Thanks everyone for welcoming onto your forum! I commend your community outreach, Outonowhere, and I agree with your concerns and frustrations about the way the system works and how people take it for granted. One of the biggest hurdles we have to face in this country at the moment is getting past this feeling of entitlement and our reliance upon the government to provide services that should never be placed under the jurisdiction of the feds. I am outraged by the "gimme gimme" attitude that has become a standard here, as well as a general refusal of people to take personal responsibility for their welfare. By accepting and abusing government handouts, which are actually handouts from the pockets of contributing members of society, we are handing over our civil liberties. To top it, people want to bitch about the government being involved in their business. Fuck yeah they are involved in your business when you rely on them to feed and cloth you, pay your subsidized rent, heat your house, and buy your drugs- that's a sugar daddy, not a political system.
Good hard working people need extra help now and then, and we pay enough into the system to provide them that help as long as we aren't carrying a bunch of dead weight on the dole. Ultimately, poor education, lack of discipline, and the loss of moral fiber in our diets is lending to this ever increasing problem of entitlement. In big cities you don't know your neighbors, so no one is forced to where the scarlet A when they fuck up, and everyone's a swindler cause no one gets hanged. You don't see these same problems by and large in small towns because you do have to look your neighbors in the eye each day. That is why we need to find unconventional ways such as this forum to form communities where people can guide each other back to an understanding of right and wrong, not from the stand point of Johnny Law, but from a do unto others approach. It's not the government's job to feed families in trouble, that's what local church groups and neighbors are for.
Unfortunately it's hard to know in situations like Hurricane Sandy, who should be helped and who shouldn't. I personally consider times like these to be of less concern in terms of how much the system is defrauded than what's happening in plain sight the rest of the time. I'm not entirely convinced that denying the free-loaders help wouldn't punish honest Americans in the process, but if you have the ability to actively choose ways to help that you trust and feel good about, that's awesome. One of the things I like about the CNN weblink I provided for helping hurricane victims, is that it directs you to some sites that will let you know if a charity is legit, although in the case of the Red Cross, that app wouldn't help.
Feel free to tell me to get down off the cross if I seem to be too preachy, but I have to say it feels good to discuss these things...
