Anecdotes are not data. So far the only real statistic given says that one quarter of one percent of welfare recipients in the state of Wisconsin are fraudulent and yet everyone knows someone in their family or saw someone in a store once who was for sure a Welfare Queen.
Did you report your cousin Canvas Shoes? If you didn’t, you are part of the problem. Instead of stewing and resenting anyone who paid for a steak with an EBT card, you should have done your duty and not let your family defraud the government for 18 years.
I may be wrong, but as a food stamp recipient I believe the proper response to this is
‘Oh! Thank you master! You’re so much better than I am! Spit in my face! I deserve it!’
I’d Pit you, but since the rule change I can’t even say what I want to say in the Pit.
First things first…the statement is “could result in losses”. If it’s still anything like UE or the old system, there are a lot of loopholes too.
Anyway, let me do the math, she’s approximately 48 now (IIRC) and she started when she was 17 or 18 with the first kid. So that was about 30 years ago. So, 1981ish? She had the second kid 4 or 5 years later, so maybe late 1986 or so. When that one reached 18 in approximately 2004 is when the state made her start taking job training and get a state subsidized job. I’m guessing that all the years before, she was grandfathered in or some such. Anyway, IIRC they paid for part of her wages for a year, and then she was on her own.
So doing the math, I guess she’s been having to work more like eight years now, not the five or six I’d guessed initially. But about 2 years into her first government provided job, she got injured and has chronic back problems, so they had to completely re-train her (taxpayer expense) and put her into an entirely new, state subsidized job for a year. So out of those 8 years, 2 of them were still being paid for by taxpayers, including the training, and all of the medical for the back injuries. The boy, (the older one) has “separation anxiety” so at 20 something he’s never had to work and gets some sort of disability and other government aid for it, and still lives at home. The girl? Well she popped out a couple of kids of her own, and is following mommy’s footsteps.
I don’t know how she’s doing it, as I’ve said it’s been 20 plus years and in an entirely different state system, so I don’t know the current regs, but she has two kids somewhere around 4-6 years old, and she’s not working but is merely raising them on welfare. She has “disabilities” too. So in addition to welfare she gets some sort of disability or SS for her anxiety. And lives at home, or wherever she happens to crash. Like my cousin’s kids, her kids are mostly being raised by grandma and grandpa while she goes off and plays.
And grandma and grandpa still subsidize everything the jobs, or the government paychecks don’t cover. I don’t know what all those people will do when they die.
I’m not saying this is all welfare recipients, but there are enough people like this, that THIS is the picture people see when they think welfare. And they can’t be blamed for balking at wanting to pay the bill for something like this.
[QUOTE]
“If it’s on Lanai, that should trigger an investigation,” said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn. “California taxpayers, who are struggling to keep their own jobs, are subsidizing other people’s vacations. That’s absurd.”
Of the nearly $12 million accessed in Las Vegas, more than $1 million was spent or withdrawn at shops and casino hotels on, or within a few blocks of, the 4.5-mile strip. The list includes $8,968 at the Tropicana, $7,995 at the Venetian and its Grand Canal Shoppes, and $1,332 at Tix 4 Tonight, seller of discount admission for such acts as Cirque du Soleil.[/QUOTE
With any program there will be criminals, but there just isn’t enough manpower to fight it in some states. And yes, it happens.
Huh? This isn’t true. Hell, our neighborhood farmers’ market takes EBT now. People can legitimately buy produce and food ingredients like flour on SNAP. It’s usually cheaper to do so, assuming you know how to cook and have the facilities to do so.
By grateful I mean to drop the entitled/I deserve this attitude that some people show when they find out prepared foods and cigarettes cannot be paid for on EBT. I had one woman tell me she “deserved” cigarettes.
No one said anything about anyone being better or worse.
Wonderful. So then when people get sick due to their bad eating habits that they fund with their EBT, those of us subsidizing will have to pay for their health care too. It never ends.
