Sorry Amy but I really don't see a problem with people choosing government services over employment. I mean, that is the logical thing to do if those two options offer similar financial return. I think it's great that people have a choice whether to work or not. For those that are content with the minimum, they can continue to receive government hand outs. For those who want more than the minimum, they are also given a choice to work. That's like a fairy tale ending for everyone. If anything, we should increase the number of programs to help people stay at home so they can be more involved in their children's lives.

Dear Diva,
My guess is that you are very young and simply do not understand the basics of economics. If you are not that young, then somewhere during your formal and informal education, you have a lot to learn.

Apparently you do not understand that government in America financially depends upon the private sector to survive. It seems as if you are arguing in favor of more social(ism), and if not ... shear communism to support the masses.

The America free market system simply cannot support a welfare economy. America is doomed to fail with more people as you are suggesting go on welfare. America will become a mirror image of an inner city Detroit and Oakland...with mass unemployment, mass welfare, mass crime...mass misery. Sound attractive to you??? The answer is to get people off welfare as quickly as possible and get them to be self-sufficient.

Study what happens in far leftist socialist countries...Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, etc. Like what you see? That is the track Obama has America on. Wise up.

"with mass unemployment, mass welfare, mass crime...mass misery."

That is precisely why we need to increase the number of programs and provide more fundings to welfare programs so recipients can live a better, happier life. That, my dear, sounds attractive to me. Getting people off welfare against their will is cruel and Un-American.

I count my blessing everything since Obama took office. He's done everything right and as promised. He will no doubt win a second term. Thank God!

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

* From bondage to spiritual faith;
* From spiritual faith to great courage;
* From courage to liberty;
* From liberty to abundance;
* From abundance to complacency;
* From complacency to apathy;
* From apathy to dependence;
* From dependence back into bondage.


"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money [to spend]." - Margaret Thatcher

Diva...you simply do not get it. You are arguing in favor of communism. Ask people who have lived under communism...or at least socialism how happy they were.

As a matter of fact, I have a recommended book for you. "Pursuing Liberty" which addresses the question... WHAT IS FREEDOM WORTH? To those who have fled oppression and tyranny, it’s worth everything. These are the inspiring true life experiences of our newest patriots—all escaped their former homes at great risk, just for the chance of living a free life in America. They’ve come from Cuba, Venezuela, the former USSR, Vietnam, and other countries to make their dreams of freedom come true.

Here is a link to the book "Pursuing Liberty" >>> Web Link

Obama is hysterical and so stupid it is beyond belief.........wait a minute the ones which voted for him are the stupid ones. I say vote out all incumbants and believe it will happen.

Call it whatever "ism" you want, Amy. At the end of the day, it's about HUMANISM! It's about having the government step in and take care of those who can't care for themselves. 99% of welfare recipients cannot care for themselves for one reason or another. Lending a helping hand to those in-need is an American, Christian, and human thing to do. Sorry if you can't understand that. Maybe it's time you stop reading what others are feeding you and start thinking on your own.

It is the same way with Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and all the other Wall Street companies. The more welfare you give them, the more you destroy their incentive to do any real work. They have become permanent parasites on society.

It is the same way with Medicare and Social Security recipients.

Diva,

You are truly uninformed or just stupid 99% of welfare recipents cannot take care of themselves??? What intelligent source of information gave you that? Please state facts or stay off of here.

I honestly do not think I have read such breathtakingly ignorant posts on this PW as those by Diva. She frankly has never heard the story about "The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg" . I recommend that she start there and work her way to reality.

Diva...you are advocating that we kill the Goose. You are also advocating pure unadulterated Communism. Read about or talk to people who have lived under communist rule. Not pretty...not the "humanism" you are fantasizing.

Once you've read "The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg" then give us a book report on these boards. We'll grade you to see if you've learned your lesson.

Amy,

Sounds like you worship Glenn Beck. Please move to Utah or some other red state hell hole. Conservatives like you are the bad for Pleasanton. Go take a time machine back to 1950.

Al...you WiseA__,
Explain to all of our PW readers, Mr. Genius, how a welfare economy is good for America and will bring jobs back. You and Diva belong to each other. Flaming ignorance at its best.

Al is right. It's peeps like Amy that give our town and our country a bad rep. Time to send Amy back to lala land where she belongs with the rest of the TEA party crowd.

Diva,

There is no magic pot of government gold.

My working, making a dollar, then forcibly giving a cut to someone who chooses not to work, as you put it, is insanity. That is how those who would chose not to work would get money; from the working, not a magic government pot of money.

Temporary emergency services are one thing; generational cradle to grave socialism empties the treasury, increases burden on those that remain working, decreases innovation and investment and eventually implodes.

Whether it's the USSR, or Greece, or the multi-generational enslaving Robert Taylor Homes; it doesn't work.

Also, many government programs are full of fraud and waste. San Diego County, Orange County and LA started home visits and found roughly a third of welfare claims were completely fraudulent and large percentages were exaggerated. Men were actually living with reportedly single mothers, other sources of income weren't reported, seniors reportedly on their own were living with family, etc. Unfortunately, the democratically controlled state government won’t allow the same successful investigative programs to go statewide.

Section 8, don’t get me started. I’ve seen a home with a new Toyota Land Cruiser on the driveway, another home applied for under an elderly person name then lived in by working age persons running a retail business in a nearby town. You can report individual cases of fraud, which is like putting a finger in a leaking dam, but even then the results/findings are kept from you due to “privacy concerns”.

Social service claims are not publicly verifiable due to these privacy issues. Our money but their privacy. Internal government investigators are supposed to be trusted by us but when outside eyes do get to look into the programs, massive fraud and waste are discovered. It unfortunately is in the interest of the internal parties to not look under the rug.

Emergency temporary services, yes. Cradle to the grave socialism, no.

I bet you Diva is either on welfare or has a family member on welfare, or grew up on welfare. No other explanation exists for the comments Diva made.

Social services are good for those who truly need it. They are bad and should not be encouraged for those who CAN work and CHOOSE not to.

Diva must think there is a source of money that grows on trees for those who are too lazy to work. Diva: where do you think money that the government uses for social programs comes from? From the taxpayer, those who WORK. How is it fair for person A to work and give a portion of those earnings to person B who could work but chooses not to?

I don't think Obama will be our president twice. He is like Jimmy Carter. I don't like the extreme right, and I did not vote for Bush the second time around, but Obama's policies so far have not worked.

Amy

I love how all you conservatives bash “big government”, yet are more than happy to hand our freedom over to those wonderful corporations (Enron, Halliburton, etc.), which are 10x worse than an even the most inefficient government program. You can whine all you want about socialism or some other “ism”, but you conservative will happily embrace right-wing fascism, economic feudalism, and the Tea Party’s version of corn-pone Nazism. I really wish you conservatives would invest in a time a machine that took you back 19th century rural America, so you could live in your limited government fantasy land. I don’t think you would survive because they didn’t have huge SUVs, Outback Steakhouse, Wal-Mart, and Fox News at that time. Most modern conservatives have little in common with the beliefs of our Founding Fathers, as they are more aligned with the Reagan-era perversion of conservatism and brain-dead mass consumption of lead-tainted plastic garbage made in China.

Please enlighten us as to which programs encourage people to stay home and not work? Can you name them please? Have you ever been on a state program?

Utterly ridiculous, but keep trotting out the tired old welfare queen driving that caddy and buying lobster. Are you insane? No one is living even a moderately decent life on these programs.

So if just take away the safety net, then the jobs will just magically appear? Wow, that's amazing! Thank goodness the repubs aren't in charge anymore. They would just love to yank that safety net out from under people and watch what happens. Your disconnect regarding the amount of struggle and suffering people are experiencing right now is unbelievable.

Janna,

I think you missed the link in the original posting that described an EXACT example of persons wanting to stay home instead of work: Web Link

Emergency temporary services, yes. Cradle to the grave socialism, no.

