A must read for Americans

[bulldogg]

The proof is that they have filed bankruptcy or that they are currently receiving welfare. As for logic, you are the one who laid claim to having formed some form of logical thesis but in fact did not. There is no tree of knowledge, its called logic, read Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Descartes and Bacon and you will learn how to form an argument which flows from logic and provides proof of your claims rather than following the path of modern advertising and appealing to emotion rather than intellect.

Again, corporations do not vote so it matters not that they receive welfare as this is about voting not about welfare nor about corporate influence. Stick to the argument at hand.

Also you need to undertake a study of the constitutional limitations of the Supreme Court to understand that they overstepped their bounds when they legislated through their decision rather than sticking to their mandate to simply interpret the laws passed by congress. That's the supreme law of OUR land.

Humans are not equal. Look around you. Its an emotional and specious appeal. Sure it would be wonderful if we were but were NOT. We are not equal in looks, intellect or any other measurable quantity. Its a utopian dream and not surprising to hear espoused by one steeped in a culture of socialism.

You still are commiting ad hominem attacks and unable to mount a logical defense in your mea culpa about not understanding Mr Kennedy's points. FYI he is one of the most learned men on the subject of US Consitutional law. A qualified expert if you will... your failure to understand DOES NOT translate into an invalidation of his argument which is in fact based on logic with proof and not based on fallacies.

 

[Donkey]

My advice...take it easy. Don't just appeal to normative statements. Everything can be reduced to red herrings, etc. Just because you claim something is not evidence. Support it with a fact or two. The problem is that your reading of these matters is what you claim in my case. Read the corpus of political philosophy. Western philosophers generally attack the notion of positive law and argue against cultural relativism and for natural law.

clipped........

Ok buddy you can do all the looking up you want and all the research about the perceived problems...

But I am going to lay it out for you as I see it and experience it....

I pay around 1200 USD a month in taxes I work hard for my money....

I know plenty of people on welfare that have very nice things probably nicer than your average world inhabitant...They can work, they choose not to and they decide the fate of my 1200 USD a month....

I have a friend that recently went through some tough times, lost a job, get screwed over, and then got stabbed...He was an upstanding citizen prior to all of this...Do you think he got aide for his problems???? No, yeah sure he got unemployment but no where near the help he needed...

Yes the welfare system in my country is screwed as the above states...But it isn’t going to get fixed when the people on it are voting and allowing it to get more fubared...

Like I said I retract the bankruptcy statement and don’t feel that should be applicable for that can be done for numerous reasons and usually it is done to provide a time to get back on your feet without state aide....However welfare is not...

I'm telling you what you are reading and posting links to is not what is happening it is not how it works...I have grown up my entire life (sans 5 years at college) in on of the top 5 most densely populated states and the wealthiest state in the country, I would say I have seen plenty of welfare abuse...

-edit

"Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awerness that created them."

To some it all up in the words of Albert Einstien[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, adobe-helvetica, Arial Narrow]
[/FONT][FONT=Arial, Helvetica, adobe-helvetica, Arial Narrow][/FONT]

 

[bulldogg]

BTW this idea is not new and has been heavily supported by consitutional historians as in keeping with the principles our country was founded upon.

In his book On Representative Government, published in 1861, John Stuart Mill said he regarded it "as required by first principles, that the receipt of parish relief should be a peremptory disqualification for the franchise." By "parish relief' he meant what we call welfare. Those who receive welfare should not be allowed to vote, in other words. If I could wave a wand, that is the reform I would now enact.

On what grounds? Mill continued his argument as follows:

He who cannot by his labor suffice for his own support has no claim to the privilege of helping himself to the money of others. By becoming dependent on the remaining members of the community for actual subsistence, he abdicates his claim to equal rights with them in other respects.

Recall that Mill was the great progressive of his day. In this same chapter of Representative Government he made a powerful case that the franchise should be extended to women. Yet I doubt if there is a politician in the Western world reactionary enough to embrace Mill's position on welfare recipients. This shows as well as anything just how much the terms of political discourse have moved to the left in the last 130 years. And they continue to do so. What would Mill have made of the Motor Voter bill, recently signed into law? One of its provisions enables those applying for welfare, or receiving it, to register to vote while at the welfare office.
Advertisement

Today there is much talk of "ending welfare as we know it." No doubt Bill Clinton would like to deliver on his campaign promise. But without Mill's reform (which is not going to happen, of course), real reform is not in the cards. We may get tinkering at the edges--perhaps enough to allow Clinton to claim some kind of victory. More money will be made available for training programs--that kind of thing.

