Conservatives: "It's about the children"

[spice]

A new Children's Defense Fund (CDF) report shows the dire state of children in America today.


Titled, "The State of America's Children: 2011," it can be accessed in full through the following link:


http://www.childrensdefense.org/child-r ... s-2011.pdf



Focusing mainly on 2008 - 2010, it ranked America among industrialized countries "investing in and protecting children" as follows:




First in GDP

First in billionaires

First in prison population size

First in health expenditures

First in student expenditures

First in military expenditures, technology, and global wars

First in weapons exports

17th in reading scores

22nd in low birthweight rates

23rd in science scores

30th in infant mortality rates

31st in math scores

31st in wealth gap between rich and poor

Last in relative child poverty

Last in adolescent birth rates (ages 15 - 19)

Last in protecting children from gun violence

Only America and Somalia (with no legally constituted government because America ravaged it with war, poverty and starvation) haven't ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Other disturbing information includes:

Every second a public school student is suspended.

Every eight seconds a high school student drops out.

Every 18 seconds an unwed mother gives birth.

Every 20 seconds a public school student is corporally punished.

Every 21 seconds a child is arrested.

Every 34 seconds a child is born in poverty.

Every 42 seconds a baby is born without health insurance.

Every 42 seconds a child is abused or neglected.

Every minute a teenage mother gives birth.

Every two minutes a low birthweight child is born.

Every four minutes a child is arrested for illegal drug possession.

Every eight minutes a child is arrested for committing violence.

Every 18 minutes a baby dies before age one.

Every 45 minutes an accident kills a child or teen.

Every three hours a child is shot and killed.

Every five hours a child or teen commits suicide.

Every five hours a child dies from abuse or neglect.

Every 16 hours a mother dies from childbirth or pregnancy complications




As George Carlin said:

Once you leave the womb, conservatives don’t care about you until you reach military age. Then you’re just what they’re looking for. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers.

 

[IJesusChrist]

:x

 

[spice]

all I want is a return to a culture with a vocal 'social conscience'



or just a conscience

 

[darkwolfunseen]

I'd settle for a half-way decent literacy rate...

 

[spice]

Well, I think that the literacy rate is probably related to the loss of voice/conscience as a culture and as a society.

The powers-that-be only have use for a certain kind of 'smart', and caring about others isn't a part of it, seeing as its hard to be selfish the more you care about anyone else,(many people miss the fact that this is true EVEN AS AN ABSTRACT CONCEPT) that mentality is counter-productive in a world where production quotas are the rule of law, and all that lip-service we were given in grade school is exposed to the light of day and seen as lies.....no, the world doesn't have 'rights' most rights were obtained at gunpoint, ask the Indians


Our capitalist culture has allowed us to throw our conscience in the trash, we do not have to co-exist with the consequences of our blindness. I believe that the 'global' economy is partly at fault but that we have also been deliberately 'steered' to this callous mentality by those who see us as nothing more that children who are exempt from labor laws and easy to exploit.

We ARE easy to exploit, and that is a fault which cannot be blamed on GM or IGFarben, it goes back to biology and our way of parenting AS A SPECIES.....it may actually turn out that this is a LEARNED BEHAIVOUR which is amenable to modification, time will tell, but the emotional ramifications of altering the way we parent are enormous, people are reluctant to change even when they KNOW their behaivour is counter-productive, much less something such as this, an instinctive behaivour such as child-rearing, which has not been subjected to critical thinking, at all


all of this is moot though, with companies like Dupont and their franken-seeds, thinking they have the RIGHT to use humanity as a test-tube, will probably end up de-railing us as a species within 50 years or so....

we will de-evolve, like cannabis plants of the F2 generation, slowly regressing back to our neanderthal/cro-mag beginnings so the cycle can begin again, a lot of alternative historians believe this (rise of humanity) has happened several times and that we keep destroying ourselves


not a stretch at all to me



here's a question:



does a 'country' need a land mass to exist....or is that archaic thinking?

 

[spice]

even bigger than intelligence is the need for transparent honesty among ALL OF US all the time......out of all the factors we percieve as not subject to our direct control, I can single THIS one out as being something we do not seem to think about correctly; it is under our DIRECT control, we make a conscious decision to lie when we do it.....and lies are the underpinnings which allow a lot of misery into our world. Everyones acceptance of it is repulsive and discouraging. it's not that hard to understand what would be a major advance-


The answer begins with a really simple seed concept;


everyone needs to quit lying for advantage



make the world worth something again



the answer has always been right under our noses



can you smell it?

 

[spice]

I totally agree and have thought that we are overpopulated for a long time now.


I blame organized religion for most of that, and they should be ashamed of themselves (of course they know no shame) for contributing to planetary misery and female subjugation in the history of our species


the question is:

How do you convince someone that they do not have the 'right' to reproduce?

Going the path of religion, and just banning birth control of all kinds doesnt help, we are a rebellious species, and prohibition doesnt work, ask the makers of Yaz or any of that pharma poison


Most peoples thoughts on the subject are non-existent.



I have observed that many younger women think that bringing a child into the world will 'fix things'


nothing could be further from the truth when you are young, single, and poor....it's a prison sentence, and NOT JUST FOR HER

 

[darkwolfunseen]

Ran across this and wanted to add the following:

I hope she (being Jane Everywoman) doesn't think just by adding a child your helping the situation. By no means is something that broad ever really helpful. That being said, Spice, I'm curious if you believe it's possible anymore for human beings not to lie? I mean that in the sense of action-reaction, since we are so used to half-truths, omissions, and lies that asking to go back to filter-less lives seems impossible.

Thoughts from anyone?