Scrooge, Incorporated
Welfare Reform in Connecticut1
1. The view from Capitol Hill
It is the fashion these days for everybody to have an opinion on welfare reform. One idea that you often hear coming from Connecticut's state Congressmen, is that our lucrative package of welfare benefits and services have drawn parasites and spongers from everywhere ,(illegal immigrants included ) , in the world . Ideas such as these which are voiced often enough in normal times, have become, with the emergence of a Republican dominated Congress under the leadership of Republican governor John Rowland, mainstream opinion
The prevailing ideology is succinctly stated in this quote from a letter that Senate Majority leader James T. Fleming wrote to federal officials of the Department of Health and Human Services:
' Evidence exists that our state currently serves as a welfare magnet, attracting applicants because of our relatively high benefits.'
(Hartford Courant, November 15, 95)
Had the letter been written before July 1st, 1995, this statement would have simply been incorrect. By mid-November the devastation wrought by the so-called welfare reform public act, P.A.95-164, (passed in January and activated in July), rendered it utterly ludicrous. Connecticut's welfare system is among the stingiest and most insulting in America.
There is a great deal of evidence , both internal and external, to suggest that the purpose of this reform is to make it impossible for poor people to survive in Connecticut. This leaves them with 4 options:
(1) Find jobs
( 2) Leave the state,
(3) Fill up the jails.
(4) Commit suicide. Since the poor seem ever to have found ways of hanging in almost everywhere 2, this can only mean that prison facilities will have to be expanded to handle the overflow of petty thieves 3.
This has been foreseen. Along with many other states, Connecticut's prison industry is riding on the wave of a construction boom.
The expressed rationale, obviously tailored for public consumption, suggests, if we give politicians credit for any intelligence, deeper considerations. They are now putting into practice what many of them have always known: that although the generic voter will balk at handing over two dollars in taxes to feed and clothe the casualties of our economic system, he will rush to thrown his hard-earned five dollar bill into the trough once he has been told that it is going to be applied to their 'rehabilitation' - a convenient euphemism for a variety of possibilities such as teaching them a lesson, exploiting them economically, or incarceration.
Not that the man in the street is heartless. I have had so much personal experience of the opposite that I cannot believe it for a moment. The problem is that he is easily frightened: spectres of drug gangs, juvenile thugs, racial vengeance, political terrorism, criminality rampant. Who can deny that , despite having gotten rid of the Black Plague, the Inquisition, periodic famine and feudal injustice, the world we live in is increasingly dangerous?
Likewise, as federal money for state welfare programs is drying up or runs the risk of being eliminated altogether, the individual states, ( those in particular with Republican majorities ), are taking advantage of the fact that a great deal of money is suddenly becoming available for the police, for the F.B.I., for systems of surveillance, biometric identification law enforcement matSrial , computerized information systems, databanks, and prisons. We who are ever watchful of such, must steel ourselves against the temptations of paranoia, which encourage us to believe that Connecticut has made it impossible for the poor to survive for the express purpose of increasing its prison population! Prisons do, after all, make a lot of money for state governments. We have but barely entered the golden era of Republican surrealism. Much worse than this is sitting in the wings.
Like most of America's mis-educated population, State Senator Fleming is innumerate. His notion of 'relatively high benefits', which does not tell us what they are relative to, is but a preamble to a more ambitious exercise in statistical nonsense appearing further down in the same Hartford Courant article: In 1994, the Connecticut Department of Social Services surveyed its welfare recipients . Those who had recently emigrated into Connecticut were requested to state their reasons for having doing so.
" The survey showed that 56 percent of recipients moved to Connecticut to live near family or friends; 11 percent came for job-related reasons; a 9 percent came for higher welfare benefits.......Fleming, though, said that 9 percent of the families would represent close to 6,000 recipients."
Were Fleming's figures correct, this would mean that , in a single year, (6x103 )/(9x10-2) = (2/3 ) x 105 = 67,777 persons moved into Connecticut and went on the dole. Yet the total number of all Aid for Dependent Children (AFDC) recipients in the state is only 60,000. One can safely assume that most of the families,(or persons; this confusion prevails in both the article and in the statements by Fleming), have lived in Connecticut for a great many years.
