Things we'd be talking about if the forum wasn't deadFollow

And that's in the USA, where privity is still a relatively big deal. In England, any kind of contract can do this.

In closing, thanks for making me read a paragraph of gbaji's drivel.

There are many hetero marriages which are less involved than "roommates".

I have never visited Gbajiland. I hear there is only one stop light, a couple of libraries and no bars. On the other hand, their 1/10th of an electoral vote always goes to the right side, so that's saying something.

Not so much a library as the magazine rack at a register of a supermarket.

Spoiler

Gbaji wrote:

No. I very clearly stated that the two cases were not equivalent for two major reasons:

1. The term RINO is almost exclusively only applied to politicians, while "Uncle Tom" is applied to anyone who is black and doesn't support the correct political positions. Joe random black man will be called uncle tom by his neighbors if he doesn't vote Democrat. No one calls a voter a RINO for not voting Republican. This wasn't me "modifying the criteria" for the term "Uncle Tom". This was me pointing out that the criteria for RINO was different than that for Uncle Tom, and that the two could not be equated because of this reason. How you came to think that I was saying that labels are only used to pressure black politicians and not black voters is beyond me. I was extremely clear about this. Black voters are pressured to vote Democrat out of fear of reprisal and name calling if they don't.

Your initial claim was that "It's a bad sign for the honesty of a position among a group of people when tactics like that are employed." When I countered that Republicans use the same tactics, you said "When dealing with political actions. That's the point of "RINO". It's applied to elected representatives, not to voters." I then countered to say that Democrats don't call voters "uncle Toms" and "race traitors", that is something done among voters. You literally gave an instance of a politician calling another politician (not a voter) an uncle Tom. Then you changed the boundaries to a person in a group, which doesn't address your claim that the Democrats deceive black voters for their votes.

Spoiler

Gbaji wrote:

2. The use of the terms are different. The act of calling someone a RINO is pointing out a disconnect between someone's chosen political party and a chosen political action. The act of calling someone an Uncle Tom is pointing out a disconnect between someone's skin color (which is not a choice) and a chosen political action. It's quite reasonable to expect that someone who chooses to represent a political party be held to that party's platform. It's completely wrong and racist to expect that someone who was born with a particular skin color must be held to a specific set of political positions. So, once again, trying to defend the use of terms like Uncle Tom and Race Traitor by pointing out the use of the term RINO is completely unfounded. They are completely different things, aimed at different groups of people, and for different reasons.

The bold is not expected. You only believe this because you fail to accept the fact that black people vote on policy. Once you accept that fact, you'll realize that your political affiliation doesn't mean anything. There are well known Black celebrities (Charles Barkley, Bill Cosby, etc.) that are Democrats who are attacked for their negative views of black people in the same way as a Black Republican. This is purely based on beliefs/policies perceived to put down/hold back black people. And as long as the Republican party support those beliefs and policies, any black Republican who doesn't distance themselves from those PARTICULAR beliefs will be treated the same way as a Democrat who holds the same beliefs.

Spoiler

Gbaji wrote:

No. I'm capable of grasping that most terms overlap. There are tons of people on the "political left" who are black. Al Sharpton is part of the "political left", despite being both black and not an elected member of the Democratic party.

You're really getting lost in the woods on this one.

Interesting how you parsed my response and conveniently left out the "And they got blacks to vote for them almost 100%". Who are "they" and "them"? What did you mean by the word "vote"?

Spoiler

Gbaji wrote:

I honestly have no clue what point you are trying to argue here. It looks like you're just randomly grabbing out of context quotes and trying to find ways in which one might mean something different than another.

You attacked me for saying that black people serious about politics vote Democratic, but you initiated the conversation saying that black people don't vote on policy but on party lines and for welfare. There's no conceptual difference between the two statements, so it wouldn't make any sense for you to attack me for using the same fallacy that you have been using. What I pointed out was that your comment on the fallacy was never about me, but the Democrat party. You tried to back peddle and redefine the boundaries as "any group". Unfortunately, even when you do that, it still doesn't make sense because you also made the same fallacy and are also part of "a group", more specifically the conservative group. This means that according to your logic of "any group", liberals and conservatives do the same exact type of attacks, which was my initial counter.

