patrick.net

When my first daughter was born we needed prenatal help. When my wife went down to "The Clinic" the social worker there sold us the whole package. I said "Look we only need help with the prenatal care and birth" we were then bluntly informed that it was NOT a buffet and we don't get to pick and choose, either we take the Food stamps($500 a month), Welfare Check($500 a month) and WIC.

I didn't change my diet to eat beans and rice for every meal just because I was paying with foodstamps.

Is that right? They force you to take the whole package? But you make a good point, akin to one I read recently. In that story, someone was offended by the SNAP recipient having a wad of cash in their pocket, inferring that they had cash but were soaking the system. Of course, that cash was allocated to pay the water bill.

I also wonder if the famous lobster surfer welfare mooch Fox promotes was really a James O'Keefe style plant. I seriously doubt many people on SNAP buy steak and lobster. Hell, the stupid drug testing idea made more sense than tilting at this windmill, and look what it produced.

CaptainShuddup says

When my first daughter was born we needed prenatal help. When my wife went down to "The Clinic" the social worker there sold us the whole package. I said "Look we only need help with the prenatal care and birth" we were then bluntly informed that it was NOT a buffet and we don't get to pick and choose, either we take the Food stamps($500 a month), Welfare Check($500 a month) and WIC.

I don't think anyone was forcing you to USE the foodstamps or CASHING the checks. You could have exhibited a bit of private enterprise and used the checks for wallpaper. But you probably used both the foodstamps and the money, did you not?

It is incredible what hypocrites the right-wingers can be.

justme says

But you probably used not the foodstamps and the money, did you not?

It is incredible what hipocrites the right-wingers can be.

Well yes I did, and when was I being a hypocrite?
Since then I have put more than my fair share welfare money BACK into the system, so I'm good with it.

I was just pointing out how the social system worked when Clinton was running shit around here, I didn't mean to offend anyone.

I heard that not only are welfare receipients taking 5 trips to europe per year, but they are also flying first class and staying in $400 per night hotels. And, apparently there's a laundering scheme going on where they are trading snaps bennies for rosetta stone.

TARP was probably the largest welfare program ever administered in the world. It was designed to keep shifty, negative productivity leeches in high paying jobs.

Having grown up on welfare, I can tell you that not only did my mother get those benefits, she sometimes babysat, she got some child support and my 3 older siblings worked. We barely had money to pay the rent or to keep the lights and water on. We were often without a telephone and relied on public transportation or our own two feet for transportation. A box of Twinkies and a 12 pack of soda on payday was one of the few things we had to look forward to. I will also let you know that when the neoliberals came into power 35 years ago, the rollback of social programs to help train and employ youth has almost insured that generational poverty continues. Thankfully, I was a teenager back then and was able to participate in a job program that soon after met its demise.

Thanks Diva,

Was work a requirement to receive those benefits, or do you know if it is required now? How rigid are the work requirements now and do they really cap at 5 years?

Diva24 says

I will also let you know that when the neoliberals came into power 35 years ago, the rollback of social programs to help train and employ youth has almost insured that generational poverty continues.

The liberal icon Dollar Bill Clinton stuck that shiv in.

Robert Sproul says

The liberal icon Dollar Bill Clinton stuck that shiv in.

Liberals don't tend to call Clinton liberal. On accounta he wasn't.

CL says

Robert Sproul says

The liberal icon Dollar Bill Clinton stuck that shiv in.

Liberals don't tend to call Clinton liberal. On accounta he wasn't.

And yet many people call Obamneycare "liberal", after that "severe conservative" Romnesia signed it. On a similar note, I see the benefits chart above seems to count some really dubious "benefits" at their spending levels, e.g. Clinton's CHIP, which puts kids on pills with lifelong side effects making them medically dependent on more pills by the time they're teenagers. I wonder how many of the police shooting stories, which are presented through the frame of race, are actually about 20yos who have been on Rx anti-psychotics and untested combinations of other psychotropics since the age of 3, and can't remember having even one clear headed day in their lives.

Hey C2. I don't know of liberals who call Ocare liberal though. Do you?

Democrats (e.g. Hillary) seem to have switched from calling themselves "liberal" to "progressive." I haven't seen a Democrat call any Democratic party policy "liberal" in a long time. But, the self-styled "liberal" media (e.g. HuffPo) swung from opposing Obamneycare to supporting it, really right after Obama completed the same tack (he had campaigned against it when it was called "Hillary's Plan"), and it seems to require 100% fealty from nearly all "liberal" publications (alternet etc.). And of course if you look at any of the allegedly "liberal" commercial press, they endorsed it along with the DTC drug advertisers' checks. Even the "liberals" demanding mandatory single-payer overlook that we already have a predatory single payer system rife with waste fraud and abuse, called Medicare.

"the single mom is better off earning gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income and benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income & benefits of $57,045."

This assumption is based on the assumption that the 29,000 income was somehow less work and therefore easier, when in fact that's probably not the case. There's a decent chance that the person with the 69, 000 income has some sort of skills making it possible for them to make more, but also to enjoy their work more.

I'm not arguing that the person with the skills shouldn't be paid more. Just noting that in fact the lower paying job may be harder and less enjoyable than the work the more skilled person is doing. So it is not clear at all that the single mom that earns 29,000 is in any way better off (other than being able to realize she does just as well with less pay). In fact in most rational people's view, she is worse off, in many ways, especially with respect to potential future earnings.

How to get $75k in benefits for you and your girlfriend. It's sad - but TRUE!

Follow these proven steps.

1. Don't get married to her.
2. Use your mom's address to get mail sent to.
3. The guy buys a house.
4. Guy rents out house to his girl girlfriend who has 2 of his kids.
5. Section 8 will pay 900 a month for a 3 bedroom home.
6. Girlfriend signs up for Obamacare so guy doesn't have to pay out the butt for family insurance.
7. Girlfriend gets to go to college for free being a single mother
8. Girlfriend gets 600 a month for food stamps
9. Girlfriend gets free cell phone
10. Girlfriend get free utilities.
11. Guy moves into home but uses moms house to get mail sent to.
12. Girlfriend claims one kid and guy claims one kid on taxes. Now you both get to claim head of house hold at $1800 credit.
13. Girlfriend gets disability for being "crazy" or having a "bad back" at $1800 a month and never has to work again.

This plan is perfectly legal and is being executed now by millions of people.
A married couple with a stay at home mom yields $0 dollars.
An unmarried couple with stay at home mom nets.
21600 disability +
10800 free housing +
6000 free obamacare +
6000 free food +
4800 free utilities +
6000 pell grant money to spend +
12000 a year in college tuition free from pell grant +
8800 tax benefit for being a single mother =
---------
75,000 a year in benefits
Any idea why the country is 18 + trillion in debt.
Keep it up, your children will pay the price.

Artful dodge, C2. You and we all know that republican intransigence and shifting goalposts make what used to be conservative philosophy appear "liberal".

It's more reasonable to say that liberals are capable of embracing a formerly conservative plan because they are less ideologically driven. All liberals I know prefer some variation of single-payer, Medicare for all, etc over anything that involves private insurance.

Yet we own private insurance, so we are realists and pragmatic.

Yet the "right" are not happy if you give them precisely what is on their wishlist.

When I was in high school, my dad underwent surgery and was out of work. As a result, our family received SS disability benefits. The money was used to offset the lost wages of my dad. My mom was also working. Neither were college grads. My dad had an 8th grade education and worked as a machinist in a copper manufacturing facility. My mom had a high school education and worked as a receptionist. I had been told by a friend who had worked in the Head Start program that my brother and I would have been eligible for the program based upon our family background. Both of my parents worked until retirement. My brother and I are both college grads. One of us is a multi-millionaire, FWIW.

Congrats to your brother, Blurtman. :)

CL says

we own private insurance, so we are [influenced by stock market returns]

There, fixed that for you. One of the federal judges who upheld the constitutionality of Obamneycare had made more $$$$ on her medical stocks during the period from its death (election of Scott Brown) to resurrection ("demon pass") than from her salary during the same period. She gushed particularly about the extra 2% of top line revenue that would flow to her hospital stocks.

How many "liberal" Democrats advocated bringing back conscription for the Iraq war (which many of them voted to authorize)? I saw Mark Shields and at least one Democrat Congressman demanding that, plus others, I lost count, of course they say it's "unfair" that "only" the poor fight in the war while rich people don't have to (they never mention that they want to conscript only males age 18-26, while nobody else gets conscripted to die in a foreign trench, somehow that seems perfectly fair to "liberal" Democrats, after "liberal" hero LBJ started the Viet Nam draft and signed Medicare). Spare me your sanctimonious BS, until you can learn to leave people alone you're not a liberal, you're merely a partisan stealing liberals' clothing.

So have we drifted leftward as a country? Does that explain Obamacare or the war bs you cited?

The new line is right. And it's never right enough for conservatards. Liberals are left in the cold begging to push the needle just a bit, and are grateful for the crumbs we get.