The truth is that, since last July, nobody in their right mind would put Connecticut on their list of places to move to for the purpose of collecting welfare benefits. Despite this, the myth prevails, that individuals, families, gangs, or even tentacular criminal organizations have elaborated schemes to defraud our honest taxpayers. Typical of such thinking is this excerpt from P.A. 95-164 :
" Any person or vendor who defrauds or assists in defrauding any town as to the support of its paupers,....., shall be subject to (1) the penalties for larceny.....OR (2) REPAYMENT TO A TOWN FOR THE DEFRAUDED AMOUNT" ( Section 21,(b), amended)
The article in which Fleming's comments appeared is devoted to a critical issue with consequences that reach as far as the present showdown between Congress and the Presidency; as I write this, the government risks being shut down for the second time in a month. Governor Rowland has personally committed himself to the institution of a 'two-tier' system for welfare beneficiaries. Under this system, persons resident in Connecticut for less than a year will only be entitled to 90% of all benefits available to others:
" TO PROVIDE THAT A PERSON ARRIVING IN THE STATE, APPLYING FOR BENEFITS FROM THE AID TO FAMILIES WITH DEPENDENT CHILDREN PROGRAM FOR THE FIRST YEAR OF SUCH PERSON'S RESIDENCY, BE ELIGIBLE TO RECEIVE NINETY PER CENT OF THE BENEFIT LEVEL FOR WHICH HE QUALIFIES."
This provision is supposed to go into effect on January 1st,1996. It , and other recent legislation requiring the creation of dozens of regulations, is in violation of federal laws unless the state receives waivers from the federal statues that forbid them. The over-confident zeal of the present legislature which, until the November budget crisis, assumed that these waivers would be forthcoming automatically, has led the state government to jump-start the welfare system with hosts of directives4 to local welfare offices. It is as if a liquor store owner were to start selling alcohol to 18 year olds, because he is confident that a waiver of a 21-year legal limit law will be coming through in about a year. Until these waivers materialize, what he is doing is technically illegal.
In fact, the Clinton administration has said that it will reject the maintenance of two-tiered systems for welfare benefits on the grounds that these violate the constitutional protection of the right to travel. The state would only be saving a minuscule amount of revenue by this regulation 5 , but the Rowland administration has reacted very defensively to this initial rebuff. It may already realize that large portions of this insulting legislation against the poor will not survive the federal winnowing.
Embarrassments from their access of enthusiasm have arisen since the very first day of the new dispensation, July 1st. A legal challenge in federal court in the last week of June forced the state to send out 60,000 supplemental payments to AFDC families ,and to postpone the projected schedule of benefit cuts for one month. The state, in violation of federal law, had not bothered to notify anyone that their AFDC checks would be cut anywhere between 27 to 35% ! Imagine the parents of a family of 3 in subsidized housing going to their post office box for a $581 check, only to find one for $500. Without the intervention of Legal Aid, there would have been no notices, no warnings, no explanation, no complaint procedure. This blunder, which cost the state millions of dollars, also exposed the intentions of the people who have designed the welfare reform bill. It may also indicate the direction from which its death-knell will sound.
II. The Federal Waivers
There are two welfare programs in Connecticut: Aid for Dependent Children (AFDC) which has about 60,000 families on its registers, and General Assistance,(GA), largely for single unemployed persons, which serves about 27,000 individuals. None of these people, including myself, have been told that the implementation of the reform is only provisional, and that some of it may ultimately be judged illegal.
P.A. 95-164 begins with the list of 12 federal waivers that are required before the act can be put into effect. These include:
(1) A 'lifetime limitation' of AFDC benefits to 21 months, starting on January 1, 1966. Some exemptions are listed for cases of extreme need. This waiver will also cover the controversial ruling that grants exemptions for adults caring for children conceived before its parents went on welfare, yet denies them to those taking care of children conceived after welfare - the so-called '10 month clause'. With the rarity of virgin births in recent times, the state is probably playing it safe to penalize all possibly culpable parties.
This is yet one more example of the vindictive and insulting mentality that has shaped this legislation. Politicians nowadays are not hesitating to stand up in public and make prejudiced speeches about those welfare mothers who are making babies on purpose just to swell their welfare checks. There may indeed be a few very crazy mothers like that around. Otherwise it is difficult to imagine anyone bringing a child into the world who will have to be cared for on less than $90 a month.
(3) Simplifying and streamlining the eligibility rules: this is a euphemism for making almost everyone ineligible.
