Category Archives: The Welfare State

Gov. Deval Patrick Vetoes Bipartisan Bill that Would Prohibit EBT Card Fraud and Abuse

Democrats, Dumbasses and Authoritarians, Government Regulation, Government Waste, Politics, Republicans, The Welfare State

In Massachusetts people can purchase guns, porn, jewelry, get a manicure, or get a tattoo with an EBT card (i.e. food stamps). Understandably, this upsets some Massachusetts residents and the state legislature passed a bipartisan bill which would prohibit use of EBT cards for these non-food related items. You would think that such a common sense reform embraced by Republicans and Democrats alike would easily be signed into law regardless of the party affiliation of the governor but you would be wrong.

Chris Cassidy for The Boston Globe reports:

In a veto statement yesterday, [Gov. Deval] Patrick slammed his reform-intent rivals for “political grandstanding” with their efforts to ban EBT buys of guns, porn, tattoos, jewelry and manicures, insisting reforms were already on track without the Legislature’s meddling. That drew return fire from irate lawmakers.

“A lot of people in the Legislature, and a lot of taxpayers for that matter, believe there are a lot of problems with our EBT system,” said state Sen. Robert Hedlund (R-Weymouth). “Some of us have worked hard to try to address those problems. Some of us actually take our jobs seriously, and to be accused of political grandstanding, I think it’s irresponsible and immature of the governor to speak that way.”

[…]

Patrick denied he’s opposed to EBT reforms.

“Nobody is more concerned about fraud than we are,” Patrick said at a press conference yesterday.

His veto rejected bans on the use of EBT cards for tattoos, guns, porn, body piercings, jewelry, fines and bail. However, he left standing bans of the use of EBT cards in tattoo parlors, gun shops, casinos, cruise ships, strip clubs and adult entertainment centers, saying the independent EBT Card Commission had ruled out the idea of banning specific products “for reasons of feasibility, enforceability (and) cost.”

For the purpose of this discussion, let’s put aside whether or not government at any level should give food stamps to those who would otherwise have difficulty feeding their families. Can we not all agree, whether your Libertarian, Republican, Democrat, Socialist, Communist, Nihilist, or whatever, that if the state has determined that taxpayers will help the needy via food stamps or EBT cards that at the very least the recipients of these cards buy FOOD with them rather than guns, porn, jewelry, body piercings, manicures, or tattoos?

Gov. Patrick, this shouldn’t be a difficult issue. You say that banning specific products from being purchased with food stamps is problematic but let me suggest one simple answer: limit the purchases to food only.

Really, how hard was that?

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/

Recovered from the Memory Hole: Sen. Obama Opposed to the Individual Mandate in ‘08

Culture, Democracy, Democrats, Election '08, Election '12, Healthcare, History, Multimedia, Politics, Recovered from the Memory Hole, Republicans, Taxation, The Welfare State, Theory and Ideas

“If a mandate was the solution, we could try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody buy a house. The reason they don’t have a house is they don’t have the money.” – Sen. Barack Obama during the 2008 Democrat Primary.

A long, long, time ago, way back during the 2008 primaries, then Sen. Barack Obama attacked then Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. John Edwards for the mandate provisions of their respective healthcare plans. Sen. Obama went on to explain how the RomneyCare mandates were not helping indigents in Massachusetts acquire the healthcare they needed leaving some without health insurance and paying the fine.

Fast forward to the present: President Barack Obama’s signature legislation, the so-called Affordable Care Act (A.K.A. ObamaCare, modeled after RomneyCare) is upheld by the Supreme Court, the main question being whether or not the federal government can force mandate individuals to purchase a product. Meanwhile on the Republican side, with about a dozen or so candidates to choose from in the course of the 2012 campaign, Gov. Mitt Romney will be the G.O.P. nominee who pledges to repeal ObamaCare if he is elected the next President of the United States. Mitt Romney, the man behind the very policy that Obama criticized and now embraces at the federal level.

Now isn’t politics fun!

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/

Did Justice Roberts Help Romney and Provide a Path to Repeal ObamaCare?

