Need help responding to this letter about the state of welfare in NO

[Quixote1818]

Someone sent me the stats on when welfare is cut off but I can't find them. Anyone have those stats handy? I am so sick of everyone jumping to the conclusion that EVERY POOR person in New Orleans is on welfare. Man this burns me up! And why is it that with the amount of socialism in Europe and Canada violent crime is so rare?



This was sent to me as an e-mail:


An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State
I received this e-mail the other day and decided to send it to you as a different point of view. I don't always agree with them but I find it food for thought.

by Robert Tracinski
Sep 02, 2005
by Robert Tracinski

It has taken four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it has also taken me four long days to figure out what is going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.

If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.

Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists--myself included--did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.

But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.

The e-mail article continued.

[obxhead]

1. My favorite line -

"But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them."
yeah they have wealth. I suggest whoever wrote this to donate all their money to charity then live on the wealth of welfare so they can feel better about themselves.

[tocqueville]

2. it's the LACK of welfare that create the riots

Name a major natural disaster in Europe (and they do happen) where rioting or even looting happens ?

besides gun laws don't help either

[Lasher]

3. This same crap has been emailed to me

I reacted by asking if the sender knew if all survivors of the Katrina aftermath were on welfare. I also wanted to know if it were poor peoples' own faults that they were raped and murdered.

That got me off his nazi email distribution list.

[Quixote1818]

14. My Response Letter

Here are some useful stats about welfare in LA:

The maximum monthly welfare benefit in LA is $240. (Try to imagine living off $240 a month. That's less than $10 a day) Regardless of how many children, the maximum is $240 per month. You also must have children to be eligible to get welfare.

The maximum length of time you can get welfare in LA is 24 out of any 60 month period with a lifetime limit of 60 months (the lifetime 60 month limit is federal and hence in effect in every state. Some states have shorter lifetime limits like Tenn at 18 months, Idaho at 24 months and Utah at 36 months.

Welfare is aka TANF and has a work requirement. Some families are exempt but overall a state has to have something like 60% of all welfare families working in the neighborhood of 30 hours a week. (It gets complicated based on your state's past performance.) That's to get the $240 per month...for a family...for a maximum of 60 months

Welfare accounts for less than 2% of tax dollars. The interest on the national debt is 20% of tax dollars. JUST THE INTEREST.

Most poor people would not be able to stay on welfare for very long and 60 months at most so it's unlikely that very many of those 100,000 in New Orleans survive just off welfare not to mention the work requirement.

Also, crime rates in the United States are higher than in most socialist countries so pinning the amount of crime we saw in New Orleans on welfare is doubtful. In fact Canada which has a very high rate of welfare and extremely nice public housing has one of the lowest crime rates on the planet and almost no violent crime. Canada has a nice mix of Capitalism and Socialism.

Psychologists have found that high stress is the main reason for violent crime something pure Capitalism creates in a dog eat dog society. Their is a feeling that if you can't make it then their is something wrong with you. This creates resentment in the lower classes towards the upper classes. Something you don't see in Europe and Canada. Based on articles like the one from 'Robert Tracinski' Which calls the poor people of New Orleans "parasites" you can see why they have so much resentment for those who were born into middle and upper class families and look down on them.

Remember, helping the poor is mentioned over 2000 times in the Bible and Jesus devoted his life to the poor and less fortunate. I am worried when we start blaming the victims of one of the worst Natural Disasters in American history. WWJD? Would he blame the victims, many of which were raped and killed?

Take a look at table 7 at this site: http://www.americanprogress.org/atf/cf/%7BE9245FE4-9A2B-43C7-A521-5D6FF2E06E03%7D/KATRINAVICTIMS.PDF

[Lasher]

17. Thanks for sharing

I should have come to DU for help before I replied.

[FloridaPat]

4. I almost bought this crap. Then I found more information. There were

people that organized everyone. Groups "looted" stores to get food and water and clothing for the thousands that were at the Super Dome. They also organized the people and kept them calm and in line to board the buses.

The people were starving to death - literally. No food or water was coming because releaf wasn't allowed into NO by FEMA. The people in NO thought they were being killed by their own government. There were several people that said that. It's amazing there wasn't widespread panic.

It's amazing there was as much calm and logic that there was at the time. Can anyone imagine 30,000 people staving to death watching the old and babies dying in front of their eyes? Can you imagine being locked in the Super Dome without water, food, lights, plumbing for 3 days?

And exactly how many were on welfare? I've heard no numbers or percentages. There were a lot of poor people. Poor people are always on welfare. There has only been inferences, no facts.

But if you want to talk about corporate welfare - there are plenty of facts there and just watch the corporate welfare that gets funded in NO in the reconstruction.

[Suich]

5. Don't know if this is what you're looking for:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=4691983

[celestia671]

6. Welfare parasites?

As a food stamp and medicaid(my children have it) recipient in La, I'm pretty offended by this. Not every poor person in NO is on welfare, but alot of them are. That does not make them any less decent than 'the innocent people' that were trapped in the city.
The stories of looting(not for food) and rape make more sense to me though after reading that convicts were released from jails during the flooding. However, the writer shouldn't assume that being on welfare would make a person angry and violent during a crisis.

