The Republican Nomination For President: The Race For The Race For The White House

Informal eugenics is widely practiced in all cultures. I bet it is rife in certain American social circles. Scientific, planned eugenics is a different thing entirely. One has to agree with the former and many don't. There is no choice with the latter.

I bet it is rife in certain American social circles.

I also submit that the class system has this idea inherent in it. While the language may change, the idea is never too far below the surface.

I think JTT's just trying to redress the balance, there's been a lot of anti-American invective coming out from him, and he's just throwing a bit our way.

there are obvious parallels between the mind-set of eugenics, and that of the nazis.

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there are obvious parallels between the mind-set of eugenics, and that of the nazis.

While there may be such parallels, it doesn't imply that atheists are like either of them any more then the aboriginal native of Australia are like either of them.

The class system tends to produce fecundating relationships between people who have certain values, speech patterns and habits in common. Eugenics is based upon biological tests.

Izzy, if you blame the Holocaust on atheists, you're a ******* idiot. Hitler made a point of publicly describing himself as a Catholic,

You know that to be false, Spendius.

The Pope and Mr Santorum are in nobody's bed who doesn't choose them to be. They are simple saying that we would be a lot happier without contraception. Nobody need take any notice.

Eugenics is not based upon biological tests.

Conservative politicians like Rick Santorum are always telling us how they are the ones to be trusted to spend our tax dollars wisely. Yet today’s record federal budget deficit tells a very different story. The damage so-called “conservatives” have done to our federal Treasury borders on obscene.

In the case of Rick Santorum, the fiscal sleight-of-hand is quite personal. In public, he rails against funding for programs that help other families, but in private he takes every advantage he can for himself and his own family.

Look at how he deceived a struggling school district in Pennsylvania into to paying $100,000 for cyber-school tuition for his five children – even while they were living in a well-off school district in Virginia.

That’s right. Between 2001 and 2004, Santorum enrolled five of his children in the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School. Since Pennsylvania law requires school districts to pay for students who live in their district but enroll in cyber schools – and since Santorum claimed his residence was a house in Penn Hills, Allegheny County – the Penn Hills School District paid $100,000 for the Santorum children’s tuition.

But wait a minute – it turns out Rick Santorum, his wife, and their children don’t actually live in Penn Hills...in Allegheny County...or even in Pennsylvania. They actually live in a big house he owns in Leesburg, Virginia.


Sure, Santorum is registered to vote in Pennsylvania, in Penn Hills, and both his driver’s license and his car registration are at that address. But the Santorums really live in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Leesburg, Virginia. The only people who live in that two-bedroom house in Penn Hills are Santorum’s niece, Alyssa DeLuca and her husband.

After this nice little “arrangement” came to light, Santorum told KDKA Radio that his niece lives in and “looks after” the Penn Hills house when he’s not there. He also admitted that when he goes to Pennsylvania, he and most of the family usually stay somewhere else -- with his in-laws -- while his niece and her husband keep “watching” the house:

“We have a nice arrangement there. It works out well. Candidly, we just sort of work it out. Sometimes, a couple of my kids stay over there [with the niece and her husband]. We get to stay at grandma’s house, and a couple of kids go over and stay with their cousin. To me, that’s a family situation. I don’t know what people’s business that is, to be very honest with you. The fact is, I own a home, pay taxes, reside here, go to jury duty. To me, this is much ado about nothing.”

But $100,000 paid for by local property taxes isn’t nothing. So under public pressure Santorum withdrew his children from the cyber school, but refused to reimburse the Penn Hills School District.

“Why do I owe them money for a bill they approved that was lawful? I don’t owe them anything.”

Santorum’s wife, Karen, now home schools the children (presumably in Virginia). And the Penn Hills School District has had to go to court to get back the $100,000 – spending even MORE time and MORE taxpayer dollars to get back money Santorum never should have pursued in the first place.

“It’s the hypocrisy, stupid.”

Back in 1990, when Santorum first ran for Congress, he attacked his Democratic opponent, Doug Walgren, for living in McLean, Virginia. Here’s how Roll Call described a 1990 Santorum television ad:

“Santorum’s spot is the essence of simplicity. Strange music plays while a picture of an attractive white house is shown. The announcer says, ‘There’s something strange about this house.’ The reason is because Walgren lives in McLean, which is ‘the wealthiest area of Virginia’ rather than his suburban district.”

