University Students SUCK

I agree that the social services system in this country is hopelessly broken. I know of a woman who was released from jail after serving a sentence for running a meth lab. The first thing she did when she got out was to get pregnant and continue on a career of petty crime. The child's father vanished and this woman has a lovely home in a decent part of town coutesy of the tax payer. Just when she would have had to get off TANF and go back to work, she got pregnant again - this time with twins. Again the father (a different one) vanished, and this woman was rewarded by being given an even larger house than before. She neglects her children to go out and party. She is intelligent and able bodied and should have the common sense to use birth control. She has the cleverness not to. I know of a man who makes a very good income and just got a sizeable inheritance. He uses the low income energy assistance program to pay his heating bills and boasts of it. People like these make me sick and enraged.

By contrast, there are the disabled folks I met in line last summer waiting for a precious housing voucher that so far not a one of them has been issued. They suffer because of the excesses of people like the two above. It is my feeling that the current situation exists because of under funding rather than over funding. There simply are not enough people in the social service agencies to do proper oversight and allocate funds to those who really need them, rather than those who don't.

I just finished reading the annual report from the director of the State of Colorado's Adult Protective Services - the agency responsible for the prevention of financial and physical abuse of the elderly and disabled. In the first paragraph, the report states that the legislature has refused funding for Adult Protective Services for the fifth year in a row, and they are unable to staff any offices full time outside of 3 people in the Denver office. The rest of the state goes underserved or unserved completely. Three staff members for the entire city of Denver hardly makes for much of a watch dog outfit there, either.

The tragedies I witnessed on Colorado's Western Slope in the poverty stricken little towns far from the ski resorts or big cities of the Front Range are nothing short of unspeakable. These things shouldn't happen in a country like the United States. Meanwhile, meth girl continues to reproduce, and everyone else pays inheritance boy's heating bill.