Welfare

Ding-a-Ling Welfare Cheat

If you have ever griped about how much we spend on welfare or people cheating the system, then you have to be royally pissed at this action.

Retired NFL quarterback Brett Favre wanted to build a new volleyball court for Southern Mississippi University while his daughter was a student and a member of the school’s volleyball team. He got around $6 million for this although about a million ended up in his pocket. Where did the money come from? It came from welfare funds intended to assist the poorest people in the poorest state.

This bombshell was exposed by Mississippi Today after a two-year investigation.

Mississippi State Auditor Shad White revealed dozens of text messages showing how Favre, former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, and nonprofit leader Nancy New coordinated on procuring welfare funds to finance an $8-million volleyball stadium. The auditor’s office is claiming the full amount of money stolen from the welfare fund is over $77 million.

The Mississippi Free Press reports, “New ran the nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center when it directed $5 million in Temporary Assistance For Needy Families to The University of Southern Mississippi Athletic Foundation, whose board she sat on, to fund the stadium on the Hattiesburg campus. Her nonprofit also directed $1.1 million to Favre for motivational speeches he never delivered. 

The Free Press reported that New and her son, Zach New, have pled guilty to multiple state charges,  including bribery and wire fraud as part of a plea agreement. The newly revealed text messages, revealed publicly in a court filing in a separate civil suit this week, shed light on how $6.1 million meant for the poorest families in the poorest state wound up going to Favre and a pet project at his alma mater instead.

The state is suing to recoup the welfare funds and states New’s organization “paid Favre $1,100,000 simply for the ‘purpose of enriching’ him.” That’s over a million bucks for a guy who made at least $140 million during his NFL career, not including endorsements.

Favre claims he never knew the money was being stolen from a welfare fund intended for the poorest in the nation, but a text message from him suggests he knew something wasn’t right.

In 2017, he texted New, “If you were to pay me is there anyway [sic] the media can find out where it came from and how much?”

New replied, “No, we never have had that information publicized. I understand you being uneasy about that though.”

Favre replied, “Awesome I needed to hear that for sure.”

Yeah, there was no way the media would ever find out, said New, unless of course they caught her and she rolls on you in a plea-bargain agreement.

I hope New didn’t get any other suspicious text messages from Favre, because he has a sordid history with such things. I mean, after what he did while a member of the New York Jets should have him banned from owning a cell phone with a camera ever again.

In 2013, Favre settled out of court with two massage therapists after they accused him of sending inappropriate and unsolicited sexual text messages to them while he played for the Jets in 2008. Favre’s lawyers said he was innocent, but he still paid them. I hope he got off cheaper than Deshaun Watson.

Favre was also investigated by the NFL after Jenn Sterger, an in-house TV host for the Jets claimed he sent her pictures of his penis, but ruled he had not violated the NFL’s conduct policies, but still fined him $50,000 for failing to cooperate with the investigation.

Sterger claimed to a Deadspin writer that despite her rejecting his advances, Favre sent her multiple penis pictures with one of him masturbating while wearing a pair of Crocs.

Apparently, there’s a Ten Commandments to sending unsolicited wiener pics to women. Charles Barkley, who saw the photos sent from Brett To Jenn (unless Favre sent them to him too) said, “My biggest problem with the whole Brett Favre thing is if you’re going to send a woman a picture of your junk, it should be huge. You can’t send small junk to a woman and expect anything. Seriously you have to be like Ron Jeremy or some of those other porn stars. If you send a woman a picture of your junk, it should be humongous, it shouldn’t be small. That’s one of the Ten Commandments.”

I don’t think the tiny size of a penis is the “biggest” problem with sending an unsolicited penis picture to a woman. The act of sending the picture is the problem. The sexual harassment of the act is a larger problem. But yeah, dudes…if it’s small, keep it in your Wranglers (a brand of jeans Brett endorsed).

This is a lot of shit for Favre to deny from sending penis pics to infidelity to cheating welfare recipients to wearing Crocs…sheesh. Is there not a low this man won’t stoop to?

This type of corruption involving white conservatives (Brett Favre endorsed Donald Trump) funneling funds from poor Mississippians, who are disproportionately Black, is a centuries-long problem that was exposed recently in the failure of the crumbling water system in Jackson, Mississippi. 

Conservatives love the idea of drug testing recipients of social welfare while never advocating the same policy for executives of corporations that receive welfare. In locales where these tests have been conducted, they’ve found very few drug users on welfare. It’s not a rampant problem among welfare recipients, but when you do find one, why punish his or her children? No cheese for you because daddy smoked a reefer?

But, if you really love the idea of drug testing to find welfare cheats, then maybe we should test Brett Favre. It shouldn’t be a problem because he does like to whip his penis out.

Music note: I jammed to The Killers while drawing today’s cartoon.

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AMIRITE About Moochers?

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If Donald Trump has done one thing for Republicans, he’s proven them to be total frauds and that everything they’ve spent the last four decades telling us they stood for, well, they were faking it. As it turns out, Trump has proven that to be a Republican is to be a vile, despicable, hateful person without any ethics or principles.

We already knew they’re not really about cutting spending and lowering deficits. The last Republican president to cut spending was Eisenhower. The only time they talk about the deficit and scream, “Think about the children’s future,” is when a Democrat has the White House. We found out they’re not about law and order, as they defend policemen, they attack the FBI. We discovered they’re not even patriots as Republicans in Congress are scrambling to prevent us from discovering the truth about Trump and Russia and bemoaning that the FBI obtained warrants to track an alleged Russian spy. Just last week, they were crying that Brett Kavanaugh is innocent until proven guilty right before going into “lock her up” chants.

Remember that business about Benghazi? How many years were spent on how many investigations over four American deaths? It’s been a year since Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico killing 3,000 Americans and there hasn’t been one inquiry from Congress. Puerto Rico truly doesn’t have any representation in Congress.

How about the Clinton Foundation? Republicans spent a few years telling us it’s corrupt (without any facts), that it enriched the Clintons, and how wrong it was for it to accept foreign donations while Hillary was Secretary of State. Now, they ignore the fact that the Trump Foundation was a conduit for sleazy political activity and Donald Trump LITERALLY stole from charity.

They don’t care about emoluments. The same people screaming about foreign donations to Clinton’s charity are silent about Trump making profits from foreign governments. Trump says we need to be nice to Saudi Arabia after they’ve killed a permanent U.S. resident and journalist because the monarchy spends millions on U.S. arms deals. What we really need to ask Trump if it’s those millions, or the millions the Saudis have put into his and Jared Kushner’s pockets? Saudi Arabia has spent millions on buying apartments from Trump, now they and other governments spend hundreds of thousands at Trump Hotels.

We might also want to ask why revenue at Trump golf resorts have increased substantially for the ones Trump has visited as president, but revenue is down at the ones he hasn’t.

Hell, we even found out Republicans aren’t really Christians or care about family values at all. They voted for a guy who brags about grabbing pussy and has five kids from three different women. And, what sort of Christian supports throwing babies in jail? The whole concept of Christianity is great, but Christians themselves, yeah, they suck.

They also really don’t care about welfare. They pretend to worry about the system and people taking advantage of it. Their efforts to drug test recipients have been a greater expense for a bunch of nothing. The thing is, if you’ve ever criticized social welfare but have kept quiet on corporate welfare, then you, my friend, are a flaming, hypocritical racist.

Social welfare is about three percent of the federal budget, worth about $59 billion. Well guess what. Corporate welfare is five percent, worth about $92 billion. While social welfare is meant to help people who are struggling, corporate welfare is about rich assholes giving millions to other rich assholes. Do you really believe Warren Buffett needs an extra $1 million each year as a gift? That’s a lot of government cheese.

You also don’t hear conservatives upset over Trump defrauding the government of $500 million. You don’t want people ripping off the government unless they’re old rich white guys. This story has been out for a week yet Republicans have been mostly silent on it. For a bunch of people telling us about Clinton corruption, they’re mum on actual corruption when it’s from Donald Trump and his family.

It makes perfect sense that Republicans are frauds and liars. The man they’ve abandoned everything for is also a fraud and a liar. Everything they believe about Trump is a lie. Everything they accuse others of always describes Donald Trump. They’ve bought into an ugly, hateful, racist image. They’ve proven the point of being a Republican is to be a shitweasel.

When you say you actually believe in something, you should also practice it. Sure, it’s easier to talk the talk than it is to walk it, but the people who lead us into the future should be the ones who walk it. The fate of the country should be in the hands of and decided by people with principles and ethics, not the lying assholes.

Amirite?

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Big Box O’ Welfare

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Republicans love to bash people who receive government assistance. It’s red meat for the hater crowd. It’s always a veiled way to tell your right-wing voters that you share their racist sentiments and all the problems in this nation are the cause of minorities. Hey, it worked for Hitler.

In 1976, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan used the bully pulpit and attacked people on government assistance by describing a “welfare queen” who, according to Reagan, she “used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year.”

Newt Gingrich, former Republican Speaker of the House, once told a tale of a welfare recipient who used her benefits to fly to Hawaii.

The “welfare queen,” as she was originally dubbed by The Chicago Tribune, really did exist. But she was an extreme example Reagan used to cast all welfare recipients as villains, and by the way, she was probably black. As for flying to Hawaii on food stamps, I’m not sure how that’s done since you can’t use them to even purchase diapers.

Fox News likes to run stories about people using food stamps to purchase lobsters (when I Googled stories about people using welfare to buy lobsters, I got a bunch of results about the welfare of lobsters).

Republicans in several states enacted laws to drug test recipients of welfare. Altogether, they’ve spent millions testing and have had positive results come back from around eight percent of recipients. Most states have discovered drug usage among welfare recipients to be less than one percent. Still, Republicans in other states, ignoring it’s a failed and wasteful system, keep proposing they implement it too. I have a family member on welfare, whose husband refuses to work, who complains about black people on welfare.

The percentage of drug usage in the general population is around nine percent, which is higher than those on welfare. If you listen to Republicans, the percentage of drug users on welfare rivals the percentage of drug users in Aerosmith.

Most welfare recipients work. The majority of welfare recipients are white. Republican-voting states receive the most federal assistance, nine out of ten of the poorest states are red, and 97 of the poorest counties are in red states. If this tells us only one thing, it’s that stupid Republican ideas, like drug testing welfare recipients, are not helping anyone rise up out of poverty.

It doesn’t matter to them if drug testing is a failed policy, or it’s accompanied by the irony that it’s more financially wasteful than people on food stamps purchasing lobsters. A dumb idea is a good political idea if it scapegoats minorites (agh! Illegal immigrants on welfare!). Which brings us to welfare in a box.

The Trump administration is proposing welfare in a box, which Budget Director Mike Mulvaney is calling “America’s Harvest Box.” This stupid plan has stuck in my head the Lonely Island song “Dick In A Box.” The song is less offensive than the Trump policy.

The idea is apparently the brainchild of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, and the administration says it’ll be a lot cheaper to send rice and beans to welfare recipients than allowing them to make their own dietary decisions. The idea is so great, they hid it at the bottom of the budget hoping no one would see it. Dick in a box, indeed.

There are questions. How will the boxes be delivered? How will recipients without addresses receive their boxes? How will it deal with perishables? Even Amazon isn’t shipping celery for a good reason. How will lawmakers deal with outraged grocery stores who will lose millions, maybe billions, from customers?

This idea is as dead in the water as the future career prospects for current Trump appointees. Then again, why are we so eager to go after welfare when there are better targets in the federal and state budgets?

There’s more than one government program for the needy, but SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) is less than two percent of the federal budget. Feeding the poor costs every American family about $36 a year. If it means a child eats, even with my unemployed racist inlaw buying shellfish, I’ll write you a check right now.

Meanwhile, corporate welfare receives much more. The Cato Institute estimates that the federal government spends over $100 billion a year on corporate welfare. Sixty three billion of that goes to Fortune 500 companies. Boeing receives $13 billion. Oil companies receive around $4 billion. Berkshire Hathaway (which owns my former employer, The Free Lance Star), a company with $485 billion in assets, with over $20 billion in profits, and an owner, Warren Buffett, who is worth about $58 billion, gets a billion a year from me and you. I don’t hear any lawmakers screaming for Mr. Buffett to pee in a cup, though his fake-cousin may fail a margarita test.

We get upset over spending $36 a year on feeding people. What doesn’t bother anyone is taking $870 from each family a year to give to corporations. Aren’t we already willfully giving enough of our money to Walmart and Amazon without the federal government tapping us for more? Where is the outrage? Where are the demands for scalps of those receiving millions in corporate bonuses while their companies suck at the government teat? Where’s the outrage at Walmart for receiving federal welfare while not paying their employees enough to get off social welfare? Nobody’s demanding the Walton family to subsist on baloney and government cheese.

This isn’t so much about welfare in a box as it it’s all a bag of….well, you know.

Here’s the video.

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The Sport Of Bashing The Poor

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Republicans in Wisconsin, Missouri and Maine are tired of poor people having fun being poor. That party has to stop. The GOP is introducing measures to limit what can be purchased with food stamps.

It’s punishing people for being poor. This isn’t even aimed at welfare fraud. It’s aimed at those who are being honest. If we have to feed them then let’s make sure they can’t taste their food.

Republicans like to deflect attention away from real problems. It’s the “look. a squirrel” strategy. It works. It makes the poor and stupid white people keep voting for them.

Unhappy with unemployment or you just don’t like people of different colors and those who talk different? Blame immigration, despite it being lower now than it ever has been in modern history.

Republicans want to give more benefits and credit to oil companies. Let’s point out how we shouldn’t be held hostage to Middle East countries and their oil, despite this country getting most of it’s oil from Canada.

Don’t like government waste then let’s attack social welfare, which we spend $59 billion a year on versus $92 billion on corporate welfare.

Republicans never attack corporate welfare. They don’t want to study it. They don’t want to limit it. They don’t want to know how the beneficiaries are spending it. Leave hardworking rich people and corporations alone with their government handouts but let’s make sure a single mother of three isn’t using your hard-earned money to spoil her kids with the luxury of ketchup.

Ronald Reagan made up a lie about a welfare queen in Chicago. He was never made to account for the racist lie and poor white people ate it up. The GOP is continuing that tradition today.