Octuplet mom....nutty as a pecan ball...

Unfortunately it's considered bad taste to let babies starve in order to prove a point.

~Zoo

RW, I heard it was 6 embryos implanted (two split) that still don't make it right, just a clarification. I think the doctor that performed it should be held liable too. He is responsible for consultation with the patient and should have refused based on her current litter of kids at home. Even if she only wanted one, it should have raised flags. I know some will scream about the womans rights, but when the burden shifts to the government, "wants" instead of "needs" must be examined. The taxpayers should sue this doctor for support of the children, that should stop him from doing it again in the future.

As for the mother, she needs psychiatric help. Any woman that thinks she can properly care for 8 newborns, 6 other young children, 3 of which have disabilities/special needs, should undergo treatment.

I can only imagine how much of this kind of welfare fraud goes on, only on a smaller scale. And some folks want more social programs?

But she plans to get a Masters degree and become a counselor.....yeah, that's going to happen.

yep and now they all have free medical too! Aint

I have been following this story since it broke and the more I learn about it the more annoyed I get.  This woman obviously has some major mental problems, how they were missed when she worked in a mental hospital is beyond me.  There are so many things to "love" about this story:

1) She claims that she doesn't consider herself on welfare.  She is on social programs that are out there that because of her three disabled kids she qualifies for.  I don't know about you but that IS welfare.

2) Her grand plan for providing for her children is to go back to school and use STUDENT loans to supliment her lack of an income.  I don't know how that is even legal.

3) I just saw an article this morning that said she has started a website where she is actively soliciting donations.  She takes Visa, Mastercard, and Paypal.  How nice of her to be so accepting.

4) While this isn't official by any means I'm willing to bet that she expects to get calls from TLC or Discovery to start a show similar to "John and Kate Plus 8".

This woman needs some serious psychological help and I really hope family services makes regular visits to her home.

I hold a 45+ hour a week job. Sara stays at home and is the homekeeper. With the children having issues at school and the threapy ...o and we are not having any more kids.

But yeah i find it funny shes getting food stamps...no father... depends on her parents to care for the kids... there is so much fail with this lady... hence the reason why in some cases i support "fixing" adults

How'd you figure that one out? In 2007 US debt was ~65.5% of GDP. UK debt was ~43.8% of GDP, so if anyones bankrupt, it's the US, not England.

Also why are you complaining? Is it not cheaper to have a parent looking after lots of children at once instead of only a few? If you have 3 kids you'll either need to not work to see to them, or get childcover while you work. If you have 14, you'll either need to not work to see to them, or get childcover while you work. In other words, it's far cheaper to have the 14th child than the 1st. Meanwhile when those children grow up they'll be expected to (on average) pay far more back in taxes than the mother will have received to help raise them.

Anyway what are you proposing instead? That you cut off welfare and leave the mothers+their children to starve on the streets? That you have a child cap policy similar to China's 1 child one? That you ban people from having IVF if they're not earning a certain level of income? That you only allow the rich to have children? Any one of those sounds like a far worse alternative.

I don't know about anyone else but I would be asking that the folks in charge of regulating the medical industry (AMA or whomever) institute rules that require that before someone gets IVF they have to prove that they can afford to care for the kids they already have plus however many may take from the procedure, assume half of the number implanted.  It is completely irresponsible for any individual to go through, or the doctor to perform, the IVF procedure when the individual can barely afford to care for the children they already have.

Perhaps I wasn't clear.  I don't mind her collecting disability payments for her disabled kids, but let's call a spade a spade when you're unemployed receiving government assistance you are on some form of welfare no matter what it's actual source is.  It was her semantics that bothered me in that case.

O Okay lol. Yeah kinda got lost in traslation there.

See I feel she did this on her own and the Gov ( at least someone with balls ) would tell her GTHO...

See I dont think I really fit into any one group when it comes to politics... I go from one side to the other on issues. I love the gov to live withen the means and not raise taxes... That makes me conservative right? But on the other hand, i dont mind giving a helping hand to honest hard working people that have had a string of bad luck.

She didnt fall on bad luck she had those eggs inplanted to have more babies at her own will. Sad thing is I almost think CS should get involved... take the kids away and put them into carring homes because there are plenty of loving couples that CANT have kids that would love the child to death. O and they could support the kids too

I am much the same way.  I consider myself Libertarian or essentially fiscally conservative, socially liberal.  I don't mind providing a hand up when someone falls on bad times but I detest the hand out.

This is nothing but total, complete, and utter liberal drivel. My god, this is textbook; Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter could have written this as a snarky example of liberal mindlessness. But with them, it would be cute, and funny. With you, it's just sad and scary.

