The NY Post found out that some strip clubs have ATMs dispensing cash for welfare recipients and decided to make a stripper name joke on its front page! "$WEET CHARITY (And Destiny, Crystal, Bambi...)" And these ATMs aren't just at strip clubs—they are also at "bars, liquor stores, X-rated video shops, hookah parlors.... where they presumably spent their taxpayer money on lap dances rather than diapers."
Welfare recipients can receive between $158 to over $400 (for a family of four) in cash a month. Besides Club 11 and Club Heat, two strip clubs in the Bronx, the Post found that "welfare recipients us[ed] their EBT cards to make dozens of cash withdrawals at ATMs inside Hank’s Saloon in Brooklyn; the Blue Door Video porn shop in the East Village; The Anchor, a sleek SoHo lounge; the Patriot Saloon in TriBeCa; and Drinks Galore, a liquor distributor in The Bronx." Oh, and, "The Boiler Room, a gay dive bar in the East Village, had $120 and $60 transactions a minute apart on Jan. 17, 2011. The bar is around the corner from a Bank of America that takes EBT cards."
A Cato Institute fellow said, "This is morally scandalous. I have nothing against strip clubs, but that’s not what benefits are for. I don’t blame [recipients]. If you are poor, it's a crummy life and you want to have a drink or see a naked woman. I blame the people who are in charge of this." The Post points out that an upstate Republican, State Senator Thomas Libous, has been trying to pass a bill banning the use of welfare dollars on liquor, casinos, cigarettes, lottery tickets and adult entertainment but it's been stalled in the Assembly.
