Well?
 

Well, where is she?:haha:

HEY, I GEUSS THE YEA'S HAVE IT!

congrats, lady sidhe! are you pissed that bruce beat you to posting first on your forum? heehee

which one of your holes is your "think hole"?

ooo that was crude

*grins* The one in my head....

(I'll leave you to take that however you wish)

I work during the day until around six, and I pick up my daughter at daycare afterwards, so I'm usually not home until later in the evening. I just got through checking my mail, which is how I found out that I got the forum. Hoodeehoooo!!! :D

THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO VOTED "YES," BTW....




Ok, let's see...first topic of discussion: Let's start with something relatively low-key....How about President Bush's Marriage Plan?

He wants to allocate $1.5 billion (during a five-year period) to help couples develop skills that promote "healthy marriages." The money would go to train counselors to help couples, with an emphasis on those with low incomes. Thus far, it's passed both the House and the Senate Finance Committee, and now they're trying to get it through the Senate as well.

Wade Horn, the assistant secretary for the Administration of Children, Youth, and Families (which is part of the US Dept. of Health and Human Services) says that the marriage initiative is meant to help those who are either already married or have decided to get married, not to persuade single people to GET married.

Basically, the idea is that you can reduce poverty by increasing marriage; supposedly, if you get more single mothers married, you reduce poverty and welfare, which saves the state money.

However, being a single parent isn't only an EFFECT of poverty. It's also a RESULT of it. Poverty would seem to be best dealt with through a decent income rather than marriage, or JUST marriage. Therefore, why don't they simply get rid of the "marriage penalty," (a penalty on working couples who file a joint tax return)? Also, according to the AMA, more than 40 million are either underinsured, or not insured at all. What about the problems they face?

Another interesting finding concerns a study of women from poor families, which was published in the February issue of the journal, "Social Problems"...Sociology professor Daniel T. Lichter of Ohio State University found that while women did get some economic benefits from marriage, those who married and then divorced had higher poverty rates than those who never got married at all.

Therefore, while Bush's plan MAY help couples, there's no guarantee that couples will seek out the counseling, or stay together even after the counseling, and if they don't stay together, the problem is just as bad. I'm not really sure how much it would help. I'm waiting on more information, but so far, it seems like the cost would outweigh the benefits which could just as well be gained by making more affordable health insurance available and getting rid of the marriage penalty.


So, what do YOU think?

Sidhe

Honestly, I think its less about marriage and more about family structure. There are wayyy to many children being raised in single parent homes. And too many of those children don't have regular contact with the other parent.

So, the way I interpret Bush's intentions is as an investment in protecting and cultivating the family structure. I think its a stark contrast between Hillary's "It Takes a Village" and Bush's "It Takes a Family" and that is what I think this debate is really about.

Oh, and congratulations on getting the forum.

Thanks :)

I agree that it takes a family, not a village. I always thought that was a stupid phrase...

Anyway...I was just mentioning that families DO pay a lot for health care, and that perhaps doing something on that front may also help.

I know that when I was working at the hospital, I was making ten dollars an hour, and I still couldn't afford the health care they offered. It was sixty dollars a paycheck, AND had a $350 deductible. I don't get $350 worth of sick...the only major thing I've had to do with hospitals in the past, say, ten years, was my pregnancy. I just don't often get sick. But what about my husband, or my daughter? If they got really sick and required even an emergency room visit, it'd probably take almost my whole check to pay it, because I can't afford insurance. That's ridiculous. I once had a migraine so bad that I had to leave work, and they made me go to the hospital. For them to take my temp and pulse, and give me one little pill, it cost me $267. That's ridiculous. So even if I'd HAD insurance, it wouldn't have paid for it, because there was a $350 deductible.

