Sigh...

Nothing like coming home from a long day at work to see that the no-job-having, Section 8-getting neighbors have put their EBT cards to use and bought themselves a 50" flat screen TV.

One is on the lease with her kids courtesy of a rent voucher that pays more than market-price rent (so the landlord has no incentive to rent to working people who might actually not just hang out and blast rap music all day and all night), and three more adults and some more kids just moved in with her and stay for free. And none of them ever seem to leave for any sort of job. Bet I can guess which party they vote for every election.

This is what's wrong with our system today.

I spotted this up in Frederick, MD the other day. I actually had to drive around the block and take another look.

Yep. Rather than subsist on basic staple foods, today's welfare recipients can now use their EBT cards to buy shrimp, lobster and crab cakes even though many of the working people whose salaries are taxed to fund those EBT cards cannot afford to buy luxuries like that.

So why would anyone on welfare ever want to give that up for a job that requires them to actually get up every morning and go work 40 hours a week at some job? Heck, it's so much easier to just sit on your couch and watch Oprah on the flat-screen TV while munching fried oysters, knowing that all you ever have to do to keep the free cheese coming is to show up at a polling place every couple of years and cast your ballot for every candidate with a big "D" after his or her name.

This is why welfare needs time limits on it, and/or a requirement that the recipient work or go to school while collecting it, and in the interim, EBT cards that were intended to look like regular debit cards specifically to shield users from any possible embarrassment related to being supported by those around him or her need to be done away with completely. Instead, let's turn their support back over to churches and other charities willing to hand out staple food and clothing and other essentials. Maybe if being on welfare meant making sandwiches from loaves of generic white bread and government cheese and spending your days in job training programs or a minimum-wage job at McDonalds, more people would be inclined to try to leave poverty behind and work a bit harder to obtain a better lifestyle.

But since history has shown us that those who earn their own money tend to vote for those who let them keep more of it, a mass exodus of people off of the welfare rolls could really kick a dent in the Democrat Party's voting base. It's much better and safer for the Dems to just keep giving people free phones and cash cards to buy seafood, and expanding eligibility for those programs to ensure that the people getting something for nothing always comprise more than 51% of the voters in any given area. And it's working. Now all that they need to do is make millions of illegals legal and give them the vote while making them eligible for all of these goodies, and we'll be irreversibly on our way to the sort of country depicted in Atlas Shrugged, a country where only self-deluded fools and suckers keep working and inventing and achieving.

I just hope that it's not finalized before I can retire, buy myself a rural homestead, and get my savings out of the economy.

Detroit--Second-handers and Liberals highlight why it's a failure.

After five-decades of single-party (Democrat) rule, Detroit has a water problem now in addition to every other shortcoming. Detroiters have by and large stopped paying their water bills and the bankrupt city has been homorrhaging money out by continuing to deliver water to nearly a hundred thousand homes and busineses that in some cases have been ignoring their monthly bills for years.

So what does the new administration of Detroit do to get these people to pay for the service that they've been refusing to pay on? Well starting in June, they began going to the deadbeats, issuing shut-off notices, and simply turning the water off, letting them know that it would be turned back on as soon as they paid the back-due balance or set up a payment plan.

Now of course the usual suspects--a coalition of welfare-rights organizations, local community organizers and senile politicians like John Conyers--becan screaming about how "inhumane" it was to deny people water and that it's not the deadbeats' fault that they can't pay their water bills in these horrible times. Alas, facts are pernicious things and the water department appears to have a few that show that fallacy for what it is.

The department issued a news release Tuesday saying “significant misinformation” has circulated about the shutoffs. Of customers who received shutoff notices, 60% paid their accounts in full within 24 hours and had their service restored immediately. Forty percent of the remaining customers had their service restored within 48 hours, according to the department.

So it's not that they can't pay the bills, apparently, it's just that they don't want to until they are left with no choice, at which time most of them find the money without too much trouble. Many of the others reportedly just handed money to illicit "turn on" crews that follow the city shut-off trucks with the same tools used to shut the water off and offer to illegally turn the water back on for a set fee.

Still, the Liberal Left screeches and protests, and when the Democrat Nutroots Convention came to Detroit a couple of weeks back, none other than B-list Hollywood actor Mark Ruffalo jumped in front of the cameras at one of the protests, calling unlimited free water delivered to your tap "a human right". Of course when he finished bloviating and the camera crews went away, Rufflao, reportedly worth twenty million dollars, left without helping pay even one poor person's water bill. Ruffalo, like Michael Moore and other rich liberal millionaires, seem to think that only other people's money should go to solve all of the problems that they love to point out. While they condemn you and me for "not caring" enough to want to pay more in taxes, they're holding tight to their own cash.

Well the city caved, like usual, and suspended the shut-offs. Then they hosted a "water fair" this morning at the DPW office, and people lined up around the block to get help. But most of them were disappointed and angry when they discovered that the purpose of the event was to set up payment plans and help them actually pay down their bills or refer them to organizations that might be able to assist them. You see, many of them came here thinking that the city was just going to hand them money and pay their bills for them.

Detroit residents show up at water event hoping to avoid shutoffs

And still they complain:

One man waiting in line lamented the state of affairs.

“You need water to bathe, you need water to drink, you need water to cook with,” he said. “Hell, we’ve got all the water resources here, the Great Lakes, the Detroit River. There’s no reason it should be this way.”

And no one is telling this man that he can't just take a pail down to the river and get all the water that he wants. He and every other Detroiter are always free to do just that. But they don't want access to water; they want the water treated and pumped right into their houses, and they want it for free even if it means that other users on the system have to pay more for their water as a result.

And here are some of the hundreds of water-bill deadbeats standing (or sitting) in line outside the water department, looking for a hand-out, only to become angry when all they were offered was a hand up.

And the real crux of the problem for most Detroit dead-beats: priorities.

Can't find money to pay water bill. Has no problem paying iPhone bill. Welcome to Detroit.

EBT glitch sparks looting, theft by welfare crowd

Call it a preview of things to come when the system crashes for real.

Apparently in 17 states this past Saturday night, EBT cards--"Free money cards" issued to those who who choose welfare over a job--didn't. work for two hours due to a problem at the contractor company that administers the program.

Naturally the natives quickly got restless.

