...don't come to Minnesota, because we hate you. And not just the ordinary crazy hate. According to Susie Madrak it's the crazy AND evil hate:
War On The Poor: Minnesota Republicans Want To Bust Poor People Who Carry Cash
They're not just crazy, they're evil -- and un-Christian, should they have the audacity to claim otherwise. If only we could force them to live like this, they wouldn't last a week:
St. Paul, MN – Minnesota Republicans are pushing legislation that would make it a crime for people on public assistance to have more $20 in cash in their pockets any given month. This represents a change from their initial proposal, which banned them from having any money at all.
It's the winters up here. Eventually they freeze solid our black little hearts. Or it could all be a bunch of BS.
Yeah, go with that last one.
Here's the real deal in a nutshell. Minnesota uses Electronic Benefit Transfer cards to distribute public assistance funds from several different programs. There are about 480,000 cards in use for food assistance and another 180,000 cards in use for "cash assistance" in the state. The cards function like a normal debit card, though the food program cards are limited to certain stores and certain products from what I understand. The cash assistance cards function like normal debit cards.
Last year one of our local TV stations did an investigation into abuses of the cash assistance cards and documented instances of people buying non-essential items such as alcohol and cigarettes. Also, out of 2 million transactions in the month of September last year, some 55,000 or so took place out of state. Their series of reports can be viewed at KSTP's site. The reports are probably somewhat sensationalized(I know, shock!) but predictably they rattled some cages and prompted renewed efforts to tighten restrictions on what the cards can buy and how much cash per month can be withdrawn.
You can read the bill at the Minnesota House website. The misinformation about restricting how much cash a person on welfare can carry comes from the effort to limit cash withdrawals to only $20 per month. There is nothing in the bill that even mentions the possession of cash.
And so another myth is born.
Now that we've dispensed with the nonsense, I think there could be some issues with the bill and how practical things such as the $20 monthly limit are. But why the hysteria? Do the Susie Madrak's of the world actually believe the stuff they spew out there or is it just a tool to get the natives all ramped up? And note that when I write "Madrak's of the world" I mean her type across all political persuasions. I used to have Gateway Pundit linked on the side bar but deleted that site a few years ago because he does the same exact thing from the conservative side.
I tried my biannual "get into a dialogue at a progressive site" on the issue and it was entertaining as a way to knock back some beers, but pretty much a disaster on the dialogue front. I'll spare you the details, but I did stumble across an attitude about public assistance that absolutely astounded me.
After admitting that the possession of cash limit was a crock, what came back was the $20/month cash withdrawal limit was too small to be practical(maybe a valid point), and criticism of any restrictions at all on how public assistance funds were spent by the recipients. You see:
"It's their money."
That's not a joke or exaggeration. The attitude was that once the state distributed the money the recipients should be free to spend it how they wish. Booze, smokes, gambling, tattoos...who are we to judge? They're poor. Give them money and stop whining about how they spend it you Rethuglican assholes. I kid you not.
Now, I don't think we should demonize people who need public assistance and I would bet that the majority spend the money on necessities as intended. Abuse does happen though, and we should have the right to exercise reasonable control over how public assistance is used in order to limit that abuse. It should not hinder the proper use of such assistance and it should not be insulting or abusive to recipients. But to make it taboo to even talk about it strikes me as ridiculous to an extreme.
I also don't think it's too helpful for some people whom those particular progressives supposedly want to help. One path to poverty is substance abuse. Do we really want to make it easy for people to slide back into that with public money? How about the guy who smacks his wife around when he's had that six-pack that I was accused of being cold-hearted about?
And I always thought of the anti-smoking effort as being more of a left-wing thing. Now they want us to pay for them for the poor? I thought they were "death sticks." Is the left trying to kill the poor now?
Puzzling.
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