The Corruption of Welfare - Not so Corrupt

There is a hidden problem with joining the future that I rarely discuss, because it's not a problem inherent in technology. The lag of upgrades.

Technology is a sink or swim endeavor, not something that can be done willy nilly or half assed. The most important thing an organization must do is how decent IT personnel.

To better understand this I will use Washington state as an example of how to do it wrong. The specific point of interest is the Department of Social and Human Services.

This organization is notoriously a mess, the majority of workers are lazy and callous. Visiting in person was always the best method to take care of issues, however, visiting in person has an inherent issue with convenience.

The Moyer traditional method is to call by phone, which should have very few problems. This office ha's average wait times of 60 minutes, even if no one if being helped.

So it was great to hear that they finally have an online method available. That is, until you visit their website.

The Washington state DSHS website is designed as poorly as those old Altavista websites designed for people's parrots and gerbils in the 80s. The Lansing page is bland and login links are obfuscated, and none of it is mobile friendly.

When you manage to find the link to create an account they demand you choose a password based on insane criteria, like including a special symbol. This  ensures that you will forget the password in the future.

So you sludge through their poorly conceived login system, but you still have no access to what they want you to complete.

For that, there is another account system you have to find, yes, it is also obfuscated. Then you create a second passcode.

Okay, now you're ready to begin the rebel process, if you can figure out which text word you're suppose to click on. Instead of obvious menus or links, they bury the correct links in the actual text that drones on about different languages and how to get help if you can't read this page in English.

Ladies and gentlemen, the stupid of that one page alone is a threat to the sanctity of the internet. We have not  reached the end of our misadventure yet.

Once you start filling out the forms, you glance at the URL and notice, it now looks like a document on its own. The session ID is probably about 1k of data on it's own, excessive barely covers it.

Assuming your browser and connection are both perfect, in which case you don't need DSHS anyway, you get through and just wait for the letter telling you their decision.

Most browsers or connections will crash, that session ID and the fact they use JavaScript in ways the spaghetti monster never intended.

If you are a poor person who needs this service, you load the browser back up an navigate to the page again. Instead of your application, you are greeted with a warning that you have to wait 30 minutes for the other session to expire.

Yeah, they don't use cookies, and they have no way of tracking your IP address. In server scripts your IP address is very easy to check, even some of the laziest coders will connect that with the session for reconnects.

Alright, 8 hours later you manage to get this all done and now you can rest easy knowing you have renewed your much needed benefits. Then you get the letter explaining that you no longer get any benefits.

You have to call them anyway, wait more than an hour on the phone listening to the annoying voice telling you that it's better to use the system that just screwed it all up in the first place. This is not how you join the future, or save the planet, this is the result of bad hiring practices that result in nerds working positions where geeks should be.

I type this after being on the phone for 55 minutes, my second time trying to call to figure out why my medical renewal was denied in spite of no major changes. I am still waiting for an operator, and I was using my cheap $15 phone's keyboard.

The Biggest Issues Are Our Smallest Problems

Seattle is one of the least green cities in the USA, in spite of claims made by our tourism industry. Today I want to take the time to explain this in depth, as well as warn tourists what not to expect when visiting this area.

Western Washington is very egocentric these days, people here think it's the best state in spite of some major, and often hidden, flaws. I spent most of my life in Western Washington, as I was growing up I saw a very different region. When we were on the piers we looked out over the Sound to watch the mountains, on clear days you could make out the tall trees.

Today, anything past the shoreline on the other side is shrouded in gray, details lost to the smog. What makes this matter worse is that the city governments continue to claim they are working to keep it all green. None of the policies are actually effective ones, as if they are only pandering for votes.

For example, in Seattle the solution to too much traffic became "let's build a tunnel so more traffic can pass through without having to see how ugly the city has become." I watch the vehicles pass by and most are SUVs or other large vehicles with only one person in them. Mass transit here is fading because Metro and Sound Transit are too greedy.

So our air quality suffers, so much that in less than a week my windowsill is covered in black soot from the cars alone. City and state officials still claim it's not that bad here, some even add insult to injury by claiming we are the most green state in the union.

Now, the nitty gritty stuff. Most businesses here still ban nonhuman animals from their stores based on the state's outdated health regulations. The homeless are often corralled into out if site locations and centers, but we still have a huge problem with people being unable to afford even closet sized apartments.

The cost of living in Western Washington is three time higher than our government reports to the federal government. Most of the homeless in Seattle work. You read that right, many have two jobs but still cannot afford a place to live, especially with the prices of food here and our severely defunded food stamp program ran by a bunch of corrupt and lazy morons who care as much about the people they're suppose to help as one does about dog shut stuck to the bottom of one's shoe.

Why did I revisit all this? Because it's a huge problem with a lot of cities and states in the USA, denial. Many city and state governments want tourism to make up for their bad budgets, but all that does is create a vicious cycle where the citizens wind up with a bigger deficit and the cost of living sky rockets.

By lying about the problems, most cities in the USA are creating a vacuum of poverty, sickness, and pollution. The solution must now come from the people, stop touring. It's that easy, if you want to tour, go to Europe, Canada, or Mexico. Force the local governments to acknowledge the problems they are hiding from, force them to consider actually improving commerce in these cities to build a sustainable economy.

In the USA, we have a tradition of only taking care of issues when they scream at us for attention, look how well that worked for Detroit.