The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Your Tax Dollars at Work

Posted on | September 26, 2018 | 1 Comment

 

Recent news from Dayton, Ohio:

The Ohio Liquor Control Commission revoked the liquor permit of Sharkey’s bar, an adult entertainment establishment, effective at the close of business Thursday, after investigators used food stamps to buy lap dances.
Agent-in-Charge Michelle Thourot said agents began investigating the Twenty Two Fifty Inc., also known as Sharkey’s, in May 2017. During the investigation, agents were able to purchase drugs and lap dances using food stamp benefits.
Throughout the five-month investigation, agents reportedly exchanged $2,404.87 in food stamps to purchase heroin, fentanyl, carfentanil, cocaine, methamphetamines and lap dances.
Criminal charges were filed against employees and patrons for drug trafficking, food stamp trafficking, aggravated shipment and distribution of heroin, engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity and illegal sexual activity.
Agents also filed 44 charges that were heard by the Liquor Control Commission that included drug possession, drug sales, engaging in sexual activity, food stamp trafficking and solicitation.
This is the second adult entertainment establishment liquor permit that has been revoked by the Liquor Control Commission as a result of an Ohio Investigative Unit investigation into food stamp and drug trafficking this year in the Dayton area. The other location, The Harem, lost its liquor license in May 2018.

Food stamps for lap dances? Federal benefits exchanged for heroin?

This demonstrates how the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We do not want the poor to suffer from hunger, and so our tax dollars are used to feed them. However, poverty is not a random occurrence. It has been demonstrated (Herrnstein and Murray, 1994) that there is a strong correlation between poverty and low IQ. Now, a person may be both stupid and poor without being immoral. We are sympathetic to the dimwit who barely made it past eighth grade, who works low-wage jobs to support himself, and who is an honest, decent, law-abiding citizen despite all his disadvantages. However, the liberal welfare state acts to promote moral corruption among the poor. Considering the poor to be victims of society, the liberal wishes to substitute welfare benefits for wages, to relieve the poor of the burden of earning their own living.

With food stamps, Medicaid and Section 8 housing vouchers, the poor are given a higher standard of living than they could honestly earn and, rather than understanding this as a species of charity — something they are provided because of the sympathy of their well-meaning fellow citizens — the poor are encouraged to believe they have a “right” to all these taxpayer-funded benefits. This rights-based view of welfare as an entitlement is destructive of every moral principle. We are justifying theft when we tell people that they have a “right” to other people’s money, and permit able-bodied people to be exempt from labor because they have a “right” to live at the expense of hard-working taxpayers.

Years ago, I was asked to speak at a Christian home-schooling conference. I presented a libertarian critique of the public education system. During the Q-and-A after my speech, I got a question I hadn’t expected: “How does your Christianity affect your political beliefs?”

“Well,” I answered, “it has something to do with ‘Thou shalt not steal.'”

From there, I launched into a critique of the immorality of the liberal welfare state, and how we are corrupted by our complicity in a system that tells us we are entitled to be given things “free.” More than half a century ago, Democrats vastly expanded the welfare system and called this a “War on Poverty.” In his final State of the Union address in 1988, Ronald Reagan delivered the epitaph for this folly:

My friends, some years ago, the Federal Government declared war on poverty, and poverty won.
Today the Federal Government has 59 major welfare programs and spends more than $100 billion a year on them. What has all this money done? Well, too often it has only made poverty harder to escape. Federal welfare programs have created a massive social problem. With the best of intentions, government created a poverty trap that wreaks havoc on the very support system the poor need most to lift themselves out of poverty: the family. Dependency has become the one enduring heirloom, passed from one generation to the next, of too many fragmented families.

Here we are, three decades later, and Democrats still haven’t accepted the truth that President Reagan told them. Food stamps are being exchanged for lap dances and heroin in Ohio, and if you point to this as evidence of the corrupting influence of welfare, they’ll call you a racist! Yet I don’t care whether the perpetrators of welfare fraud are white, black or Chinese, the point is that the wages of honest citizens are being taxed to pay for this, and that the morality of poor people is being destroyed by the entitlement mentality these programs encourage.

Unlike Democrats, I still believe in the American Dream. I still believe that there is dignity in honest labor, and that the poor man who earns his own living by the sweat of his brow deserves respect. I still believe that, through a life of hard work, sobriety and thrift, a poor man has reason to hope that his labor is not in vain, and that if his children will follow his example, they have a decent chance for a better life. It is wrong — it is immoral — for Democrats to say otherwise, to promote policies that encourage the poor to think of themselves as helpless victims.

By the way, while I appreciate the diligence of these agents in Ohio in exposing the food-stamps-for-lap-dances scheme at Sharkey’s Lounge, I’m hurt that they didn’t call me in to help with their investigation. This is the kind of work that I’d be happy to do on a freelance basis.

“Where were you last night?” my wife will ask.

“Investigating welfare fraud.”

Just doing my duty as a citizen. God bless America.



 

 

Category: Corruption, Crime, Ohio

Comments

One Response to “Your Tax Dollars at Work”

  1. “The Federal Government declared war on poverty, and poverty won.” | 357 Magnum
    September 27th, 2018 @ 8:45 am

    […] So people have been able to use food stamps for all kinds of non-food items. Your Tax Dollars at Work. […]