1 i am astounded that you have heard about this . I am so far removed from news it isn't funny, but i did hear about this from a morning radio show the other day. would you believe it if i told you that the walmart mentioned in this news story is the walmart right near my house, where i have sometimes shopped?!

2 Sweetie, you gots it all wrong.  Don't be hatin'.

They dint spend the welfares on the wii's. Dey spended the welfares on diapers and pencils, crayons, and educational stuff. ($200 per kid, age 2-17, in school or not!)  That freed up the $200 dey already had budgeted for dat stuff, so now dey could spennit on the X-boxes and Hi-Def.

Don't be frontin.  Obama said he was gonna pay my mortgage.

3 It is precisely this type of misappropriation of funds that leads them to need money to buy school supplies (allegedly) in the first place.  If the individuals in question made good decisions, they would be able to provide for the kids they have or, more likely, they would not have the children they do. 

This is why good parents make their children earn things.  So they see the value in hard work and have some ownership and investment in what they possess.  This from the mother who made her 5-year-old earn 1/3 of the price of her Barbie Jeep through chores (no b-day money!).  That Barbie Jeep is still one of her most prized things, even though she outgrew it a couple years ago.

You would think after the Katrina debit card Coach purses, boob jobs and lap dances, someone might have seen this coming.  But, after all, it was for the children.

4 You made me de-lurk on this post.  My mom lives in NY and was tellling me about this.  She saw what her neighbors daughter had spent on the grandkids.  I really wish I could go shop at the Gap, Hollister, or other high ended stores in the mall instead of Walmart and thrift stores.  Oh yeah they had to drive an hour to get to the closest mall.

5 I'm de-lurking too!  I live in this county and this is beyond irritating on so many levels.  Let's throw money at a problem and hope for the best.  The kids will show up on the first day of school w/ stories about their new video games and tv's but somehow without a pencil.  And we wonder why the Rochester City Schools are a complete mess. It starts at home people....

6 If a lack of school supplies are such a real problem, then I must wonder why the money for school supplies goes to families with a suggested list of supplies to purchase instead of to schools to purchase and have on hand as needed.  I guess that would be rather like the school lunch program, but with paper and pencils.

And I'm NOT advocating this, I'm just thinking that it would have made more sense. 

Then again - sense and government hand outs aren't exactly known to be close friends and workmates.

7 No offense, but this is why the poor stay poor.

Not because of the cards they were dealt in life, not because they didn't win the 'lotto' ticket of being born into a certain family or economic class. No, it's because they continue to participate in bad spending behaviors and they don't break away from their materialistic patterns confusing wants into needs.

One of the biggest characteristics of the wealthy is that they follow the behavioral cycle you’ll hear on any financial advisor show – earn, save, reinvest, then repeat. The common denominator among the wealthy is not the amount of income they earn (or liberals will say – their tax bracket), but the choices they make once the paycheck hits their bank account.

You could give these people on govt. subsidizes a million dollars and they'd still be filing for bankruptcy within 3 years.

8

Man it's a small world, along with Jen & Kate I too live were this happened.

 

Yes, let's simply give money away....and then be surprised when it's misspent. Our government at work folks, I blame them just as much (if not more) as the scum who received the money.

9 Okay, second thought - I'll support the X-box if it comes with the electronic game of Monopoly only so then these people can learn a thing or too about how to spend, save, and the results of investments or spending outside of your means to bankruptcy.  

10

People suck.

We know. We Alphas just pretend to love them. And yet they vOte for us anyway! Bwahaha!

people were going in and buying X-boxes, Wii systems, flat-screen television sets

They're just viktims of corporations that brainwash them into buying unnecssary junk. Funny thing is, it's the big companies that fund us Leftists! You think Bill Gates is ever gonna give his money to the H-Heritage Foundation? What a deal ... your taxes fund their purchases that fund us. Follow the money ... Leftward!

This is a great example of why it's useless to give a man a fish.

It sure is useless. Who can live off a fish these days? Let's give 'em whales ... at your expense!  Er, veggie whales ... you know what we meant, right?

I'm sure non-welfare New Yorkers would like the government to give them money to buy a Wii too.

They probably would. We'll corrupt them all. Turn the whole populace into dependents except for a handful of Gulchies.

It's Wii - we - vs. you. We outnumber you. We'll outvote you. Welcome to the USSO - the United Socialist States of Omerica.

Democracy + dependency = a perpetual welfare state!

We may be mathematically challenged, but at least we understand that much.

I hope George Soros is glad that his "help the poor" idea just helped people to afternoons of Guitar Hero.

The poor need entertainment too. It's not fair that only richies get to play Guitar Hero. Video game equality now! It's probably on some page of some health care bill. Who reads that stuff anyway?  Reading isn't fundamental; it's fundamentally Europpressive! We Alphas have better things to do.

