"Middle-class" Welfare Queens

Over at Alternet, they posted an article about a "middle-class" single mother named Nan Mooney complaining about the fact that if her state cuts daycare subsidies, her artificial middle-class existence will cease to exist. Of course, since she's on a form of welfare (her subsidized daycare) she is not middle-class, but is just a lower-class person pretending to be middle-class thanks to the government (kind of like black affirmative action workers) or grew up middle-class but made low-class decisions and is being bailed out by the government.

This article exemplifies all that is wrong with America - from the welfare dependency, to the fatherless children and the sense of entitlement people like Mooney have.

One Thursday morning last month I took a break from my job as a journalist and freelance writer and, after dropping off my 2-year-old at his subsidized daycare, drove myself and my 10-week-old daughter across town to a cupcake shop. Our mission? To decorate Cupcake-grams that momsrising.org, a national non-profit that targets family and children's issues, planned to deliver to every last member of the Washington State legislature along with a note about the critical importance of early childhood care and learning.

I didn't do this just for the fun or the frosting. I did it because my livelihood was at stake.

Washington State had threatened deep budget cuts in a number of areas, including slicing $30 million from the Working Connections Childcare program that helped to fund my childcare. I'm a single parent. I work hard to support my family of three but I don't make anywhere near enough to pay the $2,000-plus a month I'd need to put two kids in full-time daycare. Working Connections gives me the freedom to work and therefore feed, clothe and house my children. If it goes, I'm screwed.

Note that there is no mention of a father or husband. Indeed, she fails to mention him at all in the article. Perhaps she should have thought about the difficulties of raising three children before she decided to become a career woman with three kids. True, the father (probably fathers) of her children might not pay much in child support, could be incapacitated or dead, and might have abandoned her and her children. However, if that was the case, she probably would have mentioned it to gain the sympathy of her reader. She would have appeared as a hardworking woman who fell on tough times rather than being a dumb slut who bit off more than she could chew.

Single career women with kids don't need a husband, remember? They are strong and independent women. Well, not quite independent, since they essentially use Big Government as a surrogate husband.

If she loses the subsidies, she says she will be screwed. Good. If more single mothers like her end up poor, maybe women will realize that both choosing to be a single mother and trying to live a middle class existence is impossible without some form of external support.

Though the cupcake protest may be an original spin on things, our merry band of frosters was far from alone. In Buffalo (childcare subsidies eliminated for four in 10 children), in Chicago (proposed $150 million cuts in human services, among them childcare), in Brooklyn (15 daycare centers slated to close in July) and in California (proposed cut of 18,000 childcare spaces), protesters are hitting the phone lines and the streets because they recognize something the legislators and the mainstream media seem to have missed: Child care really matters.

Due to the recession, tax revenues are down. Legislators can either 1) raise taxes or 2) cut spending. Even the Democrats aren't stupid enough to significantly raise taxes during a recession and take more money from the very people who provide others with jobs. That leaves spending cuts, which no government agency is immune to right now. Even police departments are receiving funding cuts.

For the majority of today's families, child care is an expensive but all too necessary fact of life. In 1975, nearly half of families with children consisted of a male breadwinner and a female homemaker. Today, only one in five families still embody that traditional set-up. In fact mothers are now primary breadwinners--making as much or more than their spouse or filling the role of single working parent --in nearly four in 10 families. And as more mothers flood the workplace, families have to shoulder the often dizzying costs of finding someone else to watch their kids. Getting help with childcare isn't an added perk like a parking space in the company garage. It's a lynchpin, one that can affect healthy child development, job security and the frayed economic realities of today's low-income families.

In other words, liberals destroyed traditional America and are shocked at their results. Congratulations, you destroyed the family wage and made it impossible to support a middle-class family on one income, turned women into sluts, and turned men from being beta providers to being gaming pseudo-alphas and basement dwellers. Everything has a consequence. Liberalism is essentially an ideology that seeks to ignore consequences.

Also, she used the word "lynchpin" on Alternet. I'm surprised the editors allowed it, because it contains the word "lynch," which they probably think is a racist word (like "looter").

