Maine mayor wants state to publish welfare recipients' names

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Viligant_Warrior

Guest
#1
Maine mayor pushing bill to post welfare recipients’ addresses online

A Maine mayor is proposing a controversial name-and-shame strategy for welfare recipients, saying he plans to push a bill requiring the state to publish the names and addresses and other details for “every individual on the dole.”

Robert MacDonald, mayor of Lewiston, Maine, pitched the plan in his regular column for the Twin City Times. He noted that a website already lists information on state pensioners, and complained that “liberal, progressive legislators” think similar information on welfare recipients should be private“

Well, the days of being quiet are gone,” he wrote. “We will be submitting a bill to the next legislative session asking that a website be created containing the names, addresses, length of time on assistance and the benefits being collected by every individual on the dole.
Since the state doesn't seem to care about embarrassing pensioners, what's the problem with embarrassing welfare recipients?
 
Dec 12, 2013
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#2
How long before Christians make the list.....
 
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AgeofKnowledge

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#3
That's really the problem isn't it. In such an anti-Christ environment, the last thing we want is to denude individual privacy rights any further. The government should keep their lists private and laws enacted to help ensure they stay that way.

How long before Christians make the list.....
 

Desdichado

Senior Member
Feb 9, 2014
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#4
Records of individual interactions with the government should be kept public as long as the relationship with the government and its people is, itself, localized and simplified.

I like the idea of a mayor advocating something of this nature, but the government is large and occupies so many spheres of life that to make his idea tenable, we would have to prune the hedges as it were.
 
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atwhatcost

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#5
Since the state doesn't seem to care about embarrassing pensioners, what's the problem with embarrassing welfare recipients?
Note to self: Never, ever EVER live in Maine!!! (Seems like they elect morons for mayors AND legislators.)
 
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atwhatcost

Guest
#6
Records of individual interactions with the government should be kept public as long as the relationship with the government and its people is, itself, localized and simplified.

I like the idea of a mayor advocating something of this nature, but the government is large and occupies so many spheres of life that to make his idea tenable, we would have to prune the hedges as it were.
May you never have a disabling health problem that reduces you to seeking Disability and forces you to go on Welfare until you're accepted into Disability.
 

tourist

Senior Member
Mar 13, 2014
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#10
The state of Maine has horrible leadership from top to bottom. I speak from 8 years experience living in that God-forsaken wasteland.
 
Dec 12, 2013
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#11
I need a vest. Good call on that one, Brother.
Too bad you don't live close.....I was able to get Vietnam Era vests with the ceramic shock plates front and back....stop a 308 round point blank for around $75 hahah....a buddy of mine got quite a few...we tested them to make sure they were valid and they stopped 223, 308, 44 mag, 357, 12 guage etc.....
 

Desdichado

Senior Member
Feb 9, 2014
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#12
May you never have a disabling health problem that reduces you to seeking Disability and forces you to go on Welfare until you're accepted into Disability.
Where in my post did I advocate either immediately cutting welfare for those with debilitating health problems or making their personal health records public?

I'm afraid though that if the system is not reformed, our nation will be impoverished and people who need special services will find the well is even more dry.
 

Desdichado

Senior Member
Feb 9, 2014
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#13
May you never have a disabling health problem that reduces you to seeking Disability and forces you to go on Welfare until you're accepted into Disability.
It's rare that I get really personal on here, but seriously, read what I'm actually saying before posting this assuming, emotional drivel.

For your information, there are multiple people quite dear to me who struggle with mental and physical problems that have affected, currently affect, and will continue to affect the course of their lives. I don't think about these issues with a callous heart. Neither do most self-described conservatives.
 
Dec 18, 2013
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Seems to me it's only fair to either make them all public or keep them all private. I see the main points of both sides as this. For making all these records fully public, it would be argued because they are public funded programs. The main point to keep them relatively private would be because the government is compelled by its own law to make no law infringing upon privacy of the citizen.

In reality though, it's all up in the air I suppose. I collect neither, but personally I would side with keeping both welfare and pensioner identities secret, namely because of the state of corruption and fraud these days involving identity type issues. Making all those identities public especially in regards to both those programs, which are all ready targets for scammers, seems to me not prudent.
 
