Tweet
Are there no workhouses? Are there no poorhouses?
Clearly, the GOP neighbors of Wisconsin’s Scott Walker intend to outdo him for meanness and humiliation. Republican legislators in Minnesota have introduced a bill to criminalize carrying cash for anyone on public assistance.
St. Paul, MN – Minnesota Republicans are pushing legislation that would make it a crime for people on public assistance to have more $20 in cash in their pockets any given month. This represents a change from their initial proposal, which banned them from having any money at all.
This is what today’s GOPs mean by compromise: they introduce a totally punitive and rights-violating measure, then sweeten it ever so slightly when public outrage ramps up.
House File 171 would make it so that families on MFIP – and disabled single adults on General Assistance and Minnesota Supplemental Aid – could not have their cash grants in cash or put into a checking account. Rather, they could only use a state-issued debit card at special terminals in certain businesses that are set up to accept the card.
The bill also calls for unconstitutional residency requirements, not allowing the debit card to be used across state lines and other provisions that the Welfare Rights Committee and others consider unacceptable.
In Oregon, my unemployed friends have told me they must be very careful where they use their state-issued debit cards for goods or cash — many banks charge large fees, as does the bank that manages the assistance debit card program for the service, depending on where the card is used. Banks are usuriously sucking fees from people who desperately need the pittance the state is willing to provide families for their laid-off breadwinners.
{h/t Susie Madrak, C&L}
96 Comments
And of course if you Google “minnesota house file 171″ right now (6:07 pm CST), you won’t find a single word on this from any of the local traditional media entities: The (banker-owned, Republican-edited) StarTribune, the even more Republican and for a much longer period of time) Pioneer Press, the various local radio and TV stations — nothing from any of them.
Only the bloggers, local and national, give a rat’s ass.
Are the Minnesotans ready to re-up the Poorhouses? Then the poor wouldn’t need to have any cash at all. So simple really. And I used to think Minnesota was a nice place.
It was until the Republicans took over both the legislative and executive branches for most of the past quarter-century. Now thanks to an increasingly right-wing national and local media, as well as an influx of white-flighters who all move to the whitest suburbs or exurbs they can afford whilst still working downtown, it’s been circling the drain, and even retaking the governor’s mansion from the Cons might not be enough to save it.
Case in point: The excellent Cowles family sold the Strib to the nominally-liberal but viciously anti-union McClatchys, who then sold it to Avista strip and flippers, who then sold it to a shadowy group of bankers who’ve pretty much given day-to-day control of it to Doug Tice, an otherwise-unemployable right-wing hack who is both a James Lileks lookalike and writealike. The days when someone like Tom Hamburger could write stories that were world-renowned for being the first ones outside of Arkansas to shred to bits the alleged NYT “reportage” on Whitewater are long, long gone.
This is all about control. The poor will keep their mouths shut, refrain from complaining and do exactly as they are instructed. If not, the government cuts their lifeline (debit card).
It will not stop with the poor. The banksters want total control of everyone not in their inner-circle elite.
Teddy, did you find any KI? This place might still have some:
http://store.naturalnews.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=100370
Why don’t they (Republicans, on a National basis) just get it over with and declare being poor illegal?
The type of thinking that can conceive of these punitive laws is just sickening.
The evil creativity behind this thinking goes way beyond my ability to figure out what these assholes will think of next.
Glenn Greenwald posted a link to this video clip yesterday. It is even more sickening as to how “these people” think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNgCyDsvi84&feature=youtu.be
The good people of Minnesota elected these ass holes P.W.. There is an epidemic in this country of what I call white heart rot. It makes people stupid, petty and mean.
Thanks Teddy,
they just keep sinking to new lows. I believe we are in a situation which will most certain get worse if we ignore it.
Indeed. Paul Wellstone must be rolling in his grave.
On a lighter note, if the poor can’t carry cash, how about legislating that all rich people be required to carry signs stating that “I am a parasite living off the work of honest people”.
I almost clicked on it, but I don’t believe I handle “even more sickening” this evening. I’m very sickeninged out.
I don’t believe I CAN handle….
It’s totally fucking frustrating to have this “format” without edit, with the fucking nests.
This nonsense could never pass both Houses and even if it did,Gov.Dayton would veto it.Any fool can introduce a bill but to get it enacted into law is another thing.
