Thank Go- I mean mankind for these awesome welfare programs.

[VTA]

So well rounded; we should use this model for everything, including our healthcare.

According to a new report from the Massachusetts state auditor, well over 1,000 corpses are receiving welfare benefits, including food stamps.

The Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA) audit shows 1,164 dead welfare recipients receiving $2.39 million over the course of six to 27 months after plotzing. The report states that in “a majority of sampled cases, store purchases, and ATM transactions were made after the recipients’ dates of death, suggesting that unauthorized persons were using public benefits.”

The audit also shows that food stamp benefits are going to individuals who live out of state or being used in resort towns such as Las Vegas--even in the Virgin Islands.

The Boston Herald found "the state overpaid $27 million to food stamp recipients and then paid another $3.4 million in employee overtime to correct problems."

Massive welfare fraud has routinely plagued state and federal programs; the same holds true for other entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.

Link

 

[superpunk]

 

[VTA]

Corruption/Incompetence isn't partisan, only the sheep are.

 

[Jon88]

I love hearing how STUPID our government is with our tax dollars.

Fucking. Morons.

 

[superpunk]

Corruption/Incompetence isn't partisan, only the sheep are.

It's also not a reason to not do the right thing. The idea that we shouldn't have public welfare programs because the possibility of corruption exists is so stupid that it doesn't deserve much more than a picture of Mitt Romney grinning like an idiot.

Might as well ban guns because a criminal might use one someday. Go tell Katrina survivors who took handouts from the government that they shouldn't have gotten jack shit from the government because there was too much corruption and fraud in the relief efforts. Oh what there is fraud and waste and bureaucratic bloating in charities, too? OH MY GOD ITS EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF

 

[VTA]

I don't think you can compare people suffering from a tragedy to day to day recipients of welfare. And it's not a possibility when it always happens. Opportunists aren't a possible hazard, they're part of the human condition.

Whether or not welfare should exist is something else, that it's always - that's always - mishandled should tell us it's not something the government should have it's hands in, spending everybody's money on. Compassion isn't a job, you can't pay people to really give a crap and government workers are nothing more than that. Workers collecting paychecks, getting through the day.

Welfare requires focused compassion, not clinical administration.

 

[superpunk]

I don't think you can compare people suffering from a tragedy to day to day recipients of welfare.

Well I guess that settles the issue of when to arbitrarily allow welfare according to the whims of VTA, then. Protip: Disaster relief IS welfare.

 

[MetalHead]

Disaster relief IS welfare.

Uh,no...it may be your personal definition of it,but it is not welfare.

 

[superpunk]

Uh, yes.

 

[ScipioCowboy]

Public assistance programs should be just that -- assistance. They shouldn't subsidize poverty.

The biggest issue with Medicare is not that it subsidizes poverty. It's that Medicare is unsustainable in its current state, regardless of how much we raise taxes. It must be reformed.

 

[MetalHead]

Uh, yes.

Disaster relief is just that,relief.
It's like moving,you get a friend to help you that day.
Welfare is not that.
Welfare is like that same friend helping you move every day while you nap in the couch he is carrying for you.
It is not the same.

 

[superpunk]

Public assistance programs should be just that -- assistance. They shouldn't subsidize poverty.

For the most part they don't. Unfortunately, sometimes they must.

The biggest issue with Medicare is not that it subsidizes poverty. It's that Medicare is unsustainable in its current state, regardless of how much we raise taxes. It must be reformed.

Yup. Reforming healthcare in general in this country is the root of the problem, however. We're well on our way.

 

[superpunk]

As usual, I've cut right to the core of the matter here and revealed an issue with every adamant opponent of government largesse...they want to selectively apply when government aid is ok. Never realizing that such selective application how we've got here in the first place (if we cut EVERYTHING, eventually we'd say "ok maybe we should have a program where old people can get medical care", and then it would snowball from there), they idiotically cry out "get rid of these programs that I can't see any use for". Due to their inferior intellect, it never occurs to them that their stance is completely subjective and only influenced by their own personal whimsy. Stupidity breeds a lack of empathy. And you will see these geniuses demand cuts here and there so long as they personally can't imagine a use for the program, or if they have a bogeyman (i.e. "welfare queens") that they can use as an excuse. And like a petulant child who has refused to grow up, they demand that they not be forced to share their toys.

People with a superior intellect realize that, while they may not personally benefit from things like medicaire or WIC or FEMA or income assistance or unemployment etc., someone else might NEED it - and what's more you may someday find yourself in a position where you need it. Time and unforeseen occurrence befall us all. They may sensibly demand more efficiency from the programs, but aren't stupid enough to say "Lets just get rid of all these programs that I personally don't need because I'm a giant infant and don't understand that there are people other than me on this planet."

 

[superpunk]

Reminds me of one of my favorite pieces from Taibbi

Scanning the thousands of hopped-up faces in the crowd, I am immediately struck by two things. One is that there isn't a single black person here. The other is the truly awesome quantity of medical hardware: Seemingly every third person in the place is sucking oxygen from a tank or propping their giant atrophied glutes on motorized wheelchair-scooters. As Palin launches into her Ronald Reagan impression — "Government's not the solution! Government's the problem!" — the person sitting next to me leans over and explains.