How many recall that in 1988 welfare was overhauled along just these lines? "Work requirements" were added with Reagan's blessing. It was such a big deal at the time that when the legislation seemed stymied for a few days, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned that "we will have spoiled the next century" if the impasse persisted. It passed, and by 1990 it was apparent that the welfare system had been subtly expanded, in ways few (certainly not Reagan) understood at the time.

Here's another prediction, lifted from Charles Murray's playbook: Without real reform of the welfare system, high rates of illegitimacy will persist and the war zones that are our inner cities will become more dangerous than ever.

The problem is that our system of universal, equal-weighted suffrage gives too much political clout to the recipient classes. This criticism applies just as much to farmers who receive crop subsidies and to ranchers who graze cattle at minimal expense on federal lands as to those on welfare. Recipients of middle class "entitlements" should also be removed from the voter-registration rolls, then. The message would be clear and even-handed: either you vote, or you get federal subsidies, but not both.

Denying the vote to an ever-widening set of recipients would probably make such a reform even more difficult to enact. The farmers and the ranchers would get together with the social workers and the welfare fights people, and together they would constitute such a powerful bloc that they would not only preserve their voting rights but no doubt end up getting their various subsidies increased.

Recently the word "gridlock" has been bandied about, referring in simplistic fashion to the difficulty of passing new laws. But the real legislative gridlock arises because a tax-payer and a tax-recipient have equal weight on election day. The result is that it is extremely difficult to alter the structure of the income redistribution--other than by adding to it at the margin.

The gridlock is now conspicuous in Western Europe, where the welfare state is more extensive than it is in the U.S. Recipients have so much clout that, no matter who is voted in or out of office, benefits remain sacrosanct. Politicians promise change, but when they get into office they are confronted by this terrifyingly powerful voting bloc: The recipient classes! Little or nothing is changed. Gridlock.

There is still room for maneuver in the United States, and the crisis here may be somewhat longer delayed. But the middle-class retreat into guarded suburban enclaves will continue if radical reform is not enacted. Such reform is unlikely as long as tax recipients can "help themselves to the money of others."

TOM BETHELL, an editor of The Washington Monthly from 1975 to 1976, is Washington correspondent for The American Spectator and the author of The Electric Windmill (1988).

COPYRIGHT 1994 Washington Monthly Company
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_n4_v26/ai_15151993

 

[bulldogg]

This is a stunning and radical idea which, I think, has been best advocated by John Stuart Mill. Mill was a great liberal philosopher, back in the days when “liberal” meant a believer in liberty.

Mill advocated women’s suffrage and virtually total freedom of speech, but he also understood well the conflicts of interest which occur during the democratic procedure, and the sorts of implications they have for freedom. And so it was that to protect liberty, he recommended the disenfranchisement of the recipient classes as a necessary device. From Chapter 8 of “Representative Government”:

“However this may be, I regard it as required by first principles, that the receipt of parish relief should be a peremptory disqualification for the franchise.

He who cannot by his labour suffice for his own support has no claim to the privilege of helping himself to the money of others. By becoming dependent on the remaining members of the community for actual subsistence, he abdicates his claim to equal rights with them in other respects. Those to whom he is indebted for the continuance of his very existence may justly claim the exclusive management of those common concerns, to which he now brings nothing, or less than he takes away.”

Mill goes on to explain how this could be carried out, and how by repayment of his public debt, a welfare recipient could regain his place on the electoral register, saying of the qualifications for disenfranchisement:

“These exclusions are not in their nature permanent. They exact such conditions only as all are able, or ought to be able, to fulfil if they choose. They leave the suffrage accessible to all who are in the normal condition of a human being: and if any one has to forego it, he either does not care sufficiently for it to do for its sake what he is already bound to do, or he is in a general condition of depression and degradation in which this slight addition, necessary for security of others, would be unfelt, and on emerging from which, this mark of inferiority would disappear with the rest.”

As you can see, the point made is a simple one: as long as an individual chooses to live from the wealth of the public treasury, they should not be allowed to control the affairs of that treasury - doing so would effect the enslavement of their productive peers. And so, Mill believed that by becoming dependent on the public funds for survival, welfare recipients sacrificed any right they would have had to take part in the political process, until such time as they regained their independence.

As Tom Bethell remarked in the Washington Monthly back in 1994, it speaks volumes about how far Left the political discourse has moved since Mill’s time that a suggestion such as this can never be found in mainstream political debate.

Bethel continues his article to explain that this principle, if it could only be implemented, would be applied to all welfare recipients, regardless of the size of their incomes - including, for example, those receiving farm subsidies (and, I can only presume, celebrity rock stars in receipt of State artists’ grants). As he says himself:

“The message would be clear and even-handed: either you vote, or you get federal subsidies, but not both”,

which is to say: either you decide where the public money is directed, or you receive public money, but not both.

