Not so hard on Garvey there. I'm a democrat who finds it increasingly hard to remain loyal, precisely because the party has become uncharacteristically fundamentalist in its response to internal dissent or even discussion -- for example, it's dogma that killing inconvenient people is a progressive position, and I have yet to make my peace with that. Maybe the party has destined itself to permanent minority status by aligning itself with anything oppositional, without any real discussion of consistency. It IS a legitimate question: if certain people are opting out of the mainstream and its upwardly mobile behaviors, why should they have their claim on the mainstream rewards system honored and even subsidized? Let's asknowledge that this is an illusion, that far and away the majority of people on assistance would like nothing better than to get productively off of it, but it's an illusion the republicans have had the full and enthusiastic cooperation of the democrats in constructing. Maybe it's just a matter of opposing clusters of pressure groups, and the Republicans' cluster happens to be better funded and better organized.