It is funny, but when I talk about this incident of the lottery winner being given permission by the state to continue to use his food-aid card, certain people get very defensive.
So let me make this clear: I am in favor of Michigan helping people who cannot afford food so they do not go hungry.
What fascinates me about this story is that it is such a clear example of why bureaucracies are bad.
In this case, some bureaucrat in the federal government decided that winning the lottery and taking the lump sum is somehow separate from what they count as income. Some bureaucrat in the Michigan Department of Human Services said, well if the Feds say it, then that is the way that it must be, and that means that although this lottery winner is now not poor, we cannot count his lottery winnings as riches, and so by our definition he is still poor, which means he can continue to use his bridge card which uses Michigan tax dollars to buy food,
This is obviously nuts on a number of levels.
First, food aid is for poor people.
If these bureaucrats define a lottery winner as a poor person, they obviously have some problems with common definitions.
Second, we taxpayers are told that the state is in the red and there is a limited amount of money available for food aid. So if the state is giving food aid to someone who does not deserve it, then are they depriving someone who does need it?
Third, if our state is so short of money, surely one quick fix would be to stop giving it away to people who do not deserve it.
Fourth, another effective fix would be to fire the stupid bureaucrat who was hired to help poor people but instead decided to help lottery winners.
Fifth, it would be a good idea to examine all the supervisors audit the entire department to dig out any other kinds of unjustifiable nonsense.
When the state bureaucrats say they have cut everything to the bone and the only thing left to do is to raise our taxes -- examples like this indicate that they have not cut all the fat out of the budget.