Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Free Food?

I don't usually touch on news items to much as I like to keep my opinions of some things to myself, but today I feel compelled to voice my thoughts.
Is this the way we want Milwaukee portrayed in the news? I know it's a touch of reality, but is it that we are that needy of a city, or that we are loaded with free-loaders? Did the city bite off more than they could chew? Did they not think that the offer of $542.00 in food vouchers for a family of 4 would not cause near riot scenes? The sad part about this is that probably only 25% of the people who stood on the line were actually flood victims. Having some of your kids clothes that were in the basement get wet does not make you worthy of receiving free food vouchers.
Openly admitting on camera that you're just there to see if you can get them, and don't really need them does not make you anything more that a free-loader.
Then to have the alderman and Mayor speak about how they were so shocked at the amount of people that showed up (1/2 of them not even knowing why they could get these vouchers) and say they didn't realize that our city had that many hungry people. Yes, we have hungry people. We have a lot of people who need help and cannot get it. They don't have enough people to process these applications, so many of these vouchers will get into the wrong hands. Your penalty for lying on the application: a $250,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison. If they bilked you into getting the vouchers, they will bilk their way out of any kind of retribution for lying. They will be let go as "Uneducated victims who didn't understand what they were applying for".
I've been in the down and out position in my life and did stand on the cheese line once and also received WIC for 6 months. I was fortunate enough to have parents who, without me asking, helped out. I would come home from mom's to find a few food items tucked in the diaper bag. In the words of my father "Where there's a will, there's a way". Sometimes we are all guilty of not getting our priorities straight but one with responsibilities soon will learn from their mistakes. I am, however not guilty of ever being a moocher. I can always find someone that's in a worse way than I am and help out if needed. The people that I saw on the news yesterday and this morning were nothing more than guilty of trying to get something that they do not have coming. The one's that really had the help coming were probably at the end of the line. Why do our news stations only show the idiots?

2 comments:

Kris said...

Unfortunately in situations like these, we often see the best and the worst in others. Those free-loaders are the same type of people who believe they are automatically entitled to something whether or not they deserve it. I think you find selfish individuals in any city.

StB said...

And people think free health care will work?