[eavesdropper]

[quote=CA renter]
An overweight person is labled “overweight” no matter if it’s from over-eating or lack of exercise, or body type (endomorphic, for example), or other reasons (certain medicines, hormones, etc.). If a person weighs more than XX pounds, they are automatically labeled “overweight” or “obese.”
….Many underweight people with eating disorders are very likely to not be labled as having an eating disorder, IMHO, because they can convince others that they are “naturally” skinny or that they are simply “fit.”

…The “fittest” people we know (work out for hours each day and carefully watch everything that enters their bodies) tend to have what I would consider to be very unhealthy habits. In many cases, I have yet to see any of them eat a single piece of produce, as they “eat” only protein powders and other “laboratory” foods. This, after knowing them and socializing with them for years…..[/quote]

CA renter, you’re absolutely correct: there are many overweight (labeled) people out there that are healthier than their slender fellow citizens. There’s a lot of individual-specific factors, aside from weight, that go into the equation for good health and longevity: heredity, emotional health, relationship status, environment, mental attitude, etc. However, there is an abundance of empirical data that clearly indicates the causal relationship between morbid obesity and health risk. Don’t quote me, but I believe that the jury is still out on many cancers. But morbid and super obesity very often results in chronic diseases and disorders such as heart disease, diabetes, sleep apnea, hypertension/stroke, and musculoskeletal pain and disability. These are difficult to treat, and have an extremely low rate of cure in the absence of weight loss. The cost to society, to the patient’s family, and to the patient is extremely high, in terms of health care delivery, strain on relationships, and lost or reduced work hours and capabilities.

On the opposite extreme, I think that scientists and researchers are fully aware of the extraordinary health risks posed by eating disorders. However, I think that this information has not been completely disseminated throughout the medical care provider community. This is not unusual: practitioners are typically so busy handling their patient load that they are unable to keep up with advances and discoveries in biomedical research. Add the cultural predisposition against obese people, and – you got it – a lot of unhealthy skinny people flying under the radar.

I’m not in favor of the government monitoring of people’s flawed eating habits; I’d be much happier if they would make it easier for people to get regular exercise. But I’m not necessarily against public information campaigns and taxes on zero-nutrition foods (to be earmarked for covering excessive obesity-related health costs). It seemed to help with smoking: many fewer tobacco-related diseases and deaths, with concomittantly lowered health costs.

I think they need to stay away from the ad agency that did the Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing ads, though. Every time I see kids choosing raw vegetables over ice cream, I practically split a gut laughing. Possibly explained by my experiences raising four kids of my own.

[eavesdropper]

[quote=CA renter]
An overweight person is labled “overweight” no matter if it’s from over-eating or lack of exercise, or body type (endomorphic, for example), or other reasons (certain medicines, hormones, etc.). If a person weighs more than XX pounds, they are automatically labeled “overweight” or “obese.”
….Many underweight people with eating disorders are very likely to not be labled as having an eating disorder, IMHO, because they can convince others that they are “naturally” skinny or that they are simply “fit.”

…The “fittest” people we know (work out for hours each day and carefully watch everything that enters their bodies) tend to have what I would consider to be very unhealthy habits. In many cases, I have yet to see any of them eat a single piece of produce, as they “eat” only protein powders and other “laboratory” foods. This, after knowing them and socializing with them for years…..[/quote]

CA renter, you’re absolutely correct: there are many overweight (labeled) people out there that are healthier than their slender fellow citizens. There’s a lot of individual-specific factors, aside from weight, that go into the equation for good health and longevity: heredity, emotional health, relationship status, environment, mental attitude, etc. However, there is an abundance of empirical data that clearly indicates the causal relationship between morbid obesity and health risk. Don’t quote me, but I believe that the jury is still out on many cancers. But morbid and super obesity very often results in chronic diseases and disorders such as heart disease, diabetes, sleep apnea, hypertension/stroke, and musculoskeletal pain and disability. These are difficult to treat, and have an extremely low rate of cure in the absence of weight loss. The cost to society, to the patient’s family, and to the patient is extremely high, in terms of health care delivery, strain on relationships, and lost or reduced work hours and capabilities.

On the opposite extreme, I think that scientists and researchers are fully aware of the extraordinary health risks posed by eating disorders. However, I think that this information has not been completely disseminated throughout the medical care provider community. This is not unusual: practitioners are typically so busy handling their patient load that they are unable to keep up with advances and discoveries in biomedical research. Add the cultural predisposition against obese people, and – you got it – a lot of unhealthy skinny people flying under the radar.

I’m not in favor of the government monitoring of people’s flawed eating habits; I’d be much happier if they would make it easier for people to get regular exercise. But I’m not necessarily against public information campaigns and taxes on zero-nutrition foods (to be earmarked for covering excessive obesity-related health costs). It seemed to help with smoking: many fewer tobacco-related diseases and deaths, with concomittantly lowered health costs.

I think they need to stay away from the ad agency that did the Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing ads, though. Every time I see kids choosing raw vegetables over ice cream, I practically split a gut laughing. Possibly explained by my experiences raising four kids of my own.

[eavesdropper]

[quote=flu][quote=KIBU]

Side note: folks always ask why asian parents are so picky about schools. This is exactly why. Teach the damn 3r’s right rather then spend countless time/resources on everything else and not even get the 3r’s right. I haven’t researched this, but I’m curious what the school’s API ranking is. I’d say if it has time with this sort of B.S., it’s probably not doing a very good job education kids.[/quote]

Bingo!! Flu, can I borrow your bullshit weed wacker? I am awed by your finely-honed ability to cut to the heart of the matter.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’d be more than happy if the public schools would just manage to teach English to their students. ALL their students. But by the looks of most of the discussion and message boards (Pigg’s being the glaring exception) and chat rooms out there in cyberspace, this hasn’t been done in a long time (50 years?). I have to admit, despite my distress over the evidence of widespread illiteracy exhibited in these places, I get a perverse kick when I come across a post from a “real” American on a rant, declaring that an immigrant needs to come here and learn how to spell and construct sentences in English. However, their post is chock full of grammatical and punctuation errors, incomplete sentences, and spelling and syntax that is so tangled that I feel like I’M reading a foreign language.

But in defense of the schools, I think that, while they sometimes bring the ceiling down on themselves with self-initiated f**ked-up policy decisions, much of the time they are just trying to get people off their backs so they can get on with the business of teaching. School has become one big power-grabbing exercise for students. Control is very important to kids: almost from birth, they are in a constant struggle to control their environments, and this is never more extreme than when they hit adolescence. In the good old days, social groups would slug it out, mano a mano, and settle things with a Rebel Without A Cause-style chickenrun.

But kids have evolved. Thanks to the wonders of mass media, and also to their indulgent parents (who, unlike mine, no longer see fit to smack their kids upside the head, and tell them to grow up and get with the program), kids have figured out that they can go to school administration and plead PTSD as a result of cultural misunderstanding. Cinco de Mayo??!! I’m not even sure that these kids can count to five, or figure out the date without consulting their iPhones. But they manage to get the school to restrict the dress code for the white kids. Then the white kids’ parents (and, yes, I know some of the t-shirt brigade were of Hispanic descent) call in the media, and the white kids win that skirmish. Then the Hispanic kids walk out of class, and have the school administrators kissing their asses again…..it’s all bullshit.

As I asked in another post, how many of us could do our jobs with employees that are lazy, disruptive, insulting, insubordinate, and, often, violent? Especially if each of these employees had two loud publicity-seeking attorneys on retainer, protecting their “rights”. Teachers and administrators face this every day. I do not favor turning a completely blind eye to school administration policy, but i endorse turning a blind eye to our children’s inexcusable behavior even less.

[eavesdropper]

[quote=flu][quote=KIBU]

Side note: folks always ask why asian parents are so picky about schools. This is exactly why. Teach the damn 3r’s right rather then spend countless time/resources on everything else and not even get the 3r’s right. I haven’t researched this, but I’m curious what the school’s API ranking is. I’d say if it has time with this sort of B.S., it’s probably not doing a very good job education kids.[/quote]

Bingo!! Flu, can I borrow your bullshit weed wacker? I am awed by your finely-honed ability to cut to the heart of the matter.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’d be more than happy if the public schools would just manage to teach English to their students. ALL their students. But by the looks of most of the discussion and message boards (Pigg’s being the glaring exception) and chat rooms out there in cyberspace, this hasn’t been done in a long time (50 years?). I have to admit, despite my distress over the evidence of widespread illiteracy exhibited in these places, I get a perverse kick when I come across a post from a “real” American on a rant, declaring that an immigrant needs to come here and learn how to spell and construct sentences in English. However, their post is chock full of grammatical and punctuation errors, incomplete sentences, and spelling and syntax that is so tangled that I feel like I’M reading a foreign language.

