In Dallas Morning New’s story “Texas under fire over processing times for food stamp applications“,
it is reported that:

AUSTIN – The federal agency that oversees food stamps wants Texas to stop fingerprinting applicants as a way to save resources and speed up what the agency says is an unacceptably slow application system. But because Texas law requires the fingerprinting, the state’s Health and Human Services Commission finds itself caught between what the Legislature requires and what federal officials want.

“One of the things I think Texas needs to do is streamline their operations,” said William Ludwig, a regional administrator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service. “Finger imaging is very time-consuming.”

Texas is one of four states with such a requirement, which supporters – including Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst – say prevents people from collecting benefits under more than one name.

Critics have said it is invasive, a waste of money and seeks to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.

The electronic fingerprinting costs $3 million a year: $1.6 million for Cogent Systems’ contract for the imaging and $1.4 million for state workers’ time. The state and federal governments split the cost.

Last year, the fingerprint program led to the state investigating four applicants for fraud. But state officials say it’s impossible to know how many people are deterred from applying multiple times because of the fingerprinting.

Ludwig told Texas officials last week in a letter that the state’s federal funds will be at risk if it doesn’t speed up its application processing. The federal government pays for all the food and splits administrative costs with the state.

Stephanie Goodman, a spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Commission, said officials will consider eliminating fingerprinting but because it is done relatively quickly, “we really don’t think it helps this particular problem very much.”

[reprinted from the Austin American-Statesman 2009-10-02]

Most of the people posting comments are, of course, Conservative Republicans (I am in Texas, after all). Most of the respondents are of the opinion that because some people (a very few) commit fraud to get benefits, or misuse benefits once they have received them, that the program should be gotten rid of completely. This viewpoint is extremely insensitive to fellow human beings and ignorant of economic realities. I will now explain why…

There are some people who commit fraud to get benefits, or who misuse benefits, but there are a great many more who legitimately need help (more every day), mostly due to inflation caused by the greed of those in power who control the wealth and over time charge more for everything but pay the same or less.

The previous times that I have visited my local Health and Human Services office (in McKinney), there were tables to fill out forms, and a few chairs around each, and a few dozen people (max) waiting to be seen. The last few times (in recent weeks), there are only chairs, and hundreds of people filling the room, hungry, and sick with the flu, and wrapped around the block waiting to get in. It’s not because a lot more people suddenly decided to quit their jobs and let you support them with your precious taxes; it’s because the people that supposedly represent them (local, state, and federal) and the people who employee(d) constantly want and take more for themselves, at the expense of the people whose labor makes them rich.

I’m a single parent (white male) who has worked hard all of my adult life, and due to work-related back injuries and trouble finding full time work with benefits, I have had to use public assistance several times, even while working 2 jobs up to 7 days a week, just to barely be able to feed myself and my son and pay rent and electricity.

Here is my message to the hateful who have no sympathy for those less fortunate than themselves:

Those of you who are privileged enough to sit in luxury in big homes and drive around in gas guzzling trucks and SUVs (polluting and promoting the need for war) and cast judgment should count yourselves lucky, but not superior. A few unfortunate events and/or a few little mistakes in life, and you too could need help. That’s a fact that conservatives (fiscal and social) like to ignore. You are brainwashed by your leaders to think that just because you are white and Christian and racist like they are, that you too will someday get promoted up the ladder, or make your small business a big corporation, or get elected to office, or make it big in some other way (as a football player or country music singer?), so you support their selfish, vicious, imperial capitalism either because you also benefit from it, or because you think that you eventually will.

Those of you who spew hate against food benefits and medicaid and health care reform, decrying them as the evil of “socialism” should keep in mind that public schools and libraries and police and fire departments and paramedics and parks and water districts and the US military are socialist, and not private corporate for-profit entities. Should we dissolve these services and make everything private? It appears we already are with the rise of private prisons, police, and mercenary armies. Those things don’t inspire patriotism for American for me.

Those of you who say that there should be no welfare or food stamp benefits of any kind should consider that as time goes on, and more people are unemployed or underemployed and uninsured or under insured and losing their cars and homes, you may be joining the ranks of those you see as slackers and leaches. If you someday get downsized, or ill or injured, lose your insurance, lose your jobs, and end up homeless and hungry in the pro-corporate anti-human system that you propose, perhaps only then will you understand how naive your hateful self-righteousness really is. Let’s see if you still support the same corrupt politicians who get millions in campaign contributions and lobbying and secret bribes from big companies to pass and support laws that benefit the rich when you too, are poor.

I sincerely hope that you either take a look at your ideas and realize how hateful and ignorant and arrogant you are, and realize that you are not immune to the conditions of those whom you detest, and stop discriminating against your brothers and sisters who aren’t as successful, or that bad fortune befalls you and teaches you firsthand what it’s like to be one of the have-nots. Only then will karma be served.