After nonstop insanity that seems to have no end I am left only with the one statement that keeps insisting to be repeated in my heart and mind:
My country’s leaders, both Repub and Dem, are DISGUSTING & BEYOND REDEMPTION!
They need to be taken down from their fuckin ivory towers and something new created to replace the crumbling empire led by asshat ObamaRat!
I would make them wear pointy hats.
Why are they doing this? It’s not necessarily to demonize the poor (although that’s the end result). It’s because they can partner with a bank, and have their friends make more money. They can have these people’s money go into their banker friends’ wallets instead of the economy. Wells Fargo, Chase, US Bank, and the other usual suspects are having their lobbyists drive this home for their own pockets.
Since they can’t get them on foreclosures anymore, since many of them they forced homeless, they have to find some other way to make money from these poor, unsuspecting people. THINK OF THE POOR BANKSTERS.
Then they can claim how ineffective welfare is, and eliminate it altogether. Another perversion of the shock doctrine.
The banks will profit. Private prisons will profit. But, the taxpayers will get stuck with a massive bill for imprisoning countless Americans whose only ‘crime’ was powerlessness to stop the predations of a greedy corporatocracy.
You are so right. In the near future we will probably be building prisons at a greater rate than schools. I read “The Tyranny of Good Intentions” a couple of years ago. One of the tactics used is in plea bargaining. A person can be totally innocent, but the DA’s office will force the person into a plea bargain by threatening them with a more severe charge if they refuse to cop to the lesser.
And let’s not forget the two judges in PA who were sentencing juveniles to rather lengthy prison terms for first offenses which in the past would have resulted in suspended sentences and community service.
The whole notion that Americans can be criminalized for holding legal tender is a very ominous one. This is one incident of many revealing racial profiling and what goes on under the excuse of the “War on Drugs”: “DEA Returns Trucker’s Cash” (ACLU-NM.Org, Oct. 3, 2007)
To target the poor who must avoid fees on their money as they have so little is especial despicable. The above Minnesota legislation is really about who should hold money and who should not. According to the legislation’s proponents, the poor (who are Godless by definition) should not.
A lot of it is ironically due to the fact that Minnesota has a lot of progressives who stay home or vote Green, which makes it easier for Republicans. That, plus the same two-plus decades of marinating in Rush Limbaugh and a growing menu of fellow wingnuts, gives the results you see.
What’s amazing is that there’s been so little local media play outside of the local blogging community. I didn’t find out about this until I saw it as Crooks and Liars today — that’s how little it’s being discussed.
Micromanaging the poor to death, cutting taxes on the rich and immunizing them from liability for the harms they do.
The cost benefit of such a policy, catching one hypothetical cheat at the expense of criminalizing straightforward human conduct, is negative. But it’s consistent with the haves appreciation that they are operating with stolen goods and fear that they might be found out.
They fear that the docile public may turn against them and demand that the law be fairly applied to them. They’re scared to death. They discredit and demonize any convenient “other” among the haves in an effort to hide their ill-gotten gains, which they so desperately want to hang onto and believe they justly deserve.
I think I’ll call it a night and watch a Hammer horror film, replete with monsters and peasant villagers wielding farm implements.
I don’t suppose that same tireless legislature has ever advocated for limits on the usurious charges banks routinely charge the poor and the unemployed. Has it ever promoted enforcement of employment anti-discrimination laws, oversight of workplace practices, and improved better business conduct? Has it ever mandated stringent performance criteria and limits on charges in their contracts to outsource benefits payments to those oh so convenient bank card issuers? I didn’t think so.
Yep, first five pages on ixquick.com are all blog posts and government sites. Nary a tradmed publication.
one more signpost on the road to who knows where.
I simply don’t believe that very many Americans think this way.
warped freaks are in the ascendent. promoted by a tiny group of extremely wealthy, ignorant, hateful throwbacks.
When I first saw this hideous news, I wanted to think it was Onion. A few weeks ago I came upon two homeless men sleeping on donation-site mattresses next to a dumpster. I helped them move the mattresses back into place and gave them a twenty dollar bill for food. They helped me load junk into the truck for recycle. I suppose that in the Minnesota scenario, we would all three be arrested for being poor and exchanging possession of a twenty dollar bill. And that is sick.
Agreed. Totally agreed. This sort of thing moves the war on the poor from being cloaked in the guise of the war on drugs to a war on just, well, being poor.
As a poor person watching this sort of thing, I keep asking, “What do they want from us?” “What are they gaining from this?” I am at a loss. Is it to add to the inmate work force so they can extract more labor? Or is it just sheer hate?
Okay, PhoenixWoman, I am trying to do my part; I just tweeted this. And US Senator Al Franken follows me. Is he in Minnesota? Perhaps he can (or has) speak out against it?
CraneStation Rachel
Poor Minnesotans to be Barred from Carrying Cash | MyFDL: http://bit.ly/h5xlSS via @addthis
Arrested. The charge: possession of a twenty dollar bill while poor.
It is pure hatred. There is a so-called “Christian” doctrine that wealth determines one’s salvation. The wealthy are the “chosen”, and the poor deserve what they get, because they are not “saved” or one of the chosen.More and more the poor and disabled are mocked, vilified and are targets of inhumane governmental treatment.What the Reich-wing and the baggers don’t get, is that to the uber-wealthy, they are the “poor” and worthy of extinction.
I can see search warrants…to search to poor for cash.
I once heard, ‘Your bottom can always get lower.’ Well, GOP if you are reading this: it has.
Republicans. The party of limited government.
Minnesota Council of Churches and Diocese(s) (whom I believe are in need of some positive p.r. about now) need to very publicly, very loudly call them out on this – that whole ‘what you do to the least of these’ thing
it’s not like you can shame these sociopaths, but given how they continually shield themselves with their religiosity – this would be a good place to start
Over the past generation or so, we’ve evolved a mutant faith called the Church of America, which glorifies aggression, selfishness, oppression of others, and all-around hypocrisy.
Imagine what would happen if the historical Jesus walked into a prominent American megachurch.
Well, if the dems actually supported something remotely like a progressive agenda they would earn that support. “Elect us so we can screw you with a smile rather than how the the evil bastards will do it” only goes so far.
When collecting unemployment, a card is now used here in TX, and is charged fees by any bank ATM where the user doesn’t have an account. This is really an inconvenience. Has anyone ever tried to use a card to get on the bus/DART rail? Absurd.
If he gave the Sermon on the Mount, he’d be clapped in the pokey for preaching communism.
Michigan offers direct deposit of UI benefits, paper checks, or a debit card.
Incidentally, there’s a bill in our legislature that would ban anyone receiving welfare benefits from cashing a winning lottery ticket.
Well how about a counter bill that legislators can’t use their tax payer provided salaries to buy anything but food and shelter and there will be a mandatory quarterly filing and audit by the State tax assessor collector? No booze, no mistresses, no drugs, no lobbyists.
As I posted yesterday in another thread, my state now refuses to mail unemployment paper checks. If you don’t have direct deposit to your bank account, you get a Bank of America debit card for your unemployment benefits. Other “welfare” benefits are probably handled the same way. I’m sure BofA thinks this is a great system–recipients maybe not so much. But then again, they’re the unemployed–worthless by definition. /s
However, to my knowledge my state hasn’t yet gone to the lengths Minnesota has. I probably should be grateful for small blessings.
Hold it folks…..in the Minnesota Legislature we have seen this bullshit many times before…so we don’t get too anxious until we are sure a bill will become law. In fact back in the 80′s a right wing religious goofball who got elected offered a bill that would outlaw dilldoes(spelling) or any other types of sexual items that people use in private. This bills language was so “filthy” and intrusive that there was a run on the bills and the legislature could not keep enough copies around. This bill was the “highlight” of the Legislative session. Lobbyists were bringing copies to their late night get togethers as they laughed and slapped their knees. The bill was so bad that a decision was made by Legislative leaders to control the copies because parents were afraid of their children seeing this language. So we are still nice in the Great State of Minnesota. We just are getting an increase of screw balls, just like every other state, and they are increasingly getting elected. You gotta blame this on the general population who is not paying attention and are sending this idiots to our state houses and Washington to make laws. Maybe we really need to start giving people a test before we allow them to vote. (just kidding)
The problem there is, if there is no publicity about these things and they pass under the radar, they can easily wind up being voted on and passing.