And then there's the marriage penalty, which makes absolutely NO sense to me.

http://www.concordcoalition.org/fede...gepenalty.html

I don't understand why a household in which two people must work to make ends meet is taxed at a higher rate than two single people living together who make the same amount as the married couple. The tax should be the same. The marriage penalty is actually a discouragement to getting hitched, especially if you want to have children. As we all know, kids aren't cheap. They talk about how they believe that having people be married would result in fewer public assistance cases; It seems to me, though, that if married couples got more of their money back, instead of having it taken by the government, that THAT would reduce the number of people who rely on such public assistance programs as WIC and LaChip.

Having people get married, or having them go to counseling in the hope that they stay married, isn't going to help them out of poverty if they're penalized monetarily by doing so. Lots of couples fight about money. The marrige penalty probably doesn't help that, and no amount of counseling will change the fact that the penalty exists.


I'm all for marriage...just ask my husband :). I was raised in a single family home myself. I met my father when I was around 21 or so, and to be honest, I'm glad I grew up without him. He was a major flake, and probably would have been a bad and/or disruptive influence on our family had he stayed. My mother raised me well, I think. It might have been nice to have had a father around, but since he wasn't, I can't miss something I never had, and no influence is better than a bad/disruptive one. Not to mention the fact that not all single parents were ALWAYS unmarried. Some may be divorced or widowed.

And I'm all for couples going to counseling, if necessary, to help them work out their problems. But a counselor can't help you work out your money problems, and going to a counselor won't make those problems disappear. I'm not saying that his idea is a bad one. I think that low-cost counseling is a damn good idea...I'm just pointing out that it's not quite the magic bullet I think he's hoping it will be. Poverty isn't necessarily caused by not being married, especially if being married actually takes MORE money out of your pocket.



Sidhe

Sorry...typo...I meant to say that I was raised in a single-PARENT home...

Sidhe

Who said this? Or is it your take on the reasoning behind the proposal.

I think it does take a village to raise a child. While many parents do a great job of raising their children, I don't think they can cover everything there is to know. That's where the village comes in.

I was raised by a village. Most any adult in town would smack me up side the head if got caught fucking up. Then they'd call my parents to insure more of the same.:)

no, bruce...i told you before. a bunch of wolves is called a "pack", not a "villiage".

get it right

Knock it off! This is Sidhe's Think Hole. No jocularity here. Now get serious.:p

don' worry, mon....if a she no like, she delete, yes? we been warned already. flame censored for your protection, Irie?

No, that's basically what they're saying the proposal will do.

And jocularity is fine. Attacking people personally because youd don't like their opinions isn't. But ya know what? Flame away, if that's what you want.

Sidhe

I think his proposal is exactly the same kind of well-meaning nonsense that Hillaries stuff would be. Maybe they should both start by thinking about what exactly the government doing right now to destroy families before coming out with new programs. The hard left sees it as a sinister attempt to force people into government approved families, while the hard right sees it as a chance to save the family from outside influences (snicker) using the power of government. If Hillary got her chance it'd be the same, except that society becomes more important than the family.

*crazy idea for the day*- Balance the freaking budget before starting any new social engineering schemes which will backfire in most peculiar ways.

Govt. sponsored family therapy is yet another nice-sounding idea doomed to failure. (I don't think it's nice-sounding, actually ... too Brave New World-ish for me)

It's hard enough to get people to go to therapy that they desperately NEED, much less "elective therapy" like this.

Marriage and Family therapy services are probably the least utilized in the industry (no numbers to back it up) but mostly is the stomping ground of weathly worried-well parents who feel that they aren't "communicating" with their children, so pay a stranger to help them not communicate but feel more empowered about it for one hour a week.

If they are going to put the money into psych services, there are a a lot better places/programs.

The real reason this is happening is entirely political. It doesn't matter whether it's a real need or a real issue.

The state of the union speech was intended to raise several issues into the public domain. The intent is not for the Republicans to promote an agenda, but to control the agenda. As long as marriage is on the social agenda radars of the country, the Rs have an issue in which they have the support of 60% of the country.

It was particularly important to keep this an issue while Dean was the front-runner. Now that he is not, the issue may disappear.

