The Welfare Cycle

Yesterday I wrote about the tragedy in Seattle and ended it speculating that the daughter (if she survived) might someday have her own child and the cycle will continue.

That reminded me of story of a young girl I met back in the late spring of 1991 in Merced, California. 

I was stationed at Castle AFB near there and was close to retirement in a couple of months.  I used to ride a bicycle to stay in shape.  I would leave the car at home and ride to work or just ride around town.  Nothing fancy, but it was easier on my knees than running 5 miles a day.  I also had an amateur radio license and I carried around a little 2 meter HT.  HT means “Handy-Talkie”.  2 meter refers to the frequency range it operated on.  It was the size of a small kiddy “walkie-talkie” but this was no kid’s toy.  The two-meter ham band is in the 144 -148 MHz.  However, the radio would receive well past that and I could use it to listen (but not transmit) to the Merced PD that used (I think) a frequency in the 154 MHZ range.  I’d built a little carrier on my handle bars to carry and cushion the radio so I could listen while I rode the bike.  (Yes your honor, the bike and the radio are central to my case!  Please bear with me.)

OK, the ground work laid, I was out one fine sun-shiny Sunday California morning around 11 AM tooling around town on my bike.  I was bored so I went out for a ride around town with my little HT set to scan so I could monitor the Ham action as well as the local police and fire.

I heard the dispatcher tell a patrol car there was a car parked at a local strip mall in the handicap stall.  There wasn’t any handicap plate or blue mirror placard plus, there was an open container of beer on the front seat.  I was a couple of blocks away, so I thought I’d go check out the “excitement”.  (This was, after all, Merced or “Mer-Dead” as a lot of us stationed there called it.)

I arrived a minute later and I saw the cop on the other end of the parking lot already there watching. I pulled up a couple stores down and listened while they ran the plate of the offending vehicle.   As I stood there next to my bike on the walkway between stores, a teenaged girl came up to me and asked me if I was a “narc”.  She was blonde and pretty, but with a little weight on her hips.  I told her no, I wasn’t a narc and explained a little about my radio.

She said she was 16.  She said that as soon as she became 18, she wanted to take courses at the local community college to become a police officer.  I lauded her ambition and then she continued with her life story.  She told me she was worried that her mother trying to take away her two kids would hurt her chances.  She was living with her 21 year old boyfriend and couldn’t understand why her mother would do such a thing because the welfare people once tried to take her and her siblings away from her Mom several years back.  The conversation ended when a 30 something woman and an old man (her father) came out to the car.  She’d forgotten to hang the placard on the mirror so she was authorized to park there and the beer belonged to the old man who wasn’t driving.  The cops took the can and let them go with a warning.

I rode over to a park near there and immediately wrote the story down.

I sometimes think of that young girl when I hear a story like the tragedy in Seattle.  I wonder if she ever broke free of the cycle.  I doubt it, but I hope she did.  She’d be about 31 now.  If she didn’t, her kids would be well on the way to being the third generation of welfare recipients. 

I understand this story is anecdotal but I think it’s truly indicative of the fruits of the welfare state.  Dependence breeds dependence.  People talk about cycles – domestic violence, child molestation, addictions etc.  We need to re-think welfare in terms of causing cyclical dependence and find ways to get people off the dole and back to being productive citizens.  We had a nice start a few years back, but it’s been so watered down since then in many places as to be meaningless.

A safety net is one thing, a lifestyle is quite another.

Comments

[Debbie]

Very interesting post, but I want to comment on the fact that you are a 'ham'. I don't find many ham operators in the blogosphere. My husband and I are also hams, and have been for years and years. Most people don't even know what ham radio is. I post articles on ham radio sometimes, but don't get many comments on them. The HT is a good little radio.

[Violence Worker]

Thanks for stopping by. My license lapsed about 6 or 7 years a go. I had a tech license. It was a KC6 number because I got the license in Korea while in the service and my address was an APO. I also held an HL9 ticket. I choose to remain somewhat anonymouse so I won't disclose the whole License numbers. It was fun when I was single and had lots of money and time.

VW