Okay, maybe I was wrong about England; I remembered hearing that somewhere. Mea Culpa.

But you don't see anything wrong with this? It's okay with you that this welfare-sucking nutcase has 14 kids, now? Kids that she's simply expecting others to help her care for? The casual impertinence of that idea just floors me. She just assumes someone will help her with this massive boondoggle she's created.

 Everyone but you is simply saying that there should be some repsonsiblity on the part of the mother, the doctor, etc.

You, on the other hand, would be perfectly happy paying for this ignoramus to keep spitting out as many offspring as she likes, because you asked, "what about the woman's rights"?

Who gives a shit about the woman's rights? As I said, it's not like she had sex with a man and BOOM! ended up with octuplets. That's different; that's nature. Sperm is free.

No...this cost someone thousands of dollars, and over the years, will cost the taxpayers millions more. And I wouldn't be surprised at all if the taxpayers end up housing at least a few of these kids in the penitentiary, too, in 15 or 20 years' time.

What about the kid's rights? Are they going to have a good life? I doubt it. The older kids will be stuck for life, playing babysitter and taking care of the younger ones.

They'll grow up seeing the things mommy does, and be just like her: living on welfare and defrauding the people of their hard-earned money while they sit on their asses. How can I say this with such certainty? Because the statistics bear me out. People who live on welfare beget people who live on welfare, etc. It's a self-fulfilling prophesy and a never-ending cycle.

See, that's the difference in what comes from you and those like you, and what else I see on this thread: common sense. You don't have any.

Exactly. You take what you earn.  People tend to want more for nothing and stay on it.

The other thing is this is the way the "younger crowd" views life should be in the US. Its all about what they can get without working hard for it. This country was built on hard work and sweat and blood of its past generations. We have gone to the wayside of that. It makes me sad.

O well the way its going people will enbrace this lady and pitty her. Id toss her out and take the kids bottom line. Is there a way to stop something like this? Yes. make it clear that there is no freebies for those people that decide to bite off more than they can support willingly. Easy as that. People like her would think twice about going and having more kids.

Feel free to donate your own money to her if you feel that way. 

Oh, I don't feel that way.  I'm just saying normal people have issues with letting children suffer and die.  

A situation like this has interesting moral obstacles.  On one hand you have a psycho bitch who needs a fucking mental institution and doesn't deserve to get paid for this and on the other you have a litter of children that are royally fucked if no one steps in.

Choices, choices.

This is why I'm misanthropic most of the time.

~Zoo

Consider for a moment that those 50+ new employees will be paying Michigan state income taxes and bringing the state back well more than the tax break value over the ten year span. The state isn't doing this for charity. Even placing everyone at the bottom end of the software dev payscale, we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars net gain for the state, just for the term of the tax breaks. Most likely much more, and after the ten years are up, even more still. And if those people are moving in from elsewhere, add on MI property taxes, etc., for extra gravy.

That's completely ignoring the 100+ auxiliary jobs mentioned by the article.

Nevermind that the "300k in Brad's pocket" doesn't exist--the property development costs pale in comparison to the operational costs of an expansion, and that 300k over ten years (note, not an up-front lump sum, unlike the 900k up-front cost of expansion) is barely enough to pay half of one brand new developer over that ten year span.

Didn't take you long to revert to your normal habit of quoting things I never said. You basically seem to be arguing it's better for the government to spend 3 times as much on child benefits with those children being spread over several families than it is to make those child benefits be used in the most efficient manner (assuming you don't want children+their parents out on the streets starving, which thinking about it is probably a fairly big assumption), since I'm arguing for the 'more efficient' spending and you're disagreeing with me.

Yeah, looking after 14 children is 'sitting on your ass doing nothing'. No doubt you aren't the primary carer of any children.

So you have no problem with a society that leaves women and children to starve on the streets? Because that is the inevitable result if you don't have the government ensure that people can at least survive. Charity will help some people, but not all, since by it's nature it's unreliable. Better to just take a small amount from the super-rich to ensure those not as fortunate as them can at least scrape by. In the rich persons case it means they may not have quite such a massive private yaught. In the poor person's case it can be the difference between life and death. I know which I consider more important.

The same goes for children. Furthermore LW said that Brad was going to expand anyway. In other words, if that was the case the government would have gotten most if not all of the extra employee income/payroll taxes without needing to offer the bait. Seems a bit amusing though that Brad is a beneficiary of redistribution given how much he's opposed it.

~230k* is still a lot of money to have in his pocket

Not if he'd opted to build the new studio in another state or move the entire company to a lower-tax locale. The state recognized they had a lot more to gain by giving some incentive to stay put; if they hadn't granted the break, they'd be getting nothing more at all (if not much less).

