Tea Party's Carl Paladino Backs Welfare Prison

[General Zod]

Hilariously enough, there's already a program similar to the one the douchebag in the article is proposing out there but without the horribly racist overtones. It's called Job corps, and honestly if your prospects are looking pretty dismal it's not a bad prospect given they will teach you some marketable skills if you apply yourself at no expense to you, and even give you a reasonable level of dental and medical care. You have to be within a certain age range but it's still a better program than the retard in the article wants to put up.

[Lusankya]

Are there any rational reasons why someone would refuse to apply for welfare? I can understand why someone might decline to take advantage of it if there were actually limited places and it actually would kick someone out, but it's not as though that actually happens.

If I needed to accept welfare, I wouldn't feel guilty. I'd feel ashamed and disappointed that I wasn't making best use of my talents, but I wouldn't feel any guilt or any need to not accept it. I pay taxes. I'm a member of society. And welfare is one of the things I receive in return for all of that. Not accepting welfare because "someone else needs it more" is like receiving a big block of chocolate as a birthday present and then not eating it because of the starving kids in Africa.

[Broomstick]

Are there any rational reasons why someone would refuse to apply for welfare?

No. Refusing that sort of help is usually based on ideological principles and/or denial.

[Raw Shark]

I, too, can't afford insurance. If you let a bad tooth go long enough (because the government won't help with things like fillings) it becomes a genuine medical problem that the ER would have to deal with. When people who can't pay go to the ER, the taxpayers end up footing the bill. QED.

And it's a fucking STUPID way to run things - because society is too cheap to pay for either regular dental cleanings or to fill a tooth when a cavity is minor people wind up losing entire teeth, have horrible infections, may even be hospitalized, all of which costs orders of magnitude more than a simple filling. [snip the facts]

Agreed, but there's no way a tea party candidate could say that and expect to get elected. The proposal in question, with its claims of saving money through (among other things) hygiene, is as close as they'll ever get, better than nothing in my opinion, and not necessarily the words of a Captain Planet villain.

Since you ask: I've been elligible for it several times, but refrained because I have no dependents and the need of others is greater. If I get too sick or injured to work, it will become my only option.

Then you are fucking stupid to not take advantage of assistance when you are in need. Do you think the aid you so piously refuse actually goes to someone else?

And if you are too sick or injured to work you will find that there is no safety net. You will be at the mercy of a hospital for charity care. They are under no obligation to do more than simply stabilize you and ship you out. Most healthy young males do NOT qualify for medical assistance. Getting disability benefits typically takes years to work through the system.

You are ignorant of what assistance is or isn't out there.

I've never felt that my need was great enough, despite living under the poverty line. As a reasonably healthy and young male with no children I'd only get food stamps anyway, and I haven't managed to starve yet, so I think I can afford the luxury of my ideals. If the healthy part changes, I'll have a long trek through the system that I might not live to see the end of, which is fucked up and worth changing, but if I began it while I am healthy I'd have to start over again when my circumstances changed to get more anyway, so for now I choose not to. The money that is saved on me may not directly go to someone else, but it remains available for others who need it more, like people with children.

You're talking out of your ass if you think "volunteering" to live in a prison is the answer.

I think that volunteering for a program that gives you job experience and training, to help you get a better job (which may include decent insurance) down the road, is a better answer to the medical care issue than doing nothing, that Paladino would be committing political suicide with his base and thus neutralizing any effect he could've had on the matter if he proposed simply improving access to care for all welfare recipients, and that you're on the crazy train if you think they seriously intend to pull some sort of "Gotcha! You're locked in!" on the people who sign up.

[Broomstick]

I think that volunteering for a program that gives you job experience and training, to help you get a better job (which may include decent insurance) down the road, is a better answer to the medical care issue than doing nothing

As noted - we already have those programs in place. And they don't involve displacing people or having to house them in converted prisons.

that Paladino would be committing political suicide with his base and thus neutralizing any effect he could've had on the matter if he proposed simply improving access to care for all welfare recipients

I would happily see the entire Tea Party and all their candidates commit political suicide.

and that you're on the crazy train if you think they seriously intend to pull some sort of "Gotcha! You're locked in!" on the people who sign up.