For example, Texas and Alabama have I think both passed laws banning dildos and “sexual devices”
Nice plan. I’d love to see legislators’ get the ‘no junk food’ proviso that’s now being proposed for other welfare recipients who get food stamps.
I thought Onion at first, too. Wow. If you’d been caught, maybe they would have had you sew red patches on your clothes.
Think Bachmann
So your point is… let’s not worry?
These things have a way of popping up elsewhere, though — that way being ALEC, the state legislators’ clearing house for ensuring their crony capitalist donors are taken care of on the state level. Once one state proves the concept, others hear about it and test-drive it elsewhere. That’s why we’re seeing such an epidemic nowadays.
How so very Christian of the GOP.
See, now the GOP have an excuse for not giving cash to the poor via their church…God forbid the GOP church goers give to the poor — they may be encouraging a crime through charity.
Ummm, the time to get upset is before something like this becomes law. I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up with current events but letting things become law and then getting pissed hasn’t exactly been very effective.
Yep – recc’d by ∞
And the Roberts court would probably uphold such a law…
In other news, the next war has started. I wonder how many innocent Libyans have been killed so far in the name of freedom? Because nothing says “free” like the freedom to be innocent and slaughtered.
These politicians need to be barred from carrying Koch Industries cash in their pocket. Recall all of them. Revolting cocksuckers.
These people are really and truly Nuts. What else can you say?
Charles Dickens is never around when you need him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l1_82x2BO4
Warporn on cnn.
No thanks.
Just like declaring being without health insurance illegal? Oh wait, that’s Obama and the progressives in Congress.
Rush Limbaugh would denounce him as a Liberal, Glenn Beck would compare him to Hitler and Bill O’Reilly would imply that he should be shot down in the street. Then they would insist they did no such thing, despite recorded evidence to the contrary.
hey – that hurts….
Don’t forget to go out & howl at the moon tonight. Closest full moon in 18 years.
http://www.weather.com/outlook/weather-news/news/articles/extreme-supermoon-full-moon_2011-03-10
JP Morgan handles all the EBT transactions for Hawai’i…! Being a Progressive state there’s no stigmata here… All grocers/ATMs/stores/utilities etc. eagerly accept the card, and, there’s no penalties whatsoever if it is used on the Mainland…!
you have mail
Got it and am thinking about it. I’ve never been to Bordeaux.
“n Oregon, my unemployed friends have told me they must be very careful where they use their state-issued debit cards for goods or cash — many banks charge large fees, as does the bank that manages the assistance debit card program for the service, depending on where the card is used. Banks are usuriously sucking fees from people who desperately need the pittance the state is willing to provide families for their laid-off breadwinners.”
THIS is the evil at the heart of the beast.
THIS is what must be fought, with every life and breath . . .
THIS is what must change . . .
Great read n thanks. Rcc’d,
Bad as this bill is, it doesn’t do what this article says it does. It doesn’t say people can’t have more than $20 in their pockets, all it does is put a 20$ limit on ATM withdrawals, and cash refunds.
Full text of the bill is here,
2.1 EBT cardholders may opt to have up to $20 per month accessible via automatic teller machine or receive up to $20 cash back from a vendor.
there are no threats of being arrested and jailed for not carrying health insurance- a little matter that seemed to slip your little mind located in your pointy tinfoil wearing head
got a link to back up that assertion? insulting people does not give your argument any credence.
Because its so easy to link to proof of the absence of something…
Better to sit idly and watch a dictator slaughter his own…no downside to that, I guess. Would be cheaper at least.
How can there still be any doubt that the people we elect to represent us do their damnest to represent everyone but us. I know a young person that is totally disabled and lives on assistance. The benefits have been slashed to the bone where many cannot begin to survive without donations from others. Wouldn’t it be better to give these people ALL CASH so they can buy their necessities at the lowest possible cost? As a taxpayer, I am much more concerned about the person on assistance actually subsisting, than some guy playing the system for a couple of six packs.
Actually, the language you just quoted makes it even worse. They can only get $20 cash PER MONTH. I thought that they could get $20 cash and then when that ran out they could get another $20 if they still had some money left on the EBT card. Nope.
They can only get $20 cash for the whole effing month. So yeah – it does what the article says and more. It’s worse. Far worse.
