|
John Ceretto: For once a man who
takes the time to consider that real
people work very hard to pay taxes,
something that liberals in New York
City, who control the state assembly,
could never imagine to be true. |
|
Repeal that [welfare] law, and you
will soon see a change in their
manners. ... Six days shalt thou
labor, though one of the old commandments
long treated as out of
date, will again be looked upon as
a respectable precept; industry will
increase, and with it plenty among
the lower people; their circumstances
will mend, and more will be
done for their happiness by inuring
them to provide for themselves,
than could be done by dividing all
your estates among them.
~ Benjamin Franklin |
|
As government
expands,
liberty
contracts.
~ Ronald
Reagan |
|
Idleness and lack of occupation
tend -- nay are dragged -- towards
evil. ~ Hippocrates |
|
The real destroyer of the liberties of
the people is he who spreads among
them bounties, donations and benefits.
~ Plutarch |
|
The more is given the less the people
will work for themselves, and
the less they work the more their
poverty will increase.
~ Leo Tolstoi |
|
The one predominant duty is to find
one's work and do it.
~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman |
|
I am always for the man who
wishes to work.
Work, work, work, is the main
thing.
~ Abraham Lincoln |
|
If an American is to amount to anything
he must rely upon himself, and
not upon the State; he must take
pride in his own work, instead of
sitting idle to envy the luck of others.
He must face life with resolute
courage, win victory if he can, and
accept defeat if he must, without
seeking to place on his fellow man a
responsibility which is not theirs.
~ Theodore Roosevelt |
|
Without ambition one starts nothing.
Without work one finishes
nothing. The prize will not be sent
to you. You have to win it.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson |
|
Nations grow corrupt, love
bondage more than liberty;
bondage with ease than strenuous
liberty.
~ John Milton |
|
Welfare rights are pseudo-rights:
They rely on the force of law to take
private property for the use of others
without compensation and without
consent. Public charity is forced
charity; it is not a virtue but a vice.
~ James A. Dorn |
|
The more one considers the matter,
the clearer it becomes that redistribution
is in effect far less a redistribution
of free income from the
richer to the poorer, as we imagined,
than a redistribution of power
from the individual to the State.
~ Bertrand de Jouvenel |
|
Whoever claims the right to redistribute
the wealth produced by others
is claiming the right to treat
human beings as chattel.
~ Ayn Rand |
|
The fundamental fact in the lives of
the poor in most parts of America is
that the wages of common labor are
far below the benefits of AFDC,
Medicaid, food stamps, public
housing, public defenders, leisure
time and all the other goods and
services of the welfare state.
~ George Gilder |
Assemblyman John Ceretto is sponsoring the bipartisan Public Assistance Integrity Act in the New York State Assembly. The bill is designed to prevent public assistance money from being spent at casinos, liquor stores, tobacco retailers and adult entertainment facilities.
Last year, it passed the Senate 56-3 but the Assembly didn’t act on it. It is being reintroduced this year, with six Democrats and 11 Republican sponsors in the Assembly, including Ceretto, who represents Niagara Falls, Lewiston and Grand Island, and Assemblywoman Jane Corwin who represents Wilson, Porter, Newfane, Lockport and Royalton.
As a result of the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012, states that don't prohibit welfare money from going towards "sin activities" by 2014 will lose five percent of their federal welfare funding.
Ceretto noted the bill’s intent is to ensure that public funds are used to help families provide the basic necessities for their children, and not spent on non-essential goods.
After all, if a welfare recipient, by his or her own admission, is incompetent to earn money, it is logical to assume they are incompetent to spend money.
If taxes are forcibly extracted from workers to support people who do not work, then it is only fair that the money be spent on essentials, as is the entire philosophy behind welfare is that it serves as a safety net.
It is an insult to working people, struggling themselves to get by, to fund welfare recipients to drink, gamble and get lap dances. If a person wants to enjoy these, stop whining, get a job and go to work.
“The Public Assistance Integrity Act needs to be passed to establish an important safeguard against the abuse of public assistance funds," Ceretto said. "Public assistance is intended to help families pay for basic essentials while they get back on their feet….Taxpayers get ripped off (when) the use of these funds (are) for non-essential purposes"
If the bill becomes law, anyone busted using welfare money for "sin activities" will lose their benefits for a month. A second offense will cost welfare recipients three months of benefits. Strike three will permanently ban a recipient from the program.
Public assistance benefits are typically given through electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards, which function similar to debit cards. As state law currently stands, there are no protections in place to keep people from spending this money on non-essentials and entertainment.
On the federal level, the Public Assistance Protection Act requires states to enact policies that prevent misuse of public assistance money provided through federal programs. The Public Assistance Integrity Act is required to bring New York State law into compliance with federal law.
Liberal lawmakers from New York are often accused of pandering to welfare voters and their families, some of whom think that welfare is an entitlement that taxpayers owe them.
As Thomas Sowell once observed, “One of the consequences of such notions as 'entitlements' is that people who have contributed nothing to society feel that society owes them something, apparently just for being nice enough to grace us with their presence.”
Despite the fact that federal law requires that states only provide welfare benefits for five years, New York liberals elected to extend that to lifetime benefits, helping to foster generational welfare dependence in New York State.
By becoming the perfect enabler, New York cripples the incentive of people lulled into a lifetime of dependence, when working, having to work, would rescue them from their thralldom that makes them say, "I am too weak to work and support myself."
New York increasingly taxes work and subsidizes non-work.
This bill supported by Ceretto is a step in the right direction.
State Sen. Bill Perkins, a Harlem Democrat, said not allowing people to spend taxpayer money given to them by society on booze and cigarettes is "prejudice."
"It's a prejudice, I think, about poor people that we are seeing represented more than any statistical or study of behavior."
Ten other states have already ruled social services can’t be spent on items from beer to guns. |