I know it is not nice to not pretend that all welfare recipients are the deserving poor putting food on the table and paying rent with their welfare check. No doubt most are, but they also pay for designer clothes, and cable TV, and cell phones with all the bells and whistles, and play the lottery, and buy dope, and buy beer, and spend money at strip clubs. We should not be judgmental of course, the poor are as entitled to make decisions about how they spend their money as the rest of us, are they not?
Now, the governor of California wants to remove strip clubs from the official list of businesses where welfare recipients can withdraw benefits using state-issued ATM cards. Why bother? The people who are going to spend the welfare check money at the strip club will withdraw the money from an ATM somewhere else, but will still spend it at the strip club. Removing the ability to use the ATM at the strip clubs simply helps hide the truth about welfare and lets us pretend that welfare only helps the deserving poor.
Banning the use of welfare debit cards from strip clubs is punishing the poor and it is dehumanising and paternalistic. Advocates of the poor as well as supporters of strip clubs should oppose this draconian measure.
California welfare recipients have been able to get taxpayer cash -- meant to feed and clothe needy families -- from ATM machines at strip clubs across the state, including some well-known gentlemen’s cabarets in Los Angeles.
More than $12,000 from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program was dispensed from the start of 2007 to the end of 2009 at clubs including Sam’s Hofbrau, Seventh Veil and Star Strip, according to officials at the Department of Social Services.
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