Need welfare myth fact check help...

[roseBudd]

On an MSM site where I post the subject of welfare fraud came up when I reported that Reagan's Cadillac driving welfare queen was a fiction.

As a retort one person claims he knows women who borrow children when they go in for case management.

I say bogus and that would require a birth certificate which the pretend mother of a borrowed child does not have.

Am I right?

[Breeze54]

1. Are you lost?!?

"On an MSM site where I post the subject of welfare fraud"

:puke:

Do you ever post about the TRILLIONS OF CORPORATE WELFARE FRAUD?!?

:banghead:

[roseBudd]

6. you misunderstand, I fight smears, attack Republicans at every chance...

on any subject.

I posted saying Reagan's story of the welfare queen was a fabrication.

Repub is claiming he has personal knowledge of borrowed children welfare fraud.

I say BS, birth certificate is required.

Am i right?

I have not retorted yet.

[Breeze54]

9. Thanks for the clarification....

BC wasn't always required or checked back then.

Remember, they didn't have state databases or computers back then.

They went by your face. How the kid looked and what you looked like.

[roseBudd]

13. I was on welfare in early 80s, I had to get my birth certificate...

and apply for unemployment first.

I also got thumbprinted. And had a picture ID welfare card.

[Breeze54]

26. I said earlier.... as in the 70's....

or mid 70's they didn't really have anyway to track people.

Been there, done that and they didn't!

[shraby]

27. Needed birth certificates for all, bank books,

could only have one car, needed just about everything but my shoe size.

[Arkansas Granny]

16. I received food stamps in the late 70's and was required to provide

birth certificates and SSN for each child. I did not receive welfare payments, but I can't imagine that the same was not required. I don't believe it was as easy to get benefits as many people seem to think.

[Breeze54]

28. Yeah, riiiiight... maybe computers became user friendly

in the late 70's... that makes some sense but not all states were up to code (if there was a 'code') at that time.

[Hannah Bell]

38. They didn't need computers to keep track of people.

You know, they had these things called file cabinets, forms, telephones, birth certificates kept on record in every state, social security numbers...school records, cameras...

your story is the social worker looked at the kid & said, "no, that one doesn't look like you, but this one does, so you only get $ for one kid."

I worked at Boeing in the late 70s, & we had computers - not pcs, big central computing & word processing units. I did WP on a Wang.

Wang Laboratories:
Wang Laboratories was a computer company founded in 1951 by Dr. An Wang and Dr....

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Laboratories - 83k -


I don't know what welfare had, but my cousin had to provide documents, & they defintely didn't have any Social Workers deciding who to give $$$ to based on how they looked.

did not happen.

[olegramps]

45. Where in the hell did you get that information.

Do you think that people were stupid and didn't keep records and have criteria before computers?

[Warpy]

19. I was on it in the late 60s, the first time my kidneys conked out

and I went back to work against medical advice to get the hell off it. That's how hard it is to live on welfare. Anybody with the ability to get off it will do so as quickly as possible, IMO, especially if they're watching their kids suffer, too.

Google is your friend:

Five myths about welfare: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1302

Great links to debunking specific stories: http://anitraweb.org/homelessness/columns/anitra/eightmyths.html

More right wing horse shit countered: http://hcom.csumb.edu/welfare/resources/myths_facts.html

This will certainly get you started.

[Breeze54]

25. ((((( Warpy))))

:yourock:

[WinkyDink]

49. Newsflash: Republicans will lie to your face.

[Breeze54]

2. In the Reagan years, there were no computers... workers went by faces.

Truth.

[stillcool]

11. I went to the Social Security office for..

the first time in the 60's. I was kind of off the grid because my parents had died, but I was not adopted and just living with other people. It was no easy-peasy thing for me, or the people that kept me, to get benefits from my mother's death or my fathers veterans benefits. It was not a "by face" thing.

[Breeze54]

31. That's different. and i'm so sorry, stillcool...

and you are (((stillcool))) :hug:

;)

[Hannah Bell]

17. They didn't "go by faces". I don't know where you're getting that.

They never went "by faces".

Jeez.

[Breeze54]

32. Yes they did!!!!

They may have already had BC's and utility bills that were "evidence" that you were
who you said you were and you lived where you said you lived but there were NO COMPUTERS
back then to tell them that what they SAW was true or not true!! They went by FACE!!!