Of course fraud happens. Nobody, especially me, said it didn’t. What I am asking is: What percentage of people who receive public assistance are doing so fraudulently? There was only one answer to this question in this thread so far.
OIG PA has an average of 9.5 cases a month this year. That gives us a whopping 114 cases a year.
This hand wringing over poor people who don’t deserve assistance because they have better clothes than you, apple, is pathetic and beneath your and everyone else’s dignity.
Farmer-Candy IS food! Is it the best food? No, but it’s still food. If you don’t want to see what people are buying, because it offends your sensibilities, use self checkout.
Report her for what? As far as I can tell, she was on the system within the time frame (and like I said since she started so early, possibly grandfathered in). As to all of the sudsidizing and such, I’m sure they have all of the paperwork as far as the horses belonging to grandma and grandpa. And if it’s anything like when I was on, it’s not against the system regs to live in a place that is owned by family members, as long as on each weeks system report (not sure what they’re called in my cousin’s state) you show receipts for rent, or even work done in lieu of rent. When I was on welfare, if you did work for your landlord, like painting, repairs etc. you could get a receipt from him showing you were “paying rent” with your labor, even if they’re related to you. Which is probably how they got around it, now that I think about it.
So it’s entirely possible she basically “paid” for rent by playing around with horse-breeding with horses her parents owned on paper. Mucking out stalls and feeding isn’t really that hard (done it, many times), especially if that’s what you want to do anyway.
I’ll tell you what though, my mom did witness a lot of this when she lived near them and I did try to get her to turn her in. If I’d lived there and had firsthand knowledge of it? You BET I would have turned her in, or at least tried, though I’m not sure what I could have cited as her “crime”. I doubt they’d take the word of someone who lived several thousand miles away though. And now of course, it’s after the fact, so what good would it do?
Not to mention, I doubt that state takes any reports seriously, they actually did, at one point, turn in the granddaughter (my cousin’s youngest) for child neglect and it all basically came to nothing.
For the record, you’re confusing the steak issue with some other poster. I never said I cared about what kinds of FOOD people on welfare buy. My issue is when they’re buying luxury items; cigarettes, booze, etc. As a person who has stood right next to some of these folks while in line paying for food with foodstamps and watching someone game the system to get a pack of cigarettes, I damn WELL have the right to be annoyed at misuse of that kind, because they’re exactly why the welfare office was gunning for some of the rest of us. I’m not some hoity-toity never-been-unemployed-Ivory-Tower-dweller. I’ve been in the trenches, THAT far down in the trenches.
Absolutely not. I got Pell Grants, which is free college money from the gov’t that I never have to pay back; should it only be available for certain majors that are more useful to the common good or have guaranteed employment?
I think you have reading comprehension issues, but let me elaborate.
One of my best friends spends her available money on luxury items that could be going toward her food. Lingerie, engravings, fancy clothes, jewelry, a new purse every month. It’s not a matter of “better” clothes, but chances are a significant number of people spend their available money on non-necessary items that could go toward their food and guess what, no matter how you spend your money it ends up gone, so situations like this DO NOT get assessed as fraud a lot of the time I’d guess.
Well, reported cases aren’t the same as people who actually commit the crime. And as the article in the LAT said, investigators can get laid off due to budget concerns.
I think some people who aren’t on any benefits get upset at those who are because of certain lifestyle choices that we can’t make. Example: Expensive shoes or clothes and being on welfare. What the hell? You have to make diddly squat for welfare - how’d you afford that? I can’t! While it’s true that people get gifts or maybe they had that expensive item before, it can’t be the case every single time.
Again - my students with benefits that have 5 pairs of Jordans (perhaps fake? who knows?) when my kid has shoes from Target. iPods, endless supplies of chips and soda, nice clothes, weed, whatever.
It’s not that hard to scam the government. Taxes, welfare, whatever.