<p>Compassionate liberalism as well - the Dems. have been almost totally silent on the issue.</p>
<p><a href=“http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20051128/pl_usatoday/forpoorhousingwaitgetslonger[/url]”>http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20051128/pl_usatoday/forpoorhousingwaitgetslonger</a></p>
<p>Spoken like a true liberal. You don’t understand “compassionate conservatism” at all. And what amazes me, mini, is that you say you are a substance-abuse professional.</p>
<p>Poverty is primarily a behavioral dysfunction. (yes, there are a few (very few) exceptions, so don’t go there.) This is amply illustrated by the number of lottery winners who wind up broke and back in the same life they always lived.</p>
<p>It is not only useless, but counter-productive to provide such things as public housing. It brings out the worst in the subculture, e.g. the hell that was Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis before it was demolished. The people who built it still don’t have a clue.</p>
<p>Compassionate conservatism means TELLING THE TRUTH even if it’s considered judgmental by the elites of society. Like “babies out of wedlock=poverty.” Like “You have to speak standard-American business English if you want a job with advancement potential.” Like “Yeah, math is hard but you have to learn it anyway so quit your bit–ing.” </p>
<p>Compassionate conservatism means NOT ENABLING people to become DEPENDENT on GOVERNMENT. Government gives them nothing but institutionalized poverty. Government reinforces the idea that someone else is responsible for their plight, not their own decisions. That is what is cruel and totally without compassion.</p>
<p>But it may buy a vote or two, right?</p>
<p>The truth is that a hurricane displaced 700,000+ people because the Army Corps of Engineers didn’t do their job properly. Most of them had jobs, made tax payments, and had reasonable expectations of their government.</p>
<p>Compassionate conservatism threw them into an already overburdened housing market in an economy that depends on low-wage workers for its lifeblood, and told them that the government couldn’t be bothered any more, and that they should “compete” for scarce housing resources. </p>
<p>I suppose we could house them in sewer pipes before they are laid.</p>
<p>You are too quick to blame the Army Corps unless you have a source. It very well could be poor construction quality and other factors. Time will tell but most disasters are caused by several unusual factors coming together at once.</p>
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<p>Wow. Let me catch my breath. I can’t even believe someone wrote that.</p>
<p>“Compassionate conservatism means NOT ENABLING people to become DEPENDENT on GOVERNMENT”.</p>
<p>Do you mean like the real estate industry?
The financial markets?
Higher education?
Lawyers?
The medical profession?
The airline indistry?
The auto industry?</p>
<p>I’m sure I am missing a few.</p>
<p>dstark: Can you say OIL INDUSTRY?</p>
<p>Poverty is primarily a behavioral dysfunction, according to smug wyogal. So listen up everybody: America’s thirty million poor (and the world’s billions of poor) are simply reaping the wages of sin. And the rich are paragons of virtue, I guess. Go Paris Hilton.</p>
<p>Weenie, I can’t believe I missed that one.</p>
<p>“It very well could be poor construction quality and other factors. Time will tell but most disasters are caused by several unusual factors coming together at once.”</p>
<p>Yup. Construction companies eating at the government trough, directed by the Army Corps of Engineers. Compassionate conservatism at its best. (What was that about “behavioral dysfunction”?)</p>
<p>Hey, at least the people involved in this aren’t dependent on the government…</p>
<p><a href=“http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051129/ap_on_go_co/congressman_s_house;_ylt=ApcP.yFBmA5L08JMwaHKIK0DW7oF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl[/url]”>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051129/ap_on_go_co/congressman_s_house;_ylt=ApcP.yFBmA5L08JMwaHKIK0DW7oF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl</a></p>
<p>I thought the hurricane-displaced were going to housed in Winnebagos.</p>
<p>I dunno, if it’s a behavior dysfunction, obviously it’s time to bring back the poorhouses–who knew the Victorians were so progressive!</p>
<p>Let’s be fair, now. The so-called liberals haven’t done any better in this regard than the compassionate ones, and one might expect better from them (if it wasn’t for their behavior dysfunction. ;))</p>
<p>Mini, the appropriate parable is thus: a man starts to drown 50 feet out in the lake. A conservative comes by, throws the man 10 feet of rope, and tells him to swim for it. A liberal comes by, throws the man 75 feet of rope, and then drops his end to go on to something else. The libertarian comes by and calls out helpful advice about how the man should have learned to swim.</p>
<p>I’ve got another one:</p>
<p>There is an old saying, the gist of which (I am terrible at remembering such things) is that if you give a hungry man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach a hungry man to fish you feed him for a lifetime. Its a nice thought, and fits in well with our Protestant work ethic.</p>
<p>It is also profoundly wrongheaded. Before teaching a man to fish, you have to be pretty darn sure that there are fish in the river, that the river isnt polluted, that the fish are fit for eating, that the breeding grounds for the fish are protected so that it is environmentally and economically sustainable, and that not too many people arent fishing the same river, with the result that there is not enough for anyone. Without the necessary efforts to ensure the social and environmental conditions for fishing, what you have done by teaching the man to fish is ensure that the man will remain hungry for a lifetime, as will his children, and his childrens children. If you teach a man to fish under such conditions, you take away his self-respect, his drive to better his condition, and his will to teach his children that they can better themselves as well. And he will never trust you again. The man would be much better off simply given the fish.</p>
<p>a behavior dysfunction? LOL I feel sorry for the person who believes that</p>
<p>Mini, a variant: give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat all day and drink beer.</p>
<p>In Houston where we have 150,000 folks from Katrina estimated at this time, there have been complaints because they have jumped some of them ahead in the two or three year long lines for public housing. They were going to kick many of the refugees out of hotels in Houston Dec. 1, but they have been given an extension till Jan 1, 2006. Then what?</p>
<p>Another interesting story is that the African Americans flooded out of New Orleans are not generally who is reconstructing NO. A veritable army of Hispanic construction workers are going there. These are primarily young guys living many to the room in the few living spaces available in NO. These folks are used to that as they all have their families in Mexico, so what is the difference whether they build in Atlanta or Houston or LA. The AFrican Americans are not willing to leave their families in shelters in Houston, for instance,while they go back to work without a place to live for many months. It is creating racial tensions.</p>
<p>wyogal…Just curious, what is your line of business and how old are you (maybe a student)? I’m trying to understand how much you can understand about life. Are you religious? Having a hard time here understanding how you could possibly believe what you wrote, unless you are GWBush and have never met a disadvantaged person. BTW many of them work very long hours for minimum wages. Notice you haven’t been back on this thread. Just drop the bomb…produce shock and awe and then run??</p>