Welfare Money Spent On Luxury Items [View All]

[exboyfil]

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/27709217/detail.html?treets=atl

In Georgia this year, recipients will receive $52 million in
TANF dollars, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, commonly
known as welfare. A Whistleblower 2 Investigation revealed
thousands of dollars spent at liquor stores, strip clubs even
bowling alleys by TANF recipients.

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Interesting article.  What would be even more interesting
would be the use of data mining to really determine what is
going on in welfare spending.  It is easy to point to a few
examples of abuses and indict the system, but these data
mining techniques can be used to assess additional areas of
fraud (like unreported income etc).  What will eventually
happpen, if welfare fraud detection is done in this fashion,
is that the purchases on these cards will go towards necessary
goods and services once again?  If fraud is occuring, the off
the books income will be spent instead.  I really hate to
think that this spending is not fraud enabled, because this
means that desperately poor families are not spending money on
neccessities.

On the flip side aren't these welfare beneficiares entitled to
privacy in their spending decisions?