In order for disabled people to receive any sort of financial assistant for their housing, food, bills, medical supplies, etc., they cannot ever have more than $2,000 of resources to their name. Ever.
It doesn’t matter what it’s for.
You’re saving up for a new wheelchair?
For college?
To put a downpayment on a house?
Hell man, you just happen to budget for once in your life so that you can have some extra money in case something bad happens?
Your benefits immediately get cut off if you’re a cent over $2,000.
And, even worse, you usually end up having to pay back every dollar the government gave you that month.
So say you get $400. If they find out you’re twenty dollars over the resource limit, you have to give them all $400 back and you undergo an investigation of your funds to see if you will continue getting money.
“What if I spend the money that day?”
Doesn’t matter. In fact, from what I can tell, people who do this are actually put under investigation for fraud.
And yes, this system literally kills people.
Remember when “Guardians of the Galaxy” came out? one of Rocket Racoon’s creators, Bill Mantlo, suffered an accident in 1992 and has irreparable brain damage.
before the movie came out, Marvel gave him an exclusive preview screening. SOme people were upset because they felt if Marvel was really wanted to thank mantlo, they should have donated money to Mantlo’s family.
Bill Mantlo’s brother had to come out and explain: If Marvel gave them monetary aid, Bill Mantlo would lose his financial assistance.
That’s so utterly depressing.
disgusting
I have friends on welfare who won’t pick up a penny in the street because they’d risk the welfare they struggled to get for 10 years.
oh look another fucked up thing in this world. let’s just add it to the list. number 63858b
My brother has been on California State SSI for autism for the last 10 years, and he absolutely has to (no joke, HAS TO) spend all 720 bucks of his SSI every month, because if he puts it in the bank he risks losing his SSI altogether.
Sometimes, at the end of the month, he has no idea what to do with his money because the whole month went by and he still has 400-ish bucks in his account, and he fucking panics because he doesn’t want to get anywhere near 2,000.
And here’s the funnest part of the story!
One day he did a huge commission on Second Life and wound up earning 1500 bucks off of it, and he told the guy to donate it 500 bucks at a time over 3 months. The guy didn’t want to, and just donated all 1500, which put my brother at 2,036 bucks.
The state IMMEDIATELY (I’m talking less than an hour) called him up to tell him over the phone that they were canceling his SSI, because they noticed he had gone over the 2,000 buck threshold. He had to tell them that someone had made a charitable donation to him and that this was not a common occurrence in any way shape or form, and upon not believing him, my mother had to call to talk to them as his legal caretaker and say basically the same thing until they called off the cancellation of his SSI money.
He also had to cancel his renter’s assistance because it put him to 1,062 a month, so if he went 30 days without spending any money they’d cancel his SSI altogether. Like, none of us in the family have any fucking clue why that regulation is in place and it’s the stupidest shit in human history.
Please, legal side of Tumblr, tell me what positive reasoning this law has?
It’s not just money, though. Things you own can count against your resource limit as well provided that they’re not exempt and provided that they’re worth money.
Also, the rules about what is and is not exempt from being counted against your resource limit are incredibly vague and deliberately open to interpretation. Even things that are normally exempted like clothing or furniture could be deemed non-exempt if a capricious bureaucrat decides that it’s actually worth too much money and thus counts as an ‘investment.’
As someone who receives SSI this causes me a huge amount of stress.
This is so unbelievably fucked up
I knew a blind guy who apparently needed to get some kind of “medically necessary equipment” declaration to try to keep his computer from getting counted against the $2000 individual asset limit. He was in college, and really really needed access to screenreading software–which helped justify his even needing it at all.
That was also in the early ‘90s, when most people did not have PCs at home, they were considered more of a luxury item, and you could EASILY spend most if not all of that $2000 on a new desktop system. Forget laptops.
As much as the costs of basically everything but certain technology have gone up in the meantime, that $2000 individual asset limit for SSI has not.
A major purpose of allowing a certain amount of assets was: to cover major costs of an urgent nature, such as to replace a furnace or another essential appliance. The costs of such items have increased considerably since 1989.
Ted Cruz, according to CNN: “There is a small group of people on the left who are very, very angry”
Me, according to me: Dude, I’m center-left. I’m passionate but I’m the sort of well-behaved Lawful Good that shows up in a suit with talking points and a brochure
If I’m at multiple protests a month yelling my fool head off, please consider the possibility that SOMETHING MIGHT ACTUALLY BE WRONG
So my cousin and his wife have just had a brand new baby, Cooper, and he is really sick. He’s been in the NICU having seizures almost constantly since he was born last week and he was only able to start breathing on his own today, he has club feet that need surgery and a chromosome disorder that they haven’t identified yet. They’ll get the results for the chromosome disorder in a couple weeks, and for now he has an IV going into his head with anti-seizure medication.
