Quote:There is no doubt in my mind that he was "using the system" so to speak (I wonder which other Presidential candidate does something similar?). I don't know if he was married "on paper" to the woman, that's just what he always said. Now that I think about it though, he did always mention getting a pretty good size tax "refund". Usually he would blow a significant amount of it on a new computer or they would take a trip to Orlando and some of the theme parks.


Regardless, I do acknowledge that the cases that I've seen with my own two eyes are probably not "typical" of most that need assistance, but it sure does highlight the need to reign in the system. There is far too much abuse that costs me, someone that actually has to pay taxes.


There are also far too many that have come to depend on the temporary help that is government assistance as being a permanent situation for them. The problem is, they seem to think that government is their "ATM machine" and they don't realize that the very people that have to fill that machine are the very ones that could/would employ them.

Me and the wife where talking about this today actually. When does helping become enabling. We're both the oldest siblings, we struggled really bad early on having such a large family at such a young age. When we came up neither family could do much for us so we had to learn some hard lessons. Now her younger brothers are learning some of those lessons. The one has a young child him and the girlfriend where off again and on again for a while but she ended up pregnant again with his second child. Since then they've really turned the corner, I just attended his graduation from the police academy tonight, they've accepted councling and we've worked with them on building a budget and how to stick to it. Now along the way we've had to help them, I'm not a wealthy man but we've put some money and time into getting their cars running(blessings of being a mechanic) and we've stocked their frige a few times but because of the effort they put in we feel were helping not enabling.


The other brother was given a home by his fiance's wealthy family, both of their vehicles are paid for again a gift from her wealthy family and neither of them seems interested in finding a real full time job. She works as a hostess and he's changing jobs every couple of months. When the cry about being broke we don't help, we feel helping them is enabling their laziness.


That's the only way charity or help ever really works, if it's not become a tool of enabling. At the state level I just don't know how you could possibly determine if the welfare is help or enabling which is why welfare is such a mess.

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