After all, they might spend the cash on pitchforks and torches

via Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars we learn that the northern wingnuts of Minnesota will not be outdone by the dairyland wingnuts of Wisconsin. Wis. Gov. Scott Walker is trying to crush unions and take away the constitutional right of working people to freely associate - hah! what a piker! a mere robber baron wannabe! Minnesota Republicans want to make it illegal for anyone on public assistance to have more than $20 cash!

On March 15, Angel Buechner of the Welfare Rights Committee testified  in front of the House Health and Human Services Reform Committee on  House File 171. Buechner told committee members, “We would like to  address the provision that makes it illegal for MFIP [one of Minnesota’s  welfare programs] families to withdraw cash from the cash portion of  the MFIP grant - and in fact, appears to make it illegal for MFIP  families to have any type of money at all in their pockets. How do you  expect people to take care of business like paying bills such as lights,  gas, water, trash and phone?”
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.

Which is a actually a partial surrender to all those Cadillac-driving welfare queens in Minnesota - the original bill would have barred those on assistance from getting any cash at all.
Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
But remember, trying to get millionaires to pay an extra 2% in income taxes is Marxist class warfare by jealous communists who hate successful people who pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps. You know, scrappy entrepreneurs like Paris Hilton and all those hedge fund managers on Wall Street who earn every cent of their million-dollar taxpayer-funded bonuses.
I'm guessing the next step will be Oklahoma bringing back indentured servitude and debtor's prisons or Missouri passing the "Modest Proposal Act" requiring all families on public assistance to sell their children to the nearest rendering plant or perhaps the kindly burghers of Indiana will finally pass the "Work will make you Free" Act to provide a final solution to the poverty problem.

(crossposted, as usual, from The Woodshed)

Tweet