How is it redistribution when he's already paying more than what he was given a break for (a scant $120k/yr for 10 years)? Calling it that would imply that he's getting some sort of handout, which couldn't be further from the truth. Paying less, but still paying a significant amount all the same. And as the business grows, the state will get more and more back from its investment.

I probably should have said relative redistribution to make it a bit clearer; relative to a business(/individual) without such tax breaks - that is if you didn't have the tax break for Brad then both him and the other one could benefit from being taxed at a slightly lower rate. Alternatively Brad could  get the tax break while the other pays more, meaning relative to the two some of the money from the second person/business is effectively going to fund the tax break for the first.

Even with your incredibly conservative $50k per figure, that's $2.6m per year in wages. Much of which will end up going to local stores, local apartments, local real estate, etc. This is contrasted with the state basically agreeing to take reduced tax income from those people; ignoring the property taxes, sales taxes, etc., that these new Michigan residents would be paying, the state still nets a small gain tax-wise on income taxes (after the breaks) alone versus not having those jobs at all.

And should something catastrophic happen to the company and the jobs dry up, there won't be a company around to utilize those tax breaks. Brad doesn't magically keep getting tax breaks when there's no company to pay taxes, and that $120k/year gets cut short at that point. At any given point prior the state will still have had a net gain from doing so.

Bottom line: the state would not have made such an agreement if it were not in its own best interest, and they're well aware of exactly what they stood to gain or lose by the choice they were faced with. They recognize it's the best scenario for them--they give up on a tiny bit of tax income, and get a huge chunk of real local economic stimulus in return (along with enough new taxes to surpass what they gave up).

LW: You're an idiot.

If Stardock pays say $1.8M in taxes but the state of Michigan wants us to stay in Michigan despite it costing more by reducing how much it charges us in taxes to merely be say 1000X more than whats ay you pay, that's hardly the same as what the Octoplet mom is doing.

Only a total moron confuses a tax cut with welfare.  

LW, I think it's time you find another blog site.  I'll give you 24 hours to backup your stuff.

We were going to expand in Washington, not Michigan because it's cheaper to have a tech company in Washington than Michigan. Michigan wanted those jobs here and has agreed to reduce our tax burden in order to make the state competitive with Washington.

The problem with liberals, beside  not understanding basic economics or being foolish enough to go out of their way to insult the owner of the site is that they can't grasp the difference between a tax cut and getting welfare.

For instance, Little Whip gets checks from the government. Sure, when she had jobs that she paid taxes on.. in the day or whaever she paid some piddly amount in in taxes but she's probably gotten a lot more back from the government than she already paid in. That's welfare.

By contrast,  if we don't pay taxes, we don't get taxes cut.  It's a matter of the state government reducing its take in order to offset the other expenses we face because our business is located in Michigan. 

Which makes two points I've been trying to make for years on this site:

1) If you want to actually help the economy, reduce the money you take from those who create wealth so that they have more of it to invest.

2) Those who do things will always have an advantage over those who don't. They have the leverage.

It's a good policy for states or townships (heck, even Simcity gave the player the ability to set tax rates on different types of businesses) to use the tax code to attract and support different types of businesses.

Incidentally, I have exiled LW. I'm sick of seeing threads hijacked by her just so that she can smear me.  It pisses me off seeing some asshat trying to argue that the government confiscating less of what we earn as being equivalent of someone who cranks out kids and stands back and gets checks from the government with nothing in return.

I missed the part where anyone was whining.  LW has just lost her mind bitching about how she's a "have not" and anyone who has more than her has no right to complain about anything.  Not knowing what she's talking about doesn't prevent her from spewing at every opportunity even when it means hijacking threads to spew it.

This is rich coming from someone who is doing the opposite of either.  The tax payers aren't investing anything in Stardock.  MI just agreed to bleed Stardock a little less in exchange for Stardock staying in MI and creating jobs in a state that has about the worst employment situation anywhere right now.

This shows her ignorance of how Brad has built such a successful business.

LW is just writing this as an attempt to defend herself even though she knows as well as everyone else that it is a personal attack.  If it wasn't personal, she wouldn't name Brad and Stardock and quote our particular situation.  LW has just succumbed to her raging jealousy that some people make good decision all the way along in life and end up being financially well off.

I guess she won't have to worry about any "uber rich whining" around here anymore.

IVF is expensive (like all things medical), and followed by the cost of having 8 kids in intensive care for... I think 3 months, she's probably given her fellow state citizens somewhere bewteen $1.5-2.5 million in hospital bills.

That sounds about right.  ~ $3000 per kid, per day, 90 days = $2,160,000 total.

Lucky Californians!