WELFARE THE DESTROYER

God bless my mother who worked five days a week, eight hours a day for a dollar an hour back in the 1960's.   Mom was a single parent who had always been a very hard worker.  Prior to the cleaning jobs she worked in various local mills during WW II and took on pretty much every challenge.  I have really come to admire all she did.  In my mind she was a living example of Rosie the Rivetter.  She did a man's work and handled it. My earliest memories of this hard working single parent was how she made her way to work each day, relying on a lift from a friend or family member to and from work since she didn't know how to drive. She tried to learn once later in life when she had gotten remarried but, that didn't end to well as she crashed the car into a neighbor's garage.  That was the end of that.  Mom returned to walking and getting rides from family or friends.  Now mom not only had to raise me but, she also was forced to care for her own mother.  So the three of us lived in the same 4 room apartment until my grandmother passed away when I was twelve.   As I recall grandma was ill a lot and mom would end up being the one responsible for the bills,  despite the fact that she had five other sisters and one brother living in the area.  Most times none of these aunts or uncles were much help and if mom wanted to go out to a PTA meeting or to visit a friend, I would have to watch grandma. Grandma, was a big burly old Slovak lady who could be pretty rough to deal with.   Fortunately,  she never really gave me a problem.  I would get all her medicines and help her go to the bathroom and basically babysit her when mom went to work.
My point here is that mom never took welfare in her life and even though she was lucky to make 7 or 8 dollars a day, she paid her bills, bought and cooked the meals and took care of all the family business including keeping me in line.  Mom, like most people from that generation was driven to do things the right way and to work for everything she got.  She did not have the mentality or the makeup to do otherwise.  Thankfully, she passed that quality on to me. 
This is a big part of the reason I am quite disgusted with these career welfare families, whose chief accomplishment is to pass that "take, take take" mentality on to their children and grandchildren.  Especially, aggravating is that many times you see these slobs with multiple kids (with several different last names), smoking, going to bingo or just sitting around doing nothing.  They have no concept of working for money or volunteering or doing any type of positive community service.  Our government has helped create this nightmare with all the giveaway programs over the past 40 years with no end in sight.  What the hell ever happened to welfare reform?