Not so crazy - quite a few my European relatives bought into such a thing back in the late 1930's, the idea that if they just cooperated they'd be OK. Just go along, consent to go to this labor camp over there, where there will be housing and food and jobs....

They were all locked in. Then they were all killed.

Bait and switch on that level DOES occur. I don't have any illusions of it being impossible here in the US. I hope it never happens, but it's a possibility. From my viewpoint, it's not being paranoid, it's learning from history.

[Simon_Jester]

I don't think that Paladino wants these to be death camps, but forced labor camps wouldn't really surprise me at this stage. When you combine the idea of using former prisons with the idea that "chronic welfare recipients" must be lazy people who don't want to work, I'd expect the idea of locking people into facilities where they're forced to work to become rather appealing. So for Paladino to think along those lines wouldn't seem out of line at all given the overall direction he's trending.

Projecting motives that would make sense outside the extreme far-right onto Paladino may be a mistake. The Tea Party movement is the result of thirty years of party lines coming home to roost: neoconservatism taken to its logical conclusion in terms of economic policy and the culture war. It's a different mental universe.

[Broomstick]

I don't think that Paladino wants these to be death camps, but forced labor camps wouldn't really surprise me at this stage. When you combine the idea of using former prisons with the idea that "chronic welfare recipients" must be lazy people who don't want to work, I'd expect the idea of locking people into facilities where they're forced to work to become rather appealing. So for Paladino to think along those lines wouldn't seem out of line at all given the overall direction he's trending.

Not all the camps the Nazis had were explicit "death" camps. They had plenty that were just plain old work camps. Still sucked to be in them. Nor did they start]/i] with death camps.

So, first you ask for "volunteers" (Perhaps with a little arm-twisting via regulations that exert pressure to volunteer), then you make it mandatory, then you have an "accident" one night - such a shame, all those people dying in that fire in that locked facility but you know, if they weren't lazy welfare bums they wouldn't have been in the work camps, right?....

[Simon_Jester]

Not all the camps the Nazis had were explicit "death" camps. They had plenty that were just plain old work camps. Still sucked to be in them. Nor did they start]/i] with death camps.

So, first you ask for "volunteers" (Perhaps with a little arm-twisting via regulations that exert pressure to volunteer), then you make it mandatory, then you have an "accident" one night - such a shame, all those people dying in that fire in that locked facility but you know, if they weren't lazy welfare bums they wouldn't have been in the work camps, right?....

Broomstick, I truly believe that you've crossed the line away from rational objections to a loathesome policy and into paranoia space.

I could imagine, as a plausible projection of Tea Party doctrine, labor camps for the unemployed becoming common. I could imagine conditions in the camps being very bad by First World standards (anything in an American prison is very bad by First World standards). I could imagine the camps being violent, accident-prone places.

But I don't think it is remotely realistic to posit scare-quote-"accidents" in this context, certainly not with the implication that this is a covert policy of massacre. The equivalent of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, quite possibly... but that fire was a real accident, albeit one made worse by the homicidal negligence of the owners.

But there's a difference between negligent homicide and murder one, and I don't think the Tea Partiers are likely to cross that line even if given the chance.

[Broomstick]

I've never felt that my need was great enough, despite living under the poverty line. As a reasonably healthy and young male with no children I'd only get food stamps anyway, and I haven't managed to starve yet, so I think I can afford the luxury of my ideals.

I certainly can't force you, but I can make an argument that if you qualify for food stamps you should get them, for several reasons:

1) If your cash is limited food stamps allows you to spend more of those resources on important non-food items. This may be as simple as building up a small reserve (you are permitted up to $2,500 in cash assets while on food stamps) or buying new shoes or going to the dentist or getting a haircut.

2) If you've been severely economizing you may wind up eating better on food stamps - that is what happened with me and mine. I was able to buy higher quality food and more fresh fruit. I know you know how important a good diet is to maintaining health.

3) When I got onto food stamps I discovered it was a gateway of sorts to other aid provided by county and state as a means of getting you into a better position financially. Among these services were:
- resume writing assistance
- job interview practice
- locations of sliding-fee clinics for your health needs
- how to sign up for the local "prescription clubs" for lower cost medications if you need them
- a limited amount of funds for purposes such as getting you clothes for a job interview or fixing a vehicle so you could get to work
- job fairs
- seminars on how to start your own business
And various others ALL open to young, single, healthy, able-bodied men. They do this at the point of people signing up for food stamps since that's so often the very first welfare benefit people seek out.

[Aaron]

Wasn't share cropping a big part of keeping people fed and in shelter during the Great Depression? I'm not exactly a fan of this guys prison proposal (mostly because its easy to see where it could go) but I wouldn't object to fixing up old military barracks and having something similar to share cropping going on, or something more relevant to modern needs in regards to manufacturing.

It would need to be properly policed to ensure that folks aren't being abused, mind you.

And yeah, if I was desperate enough (I have four mouths to feed) then I'd sign on for the above.

[General Zod]

Wasn't share cropping a big part of keeping people fed and in shelter during the Great Depression? I'm not exactly a fan of this guys prison proposal (mostly because its easy to see where it could go) but I wouldn't object to fixing up old military barracks and having something similar to share cropping going on, or something more relevant to modern needs in regards to manufacturing.

It would need to be properly policed to ensure that folks aren't being abused, mind you.

And yeah, if I was desperate enough (I have four mouths to feed) then I'd sign on for the above.

This guy could have proposed expanding on programs like Job Corps I mentioned above instead of what he did in the article, but instead we get some nonsense about converting prisons and illegal immigrants who don't know how to bathe.

[Serafina]

Broomstick, i think you are a little paranoid here.
It might be that that asshole would actually do that if he could. And while i see many nazi-like tendencies in both republican and tea party, americas political system seems to be disadvantageous for implementing such radical things.
I can understand where your notion comes from, but i do not think it can realistically happen.

[Broomstick]

Not all the camps the Nazis had were explicit "death" camps. They had plenty that were just plain old work camps. Still sucked to be in them. Nor did they start]/i] with death camps.

So, first you ask for "volunteers" (Perhaps with a little arm-twisting via regulations that exert pressure to volunteer), then you make it mandatory, then you have an "accident" one night - such a shame, all those people dying in that fire in that locked facility but you know, if they weren't lazy welfare bums they wouldn't have been in the work camps, right?....

Broomstick, I truly believe that you've crossed the line away from rational objections to a loathesome policy and into paranoia space.

I could imagine, as a plausible projection of Tea Party doctrine, labor camps for the unemployed becoming common. I could imagine conditions in the camps being very bad by First World standards (anything in an American prison is very bad by First World standards). I could imagine the camps being violent, accident-prone places.

All of which is morally and ethically repugnant to me.

But I don't think it is remotely realistic to posit scare-quote-"accidents" in this context, certainly not with the implication that this is a covert policy of massacre. The equivalent of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, quite possibly... but that fire was a real accident, albeit one made worse by the homicidal negligence of the owners.

But there's a difference between negligent homicide and murder one, and I don't think the Tea Partiers are likely to cross that line even if given the chance.

I do. While not all Teabaggers are fuckwit nutjob racist dickheads all too many of them are. There are a lot of reports of racist behavior, other forms of bigotry, provocative acts, or outright calls for violence.

Let's look at some examples, shall we?

- On March 20, 2010, before the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Bill was voted on protesters against the bill used racial and homophobic slurs at a rally in Washington, D.C. Some black lawmakers reported shouts of "nigger". Congressman Emanuel Cleaver was spat on. Congressman Barney Frank, who is gay, was called a "faggot."

- On March 21, 2010, Springboro Tea Party founder Sonny Thomas posted racist slurs against Hispanics on the group's Twitter webpage, including one post that said, "Illegals everywhere today! So many spics makes me feel like a speck. Grrr. Wheres my gun!?".

