LETTERS: Put me in charge of welfare, Medicare and housing grants

Published November 18, 2010

Put me in charge ...

Put me in charge of food stamps. I’d get rid of Lone Star cards; no cash for Ding Dongs or Ho Ho’s, just money for 50-pound bags of rice and beans, blocks of cheese and all the powdered milk you can haul away. If you want steak and frozen pizza, then get a job.

Put me in charge of Medicaid. The first thing I’d do is to get women Norplant birth control implants or tubal ligations. Then, we’ll test recipients for drugs, alcohol, and nicotine and document all tattoos and piercings. If you want to reproduce or use drugs, alcohol, smoke or get tats and piercings, then get a job.

Put me in charge of government housing. Ever live in a military barracks? You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair. Your “home” will be subject to inspections anytime and possessions will be inventoried. If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and your own place.

In addition, you will either present a check stub from a job each week or you will report to a “government” job. It may be cleaning the roadways of trash, painting and repairing public housing, whatever we find for you. We will sell your 22 inch rims and low profile tires and your blasting stereo and speakers and put that money toward the “common good.”

Before you write that I’ve violated someone’s rights, realize that all of the above is voluntary. If you want our money, accept our rules. Before you say that this would be “demeaning” and ruin their “self esteem,” consider that it wasn’t that long ago that taking someone else’s money for doing absolutely nothing was demeaning and lowered self esteem.

If we are expected to pay for other people’s mistakes we should at least attempt to make them learn from their bad choices. The current system rewards them for continuing to make bad choices.

[The following was in the email but was added by someone else:]

AND While you are on Gov’t subsistence, you no longer can VOTE! Yes that is correct. For you to vote would be a conflict of interest. You will voluntarily remove yourself from voting while you are receiving a Gov’t welfare check. If you want to vote, then get a job.

Although the last paragraph was not in the original, I believe that if you don't pay federal taxes you shouldn't vote in federal elections; if you don't pay state or local taxes, you shouldn't vote in state or local elections. Why should you? This country became the United States of America on the premise that there should be no taxation without representation. If you don't pay taxes, why should you have representation? You're on a free ride, you shouldn't be in charge of who is driving.

I appreciate the sentiments expressed by Alfred W. Evans, however in my experience in dealing with welfare cheats, welfare fraud cannot be stopped. A crack whore will spend her entire welfare check on water bottles and empty them in the street and return the bottles to get enough deposits back to buy a pack of smokes. There are more than enough willing bodega owners who gladly buy grocery items at 15% of the original cost, so welfare recipients can get the cash to buy smokes, liquor, (or drugs) or any other prohibited item.

The only way to stop welfare fraud is to stop welfare. If there were no welfare, there would be less taxes, with less taxes there would be more business investment, with more business investment there would be more people employed, with more people employed there would be little need for welfare.