I couldn't have said it better myself. However, I don't mind the idea of low-cost counseling. I think that's a good idea. But it should be available to anyone who needs it, not just couples. Lots of people end up on the streets because they can't afford mental health services (a lot of the people I worked with in the hospital had been picked up off the streets and later found to be mentally ill), and a lot of people who just need Zoloft for depression are being turned away. Free clinics don't accept anyone who isn't floridly psychotic, homicidal, or suicidal. That leaves out a lot of people who could be helped BEFORE they got to that point.

Sidhe

I think that the description of the forum may be auspiciously over-clever.

Not true ...

You don't have to be floridly psychotic or homicidal or suicidal to qualify for treatment, either as an inpatient or an outpatient.

Admittedly, some communities are better than others at this, but there are community based outpatient centers that provide free or sliding scale tx for mental health consumers ... because it's understood that outpatient treatment is WAY cheaper than inpatient. There are also intensive case management programs designed to help the high recidivist patient populations stay out of the hospital longer (it's inevitable that they will be back, but if you can hospitalize someone twice a year instead of twice a month, the system is working).

The Medical Assistance state insurance program is utilized by a lot of severely mentally ill folks ... and WORKS. In fact, what most people don't realize is that the psych benefits from MA are a lot better than those of most private insurances.

Ok, let me rephrase, then...In OUR community, the free clinic will not take a person as a patient unless they are (a) floridly psychotic, (b) homicidal, or (c) suicidal. I know this because I went there in an attempt to get my Zoloft, which I am supposed to take for major depression, at a lower cost, as I could no longer afford almost $200/mo. What they told me was that they didn't deal with "minor" cases, and that unless I was sucidal, homicidal, or psychotic, they couldn't help me. A friend's sister, who is schizophrenic, was turned away as well, because she wasn't actively psychotic at the time.

THAT'S why I think that low-cost psychiatric clinics are a good idea. Not all free or low-cost clinics will take people who need treatment but can't afford it. They want numbers/cure rates they can show the city government so they get their allocation the next fiscal year.

Sidhe

It was meant to be a pun, especially if you know how the name is pronounced. I like puns. *shrug*

Sidhe

I definitely caught the pronunciation, and like the pun; but I also thought it was funny because it's intended forum filled with controversy.

Ok, first poem...I had to write a sonnet for a poetry class, so it was the first sonnet I ever wrote...and very concrete, which I wasn't accustomed to, which was why I was so tickled when it got published...



I had a pretty awful poetry instructor, too. First off, he believed that if you were dead, you were trash. The first thing he said on the first day of class was, "I want you to know that Edgar Allen Poe never wrote a single decent line of poetry in his life." He didn't like T.S. Eliot, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, or Shakespeare. I couldn't stand the guy. He made us read choppy poetry, and had all these RULES for poetry that, for the class, were written in stone, such as:

It has to be at least ten lines or it's not a poem

If you don't write it for other people (if you write it only for yourself), it's not a poem (I haven't written one poem for other people. It's all been for my own enjoyment. If others like it, cool. If not, find something else to read)

You can't use words with more than two syllables, because some people don't understand big words (he jumped on me for using the word "behest.")

You can't be abstract; you have to be concrete. (we clashed on that one...most of my poetry was abstract)

It can't rhyme. (wasn't that big a deal...at that time, I was experimenting with prose poetry anyway)

It can't be emotional. (HUH???)

This man would read a student's poem in front of the class (badly...he...read..like...this..with..no..emotion), and then rip the poem apart talking about what trash it was. He actually said that about one girl's poem...and I quote, "This is trash." and threw it in the garbage. She left the room crying. There's just no call for that.

I remember he called me to his office one day to discuss my poetry (I was influenced by Poe and Shakespeare, so you can imagine how we clashed in class). He told me "I don't like the way you write, but I guess SOMEBODY has to write that way." When the time came for teacher evaluations, I wrote four pages to him, and signed my name. He gave me an "A" for the class.