[Hannah Bell]

39. no, they didn't. My cousin was on welfare in the 60s, & i assure you, no one decided

anything on some social worker making the call on the basis of whether they thought a child looked like the parent. Bureaucracy didn't start with computers.

[bread_and_roses]

44. There are people on this thread who received or worked at Social Services who dispute you

(people besides me, I mean)- and yet you keep posting this. When I worked at Social Services in the '80's we did not have computers when I started, so we relied on PAPER records. People had to have a birth certificate, SS #, a landlord statement to prove they paid rent, utility bills to prove they paid utilities, etc., etc., etc. Files were kept. Files were checked. It was always very hard, time-consuming, humiliating, burdensome, and unbelievably stressful to maintain an assistance case.

Your perception that prior to computers there was no verification is - I'm sorry, but it is laughable. As someone upthread said, beauracracy did not start with computers.

[roseBudd]

47. I remember now it was 77 when I went on welfare & I had to provide everything you stated...

I can remember being at the grocery store & did not have my drivers license to write a check. I showed them my photo ID thumbprinted welfare card but they said no dice.

The irony is it took more verification to get than my license.

[blogslut]

21. Where did you get your information?

I was on welfare in the eighties. Not only did I have to provide a birth certificate for my child, I had to provide my own BC, my SS number, my child's SS# and I had to do so every six months.

[Breeze54]

30. Did I say "the eighties"?

:shrug:

[lumberjack_jeff]

33. That is a reasonable inferrence. "The Reagan years" were '81 - '89.

[Breeze54]

35. True but they still didn't have 'puters back then.

;)

[MiniMe]

37. Um, yes they did

They were mostly mainframes, PC's were just coming in and they didn't have much computing power or many programs. But they definitely had computers.

[olegramps]

46. You posted a ridiculous statement about welfare that has been totally discredited.

Why are you persisting in such nonsense. I assisted at my parish in providing people with documentation from church records, baptismal certificates, first communion and marriage records for proof of their claims since some didn't have birth certificates, had lost them or didn't know where they had been issued. We also assisted them in obtaining census data to prove their claims. The welfare folks required reliable documentation in the 1960's just as they do today. People who abused the system were charged with fraud and some faced having their children taken from them and placed in foster care. You are pushing the same crap that Reagan spewed. Nothing but exaggerations and outright lies. The people that I dealt with were desperate and needed assistance to survive.

[bread_and_roses]

42. I worked at "the welfare" in Reagan years and yes, birth certificates were required

This was in NY. I can't imagine that it was different anywhere else. If I remember correctly, in those years (pre-welfare "reform") in some truely emergency situations a person could get some immediate, very short term help prior to all documentation being provided. This usually amounted to nothing more than a food voucher (a very low $ amount, from an "emergency" fund, combined with a referral to a food bank, very few of which were "walk-in" in those days), or a call to a utility/landlord that the person was pending assistance to get a few more days befor a shut-off or eviction. On-going assistance was certainly NOT provided without proper documentation.

Most here are probably too young to remember the "welfare rights" movement, which was pre-Reagan and was spurred by the draconian, intrusive, humiliating requirements for obtaining assistance - some of which were reinstituted here in NY after welfare "reform." Like the requirement that a worker "inspect" your home (basically looking for men's shoes under the bed) before one could get assistance. Thank you, Bill Clinton! (that's sarcastic, in case anyone misinterprets.)

[Waiting For Everyman]

43. Paper files worked just as well as computers in the "dark ages".

I know that may be hard to believe, but what goes into computers comes from paper sources.

And yes, birth certificates and loads of other vital records were always required. Same for Social Security programs, same for VA.

[baldguy]

3. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

And tell them Rush Limbaugh doesn't count as proof.

[GOPisEvil]

4. You do have to prove relationship to receive benefits for a child.

It is technically possible to receive benefits for children to whom you are not related, but you will need documentation that they are in your custody.

Most states now verify birth records with their state's online database.

I suppose it is possible to falsify birth records, and the list of acceptable proof is lengthy, and includes things like family bibles. The bottom line is that the case worker has to make the best decision using the information at hand.

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. Yes you're right

The poor have to show their papers before they get their porridge.

[liberalmuse]

7. All you need to know is...

that Republicans are always WRONG. Once you get this down, the facts will follow. Republicans are the People of the Lie, and they are 100%, always wrong.

They were wrong about Bush. Liberals were RIGHT.
They were wrong about Reagan, the asshat actor pretending to be President.
They were wrong about the war in Iraq.
They were wrong about trickle-down economics.
They were wrong about segregation.
They were wrong about the Viet Nam war.