"The scooters are because of Medicare," he whispers helpfully. "They have these commercials down here: 'You won't even have to pay for your scooter! Medicare will pay!' Practically everyone in Kentucky has one."

A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can't imagine it.

After Palin wraps up, I race to the parking lot in search of departing Medicare-motor-scooter conservatives. I come upon an elderly couple, Janice and David Wheelock, who are fairly itching to share their views.

"I'm anti-spending and anti-government," crows David, as scooter-bound Janice looks on. "The welfare state is out of control."

"OK," I say. "And what do you do for a living?"

"Me?" he says proudly. "Oh, I'm a property appraiser. Have been my whole life."

I frown. "Are either of you on Medicare?"

Silence: Then Janice, a nice enough woman, it seems, slowly raises her hand, offering a faint smile, as if to say, You got me!

"Let me get this straight," I say to David. "You've been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?"

"Well," he says, "there's a lot of people on welfare who don't deserve it. Too many people are living off the government."

"But," I protest, "you live off the government. And have been your whole life!"

"Yeah," he says, "but I don't make very much." Vast forests have already been sacrificed to the public debate about the Tea Party: what it is, what it means, where it's going. But after lengthy study of the phenomenon, I've concluded that the whole miserable narrative boils down to one stark fact: They're full of shit. All of them. At the voter level, the Tea Party is a movement that purports to be furious about government spending — only the reality is that the vast majority of its members are former Bush supporters who yawned through two terms of record deficits and spent the past two electoral cycles frothing not about spending but about John Kerry's medals and Barack Obama's Sixties associations. The average Tea Partier is sincerely against government spending — with the exception of the money spent on them.



Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/matt-taibbi-on-the-tea-party-20100928#ixzz2UjF2inLv
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook

 

[MetalHead]

As usual, I've cut right to the core of the matter here and revealed an issue with every adamant opponent of government largesse...they want to selectively apply when government aid is ok. Never realizing that such selective application how we've got here in the first place (if we cut EVERYTHING, eventually we'd say "ok maybe we should have a program where old people can get medical care", and then it would snowball from there), they idiotically cry out "get rid of these programs that I can't see any use for". Due to their inferior intellect, it never occurs to them that their stance is completely subjective and only influenced by their own personal whimsy. Stupidity breeds a lack of empathy. And you will see these geniuses demand cuts here and there so long as they personally can't imagine a use for the program, or if they have a bogeyman (i.e. "welfare queens") that they can use as an excuse. And like a petulant child who has refused to grow up, they demand that they not be forced to share their toys.

People with a superior intellect realize that, while they may not personally benefit from things like medicaire or WIC or FEMA or income assistance or unemployment etc., someone else might NEED it - and what's more you may someday find yourself in a position where you need it. Time and unforeseen occurrence befall us all. They may sensibly demand more efficiency from the programs, but aren't stupid enough to say "Lets just get rid of all these programs that I personally don't need because I'm a giant infant and don't understand that there are people other than me on this planet."

 

[superpunk]

atlas shrugged

 

[VTA]

Well I guess that settles the issue of when to arbitrarily allow welfare according to the whims of VTA, then. Protip: Disaster relief IS welfare.

No it isn't. Disaster relief isn't charity; it's specific and focused on rebuilding something that was. It's not a program set up for a diffused 'they' as in 'the poor' who has become really faceless and only good for political talking points and it's not about providing for people in an open ended way. They're two entirely different concepts.

If anyone cares to be charitable, they can go on a local level and actually spend some face time with real people who are suffering and give someone some sense of immediate relief instead of pretending the government agencies aren't foolish. As though 1000+ welfare checks or whatever isn't proof enough.

 

[superpunk]

or we could pay into some sort of pool where what you give is dependent on how much you can afford so that we can do everything possible to make sure the needy don't fall through the cracks and improve quality of life for all, as opposed to VTA's "if you don't like it go give a bum a turnip so there's never any fraud EVER" plan.

 

[superpunk]

hey guys there are no poor or hungry people in America that's just something politicians made up.

do you people realize how stupid you sound or does it seem normal to you?

It's not a program set up for a diffused 'they' as in 'the poor' who has become really faceless and only good for political talking points

 

[VTA]

hey guys there are no poor or hungry people in America that's just something politicians made up.

do you people realize how stupid you sound or does it seem normal to you?

They're your words dopey. Do you think if you put stupid words in others' mouths it'll make them stupid?


The core of the issue is actual people with needs. Money doesn't trickle down and it doesn't really sustain a profitable life when it's filtered through myriad of corrupt governmental organizations. This is simple fact and verifiable truth. Ideas are cute, but they don't work.

These dopey programs have been around for decades and so far they haven't succeeded in lifting up the quality of life for the people who really need it.

Church missions do more for the immediacy of people in need than idiot bureaucracies ever will. It has nothing to do with politics. You can't adopt a platform of care in the name of a political party. It actually takes empathy and action. Nodding assent for these assholes to take more from your check isn't altruism and charity.