sometimes Christians get under my skin. I spend time with a wonderful group of people each Sunday morning. They're a great group as long as we stay away from politics (and yes, I'm friends with lots of Republicans and I'm pretty sure that I'm the most liberal member of my church.) The problem is, I have a hard time divorcing my politics from my religion. God says to care for the poor and the less fortunate. I find that pretty compelling. Unfortunately I think too many of us are willing to overlook the poor because they must be doing something to deserve their fate. Whenever the topic of poverty comes up you can count on someone pointing out that poor people seem to find money for cell phones, video games and other luxuries implying that those people are scamming the rest of us. I don't doubt that there are people receiving public assistance who are cheating the system. My question is do you think that is the rule or the exception? Do you really think every poor person is walking around talking on a Blackberry? As an aside, do you think there are more people scamming the public assistance system or people cheating on the income taxes? How many overstate their charitable contributions to get just a little more on their deductions. My point: Even if there are people scamming the system, that doesn't relieve us of our call to care for the poor and the least of these......does it? 5 myths about welfare: Myth #1: The typical welfare recipient is a black inner city single mother. The Census Bureau's most recent annual poverty report found that urban black mothers constitute less than one out of six of all poor households. Rural white families account for more--one out of five. White surburban families accountfor even more--one out of four. Myth #2: The poor are lazy. Forty percent of poor adults work, although many cannot find full time jobs. Indeed, even when they do they may still be in poverty. Some 11 million jobs in 1991 paid less than $11,500, $2,000 under the official poverty level for a family of four. Of those poor adults who don't work, 90 percent fall into the following categories: 22 percent are disabled, 17 percent are in school, 21 percent are elderly retirees, 31 percent have family responsibilities. Myth #3: Welfare mothers breed welfare daughters. Two long term studies reported by the House Ways and Means Committee in 1992 found that only about one in five daughters of "highly welfare dependent" mothers themselves become highly dependent on welfare. The rest rely on welfare sporadically or not at all. Myth #4: Throwing people off the welfare rolls will eventually improve their lives and save taxpayers money. The most celebrated experiment in welfare reform has occurred in Michigan. Governor Engler completely eliminated his state's $240 million General Assistance(GA) payments to 83,000 childless, able bodied adults.Only 8 percent of these former GA recipients found employment and they earn an average of only $120 a week. Many sell blood for $20 a pint. Over one third lost their homes when the program ended. As one study notes, if only 5 percent of these former GA recipients end up in prison or a state psychiatric institution all the taxpayer savings from ending General Assistance will be lost. Myth #5: Welfare is cheaper than creating well paying public jobs. In his book "Securing the Right to Employment", Philip Harvey calculates that in 1986 we could have achieved full employment by creating l0.4 million public service jobs. He further assumed that the average annual wage would be $13,000. The cost of such a program would have been a daunting $142 billion. But when we deduct from this sum the taxes that would be paid by these new workers and the savings from drastically reduced unemployment insurance payments, welfare , Medicaid, food stamps and other expenditures directly linked to low income and unemployment overall we would have spent $13 billion less. A full employment program, even excluding the social savingsfrom reduced family violence, more stable communities, and less crime, pays for itself in reduced welfare expenditures.