DK, you are certainly right that no matter how much you give, there are always those who will take from others regardless. My point is why should we be supporting them at all?

I know people get down on their luck sometimes and need help to get through tough times, been there myself. The problem we have here in the US however is that there's a whole segment of society who choose to live off of the rest of society simply because they don't want to work for a livin. They can apply for welfare $$ they receive monthly, food stamps they get monthly and receive rent and utility subsidies they receive monthly for YEARS, some even for a LIFETIME. Now it can be said that the government reinforces this behavior and I agree, as do many others, but the government itself simply continues to implement more and more entitlement programs (which all require further expansion of the govt at the state and federal levels, which also has a huge impact on the overall cost of the implementation of these additional entitlement programs) regardless of their costs to our society or that Americans by and large are tired of seeing their tax $$s used in this way.

This takes away any reasonable incentive for people to provide for themselves and all in all leads to an overall downgrading of our society as a whole. And ..... it enamors this segment of society to a particular political party as the democrats are well known as supporters of this type of entitlement BS, which is actually a clever way of pandering the vote for democratic politicians.

As to the Cops, dude, I'm right there with ya! Cops tend to do what brings in the Buck$ a lot more than they tend to be proactive about preventing or apprehending criminals. Not ALL cops are bad, but my thoughts are that even the ones who choose it as a righteous career path for the right reasons become jaded and all too often succumb to the power trip it affords them with the eventuality being that problee 85% or more of 'em are not GOOD cops

I'm glad I'm not forbidden to be an armed citizen .... YET