Cliffs: Those on welfare with “disadvantaged children” get a free $200 per kid to do school shopping.
The catch: This is in the form of cash. There is no regulation as to where the money is spent. A cashier friend of mine said that most of the people who came in for the $200 spent it on beer,cigarettes, and lotto.
Yes, a private citizen threw a nice slice of the pie in but the total cost was almost 200m and the billionaire only gave 35m. Guess where the rest came from.
I brought it up in the license plate thread, but it never got it’s own thread.
No oversight what so ever. Just “here’s $200 per kid, please spend it on school supplies”. Maziarz (Senate Republician, Tonawanda) brought up the fact that the state didn’t even bother to see if the kids were enrolled in school, so a bunch of parents are getting $200 for their kid that already dropped out.
Even better, one woman was interviewed who had twins that were 9 months old. She got the $ for both kids. Glad these idiots running the program pay attention to what the fuck they’re doing.
Good idea, poorly executed, shoulda given the vouchers out directly to the kids at school and made them redeemable for school supplies only, but whatever
Ooh we found a new way to piss away money. First we pay senators to argue for weeks over who’s in charge, then we just toss cash at welfare families and hope the kids get new pencils this year. I bet we see a quick spike in DVD sales this month. :hang:
It seems more like a feel good program.
Parents that get it feel good, politicians that give it feel good for helping the community.
It was probably cheaper to just give it away that it would have been to manage it properly.
It would take time and money to ensure people: use it as it was intended, met eligibility requirements, have someone to call and talk to because they do not understand any rules for getting free money etc…
The big winner no matter what is going to be Walmart. Those that use it for school supplies will shop there, and those that want a new xbox will use it there.
Even if they made the card for like office stores only for example, they could still buy a digital camera or MP3 player or something higher dollar and sell it or trade it instead of doing what they should with it. Even gift cards would be all over cragislist or with your local friendly crack head.
So… If private companies send out a report every year about how much you are actually compensated as an employee with insurance, 401k matching etc…
How hard would it be for the government to do the same… A nice summary of how much you cost taxpayers as a citizen with special attention to what you actually pay in taxes. You would have to discount things shared by all like roads… It would strictly be for social type programs.
After typing that I can for see a big problem of people comparing letters trying to get more help than your friends…