- On March 22, 2010, a Lynchburg, Virginia Tea Party activist, attempted to post the home address of Congressman Tom Perriello on his blog. He fucked up and posted the address of Perriello’s brother, who also lives in Virginia, and encouraged readers to "drop by" to express their anger against Rep. Perriello’s vote in favor of the health care bill. The following day, a severed gas line was discovered in Perriello's brother's yard which connected to a propane grill located next to the house on a screened-in, attached porch. Local police and FBI investigators determined that it was intentionally cut as a deliberate act of vandalism

That's just three days in March of this year. The overwhelming majority of Teabaggers think black are favored over whites in this country (which is absurd), believe Obama was born outside the US, are anti-immigrant, don't feel gays and lesbians should marry or enjoy equal rights. A fuckton are conservative white religious males who believe we should go back to the days (that they imagine existed) when women were baby-making machines for their husbands and said in the home and the kitchen.

These whackos overlap with the birthers and the "sovereign citizens" and a bunch of other batshit crazies. They're extremists, they have no qualms in trying to impose their views on others, some openly advocate violence for change, and I view them as potentially extremely dangerous.

[Broomstick]

Wasn't share cropping a big part of keeping people fed and in shelter during the Great Depression?

Nope. Share cropping predated the Great Depression and in fact the Great Depression had a lot to do with its demise as, between crop failures and everything else, the wealth being extracted from the sharecroppers simply evaporated. Share croppers were evicted from the land they had farmed in massive numbers, contributing to the homelessness problem back them.

The Civilian Conversation Corps did provide jobs, often in places like national parks and forests, but as I noted they weren't converted prisons (often, they were literal camps with tents, and were mobile) and people were certainly free to leave at any time.

[Broomstick]

Broomstick, i think you are a little paranoid here.
It might be that that asshole would actually do that if he could. And while i see many nazi-like tendencies in both republican and tea party, americas political system seems to be disadvantageous for implementing such radical things.
I can understand where your notion comes from, but i do not think it can realistically happen.

Prior to WWII no one believed the highly civilized and rational German people were capable of such things, either.

I'd like to think the US system has some immunity to such radicalism, but I think it would be arrogant to maintain it couldn't happen. Even if it didn't go to full blown death camps we DO have a history both both slavery and horrible treatment of minorities in this country. Terrible things have happened in the past, and a lot of the Tea Party and other conservatives would like to go back into what they view as an idyllic past - a "golden age" which totally sucked if you weren't a white, Christian male.

[General Zod]

Broomstick, i think you are a little paranoid here.
It might be that that asshole would actually do that if he could. And while i see many nazi-like tendencies in both republican and tea party, americas political system seems to be disadvantageous for implementing such radical things.
I can understand where your notion comes from, but i do not think it can realistically happen.

Prior to WWII no one believed the highly civilized and rational German people were capable of such things, either.

I'd like to think the US system has some immunity to such radicalism, but I think it would be arrogant to maintain it couldn't happen. Even if it didn't go to full blown death camps we DO have a history both both slavery and horrible treatment of minorities in this country. Terrible things have happened in the past, and a lot of the Tea Party and other conservatives would like to go back into what they view as an idyllic past - a "golden age" which totally sucked if you weren't a white, Christian male.

We already have "Ex-gay" camps where fundies try turning gay teens straight through dubious methods; iirc there's been at least one death through their practices.

[Temujin]

While I don't think the shit baggers have enough real power and influence to take control of this country (and I'm hoping I'm right in that regard), I am worried that they (and their ilk) have enough power and influence that they will continue to interfere with and hamper any real attempts at progress for a long time to come, which is exactly what we don't need in the face of all the crises we're facing.

[Alphawolf55]

Are there any rational reasons why someone would refuse to apply for welfare? I can understand why someone might decline to take advantage of it if there were actually limited places and it actually would kick someone out, but it's not as though that actually happens.

If I needed to accept welfare, I wouldn't feel guilty. I'd feel ashamed and disappointed that I wasn't making best use of my talents, but I wouldn't feel any guilt or any need to not accept it. I pay taxes. I'm a member of society. And welfare is one of the things I receive in return for all of that. Not accepting welfare because "someone else needs it more" is like receiving a big block of chocolate as a birthday present and then not eating it because of the starving kids in Africa.

