Contributors

Friday, January 31, 2014

Who Was Ronald Reagan's Infamous Welfare Queen?

Remember when President Reagan used to go on about a woman who “used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year?" It turns out that the woman was very much real after all.

Small problem, though. She wasn't a lazy black woman from the ghetto as the story morphed into over the years. She was Linda Taylor, master con artist and feared criminal. President Reagan left out that part about how she was a kidnapper, baby trafficker, and possible murderer. Apparently, she also once impersonated a heart surgeon. Read the entire piece and see that she was far more than the poster child for government abuse that Reagan made her out to be.

Essentially, it was like saying that government is bad because Al Capone was a tax dodge.

1 comment:

Larry said...

No, your conclusion, as usual, is bass-ackwards. Reagan was arguing that government welfare is inefficient and filled with abuse and fraud, of which this woman was deservedly one of the most infamous examples. So basically, you're arguing that since she was possibly the worst that's been caught, the others don't matter or something? That's kind of like arguing that most murderers don't matter because they only killed one person and didn't even eat them. And really, you're just finding this out now ? Where the fuck have you been?