Get gov't aid? Ariz. bill says no smokes, alcohol, HBO

[Emit]

PHOENIX - The way state Rep. Frank Antenori sees it, you shouldn't be smoking or drinking if the government is helping to pay for your food or health care.

And you shouldn't be buying more than a basic TV or car, shouldn't have a cell phone unless it's your only phone and shouldn't have cable TV with HBO or Showtime.

The Tucson-area Republican is sponsoring legislation to make public assistance off-limits to those who don't comply.

His HB 2770 would be mostly self-enforcing - welfare recipients would have to sign an affidavit each time they go through eligibility screening promising to live within the rules.

~snip~

"People put $100 of food up on the register, run the EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfer card) through, and then throw two big jugs of booze and two cartons of cigarettes (onto the conveyor belt) and pull $100 out of their pocket. If you see that, you call a 1-800 number and notify somebody," Antenori said.

~snip~

"If you don't have enough money to buy your own food to exist for your own sustenance, and you need some other hardworking taxpayer that's out there and working and paying taxes to subsidize your food, then you shouldn't have the luxury, at the expense of some other taxpayer, to go out and enjoy the niceties in life," he said.

http://azstarnet.com/article_a20478bb-553c-5c1e-b9a9-27aa27a95cae.html

On StarNet: Do you agree with Frank Antenori? Take part in an online poll and discuss this issue at azstarnet.com/news/local

[provis99]

1. so starving people shouldn't enjoy life.

But giant corporations that screw up the nation get billions in government welfare. Someone on DU wrote that Michelle Bachmann's farm gets hundreds of thousands in farmer welfare. McCain is from Arizona; how much government pogey has he gotten over the years?

One rule for the rich oppressors, and a different one for the rest of us.

[varelse]

2. On top of everything else that is wrong with his proposed law

it really is impossible to enforce.

The ugly is strong with this one :(

[OHdem10]

3. Does this include people on Medicare??? Social Security???

[napi21]

5. Probably not because we paid into that program all our lives

and now we're reaping the benefits.

I still think it's a STUPID BILL! All the cardholder needs to do is go somethwhere else and buy the booze and noone will know they're on the food program.

[varelse]

20. Bailout funding?

:facepalm:

On top of being unenforceable (no, really) his proposed law is fascist (report the guy in line in front of you for paying cash for a beer - turn in your disabled neighbor for smoking a cig in her doorway!) and unfair.

[Statistical]

24. Both of those are insurance programs we purchase (via payroll deductions).

It is a false comparison to put SS+Medicare into same category as welfare.

[LeftyMom]

4. When did lozo run for office?

:wtf:

[DJ13]

6. Here bankers, have a trillion or two

Hey you over there with your state aid, dont you dare have any small pleasures in life!

We have really become a sad nation.

[AllentownJake]

7. Yeah corporations aren't going to like that

The gas station that sells the cigarettes, the beer company that sells the beer or liquor, the cable company etc.

He can chest thump all he wants the masters will have none of it.

[varelse]

21. Good point

Just one more addition to a huge mountain of serious fail that is his "reform" measure.

[Lyric]

8. This is the fault of the 1996 welfare "reforms".

Before then, states didn't have so much leeway to make their own eligibility rules. Now they can make eligibility so restrictive and narrow that they can all but eliminate welfare for all practical purposes--which was the point, of course. It was the first domino. Listen to the news and you'll hear about drug testing for the poor. Now we have "behavior codes", like this one--unenforced, at first, but the day is coming when the government will be free to invade your home and inspect your life like a Saudi Arabian vice squad to ensure you aren't violating a purity rule. We all go along with it, because the vast, vast majority of us really don't give a damn about the poor--at least not enough to actually DO anything. Oh, how naive we are, never realizing that we ARE the poor.

In twenty years, the government will proclaim that those disgusting parasitic poor people are STILL managing to subvert their moral standards and engage in forbidden behaviors. They will inform us all that they've discovered a solution; the government will directly provide basic housing and food, and the poor people can come live in the place that's been provided for them, doing work that the government assigns to them in order to "chip in" for their own care. Those places will have a different name, but I can tell you what they are. We've seen them before, we humans. They're called workhouses.

