Poverty in Kansas

[lastlib]

Some fear rules cast poor families adrift

from Kansas City Star, Sunday, Jan. 6, 2013

http://www.kansascity.com/2013/01/05/3996591/poverty-in-kansas-some-fear-that.html

--snip--

These days, the notion occupying many who advocate for Kansas’ poor is that less than three miles away, near the Capitol dome, government officials led by Gov. Sam Brownback are making “getting out,” rising out of poverty, all the more difficult.

In private anonymity, fearing retribution from the state agencies that help fund their programs, those advocates use terms like “mean,” “heartless” and “vindictive” to describe the selective chipping away at policies designed to help the needy.
--snip--

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Welcome to Kochtopia.

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. Read the comments!!

OMG

Rewarding the poor for having more children is VERY, VERY expensive.

They have no problem coming to county hospitals, such as Truman, to receive free obstetric care. In return they should have to submit to sterility via tubal ligation or essure in exchange for their free care. None of the current entitlement systems are working to curb the exploding pregnancy rates of the poor. This system would be a definitive measure to reduce welfare spending and the amount of criminals on the streets (via poor, fatherless teens who have a 75% chance of ending up in the US penal system).

[lastlib]

2. bet the same people are vehemently opposed....

...to low-cost contraceptive coverage via health insurance, or to the services of Planned Parenthood...

. . . .

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. Why yes they are.

They made some really bad comments on an article just yesterday about Planned Parenthood.

[pstokely]

7. They're probably "pro-life" and claim to be creationists

nt

[patrice]

4. God! That piece is such a litany of horror stories, I hardly know where to begin!

I guess my main point would be: If it's supposed to be about good jobs, as SUBSIDY-Sam Brownback says it is, then, when you force the price of a commodity toooo low, and in this case the commodity would be the labor of the poor who have been disqualified by bureaucrats (who obtain their own paychecks through a type of SOCIALISM for those who get political patronage in our state, NOT on their qualifications to do the work they are doing, i.e. it's all ideology), how in f-ing hell do Republicans think the job-market is going to bid any higher for that labor than what the current price is, which can apparently range from $0 - $280. @ mo.

WHY would whatever jobs that do materialize out of this EXPERIMENT pay more than the going rate for those bodies? They won't, because no one is going to pay more than the going rate. Those won't be good jobs not only because wages will be low but also because Medicaid is gone.

Actually, I have an answer to this question of how Republicans think "decent" paying jobs will come out of this situation and it has to do with something else that is characteristic of the CHURCH-state in Kansas. People will get "decent" (ha!) wages depending upon their acceptance of certain other unstated, non-job-related, "qualifications", which happen ever so co-incidentally to be rather similar to those of the ideological social engineering bureaucrats who are doing this, ergo . . .

Kansas has turned into a market for indentured servants.

“Everybody is concerned that we are shrinking the social safety net. So much of it is happening behind closed doors and under the radar.”

Some 384,000 Kansans, or 13.8 percent of the state’s population, live at or below the poverty line, $23,050 a year for a family of four. That’s up by nearly 80,000 people since before the recession hit in 2008. Among children, the numbers have jumped 34,000, from 14.5 percent to nearly 19 percent. . . .

In May, the sweeping Brownback-led tax code changes that eliminated income taxes for an estimated 191,000 small businesses took away longstanding tax breaks for child- and dependent-care expenses and money spent on food taxes that helped a combined 430,000 Kansans, including the working poor.

Another policy, enacted months before, eliminated food stamps to the families of 2,200 Kansas children, all U.S. citizens, because some income in their households came from family members who were in the country illegally. The state determined they should not be counted in the formula to determine benefits.

Families that qualify for TANF cash assistance, which amounts to $280 a month on average, are among the poorest of the poor, with annual incomes no greater than 28 percent of the federal poverty level — about $6,500 for a family of four.

When Brownback took office, 39,000 severely poor Kansans received TANF. Since October 2011, when the administration instituted stricter rules defining who could receive the cash assistance, 38 percent of them — or almost 15,000 people — no longer do. . . .

In Kansas, the food stamp program has grown substantially under Brownback — up 21 percent, from 260,000 to 315,000 recipients, since he took office. Monthly spending per person has nearly doubled, from $66 to $125.

Even at $16,500 a year in food stamps, if the Hartzes’ food benefit were counted as income, they would still be living at less than 40 percent of the federal poverty level for a family their size.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/01/05/3996591/poverty-in-kansas-some-fear-that.html#storylink=cpy

[lastlib]

5. Very well-stated!!

Exactly why I referred to Kansas as "Kochtopia". It's what the Koch brothers and their ilk want EVERY state to be like! Brownback--that disgusting POS that he is--thinks this should be a model for the nation!

. . . . . . . .

[patrice]

6. AND it's like that fiasco at KsDMV this last summer. UNQUALIFIED people cutting-corners

and producing, worse than the DMV in this case, catastrophe with people's LIVES.

That crap in the article about, TTE, "We're doing the poor a favor." BULLSHIT! I didn't even go into how what they are doing is exactly like kicking a "dog" because it can't sing opera, which makes monsters out of the you and the "dog" and makes singing of any type extinct.

It's unconsciounable. Each of the family stories included in this article highly illustrates how very marginal functionality is in these demographics. Just because people keep praying doesn't mean that whatever happens is what SHOULD happen to them, nor, more importantly, that there will be no negative consequences from whatever happens even when whatever that turns out to be matches the Republican judgement about what is "right" or "good".

You know what, it's just exactly like Republicans have no real idea of whatever an individual person's actual soul might be!