More Using Food Stamps

According to the article there are 163,000 people on food stamps in El Paso that has a population of a little over 700,000 or around 23% of El Pasons are on the food stamp program. They also state that there is a growth in this program of 9.2% in two years. If those numbers stay true, the number of food stamp recipients will double in a mere 15 years. We have more on food stamps this year than last, we will have more on food stamps next year than this year. That has been the trend.

Budgets at every level of government today are being squeezed due to lack of funds and I am not sure most folks cannot afford any tax increases. Something has to give.

Our nation declared a war on poverty 45 years ago and has literally spent trillions on it and the net result is we have more living in poverty than ever before and it is increasing. It begs the question, If we are spending records on anti poverty programs, why are they not working? At what point are we going to try something different than merely more entitlements?

And ironically the federal government is borrowing 41 cents of every dollar spent on programs like these which means future generations will be burdened with this debt. We are already limiting what future generations will be able to do due to increasing deficits. In less than 10 years, we will be spending more on the interest on our debt than we do on military, meaning there are less tax monies for such important things as infrastructure, defense and social security (which is already running a deficit 8 years earlier than anticipated).

"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer."

Benjamin Franklin

Abdallah's Law

A classmate of mine, George Aguillon, recently posted about a DWI incident that involved a 2 year old boy to suffer and live in a vegetable like state. Prohibition didn't work the first time, and it won't work again. What has to happen is make it irreparably bad to get a DWI. Something like 7 years in a farm/prison where the guilty must provide for themselves at their own expense, IE, grow their own food, make their own clothes, build their own housing, etc. Any additional income goes to victims of DWI's. I bet after 7 years of back breaking labor like that, they will never drink again. as to those that say punish the providers, what happens when someone buys from a liquor store in January, and gets sloshed in Feb. How is that liquor store guilty? This all starts with personal responsibility. If you can't drink responsibly, then you do not need to be a part of civilized society.

            What is very misleading about tougher DWI laws is that you are not effectively helping the problem. It is rare that a Drunk Driving Fatality is caused by a serial habitual offender. It is the once in a while stories that make the news. If these politicians would do a little research they would see that time effective change is how we treat the disease. We would produce better results if we take a treatment approach early on as opposed to the adversarial, Probation and then "lock them all up" approach. Politicians keep talking and the problem keeps growing. No change and no differences made. Hot air and lost lives and yet the drunks are still drunks and the problem is still alcoholism.