Last time, I asked readers to write me their thoughts concerning the present state of politics in Washington in regards to the over hauling of the welfare system. Your response was overwhelming and basically two central thoughts emerged.

Anthony in St. Paul wrote,"It is about time that we started to do something about all the lazy people on welfare."

Anthony has made a good point, however, there are many people on welfare that have no other means to survive. There are the disabled, children and mentally challenged who cannot provide for themselves. We need to take care of these people. I agree with Anthony that lazy people need to get to work. However, if we do not take care of those who cannot for themselves, we will find many more homeless on the streets. And in many cases, people dying on the streets as we have now, just more numbers. The politicians in Washington need to realize this fact. The changes include turning over the management of the welfare system basically to the states. Many states are ill prepared for this change though. Several states do not have social programs in place for education, training for jobs or day care centers for single working mothers. How do we expect a single mother to go back to school, train for a job so she can get off welfare and become self sufficient. Where is she suppose to park the kid? I think the politicians need to back off of this for now until they see the shortfalls of their so called "changing government for the better" before they make things worse. Too many times, the political machinery roars in, because it is a "party" thing to do. They do this for votes if you haven't figured that out by now. What has happened too many times is, we wind up with a bigger mess than before.

This is where I agree with Anthony. Single, unwed young women under the age of eighteen without a high school diploma have become the largest segment of the population giving birth. Hello...wake up America. Here is the problem which has always been the problem ever since welfare began. We have generations that have remained on welfare because of this. Why? Because we haven't had social programs to really help these woman.

Delores from Houston wrote,"Women come across the border and wind up on welfare." This is a very true statement. The fact is our government allows any woman crossing the border pregnant, even though she may not be a American citizen. Once she gives birth, the kid and her go on welfare and food stamps. But yet, we have our own elderly that are dying daily because they cannot afford to buy their medication. Who are the politicians that have allowed this to happen? My feeling is, let these people go back to their own country and let that country take care of them. Politicians, because of their lack of common sense or care of the American people have made America a place of milk and honey for countries that do not want to take care of their own.

Richard from Oklahoma wrote,"Are there not two classes and always will be?" Yes, there probably will always be two classes until we realize that it simply should not be. The middle class has been shrinking for the last ten years because of increased taxes on the middle class, especially single individuals and married couples without children. And despite what you have heard about Clinton raising taxes on the middle class simply is not true. The facts are that the Reagan lowered taxes and the Bush administration passed over 90% of the changes on the Internal Revenue charts for increased taxation. I'm registered as a independent and don't play political favorites. I'm not mentioning this to rave about Clinton or support him. I support the politicians that are doing something good and not worrying about writing a book and becoming a multimillionaire while being in Congress. Nearly every politician that has entered Congress as a "middle class" person over the last thirty years has left Congress a multimillionaire.

America is fast becoming the land of the super rich and the super poor. Why? Because all of us have been sitting back living the so called American Dream. (I'm including myself until I became enraged and politically involved four years ago). We are wearing blinders and have let these politicians do it to us. Don't mean to sound like I am preaching, but we better wake up before it is too late.

If the present changes to over haul the welfare system take place, there will be an increase in crime if people that were on it are not able to acquire jobs. It may take some time, but it will. The new changes mean that people on welfare cannot be on the system more than two years at a time. If the programs are not there to educate and train these people for jobs, just where do the politicians think that these people are going to get money for food and basic survival, and even drugs, for those that are on welfare using drugs. Yes, there are many people on welfare that use drugs. Do you want these people breaking into your home stealing things to survive. Do you want to support their drug habit? You better start putting bars on your windows and double entry steel bar locks on your doors. This may sound extreme, but look to the past. Ten years ago, before all the radical changes where made to welfare that allowed for all these other people to get on welfare, crime was at it's highest in this country. The politicians didn't know how to deal with increase of crime due to this, so they put in place a pacifier for these people. Provide FREE money so they would stop stealing. And guess what... it worked, but like I said, we are taking care of every other country's poor but our own. As Susan Powter said, "STOP THE MADNESS!"

America is the land of the free, but just how free are we today? We have the Internal Revenue service breathing down our backs. By the way, the IRS is not a legal branch of the government, it was never approved by Congress and the taxing system need to be replaced with a more fair flat tax. This is a topic for a future column. However, I would like your thoughts about being able to make purchases using a debit card. However, the catch is, your thumb print will be scanned by a scanner for identification. Just how free is this? Why, because your thumb print will have been put on the card in the magnetic strip on the back of the card. Plans are in place by the major credit card companies to have this system in place by the end of year 2000. It will also provide better tracking for IRS to collect bigger taxes if cash is not used. Are our personal freedoms slowly being taken away from us? Will you be able to live like this? What happened to... give me life, liberty and justice as it is written in our constitution? We only need to structure our society around those three simple words. Sadly though, it appears we have lost this simplicity and why? Maybe it has to do with what we are letting slide by in Washington? Something to think about.