The true life of a 'welfare queen'

My dear conservative friends love personal anecdotes over cold statistics -- which we lib'ruls just fake anyway.

So here's a real "welfare queen's" experience of what it takes to qualify for, and keep, welfare assistance [emphasis mine]:

The first step in the food-stamp application process was turning in every imaginable document regarding my identity, housing, assets and personal finances. I was photographed and fingerprinted, which made me feel like everyone thought I was a criminal. After winding my way through the byzantine bureaucracy, including several hours-long appointments during which I obviously couldn't be looking for work, I was finally approved; the monthly allotment worked out to about $5 per day.

To keep receiving food stamp benefits, I had to spend every "work day" at a Human Resources Administration work-search office – my presence there was mandatory from Monday through Friday and from 9am to 5pm. The office was more than an hour from my apartment (that is, when public transportation – which I had to pay for myself – was functioning properly), but arriving even five minutes late earned a strike against my record for "non-compliance".

Two strikes, and I would have been out: the US system automatically revokes all benefits for rule-breakers, who then have to start the application process all over again. It's not a pleasant thing to discover when you're attempting to pay for groceries and your EBT card suddenly no longer works. The only excusable absences are job interviews – which required asking the interviewer for a mortifying letter of verification – or for illness with a doctor's note.

I asked about what would happen if I'd had a cold but couldn't afford to go to a doctor just for a note about it. My caseworker shrugged and said I'd have to go to the ER.

As I've told my conservative friends, and Gray emphasizes, "No one wants to be on welfare":

No one wants to worry about being judged as "wasteful" by pundits and policymakers and the people behind you in line for using your Electronic Benefits Transfer card at the grocery store to buy your prepackaged food, because you're too exhausted from 12 hours on your feet at a retail job and you don't have the time or the energy to cook.

No one wants to fear buying cake mix for a child's birthday celebration, only to receive scornful glares from other shoppers because they aren't buying rice and beans.

No one wants to explain for the fiftieth time that, Yes, my EBT card only works at grocery stores, and only for food – and, no, it can't be used for paper towels or beer.

Welfare-to-work, even if well-intended, has become overly bureaucratic and outdated:

The reality of meeting workfare requirements, however, is different from the idealized bargain of "will work for food". The bureaucracy today is mind-numbingly difficult to navigate and ultimately serves to block welfare recipients from access to better jobs and educational opportunities. [...]

Annie Hollis, a Baltimore-based social worker who has worked in urban settings for over 10 years, explained why the Clinton-era reforms were flawed and discriminatory from the start. "The problem with workfare is that in the wake of globalization, most of the jobs available to people without postsecondary education are increasingly part-time and minimum wage," she told me.

Policy hasn't caught up to that reality because recipients are only permitted to receive vocational training for a maximum of 12 months. Based on my personal experience working with single mothers leaving domestic violence situations, most jobs that pay a living wage require much more than one year of post-secondary education.

If federal workfare requirements weren't already stringent enough, states such as Florida, Georgia and Maine have pushed to expand the hoops that applicants must jump through to avoid sanctions – including eliminating waivers for job training absences due to illness to forcing recipients to pay for their own unconstitutional drug testing. 

I got my Master's, couldn't find a job and lived on food stamps. Now stop calling me a 'welfare queen'

By Stefanie Gray

June 15, 2014 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3q2kk

Racist joke shows whites' real beef with 'welfare'

Pardon me for forwarding the ugly "joke" below that was forwarded to me by an old Tea Partyer, but it's a clear admission by white conservatives what their real beef is with "welfare" and a teachable moment for the rest of us: they really believe these federal programs are deliberate wealth redistribution from hardworking whites to lazy blacks.  (Or to "lazy brown-skinned people who speak gibberish, hate work and wipe their asses with American flags," to quote a true genius.)

In his recent op-ed "Why white America thinks ‘too much welfare’ is a black thing," Dr. Jason Johnson sums it up pretty well:

First, most social science research shows that to white Americans welfare automatically conjures up images of lazy promiscuous black women in the inner city, popping out babies like rabbits and turning government cheese vouchers into gold chains and plasma screen televisions.

Consequently for many Americans any question about welfare and the economy is really a question about race. This is not new, but in fact a longstanding narrative in American politics where during times of economic stress business and political elites have ‘protected’ the majority of whites from swallowing the harsh realities of American economics with a sugary dose of racial distraction.

The actual facts about welfare have always been pretty clear; whites and children are the greatest recipients and beneficiaries of various programs, but that’s not good fodder for talk radio.  From the beginning of government sponsored welfare programs, discriminatory policies were enacted to keep blacks off the rolls (like excluding farm workers and domestics in the 1950’s) and even once those policies were removed media and politicians, especially on the right, insisted on maintaining the myth that the face of poverty in America was a black thing.

In fact the racist joke below was told by Arkansas Tea Party leader Inge Marler at at an Ozark Tea Party rally in June 2012, although perhaps it's been around even longer.  The TP crowd loved it.  

---

From:
To:
Subject: Fw: Racism Explained
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 19:15:53 -0400

Subject: Racism Explained

RACISM EXPLAINED

A black kid asks his mother, "Mama, what's a Democracy?" 

"Well, son, that's when white folks work every day so we can get all our benefits, you knows, like free cell phones, rent subsidy, food stamps, welfare, school breakfasts and lunches, free healthcare, utility subsidy, & the list goes on & on, you knows."

"But mama, don't the white people get pissed off about all that?

"Sure they do, son, and that's called racism." 

Today's racial parallels to Reconstruction era

This is worth reading, especially if you are a white Republican.  The 1865 parallel to Obamacare is especially interesting.  It's absurd and sad at the same time that freed blacks were accused of relying on handouts only a year after their emancipation: the 19th century version of Reagan's "welfare queen" myth.  

The more things change....

Parallels to country's racist past haunt age of Obama

By John Blake

November 1, 2012 | CNN

URL: http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/01/parallels-to-countrys-racist-past-haunt-age-of-obama/?hpt=hp_bn13

U.S. of Moochers: 96% get federal benefits!

96 percent!?  That's twice as bad as Mitt thought!  Egad, we're all "victims" dependent on Big Government!  

If you include all federal benefits that go to specific households, from Social Security to even tax expenditures like the mortgage-interest deduction, then survey data from 2008 reveals that 96 percent of Americans have received assistance from the federal government at some point in their life:

[...] Young adults, who are not yet eligible for many policies, account for most of the remaining 4 percent.  On average, people reported that they had used five social policies at some point in their lives.

Fortunately for the GOP, most of us don't know we're recipients though, so we can vote against those "moochers" and "leeches" (against ourselves) with a clear conscience and plenty of righteous anger.  Ignorance is bliss!

Survey: 96 percent of Americans have received government benefits

By Brad Plumer

September 26, 2012 | Washington Post

URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/26/do-96-percent-of-americans-receive-government-benefits/

Frum: Mitt played up to the rich's class terror but got burned

Conservative pundit David Frum makes it clear what the 47 percent is meant to mean to Republicans, the facts be damned:

Start with this data point:  When you ask white Americans to estimate the black population of the United States, the answer averages out at nearly 30%. Ask them to estimate the Hispanic population, and the answer averages out at 22%.

So when a politician or a broadcaster talks about 47% in "dependency," the image that swims into many white voters' minds is not their mother in Florida, her Social Security untaxed, receiving Medicare benefits vastly greater than her lifetime tax contributions; it is not their uncle, laid off after 30 years and now too old to start over. No, the image that comes into mind is minorities on welfare. 

It's also a lot of silly and, frankly, disproven fear about Obama's diabolical designs on the wealthy (his first term is almost over and America still exists, pretty much as it was under Dubya):

The background to so much of the politics of the past four years is the mood of apocalyptic terror that has gripped so much of the American upper class.

Hucksters of all kinds have battened on this terror. They tell them that free enterprise is under attack; that Obama is a socialist, a Marxist, a fascist, an anti-colonialist. Only by donating to my think tank, buying my book, watching my network, going to my movie, can you - can we - stop him before he seizes everything to give to his base of "bums," as Charles Murray memorably called them.

And what makes it all both so heart-rending and so outrageous is that all this is occurring at a time when economically disadvantaged Americans have never been so demoralized and passive, never exerted less political clout.  [...]

