Of Welfare Queens and Wilbur

Ross, picking up on the TV Lady of New Orleans, who bitches about her awful public-housing apartment (which houses a monster-sized TV), says that the Welfare Queen stereotype is not entirely untrue. His anecdote reminded me of the welfare fraudsters who lived in a shack across the road from me growing up in the country. Wilbur was the man of the house. Though young and able-bodied, he literally did nothing but sit on the porch all day. I know this because I could see it with my own eyes. And He was collecting three welfare checks per month -- one under his name, and two under false names. I know this because my elderly great-great-aunt, a bleeding-heart retired social worker, helped the no-count sucker pull off the fraud.

(Wilbur was also a gasoline thief. My dad got tired of it, and one night took a raw chicken and a bag of flour, and slipped across the road in the dark. He stood in Wilbur's family's dirt driveway, put the chicken down, made a circle around it with the flour, and used the flour to make an arrow pointing at Casa Wilbur. He also made a few other designs with the flour, then sneaked back home. He foolishly told my mom that the Wilbur problem was taken care of, that Wilbur and his extended family were so afraid of voodoo that they'd clear out of there. My mom was so ticked at my dad, telling him Wilbur's elderly mother was going to have a heart attack when she saw it, and ordering him to go back across the road and fetch the chicken. Which he did, under protest, and he kicked the flour design until it was just a big white smudge. But you know, until the next rain came and washed the flour away, the Wilburs refused to go near the flour, even in its compromised state. They even cut the barbed wire fence to forge a new path out of their yard for their car, so they wouldn't have to pass over the flour patch. Louisiana -- it's not like where you live!)

Anyway, re-reading via Ross the passage I put up earlier:

"I'm tired of the slum landlords, and I'm tired of the slum houses," she said.

Pointing across the street to an encampment of homeless people at Duncan Plaza, Jasper said, "I might do better out here with one of these tents."

Jasper, who later allowed a photographer to tour the subsidized apartment, also complained about missing window screens, a slow leak in a sink, a warped back door and a few other details of a residence that otherwise appeared to have been recently renovated.

...I thought about how I have a slow link in my sink, and a warped back door, and a chimney that's going to need to be replaced, and we have to paint the house next year. And I'm paying for all of this myself.

Behold, an image of Poor Mother Jasper and her taxpayer-supported hovel, which doubles as a hangar for that giant TV: