Minnesota, like so many states, is facing a harsh reality. On July 1st, the government shut down and each side began blaming the other for failing to pass a budget that would solve the $5 billion deficit.
What caught my attention was the story of Sonya Mills, a 39-year-old mother of eight children – six of whom are ages 3 through 14 who apparently live with her – who now has to face the loss of about $3,600 a month in state funding for their daycare. Yep, that’s $43,200 tax free money the generous people of Minnesota cough up to watch this irresponsible woman’s children while she works at a temp agency.
There’s so many things wrong with this picture, I don’t know where to begin but I’ll try.
Mills should be the poster child for the nanny state. Instead of families, communities and churches helping those who really need help, the nanny state that has evolved in this country encourages people to have lots of kids they can’t support and who expect the state to pay for their stupidity.
She’s collecting more a month than most seniors collect in Social Security and they’ve been paying into the system their entire lives!
I can understand one mistake by someone in her early 20s. But how do have seven more and the last one when you’re 36 years old? As Judge Judy would say, “she has to find something else to occupy her time besides making babies.”
We can all be very pleased with how effective sex education in schools has been. Perhaps Mills skipped school on the days when pregnancy prevention was being taught.
Even if she missed those classes in school, why wasn’t she going to tax-funded organization, Planned Parenthood, for some contraceptive advice? Isn’t that what they’re there for? To hand out free birth control pills and condoms? (Or is it really an abortion mill?)
And how about the fathers? As I’ve written before in “Political Correctness Abounds,” I want to know whether Mills is an unwed mother, divorced or widowed. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say there’s more than one father and she’s an unwed mother. (Prove me wrong.) So who and where are the fathers? Why aren’t they paying child support? Has the state tracked down these deadbeats and are their wages being attached?
The article doesn’t mention the other two children. Are they the oldest? Why aren’t they watching their siblings instead of the people of Minnesota?
In “Who’s Rich? Who’s Poor?” I wrote about people who’ve learned how to scam the system with impunity. I’d like to know what other benefits is this woman receiving? Food stamps? Child tax credits aka welfare? Section 8 housing? Medicaid? I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s getting paid under the table and still collecting unemployment or SSI, but then again, I’m a very cynical person.
We’ve always been a very compassionate nation. We still are. We donate more to victims of disasters around the world than all other countries. However, the nanny state has taken hold in the United States and it has eliminated the incentive to take care of yourself and your family. The days of “rugged individualism” seems to be waning.
If the economic crises continues, I wouldn’t be surprised to see rioting in the streets led by people like Mills complaining that their cradle to grave benefits have dried up. If you don’t believe me, just look at the chaos in Greece. Once people get used to the government taking care of their every need, handouts are expected, and God help you, if you start saying, “no more.”
So, when I read stories like this one, when people’s own choices put them into predicaments such as the one Mills finds herself, I don’t feel sorry for her. I feel sorry for the kids and if their mother is so irresponsible, I hate to say it, but perhaps the state should raise them – it’s already footing the bill.
I don’t get it, but if you do, God bless you.
P.S. If it turns out that Mills actually adopted eight developmentally delayed and/or physically disabled children and her husband was killed in Afghanistan and left her without any life insurance, I take back all the bad things I said about her.
