welfare

Probation For Lottery Winner Who Continued To Collect Food Stamps

Probation For Lottery Winner Who Continued To Collect Food Stamps

Remember the Michigan woman who was charged with fraud because she continued to collect welfare and food stamps even after she won the lottery? Well, a decision has been reached in the case and she has been sentenced to six months’ probation. [More]

Michigan Lottery Winner Charged With Welfare Fraud

Michigan Lottery Winner Charged With Welfare Fraud

There’s been another development in the saga of the Michigan woman who won $1 million in the lottery but continued to collect food stamps. The state’s attorney general announced today that the woman had been charged with welfare fraud. [More]

Georgia Welfare Recipients Will Have To Pass Drug Test

Georgia Welfare Recipients Will Have To Pass Drug Test

Almost six months after a federal judge halted similar legislation in Florida, the governor of Georgia has signed off on a new regulation that will require certain welfare recipients to pay for and pass a drug test. [More]

Michigan Woman Who Won $1 Million In Lottery Stays On Food Stamps

Michigan Woman Who Won $1 Million In Lottery Stays On Food Stamps

It’s not unheard of for recent Michigan lottery winners to consider themselves so hard up that they subsist on food stamps. Following last year’s revelation that a Michigan man who won $2 million in the state lottery remained on welfare, now there are reports that a woman who snagged $1 million in winnings is doing the same. [More]

Legislators Totally Cool With Required Drug Testing Unless It Applies To Them

Legislators Totally Cool With Required Drug Testing Unless It Applies To Them

One way to get a politician to withdraw a bill requiring drug-testing for welfare applicants? Just tell him lawmakers also have to get tested, and see how fast he boomerangs. Rep. Jud McMillin, a Republican member of the Indiana General Assembly, took back his drug-testing bill after one of his helpful Democratic colleagues amended it ever so slightly. [More]

Federal Judge Blocks Florida's Plan To Drug Test Welfare Recipients

Federal Judge Blocks Florida's Plan To Drug Test Welfare Recipients

Earlier this year, Florida enacted a law that requires welfare recipients to pass drug tests to qualify for benefits. A federal judge stepped in and stopped the law in its track marks over concerns that it violates the Fourth Amendment, which bans illegal searches and seizures. The law would have forced recipients to pay for their own drug tests. [More]

Fewer People Filing For Unemployment

Fewer People Filing For Unemployment

The Labor Department provided a sign that the job market may be creeping out of its dreadful depths. For the fourth consecutive week, the rolling four-week average of people applying for unemployment benefits declined. The 403,000 applicants in the span ending last week were down from 409,250 in the frame ending the week before. [More]

Report: $37 Billion In Welfare Will Disappear By Year's End

Report: $37 Billion In Welfare Will Disappear By Year's End

Unless lawmakers somehow maintain the funding of welfare programs at current levels, the nation’s poor could suffer a devastating loss of income by the end of the year. According to an estimate by Moody’s Analytics, $37 billion in extended benefits are set to expire. [More]

Florida Will Screen Welfare Recipients For Drug Use

Florida Will Screen Welfare Recipients For Drug Use

Florida has passed legislation that would force welfare recipients to undergo drug tests before they’re able to receive aid. The law, set to go into effect July 1, would make applicants to the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program pay for the tests upfront, but ensures they will be reimbursed if they pass. [More]

Lottery Winner Continues To Use Food Stamps

Lottery Winner Continues To Use Food Stamps

A Michigan man isn’t letting something a lottery windfall stop him from using government assistance to buy food. [More]

California Welfare Recipients Spending Millions At Casinos

California Welfare Recipients Spending Millions At Casinos

Following an L.A. Times report that revealed the California welfare debit card program allows benefits recipients to withdraw cash at ATMs at casinos, state officials disclosed that over $1.8 million in taxpayer cash had been withdrawn on the gaming floors of casinos in just the last eight months. [More]

Go Economy! Americans Broke Food Stamps Record In January

Go Economy! Americans Broke Food Stamps Record In January

The L.A. Times reports Americans’ love of eating and immense poverty have combined to help our people set a new record for food stamp consumption in a month. [More]

Dog Fur Coats Sold By Dillards, Caché, ELUXURY, And DrJays

Dog Fur Coats Sold By Dillards, Caché, ELUXURY, And DrJays

The Humane Society has just released the results from another round of tests on fur-trimmed products from national U.S. retailers, and in four cases they found that the advertised “raccoon” fur was actually “raccoon dog,” a canine indigenous to Asia. This is one case where the FTC is squarely to blame for creating the problem in the first place, because in 1951 they decided that trade trumps scientific classification and declared “that this animal should be referred to as ‘Asiatic raccoon’ in advertising and labeling.”

Make Your Own Bacon!

Make Your Own Bacon!

We can’t believe we’re posting this, considering we follow a largely vegetarian diet – but it’s bacon, mmm… [Homer-style drool] For all you do-it-yourself foodies, and for those of you who want to exert a little more control over where your food comes from, Dave at the BSBrewing blog provides a step-by-step guide (with photos!) to curing your own bacon at home.