My mom is a social worker, and has been all of her life. Â I swear, she’s probably one of the only libertarian-leaning social workers you can find. Â She mentioned that as soon as the election results were in, her office started hearing from clients asking, “Where is my Obama money?” Â They believed if they elected Obama, they would get free money from the government immediately – on top of whatever benefits they already receive through various social service programs.
Now it looks like insurance companies and doctors get to answer those fun questions.
Questions reflecting confusion have flooded insurance companies, doctors’ offices, human resources departments and business groups.
“They’re saying, ‘Where do we get the free Obama care, and how do I sign up for that?’ ” said Carrie McLean, a licensed agent for eHealthInsurance.com.
So what will happen when all of those people who showed up to vote for Democrats in 2008 get another knock from ACORN workers (or whatever they are called in your state now, in PA, it’s PCOC) saying that it’s time to go vote again? They didn’t get their free “Obama money” in 2008 or 2009. They don’t have their free “Obama care” in 2010. Hell, they still won’t have free “Obama care” in 2012. What will ACORN promise them this year?
Last year, there were two lines for the two precincts that vote at our polling place. The one representing all of the apartment complexes was hours long & overwhelmingly supporting Obama. Then there were the home owners in the other precinct. Sadly, there was a line of maybe 4 minutes & everyone in it was talking about voting for McCain. I’ll be happy if we can reverse the line trend this year and make sure everyone in ours is talking about defeating the Democratic leadership’s agenda.
They believed if they elected Obama, they would get free money from the government immediately …
That is a horrifying revelation. That people believe the government is there to hand out “free” money. Un-fricking believable. Unless we turn these beliefs around through grassroots educational efforts, we are in BIG trouble.
Carl, if you want to be horrified, I’ve tried to get my mom to blog about her work stories. Unfortunately, until she retires, she doesn’t feel comfortable doing it. You quickly learn that our welfare & social services programs are not actually helping the people they were designed to help and that it rewards the worst of the stereotypes.
Just e-mail them a PDF of the bill and tell them to figure it out,
Bitter, I am dating a social worker in Detroit. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard the “Obama Money” story from my girlfriend.
It also makes me sick the paperwork and headache it takes to evict someone for nonpayment of rent. Like 6 months of nonpayment of rent takes another 3 months to evict someone.
An extended family member of mine manages a small urban movie theater. After the election (before the inauguration), he started getting dozens of angry complaints each week… Some of his customers expected the ticket prices to be lower “now that Obama’s President”.
These are obviously the outliers on the entitlement scale, but holy hell. I can’t even begin to wrap my head around the worldview at work there.
I had a longer post but I think the bottom line is:
I can’t think of a good reason for the majority of people to vote against entitlement/handout/bailout pols. After all, there are no major negative impacts to the majority of people, at least until the whole system comes crashing down — at which points it will be too late.
I love how they’re trying to spin this by blaming the ‘rhetoric’ from the other side for causing confusion, rather than just admitting that we have an underclass of perpetual dependents who expect everything to be handed to them.
Isn’t there a quote out there to the effect of “democracy works until the public realizes they can vote themselves a circus and free peanuts”?
“Bread and circuses” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses