Josh Levin at Slate has a long, interesting article – more like a short online book
– about the original “welfare queen,” a Chicago woman named Linda
Taylor. She did a lot more than just scam welfare benefits, but that’s
what she became most infamous for, back in the 1980s. Actually, I’d
wager most modern readers don’t realize there was a specific person
behind the phrase “welfare queen” – which, as Levin points out, was
coined by the Chicago Tribune, not Ronald Reagan. Most people
would nevertheless get a fairly accurate idea of Taylor’s marquee crime
just by hearing that phrase, which conjures images of someone living
high on the hog while soaking up welfare benefits. As Levin notes,
despite stubborn efforts by some on the Left to claim the “welfare
queen” was apocryphal, or an unfair characterization created for
political purposes, that’s exactly what Taylor did, and to put it
mildly, she didn’t show any remorse about it when she got caught.
The political significance of the “welfare queen” story rests on how
many of them are out there. A single person scamming the welfare state
does not, by herself, represent a devastating indictment of the welfare
state. It matters how easy it was, and whether a large number of people
participate in such activities, albeit on a less grandiose scale than
“the haughty thief who drove her Cadillac to the public aid office” and
wore “expensive clothes and oversize hats” to her trial.
Unfortunately, there’s a lot of scamming going on, and the
Left is not even slightly interested in cracking down on it, or even
admitting it’s a problem. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) tried to stop the cuts to military pensions
in the Murray-Ryan budget deal by replacing them with simple enhanced
identification reforms to a welfare tax credit that gets ripped off to
the tune of $4 billion per year, in many cases by people who aren’t even
legal residents of the United States. That assessment comes from the
Inspector General of the Treasury Department, not Sessions’ office. His
reform effort was thwarted by Democrats, who like to fill the
“amendment tree” for bills with garbage so that nobody can attach a
serious amendment to bills they are determined to ram through.
(Click link below to read more)
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About Me

- Judy Chaffee
- This site is the inspiration of a former reporter/photographer for one of New England's largest daily newspapers and for various magazines. The intent is to direct readers to interesting political articles, and we urge you to visit the source sites. Any comments may be noted on site or directed to KarisChaf at gmail.
Friday, December 20, 2013
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