A couple of Wal-Mart stores in Louisiana took a calculated gamble and let the EBT card holders use their cards even though the system was down and the stores could not check their card balances. It was an act of kindness that the gimmedats quickly abused as the stores' shelves were quickly cleared of just about everything as goodie-laden hood rats ran for the checkouts with whatever they could stuff into their carts. According to one store manager, the store was "packed like Black Friday" as welfare recipients called each other (no doubt on their Obamaphones) to spread the word of the windfall opportunity. The chaos was such that police had to be called to restore order.

Walmart shelves in Springhill, Mansfield, cleared in EBT glitch

The frenzy lasted for two hours, at which point the EBT cards began to work again. And then the "shoppers" realized that they'd actually get charged for what they were buying and they abandoned their carts full of loot and left the store en masse.

One woman, caught at the check-out when the cards came back up, was trying to run $700.00 worth of groceries on a card that had a balance of forty-nine cents.

It was even worse in a Mississippi store. There, customers rioted and just stole the food.

All hail the coming Obamalution, folks. If they act like this when the cards go down for just two hours, imagine what's going to happen when the cards go down for good.

My advice: Stock up on ammo now, and keep quiet about your preparations and stockpiles when talking to folks that you don't know well, because when the stores are empty and the looter class still wants stuff, they'll be looking your way and mine.

"Help us, government man!"

Reading the New Orleans news yesterday, I couldn't help but shake my head at the latest example of the dependency and learned helplessness that welfare create.

It seems that the powers-that-be are going to demolish a building to make way for some new development. Now this should be seen as a good thing, as it'll bring jobs, both in construction and in whatever services that the tenants of the building offer. But what do we see in the news? Residents of the nearby Iberville public housing project running around worrying about the dust from the demolition and voicing outrage that no one from the public housing authority has come around to manage this "crisis" for them.

Iberville residents said on Tuesday that the little they knew about the implosion came from news reports, not from the Housing Authority of New Orleans. "I keep saying, 'When are they going to come tell us something?'" said Lanetter Dorsey, 54, who is in poor health and doesn't feel comfortable staying inside her Iberville apartment during the implosion. "I guess they've decided we need to fend for ourselves," she said.

OMG! Those poor people! They might actually have to learn things from the news and make their own decisions, just like everyone else does! How mean! How cruel! Why isn't the government man coming in to tell them what to do and make everything ok? How long after the dust settles can they start filing claims for some sort of cash reimbursement to make up for all of the stress? And the worst that could ever happen to them, in their eyes, is that they have to "fend for themselves". The horror!

This is pathetic. These people are grown. Their votes count as much as mine and yours. (and every one who bothers to cast a ballot will likely do so for Obama...) But here they are, upset and befuddled, with no idea what to do or how to respond to even this simple interruption of their day.

But Iberville residents sitting inside apartments within dark-brick buildings could soon become overheated if the dust takes hours to settle.

So go the F--k outside then! Leave for a few hours! Geez...how hard is that to figure out?

This is a prime example of the culture of dependency that big government has created, and it's what the Obama administration is trying to spread over our country, with one person and seven now receiving food stamps and with the USDA now working with the freaking Mexican government to try to get as many illegal aliens from that country to take our welfare as they can. Because the Obamaites know that people who are dependent on the government will continue to vote for the Democrats that made them dependent and accept further impositions of control over their lives from those Democrats. There's a reason why the Democrat party sends buses by the score into public housing projects around the country on election day...they know that they have a loyal base there and they're working hard to expand it because they know that it may well give them enough votes to allow them to keep control of the country despite objections from those of us who don't want their taxpayer-funded largess.

Now on another tangent, the taxpayers need to be asking why the Iberville housing project is even still around. It was condemned after being devastated by Hurricane Katrina and everyone living there was relocated by the taxpayers and given new apartments, mainly in Texas and other locations where space and local jobs were available. Yet one of the first things that then-Mayor Ray Nagin did was to divert federal money intended to help rebuild the city's infrastructure into programs designed to bring the displaced public housing residents back in time for the next election. Remember Nagin's statement that New Orleans has to remain a "Chocolate city"? He was afraid that a smaller voting pool made up largely of business owners, investors and workers might result in fewer Democrats keeping their jobs, especially after the way that his administration bungled things so badly during and after Katrina's strike. so now we have all-new welfare apartments built up to house a core Democrat constituency on some of the city's most valuable real estate right outside of the French Quarter, and it's housing many of the people who are responsible for much of the crime in the French Quarter. But the criminals, their families and other welfare recipients in the projects can be counted on to vote Dem, and the business owners and tourists in the Quarter who suffer from their presence...well most of them come from outside the city, so the don't rate serious consideration by the one-party (Dem) administration of that city.

As it stands now, that valuable land remains in service as a high-crime hot-spot that serves only to retard and inhibit meaningful economic development of that whole area. I mean, it it were my call, people relying on the taxpayers for a roof over their heads would be housed on old military bases or moved out into the country into the cheapest housing possible and the cities would be encouraged to put prime real estate like that under the Iberville projects to the best economic use on behalf of the taxpayers. But then again, that's probably why I don't get to run things.

Obama Administration's goal: Everyone on the dole.

Because if they're dependent on big government for their sustenance, they'll likely vote Democrat to keep it coming.

USDA combats ‘mountain pride,’ self-reliance to boost food stamp rolls

Can't have any of that pride or self-reliance in the Obama-nation now, can we? You will be assimilated, and if you refuse, maybe a room at Gitmo for you. (You know Gitmo, right? It's that place that Obama swore he'd close on his first day as President...the place that's still open today.)

One in seven Americans are on food stamps, but the government is pushing to enroll more — in many instances working to overcome Americans’ “pride,” self-reliance or failure to see a need.

“Our common goal is to increase participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,” the United States Department of Agriculture explains...

“Hearing from the outreach worker that benefits could be used to purchase seeds and plants for their gardens turned out to be a very important strategy in counteracting what they described as ‘mountain pride’ and appealed to those who wished not to rely on others,” the document explains. “Eventually, many accepted assistance from the Low Income Energy Assistance Program, the Qualified Medicare Beneficiary program, and others, in some cases doubling a household’s net income. In 1 year, SNAP participation increased over 10 percent.”

Overcoming “beliefs” is a stated method from the USDA to bring more people to the program.

And those "beliefs"? Chiefly the belief that it's better to care for one's own family than turn to the government to do it.

The agency adds that there are many hurdles — including reticence to accept government aid — that SNAP advocates must overcome in order to make eligible people accept the government’s help.

But it's not just welfare. The USDA says so.

The USDA also claims increasing food stamp participation is an economic stimulus.

“Outreach and education are powerful tools in overcoming barriers to SNAP participation. Even a small increase in SNAP participation can have a substantial impact,” USDA continues. “If the national participation rate rose 5 percentage points, 1.9 million more low-income people would have an additional $1.3 billion in benefits per year to use to purchase healthy food and $2.5 billion total in new economic activity would be generated nationwide.”

Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, described USDA’s assertion that food stamps are beneficial to the economy as “ludicrous.”

Sessions, who has had his eye on food stamp reform for years, added that USDA’s focus on reducing cultural impediments to food stamp participation is particularly concerning.

“I think it’s a deep problem when SNAP officials think it is their duty to overcome ‘mountain pride’ or overcome the American sense of independence and individual responsibility,” Sessions told The Daily Caller in an interview. “They seem to think that is an anachronism and that modern Americans shouldn’t have pride and independence. I think it is highly troubling actually.”

While Sessions does not begrudge food for those truly in need, he argues that the goal should be giving Americans the tools they need to get off food stamps, not adopting strategies to get more people on them.

Our Founding Fathers would be rolling over in their graves if they could see us ceding our hard-won Freedom and Independence from a British despot and voluntarily signing up to be controlled by an allegedly domestically-born one.

Kudos to Senator Sessions for fighting the good fight, but I fear that he represents a fading minority of Americans who actually understand and cherish the concepts of Independence and Freedom.

The cities fell to the Dems and their welfare-state mentality long ago. The last hope for a free nation was and is rural America...and now they're in the cross-hairs. If the Dems get them to knuckle under--and succeed in giving citizenship and the vote to the illegals in our country--who'll be left to wave the banner of Liberty?

Another Michigan lottery winner still getting welfare

Hey Michigan, why have a lottery if you're still going to let it's winners who score while on welfare keep getting welfare checks?

Lincoln Park's Amanda Clayton is 24 years old, bought her lottery tickets with welfare money, and now claims that she deserves to keep getting welfare because she owns two houses and it's expensive trying to maintain them both.

24 years old and able-bodied with no dependents according to the news stories I could find, she shouldn't have been eligible for welfare in the first place. And she's not even the first. Able-bodied welfare recipient Leroy Fick won two million bucks last year and continues to accept cash downloads to his electronic welfare card which he spends without shame. But now Michigan is working on legislation to remove lottery winners from the welfare rolls when they hit. Better idea: How about if they're on welfare and hit the lottery or strike it big at a casino, the state takes back whatever they spent on welfare for that person right off the top? Better yet--the taxpayers of the state should get it all since it was purchased with their money. In a perfect world, we'd return to the days when welfare and food stamps only went out to those who were disabled and truly unable to work? Today's welfare system though is a government program and like other government programs it measures it's success by the number of people that it adds to it's rolls, and if that means opening eligibility up to everyone regardless of their need and keeping them on forever no matter if they come into the means to support themselves, then so be it.
And of course let us never forget that in Michigan, as in many other states, welfare recipients can register to vote at their local welfare offices. Is it any wonder that the politicians, especially the Democrats, tend to curry and cater to these people like they do? And it's voters like this that gave us Obama. But hey, let's just jeep letting non-producers have a say over the laws that affect the producers and one day we're going to wake up and discover that we're Greece, we can all pretend to be surprised.
s

She had 15 kids and demands that you and me compensate her.

Seriously. Check this second-hander out. She has 15 kids by three different guys, none of whom are paying her a dime. She won't work or pay her bills despite social services giving her thousands of dollars, but she gets on the news and says that "somebody" (you and me) has to pay for all her kids AND pay her for her suffering.
You can't make this stuff up!

And of course no matter what the benevolent government does or how much more tax money that we waste on her for foster care, lawyers, social workers, new clothes for court, etc., she still refuses to comply with even the most basic requirements AND has the nerve to threaten the people that are being paid to run her sorry excuse of a life for her.

This is what Obama's socialist policies have wrought: Open class warfare and an entitlement mentality that demands instead of asks. Maybe the dirty potheads in the Obamavilles across our country can take up a collection for her. Oh that's right...they don't work, either! They just join her in demanding that those of us who do go to a job every day give up more of our cash because it's not fair that we have more than they do.

This is yet another indication that Obama buddy Cornell West isn't wrong when he says that the battle for entitlements will eventually take place in the streets.

The second-handers are agitating, and with Obama and his cronies supporting them from the rear, it's not inconceivable to picture the mobs rioting and looting and coming to your neighborhood and mine in pursuit of our stuff, motivated by a belief that they deserve it just because they want it and emboldened by the knowledge that the Obama government isn't going to stop them.

More ammo, folks. Buy more ammo and learn how to defend yourselves with it if you haven't done so already.

What the heck? Pry open our wallets and let's just feed everybody.

Detroit, Michigan, that paragon of fiscal responsibility, has now decided to give free breakfast, lunch and mid-day snacks to every kid in the school system just to spare kids from low-income households from being embarrassed about being seen accepting "free" food.

That's right. Courtesy of a new Obama Administration Dept. of Agriculture program that you and I will be paying for, Detroit Schools will now feed EVERY kid for free (to the kid and his/her parents) just so that a few kids can get free food without feeling ashamed that their parents don't work.

“One of the primary goals of this program is to eliminate the stigma that students feel when they get a free lunch, as opposed to paying cash,” said DPS Chief Operating Officer Mark Schrupp. “Some students would skip important meals to avoid being identified as low-income. Now, all students will walk through a lunch line and not have to pay.

Ironically, this means that people who do work and struggle to pay their bills will now get to pay more in taxes so that they can buy food for the kids of much richer families, because no kid is exempt from this latest welfare give-away.

But hey--if it coerces just one more welfare mom to vote Democrat in the next election, it'll be worth it, right?

Hell, welfare should be embarrassing, if only to help motiviate it's recipients to get off of it. Like Benjamin Franklin once said, "If you give the poor just enough to keep them comfortable, they'll stay poor." And they'll vote Democrat in order to keep the free cheese coming.