Spoiler

Gbaji wrote:

Meanwhile, you're still ignoring my actual point which was about the relationship between the establishment of the welfare state and the perpetuation of black poverty. You're literally arguing every single silly little thing except that. It's kinda funny to watch, really. I'm waiting for you to start berating me for using the wrong font any time now.

See post 575, second response.

Yes. I noted it. A "spouse" is a legal arrangement. In the absence of such a thing, inheritance always passes to biological children of the deceased.

EDIT: Hell. I even said this in the very next sentence.



Seriously. What part of that sentence was unclear?

Edited, Apr 21st 2015 1:18pm by gbaji

The child must exist prior to adoption.



The recipient of the trust must exist and be defined prior to the trusts creation.



Ditto.



Ditto. Doubly so in this case since it's specifically about someone taking over parental responsibility.




Lol! I seem to have a better gasp on its meaning that you.

Because there's an actual legal contract involved in making someone a spouse. A contract that can be voided at a future date. Aside from a birth certificate, there's no legal contract that "makes you the parent" of a child at birth. And even then, the legal contract that does this for the father is the existence of a marriage contract between him and the mother. That relationship cannot be voided later (barring the rare case of a husband proving he's not the father of a child via infidelity of the wife, which requires that he go through a legal process to do this).




Yes. What part of "in the absence of another legal arrangement" did you not get? I even mentioned a second marriage as an example of this. My point is that the marriage contract includes within it the assumption of parental rights and responsibilities by the husband over any children the wife produces while they are married. There is no other contract required. In the absence of marriage, the woman is the only legal parent at birth. Additional legal papers must be signed for the father of the child to legally take on that right and responsibility as parent. In the same way that adoption requires this. And in the same way that additional marriages can contain this (guardianship at least).


The clear purpose of marriage is that automatic parental right/responsibility by the male partner. It's the sole point. Otherwise, we'd just have wills or gifts, right? Or any of a number of other contracts that allow people to share joint property, or to gift property to each other, or grant other powers to each other (power of attorney and such). Marriage is the only contract you can enter which ensures that a child has two legally defined parents upon birth. It's amazing to me that this fact doesn't register as perhaps being significant when talking about the role marriage plays in a society.

There are a host of other legal arrangement and contracts one can enter that can fill every other singe thing marriage does. The one thing it does that nothing else does is deal with parental responsibilities as a consequence of a new birth. Period. That's what it does. That's the whole point of having it. You really have to ask yourself if you're denying this because it isn't true, or because it's inconvenient within the context of pushing for gay couples to receive the same marriage status. I suspect that if there wasn't currently a hotly contested partisan disagreement over gay marriage right now, not one person would be denying what I'm saying about marriage. Cart before the horse, right?

Edited, Apr 21st 2015 6:14pm by gbaji

I'm not aware that this is true. It can be for an unborn child, but the child must be an "identifiable person" in order to be the beneficiary of a trust. You could also set up a managed trust for a purpose (which could I presume be to care for future children somehow), but that's not the same thing, since such trusts could be set up for any random people in the future (say a charitable trust). Again though, that's not remotely the same as what marriage does. Marriage legally establishes paternity for any children conceived during the period of the marriage. Thus, marriage assumes that the couple may procreate, and has as one of its primary purposes the establishment of said paternal responsibility.

That's what marriage does that is unique. As I've said many times over the years, every other thing in marriage can be accomplished via other legal contracts. Only marriage creates this assumed paternal contract for future children. Thus, we have to assume that's why it exists.

Of course, you don't work at Subway.

I've already answered this: Because the Left spends an enormous amount of effort using the sorts of things we've been talking about as arguments for why blacks should vote Democrat. As I've said repeatedly, blacks are subjected to far more social pressure than any other group to vote as a block for the Democrats. Again, the whole "uncle tom" thing is huge here. As I mentioned earlier, this moniker isn't just applied to politicians, it's applied to voters as well.

I guess what I don't understand is why you're asking this question, when I addressed it right in the very next section you quoted.



