Posted on 07/03/2012 6:00:37 AM PDT by Kaslin
My son called me, furious.
“I was just in line at the grocery store, and the girl in front of me had all this food and paid for it with an EBT card,” he told me.
“Okay,” I said, trying to calm him down. “You’ve lived here all your life--you know that’s normal in L.A.”
“Yeah, but her boyfriend was in line right behind her and he had beer and all kinds of alcohol and then he got cigarettes and they paid for it with their EBT cash card after they got all their food!” he yelled. “I saved all week to buy my stupid groceries. I clipped coupons to save a few bucks, bought off-brand things and then I ended up paying for all of their food and their party stuff, too!”
I didn’t know what to say because basically he was right.
The public relations makeover for the Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card is not only changing the entire system, it’s also taking away the last bit of “good shame” (the type you feel when you’d rather not be doing something) previously associated with using food stamps.
The EBT card looks like any other ATM or credit card:
And in California, you’re not only allowed to use your EBT cards at almost any fast-food restaurant, they actually seem to encourage it with large signs in their windows, billboards and advertisements. It’s simply no big deal anymore. You just swipe your card and there’s your food.
(By the way, why isn’t Michelle Obama all over this “free junk food” thing? But I digress…)
The easy-to-use EBT card has, of course, already had its share of abuses.
In a 2010 Los Angeles Times report, EBT cards were being used in places like Indian casinos and strip clubs.
According to The Times, it was discovered that nearly $5 million in cash benefits were spent or withdrawn from ATMs at casinos and poker rooms between January 2007 and May 2010.
“The cards, which provide recipients access to federal as well as state cash, were also used in tourist destinations, including the Las Vegas Strip, a remote Hawaiian island that is home to two Four Seasons resorts and on cruise ships leaving from ports around the globe,” The Times reported.
To try to combat the abuses, a bill was introduced last year by the U.S. Senate Finance Committee which bars welfare recipients nationwide from using their EBT cards in casinos, strip clubs, liquor stores, massage parlors, medical marijuana dispensaries, bars and even cruise ships.
California liberals immediately called the bill “discriminatory”.
Jessica Bartholow, a spokeswoman for the Western Center on Law and Poverty said, "These measures come from a place of wanting to smear the names of low-income people who are looking toward the [welfare] program to help end hunger and homelessness."
In then-California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s defense, he fought to combat welfare fraud--including the use of fingerprinting food stamp recipients-- but he was shot down every step of the way.
It’s not just California-- EBT abuse is happening nationwide. In Washington, Republican Senator Mike Carrell tried to pass a bill that would ban the use of EBT’s in tattoo parlors, bars and gun shops.
“In Washington State EBT cards and their PINs are sometimes sold on sites like Craigslist. Then the sellers report them stolen and get new ones,” Carrell said in Spokesman.com. The report says that approximately 37,000 cards a year are reported lost or stolen and are replaced.
The good news is that a phenomenon is happening throughout the United States in which regular citizens are starting to take a stand.
In Peterborough, New Hampshire, 65-year old store clerk Jackie Whiton refused to sell cigarettes to someone using an EBT cash card.
Whiton claimed she initially didn’t realize that there were two different types of EBT cards: one used strictly for food and one that can be used as a debit card for any items, including cigarettes and alcohol. However after being reprimanded, Whiton told her manager that she still wouldn't sell to EBT users because she didn't think it was right.
"I made the statement, 'Do you think myself, that lady and that gentlemen should pay for your cigarettes?' Whiton told the New Hampshire Sentinel Source. "And he responded 'yes.' He was very capable of working, so I told him to get a J-O-B."
She was fired soon after.
Yes, Ms. Whiton was wrong since the rules in her state say it is okay to use EBT cards for the purchase of cigarettes and alcohol—but our question nationwide should be why is this even possible? How can “free” alcohol and cigarettes help poor people?
Maybe the only good thing about this EBT bonanza is that it is making a lot of struggling 20-somethings like my son and his friends very angry.
Kids who were previously Democrats are now seeing the difference between what Obama and his regime are promoting in America—complete government dependence—and the Conservative/Republican stance, which is self-sufficiency.
For a political party that is always whining about ‘leveling the playing field,’ it’s not looking very ‘level’ to people like my son and his friends, who actually have to work hard for a living and are realizing first-hand that they are the ones paying for someone else’s food--alcohol and cigarettes.
Otherwise all those groceries (which have to be those specifically allowed by USDA ~ apparently electronically enforced) are going to be charged to the state or local welfare cash account that is also accessible on the EBT card.
Some sophisticated systems should allow you to get your food stamp purchases charged separately while you use your welfare cash to buy your cigarettes ~ SIMULTANEOUSLY and invisibly to other people standing in line.
All things are possible with electronics!
That's what they do ~ chickens are the best though because a poor man can slaughter and eat the chicken in one meal with little waste. Cows are a problem ~ which is why the Sumerians invented those little clay 'bulls", and then invented "press in bulls', and finally went from their accounting system for bulls to the world's first written language.
If they'd stuck to gold and silver you'd be illiterate!
I once stayed in a Holiday Inn but they were out of cinammon rolls.
