Saturday, May 21, 2011

You're Too Poor To Carry Money

You're Too Poor To Carry Money

No, this isn't some new hipster trend of being too poor to carry money around. This is actually happening in our great nation of ours. I swear, you couldn't make this shit up.
St. Paul, MN – Minnesota Republicans are pushing legislation that would make it a crime for people on public assistance to have more $20 in cash in their pockets any given month. This represents a change from their initial proposal, which banned them from having any money at all.
Never mind that people living in poverty are regularly denied access to banking services and ways of paying for essential goods and services that are actually cheaper and are forced to use small cash payments, invariably the most expensive means of payment, now the sheer rage that a poor might actually be able to rub their grimy fingers all over the divine visages of the founding fathers generates such rage that it can no longer be borne.
House File 171 would make it so that families on MFIP - and disabled single adults on General Assistance and Minnesota Supplemental Aid - could not have their cash grants in cash or put into a checking account. Rather, they could only use a state-issued debit card at special terminals in certain businesses that are set up to accept the card.
Yeah... my head is just spinning from all this bullshit. I guess it's just one step closer to the staatgreuldispensersystem. But seriously, how can you just start suggesting that someone's money is no good at a store simply because they're a disabled single adult or whatever.

They would also be forbidden from spending their money outside the state, just as an additional restriction beyond only being allowed to spend in designated businesses.

So basically they're bound to their lord's demesne and all it will take is a mandatory public service requirement to take priority over their own feeble attempts at earning a living and they will be serfs in every sense of the world except for the name itself.

So it's basically time that we recognize that murdering anyone even remotely right-wing who's in elected office is the only way to get back from the edge. I mean, they already intrusively check that you don't have a dime to your name or any assets when applying for welfare.

But it shouldn't be a surprise that laws to prevent the poor from escaping poverty are more honest about the intentions of the rich than the usual bootstraps rhetoric. But I suppose there's no way this can pass or even survive for more than a year. I mean, I know America is fucked, but it's not that far gone.

Is it?

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