[TommyJefferson]

These Amish just can't seem to get it through their thick heads that we have laws for a reason. The laws protect us (especially the children).

Laws are not optional. That's why we call people who don't follow the laws *criminals*, and punish them.

Link - Amish criminals can't learn to follow the rules

These Amish retards need to spend a few months in a PMITA prison. That will teach them to follow the rules that our democratically elected representatives made to benefit ALL of us.

[Jotapay]

At least they aren't those shifless Mennonites!

[smallpoxgirl]

You are being sarcastic right Tommy?

[PenultimateManStanding]

Let them build their houses. Free people don't need permission to build a home.

[eastbay]

This is just silly. No one's going to tear down any Amish homes. They'll have an avalanche of pro bono publico lawyers lining up on their side.

And they'll get to keep building their sturdy futuristic homes free from electricity and indoor plumbing.

These officials are simply responding to complaints from voters, that's all.

[perdition79]

The Amish should be left alone. To them, our entire civilization is a speculative bubble set to burst.

[TommyJefferson]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('smallpoxgirl', 'Y')ou are being sarcastic right Tommy?

[oowolf]

Yeah, we have 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's prisoners in our jails: that makes the good ol' USA the LEAST FREE nation on Earth. Of course, I know that in some nations if you FUp they just take your life-not your freedom. They haven't learned to make incarceration a growth industry like we have.

[3aidlillahi]

I wonder what would happen if an Amish person, recently released on probation, were ordered to have an electronic ankle-bracelet on.

[joewp]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('perdition79', 'T')he Amish should be left alone. To them, our entire civilization is a speculative bubble set to burst.

[blukatzen]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('3aidlillahi', 'I') wonder what would happen if an Amish person, recently released on probation, were ordered to have an electronic ankle-bracelet on.

[blukatzen]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Jotapay', 'A')t least they aren't those shifless Mennonites!

[blukatzen]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('joewp', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('perdition79', 'T')he Amish should be left alone. To them, our entire civilization is a speculative bubble set to burst.

[IslandCrow]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'b')ut Amish homes aren't falling down, he said.

"People aren't getting hurt," he said.

[pedalling_faster]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'L')et them build their houses. Free people don't need permission to build a home.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')OPEKA, Ind. -- A part-time construction job strengthened Orva Fry's financial foundation after he was laid off from a recreational vehicle factory. It also kept the 41-year-old Amish father of two on steady spiritual ground.

Another way to make ends meet that Fry briefly considered -- unemployment checks -- went against his faith, which shuns all forms of government assistance.

That Fry even pondered signing up for jobless benefits illustrates a marked shift in this Northern Indiana Amish settlement, the nation's third-largest.

Suffering steep unemployment following a decades-long shift from farming to factory work, a growing number of the area's 23,000 Amish are breaking with centuries of tradition and taking government help to stay afloat, church and economic leaders say.

Bishops who once might have censured those who sought public assistance are reluctantly looking the other way.

"We prefer to supply ourselves, but I told people that if they have no other option and no other way to make ends meet then they can take it," said Paul Hochstetler, bishop of an Amish district east of Goshen.

Of more than two dozen Amish approached recently in Topeka, a town of 1,100 about 40 miles southeast of South Bend, only six would talk of the unemployment situation, and all were reluctant to be identified.

The unemployment rate in the Elkhart-Goshen metropolitan area approached 19 percent in March -- the most recent month for which data are available -- in large part due to the misfortune of RV factories that have laid off thousands of workers. It is the nation's fourth-highest unemployment rate and is up 13 points from March 2008, the country's largest increase.

It's part of a simpler way of life for the Amish, a Christian denomination with about 227,000 members nationwide that uses bicycles or horse-drawn buggies instead of owning cars and avoids connecting to the electrical grid because of a belief that doing so will lead to a dependence on the outside world.

"We want to be producers, to be an overall good to the community and to the nation and not be dependent upon the nation for our livelihood or for the federal or state governments to give us our livelihood," said David Kline, an Amish minister in Mount Hope, Ohio, whose county has the nation's largest Amish population.

For centuries, that has meant taking care of their own, supplying food, shelter and other necessities in times of need. Those who seek outside help can risk being forced to make public confessions in church or told to refrain from taking communion for six months, said Steven Nolt, a Goshen College history professor who has written several books on the Amish.

But tradition has had to bend as Northern Indiana's Amish continue to move away from their roots, becoming heavily reliant on a single industry.

A survey of 3,358 Amish heads of households in Indiana's Elkhart-LaGrange settlement in 2007 found that 53.3 percent earned their living working in factories. In contrast, the economies of the nation's largest Amish centers -- the Holmes County area of Ohio and around Lancaster, Pa. -- focus primarily on small shops, construction trades and, to a lesser extent, farming.

"When the RV industry shut down here as well as the mobile home industry, it hit them really hard," said LeRoy Mast, director of the Menno-Hof, a nonprofit information center in nearby Shipshewana that teaches visitors about the Amish and Mennonites.

"They can't handle the 19 percent unemployment rate on their own because the needs are just so great."
http://www.courier-journal.com/article/ ... s+of+faith

[Windmills]

I saw a program on the Amish, and it was my understanding that a big part of the problem is that they have difficulty acquiring new land and hence farms for the new generations. Without more land to generate new jobs, those without farms have to look elsewhere for work. Is this a carrying capacity/population control issue?

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Windmills', ' ')Is this a carrying capacity/population control issue?

[AAA]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '
')
For example, did you know that the Amish are the only Americans who do not have to pay into Social Security? The Supreme Court granted them this exclusive right, which applies to the farmers (the town workers have to pay into SS). The whole reason for this is because the Amish religion forbids them from accepting SS checks, and they take care of their elderly on their own.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Windmills', ' ')Is this a carrying capacity/population control issue?