-By Warner Todd Huston
Here is the waste and fraud that your tax dollars are put to, America. Senator Tom Coburn has alerted the nation to a 30-year-old man in California named Stanley Thornton, Jr., who is paid by Social Security to lay about his house and pretend he is a baby replete with diapers, baby bottles for nourishment and a 300 pound “nurse” to take care of him.
No kidding. This guy pretends to be a baby and we, the people, send him Supplemental Security Income benefits to do it.
Of course, this California nut claims that he is mentally unable to cope with life and that his SSI benefits are needed because he is “disabled” by his mental state of thinking he is a baby. But Coburn thinks this guy is just scamming the government.
“Given that Mr. Thornton is able to determine what is appropriate attire and actions in public, drive himself to complete errands, design and custom-make baby furniture to support a 350-pound adult and run an Internet support group, it is possible that he has been improperly collecting disability benefits for a period of time,” Mr. Coburn wrote in a letter Monday to Inspector General Patrick P. O’Carroll Jr.
Amusingly, the Washington Times reached out to little Mr. Thornton to ask his response to Coburn’s charges. In reply, Thornton threatened to kill himself if the government cut off his freeloading.
“You wanna test how damn serious I am about leaving this world, screw with my check that pays for this apartment and food. Try it. See how serious I am. I don’t care,” the California man said. “I have no problem killing myself. Take away the last thing keeping me here, and see what happens. Next time you see me on the news, it will be me in a body bag.”
Be careful what you wish for, Mr. Thornton!
Still, I find Thornton’s reply proof of Coburn’s charges. After all, I’ve yet to se a real baby that can reply cogently — even with threats — to an email. Heck, I’ve never seen a baby yet even able to type “goo-goo-ga-ga.”
Thornton certainly seems to be a great example of the sort of fraud and abuse from which our social system suffers.
(H/T The PJ Tattler)
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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