Britain's out of control welfare state

While elements of the British government now protest the decision to cut convicted rioters off from lavish welfare benefits that all too often support able-bodied young men and women at a rate higher than that obtainable by many who actually work full time, we now see a ridiculous example of the British largess in the form of a family from Somalia who arrived in that country three years ago. Neither adult in the household has ever worked since arriving in England, choosing instead to jump right on the benefits wagon. They were living in a taxpayer-funded apartment but decided that it was "too far away from friends and relatives" so they moved into another home in a neighborhood that they liked better...and a house that cost 2 million British Pounds (or $3,200,000 US) and just slugged the British taxpayers with the bill...and that bill was accepted!

The new six-bedroon house for this family of welfare Somalians--people who aren't even British citizens--is costing the British taxpayers 8,000 Pounds a month, or $13,000 US! And that doesn't even include the othher welfare benefits that this family is soaking up.

Raj Sohal, the family’s previous landlord, said: ‘It was the first time I’d rented to an asylum seeker family. I did it because I felt sorry for them. The fact is they were on every kind of benefit available.

But were the Somolians grateful? Apparently not. Sohal told The People newspaper that they’d gone without paying the last month’s rent.

So the British government gave them money for the rent, and they just pocketed it and stiffed the landlord. Model citizens, eh?

It is unclear how many children the family have – but up to eight youngsters have been seen at the property. When approached by The People, Mr Khaliif said: ‘This is my house. We’ve got every right to live here.’

Question is, how many British citizens who actually leave their houses and go to work each day could afford to live in a place like that? And how does a family of non-citizens who have never held a job for even one day claim a mansion as a "right"?

Frankly I'm surprised that it's the welfare recipients that are doing the bulk of the rioting in Britian. You'd think that it would be the average taxpayer over incidents like this. It's no wonder that the wheels are rapidly falling off of that once-great country. And one has to wonder how much longer it will be until we start to see it happening here.

Gotten angry yet today? If not, this ought to do it.

Compassion for the poor is one thing, but to see the serious problems with our government-run welfare system, you need look no farther than California's, where a recent audit has revealed that more than $69 million in California welfare money, meant to help the needy pay their rent and clothe their children, has been spent or withdrawn outside the state in recent years, including millions in Las Vegas, hundreds of thousands in Hawaii and thousands on cruise ships sailing from Miami.

State-issued aid cards have been used at hotels, shops, restaurants, ATMs and other places in 49 other states, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam, according to data obtained by The Times from the California Department of Social Services. Las Vegas drew $11.8 million of the cash benefits, far more than any other destination. The money was accessed from January 2007 through May 2010.

Welfare recipients must prove they can't afford life's necessities without government aid: A single parent with two children generally must earn less than $14,436 a year to qualify for the cash assistance and becomes ineligible once his or her income exceeds about $20,000, said Lizelda Lopez, spokeswoman for the Department of Social Services.

Round-trip flights from Los Angeles to Honolulu on Orbitz.com Sunday started at $419 — more than 80% of the average monthly cash benefit for a single parent of two on CalWorks, the state's main aid program.

"How they can go somewhere like Hawaii and be legit on aid … they can't," said Robert Hollenbeck, a fraud investigator for the Fresno County district attorney's office. "This is money for basic subsistence needs."

The $387,908 accessed in Hawaii includes transactions at more than a thousand big-box stores, grocery stores, convenience shops and ATMs on all the major islands. At least $234,000 was accessed on Oahu, $70,626 on Maui, $39,883 on Hawaii and $22,170 on Kauai.

The list includes $12,433 spent at the upscale Ala Moana shopping center, $3,030 spent at a group of gift shops next to Jimmy Buffett's Beachcomber restaurant on Waikiki Beach and $2,146 withdrawn from ATMs on the island of Lanai, home to a pair of Four Seasons resorts and little else.

"If it's on Lanai, that should trigger an investigation," said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. "California taxpayers, who are struggling to keep their own jobs, are subsidizing other people's vacations. That's absurd."

Of the nearly $12 million accessed in Las Vegas, more than $1 million was spent or withdrawn at shops and casino hotels on, or within a few blocks of, the 4.5-mile strip. The list includes $8,968 at the Tropicana, $7,995 at the Venetian and its Grand Canal Shoppes, and $1,332 at Tix 4 Tonight, seller of discount admission for such acts as Cirque du Soleil.

Although many Las Vegas casinos block the use of welfare cards in ATMs on gambling floors, more than $34,700 has been spent or withdrawn from the ATM at a 7-Eleven in the shadow of Steve Wynn's new Encore casino and a couple of blocks south of Circus Circus.

The data show addresses of stores and ATM locations where the cards have been used and the amounts of the transactions by year. They do not reveal the identities of the welfare recipients or show how many users visited a given retailer.

And this of course causes me to ask: "Why the hell not?" Why aren't these so-called "needy" people called into their local welfare office and made to account for the spending, and why isn't their aid turned off until they do so? And why aren't their cards set up to only allow purchase of staple food items at grocery stores?

Of the $1.5 million accessed in Florida, $13,109 was spent or withdrawn in South Beach, most of that at bars and restaurants along trendy Lincoln Road. More than $7,000 was withdrawn from ATMs a few hours north, at Walt Disney World.

The data also show $16,010 withdrawn from 14 cruise ships sailing from ports around the world — Long Beach, Rio de Janeiro, Beijing. Eight sail primarily from Miami.

The out-of-state spending accounts for less than 1% of the $10.8 billion spent by welfare recipients during the period covered, and advocates note that there are legitimate reasons to spend aid money outside of California. From the data provided, it cannot be determined whether any of the expenditures resulted from fraud.

"I think when somebody hears it's in a fancy hotel in Hawaii or Vegas, it's too easy to assume the [welfare recipient] is visiting that place and it wasn't somebody who stole their card," said Jessica Bartholow, a legislative advocate for the Western Center on Law and Poverty.

Yeah, right. Someone stole all those cards--and the PIN numbers needed to use those cards. Uh-huh. Sure. But I can't blame them for trying to gull us with that one, since we were dumb enough to set up welfare programs like this and then trust that people who applied for it wouldn't tear the ass out of it like Michael Jackson in a daycare center. But knowing what's going on, it's a no-brainer that the government has put some investigators on the job who are diligently tracking down abusers, right?

Wrong.

There is no rule preventing welfare recipients from leaving California, as long as they get clearance from their county case worker to be absent from the program's 32-hour-a-week job training requirement. County investigators, who state authorities say are responsible for rooting out fraud and abuse, typically don't question a recipient's whereabouts until transactions on a welfare card show that he or she has been gone for more than 30 days.