I'll support the X-box if it comes with the electronic game of Monopoly

Un-Liberaled Woman, these dependents are already learning about the ultimate monopoly - the gOvernment!

11 AFW, that was my thinking exactly.  Lord only knows why we just want to hand out cash, but how idiotic!

1 I have a related post: Healthcare: Mackey, Obama, and Reid

2 I did not see this coming! Thanks, Sarah!

Why were you snarky about Whole Foods? I don't think I'd like their clientele - especially after the boycott (and they do have a right to do so) - but I've never been to WF stores and don't have an opinion about them. If I knew more, I might be snarky too ... and the words of a CEO wouldn't excuse store practices I didn't approve of.

Although I was kinda turned off by his health lecture at the end, I should have expected it.

David, thanks for providing a link to your post. What's the "sock-puppetry" you were referring to? Could you provide a link for that? I'd appreciate it.

3 Amritas...a couple of years ago, Mackey participated in Internet forums discussing WF and its management...used that handle Rahodeb (a transposition of his wife's name Deborah) and argued with one commenter who made a snide comment about his haircut..as Rahodeb, he wrote "I like Mackey’s haircut. I think he looks cute!”

4 Thanks, David. I'm not bothered by Mackey's sock-puppetry if that's all he did. Defending his haircut is one thing; saying negative things about his own company, attacking others, etc. wearing a sock puppet is another.

5 There are certain things I can get from Whole Foods that aren't available as cheaply in other places - namely bulk couscous.  But I turn up my nose at most organic stuff.  Overpriced and not worth it (to me, anyway.  Everyone's entitled to their own opinions).

Honestly - I don't want bugs in my food.  Also, my Pop actively ran his farm until he was in his late 80s and while he wasn't slap happy with the pesticides, he didn't shy away from them either.  Happy medium, that's what I'm looking for.  And  my grandparent's genetics.  I want those, too.

But it's amazing how seeing the business end of creating food can change a person's opinion about things.

6 Bulk Couscous?

I don't think I've ever had a need for Bulk Couscous.

Or couscous for that matter, but still.  Bulk?!

7 There are a lot of people with big appetites in our house! 

8

@Chuck, you can only really buy it in those little boxes that you mix the dry ingredients with. So it is more economical in some respects. For instance I get my peanut butter there and it's just ground peanuts and nothing else. They have a machine that grinds it right there so it's fresh. It's actually less expensive than buying skippy. I love Whole Foods, but then I am I guess what you call a foodie as I love to cook. I don't bother with organic anything though.

I have a high deductible insurance policy and it does make you think carefully. I agreed with most of what he had to say but I'm not jazzed about portability, unless all the other reforms are put in place then that could be a real cluster f%*k if your dealing with someone in say California who has no knowledge of your local helathcare system.

Also the idea that no one should legislate what is a condition that should or should not be covered. In theory the insurance company could say, well we don't want to cover cancer treatment or pregnancy and childbirth because they don't make any money off it.

1 The Gulf countries are much more addicted to oil than the US.

The US has nothing to fear from "dependency" on oil producing states - they are more dependent on you than you are on them. 

2 My dad has worked in the oil industry for almost 50 years.  He has met with T. Boone Pickins several times states that T. Boone is an an ass and is only concerned about one person - himself.  He is into shameless self promotion and his bottom line.  Pretty much take any thing T. Boone states with a grain of salt with the above two items in mind. 

3 My stats are now a bit dated but 50% of our oil is for manufacturing and the US manufactures 25% of the worlds manufactured goods (we tend to high tech things that use plastics or oils as a base). So we may import a lot of oil, but we also export it. China and India have told us that they are more concerned about curing poverty than reducing carbon (By the way, no sunspots now 36 days and things are getting colder-It's the Sun that drives global warming) Energy & Capitalism are the reasons for our prosperity but we are turning our back on both. And David does hit a nail on the head noting the Gulf countries are more addicted to dollars from oil than we are to their oil. However, China and India now give them options. Plenty of good info on Wind on the web, and you will find it quite unreliable and expensive. The US economy drives the world. The best thing we can do is keep going with what has been working, not try what has failed to work (A Spanish Economist Prof Calzada ( http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2009/05/01/calzada-joins-economis-murphy-at-heritage-forum-on-green-jobs/) has shown 2 jobs lost for every green job created. I work in the energy industry. Wind and solar will not meet our needs. Nuclear is the best non-polluting long-term option but the Nuclear Regulator Commission has inflated costs through massive regulation (much of which is ineffective-my opinion of 20 years) and refusal to deal with nuclear waste. We have no energy policy as a country other than to hate what works. We need to get our Legislators out of the economy and let the capitalists go back to improving our lives.

4 Hey, Sarah, why won't this thing let you paste into the comments box? I was going to quote a relevant passage from George Orwell, but can't do it without retyping it...

5 Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
--George Orwell

I just coped and pasted that using Ctrl+Insert.