Now that he’s made himself at home in Washington, Rick Santorum seems to think the rules are different for him. But once you see reality behind Rick Santorum exposed, his rhetoric reeks of hypocrisy. And after a dozen years in the Senate, it makes you wonder…how come life is good for Rick Santorum, but hasn’t gotten any better for most Pennsylvanians?

Many readers of The Times were, therefore, surprised to learn, from an excellent article published last weekend, that the regions of America most hooked on Mr. Santorum’s narcotic — the regions in which government programs account for the largest share of personal income — are precisely the regions electing those severe conservatives. Wasn’t Red America supposed to be the land of traditional values, where people don’t eat Thai food and don’t rely on handouts?

The article made its case with maps showing the distribution of dependency, but you get the same story from a more formal comparison. Aaron Carroll of Indiana University tells us that in 2010, residents of the 10 states Gallup ranks as “most conservative” received 21.2 percent of their income in government transfers, while the number for the 10 most liberal states was only 17.1 percent.

Now, there’s no mystery about red-state reliance on government programs. These states are relatively poor, which means both that people have fewer sources of income other Now, there’s no mystery about red-state reliance on government programs. These states are relatively poor, which means both that people have fewer sources of income other than safety-net programs and that more of them qualify for “means-tested” programs such as Medicaid.

By the way, the same logic explains why there has been a jump in dependency since 2008. Contrary to what Mr. Santorum and Mr. Romney suggest, Mr. Obama has not radically expanded the safety net. Rather, the dire state of the economy has reduced incomes and made more people eligible for benefits, especially unemployment benefits. Basically, the safety net is the same, but more people are falling into it.

But why do regions that rely on the safety net elect politicians who want to tear it down? I’ve seen three main explanations.

First, there is Thomas Frank’s thesis in his book “What’s the Matter With Kansas?”: working-class Americans are induced to vote against their own interests by the G.O.P.’s exploitation of social issues. And it’s true that, for example, Americans who regularly attend church are much more likely to vote Republican, at any given level of income, than those who don’t.

Still, as Columbia University’s Andrew Gelman points out, the really striking red-blue voting divide is among the affluent: High-income residents of red states are overwhelmingly Republican; high-income residents of blue states only mildly more Republican than their poorer neighbors. Like Mr. Frank, Mr. Gelman invokes social issues, but in the opposite direction. Affluent voters in the Northeast tend to be social liberals who would benefit from tax cuts but are repelled by things like the G.O.P.’s war on contraception.

Finally, Cornell University’s Suzanne Mettler points out that many beneficiaries of government programs seem confused about their own place in the system. She tells us that 44 percent of Social Security recipients, 43 percent of those receiving unemployment benefits, and 40 percent of those on Medicare say that they “have not used a government program.”

Presumably, then, voters imagine that pledges to slash government spending mean cutting programs for the idle poor, not things they themselves count on. And this is a confusion politicians deliberately encourage. For example, when Mr. Romney responded to the new Obama budget, he condemned Mr. Obama for not taking on entitlement spending — and, in the very next breath, attacked him for cutting Medicare.

The truth, of course, is that the vast bulk of entitlement spending goes to the elderly, the disabled, and working families, so any significant cuts would have to fall largely on people who believe that they don’t use any government program.

The message I take from all this is that pundits who describe America as a fundamentally conservative country are wrong. Yes, voters sent some severe conservatives to Washington. But those voters would be both shocked and angry if such politicians actually imposed their small-government agenda.

“What’s the Matter With Kansas?”:

I object to that remark. If you said that in the House of Commons about another member you would be invited to withdraw it or be suspended. In an earlier age you would have been invited outside.

What I said was true. In what way is--


The Pope and Mr Santorum are in nobody's bed who doesn't choose them to be. They are simple saying that we would be a lot happier without contraception. Nobody need take any notice.


false?

Alright Frank, I don't want to start a fight. I was just saying that your post could be interpreted as saying that Atheists haven't carried out acts of mass murder like the Inquisition or the Crusades, and I think the Holocaust indicates otherwise.

I wasn't accusing you of laying the blame for every flaw in human nature on religion. If I sounded like I was doing that, I'm sorry.

I think it would be a better place if we went from a believing system to an understanding system.

If everyone was taught to have understandings rather than beliefs I do think we could be better off.

We need some source of ethics but I do not think that the church should teach it unless they can drop the beliefs.