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US Government Admits $2.4 Billion Food-Stamps "Mis-Spent"
According to the most recent report from the US Department of Agriculture's Office of Inspector General, government "mis-spent" $2.4 billion on food stamps. While $2.4bn may feel like small amount in the present day of trillion-dollar debts, as The Daily Signal's Alexandra Gourdikan notes, the fact itself should raise concerns adding that the food stamps program is in need of reform. First and foremost, policymakers should focus on promoting work. Americans are willing to help those in need, but they also believe that people must do what they can for themselves.
This year the U.S. Department of Agriculture misspent $2.4 billion on food stamps, according to a November report from the USDA Office of Inspector General.
“Misspending” means the USDA gave a household either more or less food stamp benefits than it should have received. Historical data shows most misspending results in overpayments.
Although $2.4 billion may be a relatively small portion of overall food stamp spending, that fact itself should raise concerns. Food stamps is a massive program costing roughly $80 billion in fiscal year 2013, up from approximately $40 billion in fiscal year 2008 and less than $20 billion in fiscal year 2000.
Part of the increase in spending can be traced to the recession, but a lot is related to policies that have made it easier for people to get on food stamps and remain there. Even as the economy improves, the cost of the food stamps program is projected to remain near record levels.
As the Heritage Foundation’s 2014 Index of Culture and Opportunity shows, food stamp participation has skyrocketed. In 1970, less than 10 million people received food stamps. Three decades later it was around 20 million. Today, close to 50 million Americans are on the program.
The food stamps program is in need of reform. First and foremost, policymakers should focus on promoting work. As Heritage’s Robert Rector and Katherine Bradley explain:
Food stamps should be transformed from an open-ended entitlement program that gives one-way handouts into a work activation program. Non-elderly, able-bodied adults who receive benefits should be required to work, prepare for work or at least look for work as a condition of receiving aid.
Rector and Bradley’s analysis of 2010 data revealed, “Among the 10.5 million food stamp households with able-bodied, non-elderly adults, 5.5 million performed zero work during the month. Another 1.5 million to 2 million households had employment but appeared to work less than 30 hours per week. Altogether, each month, some 7 million to 7.5 million work-capable households received food stamps while performing no work or working less than 30 hours per week.”
Welfare programs should be based on sound principles. Americans are willing to help those in need, but they also believe that people must do what they can for themselves. Policymakers should pursue welfare reform that encourages self-sufficiency. Reforming food stamps to include a work requirement is a good step forward.
* * *
But then again - in a nation where work is punished... "the single mom is better off earnings gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income and benefits of $57,045."
What more can we expect but more handouts.
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Until they get rid of the Federal Reserve, end TBTF, and prosecute the financial crooks - EBT is yearly crumbs compared to the daily cheesecake slices served to Wall Street.
mmm alms for some of the the cheescake, please kind sir
I love that the welfare chart comes from the Department of Pubic Welfare in my home state of Pennsylvania. It really tells you so much about the place. Well, mostly about Philadelphia, but to a lesser extent everywhere else.
That's one way to raise GDP, give out more benefits than you're supposed to
Exactly, much bigger problems exist. For example: Torturing people is now seen as a good idea. Good work MSM.
Pay those taxes, Uncle Sam wants a little bit moar.
That $2.4 billion figure is the 'official' USDA number, based on an alleged fraud rate of less than 2%.
We have known for nearly 20 years that the fraud rate (at least here in California) is actually around 25%:
http://www.100percentcampaign.com/
Think about that: 1/4 of the TANF and 'CalFresh' (Food Stamps) funds are being stolen.
And, you want the good news? With literally no money appropriated for oversight, our office conservatively estimates that at least 2/3 of California's Childcare budget (yes, we pay daycare for welfare recipients if they are working on their GED, looking for a job, or working a part-time minimum wage job) is being stolen:
http://californiawatch.org/dailyreport/state-takes-don-t-ask-don-t-tell-approach-child-care-fraud-5756
That's another $1 billion of California taxpayer money stolen.
The middle class is being ripped-off from both sides...
I would rather see the FIAT TRASH PAPER go to the People, no matter who they are than have someone I know either friend or family to become a victim of a crime.
At this point what does it matter anyways.
I say send everyone a check for $100,000 who gives a SHIT? Like it is going to make any difference anyway.
Who's this "they" person. Isn't it "of the people, for the people and by the people". That means "they" has to be YOU and other dedicated Americans. That typically means the 3 percenters who are willing to sacrifice and give all to make a change they believe in.
