Government has no compassion

guest commentary by Jack Moseley, former award-winning editor of the Times Record

Government has no compassion. Just rules and regulations. Here’s why I feel this way:

Ruth and Charles King are both disabled. Their mobile home burned to the ground on Christmas Eve. And that’s just a fraction of the troubles they’ve had recently. You see, the state and federal governments have made their lives a living hell for some time now.

“Please don’t send us any money,” Ruth told me several weeks ago. “The Social Security people will just deduct it from the little checks we are suppose to receive monthly.”

Charles, who is confined to a wheelchair as the result of a stroke, and Ruth, who has a nerve-damaged back, each receive a monthly Supplemental Security Income (SSI) check for $137. Charles, a retired carpenter and ordained Full Gospel minister, also gets a small Social Security check. It all adds up to about $1,000 a month total income.

“I’m not sure when our problems really started,” Ruth told me, “but most of them seem to involve the government.”

In October, Charles suffered the stroke. After hospitalization and an attempt at rehab, the government wanted to put him in a nursing home.

“But Charles wanted to go home, and I decided I was going to take him home,” Ruth explained. “That’s when a social worker threatened me and said I could be prosecuted for negligent homicide and sent to prison if Charles died at home. I took him home anyway, and things seemed to be working okay.”

Then the roof on their mobile home started leaking.

“We tried to get help with that, and the congressman’s office found out that we could get a new home, but we couldn’t afford the $250 monthly payments on a new house. Then the state government said we could not get the roof fixed on a mobile home because it was a trailer and not a regular house.”

The Kings thought they had a solution when Charles suggested getting one of those surplus FEMA trailers just sitting there down at Hope. Sounded good to the folks at Crawford/Sebastian Community Development, but then there was another government hitch. FEMA trailers have to be put on public property, and the Kings own their own land on a unpaved, Crawford County road just off another unpaved road near Cedarville. They were left with a trailer with holes in the roof.

Toward the end of the year, a new state program would allow them to repair their mobile home, and they could afford the repayment charges. Great news!

But on Christmas Eve, the mobile home burned up as the result of a short in an electric oven. The Kings no longer owned a mobile home to repair.

The Red Cross, neighbors, churches, even strangers pitched in for a couple of weeks. The Kings received about $2,900 to help them get back on their feet. One church even bought a used mobile home and put it on the Kings’ land but kept the title in the church’s name.

Meanwhile, the wonderful bureaucrats at SSI informed the Kings that the $2,900 used for motel fees, food and replacement of basic stuff lost in the fire, would have to be deducted from their monthly disability checks. You see, the government said that was income.

The church said it would put the mobile home in the Kings’ names, but it would have to receive $250 a month for repayment and insurance

“We couldn’t afford $250 a month for a new house, and we couldn’t afford $250 for a used mobile home,” Ruth reasoned.

October to April adds up to six months of fear and frustration for the Kings. Charles has had several mini-strokes. Ruth at one point even threatened to move into an abandoned dog kennel.

At long last, the church has agreed to reduce the monthly charges for the used mobile home to $150. SSI, after examining the Kings’ bank account and determining that “we were not hiding money,” has resumed the couple’s monthly disability checks, which had been stopped.

It’s unbelievable cases like this that make me wonder, “What has happened to common sense in this country?”

All the Kings ever asked was to live their lives on their own land with independence and dignity and self respect. There was a time when people and government agencies would have said that was an admirable goal. How did it all get so twisted, confused  and stupid?

Life, luck and -30-.