"If it's a one-time thing in Miami, we would never check that out," said John Haley, commander of the financial crimes division of the San Diego County district attorney's office, who said 24% of all new welfare applications in his jurisdiction contain some form of fraud. "We look for patterns of abuse."

In Los Angeles County, investigators hadn't been checking until a recipient was gone for three months, said Department of Public Social Services Director Philip Browning. The inability to do more was "really just a resource issue," he said.

Following questions from The Times, Browning said investigators would start inquiring once the data show that a recipient has been gone for more than 30 days.

An anti-fraud unit in Orange County, which won praise from state officials last year for saving the state millions, has since had to slash its budget and lay off 15 investigators, said Paul Bartlett, commander of the county district attorney's Bureau of Investigation.

Those cuts saved $900,000 in operating expenses but allowed "an estimated $9.6 million in suspected fraud payments out the door," according to an Orange County Grand Jury report released in May.

A state audit last year found that none of California's 58 counties was adequately following up on information that could help root out fraud, including monthly computer matches that list clients who are receiving duplicate aid from other states, those who are ineligible because they're in prison and others who have died.

And remember folks--California gets much of that money not from it's own citizens, but from my paycheck and yours, due in large part to that state's massive over-representation in Congress. (See why the census shouldn't count illegal aliens when determining allocation of congressional seats now? See why states like California demand that they be counted?)

This is why I'd like to see us go back to the old Pre-FDR/LBJ days when charity assistance was given out by private charities and churches instead of the government. At least then, there was usually some oversight, and cheaters could be--and were--turned away without recourse. But we can't have the big government that the Democrats want without a large core of dependent voters, and nothing creates such a pool of reliable supporters like a government-run free-cheese store...especially one that lets the "poor" and "downtrodden" take cruises and trips to Hawaii on our money.

California needs to hire a lot more investigators, even if they have to cut benefits to pay for them. And those gold-plated "aid" cards need to be reprogrammed to insure that they are only used by someone showing a California state ID card in the name of the person that it was issued to and even then they should not work outside of the state.

Pity party time...Clinton niece on welfare

"Like...it's so hard, because...I'm a Clinton too, and I should...like...be having money just because...ya know?"

Macy Clinton, the 18-year-old daughter of Bill Clinton's half brother, Roger, is on food stamps.

A cosmetology student with an unspecified part-time job in Cooksville, Tenn., Macy Clinton told "Inside Edition" that she relies on government assistance to buy groceries.

"It's hard because I'm a Clinton too, but I have to be on food stamps and I have to sacrifice everything just to make it day by day," she said in an interview televised Tuesday on the syndicated TV show.

Among the ironies in this tale of woe is that as president Clinton signed welfare reform legislation in 1996 -- an outgrowth of the "Contract With America" pushed by a Republican-controlled Congress -- that curtailed or placed new rules on government assistance to the poor. Fourteen years later, his niece is on the receiving end of that limited largess.

Macy's dad also has had troubles. The son of Virginia Clinton Kelley and Roger Clinton Sr. -- Bill's mother and stepfather -- Roger Jr. was arrested for drunk driving in 2001 and served a year in jail for a 1995 cocaine conviction, for which he was later pardoned by his brother. He met Macy's mother, Martha Spivey, in 1990 and Macy was conceived during their brief romance.

Macy says she has seen her father only a few times, and told the interviewer, "I just want my father to be there for me." She said her father "told me that he would have a trust fund ready for me whenever I turned 18 for college, and I don't have any of that money."

Here's an idea, Princess...Get a full-time job and buy your own groceries, and if you have to put off your fluff little cosmetology classes (How many people actually make a living putting makeup on other people?) until you can afford to pay for those too, so be it. That's how regular people get through life. Stop whining and acting like you've got something coming just because you're related to someone else.

Seriously, does this girl really think that Bill and Hillary are going to help her out? Come on...it's not like they were ever lauded for their charitable work when they were haunting the White House or the Arkansas Governor's mansion. If I recall correctly, they actually claimed a tax deduction once for donating their old used underwear to charity. That's hardly the act of someone who is going to voluntarily shell out to help out another human being in any significant way.

But look on the bright side, Macy...At least you're not living in a mud hut with no water or electricity like Barack Obama's Kenyan brother still is.

Funny but sad that the liberals who rant the loudest about our obligation to pay more in taxes so that we can take care of total strangers are the ones who never seem to want to reach into their own pocket even to help out family. Hey Obama, is Aunt Zeituni still living in that squalorous Boston housing project apartment?

Better find a husband with a good job, Macy. I'm thinking that you stand a better chance of hitting the lottery than you do getting help from your mega-millionaire uncle and aunt.

What is wrong with this picture?

Back to New Orleans we go for another cup of outrage.

Today's outrage stems from a glowing news story about a woman who is overjoyed because she gets to move back into public housing four years after being forced out by Hurricane Katrina.

For nearly four years, Josephine Butler has been commuting from Baton Rouge to her job at the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board.

But soon, her commute will drop to 10 minutes, as Butler, 37, and her two daughters move into a new apartment in Central City at the site of the former C.J. Peete public housing development, now renamed Harmony Oaks.

Within a few weeks, workers will put the final touches on her apartment and 20 others that will open within the next few months.

Two years after local officials and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development demolished four of the city's biggest public housing complexes, Butler will become one of the first residents to return to a rebuilt apartment.

She said she likes the new, modern look of the rebuilt apartments. She's also "happy, overjoyed and ecstatic" once again to be near her mother, her aunts and her 80-year-old grandmother, who has been sick.

"No more long commute rides," she said. "And I'll be able to see my (extended) family on a daily basis." Essentially, after nearly five years, she is getting her life back, she said.

How many things can you see wrong here? Let's make a list.

1. The woman is 37 years old and has always lived in public housing.

2. She has a job--a city job that presumably pays well--but rather than pay her own rent, we, the taxpayers, have to subsidize her...and the picture of her new apartment shows a flat-screen tv on the wall and some pretty trendy artworks. Yet we have to pay her rent?

3. She has two kids, but there's no mention of the fathers or any indication that they're paying child support.

4. Her mother, her aunts, her grandmother--basically her whole extended family--also live in public housing, again with no reference to any men paying the bills or supporting any kids. And rather than expressing shame, this woman is gleeful that now they can all be together again...in public housing.