But in defense of the schools, I think that, while they sometimes bring the ceiling down on themselves with self-initiated f**ked-up policy decisions, much of the time they are just trying to get people off their backs so they can get on with the business of teaching. School has become one big power-grabbing exercise for students. Control is very important to kids: almost from birth, they are in a constant struggle to control their environments, and this is never more extreme than when they hit adolescence. In the good old days, social groups would slug it out, mano a mano, and settle things with a Rebel Without A Cause-style chickenrun.

But kids have evolved. Thanks to the wonders of mass media, and also to their indulgent parents (who, unlike mine, no longer see fit to smack their kids upside the head, and tell them to grow up and get with the program), kids have figured out that they can go to school administration and plead PTSD as a result of cultural misunderstanding. Cinco de Mayo??!! I’m not even sure that these kids can count to five, or figure out the date without consulting their iPhones. But they manage to get the school to restrict the dress code for the white kids. Then the white kids’ parents (and, yes, I know some of the t-shirt brigade were of Hispanic descent) call in the media, and the white kids win that skirmish. Then the Hispanic kids walk out of class, and have the school administrators kissing their asses again…..it’s all bullshit.

As I asked in another post, how many of us could do our jobs with employees that are lazy, disruptive, insulting, insubordinate, and, often, violent? Especially if each of these employees had two loud publicity-seeking attorneys on retainer, protecting their “rights”. Teachers and administrators face this every day. I do not favor turning a completely blind eye to school administration policy, but i endorse turning a blind eye to our children’s inexcusable behavior even less.

[eavesdropper]

[quote=flu][quote=KIBU]

Side note: folks always ask why asian parents are so picky about schools. This is exactly why. Teach the damn 3r’s right rather then spend countless time/resources on everything else and not even get the 3r’s right. I haven’t researched this, but I’m curious what the school’s API ranking is. I’d say if it has time with this sort of B.S., it’s probably not doing a very good job education kids.[/quote]

Bingo!! Flu, can I borrow your bullshit weed wacker? I am awed by your finely-honed ability to cut to the heart of the matter.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’d be more than happy if the public schools would just manage to teach English to their students. ALL their students. But by the looks of most of the discussion and message boards (Pigg’s being the glaring exception) and chat rooms out there in cyberspace, this hasn’t been done in a long time (50 years?). I have to admit, despite my distress over the evidence of widespread illiteracy exhibited in these places, I get a perverse kick when I come across a post from a “real” American on a rant, declaring that an immigrant needs to come here and learn how to spell and construct sentences in English. However, their post is chock full of grammatical and punctuation errors, incomplete sentences, and spelling and syntax that is so tangled that I feel like I’M reading a foreign language.

But in defense of the schools, I think that, while they sometimes bring the ceiling down on themselves with self-initiated f**ked-up policy decisions, much of the time they are just trying to get people off their backs so they can get on with the business of teaching. School has become one big power-grabbing exercise for students. Control is very important to kids: almost from birth, they are in a constant struggle to control their environments, and this is never more extreme than when they hit adolescence. In the good old days, social groups would slug it out, mano a mano, and settle things with a Rebel Without A Cause-style chickenrun.

But kids have evolved. Thanks to the wonders of mass media, and also to their indulgent parents (who, unlike mine, no longer see fit to smack their kids upside the head, and tell them to grow up and get with the program), kids have figured out that they can go to school administration and plead PTSD as a result of cultural misunderstanding. Cinco de Mayo??!! I’m not even sure that these kids can count to five, or figure out the date without consulting their iPhones. But they manage to get the school to restrict the dress code for the white kids. Then the white kids’ parents (and, yes, I know some of the t-shirt brigade were of Hispanic descent) call in the media, and the white kids win that skirmish. Then the Hispanic kids walk out of class, and have the school administrators kissing their asses again…..it’s all bullshit.

As I asked in another post, how many of us could do our jobs with employees that are lazy, disruptive, insulting, insubordinate, and, often, violent? Especially if each of these employees had two loud publicity-seeking attorneys on retainer, protecting their “rights”. Teachers and administrators face this every day. I do not favor turning a completely blind eye to school administration policy, but i endorse turning a blind eye to our children’s inexcusable behavior even less.