People need to appreciate that funding quality child are isn't just a work support issue, it's also a child development issue," says Danielle Ewen, the director of childcare and early learning at the Center for Law and Social Policy. "If we don't invest in early childhood care and learning, kids will arrive at school unprepared to learn. It will affect the number of children with special needs. It will affect graduation rates. It goes to the heart of what our public education system is all about."

For years, kids started elementary school at six or seven years old and they did well. America became the most powerful nation in the world without having kids start school when they were two or three. It sounds like Ewen is just another one of those liberal "experts" who wants to destroy childhood. Thirteen years of liberal indoctrination must not be enough.

For many of us, childcare subsidies play a critical role in the economic infrastructure, bridging the gap to provide a service as essential as food or housing. About 30 percent of all low-income families using child care centers, and 16 percent using an in-home care giver receive subsidies, about 14 percent of those who are federally eligible. Not only do such subsidies ensure that parents can work, they also place those children in healthy environments focused on development and learning. If subsidies disappear, many low-income families are forced into an impossible situation in which their income is less than the cost of paying someone to watch their child.

Once again, liberals fail to realize that actions have consequences. If these "low-income families" (liberal code words for "single black women and their brood of bastards with different fathers") can't support their spawn, then they should not engage in sex. Pretty much everyone other than pre-contact Australian aborigines and young children understands the relationship between sex and women having babies. It really is not a difficult concept.

It's a lifesaver," says Francine Almash, a Brooklyn resident and single parent who relies on subsidies to pay for daycare for her three children. Almash, who works as a freelance editor and splits her time between telecommuting and going in to the office, pays $5 a week to send her kids to a city-funded daycare center near her home. "Without the subsidies I'd have to pay a minimum of about $2,100 a month, even to put my kids in a city-funded daycare. There's no way I could possibly afford that. It's almost my entire income."

No liberal article demanding the government to spend money on something would be complete without a sob story.

Francine Almash is raising three kids in New York City while making around $25,000. She could at least move to a city with a lower cost of living. But that would involve "personal responsibility," a concept that is an anathema to liberals. What a dumb bitch.

When asked what she would do if her subsidy were cut, there's a long silence.

I don't know," Almash finally says. "I really don't know. Maybe I could try to keep one kid home? I'd probably just have to quit working and go on public assistance."

Perhaps Almash should have thought about this before she decided to raise three children as a single mother in New York City - not exactly a cheap place to live - while working as an editor. It's interesting to note that the author of this piece is also a single mother journalist. I wonder why so many single mothers are writers? If they are supporting a family on one income, they should probably

For families like Almash's, the loss of childcare subsidies would be devastating. The subsequent scramble for any kind of care, let alone a licensed quality provider, would force them to play fast and loose with their children's well-being.

In other words, they will have to deal with the consequences off their actions. This is what adults do.

"There are issues of child development and child safety at stake," says Heather Boushey, a senior economist with the Center for American Progress. "Without subsidies, more kids will wind up in unstable care situations that the parents are managing day to day. They may be shuffled around to friends or relatives or even be left home alone to take care of themselves."

There's another solution: single, career women shouldn't have bastard children. And if they do decide to have children, get married first so someone can watch the kid. As for kids having to be home alone, I understand the concern about younger kids, but once kids are of a certain age (say 9 or 10) is it really that big of a deal to have them walk home from school and stay home alone for an hour and a half until their mom comes come?

For many, the juggling required to grapple with suboptimal childcare can lead to taking days off work, arriving late and leaving early. As a result, parents risk losing those same jobs subsidies are meant to help facilitate. In addition, cuts in childcare dollars mean that childcare workers, many of whom are women and many of whom are single parents, now face having their hours cut or their jobs eliminated.

"In part, we see childcare subsidies as a job program," Boushey says. "Without reliable childcare, many low-income parents are forced into a position where they are less consistent on the job because they are dealing with childcare-related issues. They risk losing jobs and losing promotions. And in a tight job market like we have now, driving people out of the workplace is the last thing we want to be doing."