Where is the desire to succeed without someone else having to carry you and pay your "essential" bills (while you buy nice things with "your own" money)? And why are the politicians so quick to demand my money to pay for nice new things for the people who don't want to live efficiently enough to afford their own nice things?

I have no problem helping people out who need help, but I'm talking short-term, bare-essential help. If someone needs a place to stay for a month or two while they get back on their feet and start working, I have no problem with that. But why do I and the other people with jobs--the ones who didn't drop out of school or go out and have multiple kids with deadbeat dads--have to buy the ones who made those poor choices brand new aprtments that are nicer than many of the places that we taxpayers live?

I will never forget when I lived in New Orleans. My apartment--that I paid for myself--did not have air conditioning. It was awful in the summer. But what was worse was walking past the nearby public housing projects every day on my way to school and seeing air conditioners humming in every unit's windows, usually while able-bodied young men sat on the stoops during normal working hours and watched all of the suckers--I mean workers--going by all day. And I didn't have air conditioning but I was being taxed to pay for theirs. And now those same crummy projects are gone, but they've been replaced by brand new units and the same people that lived in them before have just stooged around for four years waiting to get back in, because only suckers pay for their own stuff.

And perhaps the worst part is that this public housing rip-off even comes with taxpayer-funded caseworkers like Debbie Holmes, who has kept in touch with the former residents of the projects, even those who were relocated to other states years ago, so that she can try to bring them back to take up occupancy of these nice new apartments.

The biggest need is jobs, said Holmes, who estimates that roughly 60 percent of the residents she talks with are living and working in the New Orleans area but the rest are still displaced, from California to Texas and Georgia, she said. Many are certified nursing assistants, but she also has been scrambling to find positions for residents with experience in child care, social services, schools and hotels, she said.

So let me see if I get this straight...

New Orleans needs taxpayer-funded public housing because there is a shortage of affordable housing in the area. But when the housing gets built, rather than use it to alleviate the so-called shortage, they reach out and spend more taxpayer money to bring in other welfare recipients--uh, I mean "job seekers" from out of state? WTF?!

Meanwhile, the party goes on, and the freeloaders move into the nice new places that they aren't paying much if anything for, and they're moving their nice furniture, their expensive TV's and entertainment systems, and usually their boyfriends right in, too, all while laughing at the other people out there who go to work every day in order to be taxed to pay for these nice new digs.Central air, and as nice as anyplace that people with actual jobs live in...because we should all have the same nice stuff even if we don't work and can't afford it ourselves, right?

Remember the old saying: "A government that robs Peter to pay Paul will always have the support of Paul." This is exactly why I say that people like Josephine Butler who choose to live in public housing shouldn't be allowed to vote. If she and all of her freeloading relatives and neighbors could not elect politicians, then I suspect that the politicians would be a lot more responsive to the will of and the tax burdens imposed on the voters who actually earn their own money and want to keep it.

A fundamental difference between Conservatives and Liberals

In Colorado (where else?), the Democrats are expressing outrage over comments made by a conservative Republican on the floor of the state house on Monday.

State Representative Spencer Swalm stated the plain truth that people who don’t want to live in poverty, should stop having children out of wedlock. Common sense, right? Well maybe to you and to me, but the state's Democratic party went ape over the mere suggestion that single moms having kids that they cannot afford is a bad thing and leads to a life of poverty. It doesn't matter that the statistics on that issue are clear and uncontestable--Even the US Census Bureau reports that 43 percent of Colorado families living below the poverty level were headed by a married couple vs. Fifty-seven percent of families below that line that were single-parent families. And of all children living in single-parent homes, nearly a third lived in poverty. Only 8.6 percent of children in married couple families lived in poverty.

I mean, come on--it's not even something you can argue. Single-parent families may do quite well, but more of them do poorly than do families with two parents. That's just a fact.

“Don’t have kids out of wedlock,” said Swalm, R-Centennial from the House floor. “If you’re married, if at all possible, try to stay married. Those are ways to lift families out of poverty.”

In an interview afterward, Swalm pointed out that “intact families do better than dysfunctional or broken families”, but said he was not advocating that women stay in abusive marriages.

“Those children are almost guaranteed to be in poverty. You don’t want kids in poverty? Don’t have kids out of wedlock,” Swalm said. “Better yet, get a high school degree. That doesn’t cost a dime.”

Wow. Get and stay married, get a basic diploma, work. Such oppressive concepts. No wonder the Dems are outraged. It goes without saying that messages like this rock their party because impoverished people are a major bloc of their constituency. People who do well and earn money or own property naturally want to keep it so they tend to vote for the Republicans, who at least give lip-service to conservative principles like self-reliance and small government. Conversely, poor people, including people who don't work and who have lots of kids that they cannot afford, expect the government to take care of them, usually by taking the money and/or property from those who have it--typically the ones who stayed in school and worked hard and who didn't start popping out kids in their teen years.

This is why I think that people on welfare should not be allowed to vote. They have elected to become children of the state and children aren't supposed to have a say in how a household is run. If welfare recipients could not vote, many legislators who owe their seats to large numbers of non-working child-breeders in their districts might not be in office today and perhaps the government would more accurately reflect and work on behalf of the average American--the man or woman who gets up every day and puts in 40 hours or more each week to earn their own way.

Mind you, it's not cut-and-dried between the parties. There are a few conservative Democrats out there, and there are some scum-sucking liberal Republicans who like to ride on the Conservative Values float come election time but who still vote to give the store away to people who aren't putting anything in. I really don't care which party takes the lead so long as it's the most conservative one. And that's why come November, I'll be voting for and donating money to candidates who pledge or have demonstrated support for small government, pro-citizen-empowerment conservatism, regardless of their political affiliation. And if the GOP thinks that I'll support another John McCain, they're in for a rude awakening. I want a government that governs me the least and lets me keep what I earn. And I want more people like Spencer Swalm in office, because he seems to get that.

Go, Spencer, go!

Obama Plan For Wealth Re-Distribution Hits Home With Many

Today on my way to lunch I passed a homeless guy with a sign that read 'Vote Obama, I need the money.' I laughed.

Once in the restaurant my server had on a 'Obama 08' tie, again I laughed as he had given away his political preference -- just imagine the coincidence.

When the bill came I decided not to tip the server and explained to him that I was exploring the Obama redistribution of wealth concept. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to redistribute his tip to someone who I deemed more in need--the homeless guy outside. The server angrily stormed from my sight.