[eavesdropper]

[quote=flu][quote=KIBU]

Side note: folks always ask why asian parents are so picky about schools. This is exactly why. Teach the damn 3r’s right rather then spend countless time/resources on everything else and not even get the 3r’s right. I haven’t researched this, but I’m curious what the school’s API ranking is. I’d say if it has time with this sort of B.S., it’s probably not doing a very good job education kids.[/quote]

Bingo!! Flu, can I borrow your bullshit weed wacker? I am awed by your finely-honed ability to cut to the heart of the matter.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’d be more than happy if the public schools would just manage to teach English to their students. ALL their students. But by the looks of most of the discussion and message boards (Pigg’s being the glaring exception) and chat rooms out there in cyberspace, this hasn’t been done in a long time (50 years?). I have to admit, despite my distress over the evidence of widespread illiteracy exhibited in these places, I get a perverse kick when I come across a post from a “real” American on a rant, declaring that an immigrant needs to come here and learn how to spell and construct sentences in English. However, their post is chock full of grammatical and punctuation errors, incomplete sentences, and spelling and syntax that is so tangled that I feel like I’M reading a foreign language.

But in defense of the schools, I think that, while they sometimes bring the ceiling down on themselves with self-initiated f**ked-up policy decisions, much of the time they are just trying to get people off their backs so they can get on with the business of teaching. School has become one big power-grabbing exercise for students. Control is very important to kids: almost from birth, they are in a constant struggle to control their environments, and this is never more extreme than when they hit adolescence. In the good old days, social groups would slug it out, mano a mano, and settle things with a Rebel Without A Cause-style chickenrun.

But kids have evolved. Thanks to the wonders of mass media, and also to their indulgent parents (who, unlike mine, no longer see fit to smack their kids upside the head, and tell them to grow up and get with the program), kids have figured out that they can go to school administration and plead PTSD as a result of cultural misunderstanding. Cinco de Mayo??!! I’m not even sure that these kids can count to five, or figure out the date without consulting their iPhones. But they manage to get the school to restrict the dress code for the white kids. Then the white kids’ parents (and, yes, I know some of the t-shirt brigade were of Hispanic descent) call in the media, and the white kids win that skirmish. Then the Hispanic kids walk out of class, and have the school administrators kissing their asses again…..it’s all bullshit.

As I asked in another post, how many of us could do our jobs with employees that are lazy, disruptive, insulting, insubordinate, and, often, violent? Especially if each of these employees had two loud publicity-seeking attorneys on retainer, protecting their “rights”. Teachers and administrators face this every day. I do not favor turning a completely blind eye to school administration policy, but i endorse turning a blind eye to our children’s inexcusable behavior even less.

[eavesdropper]

[quote=flu][quote=KIBU]

Side note: folks always ask why asian parents are so picky about schools. This is exactly why. Teach the damn 3r’s right rather then spend countless time/resources on everything else and not even get the 3r’s right. I haven’t researched this, but I’m curious what the school’s API ranking is. I’d say if it has time with this sort of B.S., it’s probably not doing a very good job education kids.[/quote]

Bingo!! Flu, can I borrow your bullshit weed wacker? I am awed by your finely-honed ability to cut to the heart of the matter.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’d be more than happy if the public schools would just manage to teach English to their students. ALL their students. But by the looks of most of the discussion and message boards (Pigg’s being the glaring exception) and chat rooms out there in cyberspace, this hasn’t been done in a long time (50 years?). I have to admit, despite my distress over the evidence of widespread illiteracy exhibited in these places, I get a perverse kick when I come across a post from a “real” American on a rant, declaring that an immigrant needs to come here and learn how to spell and construct sentences in English. However, their post is chock full of grammatical and punctuation errors, incomplete sentences, and spelling and syntax that is so tangled that I feel like I’M reading a foreign language.

But in defense of the schools, I think that, while they sometimes bring the ceiling down on themselves with self-initiated f**ked-up policy decisions, much of the time they are just trying to get people off their backs so they can get on with the business of teaching. School has become one big power-grabbing exercise for students. Control is very important to kids: almost from birth, they are in a constant struggle to control their environments, and this is never more extreme than when they hit adolescence. In the good old days, social groups would slug it out, mano a mano, and settle things with a Rebel Without A Cause-style chickenrun.