Aug 12, 2015
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#15
Since the state doesn't seem to care about embarrassing pensioners, what's the problem with embarrassing welfare recipients?
It's not right. It's actually seditious. There's absolutely no fair, rational, even common sense reason to shame people who recieve welfare. If you live in a country where there isn't a job available for everybody (read: every country on Earth), a country in which you disabled people (read: every country on Earth), a country in which you have old people (read: every country on Earth) then you have no right to shame those people for being in the position that they're in. To live in the modern world, we generally require money. Without it, there's not much we can really do. And if a state requires that a person has money, and institutes laws like this that shame people who don't work for that money, well then, it first has to make sure that there is enough work for everybody. Otherwise you're just shaming yourself for being unable to provide your citizens with the jobs that enable them to get the currency your laws require that they make.

It's like the Maine governer is saying "I suck really, really bad at my job, and I'm so out of touch with reality that I'm gonna blame it on the sick and elderly". What a horrible cretin.
 
Aug 12, 2015
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#16
Seems to me it's only fair to either make them all public or keep them all private. I see the main points of both sides as this. For making all these records fully public, it would be argued because they are public funded programs. The main point to keep them relatively private would be because the government is compelled by its own law to make no law infringing upon privacy of the citizen.

In reality though, it's all up in the air I suppose. I collect neither, but personally I would side with keeping both welfare and pensioner identities secret, namely because of the state of corruption and fraud these days involving identity type issues. Making all those identities public especially in regards to both those programs, which are all ready targets for scammers, seems to me not prudent.
Public funding doesn't have to require total publicity, particularly when the motives for making information public are as heinous as these are. You can institute public systems that don't compromise confidentiality. It's not difficult. Pretty much every country in Western Europe does it.
 
Aug 12, 2015
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#17
Records of individual interactions with the government should be kept public as long as the relationship with the government and its people is, itself, localized and simplified.

I like the idea of a mayor advocating something of this nature, but the government is large and occupies so many spheres of life that to make his idea tenable, we would have to prune the hedges as it were.
Seems like you're alright with legally allowing citizens to pry into other citizens lives and shame them for their impoverishment. You "like the idea", do you?

You like the idea of some jackass punk kid looking up peewee's parents information on the Maine public name-and-shame database and bullying peewee into suicide? Maybe his poor alcoholic mother beats him too? What about little Jimmy, whose mom has Huntington's disease. She flails around in public and continually wets herself. Little Jimmy gets abuse in school because his moms a "spastic", right, and Jimmy comes into school in old dirty hand me downs. His life's just awesome. But what's that? Jimmy's moms a retard and now he's a scrounger, too? Well bring on the shame, baby.

Hey what about Conor? Conor suffers from autism spectrum disorder. When he goes outside the sunlight and noise of cars and talking crowds make him freak out; his brain can't filter that stuff. He panics. It's an assault on his senses. So he goes home and sits down and the local brain-dead idiot who lives next door has had a problem with him for years. He decides to knock on Conor's door and give him abuse for draining the coffers. "There's nothing wrong with you, you pretender".

You do realize the massive cultural implications of posting unemployed, welfare-receiving peoples' names and addresses online for all manner of freaks, creeps, douchebags and idiots to read, willy-nilly, in a country that already seems to value money over conscience?

It's rare that I get really personal on here, but seriously, read what I'm actually saying before posting this assuming, emotional drivel.
It's not just "emotional drivel". In fact, it worries me that you consider emotion, regarding something like this, to be a bad thing. Don't be an idiot. People DO HAVE emotions.
 
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Dec 1, 2014
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#18
It's rare that I get really personal on here, but seriously, read what I'm actually saying before posting this assuming, emotional drivel.

For your information, there are multiple people quite dear to me who struggle with mental and physical problems that have affected, currently affect, and will continue to affect the course of their lives. I don't think about these issues with a callous heart. Neither do most self-described conservatives.
I'm with you. We are called to help such people and should do so lovingly. Its the stay at home, pot-smoking, beer-drinking, Twinkie-eating, video game-playing, physically-and-emotionally-capable-of-working-but-refuse-to-do-so parasites that need to be kicked off assistance NOW!
 
Dec 1, 2014
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#19
Omni, stop with the Strawmen. My ears can't handle all the violins.
 
Aug 12, 2015
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I'm with you. We are called to help such people and should do so lovingly. Its the stay at home, pot-smoking, beer-drinking, Twinkie-eating, video game-playing, physically-and-emotionally-capable-of-working-but-refuse-to-do-so parasites that need to be kicked off assistance NOW!
Publishing the names and addresses of everyone on welfare doesn't get rid of that problem. It just makes people who are unable to work suffer. I spent about 9 months on welfare, during the worst of the most recent recession, because I couldn't get a job. I remember, in one case, applying for a position at a local supermarket and being told by the interviewing member of staff that over a thousand people had applied for the job, and nearly fifty were interviewing. Should I have been name and shamed and kicked off welfare and left to starve?
 
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