Parent Licenses

[pavel_lishin]

Well, the moment has finally come, and I don't know how I feel about it.

Republican lawmakers are drafting new legislation that will make marriage a requirement for motherhood in the state of Indiana, including specific criminal penalties for unmarried women who do become pregnant "by means other than sexual intercourse

Comments

[with_my_pistola]

oh gawd those were grooooosssssss pics!

I trust republicans as far as I can throw them and believe me, I throw them often to evaluate the exact distances.

[eazyt]

i agree college is fun, as soon as i get the money and the time i'm going to go back ... of course, everyone will think i'll be an "old man"

what disgusts me, is when we (taxpayers) foot the bill for these retards to go to college, when they have no real academic interest in being there... if their sole purpose is to get out of the house and meet girls, they can do it on their dime, not mine

[pavel_lishin]

Also, at the point where all highways become toll roads, I want to stop paying taxes. The reason I pay taxes - and will happily continue to - is because the gov't supplies me with an incredible amount of stuff that I couldn't pay for on my own. Paved roads, power lines, water, etc. - all more or less protected or put up by the government. I couldn't afford to pay for all that on my own, and since you can't really do much to choose which powerlines you use or which roads you travel on, competition wouldn't drive down the costs of these utilities.

[eazyt]

you don't pay any utility bills, because you can't afford to?

[pavel_lishin]

I pay for the utility, but I thought the government still spent a large sum of money planning water pipe placement, powerline placement, etc... I doubt GreenMountain could do everything on their own.

[eazyt]

umm the govt doesn't do shit, as far as that goes... the most they do is provide easements and allow use of public land for power lines & pipes, and provide some tax breaks

GreenMountain (whcih im assuming is your energy company) is just a middle-man... they're buying power from a company in charge of producing it, and leasing TXU Electric Delivery's lines to bring it to you

[absinthine]

So local government doesn't control the planning, financing, and execution of, say, the distribution of the public water supply? Sewerage? Waste treatment?

[eazyt]

i think it depends on the city

greenville, where i used to live, the city owned all of the utilities, except natural gas... (only city in texas with fully socialized electric & water systems)

cities typcially have their own muncipal water/sewer systems, that i believe are treated the same way roads are... they usually then just buy water/power from a neighbouring company

waste treatment, i dont know if you mean wastewater treatment or garbage collection, but here, almost all cities contract out to a private company to handle either of those

[absinthine]

So, just speaking from the standpoint of practicality, how would the private citizen directly fund these publicly shared services if they weren't payed from the tax dollars?

[pbaseball24]

I agree with the above poster, and await an answer.

[eazyt]

how can private citizens directly fund the huge factories that churn out automobiles on a daily basis? or pharmaceutical laboratories that search for the cure for cancer or aids? or perhaps companies that build computer components so small they must be assembled under microscopes?

the answer is simple -- standard business practice... go get a loan, buy materials and people, and start production... and sell your product well enough that you stay afloat, running off the revenue generated from your product...

if people forming companies can accomplish everything i've stated above, why COULDNT they create a sewer system or water system (which, here, they do both... the city only provides them with the land, and even then, sometimes the utilities have to pay the city to use that land)

[pbaseball24]

The counter-argument is simple: relevance.

Where would we be without energy and water? Completely fucked. These services are necessary for our everyday functioning. If we left this up to the private sector, and the private sector couldn't pull the weight - bye2u civilized society.

Nobody's arguing that it couldn't be done in the private sector - that's obvious. Also, it'd be pretty damned difficult for someone in the private sector to obtain resources needed to offer services such as energy and water, considering the fact that you'd need easements for these things. The gov't can basically do what's necessary...a private sector chump would get shot.

[eazyt]

Well, in many places it IS up to the private sector. For instance, there is a small town in MS, that has NO PHONE SERVICE. why? because it's not profitable for SBC or whoever to spend millions of dollars to hook up a dozen rednecks ... same goes for out in west texas, where "public services" are non existant. you want power, get a generator... you want water, drill a well

[absinthine]

I guess what I was asking was how would the provider of these services get paid

[absinthine]

PS, I'm banging this out at work so I apologize if this runs on and is a little hard to follow.

[eazyt]

same here

gotta love our jobs