They're here! They're here!

It's finally happened! I've waited 18 months for this! No, it's not the new British Sea Power album, nor is it a Radiohead concert announcement, nor is it the latest shipment of Maxx candies from the Philippines (mmmm...menthol flavor...). It's the new TANF regulations! Hooray! Unfortunately, they're only on display at the Government Printing Office in downtown DC and I (alas!) work up in College Park so I wasn't able to see them and copy them. I tried to convince Andrew to take off work early and go copy them for me so that I could be one of the first non-ACF/HHS people to read them and report on them but he politely declined. Hard to fathom those Chamber of Commerce types. It does seem pretty bizarre that the GPO has to put the regulations on display before they get officially published in the Federal Register for all us plebians (right context?) to download and analyze (this will happen on Thursday). It also seems pretty bizarre that nobody from HHS or ACF leaked the regs on the internet. I mean, people leak music albums months before their release. All I'm asking is for someone to spend 30 minutes with a scanner (at the most) and get this out.

I was able to get my regulations fix though as I talked to a guy in the heart of HHS that knew all of what was in the regs. Seems pretty interesting. I was shocked to find out that earning a bachelor's degree can count as voc. ed and that job search can now be divided into hours and not weeks! Huge! Talk about giving in to the demands of the states and APHSA. It's got to be because the Bush administration doesn't give a flying rat's rear-end about anything except trying to find some spectacular policy issue to save Bush's legacy and making it slightly harder for states to count someone as participating is definitely not one of those policy issues.

I can't think of an appropriate picture for this at all so I'll add this absolutely absurd picture from the Nevada TANF website. Why should you trust your neighborhood welfare office when they put up idiotic cartoonish unprofessional garbage like this? How hard is it to be professional? I guess it's a form of humiliation for anyone who wants to apply to know they have to work with such a mickey mouse organization.