The greatest gift..
Sunday, January 6, 2013
Welfare recipients take out cash at strip clubs, liquor stores and X-rated shops
- Last Updated: 12:48 PM, January 6, 2013
- Posted: 1:47 AM, January 6, 2013
EXCLUSIVE
Welfare recipients took out cash at bars, liquor stores, X-rated video shops, hookah parlors and even strip clubs — where they presumably spent their taxpayer money on lap dances rather than diapers, a Post investigation found.
A database of 200 million Electronic Benefit Transfer records from January 2011 to July 2012, obtained by The Post through a Freedom of Information request, showed welfare recipients using their EBT cards to make dozens of cash withdrawals at ATMs inside Hank’s Saloon in Brooklyn; the Blue Door Video porn shop in the East Village; The Anchor, a sleek SoHo lounge; the Patriot Saloon in TriBeCa; and Drinks Galore, a liquor distributor in The Bronx.
NYC OFFICIALS WANT TO INVESTIGATE BODEGAS RINGING UP SUSPICIOUSLY HIGH SALES WITH FOOD-STAMP MONEY
EDITORIAL: CARD TRICKS
One EBT machine is stationed inside Club Eleven, an infamous Hunts Point jiggle joint known as much for its violent history as its girls in pink thongs.
Cops have been cracking down on the Bronx club since 2009 and shut it down temporarily in 2010. In July, five men were stabbed and two others shot outside after bouncers broke up a 4 a.m. brawl with pepper spray. The club appeared to be shuttered when The Post visited Thursday.
Club Heat, another Bronx strip club that dispenses EBT cash, is also no stranger to violence. A 33-year-old woman was fatally shot in the head outside the club in December 2011.
Critics blasted the government for turning a blind eye to welfare’s sleazy money.
“This is morally scandalous,” said Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. “I have nothing against strip clubs, but that’s not what benefits are for. I don’t blame [recipients]. If you are poor, it’s a crummy life and you want to have a drink or see a naked woman. I blame the people who are in charge of this.”
Welfare recipients receive food stamps and cash assistance under the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Both benefits are accessed through an EBT card, but only cash assistance — meant for housing, utilities and household necessities — can be accessed at ATMs.
A single-person household could receive a maximum $200 in monthly food stamps plus $158 in cash assistance. A family of four could get as much as $668 in food stamps and $433 in cash.
The food-stamp program prohibits the purchase of booze, tobacco and lottery tickets with an EBT card. But with the cash-assistance program, users can blow money on strippers or a six-pack and to tap welfare dollars from liquor stores, casinos and adult-oriented establishments.
The Post found dozens of pubs, nightclubs and tobacco shops where welfare dough was dispensed — and presumably spent.
The Boiler Room, a gay dive bar in the East Village, had $120 and $60 transactions a minute apart on Jan. 17, 2011. The bar is around the corner from a Bank of America that takes EBT cards.
West Village tobacco shop Shisha International had EBT transactions ranging from $40 to $180 in 2011. The store is near at least two EBT-friendly ATMs.
Legislative efforts to crack down on sinful spending have fallen short.
State Sen. Tom Libous (R-Binghamton) passed a bill in his chamber in June that would outlaw welfare withdrawals at gambling dens, strip clubs and other venues of vice, but the measure is gathering dust in the Democratic-controlled Assembly.
Libous is looking for a new Assembly sponsor to carry the bill in that house in the upcoming legislative session, after past sponsor George Latimer (D-Rye) was elected to the state Senate.
With only one of the city’s Assembly members, Nicole Malliotakis (R-B’klyn./SI), as a co-sponsor, the bill faces an uphill battle.
The Assembly typically doesn’t support welfare reform, because its more liberal members think the measures “hurt the poor,” Libous said. If the bill remains stalled, the state stands to lose $120 million in federal welfare funding.
The Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act, signed by President Obama last February, requires states to prohibit sinful welfare spending by 2014. If they don’t, they’ll forfeit federal cash.
“The people who are stealing from the program are the ones I want to go after,” Libous said. “Not someone who lost his job or a single mom who has to feed her kids. That’s what this program is supposed to be for.”
A spokesman with the US Department of Health and Human Services said states make their own rules on EBT cards.
Some states already limit where EBT cards can withdraw money.
A rep from OTDA, New York’s welfare office, said the state does not choose or regulate which retailers get ATMs that handle EBTs. Instead, retailers decide whether to use an ATM that accepts welfare cards.
Additional reporting by Susan Edelman and Brad Hamilton
kbriquelet@nypost.com
Burning the candle...
According to a recent study done by a group of UK researchers, rock stars do live faster (and die younger) after all. In this comparative analysis of the survival rate of the general population and nearly 1,500 musicians in North American and Europe, American artists were the hardest hit: only 2/3 of the stars were still alive 40 years after their first big break, compared to 80 percent of the normal population at similar ages.
