Entitlements? ‘Woe is me’ is contagious

I guess you could tell by my last column, “Responsibility? I am not your baby daddy,” that I really am ticked off at being forced to help support the financial weight of irresponsible people — and judging from reader’s off-the-charts response — this state must revamp the way it distributes social services.

The magnitude of the rage from angry and frustrated readers caught me off-guard but their message was clear: The safety net has fallen into an abyss while the quality of lives of the taxpayers footing the bill has sunk along with it.

How long is the taxpayer supposed to put up with this? How long are we supposed to just sit back and swallow what is being shoved down our throats?

We’re spending so much money on able-bodied people that other serious challenges and issues we face as a state are at or past crisis levels, such as funding more services for veterans, the mentally ill and physically disabled and prison reform.

At what point do we, as a society, arrive at enough with these benefits that are being handed out to adults like lollipops to kids?

Well, I’m at enough already and if our lawmakers are too filled with compassion or worried about votes to make tough decisions — then I’ll be the town crier and lead the people’s charge — because something has to give.

We are fed up with the reclassification of help that is now defined and spelled d.e.p.e.n.d.e.n.t. and with people living their lives on our dime.

It seems nobody wants to work. Nobody wants to tough it out. Everybody is screaming for help.

Hell, it appears some people won’t even wield a broom.

Life knocks you down and that carries no shame. But people are measured by their ability to get back up on their feet.

And I have never seen so many able-bodied people who have fallen down and don’t seem to be able to get up.

It’s like their ankles are broken and they’re no longer able to stand on their own two feet.

“Woe is me” is everywhere, infecting so many people of so many ages and so many races in so many places, it’s got to make you stop and wonder — is “woe is me” contagious? I mean, if you bump into someone who has it, is it like “tag, you’re it?”

I don’t know — but one thing is for sure: We got a whole bunch of urban and suburban drifters out here, and their 9 to 5 is going from one program to the next, one nonprofit to the next, one hand-out to the next.

And taxpayers are being taken for a ride — and on the hook for everything from housing and food to electricity and heating costs.

I don’t know about suburbia but I have lived in urban America my entire life — and if you have grown up in urban America, you know the difference between the people in need and the people who are just adding those benefits to the purse.

No matter how poor they are, low-income people will knock on doors to put food on the table for a hungry family. What they don’t do is take their food stamp card, go with friends to the 24-hour store at 2 in the morning — and dressed for the runway — order five steak-and-cheese sandwiches and three bottles of 5-hour energy for them to eat and drink.

Everybody sees it happening but nobody is talking about that.

I blame the state of Connecticut and its “swiss cheese defense” against fraud and there is little doubt that entitlements and loop holes in those entitlements have led to generations of people thinking they’re entitled.

And that isn’t going away. If you look carefully, it is easy to see why when little kids swipe food stamp cards at the corner store for candy and chips. Where is their parent’s pride? I guess my rants have people thinking I could care less about those less fortunate. Nothing is further from the truth.

I find it very difficult to write disparagingly about people who are poor, having a tough time or needing help.

Most people don’t come from where I grew up and don’t need some sort of help down the line. That’s just a fact a life for people who are born poor — black, white and otherwise.

For us, that ladder out of poverty is a beanstalk and without that giant hand of government assistance and charitable organizations, many of America’s poor people who now thrive, wouldn’t have a better life.

But still … some of what I am seeing these days is not about poverty or being poor.

All I know is I am working my butt off like some many Nutmeggers and other Americans and I am growing rusty being part of the motor that makes that machine run.

We need leadership who understands that taxpayers are at a tipping point and that lawmaker’s quest to cure social ills with benefits has backfired — and is now pitting people against people. That’s what happens in a state about to shell out $3.7 billion in welfare for 2017.

And most of all, we need a Doctor of Woe to mend these broken ankles so these people can stand on their own two feet.