Get rid of all EBT cards, food stamps, WIC vouchers and every other program and go back to commodities. Stand in line for your cheese, flour and eggs and be damn happy that you can get that.
We live in an age where machines do most of the work now and create most of our wealth. Automation is only going to increase. A percentage of the population cannot compete with machine labor. These people are essentially human pets and their numbers are going to continue to grow and so will EBT. We can't permanently deny cigarettes and alcohol to them, and maybe we don't want them all living to age 110 anyway. Democrats would make better pets though if Obamacare removed their opposable thumbs so they couldn't open a feed bag of Doritos without supervision, and had them spayed.
From what I understand, the sale won’t go through if its alcohol or cigs. Could be wrong though.
I can’t for the life of me figure out WHY I am constantly bombarded with “Sign up for food stamps” commercials on the radio. Two little old ladies discovering they both use food stamps and how great they are to stretch budgets. People are being asked to guess which of 10 people in their life is going hungry. It’s like the government is BEGGING people to get on the dole.
Can anyone explain this to me? You’d think the government would want to make it at least a little challenging to become a dependent.
They are better served by McDonalds than their own junky mothers.
Here's what you can do though. Get involved with one of those interdenominational missions in the inner city ~ just anywhere. You go there you'll find Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists and so on. They work together ~ these are REAL CHRISTIAN MISSIONS ~ in this modern time in the world's most powerful nation. Imagine how tough this job is some where else.
Teach a child or two how to cook hamburger ~ and potatoes. Teach another child how to use this asian instant noodle packs.
That's the easy part. Now, find some cheap pans ~ so cheap their mothers can't sell them for crack ~ so cheap it can stay around their one room apartment.
Find someone else to help you finance this because the need is deep. Oh, and spoons ~ forks ~ something to cut with. A plate. A bowl.
I think you get the idea. Get the children up to speed. Now, teach them how to stand in line for those commodities. There are such places in these neighborhoods.
That's how you do charity ~ a step at a time. Eventually we'll get this thing beat.
At the same time America will once again become the world's lowest cost competitor.
Since she was fired, she'll find out that in the Obamaconomy that's much, MUCH easier said than done.
The 'free junk food' could be associated with blacks. Black guilt is a no-no. It's white guilt that pays off - pays off big and in big ways...
How are the EBT cash benefits any different than they were under Bush? In fact, some states are clamping down now.
Got this off another forum.
We should get it out there everywhere.
The Ten Planks of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto (and How Democrats Implement Them)
Abolition of private property rights (via eminent domain, zoning laws and UN Agenda 21)
Institution of a heavily graduated income tax (by calling it “taxing the rich”)
Abolition of all rights of inheritance (through a confiscatory estate tax on “the rich”)
Confiscation of the property of enemies of the state (through lawless application of asset forfeiture)
Centralization of credit into the hands of the state (Federal Reserve, bailouts of crony-capitalists, FTC, etc.)
Centralization of the means of communications and transportation into the hands of the state (FCC, DOT, FEMA, etc.).
Consolidation and subjugation of all major industries to central government control (EPA, OSHA, ICC, etc.)
Mandatory labor union membership (public-sector unions, automatic withholding of union dues, “card check,” etc.)
Equitable redistribution of all wealth (TANF, SSI, EITC, SNAP, etc.)
Free public education (and food and health care and cell phones and Internet access, etc.
The Cloward–Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined in 1966 by American sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward (1926–2001) and Frances Fox Piven (b. 1932) that called for overloading the U.S. public welfare system in order to precipitate a crisis that would lead to a replacement of the welfare system with a national system of "a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty".
Food stamps, SSI disability and underfunding of Social Security via Obama's tax cuts are all ways to break the bank.
Obama's handlers are not inept, they are evil. They care not the suffering that will befall our nation as long as they are the ones calling the shots.
Many people would rather have the power to distribute the last loaf of bread in a starving kingdom than grant freedom in a wealthy one.
I want to know why we are TAXED on the money we EARN, then TAXED AGAIN on the things we buy , and TAXED AGAIN on the money we don't spend?
The latest addition to the mix is that we will now be taxed on services (healthcare) whether we want them or use them.
LOL! Where have you been!
We worked our butts off to ‘reform’ welfare and finally made some positive changes when Newt was in power. We put time limits on people receiving welfare claiming welfare was a boost in a hard time, not a bed for life. Liberals just undid what we fixed in the dark and made it worse. That is the way life swings in the US.
Right now they are undoing what we put in place to keep criminals off the streets. The revolving door is back.
Dumb people are easily ruled, easily (mis)led, and good commie slaves, as long as they get fed.
The next 'revolution' is three missed meals away.
Enough free whiskey and cigarettes we can all get sick and get obamaKKKare!
Human pets? Even pets can be taught tricks to do. I'm sorry if certain jobs are "beneath" these people. I've noticed most construction jobs - that used to have the same amount of blacks and whites performing - are now mostly hispanic. Same with bussers in restaurants.
We can't permanently deny cigarettes and alcohol to them...
Huh? They can't be "denied"?? If they cannot afford to buy their own cigs and alcohol....by working at SOME type of job...then they can do without. I do!
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