Do you believe enough in the changes you believe need to be made to risk it all or are you just a whiner???
Of course, if the poor people had their own land then they could grow their own food. Needless to say, they'd also need fresh water and fertilizer. And perhaps they wouldn't be interested in growing stuff if it is easier / cheaper to buy ... but now I'm just helping to provide cover.
If the poor people had their own land ...
... but, no they can't have land now, can they? Why, land is waaaaaaay too expensive! Those empty homes have to stay empty until someone can afford to BUY them at "market" price ... we can't possibly drop the "market" price to the point where land is affordable, we have to keep that land off market until people pay the high prices ... I don't quite remember learning about that part of the supply / demand curve ...
The American Indians had their land stolen from them.
The Australian Aboriginals had their land stolen from them.
And now the settlers are having their land stolen from them.
But the theft is hidden behind the high price of land so few people notice what it really means.
I 1993 I lost my job where I was controlling $5 billion in union trust funds (health, pension, etc).
I got the position on sheer aptitude and a mix of 'How to succeed in business without really trying."
So, jobless in 1993, 35 years old. I decided, from a number of factors, to get a college degree.
I put us (family, wife and two sons) on welfare and foodstamps while I went to school and worked, on an on-call basis, steam cleaning carpets and set up my own little business hanging wallpaper.
I'm a white guy.
First, the welfare office was incensed that I refused to leave the home. I had welfare workers tell me that I was the wrong color, that I needed to get out of the house, and that I needed to stop working.
My wife and I were required to fill out a literal foot of paperwork each month detailing every hour of our life to prove that we had worked, the days, times, who for, how much did we make, how much did we spend, who watched the kids, how did we get to work, who paid for it, etc..it was endless.
The first couple of months we fucked it up not knowing what was required..then we figured it out and kept every slip of paper they would ask for six months later.
In the meantime, I was taking double or greater course loads in college. Driving 50+ miles to the college and keeping every fuckin' receipt they would ask for six months later. We would get our normal welfare and foodstamps at the first of the month. Ocassionlly, like every two months, we'd get an extra check...which we would put in a drawer figuring that the welfare office made some sort of clerical mistake.
I cannot describe the disdain my wife and I had in face to face interviews with welfare workers as we explained that we insisted on working and shouldn't have to file a foot of paper work every month to prove that we earned every cent we declared and spent every cent we declared. It remains the most appalling period in my life.
Be mexican, black or any other race, and sit on your ass....here's your check, no problem. Be white, insist on working what ever you could get, AND stay with your family? Oh, we're gonna fuck you over!
I spent three years on welfare/food stamps (in the day when you had actual, physical food stamps that you had to pull out and show the world). In that three years I got my AA, AS, BS and most of a Masters. Then took a job as a division Controller for a construction outfit
Exactly three months to the day of my being hired I got a letter in the mail demanding that I show up at a 'Welfare Administrative Hearing'. Bear in mind, I'm trying to recover from poverty over the last three months. i can barely afford gas money to get to my job.
Wife and I got the the hearing. Imperious lady sits at the head of the table saying that this is 'an administrative hearing and has no bearing on rule of law". I'm immediately stunned. She then lists the charges against us...over payment of welfare benefits in the tune of around $7 thousand. I was rocked.
"how the hell can you overpay us by that much when we gave you a foot of paperwork every single month of every dollar or our earnings and expenses for the last three years?"
She said, "That doesn't matter, we issued benefits. The error is with you for cashing the checks."
"Prove we cashed them."
Thank God for that drawer...we got a letter a year later saying that our case was dropped.
you are so full of shit it's stupid. I didn't read the other replies to your utterly fucking moronic post, but I think it's safe to assume fight club idiots are in agreement with me. Give me a fucking break. If you're going to troll, try to be slightly witty or educational, not just mean.
Dude, I don't know your personal issues, and don't really care.
But this really happened.
Progessives will conquer reality, they just need more time.
They just have the wrong people running it. If they could get the right people in there running the show, it would be flawless.
We Grubered some people, folks.
Stupidity of the American voter.
We were Gomer'd before we were grubered. Then came the flouride, multiculturalism, and commie infiltration of our bodily fluids. The average American didn't stand a chance.
"All thats required is a good liberty enema to flush out the prog blockage, all the refuse is backing up, getting into the bloodstream and affecting the brain."- Dr.nmewn ;-)
Will this rid us of the Sharpton-Pelosi's? Aside from the acute pain, knowing that this pathogen has infiltrated the biological barrier keeps us up at night. Thus, sleep deprivation combined with zombie attack has (nods off).....
