Recently, there was news being made, as two women from the Social Security Administration blow the whistle on corruption in their office, located in Huntington, WV. They spoke of retribution and harsh work environment from their supervisors, as a result of their actions to expose wrong doing. These brave women gave testimony recently in front of a Senate investigative committee.
Senator McCain told these women that what he heard was amazing, and something that you read about in books. Seriously? What beach does he go to so that he can bury his head in the sand? Corruption in governement isn’t something you read about in books! It is something you read about in the news, on a daily basis! It happens all over southern West Virginia! It happens in Washington! And I’m sure that we only uncover a very small percentage of what goes on.
And what about the corruption that we do know about, in the food stamp program? In the welfare system in West Virginia, we have people selling their food stamp cards for fifty cents on the dollar, so that they can buy drugs, alcohol or cigarettes with the cash. We have people who have more than enough money to by beer, drugs, cigarettes, X Box games, and 60 inch TV’s, but they can’t buy food, pay their rent, or their utilities without using our hard EARNED tax money!
When you got to Walmart, if you see people sorting their groceries into three piles, get out of that line! This transactions is going to take forever! The first pile is for the WIC, which is a program that I like, because it restricts the purchases to healthy foods. The second pile is the food stamp pile, which usually consists of Delmonico steaks, (which I can’t afford to buy myself), sugary cereals, cookies, candy etc. The third pile is the cash pile, which has the beer, cigarettes, dog food, X-Box games etc.
The federal government has put such tight restrictions on school lunches, in the interest of healthy meals, that the kids won’t even hardly eat it. The flavor is practically non-existent in many of the meals, through no fault of the cooks I might add. But the feds don’t mind paying for all of the unhealthy foods that can be bought with food stamps?
I apologize. I was chasing rabbits there. Back to corruption. Have you bought tires lately? Did you pay full price? I’m sure you did. But a certain county commissioner in the southern part of the state thought that he should get the same discount that the county received. Have you had the opportunity to use the state credit card to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of computer supplies for your personal business? I’m sure that the answer is no. But to some politicians, the answer is yes! Corruption! And these are just two examples in little ole West Virginia Mr. McCain!
Again, I applaud these women for standing up for what is right. That took backbone and courage. It is simply too bad that they ever had to be put in that position to start with. Where are the morals and ethics that most of us were taught when we were kids?
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