(4) Increasing the power of the police and relevant agencies involved in collecting child support payments.
(5) Freedom from federal regulations that will allow the state to make it easier for persons on welfare to find and to hold permanent jobs. This, I suspect, means freedom from the restrictions imposed by federal labor laws. It also reflects another persistent myth among conservatives. Many people somehow believe that giving people a little bit of job training before throwing them off welfare will automatically create jobs, even though the unemployment rate in Connecticut has been holding steady at 5.3% for some time
(6) Freedom from federal regulations covering the disregard amount: the amount of money that persons can legally earn and stay on welfare. There is much treachery in this seeming benevolence. The present policy, instituted in July under the assumption that the federal waivers would be granted, allows a person enrolled in the General Assistance program to independent earnings of $150 a month. Since the normal grant is between $350 and $150 a month, this brings the amount permitted for covering rent, utilities, clothes, transportation, laundry, toothpaste, pencils, whatever , to between $300 and $500.
Food stamps are administered by another program, through an agency known as the Department of Income Maintenance
( D.I.M.) Anyone who honestly tells the D.I.M. that he has earned up to $120 a month, will have the complete amount taken off his food stamp grant. It has not always been like this. The food stamp administration had its own disregard amount until the activation of PA 95-164 in July, when it was cut to nothing. This means that it is a waste of time to do any work unless you are able to earn more than $500 a month, the zero-point of the system. A cute Catch-22: the axioms of arithmetic guarantee that someone on G.A. cannot have more that $500 a month.
There are ways around this, such as traditional "money under the table". What the disregard waiver will do is to create a disenfranchised and vulnerable labor pool for low-level tasks, officially illegal, ununionized, lacking all safeguards or rights, without workman's compensation or other benefits, at unregulated wages. It is safe to assume that the corporate hierarchy running the state of Connecticut has decided that such an underclass is needed for its vision of the future.
(8) The creation of the two-tier system previously discussed
(10) Another '10 month law" that would cut the incremental AFDC benefit for a child 'conceived under welfare' to $50.
(11) The purchase, installation and operation of biometric and photographic identification equipment: the creation and computer storage of information obtained through retinal scanning, hand geometry, finger imaging and facial recognition.
These affronts to the spirit and letter of the Constitution have been judged indispensable to the war against welfare fraud. The costs of procuring and administering these technologies will be enormous, perhaps more than all of the money lost through welfare fraud over the year.
In the absence of reliable information , politicians and their publicists are having a field day outdoing each other in exaggerating the scale of cheating perpetrated by the poor on the rich. An article in the Middletown Press of August 30th revealed that Connecticut does not have a central computer database for welfare statistics. One knows therefore that the oft cited figure of 600 for the number of persons in jail who are supposedly indirectly collecting welfare through their friends and relatives, is just something drawn out of a hat. Though worthless, this figure has had considerable political clout: it was used in the Legislature to ratify a provision that now requires welfare recipients to show up in person at designated places in their towns to collect their checks, rather than getting them through the mail.
This essentially covers most of the provisions that will require federal waivers for them if they are to become law. They also include most of the amendments in PA95-164! The towns , however, have been instructed to implement them immediately. They will not have to answer in the eventuality that the federal government decides that most of what they have been instructed to do for the past 6 months has been illegal. The responsibility will fall on the shoulders of government agencies such as the Department of Social Services, who may find themselves having to make substantial reimbursements to the public and pay large fines. It may not only be the welfare cheats who will be going to jail , but state legislators as well.
Collecting together the opinions expressed in the welfare reform welfare recipients, a hideous caricature of the welfare recipient emerges, composed in equal parts of ignorance, stinginess, prejudice and malice:
* Welfare recipients are nomadic gypsies who tend to migrate to those states with the best welfare systems.
* They have babies just to receive extra benefits of $100 a month. If this figure is cut to $50 they will stop having babies, at least not while they are on welfare.
* Given half a chance all of them are frauds. Biometric identification files, like those used for wanted criminals, must be maintained for all of them.
* Their refusal to work has raised the unemployment rate to 5.3%
*They secretly make oodles of money on the side. One way to catch them is to construct a disregard amount system that tricks them into declaring what they earn.
* Half of them have a brother in jail whose name they are using to collect benefits.
* They regularly abandon their children.
* They should really all be locked up.