Willis wrote:
love how all you conservatives bash “big government”, yet are more than happy to hand our freedom over to those wonderful corporations (Enron, Halliburton, etc.), which are 10x worse than an even the most inefficient government program.

**Translation: Willis believes big government programs are 10 times better and more efficient than corporations. Talking about fantasy land!


Willis wrote:
You can whine all you want about socialism or some other “ism”, but you conservative will happily embrace right-wing fascism, economic feudalism, and the Tea Party’s version of corn-pone Nazism.

**Translation: Willis likes socialism. Insults others who don’t.


Willis wrote:
I really wish you conservatives would invest in a time a machine that took you back 19th century rural America, so you could live in your limited government fantasy land. I don’t think you would survive because they didn’t have huge SUVs, Outback Steakhouse, Wal-Mart, and Fox News at that time.

**Translation: Conservatives would not survive in the 19th century with their strange beliefs of working hard and making something of yourself. Unlike those waiting for someone else to take care of them?


Willis wrote:
Most modern conservatives have little in common with the beliefs of our Founding Fathers, as they are more aligned with the Reagan-era perversion of conservatism and brain-dead mass consumption of lead-tainted plastic garbage made in China.

**I’ll let the Founding Fathers speak for themselves:

**“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. “ - Thomas Jefferson

**“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. “
- Thomas Jefferson

**“A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government. “ - Thomas Jefferson

**“God helps those who help themselves.” - Benjamin Franklin

**“If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher's stone.” -Benjamin Franklin

**"Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow." - Benjamin Franklin

**“It's not tyranny we desire; it's a just, limited, federal government. “ - Alexander Hamilton

**“The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy. “ - James Madison

All---Diva and Al are posers from the Peoples Republic of Berkeley (apparently Willis is also on a hunger strike with them).
They are baiting you...there's no way anyone can seriously believe what they are espousing. Please don't take them seriously or respond since it's obviously a joke that is no longer entertaining.

Hmm,

Good to see you pulled a bunch of quotes off the Glenn Beck website. Must be nice having him do all your thinking for you.

But I have good news! As Pleasanton becomes more diverse, people like Amy and other Tea Party bigots will get scared off and move to another community. There is nothing they fear more than “change” and “different” ideas and people. I here Bakersfield is nice this time of year, need help packing?

Funny how you "hard working" conservatives find so much time to post on the TownSquare Forum. By "hard work" they mean trolling websites, listening to Rush Limbaugh in their mom's basement, and staring at their Sarah Palin poster.

It's interesting that since Obama took office, all the conservative racists have come out of the woodwork here in Pleasanton. You guy are doing a great job of making Pleasanton look like the redneck backwater of the Bay Area.

Hmm,

The inference was there, sorry to tell you. Amy was trying to say that people are lazy and unmotivated if they receive help. That was the point of what she posted. "Properly designed" = worthiness, according to Amy. Too bad she doesn't get to decide, must be driving her nuts!

My husband is on unemployment, down from making six figures. So you think that people should choose a job that pays less than unemployment, even if they have to support a family? Does this make him unmotivated because he won't even consider taking a job that can't support us fully?

When you or Amy are in that situation, please come back and tell us how you opted to work at McDonald's rather than to stay on unemployment until you found a viable job. Thanks!

Janna,

Your husband has been unemployed forever and you are still on public assistance. Come join us picking in the fields and you can pay people back for their charity in supporting you and your family.

Neal Boortz is that you?

Web Link

Willis wrote:
Good to see you pulled a bunch of quotes off the Glenn Beck website. Must be nice having him do all your thinking for you.

**So you don't like what the Founding Fathers thought anymore and want to shift to petty unimaginative insults? What a shame.

Willis wrote:
But I have good news! As Pleasanton becomes more diverse, people like Amy and other Tea Party bigots will get scared off and move to another community. There is nothing they fear more than “change” and “different” ideas and people. I here Bakersfield is nice this time of year, need help packing?