I couldn't stand him, and I think that if I ever found out that my child was being taught by someone as cruel and narrow-minded as he was, I'd pull her out of the class and make sure the school knew why. He was just an awful man....but he was tenured, so we really couldn't do anything about it. I just thought it was a shame, becuase there were a lot of people in the class who could have been stellar poets, if he hadn't told them their work was shit. I mean, I'd been writing for years, so his criticisms didn't bother me, but some of those who were just starting out weren't so thick-skinned, and it was kind of sad to see their artistry crushed by an instructor who was trying to mold in stone something as fluid as poetry...

Anyway, that's my rant for the day...now here's the poem...

I tried to bring across the idea of the lonliness of someone who who has survived her partner of many years, and has been somewhat "forgotten" by her children, and yet still dresses up in the hope that someone may visit her.

I wrote it because I remember when a friend and I once visited a nursing home on a whim, and the lonliness on the faces of all those old people whose children had abandoned them to an institution just broke my heart. I and a friend sat and talked to a group of old folks all day, just to give them some company...the stories they told about their lives...the things they'd seen and done...it was amazing, and their children didn't know the living history they were missing by ignoring their relatives. All in all, it was a fascinating day, but it made me so sad I never went back...this poem is one poem I think that maybe I DID write, subconsciously, for other people...a memorial to all those old people who were abandoned in that nursing home.

A SONNET IN FUTILITY

In an ancient, chipped, brown rocking chair
The old woman sits in her very best;
She sits and rocks, and rocks and stares
At the winter-abandoned paper nest
Underneath her front-porch eaves.
Like the wasps, her own have flown...
Around the nest, the windy leaves
Swirl, as she sits poised beside the phone.
No more busy buzzing noise
Of insect nest or active house
She rocks and thinks with downcast eyes
Of long-gone children, long-dead spouse.
But still, she peers from her window-nest,
Rocking, in her very best.


Sidhe

Sidhe ...

In order to make your forum readable ...

Start separate topic threads with titles that actually reference what they are about.

I agree with wolf. You'll have people wandering into the thread, possibly weeks from now, that will want to comment. If you jump topics in the same thread, it'll get real confusing. I've seen this happen in a lot of threads that wandered off topic and it gets real messy.:)

Sorry about that. My bad. I'll do better in the future, I promise.

:)
Sidhe

Apropos of nothing
 

Behest only has two syllables.

Poetry
 

Yeah, but he said that I shouldn't use that word because not everyone knows what it means.
I don't know about other people, but when I don't know what a word means, I look it up. It's just another example of the "dumbing down" that goes on in the school system, even, sadly, in college.

Sidhe

Watch for the village idiots, though. ;)

re: the marriage plan
 

Hm...ok. I guess my questions would be: what kind of counselors would be helping these couples? Would it be "faith based" and unbiased? If the focus will be on low income families, will there be adequate funding to assist them in their financial needs?

PLus, I just don't completely believe this will be only for those who are already married or are thinking about it. I feel it's a precursor for those of us who are not married (yet), or for those who do not want to be married, no matter what. Some people are just.not.marriage.material, and to try to convince those people otherwise, IMO, is wrong (just like society tries to convince people to procreate...not everyone is cut out to be parents).

So, that's my take on it.

Re: re: the marriage plan
 

I haven't been able to find out whether or not the would be "faith based" counselors or not.

And all I'm doing is reporting what I read insofar as who the counseling is to be meant for (those who are married, thinking of being married, and low-income). From what they said, they're not going to try to convince people to get married. Supposedly it's aimed at those groups who are low-income/married, low-income/thinking of getting married only.

And I definitely agree with the idea that not everyone is cut out to be parents...take a girl my best friend knows:
She's a crack and meth addict who spends most of her time in jail (she's in jail now, and pregnant); two of her children died due to complications from the drugs she abused while pregnant (one died in utero, the other after birth). She has five boys, none of which she has custody of, and said she was going to KEEP having babies until she had a girl. :mad:
Well, the one she's pregnant with now is a girl, and the doctors say that it will probably die also, because she used drugs until she got busted and sent to jail a few months ago (she's pretty well along). IMO, this girl, and people like her, should be sterilized.

