Like the bike you bought after saving lawn-mowing money for a year, welfare reform was the prized trophy of the conservative governing philosophy. We believed that we'd found the vehicle of social mobility for poor Americans, once and for all. No one should live on taxpayer money without doing some work on their own, right? Everyone agrees, right?

Wrong. President Obama ran over our bicycle, issuing illegal waivers to welfare's work requirements and taking the wheels off the program. The fact is, we never won the welfare battle after all. Out of the 80 different federal welfare programs, the '96 welfare reform really only fixed one. A third of the U.S. population received benefits from one or more of these 80 programs in 2011. According to the Department of Agriculture, one program alone – food stamps – gave benefits to a record-breaking 47.7 million in the last month of 2012, benefits those millions didn't have to work to receive.

Rep. Paul Ryan recently said it's time to use the 1996 reform as a model to fix the rest of welfare. He's right, for at least five compelling reasons.

1. America's welfare programs are redundant and inefficient. As The Heritage Foundation's welfare expert Rachel Sheffield noted, there are at least 12 separate programs providing food aid, 12 funding social services, and 12 assisting education. Average benefits from all welfare programs are about $9,000 per recipient. If you converted those programs to cash, it would be more than five times the amount needed to raise every household above the poverty line. We should streamline redundant programs to save money while getting the same or better value.

2. Means-tested welfare programs are fiscally unsustainable. These cost nearly $1 trillion annually. By the end of the decade, welfare spending will rise from five percent to six percent of GDP. This means every taxpaying family would have to make, and then give up, over $100,000 in the next ten years – just to cover the cost of welfare spending.

Imagine this: If government spending were a pie, welfare would be a bigger slice than defense, education, or even social security. This isn't apple pie a la mode. It's poison-the-economy pie with a side of swamp-our-children-in-debt ice cream.

3. The welfare state encourages dependence instead of lifting people out of poverty. Poverty has actually increased with federal spending on anti-poverty programs. Adjusted for inflation, we've spent nearly $20 trillion total on “the war on poverty.” That's more than the combined price tag of all America's wars. Ever. From the American Revolution through Afghanistan, we've spent less than $7 trillion. These days, we spend 13 times what we spent on welfare in the 1960s. Guess what? In 1966, the share of the population living below the poverty threshold was 14.7%; by 2011, that share rose to 15.0%.

This spending gives people significant incentives to stay on welfare. According to the Senate Budget Committee, if you break down welfare spending per household in poverty, recipients are making $30/hour. That's higher than the $25/hour median income – certainly more than what I make per hour.

4. Welfare dependence creates behavioral poverty. Perhaps President Franklin D. Roosevelt said it best: “Continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.” To become comfortable relying on the work of others instead of your own work will change your character, and the character of the nation. Americans want to give everyone a helping hand, but hand-holding year after year, generation after generation, patronizes, corrodes, entraps. In the words of welfare policy experts Robert Rector and Jennifer Marshall writing in National Affairs:

Material poverty has been replaced by a far deeper “behavioral poverty” — a vicious cycle of ***** childbearing, social dysfunction, and welfare dependency in poor communities. Even as the welfare state has improved the material comfort of low-income Americans by transferring enormous financial resources to them, it has exacerbated these behavioral problems. The result has been the disintegration of the work ethic, family structure, and social fabric of large segments of the American population, which has in turn created a new dependency class.

Is this the America we want? It is not compassionate to leave a whole class of people in perpetual dependence. Behavioral poverty cuts off millions of citizens from a chance at American opportunity, destroying the virtues necessary to sustain oneself. My generation has seen the effects of behavioral poverty – in D.C., Detroit, or my hometown, Cleveland. Whole neighborhoods rot. To many, this cycle of dependence indicts the principles of American society as inherently unfair.

5. Work requirements promote individual responsibility and reduce poverty. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) work requirements slashed welfare caseloads by nearly 60 percent. Poverty among all single mothers fell 30 percent. About 3 million fewer children lived in poverty in 2003 than in 1995.

In this Developed Nation, a 19 year old woman sleeps in a bag in a door way.
In this Developed Nation, a working family of four relies on the local food bank.
In this Developed Nation, grandmothers live on a pittance and die lonely.
In this Developed Nation, my friends use drugs to fill a spiritual chasm.
In this Developed Nation, stateless refugees are kept in cages while processed.
In this Developed Nation, slave labour is abolished, but persists.
In this Developed Nation, the media patronizes and panders to the lowest common denominator.
In this Developed Nation, the unscrupulous employers bulldoze workers rights.
In this Developed Nation, the population is kept divided and ineffective.
In this Developed Nation, ‘I’m not a racist...but...’
In this Developed Nation, black people are stop/searched nine times more than whites.
In this Developed Nation, under four percent of **** reports end in conviction.
In this Developed Nation, seventeen percent of adults take anti-depressants.
In this Developed Nation, suicide is the biggest killer of men under fifty.
In this Developed Nation, children cut themselves to relieve pain.
In this Developed Nation, I’m a snowflake if I care.

What has this Nation Developed into?

