The Hutchinson News, April 17
Welfare dos, don’ts:
Amid all the chatter about what activities Kansas’ new welfare reform law prohibits – liquor, swimming pools and cruises, among them – what we’re not hearing as much about is what isn’t off limits.
Gov. Sam Brownback signed the law on Thursday as Kansas continued to suffer seemingly endless ridicule from around the country. Some restrictions made sense, such as casinos and liquor. Others, such as cruises and lingerie stores, seemed incomprehensible.
For many legislators, their vote for a bill like this may have been with good intentions. Welfare recipients shouldn’t be gambling and going to strip clubs with their benefits. But lawmakers seemingly left out many items from their list of no-nos.
Massages and pedicures are prohibited. But not luxury cars, private jets and country club memberships.
Welfare money still can be spent on guns. In red states, of course, buying guns is to be encouraged, so that isn’t a surprise.
How about live theater if not movie theaters? Maybe our legislators are more cultured than we gave them credit for – or it was an oversight.
Newspapers that have been targeted for retribution for critical editorials – editorials like this one perhaps – may be surprised that newspaper subscriptions aren’t on the list. That must have been an oversight.
Surely legislators will have to revisit this law. Turns out, it’s woefully inadequate. All kinds of extravagant and sinful expenditures are still allowed on the public dole.
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The Topeka Capital-Journal, April 18
Fraternity under microscope:
A representative of Phi Delta Theta International says an exchange of sexually charged text messages among members of the organization’s Washburn University chapter was “inappropriate.”
That’s putting it mildly. The exchange of sexist images and messages was indefensible and cannot be tolerated in any way by Phi Delta Theta International or Washburn University.
How many local fraternity members participated in the texting is unknown, but the international organization and Washburn University are investigating. Further details may be slow in coming, however, as the associate executive vice president of Phi Delta Theta International says its investigations typically take seven to 21 days.
But it isn’t too soon to say the fraternity’s international organization and Washburn University will determine the fate of the local chapter.
Some might think the Washburn chapter will survive the incident if few fraternity members participate in the mindless exchange. Perhaps, but the University of Oklahoma earlier this year shut down a fraternity and expelled some members for their participation in a sing-along of a racist verse that someone recorded on video.
That the subjects of some Washburn Phi Delta Theta members’ text messages were female – pre-teen to adult – makes it no less disgusting than what happened at OU. Racism and sexism are both inexcusable, abhorrent behaviors meant to demean other people.
It is difficult to imagine that all the OU students who participated in the racist sing-along and all the WU students who participated in the texting actually believe the content of their different communications. We would like to think some of them, at both schools, surely know better. But in the age of modern technology and instant communication, it is impossible to undo the damage caused in a moment of idiocy.
That Phi Delta Theta International acted so quickly to investigate what happened is a credit to the organization. That Washburn University officials were quick to react once they learn of the incident also speaks well for the university.
It was heartening to read that WU president Jerry Farley said such conduct wouldn’t be tolerated on campus. We also share Farley’s belief that the content of the text messages aren’t indicative of the values of the campus or the Greek system as a whole.
Despite earlier references to what happened at the University of Oklahoma, we hope the actions of a few WU fraternity members don’t harm the innocent. But it happens.
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The Wichita Eagle, April 16
Don’t advertise welfare?
Brownback administration officials have pushed back at critics of new welfare legislation by touting the great work they’re doing to assist the poor.
But some little-noticed language in the much-discussed bill reflects the growing disdain in Topeka and Washington, D.C., for letting the needy know help is even available.
“No federal or state funds shall be used for television, radio or billboard advertisements that are designed to promote food assistance benefits and enrollment,” the Kansas bill says. Bizarrely, the next sentence bars the use of federal or state funds “for any agreements with foreign governments designed to promote food assistance.”
The advertising ban in the Kansas bill mirrors Congress’ 2014 farm bill, which similarly curbed the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s outreach on food stamps and went further by nixing use of federal money for all “recruitment” activities “designed to persuade an individual to apply for” food stamps. It turns out the part about “agreements with foreign governments” in the farm bill targeted Bush- and Obama-era efforts to use Mexican consulates in the U.S. to “educate eligible populations about available nutrition assistance,” as then-Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said in 2004. Why Kansas would need such a ban is hard to imagine.
Part of the motivation for the advertising bans is the misguided belief that food-stamp usage by Americans has soared in recent years not out of genuine need related to the brutal recession but because government assistance is too easy to get – and to keep getting for too long.
If the TV, radio and billboard advertising ban in the Kansas bill was rooted in congressional action, it fits a pattern and philosophy of the Brownback administration’s Department for Children and Families.
In 2013 DCF rejected federal dollars intended to help identify and enroll people eligible for food stamps – a day before the grants were to be renewed.
DCF’s spokeswoman explained then that “we simply do not believe taxpayer dollars should be used to recruit people to be on welfare.”
Senate Substitute for House Bill 2258, which Gov. Sam Brownback plans to sign into law Thursday morning, furthers that attitude. The bill also restricts Temporary Assistance for Needy Families benefits to 36 months in a lifetime, limits ATM withdrawals using welfare benefit cards to $25 a day (which means $20 minus fees, because how many ATMs let people withdraw $5 anymore?), and – in its most famous features – bars welfare dollars from being spent on everything from cruises to tattoos.
On the Opinion page, DCF Secretary Phyllis Gilmore proudly wrote that the administration’s “effective policies have helped drastically reduce welfare rolls.” But the administration hasn’t proved that most of the people no longer on welfare in Kansas found good-paying jobs and rose out of poverty.
And when it comes to promoting the state’s programs for the poor to those Kansans who could use the help – and are eligible for it – the official strategy now amounts to “Shhhhhh.”
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