Excellent opinion piece!! I am sometimes proud of my fellow Alabamians. Any emphasis or emotes are mine.

Exposing the myths and truths about so-called 'welfare queens' and federal entitlements (Opinion from Clete Wetli)

One of the most pervasive political and cultural myths that has stubbornly endured and colored political discourse since 1976 is the idea and racially infused imagery of the nefarious "welfare queen" as first imagined by President Ronald Reagan. Bereft of factual reality and riddled with hyperbole, the idea that there is an American underclass of "takers" has permeated conservative rhetoric ever since.

Any doubters can just pick up their "Obama phone" and order caviar using their food stamp cards while picking up their unemployment checks on their way to the ER for an annual physical! Fox News and Mitt Romney would have us believe that it's about 47 percent of America on the dole.

Prevailing right-wing logic posits that poverty is the bastard spawn of laziness and an intrinsic sense of widespread entitlement derived from generational dependence on government handouts. This has become the cornerstone of policies espoused by regressive think tanks that use sensational stories of fraud or abuse to justify and extol social Darwinism.

Rather than buy into the myth of "takers and makers," people need to do the math and look at the facts.

The fact is that most people who receive food stamps work for a living. The fact is that more than half the people on welfare no longer require assistance after one to two years. The fact is that the government spends about twice as much on corporate subsidies than it does on traditional welfare or poverty assistance programs.

Of course, there are real and costly cases of waste, fraud and abuse that, indeed, exist. However, these cases represent 2 percent or less of the entire population that receives government assistance. Not only are the penalties for fraud severe, but the payoff for malfeasance in states like Alabama are certainly not worth the consequences. For example, in Alabama the maximum food stamp benefit for a family of three is $408/month. In Alabama, TANF recipients max out at $215/month and are cut off after 60 months.
The fact is that most people who receive food stamps work for a living.

But these pesky facts are ignored by those who perpetuate the myth of a pervasive entitlement culture. In fact, the right-wingers even refer now to Social Security as an entitlement, even though people have to pay into the system to eventually receive the benefits they earned!

As Carl Gauss discovered that many things fall into a normal statistical distribution known as the Bell Curve, voters should understand that sensational and media-driven stories about entitlement are the outliers, not the norm.

Perhaps, the ugly truth is that there may always be people who will try to take advantage of the system. It is also probably true that there may be people who actually prefer dependence or feel that assistance should be a way of life rather than a hand up toward independent living. But it doesn't mean that necessary programs should be eliminated. As a nation, should we turn our backs on those in need or those who are poor?

Just as 2 percent of the population who receive assistance may be engaged in some sort of fraud or abuse, there is probably an equal percentage or greater that may be denied benefits that truly need them. The point here is that sound policy and tactical program reforms are a better solution to curb abuses than just defunding programs based on myths or sensational stories.

It's become all too easy to use the word entitlement as a blanket pejorative without looking at the facts or the reality on the ground. It's high time to think more about what we can do collectively to help those in need, rather than write more checks to wealthy companies that don't need the money anyway.

http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/201 ... er_default

You can only be on Temporary Aid for Needy Families (TANF) for five years of your life.

Welfare queens aren't.

As Kathy notes, there have already been significant improvements to "welfare" ~ and, if I'm remembering correctly [yes, that's always "iffy"], there is now in place enhanced regulation and investigation that has resulted in scamming being slashed to very low amounts ~

Social security and Medicare are NOT "entitlements" ~ every working person pays both SS and Medicare taxes with every paycheck on earnings up to something like $115,000 per year [employee and employer each pay something like 7.5% for SS and employee pays entire Medicare tax of about 3%] ~ the primary reason there are concerns about SS viability is because of the massive amounts prior administrations have "borrowed" [and NOT repaid] from the SS cash reserves ~ a secondary reason is the depth and length of the recent recession and resulting high unemployment ... thanks to GOP/TP "policies" ~ the easiest way to bolster SS long-term viability is to significantly increase the amount of earnings subject to the tax ~

Sooz