The thing is, my cousin and his wife had absolutely no warning that anything was wrong and they were flown off the island to the children’s hospital on the mainland and my cousin thinks he’s lost his job from having to miss work, and they’re really struggling to support themselves away from home and even at home they are going to need a lot of stuff to support their new special needs baby.
If you can donate even a few dollars to help them survive this nightmare and look after baby Cooper I would be eternally grateful (and so will they!) He has had a really rough start to life and if you can help make it a little easier it would mean the world to me.
So, I forgot to include this, but Cooper also has a cleft in his lower back. It’s not spina bifida because his spinal column did seal and he can move his legs a little bit, but they aren’t sure what exactly the ramifications of it are yet. 😦
Any amount is greatly appreciated! Even a couple dollars will help them meet their goal!
Apparently the only time anybody saw my Grandaddy cry as an adult was after my biodad got drafted. His main comment on that was “For God’s sake, Billy, don’t be a medic!” Cue crying breakdown.
My Nana didn’t even snark when he proceeded to stay drunk for two days, she was that worried. (Both her parents had problems with it, and nobody was supposed to drink in that house. At least after they got married, he never went on a bender like that before or again.)
Yeah, he had served as a medic himself, with the 1st Infantry Division in North Africa. “At the end of World War II, the Division had suffered 21,023 casualties and 43,743 men had served in its ranks.” (X) He never talked about any of his war experiences afterward, and over 20 years later broke down like that when he did try to bring it up.
As for the state of PTSD recognition at the time (a longer quote than intended):
Medical personnel were puzzled that although over one million soldiers were screened out for psychological reasons, there continued to be staggering numbers of psychiatric casualties in war. In fact, even soldiers who had fought bravely on previous tours were being affected (Scott, 1990).
Overall, 25% of casualties were caused by war trauma, and this rate was even higher– 50%– for soldiers engaged in long, intense fighting (PBS, 2003). In fact, so many soldiers were affected that psychiatrists were confronted with the reality that psychological weakness had little to do with subsequent distress in combat. Thus, terminology changed from “combat neurosis” to “combat exhaustion,” or “battle fatigue” (Bentley, 2005). Reflecting the consensus that all soldiers were vulnerable to battle fatigue due to their environments, the U.S. Army adopted the official slogan, “Every man has his breaking point” (Magee, 2006)…
During WWII, treatment shifted to giving “mental patients” rest in safe areas (PBS, 2003). Other methods used by psychiatrists at this time included administering sodium pentothal (or other barbiturates) to induce repressed battlefield experiences, and even disbursing liquor to soldiers (PBS, 2003)!…
Although psychiatrists were advancing in their understanding of war trauma, combat exhaustion was not universally accepted. General George Patton was notable in his lack of sympathy for the psychological afflictions of soldiers. He is said to have slapped two soldiers who were recuperating in a military hospital while yelling to a medical officer, “Don’t admit this yellow bastard…There’s nothing the matter with him. I won’t have the hospitals cluttered up with these sons of bitches who haven’t got the guts to fight” (Magee, 2006). President Roosevelt received thousands of letters about the incident, most of which indicated support for Patton. “Ultimately, though, Patton was reprimanded, ordered to apologize, and relieved of command of the Seventh Army” (Magee, 2006).
And that was the people who spectacularly fell apart to the point of being incapacitated more immediately, not the ones who were “just” never the same after the repeated trauma. They were on their own, which may have been just as well given the state of understanding and what passed for treatment.
So much largely unacknowledged suffering there, yeah. The situation wasn’t great for Vietnam vets either, but their parents pretty much exclusively got the stiff upper lip treatment protocol.
I’m sure that helped a lot of them about the same as it did my Grandaddy. Who may not have gotten a decent night’s sleep between 1942 and when he died 45 years later. Never mind all the other lasting effects, and often the impacts on people close to them. Certainly not blaming them for it, but that can be hard on everybody. (Coming from someone dealing with PTSD for other reasons, in a family full of it.)
It’s overwhelming to think about, and that’s just combat vets from one war. Not even starting into all the other horrible shit going on at that time.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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