I went outside, gave the homeless guy $10 and told him to thank the server inside as I've decided he could use the money more. The homeless guy was grateful. (He'd probably vote for me for President, especially if I arranged to have someone drive him to the polls.)

At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment I realized the homeless guy was grateful for the money he did not earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money he did earn even though the actual recipient had the greater need.

I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept than in practical application.

When second-handers attack

The place: Boca Raton, Florida.
The event: A mini-riot.
The reason: The government tried to give some of our money to the non-working slobs, only when there wasn't enough, the slobs got angry.

Stuff like this frosts me.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

BOCA RATON — A crowd of more than 500 people waiting for hours this morning for housing voucher applications were dispersed by police in riot gear at the Boca Raton Housing Authority when the applications ran out sooner than expected.

The action prompted complaints that officers used excessive tactics and housing authority officials were incompetent in their planning.

Two people were arrested and six to eight people hospitalized for exhaustion during the ordeal.

Hundreds of people, mostly mothers who had spent more than eight hours in line, were forced to leave the property at 2333 W. Glades Road by 30 Boca Raton Police officers, including SWAT team members, who walked toward the crowd in unison holding their police shields up about 10:30 a.m.

"Leave or face arrest," police officers shouted at the crowd as they urged them out of the housing authority parking lot. People were made to leave the vicinity altogether, with officers forcing them to cross the street and move toward their cars.

The overwhelming turnout of people desperate for housing money came as little surprise to Suzanne Cabrera, president of the Housing Leadership Council of Palm Beach County.

"This is an indication that housing it's still a huge problem," Cabrera said this afternoon. "It's a reflection of people's concern for housing, their uncertainty. I got people today asking me: was this my last chance to get housing I can afford?"

Several other things, such as mortgage foreclosures and high gas prices, are contributing to that feeling of insecurity and desperation, she said.

I can't help but notice that this particular grubber obviously has money for cigarettes and certainly seems to be eating well.

So whenever word gets out that voucher applications are being handed out, which she said doesn't happen very often, people get full of hope.

Yeah...They're hoping that they get something nice without having to work for it like ordinary saps have to.

Police had been at the housing authority since about midnight, a few hours after people started lining up outside for Section 8 housing voucher applications.

Some people lay down blankets and pillows to camp out until 9 a.m., when the housing authority had advertised they would hand out applications.

They can camp out in line to get hand-outs, but the idea of working a minimum-wage job is insulting and demeaning.

The line was already hundreds deep, so police asked Aigen to come to the property.

"There were traffic issues, disabled people who couldn't breathe well, children standing in line," she said.

The agency, worried about the size of the crowd, decided about 2 a..m. to hand out about 500 applications and reserve a few for later.

"We didn't expect so many to show up," Aigen said. "We thought we had enough area to accommodate all the people. It was not a good judgment call. The neighborhood wasn't equipped."

But handing out the applications early did nothing to stem the flow of potential applicants.

By 10 a.m. the crowd had swelled to more than 500 people, with most unaware that the bulk of applications had already been passed out.

The parking lot was a mass of women nursing crying babies, pushing strollers and waiting anxiously for officials to give them information.

People grew agitated. Several fights broke out. Police and firefighters said they were prepared if things were to turn violent on a large scale. Nearly 50 firefighters and paramedics from the city, county and Delray Beach set up across the street in the Town Center mall parking lot.

Then an official came out of the housing authority building and announced through a megaphone that disabled people should come forward.

Instead, the entire crowd surged forward. People fell down and were close to being trampled, witnesses said.

Animals...Nothing but animals.

"That's when all hell broke loose," said Shannon Pierce, 26, of Lake Worth. Pierce, who is six months pregnant and had been waiting in line since 6 a.m. "We almost got trampled over."

Authorities decided to shut things down.

Police told the crowd they had to leave. Angry and disappointed, many of those waiting stalked off.

Those who remained were soon dispersed by police in riot gear, many shouting and complaining.

Of course they're complaining. Ever since the Johnson Administration, the government has been telling them that they've got something coming even if they're too lazy to work. Now we have generations of deadbeats sitting around with a major sense of entitlement feeling that the rest of us owe them a living...and not just a living, but a living every bit as nice as the ones that we who work are able to afford.

And they cry and act like they've been wronged.

"We're all working people and we're all bitter right now," said Deborah Davis, 37. "To be turned away like this hurts."

"I'm very angry," said Nora Jones, 55 from Lake Worth, who said she had been there since 5 a.m. "Very disappointed. It's so unorganized. They are asking everyone to leave."

Amanda Palmer, 23, waited in line for hours with her 3-month old daughter. Palmer is staying in a maternity home, from which she must move out by June.

"That's why I'm here. This is my first child," Palmer said. "We really need it."

People in the line said they came overnight, from as far away as Riviera Beach and Pahokee, to apply for the housing subsidy.

Sigh...They claim that they can't get to jobs, but they can flock to this place like ants to a picnic when the motivation is there. Free stuff? Suddenly a ride's no problem.

And the "Gimme or else" mentality of these losers was perhaps best summed up by this delightful creature, who should be deported to any country that'll have her in exchange for a new law-abiding immigrant willing to actually work:

Shayla Williams, 22, of West Palm Beach, was angered by the police tactics.

"This place is going to get shot up later," she yelled to officers. "They can't treat us like this."

Source

Wow--the 9th Circuit actually gets one right

I'm feeling like I'm in some sort of backwards Bizarro World tonight when I read this story about the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals actually standing up and supporting something that helps America as a whole, something previously thought to be about as unlikely as the ACLU suddenly becoming a patriotic organization.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court rejected a challenge Monday to a county's practice of routinely searching welfare applicants' homes without warrants and ruling out assistance for those who refuse to let them in.

The justices refused, without comment, to intervene in the case from San Diego County, where investigators from the local District Attorney's office show up unannounced at applicants' homes and conduct searches that include peeking into closets and cabinets. The visits do not require any suspicion of fraud and are intended to confirm that people are eligible for government aid.

Failure to submit to the searches, which can last an hour, disqualifies applicants from assistance.

The 10-year-old program was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of six single parents who were seeking assistance. The welfare applicants argued that the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches, protects them from the home visits.

