"Put me in charge" letter

My uncle sent me this letter from a retired Army sergeant, supposedly printed in a Texas newspaper (though it doesn't necessarily represent his own opinion). I find it utterly repulsive - someone who has no doubt enjoyed every conceivable privilege possible has nothing but hatred and derision for people who need help. What would Jesus say? Not this. And I would rather have my tax dollars go to help people (whether or not they use drugs!!!) than see one penny go to bailout billionaire bankers or provide subsidies for oil companies.

I'd go even further - those banks and oil companies who get "our" money don't have to follow any rules, but wouldn't it be great if they did - like, hey banks, how about you have to put the money into loans and refinancing, rather than your own bonuses and bottom lines, and oil companies, if you take our money, you have to clean up your own damn messes.

Below this screed is a fabulous response I found online.

PUT ME IN CHARGE . . .

Put me in charge of food stamps.  I'd get rid of Lone Star cards; no cash for Ding Dongs or Ho Ho's, just money for 50 pound bags of rice and beans, blocks of cheese and all the powdered milk you can haul away.  If you want steak and frozen pizza, then get a job.

Put me in charge of Medicaid.  The first thing I'd do is to get women Norplant birth control implants or tubal legations. Then, we'll test recipients for drugs, alcohol, and nicotine.  If you want to reproduce or use drugs, alcohol, or smoke, then get a job.

Put me in charge of government housing.  Ever live in a military barracks?  You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair.
Your "home" will be subject to inspections anytime and possessions will be inventoried.  If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360, then get a job and your own place.

In addition, you will either present a check stub from a job each week or you will report to a "government" job.  It may be cleaning the roadways
of trash, painting and repairing public housing, whatever we find for you.  We will sell your 22 inch rims and low profile tires and your blasting stereo and speakers and put that money toward the "common good."

Before you write that I've violated someone's rights, realize that all of the above is voluntary.  If you want our money, accept our rules.  Before you say that this would be "demeaning" and ruin their "self esteem," consider that it wasn't that long ago that taking someone else's money for doing absolutely nothing was demeaning and lowered self esteem.

If we are expected to pay for other people's mistakes, we should at least attempt to make them learn from their bad choices.  The current system rewards them for continuing to make bad choices.

AND, while you are on Gov't subsistence, you no longer can VOTE!  Yes, that is correct.  For you to vote would be a conflict of interest.  You will
voluntarily remove yourself from voting while you are receiving a Gov't welfare check.  If you want to vote, then get a job.

Reply posted on Independent Realist blog:

This is brilliant. Whoever said that only cab drivers and barbers know how to fix the country is dead wrong.

Humiliating and punishing poor American children because their parents can't or won't find work that pays a living wage will encourage them to chose better parents in the future. We could go one step further and require them to wear welfare clothes and welfare shoes so that everyone else could see immediately that they are on public assistance, and other kids in school could humiliate them into making their parents get off welfare.

And putting unemployed and poor Americans to work for their welfare check would enable the Government to eliminate even more overpaid, lazy American government workers, or just eliminate their jobs, and put them back to work doing the same job for their welfare check. And if there are left over workers, the Government could lease them out to private corporations to do jobs that are now being done by lazy, overpaid employees.

Can you imagine how much this country would prosper if we were able to replace lazy, overpaid American employees with press workers living in military barracks and eating beans and rice? We could build camps around the country, preferably in industrial areas, to house these lazy unemployed Americans. Lose your job, get sent to Welfare Camp in a boxcar. Now that's a motivator to keep people working harder for even less.

In addition, if the Government seizes half the total assets of the bottom 50% of this country, which could coincide with them losing their jobs or applying for public assistance, we will obtain the same 700 billion dollars we would get by raising the taxes of the top two percent to where they were before the Bush tax cuts created all those trickle down jobs that the poor were just too lazy to accept.

Many lazy and poor Americans on Food Stamps and other government assistance are already working. A lot of them at Walmart, the Nation's largest private employer, where the majority of lazy workers with children live below the poverty line. Fortunately, there is someone there to help these lazy employees find and apply for Government benefits they are eligible for because they don't make enough money to support themselves and their families working at Walmart. Do you wonder how many people would go off food stamps and other public assistance if Walmart was in a financial position to pay their lazy employees enough for a 40 hour workweek to actually support their families? Sadly, Walmart just doesn't make enough money to do this.

Instead of taking away the vote of lazy unemployed and poor American Citizens, which only Scalia and Thomas might find to be vaguely constitutional, the Government could sell votes for a dollar to Citizens and Corporations. The poor American Citizen might vote once, but the Wealthy and Corporations could vote thousands, or even millions of times. This will raise money that could be used to fund a large internal police force to keep the lazy unemployed poor working cheerfully for their daily beans and rice instead of taking to the streets and complaining about imagined injustices, because the voters who count are going to elect people who will cut their taxes to nothing, and the formerly employed won't be paying any income taxes, so the Government will be pretty much broke. And then they can't foolishly waste my tax dollars making The United States of America the greatest experiment in liberty, prosperity and personal freedom the world has ever seen.