My comment plays to Edgar Allen Beem’s recent Universal Notebook commentary of our governor’s proposal to drug test welfare recipients. No doubt Gov. LePage received another anonymous letter. (I suppose it sounds better then hearing voices.) But it also feeds into other newspapers’ recent articles about OccupyMaine and welfare fraud.

Suffice to say, it isn’t the single homeless person bleeding the welfare system dry, but rather the young mother of two, three and, do I dare say, even four (and quite often by different fathers). So, if drug testing might be unconstitutional, what say you to the idea of sterilizing the young mother after one child? That’s where the fraud is, and they live off that child bearing. And then we get to the lawyer representing OccupyMaine talking about that group being at the bottom of the economic ladder. I suspect those are college graduates who major and degree in the soft sciences and discover after a five-figure education debt they have no better opportunity then the people from the 1987 Tent City protest. (But they do.)

Interesting that neither competitor wanted to mention the real crust of welfare fraud and how the current Lincoln Park gang is, in addition to protesting economic disparity, also citing reasons why they should be forgiven their school debt.

John W. Russell
Portland