A more effective job program would be to slash the welfare/warfare state, abolish the income and capital gains tax, and allow wealthy people and small businessmen to create jobs. Also, expelling all illegal immigrants and many legal immigrants would help, too. That would be a far more effective job program than providing single women with an incentive to pop out bastards. It would also be a lot better for society than subsidizing the increase in the number of criminals and teen pregnancies that result from single motherhood.

What also seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle is how much such cuts could potentially cost individual states and the country as a whole. If I lost my daycare subsidy I would have to turn to food stamps, Medicaid, temporary assistance for needy families, Section 8, and every other social service out there to support my zero-income family. I would wind up the kind of financial burden no one's looking to take on these days. In addition, every child who doesn't get what they need in terms of early childhood care and learning risks costing the system more down the line in the form of behavioral problems or poor school performance.

If she would end up on welfare if she lost her daycare subsidy, she really isn't living a middle-class existence as she claims. She is living one artificially created with taxpayer dollars.

Also, due to the fact that her children are being raised by a single mother, they already are likely to have behavioral problems and poor school performance.

"Childcare faces a serious threat right now," says Ewen. "The short-term implications of the recession are very bad. We could see states making tremendous cuts, particularly once the stimulus money expires. The hard truth is that we can't make any reforms without resources. We know what we need to do -- develop a system in which the highest quality care is available to the widest range of families. Now it's a question of finding the means to do it."

The Obama administration seems committed to early childhood care and learning, pledging an additional $1.6 billion toward the Child Care and Development Block Grant in fiscal year 2011 (a pledge that still has to make it through Congress). Advocates hit a major stumbling block when the Early Learning Challenge Grant --$8 billion stretched across eight years targeted for education and learning for children from birth to age 5 --wasn't included in the final health care bill passed by the Senate. Now it's up to Congress to allocate more money to the states and also to states to put their own resources on the table.

Naturally, Obama and the Democrats will step in and further subsidize the destruction of the family with stolen money.

We can only hope they see the bigger issues at stake. Investing in childcare means investing in the future of our children and our education system, in job growth and creation.

She becomes very Orwellian in this sentence and the following ones.

By "investing" in childcare, she really means "take money from hardworking people via taxes and give it to single women." That is not investing, it is taking money from the people who invest.

It isn't a handout.

...

If this isn't a handout, then what is?

It's a crucial step toward helping individuals to help themselves.

No, it leads to the exact opposite. When someone gets $2000 a month from the government, as Mooney appears to, this does not cause them to take care of themselves. If they took care of themselves, that money would go way and they would have to pay $2000 a month out of their own pocket, so there is no incentive to help themselves. People realize they do not need to take care of themselves because the government will do it better than they can. This is one of the problems with welfare and why it is so destructive.

If Mooney wanted to take care of herself, she should have either not gotten pregnant or got married to the father of her children. Or she could have exercised this "choice" that feminists are always clamoring about.

Nan Mooney is the author of "(Not) Keeping Up with Our Parents" (Beacon, 2008). Read more about the book and her work at Nan Mooney.com.

Perhaps if Mooney is poor enough that her middle-class existence is endangered, she should find a more lucrative job than writing progressive political books for a non-profit organization (Beacon Press is run by a Unitarian group). And the reason why we are "not keeping up with our parents" is because liberals like her destroyed the society that our parents lived in, though I'm sure in her book she blames it on Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

I hate single mothers. I really do. I don't hate widows or mothers whose husbands/boyfriends turn out to be deadbeats, criminals, or otherwise worthless, but I hate single women who decide to have children knowing there will be no father in their children's lives and then expect everyone else (via government taxation) to pay for their decisions. Not only do I hate ghetto black welfare queens running around with their brood of five misbehaving nigglets, but I also hate "middle-class" white career women like this who have fatherless children and whine about the price of daycare (and the fact that school hours don't work well with office hours, that their employer won't give them time off to see their kids' school plays, etc.).

Nan Mooney is an embodiment of everything wrong with America.