Blog Discussions, Democrats, Economics, Election '12, Healthcare, Independents, Libertarians, Politics, Republicans, Supreme Court, Taxation, The Contributors, The Welfare State, Theory and Ideas

Over at Red State, Erick Ericson theorizes that Chief Justice John Roberts joined the majority opinion as a way to put ObamaCare back into the hands of the political branches to decide the law’s fate:

The Democrats have been saying for a while that individual pieces of Obamacare are quite popular. With John Roberts’ opinion, the repeal fight takes place on GOP turf, not Democrat turf. The all or nothing repeal has always been better ground for the GOP and now John Roberts has forced everyone onto that ground. Oh, and as I mentioned earlier, because John Roberts concluded it [the individual mandate] was a tax, the Democrats cannot filibuster its repeal because of the same reconciliation procedure the Democrats used to pass it.

It seems very, very clear to me in reviewing John Roberts’ decision that he is playing a much longer game than us and can afford to with a life tenure. And he probably just handed Mitt Romney the White House.

Our own Doug Mataconis said he “would not be surprised to see it be a 6-3 decision” way back in April for the following reason:

Ordinarily, the most senior Justice in the majority gets to decide who writes the majority opinion. However, if the Chief Justice is in the majority he gets to make that decision. If Kennedy ends up voting to uphold the mandate then I could see Chief Justice Roberts joining him so that he can write the opinion himself and make the precedential value of the decision as limited as possible.

Erick Erickson also mentioned on his radio program that many conservatives and libertarians who aren’t thrilled with Romney as the nominee will put aside their objections and vote for him if it means repealing ObamaCare.

I hate to say it but I think Erickson has a point. ObamaCare being upheld is a game changer. Prior to this decision that was supposed to strike down all or part of ObamaCare, I was absolutely certain that I would enthusiastically vote for the Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson rather than settle for the lesser of the two evils. With ObamaCare being upheld, now I have to say I’m not so sure. I’m not normally a single issue voter but if ObamaCare isn’t stopped and soon, we will be stuck with it for at least a generation.

The problem is though, it might already be too late. Several things have to happen just right. First Romney must be elected and the GOP must take control of the Senate and hold the House. Second, we have to trust that Romney and the Republicans in congress will actually follow through. We’ve been disappointed before.

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/

The Birther Distraction Only Benefits Obama

Civil Liberties, Conspiracy Theories, Constitution, Culture, Democrats, Doublespeak, Dumbasses and Authoritarians, Economics, Election '08, Election '12, Healthcare, History, Hope n' Change, Human Rights, Independents, Media, Military, Multimedia, Politics, Republicans, Security, The War on Drugs, The Welfare State, Theory and Ideas, War on Terror

There it is again. That damned conspiracy theory about Barack Obama being born not in Hawaii but Kenya. An honest question for you birthers out there: even assuming that everything you believe about the birthplace of Barack Obama is true, do you really think that even if you could prove it 100% that people who would otherwise support him/undecided would choose not to or would be declared ineligible to serve as president by some court, perhaps SCOTUS?

IMO the answers to those questions are no and probably not. If the voters are not concerned enough to vote him out (or even call for his impeachment) based on his other, much more damaging assaults on the Constitution, I seriously doubt these same people are going to be upset about Obama’s audacity to be born to an American mother outside the country. As far as violating his oath to defend the Constitution goes, this would be quite a minor assault.

So if the birther issue doesn’t benefit Obama’s opponents, who would it benefit? President Obama and the Democrat Party. The Obama campaign has already released an ad critical of Mitt Romney and his ties to Donald Trump (below).

This is precisely the kind of issue President Obama wants to be a part of this campaign. If the media and the people are talking about the birther question, they are not talking about his failed economic policies, his continued assaults on free market capitalism, ObamaCare, signing extensions to the Patriot Act, signing the NDAA, Fast and Furious, his drug war hypocrisy, his foreign policy befitting that of a warlord, his very Orwellian change in the definition of the term “civilian” to make his statistics for killings of innocent people in foreign lands not look so bad to the casual news consumer, and etc. In other words, Obama’s record as president!

I hear people complain that Obama wasn’t properly vetted in 2008 (and to a certain extent I agree). The media didn’t concentrate enough on the birth certificate, his time hanging out with Marxists in college, his unwillingness to release his college transcripts, his association with Jeremiah Wright. Some of these things are reasonable questions but are distractions to the issues of the greatest importance.

It may be true that we don’t know a whole lot about Obama’s biography or what made him the person he is relative to past presidents but we have had four years to evaluate his job performance as president. In the final analysis, isn’t that all that really matters?

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/
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