Clerk loses job for refusing to let customer use welfare money to pay for cigarettes

[Nuclear Unicorn]

147. Rant: ON

Poor people are not infants they don't need to have their lives micro-managed by a society that already treats them like shit.

You're absolutely right but you don't go far enough.

We're all being micromanaged and treated like crap. What do you think The Mandate is? It's one, big, "No, you're not allowed to not buy insurance because X, Y or Z could happen to you so we're going to tell you what is best for you even though statistically there's no real reason for you to have this." Look at the TSA. Look at standardized testing. Look at the food police. Look at the TSA feeling-up grandma's colostomy bag.

Name one facet of our lives where we can go and there isn't some agency brought to you by the same crew that brought us bank bailouts. There they stand, looking over your shoulder and wagging a disapproving finger. I don't smoke but if I went to buy a pack of cigarettes with money I made selling lemonade made from lemons I grew in my own backyard I'd have to run a vertiable gauntlet of lectures and condescending sneers because someone, somewhere decided they knew what was best for me. Assuming of course the local stores didn't pay-off the city council to pass so-called "food safety" ordinances to shut me down because I didn't have an inspection permit from office that never answers its phone or pay fees only large businesses can afford. The only way people would have defended the cashier in the OP was if it were Wal-Mart doing the firing.

I wish the people standing up for the rights and dignity of welfare recipients would stand up for the rights and dignity of the people whose livelihoods support welfare. NO! That's not a slam against people on welfare. To paraphrase Ben Franklin: If we don't hang together we shall surely hang separately. A single mother working and going to school to better her place in life is a hero, as much a hero as those who serve in the US military IMHO and she deserves as much support, admiration and encouragement. My dad was that single mother! ( ) YES! I believe they should be treated equally -- but that's the point isn't it? We aren't being treated equally because those who contribute are being treated as lessers. Not by those being helped, they're too busy just trying to eke out a new day form themselves and their families. The contributors are being treated like pre-criminals from The Minority Report. And as soon as that single mother gets off welfare and becomes a contributor she too will be treated as if it was always her fault that some people are poor. God forbid she move up to a 6-digit salary, then she might as well be a 17th century witch.

I saw a man 6 months out of work not make the cut-off for hiring because the contractor chose a half dozen parolees for the tax credits. He walked away hiding his tears. Yes, it's important to give criminals a chance to reform but the man who never broke the law lost out because of it. He had just as good a resume as the others, maybe better; his only crime was he had never committed a crime. Would society be better served if he too committed a crime, clogged up the system and had to be warehoused just so he was more attractive through tax credits? Where is the defense of his dignity, respect and equality?

Do you really trust the people who make up such distorted programs to alleviate poverty? I'm seriously starting to think that the single greatest act of charity and dignity we could affect on behalf of those who are genuinely suffering would be to get them the hell away from the government that wiretaps and molests the rest of us. I don't know where the cure is but I starting to get an inkling of where it isn't.

Rant: OFF