I know I’m beating a dead horse here, but I just can’t help myself.
I run a law office which operates in Washington and California. I keep calendars, meet deadlines, know in which court my husband is expected to be, and do tons of paperwork. When I order supplies, I know exactly what I’m buying and know exactly when the order will arrive. I’m accountable to my husband. In other words, I keep track of a lot of things and I’m just one person.
The government has, how many, employees and all of them put together can’t seem to keep track of anything. From the looks of things, it has no interest in weeding out the scammers.
According to a WSJ op-ed piece by James Bovard, the number of food-stamp recipients has risen to 44 million, up from 26 million in 2007 costing $77 billion up from $33 billion. The USDA has only 40 inspectors to oversee about 200,000 merchants who accept food stamps but who’ll never be prosecuted for illegal activities.
Wisconsin food-stamp recipients routinely sell their benefit cards on Facebook and prosecutors won’t prosecute.
In my state of Washington, food-stamp recipients are selling their cards on Craigslist. DSHS management has actually restricted fraud investigations into this criminal activity. Go figure.
Thirty percent of inmates in an Iowan jail collected food stamps. The same thing is happening in Wisconsin where more than $12 million in overpaid benefits and other questionable charges were made in 2009, some which went to prison inmates. Again, same thing in New York and the list goes on and on.
Not only are monies going to people who aren’t qualified to receive them, but government employees are scamming the system as well. Two employees of NYC’s Human Resources Administration pocketed $8 million from their food-stamp scam; Wisconsin staffers plundered almost $300,000 and a Louisiana state bureaucrat scammed the system for $50,000.
What’s really disgusting is that, on the one hand, the food stamp program is considered by the USDA as a “nutrition” program but, on the other hand, it vetoed all proposals to prevent food stamps from being used for junk food. Although food stamp recipients rose by more than 50% during the Bush administration, you’d think that President Obama would do something about this so his wife would stop kvetching about junk food.
And the abuses aren’t limited to food stamps. My husband often sees people selling their government-issued bus passes for money to buy drugs. In 2010, Medicare and Medicaid made $70 billion in improper payments.
I remember reading last year about protestors on Wall Street, not angry about the failing economy or Wall Street scandals. Nope, they wanted an extension of their already 99 weeks of unemployment benefits! Sure, some people, through no fault of their own, lose jobs, yet, I know a few people who miraculously found a job after their 99 weeks were up.
What are the two million federal employees doing? I know every one isn’t in charge of doling out money, but, really, who’s in charge here? Who’s watching the vault?
We’ve got a growing number of whiners in this country who feel entitled to the tax dollars paid by hard-working Americans. We’ve got the scammers who know they’re not entitled to the monies they receive but don’t return it. And then we’ve got the government that is either disinterested or impotent to do anything about it.
What was once a country whose greatest asset was its self-reliant citizens, is now becoming a nation of wimps and deadbeats. We only have to see what’s happening in European welfare countries to visualize what our country may look like in the foreseeable future.
Cradle to grave benefits gut peoples’ independence and individualism and results in a nanny state where folks believe they are entitled to free money.
I wasn’t raised like that. I was expected to work after I graduated from high school and I continued to do so while attending and paying my own way through college and law school.
Instead of getting an education and become productive members of society, too many people feel entitled and are willing to accept a government stipend and then complain when the coffers dry up. The welfare mentality has always been alien to me.
I don’t get it, but if you do, God bless you.
