DETROIT — A Michigan Lottery $2 million jackpot winner from last year is eligible and collecting some food stamp assistance under a loophole state officials have been working for months to close.Read the rest here.
Leroy Fick, who lives near Saginaw, took a lump sum payment for his June 2010 prize, buying a house, a used 2008 Audi and investing the rest, attorney John Wilson said on Wednesday.
"If you're going to ... try to make me feel bad, you aren't going to do it," Fick told a reporter from local station TV5.
The income he receives from investing the remaining money leaves Fick eligible under federal rules for food assistance of "far less than $5,000 for the year," Wilson said.
"There is no asset based testing for it, it is all based on income," Wilson said. "The amount that he has invested of this winnings spins off an amount of income and that income is such that he is eligible."
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6 comments:
Hell, I wouldn't feel bad, either.
I'd have no problem with simultaneously using the food stamp system's flaws to enhance my competitive advantage while advocating the program's abolition.
That's nice, Vis. Those of us who work but still sometimes find ourselves needing help to feed our children would be so grateful to you. Perhaps we could come to your house for dinner after working our 2-3 part-time jobs.
Teena, you may want to reconsider your premises.
First, receiving food stamps isn't a zero-sum game. My receiving food stamps wouldn't decrease anyone else's receipt; that's why we have a budget deficit.
More important, the food stamp program is an assault on the economic growth that creates the affluence that makes charity possible. Economic growth has done more to benefit the poor than any charity or donation.
Frankly, I'm not misled by the propaganda about the nobility of the program's intention. Its intention, and the intention of all government-run welfare programs, is to crowd out private charitable giving.
By exploiting the programs rules to enhance my competitive position, I'd be redressing an imbalance created by the government assault on my private economic activity, and I'd simply be implementing the venerable Orthodox legal principle of rendering unto every man his due.
You'd be welcome to come to my place, but my culinary skills are limited to boiling eggs. Still, a low-carb diet of hard-boiled eggs would be preferable to government cheese, in my view.
Oh, please. My frustration with you was using the program to get rid of the program. I'm a Christian, and I work-a lot. If I were to rely on private charity, my family and I would have starved long ago. So, unless you're willing to host three people every day, three meals a day, for the three months a year we're eligible for FS, because my employer uses a loophole to prevent paying me my UI I really don't want to hear it. I was raised middle class, the child of two hard-working parents who worked their way out of poverty. I've never heard them complain about social welfare programs-as a matter of fact, I suspect they are proponents. Since entering the ranks of the working poor in the last few years, I've hear lots of pious claptrap from people who want to argue that private charity should completely take over from gov't. Well, I haven't seen it in action. No one, including government programs is preventing you from being as charitable as you like to whomever you like. Before you make snarky remarks about programs that in many cases prevent people (my child) from going hungry several months out of the year, ask yourself how many people you or your parish feed on a regular basis.
And at least at the FS office, they don't insist I grovel sufficiently so they can feel good about their "charity."
The Federal government is a significant financial partner in my endeavors, if one considers the cash flow that streams from my pocket into its coffers. That cash flow isn't available for charitable, or any longer-range, purposes. I'm not unique in this respect.
Incidentally, my motives for my unquestionably paltry charitable giving range from obedience to "sticking it to the man" (don't ask). Nowhere among my motives is "feeling good", believe me.
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