Friday, September 30, 2011

What am I?

Three political ideology quizzes later and the internet tells me exactly what I already know.  I'm a "post-modern", not a word I've ever heard before, but a rose by any other name and all that.  Basically it means I'm a centrist, maybe a little more liberal than conservative.

But that is an overarching view. When you get down to it, I'm a "filthy liberal" when it comes to social issues and "I don't really know what's going on" for everything else.

Because, let's face it, I am not qualified to be deciding who to tax and how to spend it.  I lean towards the "tax the bejeezus out of the rich" idea, but I don't pay taxes.  I also don't have a job (yet - hopefully this is a temporary situation, but I kind of missed the window to exploit the vacated positions when the college kids went back to school)  so I don't pay social security. But I hope somebody fixes that particular program; people who have been paying into it should not have to treat it like a risky stock.


My point is, though, that I am not familiar enough with that whole system to be making judgments about how the talking heads go about fixing it.  Let's be honest, a candidate can bark up a storm but if he ain't got teeth, then the bite is going to be worthless.

So the moderate views of fiscal matters is a default.  We'll see how that changes as I am educated.


More importantly:
I don't like Virginia.  They are one of the laxest states on gun control. They are one of the strictest states on allowing abortion.  They are one of the many states that has not legalized gay marriage.

These are the things that are important to me.  Money is transitory and therefore not important.  But marrying the person you love is.  Getting gunned in your university by someone with mental problems is. And neither is transitory.

Abortion falls into another category where morals and gray areas and religion rule the policy making. I am pro choice for many reasons.  Very, very many reasons.
  1. When the health of the mother is at risk. It is self explanatory.  In my mind, that extends to covering teen moms (but not the ones who are on sixteen and pregnant and darn proud of it). Teenagers are technically still children.  We can't drink, we can't smoke, we can't drive for most of those years, we can't go see R rated movies, we can't go get our own ears pierced. Since when are we qualified to be growing babies, let alone raising them?  The absolute most important growth period of a child is the first month of pregnancy.  Kids do not eat healthily enough to support this growth (I won't even get into how drugs effect unborn babies). Kids can't mentally handle becoming a mother or a father nor can they really do what is right for the baby.  So, in the end, it would be protecting the baby.
  2. Children of teen mothers often end up being adopted.  Or not being adopted and put into the foster care system. Statistics show it is not the best environment.
    1. 54 % earn a high school diploma
    2. 2% earn a Bachelor’s degree or higher
    3. 84% become parents too soon, exposing their children to a repeated cycle of neglect and abuse
    4. 51% are unemployed
    5. 30% have no health insurance
    6. 25% experience homelessness
    7. 30% receive public assistance
         http://www.angelsfoster.org/about-angels/the-foster-crisis/scary-statistics/?gclid=CJyhnLqbxqsCFcZ-5QodMC4I2w
            The book "Freakonomics" also posits the theory that the Roe v. Wade decision lead to a drop in crime rate twenty years later. This may or may not be a cause and effect relationship, but it is suggestive of inadequacies in the foster care system.

Michele Bachman has had 23 foster kids.

Rick Perry is proud of executing 234 Americans.  How many came from underprivileged homes?

      3. It costs $11,000 per year to raise a kid.  Who's going to pay for that? Not the legislator deciding you must keep your baby, that'd be you.  The person who maybe made one mistake. The person who maybe thought that one form of protection was plenty.  Oh, and it's more if you want to send your kid to college.


Anything else is superfluous.  I don't think the life of a non existent person should take precedence over someone two decades in the making.

I don't know this is what you wanted, Stroud, but shouting this out to the vast wasteland of the internet was very satisfying.

5 comments:

  1. But more control = more violence! Well, at least statistically, places with laxer gun laws experience less gun violence, while places with restricted access to guns experience more violent crime.

    http://napoleondapgovt06.blogspot.com/2011/09/gun-control.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. I was basing it more off the belief that no one ever has a reason to need a gun. But they do. And I just realized I need to think more critically about what my mom tells me.

    http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0210e.asp

    You're actually right. Consider me blown away.
    There is a strong correlation, and I'm inclined to believe it. I don't know if its as easily compared, but the restrictions on drinking have caused sort of the same sort of backlash of illegal binge drinking by teens. In both cases though, there is a chance that it's not necessarily a cause and effect relationship, there may be other variables that go along with lax gun control that influence crime rates.

    Still, mentally unstable people should not be allowed to acquire firearms.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ah, well statistically, when the drinking age was only dealt with state by state, a study was done. States where the drinking was 18 had significantly higher death rates due to drunk driving than did states who rose their drinking age to 21. Honestly, there is NO data to back up a lowering of the drinking age.

    http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-03-20-drinkingage_N.htm

    Oh, and yes, we should still have background checks. I'm just saying that banning guns from everyone is a bad idea, like they did in DC.

    ReplyDelete
  4. http://www.youthrights.org/issues/drinking-age/frequently-asked-questions/

    The specific age doesn't matter. People just need to learn how to drink. People binge drink because they don't know their limits, and that is the culture that pervades parties.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Did you know that it is legal for you to consume alcohol right now if you are at home, and your parents are present? It is legal to do so in 30 states, including Virginia.

    http://drinkingage.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=002591

    ReplyDelete