - the system is so broken.
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[sarcasm]Don't you understand that liberals now better than conservatives how to help these people?[/sarcasm]
This story has been played out for not one generation, but many generations in the same family. I can tell you from personal knowledge you have 3-4 generations of "families" who were provided for from cradle to presumably grave, without lifting a finger to do anything productive for the society that provides their daily existence.
Instead of enabling these people, conservatives want to end the gravy train and force them to fish or cut bait.
However, left to their own devices, those sucking on the government teat will do neither, and liberals just demand more money to help them, as if that will solve the problem/s these people have.
Another big problem which liberals have created is all but eliminating social scorn/stigma so as to not damage these peoples "fragile egos/self worth".
Here is but one classic example;
Rest assured these people are already in the gutter and only abuse the high minded ideals liberals come up with to try and help these people. In most cases it is wanting to throw more money at the problem despite half a century of evidence it does nothing but make the problem worse.
Before welfare, poor people were sent to the county poorhouse. Part of the motive for welfare was to give better civil rights to poor people. To let them remain in their homes and live like everyone else, instead of going to the poorhouse. But that was just a theory. A theory that they could be equal with welfare. It didn't work. We need to stop testing that theory because it has been proven not to work. We need to bring back the poorhouses. They give the poor everything they need: Food, lodging, lack of drugs and booze, motivation to get back on their feet, etc. We can try other theories in the future. But what we need right now is to stop trying the welfare theory and go back to the way that worked in the past. The poorhouses.
Actually about two-thirds of people who go on welfare go off of it within six months so it is a much better option for most families than a poorhouse. It works for most people as it should, but those people don't get newspaper articles written about them, aren't the focus of political speeches, and are seldom mentioned in conversations, either private ones or on talk radio et cetera. One other thing that makes modern society different from that of the days before welfare is that most people came from larger families, meaning there was a much, much larger family support network than that enjoyed by most folks today.
Learn how, and from whom? People need role models to learn from. Also again the untreated mentally ill are highly likely to self-medicate, so again IMO much of this is due to untreated mental illness. Also often young girls especially are given drugs by boys/men as young teens, and become addicted as adults as well.
School. Teachers. Coaches. Friends. Friends' parents. Other family members. There are other potential role models and if someone wants it enough, they can succeed in life. There are plenty of success stories of people who could have turned out like this woman, or like their own parents, but did not and there's a reason for that. It starts with the individual.
It's not as if people don't know that drugs are bad for you and why. It's taught in school. It's not like there aren't caring teachers in each district, poor performing or not, who want to help the kids and see them succeed. Same with coaches, guidance counselors, and other positive adult role models in a child's life. They exist. It's up to the kid to use those around them and what they offer. I'm talking mostly teens here, not necessarily young children.
School. Teachers. Coaches. Friends. Friends' parents. Other family members. There are other potential role models and if someone wants it enough, they can succeed in life. There are plenty of success stories of people who could have turned out like this woman, or like their own parents, but did not and there's a reason for that. It starts with the individual.
It's not as if people don't know that drugs are bad for you and why. It's taught in school. It's not like there aren't caring teachers in each district, poor performing or not, who want to help the kids and see them succeed. Same with coaches, guidance counselors, and other positive adult role models in a child's life. They exist. It's up to the kid to use those around them and what they offer. I'm talking mostly teens here, not necessarily young children.
I'm not even going to pretend to know what it's like surviving in a war zone, that is not growing up like either of us know it, and our experiences and opportunities and obstacles are vastly different. It's nice to know you would have fared so well if you were born into abuse, fear, death, lead paint, hunger and pain, I cannot say the same the same with such surety. Yes, "Precious" seemingly made it out, but she was lucky to find people who cared enough to help, not all do. She was also lucky enough to be intelligent. Many of these kids in these cycles are born with all sorts of learning issues due to being born to drug addicted moms, and they get worse with lack of stimulation, dirt and malnutrition. It is so easy to say "oh, anyone can succeed if they want to!" but it is a lie we tell ourselves so we can hold ourselves above them and look down on them with disdain, but many are born with 2.5 strikes against them.
I'm not even going to pretend to know what it's like surviving in a war zone, that is ot growing up like either of us know it, and our experiences and opportunities and obstacles are vastly different. It's nice to know you would have fared so well if you were born into abuse, fear, death, lead paint, hunger and pain, I cannot same the same with such surety. Yes, "Precious" seemingly made it out, but she was lucky to find people who cared enough to help, not all do. She was also lucky enough to be intelligent. Many of these kids in these cycles are born with all sorts of learning issues due to being born to drug addicted moms, and they get worse with lack of stimulation, dirt and malnutrition. It is so easy to say "oh, anyone can succeed if they want to!" but it is a lie we tell ourselves so we can hold ourselves above them and look down on them with disdain, but many are born with 2.5 strikes against them.
Then it's an endless cycle that throwing money at won't fix.
What can I tell you.
