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Welfare Recipients to Ride New Gravy Train
A controversial program, purportedly designed to make the benefits payment process for welfare recipients more efficient, was put into action today in the city of Chicago. "Entitlements" will be received via credit accounts created for everyone on the city's welfare roles. A card, dubbed the "Gravy Train Card," has been shipped to all adults over eighteen who were able to meet the minimum application standards (applicants had to recognize basic icons on a computer touch screen and possess adequate motor skills to use it), which allows them to access their, and their dependents', monthly allotment of cash at any participating ATM*.
The major backlash resulting from the program is due to the source from which the money is drawn. Whenever a Gravy Train cardholder makes a withdrawal, a robot inside the program's computer operating system randomly searches all existing bank accounts within Chicago's city limits. When a "donor" account is found that contains a sufficient amount, it is automatically tapped to make the payment for the cardholder. Depending on the amount requested, the system may have to tap several accounts, as the withdrawal amount may not exceed ten percent of a "donor's" account balance. The "donor" account holder is notified of the withdrawal by text message.
Proponents of the new program are quick to point out that the withdrawals are tax deductible, and that any given account will not be required to make a "donation" more than once every thirty days. "This simply cuts out the middleman for welfare benefits by not having to redistribute the payments after they are collected through taxes. By taking the money directly from the taxpayer's wallets, we're actually benefitting them by streamlining the entitlements payment process," claims the bill's sponsor, city councilman Seizama MuFuTu (real name, Harold Jones).
Chicago Mayor, Tony "Big Don" Sicilia, who signed the legislation the moment it landed on his desk, also rushed to assure anxious business owners that this program would not translate into a significant loss of income for those who managed successful food stamp laundering operations. As the food stamp program for the underclass is being phased out, a new program of benefits utilizing coupons is being put into place for the middle-class skilled workers who are unable to find a job in this moribund economy which has not so much as made an attempt at a gasp in over three years. The mayor's accounting office also predicts that the increased flow of cash on the streets from the Gravy Train Program will bring a much needed boost to the illicit drug trade, thereby cutting a sizeable amount from the city's expenditures as drug addicts receive their cards, leave the municipal rehabilitation clinics, and flock back to the alleys. "We are also expecting a surge in demand for imported, low to moderate priced, slave-labor manufactured, disposable goods, which is more encouraging news for local vendors," Mayor Sicilia added, reading from the report.
Opponents of the legislation, completely befuddled by the strained accounting projections, point out that the program has created several layered agencies to monitor and enforce the new program, and that it will be quite a while before the savings, if any, can be calculated. "But since we have received solemn assurances, from both the political and welfare communities, that the new program will not be abused, we feel that our objections would be best withdrawn at this time. It's only fair to let the program have the opportunity to be judged on its own merits," several of the spokesmen conceded in a public statement.
Although the council members attempted to implement the Gravy Train Program in secret, word leaked out earlier in the week. A massive run on the banks ensued as frantic patrons scrambled to retrieve their hard-earned cash "before the political gangsters can hijack it," as one irate man on the street put it. The mayor, "acting solely in the interest of the public good," issued an emergency executive order that put an immediate and indefinite freeze on all withdrawals in excess of one hundred dollars – excluding, of course, withdrawals by Gravy Train cardholders.
A protest march in front of city hall planned for today had to be cancelled at the last minute by the event organizers after they were unable to obtain a P.A.P. (Peaceable Assembly Permit). The PAP fee was increased from $150 to $250,000 in a separate executive order that was issued on the same day the Gravy Train Bill was signed.
*Since the penalty for a bank's decision not to participate in the program is revocation of their license to do business within the city's limits, it would seem that anything other than full compliance is physically impossible.