A friend of mine was a crack baby, and she's had many health problems over the years. She also cannot have children of her own due to female complications from her birth mother's (she was adopted as a baby) crack use.


Sidhe

I find it frightening that "crack babies" are now old enough to be having babies.

I remember when crack was new ...

Yeah, me too... I personally don't understand why people would want to do something that makes them speed...doesn't cocaine speed you up, among other things?

I mean, I can understand weed, it relaxes you and makes you all giggly...I can understand acid, it gives you interesting perspectives; but things like cocaine/crack, speed, and meth that make you bounce off walls, or heroin, which I'm told makes you sick as a dog the first time you do it, and downs you so much that you're almost unconscious....I just don't get it...

Re: Re: re: the marriage plan
 

Ah, "supposedly" being the operative word here. ;)

That's what they said in the article...that the plan was aimed towards low-income couples who were already married or who were engaged to be married.

Sidhe

Here's the latest info I've been able to dig up, pro and con...just a couple of articles, but enough to give the general idea:

From CNBC:
Report: Bush backs $1.5 billion marriage plan
Initiative to promote nuptials among low-income couples
Updated: 7:26 a.m. ET Jan. 14, 2004

NEW YORK - Bush administration officials are planning a $1.5 billion election-year initiative to promote marriage, especially among low-income couples, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.

The plan would provide at least $1.5 billion for training to help couples develop interpersonal skills that sustain “healthy marriages,” the paper said.




From FoxNews.com
Bush Welfare Marriage Plan Sailing Through Congress
Thursday, July 17, 2003

WASHINGTON — President Bush's proposal to nudge women on welfare toward the altar is headed for approval in Congress despite opposition from both the political left and right, as Democrats choose other battles to fight in the welfare debate.


From the start, the plan sparked outrage from libertarians who complain government has no place in people's intimate lives and from feminists who worry women will be coerced into bad matches. Both say scarce dollars should be spent elsewhere.

Despite the concerns, Republicans are largely in favor of the plan and Democrats are largely resigned to it.

The debate has been ongoing over the last year and a half as Congress works to renew its landmark 1996 welfare overhaul. The renewal gives lawmakers and the White House an opportunity to make changes in the program, and Bush has made promoting marriage one of the centerpieces of his plan.

The House has already passed its welfare legislation, which includes the marriage initiative. The Senate Finance Committee plans to consider the matter next week. An initial proposal from Chairman Charles Grassley included the marriage money, and he said Thursday that Democrats have not pushed him to remove it.

In a letter to Grassley last week, 41 Democrats laid out their priorities in the welfare debate, including more money for child care, reasonable work requirements and benefits for legal immigrants. They didn't mention the marriage initiative.

Under the Bush marriage proposal, the government would spend $300 million per year on programs promoting marriage. That includes $200 million in federal dollars, and $100 million states would have to spend in matching funds. The administration is vague about what the money would go for, but says it would help couples that are already interested in marriage, perhaps through financial incentives or by offering counseling.

Supporters say children are better off when they are raised together by a mother and father, and poor families are better off with two wage earners.

"The fact of the matter is, marriage is a very important tool for economic survival," said Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa. "When you have two people in a family it makes it easier." Grassley said promoting marriage is "just a no-brainer."

Opponents say it's no such thing.

Michael Tanner of the libertarian Cato Institute says there's no evidence these programs will work and argues there are too few "marriageable men" out there anyway.

"It's not like there's a doctor or an accountant down the street waiting to marry an unwed teenage mother," Tanner said Thursday before a news conference with feminists and others to denounce the initiative.

Women's groups worry that women will wind up coerced into bad, possibly abusive relationships. "The government has no business being involved in personal issues like marriage," said Lisalyn Jacobs of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund (search).

