More pillow talk, Maria!

I should have known it would happen. No sooner than I praise Governor Schwarzenegger then he calls for hurting welfare mothers.

Arnold needs to talk to Christopher Jencks and needs to understand that the abuses of welfare by women with children is the exception, not the rule. Also, the LA Times article I linked to appears to be saying that, due to the high cost of housing, any cut in welfare payments could have dramatically adverse consequences, i.e. women and children losing shelter.

I wish people would realize that most welfare recipients are on for short periods of time--this was true back in the 1970s as much as today--and that the cost of welfare is far less than the subsidies we hand out to corporate America. Start here and here, with information from the early to mid-1990s, before the "welfare reform" wave of the mid-1990s. Some pillow talk with Maria and a couple of seminars for the governor are in order. Perhaps that would help the governor see how a punitive approach to welfare reform is inconsistent with his goals for medical insurance for all children in California.

If he is truly interested in raising the workforce rates of poor women with children, don't cut their assistance. Instead, he should find out why more poor women are not in the workforce. He may find a higher incidence of sick children, for example, which keeps the moms home. He may find other reasons that would undermine the assumption that the moms are somehow "lazy."

Again, the governor was off to a good start. He can still maintain that course--but punitive measures against vulnerable and poor people is a hard right turn off the main road.

(Edited)