I wouldn't call it a "rational" argument, but I once heard an argument from my sister that if you look at it in a long term manner makes a little bit of sense when you apply to countries like the USA that doesn't have its shit together.

My sister who is a very principled person in that she loves doing charity, fighting for gays rights and yet refused unemployment when she got laid off from her job had an interesting argument when I informed her that I was applying for NYC food stamps due to my lost employment. She argued that while there are no slots in the food stamp program and that you're not bumping someone off, the money isn't free either. It has to come from somewhere whether it be taxes or borrowing and in this country it's borrowing. She argued that if I took it, the Government would have to pay back through interest several times what I spent, sending us deeper into debt and preventing that money being spent on more needy recepients like homes for the truly homeless and ect. She admitted her argument though is only directed at people who have a choice (people like me who live on their own and could live with their families if they had to be, but choose not to due to completely different life style personalities) and said that if it's a choice between starving and being homeless you defintely choose the aid.

She wasn't saying that if you take government aid you're going to destroy the system but rather each person has certain obligations including following the law, paying taxes, being a good person and that if you have an option of receiving money that you don't absolutely need, you shouldn't and that if each person who doesn't absolutely need a cookie takes one from the jar, there won't be any cookies left for people who do.

[Simon_Jester]

Broomstick, I truly believe that you've crossed the line away from rational objections to a loathesome policy and into paranoia space.

I could imagine, as a plausible projection of Tea Party doctrine, labor camps for the unemployed becoming common. I could imagine conditions in the camps being very bad by First World standards (anything in an American prison is very bad by First World standards). I could imagine the camps being violent, accident-prone places.

All of which is morally and ethically repugnant to me.

I repeat: I truly believe that you've crossed the line away from rational objections to a loathesome policy and into paranoia space. You are extrapolating from your perceptions into your worst nightmares and positing those nightmares as a plausible outcome.

But I don't think it is remotely realistic to posit scare-quote-"accidents" in this context, certainly not with the implication that this is a covert policy of massacre. The equivalent of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, quite possibly... but that fire was a real accident, albeit one made worse by the homicidal negligence of the owners.

But there's a difference between negligent homicide and murder one, and I don't think the Tea Partiers are likely to cross that line even if given the chance.

I do. While not all Teabaggers are fuckwit nutjob racist dickheads all too many of them are. There are a lot of reports of racist behavior, other forms of bigotry, provocative acts, or outright calls for violence.

The catch is not that there are no potential Nazis among the teabaggers. It is that their numbers, their political competence, and their policy-making competence are not equal to the task of being the Nazi Party.

That's just three days in March of this year. The overwhelming majority of Teabaggers think black are favored over whites in this country (which is absurd), believe Obama was born outside the US, are anti-immigrant, don't feel gays and lesbians should marry or enjoy equal rights. A fuckton are conservative white religious males who believe we should go back to the days (that they imagine existed) when women were baby-making machines for their husbands and said in the home and the kitchen.

These whackos overlap with the birthers and the "sovereign citizens" and a bunch of other batshit crazies. They're extremists, they have no qualms in trying to impose their views on others, some openly advocate violence for change, and I view them as potentially extremely dangerous.

They are.

And yet to become the functional equivalent of the Nazis, they would have to take their already horrible, potentially extremely dangerous nature and kick it to the next level, utterly remaking the country in the process. They would have to remove, as the Nazis did, all functional political voices to their left- including the "revolutionary dickheads are bad for business" wing of their own party, including the "we may be corporate whores but we aren't actively trying to kill everyone browner than us" wing that seems to hold so much sway among the Democrats. They would have to remake the organs of government to the point where they could isolate each agency and do as they pleased with absolutely zero oversight by anyone who wasn't them (as the Nazis did).

