Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Do you get a litte thrill, in spite of yourself, when you read something so unselfconciously horrific it gives you vertigo??

If so, allow me to recommend this, by "a political science professor at New York University":

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/19/AR2007031901638.html

In 2005, there were more than 7 million poor men ages 16 to 50 in the United States, and only half of them worked at all.... Poor men want to work and succeed, yet many cannot endure the slights and disappointments that work involves.... Congress is likely to raise the minimum wage, and wage subsidies for low-skilled men could also be increased. But if low wages are not the main cause of male nonwork, these steps will change little.

Can you guess where this is going? Yep, right the first time. Here's a teaser, expressed with just the right foreboding blend of bureaucratic disassociative surface sentiment and deeply buried sadism:

A better idea is to use the child support system, which requires absent fathers to support their families, and the criminal justice system, which is supposed to supervise many ex-offenders on parole after they leave prison.

Here's what this latter-day Gradgrind looks like -- surprise, surprise: