Tax credit, food-stamp increase take effect today

NC Mom: if indeed you are working and paying taxes and still receiving assistance, you ar the EXCEPTION, not the rule. And I commend you. However, in your post you practice the same sterotypical behavior you claim “makes you sick” by making ignorant remarks about my church attendance. And although I owe you no explanation, I’ll do the Christian thing and enlighten you: Merely attending church does not make one a Christian or a good person. However, I do in fact attend every Sunday and throughout the week. BUt more importantly, I try daily to live by God’s instruction. I wish you and your family the best and hope you are back on your feet soon.

VirginiaGal2: Don’t feel sorry for me.  I’m not angry at needy people. I spend a great deal of my time and income at church helping the legitimate ones. I’m angry at people who are not needy yet access the goods and services meant for those who are. I’m angry at people who are are either born into or come into this country with an entitled attitude, thinking that they are owed something. But I’m most angry at the hearts like you who enable them.

So here’s a challenge if you can tear yourself away from your healthy fruits and vegetables for a couple of hours. On May 1st, at around 1pm, trot on down to the Wal Mart. Stand at the end of any one of the lines and observe the items being scanned and paid for by the good old government (it’s a card now; they had to discontinue the stamps because folks were selling them for a profit). Watch the brand name junk loaded into bag after bag. Then talk to me about how they are only getting supplemental nutrition. Then whiz on over to any elementaty school in the City of Richmond and tell the secretary you suspect that a child is getting free lunch because mom is claiming she’s the only household income even though her boyfriend lives there and brings home a paycheck. She’ll tell you that the only requirement for obtaining free lunch is a one-page form voluntarily filled out by mom that no one at the school is allowed to question. Next, use your free bus tickets (you can get those by claiming poverty, too) and head on down to the ER at MCV and observe for one hour. Then me if it’s an urban legend that folks use it as a GP office, get pain meds and sell them. They absolutely do. I have seen it first-hand and reported it.

You can throw around terminology and figures all day but what you really need to do is get out from behind the desk and go over to Whitcomb Court or Fairfield Court or any other government-subsidized housing complex and talk some of the people I deal with on a regular basis. Because you’re right - keeping people from starving is not socialism. But misinformed, bleeding hearts like you redistributing my hard-earned income to slackards is.

Because this is what our country needs to do…give out MORE free money to those who refuse to work for a living.  This food stamp system and other government assistance programs are a joke.  They are there to help those who pop out a dozen children and do not work out of laziness.  I remember as a 19 yr old single mother of a newborn, I worked full time and made $11.50 an hour and was told I made too much money to receive WIC.  Angry and dissapointed I asked the woman who gave me this news “if I quit my job, then I will be approved?“ She simply stated “yes”.  Of course I didn’t quit my job, I wasn’t raised to expect handouts, however there is a new generation of lazy idiots that sit around and collect all forms of government assistance while those of us that struggle just as much…pay for it.

It’s one thing to provide it to those who are reallyu in need (even though I was denied then) but when I see people riding in their nice cars, with their designer clothing and their fake nails and hair…I get a little pissed when I find out there are on some kind of govt assistance. At 19 I sacrificed everything in order to take care of my daughter.  Formula at $24 a can several times a week, meant I lived off of cereal and tuna fish for a year.

Virginia gal2 you really need to get diiferent sources of information.  My sister was getting WIC payments and they both worked.  How did they do that you ask?  the people in the WIC center taught them how to scam the system.  They were living on 10 acres of property had 3 cars and an antique Model A that they took to shows. She said she could have got welfare and food stamps but was too embarassed by her family to go that far.  Your sources for this iinformation are completely in another world.  i begrudge those who can and should be working the money they steal from me and the other tax payers.  If a person is truely needy and as poor as you say then they should get government help.  I can safely estimate that 50% of the people on government payouts are doing it against the rules.  And for your enlightenment Chairman Obamas own Aunt, who is in this country illegally, was found living in government housing and drawing food stamps while under a deportation order.  But according to you that can’t happen right.  The regulations say she wasn’t allowed to do that.  So what happened to the system that you say works !!!
Get better information the next time you try to prove all these people wrong as you are more wrong and nieve than most people

citycynic, I feel sorry for you.  Your anger against needy people is sad. 

Certainly, there are people who work the system.  It’s not the majority, and I know its better to help 49 people, and try to catch the 50th cheater, than to punish 49 desperately needy people out of misinformed anger.

Getting a disability claim approved is not easy - and there’s a many year backlog. 

WIC provides supplmental nutrition.  It does not provide enough food to live on, unless you are an infant on formula.

Free lunch requires proof of income.  I have no idea why you think they can’t question it, but you are mistaken.  You have to be quite poor to be eligible - and its one meal a day. 

Welfare - TANF, once called “General Assistance” - is limited to five years out of a lifetime.  You can’t live on welfare for a lifetime unless you die at 5.

MCV is not in the habit of handing out pain meds for sore throats.  So much for that urban legend.

Most people cannot work construction - and to get assistance, you have to be able to sit in an eligiblity office for hours during a work day - kind of hard to achieve while working construction.

Re your personal comment, my food bill is high because I actually eat healthy fruits and vegetables and lean protein, not just Ramen noodles and rice.  The diets you are suggesting would kill someone. 

Finally, I do not feel that keeping people from starving or being malnourished is socialism.  Sorry.