They would have to do this in spite of the fact that their potential support base is smaller. The Nazis used small minority groups as their scapegoats; this was a key to their success. The portion of the population they targeted for brutalization and terrorization was on the order of 10 to 20% of the nation as a whole, at most;

Because of how difficult all these things would be, any realistic "Tea Party" leader we are likely to see will be one who has compromised his ambitions (however vile and extensive they may be) in light of the political realities. To remake America in their image to the point where Nazi-scale atrocities become possible, they would have to rule the nation for many years, possibly decades; far longer than we can expect them to remain in power unopposed in light of the absolute flaming incompetence we can expect from them in office.

In a horrible bizarre parallel-universe version of America where the corporate-whore wings of the two great political parties did not exist, and where assorted brown people made up a smaller fraction of the population, the Tea Party might well have a credible shot at becoming the next Nazis. Or if by act of Q, elections stopped working entirely, even to the minimal extent they worked in 2008 with both candidates having to deny their Bush-hood in order to become Bush's successor, then over the course of decades the one we have might have a credible shot at it.

Barring act of Q, I really am not seeing it. It's not that it couldn't happen here, not in the final analysis; it's that they are too incompetent to make it happen here.

[Broomstick]

First of all, I don't think the Teabaggers are a reincarnation of the Nazis - if they did become as powerful and destructive they would still, nonetheless, manifest in a different way and likely with different scapegoats. Certainly different propaganda.

I view the Tea Party as needing only two conditions to catapult to "the next level" as you put it:

1) A competent leader to appear in their midst. Yes, right now they're a mess, but there is a LOT of them. Odds are that there are at least a few who are potentially competent enough to govern effectively. Before the rise of the Nazis Germany's political system was fractured and a mess, with many, many competing interests (assuming I have my history correct - Germans, please correct me if I'm wrong). The Nazis weren't the only extremist party, and they weren't the only violent, hate-filled group. They were just the ones who managed to take over.

2) A national crisis of sufficient proportions. This could be either natural or man-made, and could be completely accidental in origin. Desperate people are more inclined to extremes. The between world war years in Germany involved financial catastrophe that in many ways dwarfed the Great Depression in other countries (the infamous "a wheebarrow of money for a loaf of bread" problem, for example). The US is currently experiencing a financial crisis, the greatest since the 1930's. If the economy completely crashes that could give an opportunity to extremist groups. If the oil stops flowing. If there is a sufficiently great natural disaster that completely disrupts the national level of government.

Now, at the moment, the Tea Party has neither of those. Number1 is probably of slightly greater possibility, both because of sheer numbers of Teabaggers and also because it would take a truly monumental disaster to bring the US to its knees. But it could happen.

As for eliminating the left - I've already seen a massive shift to the right in my lifetime. If there was a debate I could probably construct an argument that, were he running for office today, Richard Nixon would be considered a leftist by American standards. The left doesn't have to be eliminated overnight, it can take place slowly over time. As I expect to be around another 50 years or so slow shifts of that sort do concern me.

[Liberty]

As for eliminating the left - I've already seen a massive shift to the right in my lifetime. If there was a debate I could probably construct an argument that, were he running for office today, Richard Nixon would be considered a leftist by American standards. The left doesn't have to be eliminated overnight, it can take place slowly over time. As I expect to be around another 50 years or so slow shifts of that sort do concern me.

I took a graduate seminar on the sixties, and I can say that yes, Richard Nixon would most definitely be considered leftist today. Many of the policies he put forward were left of Obama (such as universal health insurance and a program that would have ensured that every person had a certain minimum income, whether they worked or not, thus essentially providing welfare cash payments to every person under a certain minimum wage).

Source: Nixonland, by Perlstein

[Simon_Jester]

On the other hand, there are also countervailing trends- increased support for relatively liberal policies among the younger generation and rising minority populations come to mind.

I really do not expect to see a nationwide shift to something more horrid than what the Tea Party already stands for (which, as yet, doesn't include killing off undesirables at this point, except on the fringe). Hell, I don't really expect even the Tea Party to become a major long-term player; I think they represent the high water mark of right-wing radicalism in America, simply because so much of their support comes from the most conservative demographics and those demographics are in decline.

I think they're the mirror image of the '60s youth culture: just as the flower children created a reactionary movement, so will the Tea Party, certainly if they get enough power to think they can take the gloves off on the local level in a few places.

[Knife]

I've said it before, when Obama won the election over a year ago, did you really think the conservatives would just evaporate? The Tea Party is just the conservatives screaming at the top of their lungs that they've lost. A reactionary movement of people who changed labels because the GOPer label lost, and want their illusion back. I expect them to be loud, and to influence the election some but at the end of the day they are less than 20% of the voters who vote GOP and conservative anyways. The pendulum swings both ways, and after they go hoarse screaming their bullshit, it'll go the other way.

[ray245]

On the other hand, there are also countervailing trends- increased support for relatively liberal policies among the younger generation and rising minority populations come to mind.

I really do not expect to see a nationwide shift to something more horrid than what the Tea Party already stands for (which, as yet, doesn't include killing off undesirables at this point, except on the fringe). Hell, I don't really expect even the Tea Party to become a major long-term player; I think they represent the high water mark of right-wing radicalism in America, simply because so much of their support comes from the most conservative demographics and those demographics are in decline.

I think they're the mirror image of the '60s youth culture: just as the flower children created a reactionary movement, so will the Tea Party, certainly if they get enough power to think they can take the gloves off on the local level in a few places.

Maybe for social issues like gay rights. But in terms of other issues like economic policies, I feel that they are leaning more towards the right.

[NecronLord]

Shark, an appeal to authority is not a fallacy unless the authority is invalid. Citing the opinion of someone evidently qualified for the topic, (an epidemiologist on disease an astrophysicist on stars) is not fallacious. Nor is vouching for their authority. I’ve never seen anything to suggest Broomstick is anything but very knowledgable about the topic of welfare in the United States.

Just for a different perspective, I currently work in welfare delivery (in the UK). And looking at these kinds of proposals always make me cringe, if nothing else from a cost reduction standpoint. Obviously I can’t really comment on the expenses of the US welfare system but let’s just take the UK:

The cost of keeping someone on JSA is in terms of ‘tooth’ (to hijack a logistics phrase – meaning in this case the money actually delivered to the customer) £65.45 per week for a single, healthy adult (£3,403.40 if they remain on it for a whole year) with no other income. There is various ‘tail’ (processing costs, child housing benefit, free school meals, prescription costs, etc of course most customers don’t get all of those and an adult without dependants won’t get say, child benefit) attached to that. The ‘tail’ costs more than the teeth, though this declines after initial costs in a long term claim. Because of the complexity of this, and how you count it, a precise figure per person per year for a healthy adult is difficult to come by, as it is spread throughout different departments and local authorities. Housing benefit, a major government expenditure, averaged at less than £100/week per claimant in 2003 for an annual total of £5,200 year. Let’s add another £2,000/ year for other potential payments and support in training for work and other things. That’s a generous total of £10,503.40/year, for the government to support a healthy adult in housing, looking for work, and surviving.

A conservative (as in restrained, not the political party) figure for keeping someone in prison costs over £24K/year.

You may argue that the costs would reduce because you no longer need to hire (as many) guards and keep big dogs for the prison. Unfortunately, the other costs would remain pretty much fixed. You would however need to hire in a whole variety of new staff, build new training facilities, and so on.

Prison is expensive; the point of prison is to isolate dangerous people from society.

You could probably put people into University and it would be cheaper. AFAIK a fully funded university course costs the government less than that.

This is leaving the immense personal damage of institutionalising people and limiting their opportunities to socialise outside a select group, damaging aspiration and motivation.

And won't someone think of the civil servants who'd have to commute to some isolated prison every day?

____

In accordance with the Civil Service Code I note that this post, along with every other post I have ever made or ever will make on this forum is entirely my own opinion and does not in any way reflect any official guidance or comments of the Department for Work and Pensions. No confidential information or information from DWP internal guidance is provided above.

The only sources of information are the public-facing website http://www.direct.gov.uk and http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/167990.stm for the cost of keeping someone in prison. http://www.york.ac.uk/res/ukhr/ukhr0405 ... 115abc.pdf for the Housing Benefit figure.