I think this topic can be inextricably linked to the idea behind a question that was put to me in a political quiz recently, which asked:

“Should people be allowed to sell their vote?”

- to which my first reaction was: but that’s exactly what they do already. What are most spending and benefit promises if not the offer of payment in exchange for power? Is it supposed that this is to be condemned when the politician makes the payment with his own personal funds, but to be applauded if he does so with public funds? Hardly!

I suspect that most voters who took the political quiz would have answered the above question in the negative, not realising that the proper enforcement of such a ban would require the full implementation of Mill’s idea; the conflict of interest implied by welfare recipients helping to elect leaders who will continue to subsidise them would clearly be far too great to bear. Yet the idea of such a disenfranchisement would probably shock and appall such voters, at least at first.

Now, funnily enough, I doubt that the question of disenfranchising welfare recipients is going to be an election issue next year.

But at the same time, it’s worth thinking about the nature of welfarism and what it means for someone to be living off the State. It’s a fundamental issue.

So, the next time some hopeful politican comes knocking on your door, don’t ask “what’s in it for me?” Instead, ask him if he thinks people should be allowed to sell their vote - and then ask him why!

http://www.irishelection.com/03/disenfranchise-poor-and-rich-welfare-recipients/

Seems some of our English speaking brethren are also tired of this :cen:.

 

[Marinerhodes]

Let me add my 2cents worth in here. I have asked various people (all military of course) about this topic. Who should be allowed to vote?

The most common answer in one form or another was: Military Service Members (Active, Retired, Reserve, Honorable/General Discharge etc), Those with an above median income, and those with at a minimum highschool diploma. Several went on to say that you should not be allowed to vote until you are 21ish.

Let me say that I agree with the spirit of the comment if not the actual words.

I feel that a person should not be allowed to vote if they do not make some continual contribution to society (excepting the elderly and retired of course). One good example would be those that pay xx amount of taxes per year. If you do not pay in a certain % of your gross annual income then you do not get to vote. (This will prevent alot of the tax shelter types from coming out of the woodwork.)

I feel that most people that are under the age of 23 can not make a well informed opinion of the current state of politics. Raise the voting age to at least 23. This will allow voters to be out of college (mostly) and in the world. This will allow them time to see how the world impacts them and see what matters to them in regards to policies from the various political parties. (I may have offended some but that was not my intent.)

A person should have at a minimum a High School education and diploma. GED will not suffice. If they could not complete High School for whatever reason why should we think they have the inherent intelligence to make an informed decision on politics?

Lastly, If a person is on welfare, social aid, whatever name you give it, they should not be allowed to vote at all (with the exception of the elderly and retired). If they can not better themselves to the point that they can subsist on their own then they should not be allowed to vote on decisions that will have a far reaching impact on the average taxpayer.

 

[WNxRogue]

The words "Taxation without Representation" launched the Revolutionary war. If you expect to say that only certain groups can vote, then you must exclude those groups from taxes, and require nothing from them. You can not tax someone or make someone follow your laws if you do not give them the opportunity to change them, through the process of voting.

 

[bulldogg]

How about you back your tail up and READ. The point has been addressed ad nauseum. I hate it when people join in the middle of a conversation and bring up crap we've already dealt with.

 

[Damien435]

The words "Taxation without Representation" launched the Revolutionary war. If you expect to say that only certain groups can vote, then you must exclude those groups from taxes, and require nothing from them. You can not tax someone or make someone follow your laws if you do not give them the opportunity to change them, through the process of voting.

I paid taxes for four years without having the right to vote....

 

[Donkey]

The words "Taxation without Representation" launched the Revolutionary war. If you expect to say that only certain groups can vote, then you must exclude those groups from taxes, and require nothing from them. You can not tax someone or make someone follow your laws if you do not give them the opportunity to change them, through the process of voting.

We are talking about people that are on state aide, that is the people that are using my tax dollars that comes from my pay check. Those people should not be allowed to vote on what is done with my money...

Get the point

It is not taxation with out representation it is taxation allowing you the right to have representation. If you can not handle your own affairs then you should not have a say in the affairs of the nation...Again this isnt something that should be permanent but as Albert Enstein said "Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awerness that created them.". Now if you would have gone back and read this in it's entierty or at the very least the first few pages you would have seen what we are discussing...

I paid taxes for four years without having the right to vote....

You have been paying taxes longer than that for everytime you buy something you are paying a tax or two or ten...But that is an entirely different discussion...