Here I find myself
In a semblance of an assembly
A spineless lizard
Lazing with a sheet
He tells me sweet acrimonies
About balancing his shelves
Appoints himself a wizard
Over anybody else

Tells me of obligations
Within a life on parole
Upholds his occupation
In an insulated hole
Bestows us something he don’t hold
And demands we give it back
Sanctifies the mold
That is soon to shape our tracks

Hollow hands for thankless kings
That pull no gratitude
He wears a tune he doesn’t sing
Dares to worry of our food
He patronizes a choir
He grasps the open sea
And says “I have the fist of salt
That will lead to unity”

Coddles us like Cain
Treats this brick like a stable
Life doesn’t drive in lanes
Elastic minds are able
If you’ve gone to deride us
You wear it on your form
Don’t brave an iron suit
You don our skin, Norm

You read your your books on nature
You’re bred to expect rain
Yet waste a breath to nurture
Some other person’s reigns
Dread a life that keeps you well-
Beholden to the rule:
That life is tethered to a bell
Engulfed in packless mules

She is me, my mind is myself, a passion unto flame
there is no separation, no glorious difference
between shake and stem, emotion and logic
I have the fire of my soul, and it burns
everyone it touches

The twin of my self, my reflection of soul
watches from that small, cold place,
locked away in my mind; she cries
not screams of rage, but pity
she knows my enslavement
emotionally wounded
perpetually lost

Niether really knows the other; I don't know myself
Rage floods my veins, my mind quickens to hurt
words pour forth before I can stop them
filthy, terrible things that amaze me
If I know it hurts, I say it

He stands there too calm, he takes my bits of wraith
Pauses before speaking; I know my tongue cuts deep
he takes a breathe, speaks again, so calm
this only make my anger worse, fuels it
how can he be so terribly heartless?
how can he not see my pain?

The knife goes in again, sarcasm punches through; I have him
his exterior is shaken; he pauses again: close, so close
He patronizes me; trying to be soothing. I know his lies
I claim torture, cruelity, and punishment on his part
he is, after all enslaving, binding me
punishing all women everywhere; I give him argument,
my spittle; he uses logic, reason

I hate him; his words expose my hyprocracy, a reflective self can see
He turns what I say to nothing, insulting me: fuleing anger
he turns what I say I am against who I know I am
Pointing out my actions as childish,a betrayal
only makes me more angry

I know he loved me, but only now
one last letter, never sent
I found today; I think he
planned this, cruelty
the last word
his last, only
in death

Years have past, I remember this place
in my head, in a memory, in the past
where I was, if I had only known
If I might not have been
If I could have done

Questions drive me to write again, revistit, open unhealed wounds
Years and years, years and years, an almost enlightenment for me
So much time has passed, faded, bleached; I've changed so much
my bitter, tireless resentment, festoned, anchored reality
for making him leave, I created this world for myself
but in one small letter, he made me remember
how much I loved him; he loved me
simply because

He made me remember, how much he cared, loved, cherished & hurt
and let me see all our fights in new, shiney, bright light
by letting me remember something he would never do
let me make choices that would hurt me later
I was too selfish, too much pride

That letter he sent, I found far too, too late
reminded me of pride, our first, sweet night
how I wanted and he denied, he kissed, he waited
for just and only for me, he made me wait
and now he waits again, etheral

every person that walks into your life must walk out…


   this is exactly why we shouldn't choose to hold onto someone forever. the same door they walked in through, one day they will use to walk out. the idea of forever with someone patronizes our heads and sometimes leads to false hope. but truth is, time doesn’t stop for anyone. seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and years pass far from what we can control.

(particularly when nursed at room temperature)

I learned that Kombucha
best be kept refrigerated lest
said probiotic drink
served at room temperature
(incorporating live bacteria) erupts
potentially causing
serious damage to consumer
as nearly happened to yours truly,
nonetheless patronizes company(ies),
who manufacture
aforementioned healthy beverage.

Analogous to other fermented brews,
one must cultivate an acquired taste
regarding delicately sipping Kombucha
now if you will kindly excuse
wordsmith henpecked and
away from Macbook Pro
fortunately satisfied with poem thus far.

Hello, I got back to laptop
today - December fourth 2021
after few hours elapsed
got hunger pangs
during brief hiatus
experienced relapse concerning
craving vegetarian hypocrite's delight
meat product constituted chicken sausage,
which greasy entree
invariably caused cholesterol to spike.

The missus (a plump carnivore
to the bone with plucky constitution)
vowed never to purchase
named poultry appurtenance ever again
so help me dog, cuz she
(connoisseur of gluten free foods)
attempts to promote healthy eating.

Indeed buzzfeeding body, mind and spirit
courtesy fruits and vegetables
ideally, preferably, and undeniably organic
helps me feel emotionally,
mentally and spiritually fit
able, eager and willing

to staunch the flow,
whereby yours truly
would become deceased,
thus imperative to jot obit
before that instant I exit
stage door left,

the only occasion witnessing
ala bumbling and fumbling performance
(despite unalterable fact that
life haint no dress rehearsal)
courtesy painless suicide
exhibiting true grit

regarding one generic long haired
pencil necked geek,
whose demise undermined,
when his lovely bones
deteriorated analogous to
rotted fascia and soffit.