Posted on 06/25/2012 11:03:52 AM PDT by Hojczyk
Americans spend $80 billion each year financing food stamps for the poor, but the country has no idea where or how the money is spent.
Food stamps can be spent on goods ranging from candy to steak and are accepted at retailers from gas stations that primarily sell potato chips to fried-chicken restaurants. And as the amount spent on food stamps has more than doubled in recent years, the amount of food stamps laundered into cash has increased dramatically, government statistics show.
As a result, fraud is hard to track and the efficacy of the massive program is impossible to evaluate.
As the House debates the once-every-five-years farm bill, the majority of which goes to food stamps, there is a renewed and fervent call from a broad spectrum of camps that the information - some of the most high-dollar, frequently requested and closely held secrets of the government - be set free.
The District said it would be illegal to tell the newspaper how many food stamp dollars were flowing to each local vendor, but first offered to sell The Washington Times the information for $125,000.
“Why don’t you just pay the charges? Your paper has a lot of money,” said David Umansky, spokesman for the District’s chief financial officer.
Told that the newspaper would not pay, the CFO’s office then said that only JP Morgan, to which it contracted out operations, had access to the store totals and that the office had never looked at them. After six months of the local government attempting to extract the information from JP Morgan, the District finally said that releasing the information would be illegal.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
In the case of my exwife, I was going through divorce and proved to the court she was commiting food stamp fraud and that she had entered the marriage fraudulently.
Liberals in charge there ignored all the evidence, gave all the custodies of my children to her, and put her right back on food stamp.
This is what Obama is doing: he is betraying the country with MExican illegals and fraudulent feminist armies, just so he can get elected and the country be secured away from jailing him once the Russian and CHinese come in after the army has been perverted and dwindled.
I’ve been around food stamps, back when they were paper.
One strange thing was that if you did not use them all for a couple months in a row, you got your benefit reduced.
This led to a situation where the recipient MUST go buy a couple of tenderloins, a cooked lobster or two (raw lobster or shrimp not covered, but the grocery store would steam it for you). This usually happened at the end of the month. Just to keep at the benefit level you were at. I knew someone who’d buy a roast, then invite folks over for a dinner, and charge them some small amount, sort of like a rent party.
And there were huge bags of rice and blocks of a cheese-like substance like fireplace logs, sacks of beans, and instant milk.
cutting food stamps by $1/month can save a half billion dollars per year.
This article is very misleading. The food portion of the money on an ebt card cannot purchase the following: hot food of any kind, laundry detergent, soap, toothpaste, toilet paper, paper plates.
The food portion, or credits, can purchase soda, candy, cheese doodles, ringdings, twinkies.
This doesn’t make sense to me -
There is also a small cash allotment that could theoretically be used at a fried chicken place, but it would be used up after four or five meals.
We're on the wrong road............ >
We saw a shrimp vendor - the truck and camper kind - with a “We Accept Food Stamps” sign in their front windshield!
I am so pissed off over the food stamp (EBT card) fiasco. The whole mess should be dumped and we just use UPS or Fed Ex or even the post office to deliver a box of powdered milk, powdered eggs, dried potatoes and some cans of soup to these peoples homes each week.
At most, it should cost about 10 or 20 per person per week.
If this doesn’t piss you off, what’s up??
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hYeRJyiPAgk#/watch?v=hYeRJyiPAgk
Rather than focus on how some poor and/or unfortunate people are spending their food stamp money, why not focus on getting the economy back on track so folks don’t need food stamps?
Making stores report on what’s being purchased, and then folks examining the data and second guessing purchases, then trying to “outlaw” certain items, sounds like the creation of a new multi-billion dollar government department, as well as adding costs to retailers.
Plus, who is going to determine what is “taboo”? Michelle Obama? Too much salt in that soup, no soup for you! Too much sugar in that Gatorade, so you home-bound cancer patients who need it to rehydrate lost electrolytes, too bad!
Sounds like a politicized boon-doggle waiting to happen.
I don’t have a problem with that as shrimp is food, albeit and expensive one. If they had been selling velvet pictures of Elvis, then that’s a different question.
I was approached by a woman in WalMart one evening and she asked if she could pay for my groceries with her EBT card and I was to give her the cash. I turned her down, of course, but she continued to seek others for the same deal........
Now That I think about it, I should have done so, then walked out of the store without giving her the cash............
Because most on food stamps have no intention on being contributing members of society. You cant turn back dependence without a social revolution..
Dependence will inherently end when the host dies.
When the gov’t can’t deliver any more, or people stop accepting fiat money because it’s worthless,
they’re going to starve or turn to crime. And most are too lazy to steal.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.