Welfare cheaters rob taxpayers and the needy

Responsible oversight of welfare benefits is good government. Holding the poor up to public ridicule for cheap votes is mean-spirited, lowest-common-denominator politicking.

A Georgia House committee study that targets welfare cheaters appears to be on the high side of that not-so-subtle line.

The Foundation for Government Accountability, a conservative Washington nonprofit, estimates that about one-tenth of welfare recipients don't legally qualify. Better screening could save the state up to $175 million, according to Andrew Brown, a foundation senior fellow.

Some of the suggested remedies -- more thorough background checks, shorter benefits periods, in-person conversations with caseworkers about the exact terms of the process -- sound like common sense.

Another, described by Walter C. Jones of Morris News Service as "reductions of the benefits of adults and children for failure to work or look for it," raises a glaring red flag. If there's a gaping moral void in the politics of welfare "reform," it's a willful obliviousness to its effects on children, for whom sanctimonious political pronouncements about "personal responsibility" are grossly irresponsible.

If members of this committee can come up with ways to identify and punish those who cheat the system, more power to them -- as long as they make sure the right people get punished.

Phone problems

It sounds like a 21st century sequel to "The Shawshank Redemption." Except the contraband getting smuggled into prisons now goes way beyond just booze and dope and posters of movie starlets.

Now they're getting their hands on cell phones.

It's a major concern, as you might imagine. As reported recently by television station WSB in Atlanta, Georgia Corrections Commissioner Homer Bryson is caught between the potential danger represented by cell phones in the hands of criminals and a law that keeps authorities from jamming their signals.

Last week a drone crashed in a Georgia prison yard with four cell phones. About 8,000 phones (no, that's not a typo) have been confiscated in Georgia prisons just this year.

The ability of criminals to communicate with the outside world represents all kinds of obvious threats -- victim and/or witness intimidation, harassment and worse.

Laws against jamming the signals aren't about coddling inmates' "rights," but protecting public safety. The same signals that would block the phones would also interfere with 911 and other emergency calls, as well as law enforcement's own communications systems.

So for now, It's still a matter of finding and taking away the phones -- and trying to stop them from getting into the prisons in the first place.

This story was originally published October 15, 2015 at 5:14 PM with the headline "Welfare cheaters rob taxpayers and the needy."