One question I have, unrelated to the article(sort of): Can anyone tell me why, when the mandatory evacuation was ordered, that tourists stayed in NO? Was there some reason that they stayed?

[juajen]

13. I heard that they could not get transportation out of the city

Evidently, lots of people and not enough seats. Logical because, normally, there departures would be staggered.

[tocqueville]

7. US under average of OECD for social expenditure

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/eco_soc_sec_exp_as_of_gdp&int=-1&id=OECD

and here are the GDPs

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/eco_gdp_ppp&int=-1&id=OECD

[pinto]

8. This is an article from a Libertarian, flat tax web site. The agenda here

is less about New Orleans it seems, as the site's political agenda.

(aside) As this is a reprint, DU maintains copyright limits of four paragraphs copied to a post. Thanks.

[pinto]

9. Please limit reprints of copyrighted material to four paragraphs. Thanks.

[Lifelong Protester]

10. Is there any differentiation made between the working poor

and those unable to work when people write these articles? Many of the working poor do get welfare services, such as WIC, food stamps, and medicaid. But that does not mean they are not willing and able to work,they DO work. I get tired of people running that old saw of 'well, let them all get jobs and get off their asses' . Guess what folks, lots of these people DO have jobs, and that still doesn't solve the problem. Do people who write this kind of crap about welfare 'parasites' know how much daycare runs? If we were a country that truly believed in LEAVING NO CHILD BEHIND, we'd invest in more quality daycare, for one, and not be cutting after school programs for children for another. But you wait and see, as the deficit continues to spiral out of control, those righteous repubs will be RUNNING to leave as many children behind as possible.
There, got that off my chest.
Folks that believe that the people who live with welfare assistance are 'brutish and uncivilized' need to remember this: Children do not ASK to be born into poverty. Why should we let them suffer because of it?

[ispeculate]

11. crucial fact:

"crucial fact: early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails--so they just let many of them loose."

This is news to me. Is this total bull or what?

If its true, it would explain all of the crime but I dont believe its true. Tell me Im wrong.

[idiosyncratic]

12. NO has high percentage of people who qualify for "Earned Income Credit"

That is the money a person gets back if they are working but make a poverty wage.

I heard the other day that New Orleans was way up there for cities in the entire country for the EIC.

That means these people were working. They were not on welfare!

One other thing I learned was that many of the people who didn't evacuate were either disabled, or caring for someone who is disabled.

That means their income, if they have any, came from Disability Payments, not welfare.

[Quixote1818]

15. My Response Letter

Here are some useful stats about welfare in LA:

The maximum monthly welfare benefit in LA is $240. (Try to imagine living off $240 a month. That's less than $10 a day) Regardless of how many children, the maximum is $240 per month. You also must have children to be eligible to get welfare.

The maximum length of time you can get welfare in LA is 24 out of any 60 month period with a lifetime limit of 60 months (the lifetime 60 month limit is federal and hence in effect in every state. Some states have shorter lifetime limits like Tenn at 18 months, Idaho at 24 months and Utah at 36 months.

Welfare is aka TANF and has a work requirement. Some families are exempt but overall a state has to have something like 60% of all welfare families working in the neighborhood of 30 hours a week. (It gets complicated based on your state's past performance.) That's to get the $240 per month...for a family...for a maximum of 60 months

Welfare accounts for less than 2% of tax dollars. The interest on the national debt is 20% of tax dollars. JUST THE INTEREST.

Most poor people would not be able to stay on welfare for very long and 60 months at most so it's unlikely that very many of those 100,000 in New Orleans survive just off welfare not to mention the work requirement.

Also, crime rates in the United States are higher than in most socialist countries so pinning the amount of crime we saw in New Orleans on welfare is doubtful. In fact Canada which has a very high rate of welfare and extremely nice public housing has one of the lowest crime rates on the planet and almost no violent crime. Canada has a nice mix of Capitalism and Socialism.

Psychologists have found that high stress is the main reason for violent crime something pure Capitalism creates in a dog eat dog society. Their is a feeling that if you can't make it then their is something wrong with you. This creates resentment in the lower classes towards the upper classes. Something you don't see in Europe and Canada. Based on articles like the one from 'Robert Tracinski' Which calls the poor people of New Orleans "parasites" you can see why they have so much resentment for those who were born into middle and upper class families and look down on them.

Remember, helping the poor is mentioned over 2000 times in the Bible and Jesus devoted his life to the poor and less fortunate. I am worried when we start blaming the victims of one of the worst Natural Disasters in American history. WWJD? Would he blame the victims, many of which were raped and killed?

Take a look at table 7 at this site: http://www.americanprogress.org/atf/cf/%7BE9245FE4-9A2B-43C7-A521-5D6FF2E06E03%7D/KATRINAVICTIMS.PDF

[wellstone dem]

16. why don't we call the tax deduction given to home buyers "welfare"

why don't we call the tax deduction given to home buyers "welfare"?
Why is one cash benefit good--the tax deduction I get because I am buying my home. Whey is one cash benefit bad--the one my neighbor gets to support her child because she cannot get a living wage job?

Oh, I get it. The welfare my family and I get is good. The welfare "they" get is bad.