Crumbs of arsenic in the water that you swallow gratefully with your toxic SSRI placebos, shifting the cost via mandatory Obamneycare. Count me out. If you're what passes for liberal, I don't want it.

Ok. You're out! We don't want you either.

CL says

You're out!

I wish. If I don't sign up for Obamneycare, I get punished. If I do sign up, it's the frying pan vs fire, I'm not sure which is worse.

I meant you're out of the liberal club. Pretty sure you weren't a member, so don't expect a refund on your membership fee.

CL says

you're out of the liberal club.

It's gone, sold out, foreclosed, replaced by partisan zombies, the Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

You surely vote green or CPUSA.

Call it Crazy says

That's the whole point. What incentive does the mom have to work harder and try to climb the success ladder when she is already receiving comparable benefits that the $69K person is getting... she's better off just staying where she is, thanks to "redistribution of wealth".

Being the liberal/socialist that you are, you won't understand that point.

I understand your view. In fact I wish that redistribution wasn't necessary. But it is. If one could live decently on 20K ($10/hr) or 30K even, then it would be a different story.

You're right that one of us doesn't see the big picture very well, or even comprehend the other persons point of view.

Your so called liberal redistribution of wealth, is just as much welfare for all the businesses that can't afford to pay their employees a living wage, as it is welfare for the recipients of the food stamps, child care, or whatever.

The ironic thing is that I know for a fact that you're a white hillbilly that is on welfare.

Call it Crazy says

your a slug, school teacher, sucking off of the tit of the public, who doesn't have the skills to get a REAL job in the private sector

That was predictable.

Fact is I had many jobs in the private sector before being a teacher, which I didn't start until middle age. Also, teaching is by far and in many ways the most REAL job I've ever had.

IF you hate public school teachers so much, that says a lot more about you than you realize. Do you blame them for your incompetence and your low IQ ? Intelligent people (even intelligent republicans) almost always love teachers, with the exception of some bad ones they may have had.

Maybe, just maybe, political winds are shifting here in the states. It's pretty simple to tell who is on the left, and who is on the right, but neither of them are willing to own their recent party representations

they just happen to always vote one particular party, because said party is the lesser of two evils

Capn' says: ", I didn't mean to offend anyone."

Hell! I thought offending everyone is the purpose of commenting. lol

Chapter Jackson - It's Free Swipe Yo EBT

https://www.youtube.com/embed/NzspsovNvII

Our tax dollars at work.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Wgv6SSjynw4

Call it Crazy says

marcus says

The ironic thing is that I know for a fact that you're a white hillbilly that is on welfare.

Nice try with your fantasy... When all else fails, liberals just pull more lies out of their asses.... Seems to be a pattern here..

So you are saying you aren't white?

carrieon says

1. Don't get married to her.

2. Use your mom's address to get mail sent to.

3. The guy buys a house.

4. Guy rents out house to his girl girlfriend who has 2 of his kids.

5. Section 8 will pay 900 a month for a 3 bedroom home.

6. Girlfriend signs up for Obamacare so guy doesn't have to pay out the butt for family insurance.

7. Girlfriend gets to go to college for free being a single mother

8. Girlfriend gets 600 a month for food stamps

9. Girlfriend gets free cell phone

10. Girlfriend get free utilities.

11. Guy moves into home but uses moms house to get mail sent to.

12. Girlfriend claims one kid and guy claims one kid on taxes. Now you both get to claim head of house hold at $1800 credit.

13. Girlfriend gets disability for being "crazy" or having a "bad back" at $1800 a month and never has to work again.

This plan is perfectly legal and is being executed now by millions of people.

Millions of guys have bought a house, put their girlfriend up in it collecting section 8 rent? Yea right sure. Idiotic.

You are telling me Pennsylvania pays child care for people who are not working? What? Not according to this:

http://www.dpw.state.pa.us/forchildren/childcareearlylearning/childcareworkssubsidizedchildcareprogram/

Minimum is must work 10 hours per week and go to school 10 hours per week. At minimum wage in Penn, that is $3625 annual income, and in school. If they are not in school, then it is over $7k income.

But that chart shows $16k starting at zero income....

So what is the actual source of this chart?

control point says

You are telling me Pennsylvania pays child care for people who are not working? What? Not according to this:

That's what I'm saying too. Didn't they greatly restrict benefits and require work, so that essentially you are paying back the cash or working a crappy job?
It seems like most people are living in pre-1996 America, where it was widely BELIEVED that welfare fraud was rampant. Well, reform "fixed" that, didn't it?