Sharpton and Pelosi are there to feed your "progressive" talk radio meme bullshit, just as Boehner and Jeb are there to feed the blue team. Divide and conquer. Stop paying attention to the pawns. The guys playing are not progressive, nor are they conservative. They are just sociopathic assholes who want to own you, and who apparently already own your narrative based upon the content of your posts.
But "you didn't build that" Rand.
What YOU failed to realize in your ongoing defense of that dumbass Warren/Obama screed is actually, they did. They were taxed and taxed "progressively" weren't they?
Who's fault is it if they weren't taxed as much as you think they should have been and would they have raised their prices to match the "progressive taxation" imposed if they had been taxed moar?
And who would have been hit in the wallet, the consumer, right?
Don't come on here preaching Krugman style socio-economics without knowing the subject matter and its ramifications thinking you won't get called on it.
That is the most dumbass comment ever from you, nmewn. I don't defend Obama or Buffet, and never have. And you know it. But it is interesting that your only response to my post is to throw that out.
I'm also not in favor of progressive income tax. I am in favor of ending oligarchy by taking back what they stole.
"That is the most dumbass comment ever from you, nmewn. I don't defend Obama or Buffet, and never have."
You deny you argued FOR the premise of ELIZABETH Warren's/Obama's "You didn't build that."?
Yes and no. What Obama should have said is that capitalists in America do not start with a clean slate. They have infrastructure, roads, military, police, courts, etc. to protect their interests, so to say they should not pay taxes to support that infrastructure is to be juvenile. But Obama works for bankers, so he said it the way he said it. And I think Warren is probably a fraud, too.
I agree with you in that the captains of industry relied on our so-called "Rule of Law" to protect their interests. In the abcense of .gov there can be no grand class divide. If true capitalisim (anarcho-capitalisim in practice) took hold, the productivity increases and cost decreases would push the class strata flat. The debate between you to would be moot. It seems to me that you are the pragmatist and nmewn the idealist whose end games are not so diffrent.
I enjoy both your and nmewn's comments and see my own thoughts in them. I think we should cut taxes where ever possible. I also think the raped in the lower classes should manipulate the system for whatever schwag they can. I want a libertarian decriminalization of drugs. I also want someone's health care bill to not bankrupt them. We're so far through the looking glass the only thing to look forward to is the inevitable breakdown of the system. Until then if some fraudulent food stamps allowed a family some extra money for Christmas toys I could truly give a fuck. It's all going to shit anyway and the proletariat has been systematically disenfranchised and brainwashed into irrelevance. They deserve whatever breaks they can get. When things change and an honest days work can once again earn you an honest days pay, I'll hold them to a higher standard.
The funny thing is that a few hundred years ago, some guys just wanted freedom. They took it by force, and got it for a while. The fucking bankers took it back, and most Americans don't realize it.
I'm thinking that more and more are realizing it every day.
I turned to look, but it was gone.
Well, sometimes things happen for a reason, my internet died last night...lol...but I was gonna say in response to this:
"What Obama should have said is that capitalists in America do not start with a clean slate. They have infrastructure, roads, military, police, courts, etc. to protect their interests, so to say they should not pay taxes to support that infrastructure is to be juvenile."
Every communist dictator and their children in the world don't have a clean slate either, they have roads, military, police, courts (infrastructure) that protect their interests in staying in power, so it has nothing to do with "capitalism in America" or anywhere else. And that is not what Warren/Obama even said, they said without GOVERNMENT they would not have the wealth they do (which is a crock) and inferred that they didn't pay any taxes for that "infrastructure", which is also untrue.
What you're failing to realize is the thing you (and sometimes myself) keep trying to make work to our mutual benefit (government) is also the greatest source of our problems & frustrations. The mere fact we're commenting underneath a post where the government is admitting its gross inefficiency (which I believe they lowballed anyways) and people are having their ethical & moral compass reduced to the point they say "Well bankers got trillions so whats wrong with the able bodied getting billions?" says all there is to say.
Its irretrievably broke.
Hot war? GL+HF
Nobody owns us, Rand. Boehner and Jeb are most certainly not conservatives, Boehner sucks Obama cock and Jeb pushes Common Core. There are but a handful of true conservatives in the entire Congress. That firebrand Trey Gowdy is at least talking the talk. You seem to be oblivious to the fact that USFEDGOV has moved hard left over the last 50+ years. Yes, they are sociopathic/socialist assholes. Conservatives merely want a level playing field. Don't confuse "Republicans" with "conservatives".
still amazed how could you elect obozo fucking twice.