No. It's not. as I just said "Everything else is like arguing about the seating arrangements on the Titanic". How is the "laundry list" a solution? It's not a solution. It's a list of symptoms. How do you "solve" gun control? How do you "solve" opposition to private schools? How do you "solve" opposition to voter ID? None of those are things you can solve. All of them are issues you can use to rally groups of people to vote a given way though.

Which is the point. The Democrats don't want to solve any of those "problems". They want to perpetuate them, because as long as they exist, they can use them to manipulate people into voting for them.




What? When? Let's review again (and once again put the context back in since you keep stripping it out and then conveniently pretending the conversation was different than it was):

Gonna put the context back in, because you keep stripping it out, and I suspect it confuses you.



How about instead of asking me to go look somewhere else for your response, you do what I asked and actually respond. Don't tell me you did it earlier. Don't insist you linked to something else, and then not bother to find said link and provide it (again, if you actually did so earlier). Give me a response. This "I already answered this, but I won't tell you what I said, or when, or how" is getting really tiresome.

If you think you already answered something, then you can say that, but then repeat the answer. Like I did above.

I have no clue what "cite" you are talking about btw.



If the government were spending billions of dollars subsidizing McDonalds on the idea that it was promoting healthy food, and I was arguing that we should remove the subsidy because McDonalds food is not only not healthy, but actually unhealthy, and that by subsidizing it, we're making the problem worse, and you responded by talking about other restaurants with unhealthy food, you'd be going off on a tangent.

I'm talking about whether we should continue to fund a program that our government spends billions of dollars on, under the claim that it will not just address the symptoms of poverty, but as stated by Johnson when created, end the need for such assistance in the future for the very simple reason that it has utterly failed to do that, and arguably actually makes poverty worse by making it harder for the recipients of the benefits to get themselves out of their impoverished state. I have further argued (you know, it seems like I've said this several times now), that since African Americans were disproportionately poor when these welfare programs were implemented the negative effects of welfare in terms of trapping those already poor in an impoverished state has disproportionately harmed them as a group, and has served to inhibit black financial success over the time since it was introduced. I have further argued that since high crime is correlated with high poverty, that this disproportionate poverty rate that blacks suffer also results in them suffering from disproportionate criminal rates, which is why we see the kinds of stats that were released in the DoJ report on Ferguson recently.

That's how it's relevant. We can talk about other issues if you want. By all means. Bring one up, and propose a solution. But all you've done is say "but what about XXX?". You've presented no solutions, nor any means by which discussing such things serves any purpose other than to derail the conversation away from the issue with funding welfare that I originally started talking about.



That's not remotely accurate though. If you were actually bringing up other issues and attempting to argue for or propose solutions to them, you might vaguely have a point. But it's abundantly obvious that your sole reason for bringing them up is to *not* discuss the problems about welfare that I've been talking about.



You haven't proposed a single solution. You've just listed off complaints.



It's a valid talking point though.

[quote]Just like how I can eat McDonalds and still be healthy, you can be on welfare and end up successful.[/quote]

Yes. But just as eating at McDonalds will decrease your odds of being healthy, being on welfare decreases your odds of being successful. The fact that it's possible for something to happen isn't the issue. Whether an action we're doing increases or decreases the odd of that something happening is the issue.

[quote]There is absolutely nothing about welfare that hinders, prevents, stops, reduces (or any other verb) the ability to do better in life.[/quote]

I've written at length about the ways in which welfare does exactly that. Anything that grants someone a benefit as the result of a condition also acts as an incentive for that condition. In this case "being poor" is the condition. I guess what I find stunning about your responses is that instead of actually responding to my points about welfare, you keep trying to change the subject to something else. If you don't think welfare is a problem, then say that and defend it. But instead of doing that, you just say "But here's this other thing over here. Let's talk about that instead!".

Again those other subjects may be interesting all by themselves, but they aren't valid responses to the argument I'm making here. Additionally, many of these side topics you keep bringing up are themselves merely symptoms of the problem I'm talking about. Right there at the top of this post, is a paragraph by me showing how several of those things are themselves the result of black poverty. So if we want to fix those things, the correct starting point is to talk about black poverty. But for some bizarre reason you don't want to talk about that. Heck. I'd even accept a counter argument about something else that is more responsible for black poverty than welfare. That would at least be on topic. Somewhat.