China - Coldest Winter in nearly three decades.
BEIJING (AP) -- China is experiencing unusual chills this winter with its national average temperature hitting the lowest in 28 years, and snow and ice have closed highways, canceled flights, stranded tourists and knocked out power in several provinces.China Meteorological Administration on Friday said the national average was -3.8 degrees Celsius (25 degrees Fahrenheit) since late November, the coldest in nearly three decades.
The average temperature in northeast China dipped to -15.3 degrees C (4.5 degrees F), the coldest in 43 years, and dropped to a 42-year low of -7.4 degrees C (18.7 degrees F) in northern China.
In some areas - northeastern China, eastern Inner Mongolia, and north part of far-western Xinjiang province - the low has hit -40 degrees C (-40 degrees F), the administration said.
The state-run, English-language China Daily reported Friday that about 1,000 ships were stuck in ice in Laizhou Bay in eastern China's Bohai Sea.
In southwest China's Sichuan province, more than 1,000 tourists were stranded Wednesday in a scenic mountainous area because of icy road, the state-run Beijing News reported.
In southern China, snowstorms from Thursday night have disrupted air and road traffic.
In eastern China's Zhejiang province, at least eight flights were canceled at an airport in Hangzhou city on Thursday, and authorities told state media the airport might be closed if the snow should continue. Utility workers also rushed to restore power in parts of the province, according to state media.
Several highways, including some sections of the Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao Expressway in central China's Hunan province, were closed Friday because of icy condition, state media reported.
An airport was temporarily shut down in Nanchang city in Jiangxi province, as workers were trying to clear ice and snow from its runway, state media said.
On Saturday, the forecast by China's National Meteorological Center said southern China would have more snow and rain in the coming days and that icy rain could hit some regions.
Does The YMCA Promote Socialist Ideas?
Fabian Socialism advances the principles of socialism via gradualist and reformist, rather than revolutionary, means.
The YMCA is attempting to implement Fabian Socialism through the Social Gospel.
The YMCA's motto is: Working for youth and social justice.
They promote:
Social Justice - The theory that implies and justifies the practice of socialism or Domination by the State. Equal distribution of all wealth.
Economic Justice - Which is the global redistribution of a property equally to all people of earth and the profit from this property is also equally shared.
Trade Justice - A subset of Economic Justice
Climate Change -They indoctrinate children in the warmest philosophy, that is, making claims with dubious scientific evidence in order to bring about a new world order.
Global Citizenship - Global Socialism
Here is a video teaching children to become warmists:
YMCA Earth Service Corps
http://ymcaearth.org/
Info on Social Justice:
See Here:
Social Justice: Code for Communism
And Here:
Does The YMCA Promote Socialist Ideas?
And here:
Support Social Justice, Support Bad Luck
And Here:
The Truth about Social Justice
Hurtling through space to unknown destinations.
Forget the old heliocentric model – our solar system is a vortex!
The old Newtonion/Copernican Heliocentric model of our solar system is an unproven theory.
A bright fellow named Dr. Pallathadka Keshava Bhat came up with quite a different way to think of our Solar System.
A bright fellow named Dr. Pallathadka Keshava Bhat came up with quite a different way to think of our Solar System.
There are a couple of reasons why I think this model could just be right.
First of all, the heliocentrical model has always been presented (especially by NASA) as a “frisbee” model.
[image taken from here]
Think about this for a minute. In this diagram it seems the Solar System travel to the left. When the Earth is also traveling to the left (for half a year) it must go faster than the Sun. Then in the second half of the year, it travels in a “relative opposite direction” so it must go slower than the Sun. Then, after completing one orbit, it must increase speed to overtake the Sun in half a year. And this would go for all the planets. Just like any point you draw on a frisbee will not have a constant speed, neither will any planet.
Secondly, most planets are visible throughout the entire year. In a “flat” model, every single planet would hide behind the Sun at least once a year. They don’t. Now the heliocentric model isn’t entirely flat, but mostly.
IF the travel direction of the Solar System is “up” or “down” – why haven’t I heard from this in my entire life? Why do I need to run into the dr Bhat material to see the “spiral” for the first time? The opposition is divided into two groups: one group thinks the helical model is wrong, the other group says that there’s no or little difference with the current model – very curious.
UPDATE: the FIRST NASA image that shows it like it is
Finally I found ONE image from NASA that shows the angle and travel direction of our solar system:
Consequences
Fact of the matter is that if the helical model is correct and our Solar System is a traveling vortex, it will change how we feel about our journey. For me personally the heliocentric model feels like a useless marry-go-round: after one year we are back to square one. The helical model feels much more like progress, growth, a journey through space in which we never ever come back to our starting point. We are NOT in a big marry-go-round. We are on a journey.
http://www.djsadhu.com/the-helical-model-vortex-solar-system-animation/
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