**Willis, can't you focus on the issues instead of more childish name calling? Sad.

Janna,

Do you think the landscapers should return to work or stay on unemployment? Web Link

Willis, are your arguments so weak that you need to resort to insults instead of substance?

I read the link the first time.

If they can make more working, then they should. And by that, I mean, enough money to support them and their families.

Would you take a job that would not support you completely (i.e. pay all your bills and buy food)?

another wannabe Cholo...tee hee hee, tee hee hee...

ILLEGALS ON THE MARCH...HOORAY!

Hmm,

Something you have yet to consider. If you take a job that does not pay all your bills, you are wasting time you could be using to find a job that will, while working a lower paying job. How does that make any sense? Have you had long term job loss? Please share your experience that gives you knowledge on this subject.

Ah, so it was Neal Boortz or some cheap facsimile thereof.

Janna: are you working or just playing housewife while your hubby is collecting unemployment? If you're not working, perhaps you can get a job to help pay some of the bills

Janna wrote: "If they can make more working, then they should. And by that, I mean, enough money to support them and their families."

So then you would agree with the original poster:
"Articles like this should convince even the most extreme liberals that welfare programs, WHEN USED IN EXCESS, are damaging to society."

The poster also wrote:
"I am in FAVOR of a very limited safety net when designed properly...but programs like these are very destructive to an individual, a family and to society in general. "

"Conservatives are in favor of safety nets and are not opposed to some limited welfare programs...but NOT programs that provide more incentive to stay home and avoid work."

Nothing wrong there.

As to your question: "Would you take a job that would not support you completely (i.e. pay all your bills and buy food)?" :

YES to emergency temporary government services. NO to cradle to the grave socialism. Find better work or business or skills and lower your bills to adjust to your means.

My family has worked in orchards in the valley, lived in low income areas of Oakland, worked at factories and saved, doing what we had to to save money, get an education and better our selves. So, been there done that. I think earlier generations would shake their heads by seeing how whiney we have become.

Janna,

Unemployed make more than pickers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.......tee hee hee, tee hee hee...
ILLEGALS ON THE MARCH...HOORAY....VIVA LA RAZA!

(Truly) Clueless,

You must be one of those pro-lifers that cares deeply about the fetus and thinks the child should fend for itself. I am a SAHM and I value being able to raise my kids instead of being one of these women who works and sticks their kid in daycare for 10 hours a day. I've not worked a job outside the home in 10 years, exactly what type of job am I qualified for that would make it worthwhile to leave my children all day? I'm sure you won't possibly understand this, but I prefer to leave any jobs that might be available to other people who probably need it worse than us. You know, single moms and dads, people who don't receive any monetary support whatsoever, etc. What do you care if my husband collects unemployment, he paid into it. You are more concerned about that, then the fact that jobs are scarce in the first place. Nice priorities.

Hmm,

I don't agree with anything the original poster said, particularly this quote: "Conservatives are in favor of safety nets and are not opposed to some limited welfare programs..." That's so not true. You want people to die off, that's the natural result in taking away services. So even if you don't say it, that's exactly what conservatives mean. 'Compassionate conservative' is an oxymoron.

I never suggested cradle to grave services, unless of course someone is born with disabilities that keep them from being able to work. I'm sure you think that they should have to earn their keep somehow, eh?

You can demonize me all you'd like, but no one should be forced to take a job that can't support them or their family, period. Where's that fabulous free market to rescue our economy? Love all the complaining about those who don't have jobs, even when they can't find them. Your blame is completely misplaced.

SAHM. HAH! What a joke! So neither of you are working and we taxpayers are footing your bills and feeding your children.

Janna,

Your mindset is scary. You believe conservatives want to kill people off even if they don't say so? Yet you claim you're being demonized?

You don't feel you and your husband should look for jobs but should live off of the taxpayers? Ten years off? How old are your kids now?

We started poor, we fought (worked) and sacrificed our way up, we didn't have the million and one excuses you have, so I REALLY don't understand your mindset.