Edited, Apr 21st 2015 5:52pm by gbaji

Huh? Where did I do this? Unless maybe you're confused about what "unborn" means in this context. It means "conceived but not yet born". My understanding is that you cannot create a trust for someone or something that does not yet exist. I freely admit that I may be incorrect on this, but I have not yet read anything to suggest that this is the case.

And what is with insisting that I "admitted" I was wrong? That's a bizarre methodology. If you think I'm wrong, then say so, and back up your claim. What the heck is with people arguing sideways?



Um... I actually have no clue if I'm wrong. As I've said quite clearly, I'm saying that I don't believe you can create a trust for a person that does not yet exist in any way. I could be wrong, but I haven't read or heard anything to contradict that assumption. If you think I'm wrong, then make that case. Heck. If that's true, I'd be happy to modify my earlier comment to include trusts as something that can be provided for someone who doesn't yet exist and re-evaluate my earlier statements about marriage's uniqueness in this regard. I'm still not sure how that nullifies my point that this feature is still a primary purpose of marriage as a legal contract, but that's a discussion we can have if it comes to that.

But you have to actually go through the bother of showing that this is the case first. Can you do that?

Just so we're clear. Your point is that blacks nearly universally vote in alignment with a set of political positions which Democrats support and which Republicans oppose. Right?



Uh... Really? That's not circular at all. You just said that's what black people do. You get that "Republicans never support what blacks care about" is the flip side of "blacks vote along party lines", right?

Here's the question though. And I want you to actually stop and think about it. Do you think that black people started out holding all of those positions as a condition of voting first and then the GOP chose to adopt a platform that was in opposition to blacks? Or do you think that maybe the GOP has held these positions all along and over time blacks have been somehow taught to hold positions in opposition to the GOP? It's just that I'm seeing a massive cart before horse scenario here.

Sigh. Let me put the context back in (again).



W T F

Dude. Stop. Just... stop.



No. But I was responding to this:



Why include the word immigration then?



Honestly? Because, as I mentioned earlier, conservatives weren't nearly as much in an uproar as liberals were talking about how much of an uproar this caused among conservatives. I honestly didn't know what you were even talking about. I googled it, and the first thing I could find controversial about Jeb Bush was some comments he made about immigration. So I responded to that.

I've said this before Alma, and I'll say it again. I'm not a mind reader. I don't magically know about or care about the exact same things that you know about and care about. If you want to make a reference to something, don't assume that I know what you're talking about when you say "that thing that happened last week to <so and so>". Include a link to a news story or something that talks about the specific thing. You do this a lot.

But in case you're still confused, I don't have a clue what exact education thing you think Jeb said that you think blacks agree with but that conservatives oppose. So how about starting by saying what that is, and perhaps include a link to a source for this? Just a thought.




Great. Here's the problem (again), welfare makes it more likely that people will choose not to do better. I easily spent 3 or 4 whole posts explaining the logic of this and how welfare benefits can influence people's decisions regarding upward mobility. Heck. someone else even linked a handy chart showing that at certain income levels increasing your earnings actually decreases the amount of net income because of welfare cut offs. I further argued that even without that negative incentive effect, the mere fact that welfare reduces the earnings increase relative to effort curve will have an effect on incentive.


Let me also point out that putting in the caveat "unless they choose not to do X" is a ridiculous cop out. By that argument nothing is effective at anything. Fining people for littering doesn't reduce littering unless people choose not to litter. Speed limits don't decrease average speed on the road because people only slow down if they choose to. It's moronic. The point of those things is to influence people's choices. In the same way, providing people benefits so as to make working less pay more, will tend to result in people working less. Period. This is such a basic concept that it's hard for me to figure out if you really don't get it, or if you're just pretending to because you need to support a political position you already hold.

Again: Cart before horse. If you didn't already have a vested political interest in defending welfare, and were looking at it objectively, it's hard to imagine you'd be defending it.

Edited, Apr 21st 2015 7:00pm by gbaji