Yet even so, the rich and the old are scared witless! Watch the trailer of Dinesh D'Souza's new movie to glimpse into their mental universe: chanting swarthy mobs, churches and banks under attack, angry black people grabbing at other people's houses.

It's all a scam, but it's a spectacularly effective scam. Mitt Romney tried to make use of the scam, and now instead has fallen victim to it himself.

Here’s Why Mitt’s 100% Wrong on the 47%

By David Frum

September 18, 2012 | Daily Beast

URL: http://www.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2012/09/18/here-s-why-mitt-s-100-wrong-on-the-47.html

How Romney engaged in class warfare

Said Romney to a room of friendly, super-rich private donors in Boca Raton on May 17:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

This is blatant class warfare.  There's no other term for it.  Not only that, it's a lie.  

Here are the facts: 17 percent of those non-taxpayers are the elderly with little or no income who collect Social Security and Medicare -- services they paid their whole lives for.  But the elderly are "dependent" in Romney's view.  Only 18 percent have no tax liability (including FICA) because they have no labor income, for whatever reason (including college students and our combat troops, for example) -- they are the true "dependents" if you prefer that term.  The remaining 28 percent are lower- and middle-class workers who do pay FICA tax levied on 100 percent of their income -- revenue from which goes to fund about half of the federal budget -- Medicare and Social Security.  And why do they not pay any federal income tax?  Because of Dubya's tax cuts, the Standard Deduction, Mortgage Interest Deduction and the Child Tax Credit, all popular tax expenditures in place long before Obama and upheld by Republicans.

Moreover, according to CNN, more than 90 percent of all those with zero federal income tax liability earn below $50,000.

So Romney is basically admitting he can't win over the middle class, and he's blaming it on tax policies that have been in place for decades.  Perhaps that's why Romney is silent on the middle class on his Issues web page.

Besides class warfare, it's preemptive excuse-making by Romney.  He's laying the groundwork to justify later why he lost.  At this fundraiser Romney admitted, "The fact that I'm either tied or close to the president…that's very interesting." Interesting, because he should be kicking Obama's tail in such a down economy and he knows it. But he's not.  They are running neck and neck.  Why?  Because Romney sucks, and the GOP's ideas suck.  

Now enjoy this:

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

SECRET VIDEO: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He REALLY Thinks of Obama Voters

When he doesn't know a camera's rolling, the GOP candidate shows his disdain for half of America.

By David Corn

September 17, 2012 | Mother Jones

URL:  http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/secret-video-romney-private-fundraiser

Rush says what Republicans think: Non-whites hate work, wipe their a**es with American flags, and vote Democrat

Rush Limbaugh and other Republicans have a racist view of blacks and immigrants as people who choose government handouts over honest work and therefore they support Democrats. For their part, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and even Mitt Romney are echoing this line to win support from the radical GOP base.

Rush, "The Titular Head of the GOP," couldn't make it any clearer:

"But Obama is going to be campaigning exclusively to the people who are being pulled in the cart: The people that aren't paying income tax, the people that are on the federal dole. He has made the calculation that that's where he wins. It's clear to me that the Democrat Party has now made the determination that, of the people that vote in this country, a clear majority of them don't work. A clear majority of them don't want to work. A clear majority of them live and breathe on this class envy stuff, and are gonna vote for somebody who's gonna make sure their contraception pills keep coming; their welfare checks keep coming, their disability checks keep coming, their unemployment checks keep coming. Food stamps, you name it.

"That's his group. That's his constituency. Illegal immigrants or families of illegal immigrants. As many minority groups as he can create and convince they are victims of an oppressive America. And, in that calculation, he just casts aside white working-class families while setting up African Americans for Obama."

Yet today, 49 percent of Americans live in a household receiving some form of government assistance. Will that make Republicans' "welfare queen" arguments less effective this election?

Never mind that, even in these tough economic times, only about 1.9 million families receive "pure" welfare (cash assistance) in the form of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, down from 5 million in 1994 before President Clinton's welfare-to-work reforms. And never mind that, as far as welfare goes, Medicaid ($274 billion) and refundable tax credits ($102 billion) far outweigh food stamps ($71.8 billion) and cash assistance ($6.9 billion).

Is the mental image of the black "welfare queen" -- a made-up story by Ronald Reagan that changed with each re-telling -- so deeply embedded in Republicans' brains that no amount of information can erase it?

Should I Just Declare the Republican Primary Over and Anoint Mitt Romney?

February 29, 2012 | The Rush Limbaugh Show

Drug testing for welfare recipients and clash of conservative values

This is a pretty good example of where conservatives' values collide, and one proves stronger: on the one hand, conservatives despise drug use as immoral, and they think it leads to crime and poverty; on the other hand, they want to cut government expenditures wherever possible.
In the case of drug testing for welfare recipients, it's a case of spending way more money on testing than can be saved by excluding drug abusers from welfare.
For example, since Florida mandated testing of welfare recipients last year, only 2 percent have failed the tests. Florida has had to eat the costs of tests for the 96 percent who passed.
But don't hold your breath waiting for Florida to cancel expensive drug testing. This is a case where conservatives want government to spend a lot of money to promote their values.
UPDATE (02.25.2012): GOP primary candidate Mitt Romney said that drug testing for welfare recipients was an "excellent idea," damn the costs. So there you go.

Commentary: Drug testing welfare recipients is a waste of taxpayers' money
By Mary Sanchez
February 20, 2012 | Kansas City Star
URL: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/02/20/139081/commentary-drug-testing-welfare.html#storylink=cpy

ID law proponent convicted of voter fraud -- HA!

Well, well, well. Republican and Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White was convicted by a jury of his peers for voter fraud.

"The irony is that White has been an outspoken defender of controversial voter identification laws, which are purportedly aimed at stamping out the kind of fraud he was found guilty of committing." Yep, irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.

His conviction is also ironic because voter fraud in America is so exceedingly rare. Even after five years of investigating, George W. Bush's Justice Department "turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections." Yet many Republicans take it as an article of faith that voter fraud -- almost exclusively by Democrats -- is so rampant that it costs (Republicans) elections.

I classify this article of faith in the same category as "welfare queens:" they want to believe that legions of evil poor people, mainly blacks, are subverting our democracy to grow the welfare state. A big part of their political platform depends on this false belief.

(On a darker note, I hope Mr. White's conviction does not signal a trend, as with vocally homophobic Republican politicians who get caught in public restrooms stuffing gay men, where the most pro-ID, anti-voter-fraud Republican is the one most likely stuffing ballot boxes.)

Indiana's Top Election Official Convicted of Voter Fraud

By Corey Dade

February 6, 2012 | NPR

URL: http://n.pr/Aril6m

1/3 of Alabamans on food stamps

This makes perfect sense (?!?) because Alabamans hate lazy welfare queens and Big Government, and love the GOP and Tea Parties.

Nearly third of Alabamians receive food stamps

August 7, 2011 | Associated Press

Nearly one-third of Alabama's residents received food stamps in May.

The state Department of Human Resources reports there were a record 1.43 million Alabamians in the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program. The number was higher than normal because 43 of Alabama's 67 counties were receiving disaster assistance due to the deadly tornadoes in April.

While the tornadoes had a big effect, the number of Alabamians on food stamps has been growing in recent years. Department spokesman Barry Spear told the Montgomery Advertiser (http://bit.ly/quyHuy ) that the number of Alabamians in the program grew from more than 546,000 in fiscal year 2006 to 805,000 in fiscal year 2010.

Spear said rising unemployment is a factor, along with efforts to make more people aware that they can qualify for the assistance.

Washington state graphic: Who votes how?

I must point out that this super graphic from WA state is indicative of a national trend. Indeed, Red States tend to be federal welfare queens.

'Course, if you want to dig deeper, then you see that all major cities, even in Red States, tend to vote Democrat. It's the 'burbs and the vast swathes of nothing that vote Republican.

What does all this mean? I'm not quite sure. But cognitive dissonance is nothing new to conservatives and Republicans. To be charitable, let's remember that famous quote from writer F. Scott Fitzgerald: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." Red State welfare queens obviously have no problem with hating Big Gubument while collecting all kinds of federal goodies. So doggoneit, Red Staters are possessed of a first-rate intelligence!

http://www.thestranger.com/binary/ea57/CityLead-CLICK.jpg