II. Childcare
In anticipation of a phenomenal surge in the numbers of working mothers, that will result when thousands are kicked off the welfare rolls, the Rowland administration has announced its intention of investing millions of dollars in expanding childcare services. The amount currently being spent by Connecticut is $29 million per year. By the end of 1995 it will be $37 million; by 1996 it will be $44 million. It has already produced a raft of educational brochures and videotapes to be shown to welfare parents to 'educate them into choices available under the existing child-care system.'
An article on October 10th by Hartford Courant's political columnist Tom Condon, states that the very concept of childcare for working parents in Connecticut is a farce: the Childcare Certificate Program which provides daycare for low income families is closed to new applicants for the next ten years. In early October there was not a single slot open in any child care center in the state. Finally, although the AFDC grant does include childcare privileges, you lose them all the minute you start working. It therefore encourages mothers not to work.
Although the vision of hundreds of welfare mothers dropping their children off at childcare centers as they goose-step into the workforce may be idiotic, it is also not prompted by benevolence. This was the substance of Dole's "compromise provision" which , on September 19th, obtained the required bipartisan support needed to pass the welfare reform bill through the Senate. Dole won over the Democrats by agreeing to provide $8 billion for childcare programs.
IV. Lifetime Limits
The strangest provisions in PA 95-164 are those which define 'lifetime limits' on the right to welfare. As the law now stands no Connecticut resident who is not totally disabled will receive - in their entire lives - more than 16 months of General Assistance , nor more than 21 months of AFDC. The United States Congress has voted to impose a lifetime limit of 5 years, but this appears to be one of those things that Clinton has promised to veto . With a temporary hold on the Congressional limit of 5 years, pending the outcome of the most serious budget crisis in recent history, it is very unlikely that Connecticut's '21 month' and '16 month' limits will be able to go into operation by January 1st as promised - legally at least.
Under the new law, one has a right to petition for 6 month extensions after a delays of a year. The commissioner of the Department of Social Services may then decide that benefits can be extended or renewed for "good cause". This notion of good cause is nowhere spelled out. Another amendment states that if you have used up your AFDC rights you are also automatically disqualified from applying for GA. Here is the exact wording:
" On or after July 1..1995, financial assistance...... shall be limited to.....a twenty-four month period of eligibility with no more than ten months of assistance in the first twelve months of eligibility and no more than six months of assistance in the second twelve months of eligibility. At the end of such twenty-four-month period of eligibility, an employable person may petition the commissioner every twelve months for a six-month extension of such eligibility in good cause, as determined by the commissioner6.
"The commissioner shall seek waivers[.....] (1) to limit benefits of a family to a period of twenty-one months...."7
" No person whose benefits from the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program have terminated [.....] shall be eligible for financial assistance under the General Assistance program."8
Let's examine the consequences of the General Assistance statute. In the first place we see that this lifetime limit must be used up within two years of one's enrollment in the program. The clock starts ticking on the day you are admitted; you are out for good after that time. Nor do you have the right to spread these 16 months over 10 or 20 or 40 years.
Within the first year you are free to distribute the 10 months of benefits as you wish; after an obligatory 3 month recess, you are then free to distribute the remaining 6 months over what remains of the second year .
Whatever arrangement you decide, it is just common sense to remain in the system for as long as possible. Let's say that someone - as in my case - slips on a concrete floor and injures his back. He can't work, so he applies for, and is granted welfare status. Within one month a rich uncle dies, leaving him $10,000. The law now obliges him to drop out of the welfare system.
The back injury was serious though not disabling. With thrift and luck he nurses this $10,000 over a two-year period. In the meantime a complication has arisen from the injury that turns into crippling arthritis. He goes back to the welfare office , where he is told that, because he received one month of benefits two years ago, he is not entitled to another penny for the rest of his life. He may be able to petition the commissioner for 6 months, but he must wait a year to do that.
Evidently the only sensible thing to have done ,was to ask his uncle's estate to postpone giving him his inheritance until his 16 privileged months were exhausted. The system, in other words, discourages anyone from finding a job for two years.
The basic penalty for any infraction of the regulations is a 3-month suspension from welfare benefits. Even though your 10-month membership must be run within the first year, any suspension time goes over into the second year. It is not clear if welfare recipients have any leeway in the matter of distributing these three months. It is also not clear if one is obliged to go off welfare for the first three months of the second year, even if one only received a few months of benefits (owing, say, to suspensions), in the first year.
