Why We’re Broke
Here’s a good example from today’s Wall Street Journal. Families can now get SCHIP (state children’s health insurance program) for their kids at an income level of $63,081 for a family of four. This exceeds the median national household income of $50,233.
This is welfare, plain and simple, no matter what fancy, innocuous sounding acronym Congress attaches to it. And not even good welfare. Welfare should be for those who are unable to support themselves, not those who are unwilling to do so. Welfare should make up the difference between a family’s (however you choose to define it) wages and the poverty level, not pay them for doing nothing. And government should certainly not be providing welfare benefits to those who are not poor.
This focus on extending welfare benefits to the non-poor has been at the heart of New York’s stunning collapse, as its Medicaid program costs more than that of Texas and California combined. According to the WSJ editorial, New York’s threshold for SCHIP benefits is 400% of the poverty level. Now we are seeking to replicate New York’s error at the national level.
‘Puter can hear the do-gooders now. “You heartless bastard, it’s for the children!” And ‘Puter replies that children are the last refuge of those without a rational supporting argument.
Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.
’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.
The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.
His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.
He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.
Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.
‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.