Carl Paladino: Ebenezer Scrooge's Descendant

Carl Paladino believes that unused prisons in New York should be converted into dormitories for welfare recipients.

"Are there no prisons, are there no poor houses?"

That would be Ebenezer Scrooge from the famous Charles Dickens tale, A Christmas Carol. And what this man is proposing sounds a lot like he and the Scrooge at the beginning of the tale would be very much in agreement.

Something does need to be done so that there are fewer people on welfare. This is not it.

I can only speak from my own perspective, but having lived in a marginalized situation for all of my adult life, I can say that most people who end up on welfare are not lazy. Some are undereducated. Some made poor decisions earlier in their lives. And many end up marginalized due to health conditions, both physical and mental.

As a person who lives with a psychiatric illness that was misdiagnosed until I was nearly 40 years old, I can say that many people in impoverished and marginalized conditions do suffer from untreated or undertreated mental illness. Once I learned what was really wrong with me I was able to make some changes, but now that I am closing in on 50, I find it is very late in the game and my life could have been so much better.

Diagnosing and treating physical and mental illness in welfare recipients could go a long way to insuring that there would be fewer of them.
But some might find prisons and poor houses to be easier. Out of sight out of mind.

Paging Dr. Asshole

A woman went for an eye exam, and the optometrist ripped on her for being overweight, pregnant, and unemployed. Hellooooo! It's an EYE exam, Jackass! He may lose his license for his rude behavior. The article is here. This was my response.

It is not the doctor's right to give the patient a ration of s**t for being pregnant and  unemployed and it is downright unprofessional for a doctor to ridicule or demean a patient. Even if the patient were overweight, pregnancy is not a time to be attempting weight loss. If he had said in a polite, professional manner that it is important for her to keep her diabetes controlled as uncontrolled diabetes can lead to vision loss, and that weight loss following the pregnancy could help keep her diabetes under control, he would have been behaving as a concerned health care specialist instead of a judgmental jerk.

The last paragraph was in response to this asshole comment:

Them: What is wrong with speaking the truth? If she is unemployed with no insurance, she has no business being pregnant. Probably on welfare and food stamps too. I'm tired of footing the bill for these lazy people while they have more kids to get more welfare.

Me: Speaking of judgmental jerks, Mishouse, perhaps she became pregnant before becoming unemployed. Losing her job would mean losing insurance. You don't know the whole story.

In other sad news, the voice and character actress Brittany Murphy was found dead. The exact circumstances of her death have not yet been disclosed. She was 32 years old. Of course there was an asshole who needed to be responded to.

 carleton1968 says
"CNN : Celeb bites big one, Losers feel need to weigh in"

Cheesemeister replies:
Losers may feel the need to "weigh in." Bigger loser feels need to show how cool s/he is by criticizing the "losers."