[spence]

Originally Posted by fishbones

Good morning, Spence. If you went offline yesterday, my day would have been empty. And I love arguments about irony. I find them, well, ironic.

I'm glad to see you have some level of dependence.

The reason I questioned you was because you originally made a blanket statement which was untrue. Then, you amended it and asked me to site examples without providing any of your own to support your argument.

Quite simply, too lazy and too busy on a Friday during work to make the effort.

While you can certainly find instances of cutbacks in funding by the Republicans, you might be suprised to find that the Democrats are guilty of the same things. They just try to blame it on the Republicans. Even you have to admit that there is a mindset among the public that all cuts to social services come from Republicans. It's a brilliant plan by the Democrats to keep themselves in office.

There is perhaps some of this, but there's a idiological undercurrent to at play as well. Conservatives tend to believe that the Federal Government has no Constitutional justification to fund social programs, which end up funding a lot of programs for the mentally disabled. While State Governments have more freedom here, politically they are often constrained to sticking to the same platform, perhaps more now than ever. This certianly was true under Reagan, and even recently our own Gov. Carcieri attempted to slash state budgets for the developmentally disabled without any thought into the net business value of his actions. Considering he's a business man this surprised me quite a bit. That being said, I'm glad he considered it as an option as if you're going to reform, there can't be any sacred cows. He did eventually back down when the stupidity of his plan became appearant. I've read plenty of stories over the years, but again...to lazy to write a book about it.

RI actually has some very good programs for the developmentally disabled, and I don't credit a longstanding conservative state government for the value that it does deliver...granted, at a high cost. Religious and other community efforts add tremendous value and improve quality of life, but with some people needing 100K+ per year in state and federal aid, the till from the taxpayer ends up footing a lot of the bill.

While I'm sure there's examples of good and bad being done on both sides...at the top of either ends political elite though, I think there's a consistent message that's quite different, hence the irony.

As for SOSEA, look up the bill. I'm pretty sure you're internet savy enough to do a google search on it. I shouldn't have to be the only one to actually provide facts to back up my statements.

Had I found it via Google I would have educated myself, found the weakness in your argument and posted as an expert in the subject asserting your error. Perhaps you don't have the acronym correct?

-spence