But kids have evolved. Thanks to the wonders of mass media, and also to their indulgent parents (who, unlike mine, no longer see fit to smack their kids upside the head, and tell them to grow up and get with the program), kids have figured out that they can go to school administration and plead PTSD as a result of cultural misunderstanding. Cinco de Mayo??!! I’m not even sure that these kids can count to five, or figure out the date without consulting their iPhones. But they manage to get the school to restrict the dress code for the white kids. Then the white kids’ parents (and, yes, I know some of the t-shirt brigade were of Hispanic descent) call in the media, and the white kids win that skirmish. Then the Hispanic kids walk out of class, and have the school administrators kissing their asses again…..it’s all bullshit.

As I asked in another post, how many of us could do our jobs with employees that are lazy, disruptive, insulting, insubordinate, and, often, violent? Especially if each of these employees had two loud publicity-seeking attorneys on retainer, protecting their “rights”. Teachers and administrators face this every day. I do not favor turning a completely blind eye to school administration policy, but i endorse turning a blind eye to our children’s inexcusable behavior even less.

[eavesdropper]

Congratulations!! May you always be as happy in your home and neighborhood, as you are today. And here’s hoping that you build up a ton of equity!

[eavesdropper]

Congratulations!! May you always be as happy in your home and neighborhood, as you are today. And here’s hoping that you build up a ton of equity!

[eavesdropper]

Congratulations!! May you always be as happy in your home and neighborhood, as you are today. And here’s hoping that you build up a ton of equity!

[eavesdropper]

Congratulations!! May you always be as happy in your home and neighborhood, as you are today. And here’s hoping that you build up a ton of equity!

[eavesdropper]

Congratulations!! May you always be as happy in your home and neighborhood, as you are today. And here’s hoping that you build up a ton of equity!

[eavesdropper]

[quote=AN]eavesdropper, I don’t deny that we’re paying for it. But that’s still not enough ground to start controlling others diet. Those like Brian probably support taxing calories, fat and suggar too, right?[/quote]

AN, I definitely see your point, but I guess I’m just frustrated that no one seems to recognize the incredible overgrowth (no pun intended) of the “welfare” system. I’m not talking about the widespread perception of the lifelong “welfare queen” whose only real job has been to give birth to more jobless AFDC recipients. I’m not denying the existence of individuals that fit this description, but I think that we’re focusing so much attention on one stereotype, that we’re missing what amounts to a ticking time bomb in our national economy.

I think of Social Security disability as middle-class welfare. For the life of me, I can’t understand why the Social Security system was ever expanded to cover income for disabled people, with no accompanying tax to pay the costs (and while Democrats may have been responsible for the original expansion, Republicans have played a part in maintaining it). But I do know that the criteria for the original recipients was that they have an chronic illness (with no hope of improvement or recovery) or permanent injury so disabling as to not be able to perform ANY type of work. So, for example, if you became parylyzed from the waist down from a diving into a shallow pool, and could no longer work construction, you were still expected to go to work at a job you could do with your upper body. It didn’t matter if you had to get different training, or if the new job wouldn’t pay as much as your prior occupation did.

It’s completely different now. You cannot believe what qualifies as total disability. What’s even more mind-boggling is that parents are working to get their children on SS disability. For anyone wondering how Octomom was able to make it (before the recent additions to her brood), three out of her six kids were receiving SS payments for disabilities such as ADHD, delayed speech, and mild autism.

I’m a hopeless C-Span radio addict, and listen to their morning call-in show. I’m stunned by the number of callers in their 30s and 40s, eschewing ultraconservative views, who then reveal that they’re on SS disability for a variety of physical ailments related to lifestyle choices. They’ll condemn the poor, the unemployed, the unwed and divorced mothers for causing all the country’s economic ills, but really believe their form of government aid is justified.

Sorry to go off on this, but it not only frustrates me tremendously – it scares the hell out of me. If raising taxes and the level of surveillance on people’s eating choices can bring attention to the abuse of the Social Security systems by undeserving individuals, and the resulting exponentially-expanding debt, I’ll go for it. Surveillance exists already by the private health insurers, who are dumping overweight subscribers with obesity-related issues. Where do you imagine they go from there? You guessed it!

[eavesdropper]

[quote=AN]eavesdropper, I don’t deny that we’re paying for it. But that’s still not enough ground to start controlling others diet. Those like Brian probably support taxing calories, fat and suggar too, right?[/quote]

AN, I definitely see your point, but I guess I’m just frustrated that no one seems to recognize the incredible overgrowth (no pun intended) of the “welfare” system. I’m not talking about the widespread perception of the lifelong “welfare queen” whose only real job has been to give birth to more jobless AFDC recipients. I’m not denying the existence of individuals that fit this description, but I think that we’re focusing so much attention on one stereotype, that we’re missing what amounts to a ticking time bomb in our national economy.

I think of Social Security disability as middle-class welfare. For the life of me, I can’t understand why the Social Security system was ever expanded to cover income for disabled people, with no accompanying tax to pay the costs (and while Democrats may have been responsible for the original expansion, Republicans have played a part in maintaining it). But I do know that the criteria for the original recipients was that they have an chronic illness (with no hope of improvement or recovery) or permanent injury so disabling as to not be able to perform ANY type of work. So, for example, if you became parylyzed from the waist down from a diving into a shallow pool, and could no longer work construction, you were still expected to go to work at a job you could do with your upper body. It didn’t matter if you had to get different training, or if the new job wouldn’t pay as much as your prior occupation did.

It’s completely different now. You cannot believe what qualifies as total disability. What’s even more mind-boggling is that parents are working to get their children on SS disability. For anyone wondering how Octomom was able to make it (before the recent additions to her brood), three out of her six kids were receiving SS payments for disabilities such as ADHD, delayed speech, and mild autism.

I’m a hopeless C-Span radio addict, and listen to their morning call-in show. I’m stunned by the number of callers in their 30s and 40s, eschewing ultraconservative views, who then reveal that they’re on SS disability for a variety of physical ailments related to lifestyle choices. They’ll condemn the poor, the unemployed, the unwed and divorced mothers for causing all the country’s economic ills, but really believe their form of government aid is justified.

Sorry to go off on this, but it not only frustrates me tremendously – it scares the hell out of me. If raising taxes and the level of surveillance on people’s eating choices can bring attention to the abuse of the Social Security systems by undeserving individuals, and the resulting exponentially-expanding debt, I’ll go for it. Surveillance exists already by the private health insurers, who are dumping overweight subscribers with obesity-related issues. Where do you imagine they go from there? You guessed it!

[eavesdropper]

[quote=AN]eavesdropper, I don’t deny that we’re paying for it. But that’s still not enough ground to start controlling others diet. Those like Brian probably support taxing calories, fat and suggar too, right?[/quote]

AN, I definitely see your point, but I guess I’m just frustrated that no one seems to recognize the incredible overgrowth (no pun intended) of the “welfare” system. I’m not talking about the widespread perception of the lifelong “welfare queen” whose only real job has been to give birth to more jobless AFDC recipients. I’m not denying the existence of individuals that fit this description, but I think that we’re focusing so much attention on one stereotype, that we’re missing what amounts to a ticking time bomb in our national economy.

I think of Social Security disability as middle-class welfare. For the life of me, I can’t understand why the Social Security system was ever expanded to cover income for disabled people, with no accompanying tax to pay the costs (and while Democrats may have been responsible for the original expansion, Republicans have played a part in maintaining it). But I do know that the criteria for the original recipients was that they have an chronic illness (with no hope of improvement or recovery) or permanent injury so disabling as to not be able to perform ANY type of work. So, for example, if you became parylyzed from the waist down from a diving into a shallow pool, and could no longer work construction, you were still expected to go to work at a job you could do with your upper body. It didn’t matter if you had to get different training, or if the new job wouldn’t pay as much as your prior occupation did.

It’s completely different now. You cannot believe what qualifies as total disability. What’s even more mind-boggling is that parents are working to get their children on SS disability. For anyone wondering how Octomom was able to make it (before the recent additions to her brood), three out of her six kids were receiving SS payments for disabilities such as ADHD, delayed speech, and mild autism.

I’m a hopeless C-Span radio addict, and listen to their morning call-in show. I’m stunned by the number of callers in their 30s and 40s, eschewing ultraconservative views, who then reveal that they’re on SS disability for a variety of physical ailments related to lifestyle choices. They’ll condemn the poor, the unemployed, the unwed and divorced mothers for causing all the country’s economic ills, but really believe their form of government aid is justified.

Sorry to go off on this, but it not only frustrates me tremendously – it scares the hell out of me. If raising taxes and the level of surveillance on people’s eating choices can bring attention to the abuse of the Social Security systems by undeserving individuals, and the resulting exponentially-expanding debt, I’ll go for it. Surveillance exists already by the private health insurers, who are dumping overweight subscribers with obesity-related issues. Where do you imagine they go from there? You guessed it!

[Author]

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