LA Times: CA Welfare cards can be used in many casino ATMs

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-welfare-casinos-20100624,0,6190326.story

Not that I actually disagree with the Governator on it being reprehensible, but he is really living in a fantasy world if he doesn't realize this goes on all the time, at every level, from misuse of public funds to fraud to welfare parasites who would rather live off the taxpayers' dime than provide for themselves.

They need to force welfare scum to sell their cards for pennies on the dollar to buy their vices--like the old days!

This is why I prefer spending on defense: Sure, you pay $2.5 billion for a bomber that is invisible to radar, but when you're done you have a FREAKING BOMBER THAT IS INVISIBLE TO RADAR! Or spending on police and prisons. Spend the money to catch the Bad Guys and get them off the streets and you'll see a safer, more productive country.

That and no longer allowing Mexico to steal billions a year would be good.

It's amazing how before welfare people seldom starved to death, but, now, somehow, millions of people (we're told) cannot survive without it.

I'm skeptical. Welfare has merely subsidized dependence, laziness, and lack of ambition. Inasmuch as welfare might (repeat: MIGHT) help a few worthy or genuinely unfortunate people, I'd be content if it were cut down to 10% of its current size...

It is entirely possible that this is true. Too many people are now such totally dependent parasites that I firmly believe that many of them would have a very hard time surviving if welfare was suddenly cut off.

Not that that justifies maintaining it, but it does indicate that there probably is some truth (as well as a lot of exaggeration, hyperbole, and distortion for political purposes, of course) in the assertion that lots of people could not survive without it.

I have a feeling that Arnoid and a bunch of others are clueless as to the amount of "reprehensible" that's going on in this country.

How many?

Keep on laughing bitches!
At 9:00 PM I was down to my last twinkie and doubled down...and my luck turned around - now it's 3:00 AM and I'm staring down the business end
of a 10 lb. chunk of gub'mint cheese!

Ansyc already beat me to what I was gonna say, but to add to the first part of that, the problem lies in making welfare checks bigger than an actual paycheck. If one can make more doing nothing than slaving away at a minimum wage job and not see their kid...pretty obvious choice, for most.

I've heard of exactly three stories of responsible useage of welfare, including a young woman who asked for a benefits extention until she graduated college, but those are the far minority.

They should never allow these cards to be used to withdraw cash. They should only be accepted for certain items like food and other necessities of life.

But...but...the Dems will lose voters, EP!

Oh yeah, that'll show them...






...that they have to withdraw their cash from the gas station across the street first.

Maybe, except for the fact that not all places take these cards and CA no longer mails checks. Clothing stores don't, for example.

Food banks. Rent/utility vouchers.

Then they just wind up selling their cards for pennies on the dollar.

Um, all of them?

That's why you stop giving them cards and give them vouchers and stamps instead.

There is also no reason why they can't take these debit cards and make them so you can't withdraw cash, have long lists of unauthorized purchases that will be denied if they try to buy shit they shouldn't with it and now they can put your picture right on the card so they can't sell it to someone else either.

Eh. It is still tradeable. Give'em stamps that can only be redeemed for milk, bread, and tuna. They'll sell off a dollar's worth of stamps for a dime and then go buy cigarettes with it. Meanwhile some enterprising person gets a dollar's worth of food for a dime, so I guess push comes to shove I'd be in favor of that--if I wasn't making up the 90 cent difference.

Won't matter, back before the cards became the norm it was vary common to cash out food stamps in a myrid of different ways from outright sale for say half value in cash to the more common approach of buying a cheap can of soup say with a dollar stamp and recieving the change in cash. This is one of the reasons they went to the cards, that and printing costs for the stamps.
The lists of what you can and can't buy has always been there and never changed with the issuance of cards and retirement of stamps. I find it damn odd that they can get cash outright like this. Odd indeed.

Yeah, IIRC, as of five months ago when I last set foot behind a Target register, one can't use the food stamps for alcohol or even soda now.

ETA: Caboose, CA issues welfare allowances and food off the same card, but one can only pull cash from the former. So if someone spends all the cash, and not the food voucher, too bad, they don't get to spend that like cash.

I agree yet I don't see how you can stop abuse of the system. I can't tell how many times I've seen folks in grocery stores buying food with food stamps and using their own money to buy smokes and booze. If you have money for smokes and booze, then you have money for food. Have a little pride and provide for yourself.

Another reason why I think we need to go back to the WPA and CCC camps.

You'd get 3 hots and cot. Meals, not food stamps or debit cards, issued in a mess tent.

And best of all, you have to work for it. You don't do your job? You get fired. No hots or cots anymore.

^ Something along those lines is the only way to be sure that there is both provision for those truly in need, and that that provision does not become a way of life for parasites. I can't get on board with the ultra-libertarian "Let them starve," but the current system, though grounded in compassion that is perhaps laudable on the surface, is a disaster.

Yet for people who have legitimate issues such as very badly backs bipolar etc or othe medical or psychological issues seem to get screwed and i notice that those ones on disabilities seem to actually want to work. Gott love the irny people who are healthy leaching and the ones with health issues wanting to work.

There are still jobs they can do.

I had back surgery and a disc removed in 1992. Fractured the 2nd Lumbar vertebra in 2004. Look at an MRI or CT of my spine and most of the discs are so degenerated that they're non-existant. Several of the remaining discs are bulging.

I work a full-time job as a home health RN.

The maximum monthly cash welfare award for a single person in CA is $336. Also, a person will get $200 in food stamps in addition to the cash award....but as Anna mentioned, you can't access the food stamp money for anything other than food.

Now, the $336 is awarded usually for rent purposes, but one can take that card to an ATM and withdraw the cash for whatever reason. Limiting their functionality at casino atms then, wouldn't really do much, as the person could just go to a Wells Fargo and withdraw the money there.

In any case, it's not that I'm condoning what these folks are spending their money on, but $336 for rent, in the grand scheme of things, isn't all that much. It's barely enough to get a room in many places.

Yeah, but I've been told that the "rent" that some of them pay in gubmint housing projects around here is only about $20-$30/month.

The big money seems to be if you have Medicaid. Go to the pain clinic, get a scrip, taxpayers pay for it, and you can sell your pills on the street for about a buck per milligram.

Like Eminence said, the amount of cash given to Californian residents can barely cover basis necessities. And Section 8 is far from the gold mine it used to be. When my family first got on it in '96, we never paid more than $200 for the three bedroom house we rented. In 2007, most of the houses of a similar size were being rented through Section 8 for no less than a thousand buck...which is only three hundred less than the market rental value. And even that is a better deal than the apartments that average a hundred bucks less.

I believe the 300 dollar figure is lower than I remember (my family never got less than six hundred), but even on minimum wage subsidized housing is unaffordable to most here.

This is outrageous! They should allow people to use their bank cards directly in the slot machines; much more convenient.