In fifty years, workhouses will be fully established again. In sixty years, the government will decide to start sending people who are in debt to those workhouses, in order to work off their debts. Behold--the debtor's prison rises again.

Mark my words. If we continue to care only about ourselves, if we continue to ignore the way that our government treats the poor...those days WILL return. Nobody is safe from a debtor's prison, at least not in a modern society that relies so very heavily upon credit and debt. In a hundred years, we will all be slaves again when the government starts sending "subversives" off to the camps, using the excuse that they have defaulted on their debt. Of course, the defaults will be manufactured. It's hard to pay your bills when you've lost your job and the rich have you on a no-hire blacklist that's available to every employer in the nation with a mouse click. A nightmare scenario? Too much of a stretch? I don't really think so. I wish I could say this was all a fantasy, but I think we all know better.

The poor are our canaries in the coal mines, people. Wake up. This is not about morality or personal responsibility. Those are bullshit semantic constructs that the Powers That Be use to keep us mollified so that we don't revolt in outrage. What happens to the poorest among us is just a preview of what's coming soon to a middle class near YOU. Stay silent at your grandchildren's peril.

[scorpiogirl]

9. I'm so sick of hearing this attitude.

People, like this asshole, think that you should sell off everything you own to survive. I've also had people on other forums tell me the same. If you're broke, you should live like shit. I've already sold so much and downgraded my family's lives, but they aren't happy unless you're sleeping on the floor and everything little thing you valued is gone. Fuck them! They've never walked in anyone else's shoes or even cared to.

[proud2BlibKansan]

10. Just more war on the poor

They are poor so they deserve to be miserable. :sarcasm:

[valerief]

11. I don't think cigarettes s/b sold and people do drink too much because pot isn't legal.

That said, I don't think some dickhead republican asswipe gets to decide who can smoke/drink and can't. They're draining every penny to waste away on the wealthy.

[Joe the Revelator]

12. I can't say that I disagree with this bill, at least the way it is presented here...

A long time ago I had to choose between super cool cable TV and having food to put on the table. That wasn't really much of a choice. Nobody is guaranteed the right to live like a king with the state is helping them feed their family.

[On the Road]

15. Yeah, the Details May be Stupid

but I sort of understand the impulse. Assistance is supposed to be temporary, and there has to be some incentive to get off it. It also has to be realistic to expect a person to find a job and get off assistance. It is a very hard balance to strike.

[cbdo2007]

16. Right....it's kind of silly the comparison here to "oh you will bail out wall street

but not help these poor people be happy"

I don't agree with bailing out Wall Street at all. I think that was a major scam and did way more harm than good. Also, I don't necessarily think people who get government assistance should literally have the right to spend that on whatever they want. I don't agree with either thing.

They'll come along any minute now and call me a Freeper or talk about my right wing values...but you and I are just rationalizing this rather than making ridiculous comparisons.

[varelse]

22. I can't say I'm at all surprised to see this coming from you (nt)

[Odin2005]

13. Ugh, a friend and I were just complaining about this kind of BS earlier today

:grr:

[Joe the Revelator]

17. What about this is "BS"?

[Odin2005]

18. It's paternalistic crap.

It treats the recipients of welfare as being unable to take care of themselves. It is based on bigoted notions of "welfare queens".

[Joe the Revelator]

19. First of all, if you really want to lable things, giving people money for food is paternalisitc

by definition.

Second of all, nobody says that recipients of welfare can't take care of themselves, but if a person is too poor to buy food with their own income, then I can't think of any argument where that person should spend their money on cable and multiple phones instead of using that money to pay for their own food.

[cbdo2007]

14. To protest this, I just went and handed out cigarettes and alcohol at the

local homeless shelter. Just trying to help out the community and give some of these people some happiness.

[The Gunslinger]

23. If people were paid a living wage,

they might be able to afford those niceties, I'm sick of these fascist bastards rubbing their wealth in others faces, and assume that low pay is not hard working. that jack ass probably never worked a day in his life.