From: nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)
Date: Sun, 24 Aug 1997 18:42:22 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Welfare Solution #389
Message-ID: <199708241031.MAA29938@basement.replay.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Tom Mix wrote:

> I could imagine that a junkie who takes some old lady's purse to buy
> heroin is victimizing the old lady, but is a student smoking marijuana
> and drinking a beer victimizing anyone? What about a heroin junkie who
> is rich, though unpopular, and never committed any other crime? Have
> they made themselves a victim of something? Maybe so...the needle,
> the darkness, the overwhelming Love Which Cannot Be Real. But the
> state shouldn't recognize "mystical entities" like this as perpetrators.
> The person in this case is making a choice; they will do no harm but
> to themselves. Are they then a victim, or a perpetrator, or both?

-- Excerpt from "Victim" (c) County Mountie Productions --

{Passage sung by purse snatcher who is mugging little old lady.}
	"I knocked her dowm, stepped on her face,
	 Slandered her name all over the place.
	 Hit her with my fist, kicked her with my shoe,
	 	"I said, "Lady, I'm a victim.
	 	 A victim, just like you.
		 I'm a victim of a Bad Attitude."
--

  When this song was recorded, it was somewhat tragically ironic,
but it proved to be prophetic.
  I believe that "Bad Attitude" is now a recognized psychiatric
illness, allowing one a reduced sentence and monetary support
from the government while the poor victim of "Bad Attitude"
takes "the cure" on the beaches of the Hawaii.

  I know a man in Tucson who worked all his life, spent all of 
his money recovering from an accident, and then couldn't get
welfare money when he needed a few more months of recuperation
before returning to work.
  The lady who turned him down made the mistake of commenting
that it was a shame he wasn't a drug addict, because then he
would "qualify" for welfare. The man lived on the streets for
several months, barely surviving, until he was healthy enough
to work, and he has never paid a dime in taxes since then.
  What is even more atrocious is that a church that he attended
occasionally turned down his request for minimal assistance,
because their policy was to only help those who qualified for
government benefits (in order to help weed out the "bums").
He wasn't "entitled" to the church's help as a Christian, but
he would have been, as an agnostic junkie.

  I met the man in the park, and gave him a place to live for
the last month of his recuperation, so he could shit, shower,
shave and use it as a base to look for work. In the next two
years, the company he went to work for bought around $50,000
worth of computers from me.
  Before this experience, the man was a "God and Country" type
of individual who probably would have turned in anyone he found
was "cheating" on their taxes. Now he is perfectly willing to
go to jail rather than give the robber barons their booty.