6 While I generally agree with you in regards to the hysteria over oil consumption (don't like it?  Then don't use it and quit bitching at me.  Come up with your own damn alternative and maybe I'll end up buying from you instead), I think the problem is defining what is coming by something "fairly." 

Unfortunately, there is always an element of morality in what we buy/pay for/do.  I think it's more of an issue with various warring moralities than it is with an emotion free simple transaction.  Not everything is infinite, and the consequences of some things touch a lot more people than the ones doing the transacting.

This does not mean I buy into the Global Warming hysteria - and I don't plan to until Al Gore and Bono practice what they preach and do everything by teleconference while living in mud huts without air conditioning and only eating vegetarian porridge made from wheat grains that naturally dropped to the ground after growing wild in a field somewhere.

Anyway, defining "fairly" is certainly an issue in any free-market transaction.  Is it fair that my husband (1/5 of the residents of our house) eats about 1/3 the food that comes into this house?  Yes - he's the main provider and he's also probably the largest percentage of body mass in the house.  However, if we take the points of people like you mentioned, he would not be entitled to the amount of food he eats.

Tortured explanation, but you see what I mean?  They're completely unwilling to look at the equation using anything other than their preferred math formula, and that just irritates me.

7

Thanks, Sarah. Doesn't work on my old laptop, but works fine on the new $340 netbook. Here's the Orwell quote:

"Our civilization, pace Chesterton, is founded on coal, more completely than one realizes until one stops to think about it. The machines that keep us alive, and the machines that make machines, are all directly or indirectly dependent upon coal. In the metabolism of the Western world the coal-miner is second in importance only to the man who ploughs the soil. He is a sort of caryatid upon whose shoulders nearly everything that is not grimy is supported."

Orwell was a socialist (also an asthmatic, which meant coal-burning must have caused him considerable difficulty), but he understood that a society needs energy. I can't imagine modern "progressives" showing the kind of appreciation to offshore oil platform workers that Orwell showed to coal miners.

Boone Pickens has extensive natural gas interests, and his energy ideas involve a combination of nat gas and wind. Does he object to the US using a disproportionate share of the world's nat gas?

 

8 This is what I don't like about good ole boy T. Booooooooone. So easy for him to lecture after he's made his billion fortune off of it. He sure didn't seem to mind us paying for oil when he was building a lifestyle for himself - which was fair because he was providing a service which in turn weeeee little Americans were paying for (willingly).  People like him act like we are pillaging the earth without anything in return. But we return for our usage things like money that help pay for jobs, benefits, and other growth of industry. And at least we adhere to some pollution standards with our fossil fuel usage, unlike say oh, China, India and I'm sure T.Boooooone's new favorite Venezuela.

Also, it irks me when people talk about 'Blood for Oil' and don't bother to look up the fact that the US only gets 6% of oil from Iraq - less than the amount we get from Mexico. We get the most crude oil  AND petroleum from Canada. I don't hear T.Boooone crapping on the people of Canada for selling the oil to the US.

How come when it comes to 'addicted to tobacco' the evil doers are the tobacco companies, but when it comes to 'addicted to oil' the evil doers are pegged as the end user????

The thing I think is that T.Booone is trying to make another billion off of the scam of global warming. The demand for oil while still high, is now at the same level as the demand for the mythical 'green' energy eurphoria that comes with building things like wind farms. Why do you think T.Boone isn't for nuclear plants (which costs around $5/kilowatt hour) but is for wind farms which cost more to build and cost more to use the energy produced by them (around $15/kilowatt hour). He's another Goracle - raking in the millions while shielding himself as the Piped Piper of 'Clean' Energy.

9

I couldn't agree more.  I'm finding that lately I agree with you more than I have in the past.

Totally unrelated, I'm glad we're seeing an ultrasound picture. And I'm super glad you've got morning sickness ;-)

1 Oh, they are SO just... SO out of reality. Trying to be all "current," they show how completely ignorant they are. I can't take much in the way of Law & Order anymore, anyway, but eeYIKES. Paranoid much, screenwriters?

2 That is so why I don't watch sit coms at all.  If I run across an old King of the Hill I watch, cause I love that show. We are in a wilderness and have only satellite for internet and TV so we got out of the habit of the major network stuff and just don't even think about it or miss it. We have received our locals for the past 5-6 years but we only watch for the weather.  We are in such a drought I don't know why we  watch, but we keep hoping for rain.

3 That is so why I don't watch TV at all. King of the Hill is OK, but most programming reeks of PC.

I too "got out of the habit of the major network stuff and just don't even think about it or miss it." I check the weather online - I can get forecasts and data specifically for my town.

We are in such a drought I don't know why we watch, but we keep hoping for rain.

When I first read this, I thought you meant there was a quality drought on TV but you kept watching anyway. Then I realized that would obviously conflict with what you said. You meant a literal drought!