Budget eliminates funding to assist poor in burying the dead - Michigan

http://michiganmessenger.com/49267/budget-eliminates-funding-to-assist-poor-in-burying-the-dead

Poor residents of the state of Michigan who lose a family member will lose an assistance program to help pay funeral costs.

The state spent $4.1 million in the last 12 month helping low income residents bury a close relative, reports Michigan Radio. The program, which is designed to assist in covering funeral costs that average $7,000, has seen cuts over the last several years.

As recently as ten years ago, the average payment to help a family bury a loved one was $1290. The state reduced the rate over the years. Since 2007, the maximum the state would pay is $700. Last year the average payment was $569.

Phil Douma, executive director of the Michigan Funeral Home Directors Association, tells MR’s Lester Graham that the budget will help pay for unclaimed bodies. That has been an issue in Wayne County, reported the Wall Street Journal. In fact, that plight drove Department of Human Services Director Maura Corrigan to pledge to cut the backlog in freeing up cash for the hundreds of bodies awaiting burial assistance. This new budget would only pay for unclaimed bodies, MPR reports.

More at the link --

Are you one of those people who thinks we should further fuck over the poor to give tax breaks? Or should they forego rent or food in order to pay for funeral services?

Don't be cryptic -- spit it out.

Nature's perfect food.

:spank: smartass :rofl:

:evilgrin:

:hi:

mulched up human carcasses to cattle and pigs, but "no one could have foreseen" that the company that gets the contract for disposing of human roadkill would try to squeeze out some extra $$ by mincing Grandma.

and then this?

We have a real saint amongst us.

http://www.marylandcremationservices.com/?gclid=CMKW3ZeBhKkCFUF95QodTkK1UQ

I'm sorry, but if a family can't pull together $875.00, they should probably forgo getting out of bed in the morning.

I had been unemployed for two years and was selling plasma to have ten bucks in my pocket.

I couldn't have come up with $875.00 if my own life had depended on it.

Fortunately, my mom had prearranged everything herself a year or so before.

Enjoy your stay, it will be a short one.

I guess about half of American families should "probably forgo getting out of bed in the morning".

http://newzchief.com/average-american-family-is-economically-fragile.html

The National Bureau on Economic Research released its troubling findings from a recent study of American families’ readiness for “emergencies.” Pegging $2000 as the price of a serious car repair, hospital ER visit, appliance breakdown, or major home repair, researchers asked study participants if they could come-up with $2000 in thirty days, and they further asked how the people would do it. The results: approximately half of the participants said they could not pull together the funds they needed in time to meet the emergency. More precisely, 22% said they “probably” could not find the cash; another 28% responded they “definitely” could not scrape-up $2000 even if they used every resource and trick they could imagine.


The average American family "probably could not" pull together $2000 within thirty days.
Not surprisingly, most low-income families responded they would have little or no hope of borrowing or financing $2000. Researchers did express considerable surprise, however, their studied showed so-called “middle class” families were more cash-strapped than their low-income neighbors. More than half of middle-income families expressed pessimism about eking-out the cash an emergency would require.

Of course you already knew that.

Sell their loved ones to science?

Karma has this funny way of reminding the arrogant they've gone too far.

get behind me, satan

Obviously you live on a higher plane of existence than we do.

done away with also?

Another "milk of humann kindness" post.

problem solved. my work here is done.

grovel & expose yourself & ask strangers to send money.. It's sad but if you are poor, you are expected to beg:grr:

And it's unnerving how most think it's *okay* for poor folks to beg.

So is carwashes & bake sales for cancer treatment:grr:

put a damn jar on the counter of a convenience store and hope it doesn't get stolen before enough is collected

to help someone out.

Our fucking country is sick in its' soul.

will remind the peasantry just who is in charge. And begging is illegal, peons, so get lost.

:sarcasm:

in order to bury their loved ones.

There is already a blackmarket for organs -- we just haven't seen it rev up here -- yet.

Get with the program.
:sarcasm:

their own backyards.

It's the states that have all passed kinds of laws about embalming bodies and where bodies can be buried. So fuck the state, bury your dead bodies where you want and how you want.

sw