Taxpayers pay for me and my 14 kids, but I'm not on welfare

The more I learn about the octuplets' mother, the worse I feel:

Suleman, who lives with her mother… acknowledged in the NBC interview that she was struggling to support her six children before the birth of her octuplets [but]… She denied that she was on welfare — a comment her publicist later clarified.

She can’t pay for her fourteen children. She’s receiving large welfare payments from taxpayers. She’s a single mom living with her parents. But she has a publicist!!!

Imagine if this woman were African-American! Media criticism of “welfare queens” would be 24x7, and the subtext would be that they are all living large on your taxes.

(Similarly, most terrorist acts in America are committed by white people — think Timothy McVeigh — but the media treats white terrorists as lone nuts while conveying the impression millions of Muslims worldwide are actively plotting to blow up America.)

Suleman is paying her bills almost entirely thanks to government assistance. But she’s not on welfare!

“In Nadya’s view, the money that she gets from the food stamp program … and the resources disabilities payments she gets for her three children are not welfare,” Furtney said. “They are part of programs designed to help people with need, and she does not see that as welfare.”

I’m having flashbacks to Joe the Plumber, who has repeatedly benefited from welfare (“I once was on welfare, my parents twice!”) but didn’t let that stop him from condemning the entire concept of taxation and government spending: “Was it patriotic for Joe Biden to say ‘take my money and give it to other people’? That’s patriotism?”

And then there’s Suleman’s fertility doctor, who appears to be both incompetent (“of the 61 procedures Kamrava conducted in 2006 — the most recent data available — only five resulted in pregnancies and only two of those resulted in births. One of those births was Suleman’s twins”) and corrupt (“Kamrava required patients to pay their bills in cash, which was then put in an envelope and given to Kamrava’s wife, who “never entered the payment into the computer and never deposited the payment in the bank” so that Kamrava could avoid paying income tax on the money. The clinic kept two sets of books, one for insurance payments and one for cash payments, the lawsuit alleged”).

Posted by James on Tuesday, February 10, 2009