Entitlement-Bestowing Tyrants? Escaping Beneficial Trade? Eradicating Built-up Trust? Emptying (the) Bottomless Treasury? Or maybe... Eternally Bankrupt Territory?

Very true. Everyone who works there is collecting a salary and the higher folks on the food chain are doing very well. And there are other ways of gaming the system. The halfway house I mentioned was told that it needed a nurse on staff. So....the owner hired his wife.

There's a lot of government subsidy involved in the mental health/CD treatment racket. The majority of the average treatment center's clients are court-ordered or receiving public funding. Locally, that's around $15,000 per person for 28 days. Multiple that by two dozen people, in a facility which, other than eight hours a day, has two staff members on duty, and you've got the makings of a growth industry (they keep buying new buildings to turn into halfway houses, assisted living, and treatment facilities).

In Minnesota, Medical Assistance/Medicaid pays for ten days of psychiatric hospitalization. So, there are an amazing number of "short term" psychiatric facilities and an equally amazing number of patients magically get better in ten days.

This may not come off well, however...

That sounds good until you have the homeowner who works for the government and produces, not slacks. And of course there's the other side of the coin - are you willing to work in a sewer treatment plant? On a highway as a target, er, worker? Part of why there is a civil service is because there are jobs that are so dangerous or disgusting, or that must be kept out of the influence of private interest, that no one would do them, yet are necessary for a society to function. We could go back to the 19th century when Fire Departments were provided by Insurance companies, and if you weren't one of their insured... well, hope you brought marshmallows home. Want a cop? Hope you paid your police and security "insurance subscription" to the right company. And that the scofflaw that just held you up doesn't have a better plan and pay a higher premium than you.

Civil servants are a cheap and easy butt of scorn and jokes by people who wouldn't do their jobs, because contrary to the popular fable, most of them actually *do* work... for less compensation than their private industry counterparts.

Sorry, my comment got separated so far from the original post that it is hard to keep track of pronouns. "Them" refers to the EBT recipients who are are upset at the EBT card outage.

Uh, this is general media. Obama has been pushing to advertise the availability of food stamps and welfare programs of all kinds.

Here's a couple of sources: http://www.forbes.com/sites/merrillmatth...

http://www.factcheck.org/2014/01/obamas-...

http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/nat...

http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/25/news/eco...

Am I saying Bush didn't do it too? Nope. I give no quarter to him either. But as Forbes notes, it was the Democrats who passed the bills to expand the program in the first place...

Disgusting is putting it mildly. While it may not be Obama directly, it is the administration doing it and this is not the only place it is happening. Everywhere I drive in Wisconsin I see billboards advertising Aging & Disability Resource Centers (ADRC) which I learned is also federally funded advertising. When I asked our county government about it, I was told that they were given the money and had to use it for advertising. There are also radio ads. I know these are not the only places that are advertising too. IMHO, government should be banned from advertising with the exception of a couple topics, those being an epidemic or military recruitment in time of war. There may be a few others but for the life of me, I do not understand government spending our money advertising to make them bigger.

...or rather: "Thy phone and thy pen they comfort me."

That still leaves us conservatives out of the voting booth who ply our trade but stay out of the government loop as much as possible.
I'd say: Anyone on welfare or foodstamps is ineligible to vote.

Obama is sponsoring these ads and crowing about how many more people he got on them. Disgusting.

Agreed. Those who choose welfare are no longer paying taxes. No representation without taxation - to turn the phrase around.

Well done.

That seems about right to me. Are we to include Social Insecurity, Mediscare, etc. in this calculation? After all, people think that they are getting a return on their "investment", when we all know that their money was spent as soon as it was collected, if not before.

The Voter should have a net, $5,000 contribution to the US Federal Government. Someone must contribute more to the Government than they get out.

I.E. A welfare recipient would have a net -$15,000 contribution, and not be eligible to vote. I.E. A Government employee may pay $5,000 in taxes, but since their government salary is $50,000, they have a net -$45,000 contribution, and would be ineligible to vote.

Actually, I agree with you. The reason for my efforts is to (hopefully) allow anyone who wishes to keep their food budget down to do so, and perhaps, just perhaps, reduce the cost of the food stamp program. And if somebody, SNAP recipient or not, buys nutritious food for their kids instead of popcorn and Kool-Aid (speaking from observation there), that's a reward to me.

I had no idea that SNAP and similar programs were being actively promoted. That simply should not be. They should be a last resort (as they were for me), not an "alternative".

Second Harvest, to my understanding, is a private, non-profit organization. They should not receive government grants. Locally, I know they provide food to the inpatient units and CD treatment facility run by the area "community mental health service" (I could write a book on that one, but I won't trouble you). Employees of the various facilities claim that the buy the food at a reduced price, but no one who does any of the buying will speak with me and no one will provide any details.

A local halfway house for recovering alcoholics/addicts is independently run and is also a non-profit organization. Their groceries come from the grocery store. Why aren't they qualified for the same services as the larger (and growing) organization? There was another halfway house in town--the "community mental health center" bought it, put extra locks on the doors, and turned it into a "residential treatment center" (they've been kicked out of at least two hospitals).

Will add that they may be non-profit but the higher-ups certainly aren't starving. Nor are they providing quality services (they put quotas on their doctors and counselors and take other steps to help keep the supply of repeat customers high). But when you have some of the most prominent people in the area, including a judge, on your board of directors, no one asks questions (employees who do are fired). There's also a lot of power involved when you can literally yank people off the streets and lock them up for "treatment" with the resulting bills usually being footed by the taxpayers. Of course, if you make enough noise about it, you never know.....you just might find yourself in court trying to defend yourself against an accusation that you are insane. Yes, it's happened.

I digress, of course. However, the place I mention is in many respects the result of social programs. Government insurance, tax breaks and grants, and apparently, subsidized food. All given to a corrupt organization which has little purpose for existing, in 20 years of observation, other than to keep beds full and the government dollars rolling in.

In Florida our votes really matter. I voted libertarian and had several colleagues getting on me for the possibility that I might have gotten Al Gore elected during the hanging chad debacle (not in my county).

I applaud you for what you are doing and wish you the best. Unfortunately our government is spending our money to advertise these programs to get more people hooked. I heard a radio ad telling people that they could qualify for the food share program even if they were making more than $10 per hour. I investigated the ad and learned the federal government was giving out grants to groups like Second Harvest Food Bank to place the ads. They are working against us producers in so many ways.

"And those people cancelled out our votes..."

Only in the states that they voted...thanks to the Electoral College.

Such a vote in California was a wasted trip to the voting booth...since California should be the first state on election night to be declared as a Democrat win.

LOL! This would be really funny if it were not true.