"When the investigator conducts the home inspection, no part of the home is off-limits," they said.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, upholding the program, said the Supreme Court in 1971 allowed social workers to visit homes in New York to determine eligibility. The appeals court, in a 2-1 decision, said the visits do not even constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment in part because people are free to turn away the investigators.

Eight appeals court judges voted to have the full San Francisco-based court hear the case. Seven of those judges called the program "an attack on the poor."

The case is Sanchez v. San Diego, 07-211.

A close decision, eight to seven, but a proper one, and totally unexpected from the court that is the most liberal--and most often reversed--of any of our US Circuit Courts.

And I agree wholeheartedly. This isn't an 'attack on the poor", but merely local government showing some responsibility and trying to ensure that those who apply for and live off of public assistance funds actually meet the criteria and deserve it. Truth is, there are untold numbers of cheaters and frauds on the welfare rolls all across this country, and every one of those people is sucking up a benefit intended for a truly needy family who is currently going without. While I'm no fan of the welfare system in general, I take serious issue with people who milk the program and scam it and anything that deters or catches these crooks and leads to their prosecution and incarceration is a good thing.

And if the people on welfare have a problem with it or consider it too intrusive, they can always give up the welfare checks and/or move out of the houses that the rest of us are paying for and support themselves in the workforce just like almost everyone else does. Like the Supreme Court pointed out in it's 1971 decision referenced above, they get to choose.

In my opinion, the government needs to check every welfare home for evidence of high living, drug use, illegal weapons, etc. These people set themselves up as children of the state when they applied for and took public money in lieu of jobs and that made the government their de facto parents. Parents have not only a right but a responsibility to monitor their charges and make sure that they're doing the right thing and that holds equally true for the heads of individual households and the heads of our nation's social services programs. As the people asking for welfare are admitting that they're in trouble and are in need of help from the rest of us, I'm of the belief that we need to be helping them make the right choices, and that means making sure that they aren't using drugs, making sure that their children are eating right and also ensuring that the single moms who are asking us to raise their kids for them are working part-time and/or going to school and not letting able-bodied but non-supporting men move in with them.

No good deed goes unpunished--Katrina refugees destroying the FEMA trailers loaned to them as aid.

Sometimes I wonder why we should even bother.

Here we (the taxpayers) go, buying brand new travel trailers for around $20,000 each and giving them to those who claim to be in need following hurricane Katrina, and apparently a lot of the recipients of this aid program have decided to show their respect and gratitude by destroying the trailers through theft, neglect, or outright vandalism, or else they've stolen the trailers outright--either selling them, dragging them off to hunting leases or turning them into illegal meth labs.

And what is FEMA doing about this? Well it may surprise you (but it probably won't) to find out that FEMA's doing absolutely nothing about it beyond sending letters to the trailer recipients asking them to pay for the damages. And that only in cases where FEMA actually knows who they gave the trailers to, which is not always the case. And since FEMA has no legal authority to prosecute people who have ruined the trailers to the point where they aren't ever usable again, it's just falling on us taxpayers to suck it up and eat the losses while the welfare sponges who got the trailers and wrecked them go off scot-free, no doubt proud of how they've gotten over on the rest of us.
And let me be fair here. It's not just inner-city hoodlums and lifetime welfare recipients from New Orleans this time. Many of those trailers went to rural residents, including homeowners in Arkansas, Mississippi, rural Louisiana and Texas. One would think that at least some of these people still own property which could be attached to cover the costs of the property that they've ruined but apparently FEMA's content to just let them ride because it's easier to stick you and me with the bills. You see, while FEMA might not have a clue as to who they loaned many of these brand new trailers to, they definitely know your billing address and mine.

Related article

Related article

Related article

How much longer will we have to carry them?

This story in the Washington Post today got me piqued. It's about FEMA's famed post-Katrina trailer parks, which us taxpayers are still paying for a year and a half after the storm. FEMA is closing one in particular--Yorkshire--and moving the refugees to other trailer parks, and predictably the people getting the free trailers are upset. Heck, I'm upset that these people still haven't done what they needed to do to run their own lives without me and the rest of us paying their rent. From the story:

"People say we shouldn't still be living in a FEMA park," said one former Yorkshire tenant, a Wal-Mart worker who wanted to be identified only as "P." "But take a look at the rents people have to pay in New Orleans now -- who can afford that?"

Well it would seem to me that you need to go out and get a better job, or failing that, a second job. And if you can't afford to live in New Orleans now, you go live somewhere else. It's not up to the rest of us to pay your rent indefinitely until an apartment opens up in your price range right where you want to live. The rest of us have to work and manage our own money to buy housing in choice areas, and I have to wonder why this woman and the others haven't been able to set aside thousands of dollars over the last year and a half since they haven't had to make any rent payments? BUt of course it's not their fault. If you ask them, it's ours.

The tenants said the sense of rootlessness that comes with the trailer life is affecting their children.

"I'm tired of tossing my kids around like a bouncing ball," LaFrance said. "And I hate waking up every day wondering what's going to happen next."

I winder if it ever occurred to her that her kids wouldn't get bounced around from welfare trailer to welfare trailer if she'd just use her own money to rent an actual apartment where her and her kids could actually set down some roots?

Nah. Sadly, the welfare crowd never seems to make that leap from dependency to self-sufficency and security. And what's even worse if that the Democrats who keep them in poverty to mine them for votes wouldn't have it any other way.

Finally some common sense.

According to this news article, the State of Colorado is finally doing something that makes sense. Since local farmers complain that they can't get enough laborers following new laws and crackdowns on illegal aliens, the state has decided to lease out state prison inmates to work on their farms. The farmers have to pay the convicts and probably the state, but it's a lot better then them paying illegal aliens and it does convicts good to actually work and pay back society for a change. Who knows? Some of them might actually learn skills that they can use in honest jobs when they get out.

This is a good idea but it should be just the beginning. It needs to be expanded to employ parolees and welfare recipients too. Anyone who is just sitting around being a burden on the state should be put to work as a condition of getting checks or requiring state supervision. In fact there's no reason that able-bodied welfare recipients can't put in 40 hours a week and get paid directly by the employer instead of us taxpayers just forking money over to them for nothing.

But it''s good to see Colorado deterring illegal aliens by giving the jobs that they seek to convicts. Convicts need to do more than sit around watching tv and working out all day. Let them try some honest labor for a change and if they take up all the farm jobs, the illegals will have fewer enticements to come here and break our laws.