Let's imagine that someone has been suspended from the system after receiving 7 months of benefits. This means that he cannot collect another penny for the rest of that year. After waiting 5 months he enters the second year. Must he now wait another 3 months, for a total of 8 consecutive months, before he is entitled to his remaining 6 months? One can have every confidence that the administrators of the new law have not even begun to weigh the dilemmas that are bound to emerge in adjusting the complications of time limits, cut-off dates, suspensions, petitions, and so on: the reform has been operative for less than 6 months, and there will be plenty of time to worry about such things later. Time enough, at least, to prepare for the riots.
The situation with respect to AFDC is similar, except that the 21-month lifetime limit must be used up in a single continuous block. Children, you know: one has to worry about them.
V. General Assistance, Continued:
Grants, Rent and the Bathroom Clause
General Assistance gives 4 kinds of monthly grants to single individuals. I myself have been placed in the category of "dislocated worker" which I find so admirably suited to me, and at the same time so richly comic, that I am tempted to spread catsup over my copy of Das Capital and eat it for dinner.
(a) The unemployable. 'Unemployability' is defined in various ways. To quote the manual:
"...the determination of his employability ........ shall consider factors, including but not limited to: (1) Age; (2) Education ; (3) Vocational Training;(4) Mental and Physical Health; and (5) Employment History.......9
If you pass the 'unemployability test' with flying colors, GA entitles you to $350 per month. Under the old law, the amount was $356 . The creaming off of $6 per month is something of a mystery to me, unless it will be going to pay off Rowland's gambling debts. 10
(2) Persons collecting GA who live in commercial housing are entitled to $300 per month. The term 'commercial housing' covers hotels, the YMCA, shelters, 'Single resident occupancy' rooming houses, and so on. Note that if you live at the YMCA and share your room with someone else, you fall out of this category and join the ranks of persons in 'shared housing'
(c) Persons living in shared housing are entitled to $250 per month.
" Shared housing" is an idea which is not easily pinned down. What it really means is any rental situation that is not commercial. Commercial begins at '3 rental units', but if the landlord lives in the building and shares the kitchen, the property isn't commercial anymore. Getting into the fine print , it appears that any residential situation in which the landlord shares anything with the tenant is shared housing: even a bathroom! Therefore, if my landlord and I share the bathroom, I lose $50 /month on my welfare grant.
A long list of possibilities may be drawn up from the definition of 'shared housing' that appears on page 3 of Policy Transmittal
# GA 95-3:
" A recipient is considered to be sharing a dwelling when he/she shares a bedroom, a bathroom, or kitchen with another person, unless he/she lives in commercial housing."
All that this tells us is that shared housing is anything that isn't commercial housing:
" Recipients that live in commercial housing are considered to be living alone unless they share a bedroom with another person.
( Commercial housing is any residential building other than an apartment building, which contains at least three rental units. Examples of commercial housing include single-room occupancy dwellings (S.R.O.'s), the Y.M.C.A.'s."
"In addition, employable recipients who reside in an emergency shelter, a substance abuse treatment facility, a boarding home, transitional housing or other institution are considered to be living alone and will continue to receive the monthly maximum award of $300 per month if the facility is non-rated , i.e., if the facility does not have a state rate. The purpose of this provision is to ensure that recipients living in non-rated shelters, treatment facilities, boarding homes, etc, have sufficient funds to pay for their stays. Towns are strongly encouraged to vendor these payments to the facility.
The final sentence means that shelter residents shouldn't be able to get their hands on the check. These statements taken all together contain a lot of double-talk and don't tell us what shared housing is. Reading between the lines, we realize that what the state wants to do is to define a very narrow category of "commercial" residences, and lump everything else into "shared housing". For example, all apartment houses are considered to be shared housing, even if they hold 100 rental units, each with their own bathroom, kitchen, etc. Most of the items in commercial housing are state run facilities, so that all the state is doing is to make sure it gets its own money back. It does this very simply by raising the rent to $350 a month!
(d) The fourth category consists of persons who, officially, don't pay any rent. They are entitled to a grant of $150 per month. This is not a bad arrangement, provided that one is also receiving food stamps. Since almost all rental arrangements will eat up the entire amount of the welfare grant, someone who is free from any rental obligation will be better off by $150. This suggests that the best way to deal with this payment structure is to find some kind of house-sitting or work-exchange arrangement to cover one's rent, then collect the $150 to use on one's favorite vices: drinking, gambling, textbooks in Differential Geometry, etc.
