Bush's new welfare rules kick in, nasty!

[ananda]

Boy, this is mean spirited. I hope BushInc goes down in flames soon.
It should have been yesterday. Actually, BushInc should never have
happened. This is one mean, crazy world.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/4100719.html

States scrambling to comply with new welfare rules
Second phase of reforms pushes poor to work more with less time for personal growth

By AMY GOLDSTEIN
Washington Post

WASHINGTON - Having grown up on welfare, Rochelle Riordan had vowed never to ask for a government handout. That was before her hard-drinking husband kicked her and their young daughter out of their house near Lewiston, Maine, leaving her with a $300 bank account, a bad job market and a 15-year-old car patched with duct tape.

Maine's welfare agency, she heard, was offering help for poor parents to go to college full time.

With the state paying for day care and $513 a month in living expenses, Riordan, 37, has been on the dean's list every semester at the University of Southern Maine, expecting to graduate and start a social work career next spring. But this summer, her plans — and Maine's Parents as Scholars program — suddenly are on shaky ground; under new federal rules, studying for a bachelor's degree no longer counts as an acceptable way for people on welfare to spend their time.

A decade after the government set out to transform the nation's welfare system, the limits on college are part of a controversial second phase of welfare reform. The new rules, written by Congress and the Bush administration, require states to focus intensely on making more poor people work, while discouraging other activities that might help untangle their lives.

[liberal N proud]

1. The bu$h elite want to keep the poor, poor and never give them hope

This demonstrates the bu$h republicans ideals on society.

[Ilsa]

2. Not giving people a hope for a decent future is what brings about

revolutions. The extreme capitalists may have gone too far by stripping away this opportunity from so many deserving people.

[TechBear_Seattle]

3. "A decade after the government set out ..."

This is the logical extension of the welfare "reforms" instituted by President Clinton. You may remember that HE is the one who started the ball moving this direction.

[ananda]

5. I don't blame Clinton for this.

I blame Bush, the GOP, and the two fixed elections.

This would never have happened under my real
President, Gore.

Sue

[Hamlette]

6. I was against Clinton's reform until I saw it in action

Putting a time limit on how long people can stay on welfare actually did motivate some people to get it together. (You can stay on forever if you have a hardship.)

These new work requirements are killing us (I work in the state welfare office) and by state law, we have never allowed people to spend 4 years to get a college degree.

If we don't meet the 50% work requirement, we will lose federal money which makes it worse for the poor.

I'm glad to see articles like this.

[SpiralHawk]

4. All pigs are equal, but republicon pigs are more equal

so you proles can just go pound sand. You are on your own, unless you are part of the republicon "elite" and thereby entitled to special government contracts, kickbacks, and "favors"

[mom cat]

7. Reccommendation # 5. ... Very good post ... Thanks.

[quiet.american]

8. Scum. Especially given the Bushista meme about minimum wage and welfare.

Their answer is always that people should get more education to improve their lot in life. So much for that. They've now taken the gloves off the real goal -- to create a permanent "servant" class.

[undergroundpanther]

9. dread..

"This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."

-- Frederick Douglass

Read on..
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/kaleidoscope/volume6/page16...

"Most Americans have never seen the ignorance, degradation, hunger, sickness, and futility in which many other Americans live … They won't become involved in economic or political change until something brings the seriousness of the situation home to them."

-- Shirley Chisholm

"There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread."

-- Mother Teresa

I'll bring it home to you, how far do you dare to empathize ?
Will you touch them,give them spare change, walk on by,blame them, or what?

http://www.usccb.org/cchd/povertyusa/tour.htm
http://www.cfah.org/factsoflife/vol3no1.cfm
http://www.ssw.umich.edu/trapped/pubs_trapped.pdf .
http://www.bookmasters.com/clarity/b0015a.htm

Want it MORE personal?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=250x2187
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/undergroundpanther

[PinkyisBlue]

10. Education is often the ticket out of poverty.

But then, the Republicans' goal isn't to get people out of poverty. They will need plenty of cheap labor to fill their below minimum wage jobs.

Unlike Bush, a lot of the poor don't have a wealthy dad able to give then their own oil company (to run into the ground).