Locally, we have people working in our thrift [charity] shop that are working off 'time' for offenses they've committed ... I mean, offenses like traffic tickets - we are never in danger of having a totally deranged person working along side of us ... since we are an authorized and tax exempt store, we qualify as a charitable organization and those who need to do "community service" can work their time off - without pay, of course ... we are all volunteers at that shop ... well, I'm paid to do the books, but it is a pittance and just covers my petrol costs.
I truly believe that our government is blinded by all the "freebies" they keep handing out, and at the same time, raise the working class peoples taxes to compensate for paying out those freebies that mostly go unchecked and never audited. Too many people are on the free ride who are able to work for a living just like the rest of us honest people. They've learned how to 'work the system' to their benefit ... right under the politicians noses, too.
There are, and I realize this, people who are disabled and cannot work on a regular basis, but then there are those who "claim" to be disabled that clearly are not. Seeing the moron who parks in a handicapped space with the handicap plate or placard, and then bounds out of the car and runs into a store just fries my gut ... using the 'system' to their advantage, and without any morals, or oblivious to what it looks like to others - they care only about themselves.
At one point in my life, I was on food stamps - it was a very degrading thing to experience as I had always paid my own way - but due to circumstances totally beyond my control, and in a very depressed community job wise, with the nearest other town some 30 miles away - we accepted the food stamps program, or face starvation.
The looks we got and the very rude comments we got from other shoppers when using those at the checkout when we bought meat and other staples ... like we were supposed to survive on bread and water while on food stamps in their eyes ... We weren't abusing the system ... it was the very last option for us.
I couldn't wait to get off that program, and did eventually as another line of work opened up for us - albeit as motor-carriers for a huge daily newspaper. Fun delivering newspapers in the dark of night between midnight and dawn - it was a small town of 8,500 people.
If our government officials would actually leave their ivory towers and take a tour of those in the trenches, they would have a much better understanding of the systems in place, or lack of those. We citizens struggle daily to meet the rising costs of everything - petrol, groceries, sundries, clothing, medical care, etc - yet our politicians, whose wages are paid from taxes (we citizens) get all these "perks" for next to nothing, or at zero cost, and their own pension plan totally apart from Social Security (again funded by taxpayers). It surely isn't fair, but there is not much I can do about it, except maybe move to Denmark or the UK, which probably have much of the same problems anyway - as I gather from the previous postings.
Kh
