Congratulations Po, you've written the words that will lead to your healing. Now all you have to do is read them and thing of the saying "two wrongs don't make a right". If you pull it off, you should investigate the rest of what I said so you can take issue with something that's actually interesting, instead of this turkey shoot for an argument.
I'm in complete agreement about the south being scary though. Unfortunately, I'm here in racist hell southern Oklahoma, and the racists are all registered democrats. How do I know? There are so few people registered republican that the democratic primary is the means for electing all the local officials. I haven't voted for a single candidate below the national level since I got here. When funding for a school in the "black town" came up in a ballot measure, one of my relatives was like "what do they need a school for? It's not like black people can learn nothin!" Yeah, he's a died in the wool democrat, I didn't ask him whether he voted this last time around. I can't imagine he was able to make a mark next to an R, even if McCain is a better democrat than he is.
How would something like the FAA exist if only people who fly paid for it? We'd be living in the stone age if we practiced that mentality.
This is the FAA that's ten years behind on radar capacity, doesn't check maintenance records until after a whistle blower goes to the news, and tells the manufacturers to change their specs when the airliners complain about stringent safety requirements?
When Alaska Airlines was caught failing to lubricate jackscrews, and then not replace the worn nuts, they got the FAA to increase the time between inspections, increase the interval between mandatory lubrication, and tell MD to set a higher threshold for wear. The whistle blower was fired and trashed. The result was 88 dead people when flight 261 did a nose dive into the pacific after they blew off the new wear threshold as well. The US attorneys then let them all off the hook for those 88 counts of manslaughter. Yay government oversight, looking out for the people...
Lawsuits to a better job of protecting you from unscrupulous corporations than Uncle ever wll. To get Uncle to care, you need a majority opinion telling politicians the end is coming if they don't get off their ass. To get a corporation to care, all you need is one judge and twelve jurists to make it worth their while to do the proper maintenance. Niether one of them will do a damn thing before the catastrophy hits, so the post mortem revenge isn't even a drawback.
Do you really KNOW a significant amount of people cheating the system?
Like the alarming percentage of the workforce that stays employed just long enough to collect unemployment, rinse and repeat? They absolutely love these extended benefits too. Did you know that unemployment increases right when they do it? It's like clockwork.
I also believe welfare reduces crime and unrest, which may not seem beneficial or relevant to you, but if people were starving in the gutters it probably would be before long... Not to mention there's a term for paying for crime protection and it's "protection money." I've never been the victim of a violent crime, but I still prefer taxes to hiring thugs to keep me safe.
Crime went way up after the progressive welfare state kicked in, and crime amongst minorities went through the roof. It stands to reason, if one does such silly things, that welfare not only doesn't reduce crime and unrest, but increases it instead. Check out the statistics for a place like Harlem and compare them to things like the installment of quotas into hiring practices and you get one scary picture.
