The New Welfare Swindle. (CRAZY MONEY)

American spectator ^ | 11/17/11 | By Christopher Orlet

[Typical_Whitey]

Ever since I moved to the inner city one thing has puzzled me more than any other, and that is how my low-income neighbors get by. Assuming they aren't doing anything illegal, how do they afford their homes, their meals, their gadgets, their cars?

Few seem to work, even part time, for they are home in the morning when I leave for work, home if I stop by for lunch, and home when I return in the evening. They can't work the graveyard shift, for they keep me up half the night with their raucous music. I am left to conclude that they seldom, if ever work. Therefore, their funds must come from elsewhere. And none of them strike me as a trust fund baby.

The best I can figure is they make do with a patchwork of welfare programs. Besides, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which expires after five years, there is housing assistance, WIC (Women, Infants and Children) and Medicaid. There are food stamps, which also can be sold in parking lots for cash, and various lesser programs, such as heating assistance.

[magellan]

"Back in the bad old days when food stamps were actually stamps, this could be done. But today food stamps are doled out via a credit card."

They still sell the EBT cards and PINs, and will sell the recharge too. In California, you can buy fast food with EBT.

Don't forget, their are unscrupulous shopkeepers who will take EBTs and give out cash, or sell liquor or cigarettes off of the SNAP side of the EBT money. The same way they did with paper food stamps.

As long as you have the card and the PIN, you are good to go.

However, with the ability to now purchased pre-cooked prepared food and restaurant food with EBT, fewer people probably sell their benefits for cash.

[magellan]

"Rent alone can be a big expense on the fixed income of SSI."

True if it is just you in an unsubsidized home.

Easier if it is you and your three kids who also qualify for SSI and you are in subsidized housing. Oh, and you also get SNAP, TANF, Medicaid, daycare subsidies, and an ObamaPhone.

And even easier if you share the home with your sister who also has three kids on SSI, SNAP, TANF, and daycare subsidies, and you babysit her kids, and she babysits your kids, and you each get paid each other's daycare subsidies so it never leaves the house.

Increase the cash value of these benefits by about 1/3rd again, and you have what you would need to gross in a paycheck to equal the tax free value of these benefits.

[StAnDeliver]

"Need to stop thinking about it.... If I allow myself to dwell on it, I’ll feel like a total sucker for busting my ass working hard to support my family. My wife totally feels the same way. I swear, if this continues, someday we might just decide to pick up our toys and go home."

"The Election -- listen I think this is where this country's at right now ... I like a country where people bust their tookus, and I think this country's gone a long way towards becoming more of a European model. And I would say once again, read the book, Amity Schlaes' book The Forgotten Man -- if you are out there now, making $45,000 a year, busting your hump being away from your family because it's in your hard drive to do the right thing, the right thing changed in this country yesterday. You can get close to that from the government." -- Dennis Miller, The Factor, Nov. 7, 2012

[Typical_Whitey]

You see that is the problem on our side there is really no passion.... Where is our ANTI-DEBT movement? It should better organized, louder and more focused than the Lefts anti-war movement.

[bitt]

this writer has an easy way of stating the (unfortunate ) obvious....

the new welfare swindle
http://spectator.org/archives/2011/11/17/the-new-welfare-swindle

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/09/27/my-zero-tolerance-policy

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/09/13/among-the-dropouts

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/05/17/when-men-wont-work

[dforest]

They don’t get married and breed. They live together and both receive assistance. They get massive amounts of benefits and monster tax refund checks too.

[dforest]

The case you are speaking of is legit. The majority are not.

[StAnDeliver]

"Read an economic history of 21st century Argentina, and then say you wish that on America, although that’s where I think we’re headed."

Columbia.

[Nascar Dad]

+ Obama Phones!

[Nascar Dad]

bttt

[OneWingedShark]

Supposed to be for those who have a disability that never allowed them to work. Think MR, polio etc.