My own history with the welfare system since September can serve as a good illustration of the peculiarities of the present system. After a summer spent in Boston, where I covered the Fermat's Last Theorem Conference at Boston University for an Internet newspaper, I returned to Middletown around Labor Day My present plans are to stay in Middletown at least until June, 1977. 11
Upon my arrival I moved into the downtown YMCA. The Middletown Y is something of a stickler on security. When you come there the first time, you have to talk to the manager, David Jacobs, whom everyone calls Jake. You have to say how long you intend to stay and what your job prospects are. He will then decide if he wants to rent you a room. If you are accepted, he hefts a camera and takes a mugshot for his private rogues' gallery.
These preliminaries had been accomplished the year before. This time Jake knew me, thought I was a rich academic like all the others, and rented me a room for as long as I wished. The rent in the Middletown Y is $15 a night, very cheap for a clean and secure little hotel room in today's America, There are no cooking facilities, and $450 per month was far more than I could afford. I didn't intend to stay long.
Then on September 7th I slipped on a waxed floor (Ferment IX#6) and injured my back . With the help of David Downs, an acquaintance at Community Action for Greater Middlesex County,Inc. , an organization that works on housing issues for the very poor, (CAGMC ), I applied for and received welfare.
I was now living in what even the state of Connecticut would officially describe as "commercial housing" . That meant that my grant was $300 per month: my rent of course was $450. A phone call to Jake from Sharon Kupiac of CAGMC got the rent reduced to $85 per week: over the month this works out to $360. Not only did I need to find a way to come up with $60, but since the Y doesn't have any cooking facilities, I couldn't apply for food stamps. My tiny amount of savings quickly evaporated.
However, by the end of the month I'd found a marvelous living arrangement in the house of a friend, Ron Kuivila, on the Wesleyan University music department faculty . ( Such arrangements are what I am looking for as long as I am in the area: Wesleyan subscribers take note). It is less than two miles from the university, 12 in a quiet suburban setting, airy, well lit, with studio space for working. Ron and I have worked out an arrangement at $250 a month. Since I now have the use of a kitchen I am able to get food stamps; and since I am also covered by medical insurance, I need only be afraid of being killed by doctors.
In compliance with the law I reported my change of residence within a few days. A few weeks later I received an information sheet from the Middletown Welfare Office explaining that my monthly grant had been cut - to $250. Ron and I , assuming that the cut reflected the reduction in rent, concluded that he should have charged me $300, leaving me with $50 for the necessities of life.
At the welfare office, however, I learned that no-one in "shared housing" receives more than $250. Since I did not yet realized that "sharing" could involve as little as a bar of soap, I decided that they had made a mistake, and asked for a fair hearing.
The law states that if you ask for a hearing to contest a change in your benefits , they will be maintained at the earlier level until the hearing is held. If the decision goes in your favor, you can keep the difference; if it goes against you, you have to return it.
A few days later I went back to the welfare office and picked up the fair hearing forms. I filled them out and returned the next morning to hand them over to my case worker. I will not mention her name because he job is not only hard, it is impossible, and I am not on a personal crusade to make her lose it. At the same time, I will not gloss over the facts.
At first she refused to take the forms. She said, in effect: " I know the law, Mr. Lisker. You haven't got a case. You live in shared housing."
" But I have my own room."
" That doesn't make any difference. Your landlord statement says that you share the building with your landlord."
Then I started to say: "When we filled out the landlord statement, we..." She interrupted my sentence and yelled:
" WE FILLED IT OUT? YOU SAID THAT WE FILLED IT OUT! I COULD HAVE YOU ARRESTED FOR PERJURY! I'M GOING TO ARREST YOU FOR PERJURY!!"
" Go ahead!" I snarled. I crossed my wrists: "Bring on the handcuffs!" This is one of my favorite gestures. It always disconcerts people.
Backing down on her threat, she persisted in her accusation:
" Doesn't it say at the top of the landlord statement that HE is supposed to fill it out?"
" We went over the questions together and he signed it."
" You were not supposed to do that! He is the only person who can fill it out! All right, I'll take your application and send you a notice for the fair hearing in the mail. I'm the person you're going to have to talk to, and I can tell you right now that you're wasting your time."