This is what state legislatures do. They legislate. They are an independent branch of government that literally has no actual work to do. They pass laws no one ever wanted or needed. I lived in illinois for years and all the illinois legislature did every session was making drunk driving more illegal, make meth more illegal, and create new specialty license plates despite the fact specialty license plates became money losers years ago. I have long advocated that state legislatures being limited to meeting for 20 minutes every 4 years to try to minimize the damage they do. Have you ever met your state rep? You will quickly realize they are amongst the dumbest people in the district. Living in illinois you quickly learn to dislike the legislature.
First of all, the article is lying. It says “would make it a crime for people on public assistance to have more than $20 cash in their pockets any given month.”
The actual bill would make it a crime to withdraw more than $20 dollars cash from your EBT card.
What the article says is not true–that was the point.
Are you sitting idly by or are you in on the killing fields ?
If you were there who should die at your hand?
What they want is for us to cease to exist. It’s really that simple.
This bill is absolutely needed. I work at a large retailer, and on welfare day (as we call it) we are innundated with the state benefactors coming in to get cash from their EBT cards..to use where? The casino, to buy drugs and alcohol??? Well, it has to stop. There needs to be strict rules of engagement for people who are living off of my hard earned tax dollar.
No one is totally disabled
Here are a couple relevant passages from HF 171, as of 3/17:
“Subdivision 1. Electronic benefit transfer or EBT debit card. (a) Electronic benefit transfer (EBT) debit cardholders in the general assistance program and the Minnesota supplemental aid program under chapter 256D and programs under chapter 1.13256J are prohibited from withdrawing cash from an automatic teller machine or receiving cash from vendors with the EBT debit card. The EBT debit card may only be used as a debit card.
.
.
(c) Notwithstanding paragraph (a), EBT cardholders may opt to have up to $20 per month accessible via automatic teller machine or receive up to $20 cash back from a vendor.”
I read this the same as Uzza, as not prohibiting the carrying of more than $20, but limiting the use of the EBT card. I’ll leave it to others to debate the necessity of such a limitation, but I do think the headline on this post is misleading. Unless I missed something.
Here’s hoping you never get to know what a quadripelegic feels like! It’s absurd to suggest that no one is totally disabled when there are very real disabilities that could prevent individuals from being gainfully employed. I have a 19 year old boy who lives next door who IS an amputee as a result of bacterial meningitis. He has to wear a catheter. He can’t even urinate on his own. What job opportunities would you suggest for him?
Another “small government” hypocrite I see!
Since it’s Sunday, perhaps you might try checking the bible to see what Jesus had to say:
Matthew 25:41-45
This sort of thing is inspired by hatred of the poor. Which is scary enough even before you realize that the plan is for everybody to be poor. It’s also, of course, a way to make government sanctioned banks richer at the expense of the poor. And it is a step toward a cashless society in which if you are not sufficiently obedient your account is closed and you starve.
What was your source for those excerpts?
What is an EBT card? What state do you live in?
EBT = Electronic Benefits Transfer. They are debit cards for buying food stamps. They are used in most states.
If you mean the excerpts Tedy20 and I cited, they are from the actual bill itself, cited from this link.
There are no food stamps in Louisiana. Only debit cards. There is no legal way to get cash from a food stamp debit card. I think alamode is making shit up.
Never mind. I checked the profile. Troll. Hater.
The Rs seem to be intent on creating a one-party system. They are so evil that they will persuade voters that it is suicide to vote for them or even sit home in elections, because no Democrat, however, miserable, ignorant, cruel, and stupid he or she may be can ever be as bad as the Republican who might defeat them in an election.
Just joined (see profile), and first act as an FDLer is to hurl a slimy insult.
We saw this same Republican stunt pulled after Hurricane Katrina.
Remember when evacuees from the flooded New Orleans in late 2005, many of whom had lost all that they had once owned, were issued debit cards instead of being given a government check which they could then cash? And remember when Republicans jumped all over any evacuees who didn’t use the debit cards to purchase what Republicans had decided they could/should only purchase, and nothing else?
The Republicans are at it again. These debit cards are only an attempt to track what American citizens on public assistance are purchasing. Control. Control. Control. While helping the debit card issuers make even more money.
Republicans have no conscience, no compassion. And they are all poster children for “the love of money is the root of all evil.”