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"Father Placement in Lieu of Welfare"


How does a bureaucracy grow to $250 Billion per year at a steady rate of
11% per year after inflation when the economy is shrinking?  Easy?  By
being as inefficient as possible.  And the welfare system in the US is
"inefficiency personified".

In 1953 it implemented the "Man Out of The House Rule" which ostensibly 
would decrease welfare payments by refusing to make payments if a man who
could earn a living was around.  Instead the rate at which men left the
home simply accelerated and enabled welfare payments to skyrocket.  95% of 
welfare recipients are women, and 89% of the women who apply for welfare 
get it, at an annual cost to taxpayers of $25,000 per year per recipient.

What happens when a mother applies for welfare?  Do they contact the
father or any other biological relative to see if there is a way to avoid
placing the stigma of welfare over children's heads?  No.  Instead,
in a large majority of cases, a file is handed over to the DA's office
which files a criminal complaint against the father.  Do they contact the
father at this point?  No.  Instead the father is kept completely in the
dark about it - he might have no knowledge that his children are on the
dole, and he might have no knowledge that he as been criminalized, until
years later when the "system" decides to "crack down" on him and make him
pay for THEIR folly - again!  First, he paid the taxes which funded welfare
payments to his children.  Second, he paid the "child support" payments
which gave his ex-wife a higher standard of living than him.  And third,
he is now supposed to "pay back" money that unwillingly came out of his 
own pocket in the first place and which was used to fund his own divorce 
from his own children???

This is not the result of some arbitrary local or state policy - it is a
federal law!  This is a nationwide policy.  Coast to coast.

WHY, oh WHY, wasn't a simple phone call made immediately to the children's
father in the most meager attempt to avoid this financial and social 
catastrophe?  Why doesn't the federal government require its agencies to
exercise simple "due diligence" in the same way that it DOES require 
every other business to??  Because this phone call would have made 
perhaps 90% of the welfare funded by US taxpayers in the last 30 years 
unnecessary. This would make this a $25 Billion sinkhole instead of a 
$250 Billion HOLE.

So what can be done?  

	"The children of a mother applying for welfare will be placed 
with the father, leaving the mother free to pursue an education or 
training to enable her to become a productive member of the workforce."

	How significant is this?  It is a major reversal of a 50 year 
old tradition of excluding the father in every way, except of course for 
his financial contribution which everyone expects him to continue to pay
through income taxes, property taxes, "child support", and even worker's 
compensation.  Rather than criminalizing the father isn't it time to 
take advantage of his parenting skills and his love for his children? 
Rather than demotivating him isn't it time to find every way possible to
motivate him to become a productive member of the workforce?  Rather than
asking governments to parent our children  isn't it time for children 
to have their real fathers?

"Father Placement in Lieu of Welfare"!

regards,



fathers



From owner-online-news-digest@marketplace.com Thu Jul 13 15:41:18 1995
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