I thought it a bit early in the month for this. If you know how to play the game, and so many know how to play the game, you usually don’t run out of money this early in the month. If you know how to play the game, you collect the food stamps and the various other government food coupons, the disability and welfare checks, and whatever other free money that our society so graciously lays on the folks who ask. So this lady should not have gone bust by the 10th. The old folks on Social Security often run out of money before they run out of month, for Social Security really doesn’t land ya into the lap of luxury, and those stuck with only that one resource rarely know how to scam the system to get more. But this lady was young enough to have a few generations of career welfare scamming wisdom to draw upon, and the collective wisdom from this should allow her to make a better life for herself, at our expense. So she shouldn’t have been hitting folks up for money in the parking lot of the grocery store.
Now, I didn’t see this lady myself, so I couldn’t tell you if she was one of the regular panhandlers that infest this area. There’s one gal who works the traffic backed up on Railroad and probably visits that parking lot. Her boyfriend hangs back, just out of sight, for she no doubt collects more if people don’t see that he is taking the pimp’s cut. But I don’t think that gal is pregnant. This lady was. My wife was waiting in the truck while I fetched our lunch, and the lady hit her up. The pregnant part might have worked in her favor, but the fact that she was eating while she was hitting on folks for money for food might have seemed just a bit disingenuous. In fact, it kinda makes ya wonder if she was feeding some habit other than hunger, or maybe just saving up for a third cell phone or a newer flat screen.
The lady was clearly not homeless, or crazy. She had a snarky sorta entitled attitude, like we’ve come to expect. So I figured her for someone who simply was expanding her welfare income with some free money from the private sector.
I suppose you could make the argument that this lady was demonstrating self-reliance here. Panhandling does take some initiative. You do have to get out of bed during the daylight. And unless you have a good spot next to the left turn lane, you will get some exercise. If you can come up with a better line than “will work for food, but would prefer free malt liquor” that should be a good thing, so I guess this lady gets props for originality. But as we drove away with the food we paid for, I had to wonder if this is one lady who could have gotten out of New Orleans when the evacuation order went down, or if she would have been as paralyzed as all the others who cannot do anything unless the government does it for them.
I’ll probably catch some heat for my attitude here, cause I had all the breaks in life and have lived on easy street onacounta that. But I figure this lady also learned at her momma’s knee. There are tricks to getting welfare and disability payments from the taxpayers, and learning about all those food coupons that you can sell to score drugs, and (poor thing) just think of all those hours you have to wile away working your way through the line down to the welfare to qualify for payments for each of your aliases.
I had to wonder how well this lady did in that grocery store parking lot, since most of the people shopping there are probably in this country illegally, and they are working their asses off to stay here. Don’t know what they think of panhandlers who make a career out of not.
At home, we are learning how to can our own food. This year it is only home canned pickles and some frozen pole beans. But for only year two in her garden, the wife has made tremendous progress. She has learned much, and we’ve been eating every night from the garden for weeks, and we have weeks more to look forward to. Next year I will armor the garden so we don’t feed the gophers and squirrels, and she will have more to put into the larder. And with only a little industry on my part, hopefully I will add a year’s worth of bison meat to the freezer this winter. Healthy food, grown by my wife or harvested from traditional grassland, all with very little reliance on the government. So Mr. Obama…don’t promise to take care of me, cause I’m not needing it. Heck, rather than needing your “help”, in reality you are getting in my way.
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