As soon as I got out of the office I went the two blocks down Main Street to the offices of Connecticut Legal Services. Randi Mezzy is the person there in charge of welfare law. We went over the guidelines together and realized that almost every kind of dwelling is considered shared housing. She made me a copy of Policy Transmittal #GA95-3 and a copy of parts of the Workfare legislation, because I also had a question about the coverage of transportation costs to workfare sites.13
That evening, a Friday, I left for Boston. I stayed there for four days. On Monday morning, I picked up a message left by Ron on the message machine of the phone of the house where I was staying. He said that my caseworker had called to say that my hearing was scheduled for Tuesday morning.
This constituted a serious emergency. I had not realized, though I should have known, that they would act so quickly. If I didn't show up for the appointment I could be suspended for 3 months. I had decided in the meantime not to contest the shared housing provision. There is a right time for fighting everything, and, as Hamlet puts it so well, "The readiness is all."
I dialed the caseworker immediately. When she came to the phone, I explained that after talking with a lawyer at Legal Aid, I realized why my grant had been cut.
" WHY DID YOU GO TO LEGAL AID. DIDN'T YOU BELIEVE ME WHEN I TOLD YOU THAT YOU WERE IN SHARED HOUSING? ARE YOU ACCUSING ME OF LYING TO YOU?"
Such attitudes towards the right to a second opinion are certainly not unique to her, although most people are not so up front about them. I mumbled something, then said : "Thank you. I'll be back in Middletown tomorrow and stop by the office." There was another form I had to turn in.
"Tomorrow? Where are you now?"
" In Boston?"
" In Boston? What are you doing there?"
" I'm looking for a job."
" HOW DID YOU GET THE MONEY TO GO TO BOSTON?"
" Some friends drove me up here in their car."
" Who are these friends?"
At this point I stared at the receiver and said to myself, there are some things in life just not worth holding onto:
" Look. That's none of your business."
Surprisingly, she accepted this. "All right, Mr. Lisker. I'll see you tomorrow."
Since then we've had no trouble. The rule is that you say "Yes" when they want you to say "Yes", and say nothing the rest of the time. ( This article flagrantly contradicts that rule).
Hey; they're giving it to you for free, aren't they?
( First of a Series of Two Articles)
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The Internet connection is not bringing in the fabulous sums that were predicted at the end of the summer. Consequently, Ferment will still be coming out in a text form. It is very much in the throes of some kind of interim disequilibrium. The publication will be somewhat sporadic for the time being. I am pretty sure that we will be seeing from 6 to a dozen more issues emerging before it either closes down or becomes absorbed into the Internet or its equivalent.
Therefore, anyone who wishes to send in a subscription renewal is strongly encouraged to do so. I am able to integrate this money into the "disregard amount" because the caseworker at the D.I.M. is permitting me - provided I keep comprehensive records - to discount the amounts needed in the production and mailing of Ferment. This guarantees me a negative income by the end of each month, which is enough to keep the food stamp check at $119
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Steamshovel Press, a lively magazine dedicated to conspiracies and their theories, has come out with an anthology of its best articles from the 90's. I have four articles in this anthology. It is called :Popular Alienation: A Steamshovel Press Reader and is available from Illuminet Press: P.O. Box 2808 , Lilburn Georgia 30226.
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1This research has been made possible by an ongoing grant from the Connecticut Department of Social Services' welfare program.
2I need only call attention to the wise observations of some ancient Hebrew moral philosopher, to the effect that they are always with us
3The upper echelons are all in insurance, gambling and politics.
4included in the guidelines of "Policy Transmittal No. GA 95-3", issued to state employees on June 20.
5if we define 'savings' as money that gets withdrawn from the public to end up in the pockets of private individuals
6 PA 95-164 SECTION 9(a)
7 Ibid: SECTION 1(b)
8 Ibid: SECTION 7(g)
9Ibid: SECTION 9(b)
10 A metaphor of course: the 3 words 'Rowland', 'gambling' and 'debt' play the ambiguities at every level.
11A combination of career ambitions and difficult personal involvements are keeping me here.The former only , will be described in the next issue of Ferment!
12Although a professional denigrator of the academic world, I wouldn't dream of living anywhere that wasn't walking distance to a good campus.
13In the next issue
#4.