What I DO know is that more money and more spent on welfare programs sure as hell won't help. There will always be loser degenerates in society. It can't be a perfect world. But let's stop spending so much money on people who just wind up like this idiot in the article.
At the end of the day, people make choices. They are responsible for their own lives and decisions. You can tell a heroin addict until you're blue in the face that heroin is bad, they should go to rehab, get a job, hell even move in with you if you love them that much, but that doesn't mean they will listen. I know from personal experience dealing with people like this. They can have the best family, or the worst family, and still come out a total loser who makes awful decisions. Hope or no hope. So whatever.
Then it's an endless cycle that throwing money at won't fix.
What can I tell you.
What I DO know is that more money and more spent on welfare programs sure as hell won't help. There will always be loser degenerates in society. It can't be a perfect world. But let's stop spending so much money on people who just wind up like this idiot in the article.
At the end of the day, people make choices. They are responsible for their own lives and decisions. You can tell a heroin addict until you're blue in the face that heroin is bad, they should go to rehab, get a job, hell even move in with you if you love them that much, but that doesn't mean they will listen. I know from personal experience dealing with people like this. They can have the best family, or the worst family, and still come out a total loser who makes awful decisions. Hope or no hope. So whatever.
I don't think this kind of person can make responsible choices. It's like asking a baby to make a choice or asking a little kid to choose between candy or doing something hard like going to the doctor. This person, in their mind, is like a young child--maybe worse, because this person already had the cards all stacked against her to begin with. At least with most young kids you have more of a clean slate to work with.
If the money is spent CORRECTLY (and we still don't know what that would look like) then people could be helped. There will always be some who are hopeless though. This woman is now hopeless and I think she should be determined to be incapable of living on her own and should be somewhere, supervised.
Of course, there are strings attached as to the legality of determining her to be incapable and of putting her somewhere under supervision. However, she is breaking so many laws (renting out rooms on section 8, having the baby daddy live with her, selling her foodstamps, etc.) that she is also a criminal and maybe could be locked up. Not in a prison but someplace that would take care of her--and supervise her so she won't cause problems for anyone else.
Society will always have some hopeless people. But I think one measure of a society is what we do with those people? Leave them to die? (Which is really what is being done in the case of this woman) or take care of them since they cannot make a responsible decision and cannot take care of themselves. Leaving her to die is wrong for her and wrong because of what it's done to her kids but IT SAVES MONEY IN THE SHORT RUN. We have to think ahead and consider what is best in the long run. As someone here said, politicians don't get elected unless they're going to save tax money!
Perhaps, instead of looking at this poor woman living a horrible life......maybe, we should follow the money and find out who or what makes money off of public assistance. What stores, what medical facilities, what business, what government entity?
A lot of the problem is we simply throw money away. Housing developments or projects are not a wonderful place to live with tennis courts, pools, their own schools, their own supermarkets, their own dedicated doormen, their own child care. They are rough warehouses of human failure and suffering.
Solution on a grand scale is fairly simple. Create an employee shortage by stopping immigration completely. Cut taxes and eliminate government. Eliminate HUD and simply give current residents the home they live in now.
DSS in this state is always a mess, there is a long history of under funding that results in too high a caseload for the workers to manage. That results in discoveries that are too late--like kids being found dead when they should have been removed from the home to begin with.
In my state they do neglect many of these situations. However, to show how they treat all races and classes "equally" they pick on loving, intact and prosperous families for no reason. My story:
I have two children, one now almost 20 and one whose 19. Abouit seven or eight years ago, when they were 12 and almost 11, my older son was considerably stronger than my younger son, who is on the high end of the autism spectrum. One day my older son was playing a little bit more roughly with my younger son than I liked. I sat him down on the stairs for a lecture. I told him that he is never to pick on someone smaller or weaker than him, for any reason.
That upcoming October, my younger son is bothering my older son at school. We ask the school to keep them separate during the day to the maximum extent possible. Not an uncommon thing that siblings will bother each other during the school day. The school psychologist asks my older son if his parents (meaning my wife and I) have ever done anything that "scared" him. He tells her that I "put" him on the stairs for the above-mentioned lecture. She writes it down as "pushed" and files a report with Child Protective Services. They come out to "investigate." The report is dismissed as "unfounded."
We scheduled a meeting with the head of the department that handles special education and the school superintendent. The former says that he "wishes more parents" would take bullying as seriously as we did. I said "not when it results in a Child Protective Services complaint."
Your government at work. I have a friend who suspects that the use of "protective services" for children on steroids is the overall agenda to weaken the family as a control unit. He ascribes it to the left. I am not so sure. He cites such things as gay marriage, child protective services agencies, restrictions on corporal punishment and the like.
I am not sure that the agenda is deliberate. I suspect, as I have stated, that they are fostering an agenda that all social classes and races have equally dysfunctional families. While clearly there are some that are affluent, any objective viewer of the facts would conclude that the OP is more typical of deeply impoverished families than affluent ones.
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