By Michelle Crenshaw Santa Monica
(Re: “Welfare mothers need to be spayed” June 26) Mr. Pisarra is, first and foremost, an uninformed idiot who should really consider gathering the facts about who “welfare” mothers are and how “welfare” mothers live in America. His statements on this subject are so arbitrary and illogical, based in supposition and conjecture, rather than fact, that it is difficult to know where to begin in addressing his asinine proposal to control welfare recipients’ “right to breed” while receiving public assistance.
Let’s deal in the real numbers. The maximum income allowed for a family of four to receive food stamps is approximately $2,549 per month. This staggering income, which amounts to about $30,000 annually, will reap a whopping food stamp allowance of about $134 per month. Within that income umbrella, the receiving family of four is only allowed family assets of up to $2,000, which includes cash on hand, cash in the bank, as well as the value of some types of non-liquid assets of personal property, such as a family automobile. In Los Angeles County, adults with children applying for cash aid must simultaneously enroll in job training and placement programs (CALWORKS) and their term of eligibility (since 2003) has been subject to a five-year term limit that greatly restricts the recipient’s eligibility through stringent guidelines for continuation of services past the five-year time-out limit.
“What’s The Point” — of letting Mr. Pisarra speak if the words coming out of his mouth are pure garbage?
It is the data that tells the real story of what the average family receiving assistance looks like: A picture that is virtually unrecognizable in comparison to the one painted by Mr. Pisarra of “large numbers of uneducated obese people who are living off the government dole and spend their day reproducing.” In fact, according to the USDA-Characteristics of Food Stamp Households: 2003 Report, the picture of the average household receiving assistance looks more like this: “... benefits to 20.9 million people (nationwide) living in 9.0 million households,” which averages out to about 2.3 persons per household. This factual image of less than three persons per food stamp household doesn’t at all resemble the implied welfare breeding farm described by Mr. Pisarra.
Since Mr. Pisarra’s issue seems to be with welfare mothers, let’s look at those statistics. Of the nine million households receiving food stamp benefits, just over half (55 percent) are households with children. These households, with an average size of 3.3 persons, does not even remotely mirror the image of an overproducing female head of household with overactive, animalistic reproductive habits that spawn a litter of welfare babies who are leeching off the governmental budget with reckless abandon.
At the end of the day, I think it is Mr. Pisarra who might want to look into getting his verbose rhetoric spayed. Then we, the informed taxpaying public, could be spared the nausea brought on by having to digest the ignorant garbage spouting out of his mouth.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 5, 2007. Read the original PDF.