Well, yes; Mitt Romney is a disability... but I don't see how many people could claim him for their social security disability.

[MrB]

This theme needs to become prevalent:
0bama voters just aren’t interested in working for the stuff they want.

[OneWingedShark]

To play devil’s advocate:
But what good is work when it never matters? What good is it when most of what you make will be taken from you under color of law?

[OneWingedShark]

>“CALIFORNIA: CITY TO PAY FOR SEX CHANGES”

Page 2: new hot-dog plant opens.

[MrB]

If you work to better your economic situation, it will be taken from you.

If you don’t work, it will be given to you.

Hmmm... is this a tough choice for your average Ozombie?

[Little Ray]

This is actually pretty old. I remember this from the Clinton Administration.
Yet NOTHING has been done...

[OneWingedShark]

>If you work to better your economic situation, it will be taken from you.
>If you don’t work, it will be given to you.

Indeed, that’s what my point was. (The first part, anyway).

[MrB]

You need both sides of the equation to see what a screwed up mess this incentivizes.

[OneWingedShark]

You see that is the problem on our side there is really no passion.... Where is our ANTI-DEBT movement?

I totally agree.
I have a bit of passion about law -- but I get a lot of flack for it because I shoot down people's expectation of it by going to the [usu constitutional] text, to be honest I don't think that people really want to reform our corrupt justice-system.

An example:
The NM state constitution says "no law shall abridge the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms for security and defense", yet there's state statutes prohibiting firearms on university property, and one on [public] school property.
And "no county or municipality shall regulate, in any way, an incident of the right to keep and bear arms", yer all the municipal and county courthouses I saw posted big prohibited signs.

Even on a conservative site like this, I get a lot of people saying it's stupid to allow guns in courthouses, that the university can regulate firearms being private property [conveniently ignoring that it's a state statute, and the constitution prohibits such a law].

[Polyxene]

I received the following e-mail. It was signed, but I didn’t want to publish the woman’s name.

“At approximately 2:30 pm, September 6, 2012, I entered
the Kroger store on SR 28 in Goshen, Ohio to pick up a few items. I gathered my items and went to the 10 and under register to check-out. The person in front of me (white female, approximate age 25-43, fake nails, big braided hair do, clean clothes, carrying a purse and a plastic drinking cup) put her purchase on the check out surface - ONE GRAPE. Yes, that is correct ONE GRAPE. The cashier asked if that
was all, she replied yes. The cashier then weighed the GRAPE and told the woman the cost was $.02 (TWO CENTS), the woman then pulled out her EBT card (credit card for food stamps) and swiped it through the credit card machine, requesting $24.00 in cash back. The cashier asked if she
wanted the GRAPE, the woman replied no and the GRAPE was put in the garbage can. The register recorded the sale as .02, cash back $24.00,credit .02, total $24.00 cash back. The cashier then asked if two fives would be okay because was out of tens, the woman agreed and took the
$24.00 folded it up and put it in her pocket and left the store. As the next person in line I asked the cashier “as a taxpayer what in the hell just happened here?” She said she was on the clock and could not comment. I then asked if I had actually seen this person purchase and discard a GRAPE, then get cash back on her EBT card. The cashier responded that it happens all day every day in their
store. She also said that if the person buying the GRAPE has it ring up over .02 they get mad and make her reweigh it. My next comment was to ask the cashier if she planned to vote in November and she said she could hardly wait for 11/6/12 to get here as one taxpayer to another. I paid for my groceries, in cash, and left the store madder than 10 wet hens.

This is not one of those stories that a friend of a friend
told a friend - I WITNESSED THIS AND WOULD LOVE TO TESTIFY IN COURT TO WHAT I SAW, however, it is apparently not illegal to go into a grocery store and buy a GRAPE, throw it away and take cash back from a food stamp EBT card and walk out the door. If she is so poor she needs food
stamps why in the hell didn’t she buy groceries??”

No wonder BO won — more takers than makers!