Do I need to go on? My fingers are tired already. Republicans are !00% WRONG ALL THE FUCKING TIME. At least in the 45 years since I've been alive. The Nazi's were considerate enough to kill us (aka 'liberals', 'Jews', 'Pagans', 'Homosexuals', 'Gypsies', 'Czechs'). These fuckers make you live and force you to watch their atrocities.

[roseBudd]

8. I try to be positive before I come back, when someone claimed Sarbannes Oxley was

the cause of the current crisis I came to DU for help.

[liberalmuse]

12. I know. You are a good person.

I'm jaded. I love that you aren't. But I do know that this tweaks my BS meter. I may be off on a lot of things, but I can tell you that if you outright dismiss something a right winger says as a lie, you will be right 99.9% of the time. It has been tried and true by many people here.

I'm giving the pubs a little bit of leeway here, because if truth be told, they are wrong 100% of the time.

[Breeze54]

29. Rethugs are WRONG 100% of the time!!!

BET on it !! :P

[Enthusiast]

41. Liberalmuse, you are dead on.

Every time I try to give a Republican even the slightest benefit of the doubt I find they don't deserve it.

[Telly Savalas]

15. Somebody claimed SOX created the financial crisis?

Sounds like Larry Kudlow on magic mushrooms.

[Thothmes]

48. Was LBJ right about Vietnam?

[roseBudd]

10. here is what the Ahole wrote...

850, you do realize that you are full of it about whether the Cadillac driving welfare queen existed - don't you? Where I work we have reported several of our former employees for welfare fraud, including some who have rented several of their friends childrens to take with them for their benefit determinations. I have personally watched an employee who was reported for welfare fraud get into her Escalade with the spinner hub caps and drive away.

Just because you don't want to admit that Reagan was right is no reason to be foolish. Abuses in the medicaid system are wide spread.

[GOPisEvil]

14. So he has an apocryphal story and that makes it all true?

I worked as both a case worker and in the anti-fraud sections in Texas. Fraud is not wide-spread, but it does exist.

[DBoon]

23. Any social program will have some amount of fraud

That is a fact.

When you factor in all the people who need those benefits and compare it to the few who game the system, you need to decide where your priorities lie.

If your priority is helping people who need it, you have to accept the fact that some who don't need it (or some who are accomplished crooks) will get benefits who don't deserve them. Just like banks have to assume some of the people they issue credits cards to will use them to commit fraud. It is just a risk of offering that service.

If your priority is destroying all social programs, then one case of fraud is good enough to prove your point.

Also, any steps taken to reduce fraud will inevitably harm those who really need the benefit.

It is telling the right wingers never ever cite valid statistics about fraud - they only can come up with vague anectdotes about "welfare queens driving cadillacs".

They don't believe these programs should exist in the first place, so they think one single instance of imagined fraud should be enough to shut them down.

[Luminous Animal]

22. By the way, he's right about Medicaid fraud, EXCEPT

the bulk of the monetary benefit of the fraud goes to doctors, whilst shills are merely the lowly paid mules.

[Mojorabbit]

18. Some info about the myth of the welfare queen

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-welfarequeen.htm

[Luminous Animal]

20. Case workers never based benefits

on how many kids someone drags to the office. Jeesh.

No doubt there is some fraud but a pittance compared to the millions that white-collar criminals put in their pockets, et. al.

It is odd how all these petty-minded middle class people seem to know folks on welfare when, in fact, they wouldn't be caught dead in the same neighborhood.

[RobinA]

24. And Even If You Could

get away with fake children, which you could not very easily because yes, they ask to see SS and BC, the amount extra you'd get would not allow you to buy a Cadillac. At least not one with wheels and an engine. And a roof. And a steering wheel. And seats.

There is a way of claiming children on income tax that aren't really yours (I don't know how they do this, but I did know some people who pulled off this scam), but again, you aren't going to be driving a Cadillac. Maybe an X-Box, but that's about it.

[Lil Missy]

34. Social welfare is a fraction of corporate welfare and subsidies, and breaks for the rich.

I'm sure there are frauds in every system. But none the likes of or expensive as the ones in the corporate world and the rich.

It's a red herring to single out social welfare.

[Breeze54]

36. Right on!

An enlightened one! :D

:yourock:

[Lil Missy]

40. .....

:)