* if you do or * if you don't

[where I want to]

There have been a flood of Yahoo comments on both the story of the mother who shot her two children in a Taxas Welfare office and the couple getting housing assistance to live in a 1.2 million dollar house in Seattle.
The comments were almost all hateful towards the couple and all supportive of the poor, desperate mother. The only thing they agreed about is that the welfare departments were incompetent.

The comments are examples why nothing can be really learned from news reports. The media wants to get readers with minimum effort so they almost never report important details.
People in general want their own ideas confirmed and are not interested in anything that doesn't support them.

So, in defense of Welfare worker's everywhere, people frequently lie, cheat and steal being the self-important, self-centered creatures they are. And I'm sure that welfare departments in general do not budget enough employees or resources to do a thorough job on anything. I have never worked in one but have had enough contact with their employees and clients to know.

So things are going to go seriously wrong but it may not be what you think.

I can remember dealing with one mentally ill woman who would not sign a release for welfare to get copies of her bank records even though this meant termination of her benefits. So many people spent lots of time trying to help her understand that this was important.
Eventually she did sign with long discussions with everyone, including me because I felt sorry for her- for the welfare deptartment to find she had $50,000 in one account alone.
So yes- she was crazy and yes- she was also stealing from welfare.
Being a crook, insane, old , clever,ignorant, etc are not exclusive. People are frequently both dishonest and in need. And it's hard and time consuming to find out which is going on.

The bottom line is that we as readers are almost never likely to know what happened as the welfare departments are not allowed to release most records and the media will never exert themselves to find out the facts.

[Callieslamb]

AND...welfare dept have to deal with a lot of govt red tape.

[where I want to]

Originally Posted by Callieslamb

AND...welfare dept have to deal with a lot of govt red tape.

It's all red tape.

I guess I was just irritable this morning but it really bothered me that the responses for one were all so negative for the house "cheater" and all so positive for the "desperate mother" when there was almost no info on either to start.

I can remember when I worked for Social Security all those years ago, it was hard to do the paperwork to make a fraud referral and if you did, the legal department would not investigate unless the amount involved was clearly over $100,000. Otherwise they felt it was not cost efficient to pursue.

[plowjockey]

The comments are examples why nothing can be really learned from news reports. The media wants to get readers with minimum effort so they almost never report important details.
People in general want their own ideas confirmed and are not interested in anything that doesn't support them.

I googled for about 20 seconds and found relatively in-depth news articles, on both stories.

Apparently the Mother had some mental problems and was angry because whe was denied benefits, due to paperwork snafus.

the "fraud mon" allegedly listed that she was living alone with two children, verses married and living with a well off Chiropractor.

I agree that people just want to beleive what they want to beleive - and then compain about it.

[tarbe]

I would hate to think the comments on Yahoo news articles are representative of the whole country.

There is some seriously derranged stuff on there............