Democratic aides say some Democratic senators are sensitive to these concerns but have not made the issue a priority, focusing instead on trying to get more money for child care and other concerns. At the same time, some moderates are comfortable with the program, willing to experiment and see if pro-marriage programs work.

Sen. Max Baucus, the top Democrat on the Finance Committee, opposes the initiative along libertarian grounds, reflecting his Montana roots, but he's one of the few who has spoken out against it.

Last year, when Democrats ran the Senate, Baucus crafted a bill that included money for experiments promoting marriage but also allowed it to be used for teen pregnancy prevention and other programs, a change the Bush administration denounced.


Sidhe

[quote]from article
From the start, the plan sparked outrage from libertarians who complain government has no place in people's intimate lives and from feminists who worry women will be coerced into bad matches. Both say scarce dollars should be spent elsewhere./quote]

Totally agree with that. It's mindblowing how wasteful our government can be sometimes.

:mad:

--------------------------
"The debate has been ongoing over the last year and a half as Congress works to renew its landmark 1996 welfare overhaul. "

---------------------------


Now, I have to say, I do agree with welfare overhaul. I think it's disgraceful that people live on welfare and teach their children to do the same.

Don't get me wrong...I'm not opposed to welfare. There are people out there who need it. That's who it's for. It's not for people who are too damned lazy to get off their asses and work for a living. I resent the fact that I have to pay for people who are too lazy to work. All of us do. Welfare is there for people who are working but can't make ends meet...or people who are looking for work but can't find it. People who live on it, and teach their kids to live on it, give people who legitimately need it a bad name.

Here in Louisiana, I believe they've put a five-year limit on welfare. You get five years, period. Whether they're together or spaced out. That makes sense. It seems to me that if you CAN work, you should have pride enough to do so. Now there are people that work their asses off at pissant jobs and still can't buy grocieries....those are the people welfare was meant for.

I remember reading a "Dear Abbey" letter...it was from a woman in response to a caustic letter about welfare recipiants. She said that she had a job, but got laid off, and she also had a child. She had to go on welfare. She said, "if anyone's willing to give me a job, I'm willing to take it." That's what I like to see....people who have pride in themselves. There's nothing wrong with going on welfare if you need it....but damn...if you're able-bodied, have some pride and get out there and get a job!!


I guess that's just me. I have a lot of pride. Maybe that's not always a good thing. But it is a good thing when it comes to teaching my daughter life skills. Do what you have to do, within reason, to live. No job is too menial, or beneath you, when it comes to standing on your own two feet as much as possible. There's nothing wrong with getting help when you need it; anyone can hit a rough spot...it's what you do when you hit that rough spot that defines your character. Getting needed help is one thing. Being a parasite is something completely different.

I know this is kinda off the subject, but the subject seems to have died....


Sidhe

While I agree, the problem is that people don't always know which ones are the ones who are abusing the system (unless you actually know someone or know of someone's situation first hand). Reform and overhauling is fine, but IMO, it can put people who really need the help in a possible bind.

]

That's why I think a five-year-limit is a good start. It shouldn't take five years to find a job. I know that sometimes it can take up to a year to find a job if the market is bad, but five years....naah.

Unless they actually had people going to recipiants' homes to monitor them, I don't think there's really any way to know for sure if someone is abusing the system. Although in La., you're required to look for work if you get public assistance, and you have to bring at least 5 applications to their office a week to prove it. If a job comes up that you can take, you're required to take it. You don't get cut off if you do, although the assistance may be reduced depending on how much the job pays. I think it's at least a good start.

There's nothing wrong with trying to get people to stand on their own feet. It instills pride to know that you can take care of yourself...at least I'd think it would. It does for me. I believe that people who truly DO want to take control of their lives won't protest welfare reform. They don't intend to be on it forever, so they don't have a problem with it. So long as it's there when the people who need it need it... That's why it exists.

Sidhe