$2.4 Billion is 1 day's worth of QE. That's 0.24% p.a.
Sounds like a cheap deal... paying off the desperate masses, to keep them off the barricades, so that Wall St can keep plundering the other 364 days.
Perspective, boys, perspective.
They certainly do need the proper aparatchiks in place, but what they really need is money, cash, wampum, etc. So send your FRNs to CARE (Communists Are Running Everything) c/o UN NY NY and hurry!
......and more of OUR money!
For every 1 dollar of welfare to the poor, there is 40 dollars of corporate welfare in the USA
Anyone know if the $2.4 billion includes the skim that JPM took when they ran the EBT card system?
No. It was a separate IG report and surprisingly (heh)
no mistakes we found.
None was found to be mis-spent. Seems that department was 100% efficient.
My bet is the "$2.4 Billion" wasted is probably a number put in it's "best light". Most of the numbers are cooked. My et is it 3-4 times that amount.
"US Government Admits $2.4 Billion Food-Stamps "Mis-Spent"
Government does NOT spend money on welfare. They steal money, and then piss some of it away on direct welfare instead of indirect welfare on tanks, drones, and/or Hellfire missiles.
The crime is in the theft, not the pissing away.
The banksters need to repay us.
If I mug you in the street and give it to my grandmother, do you hate me, or my grandmother?!
You may be surprised that many will answer BOTH.
She is the beneficiary of ill gotten gains and that is contemptable to many.
But the Food Stamp Program needs to be rapidly disposed.
Then the HUNGRY MASSES WILL ARISE and TAKE THIS CORRUPT SYSTEM DOWN
BURN THE MOTHER FUCKER DOWN.
Gary Shandling..
Clawback the 23 trillion in back door bail outs and bank subsidies and then get back to me about 2.4 billion in public welfare.
All for it, theft is theft.
And people get all hot & bothered when I compare a "welfare queen" to Jamie Dimon.
Or Queen Elizabeth ;-)
At least Queen Liz ain't popping out more squalling brats.
On the other hand, she's a textbook example of multigenerational wards of the State.
I'd say 1000 years has got to be the record holder.
and let all rapists go free until you've prosecuted all murderers. nice set of morally relative principles, triple-dip-shit.
Who was it again, JP Morgue or Goldman Sux who has their hands in the till for the US foodstamp program?
Our government is subordinate to bankers. Remember TARP. When a few people can coerce the government to pay off the wealthiest, then you know there is no real political control.
Here is a video showing the power relationships.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96c2wXcNA7A
It would be a simple matter to design an economy that has full employment and people who also make enough money to feed themselves without welfare. There are many examples in history. Our curent system drains the lower loop where labor lives, and hence they don't have enough of their output remaining to fully trade with others. This mechanism then starves labor so they must sell their goods and services cheaplyto those where their output as money vectored (an upper loop). The upper loop is on the other side of banks, where the usury passes through into banking sector and then paretos into a pyramid control, now represented by bond and debt instrument holders.
And of course the leaders in government and wall street are provable psychopaths... They get a rush from cheating and winning. see study:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/seven-reasons-why-the-bad-guys-keep-winning...
A drop in the bucket contrasted with the every day fraud that are the global finanical markets.
The $2.4 billion mis-spent is far less than the $2 trillion that was mis-spent and missing from the defence budget.
Let's keep some persepctive of the geater problems.
Trickle down economics does not work but trickle down justice might start to transform America.
Well what do you need to better monitor this, upgraded IT systems...here's a story about North Carolina and their upgrading story...not good.
Over 10,000 people had to wait over 3 months to receive food stamps, again all due to a new IT system put in place to run it. People and kids went hungry, churches had to fill in as again just as in the markets, when the machines don't run and there's no manual system set up to take over when that happens, everything stops. Lesson learned here is to have that back up system. Hospitals do when their medical records systems go down and then they input after the fact when things are back alive.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2014/03/over-10000-in-north-carolina-had-to.html
I agree with comment #1 above, it's drop in the bucket so get the IT systems in place and tested and have a back up as this is critical with people not getting food.
You guys are ruining my Lobster Bisque and Filet Mignon I got with my EBT.
You act as if I didn't have to make it for myself.
Buncha pikers.
Pelosi (D - Braindead, CA) said that the more we spend on welfare the better the economy will be.
So a pidddling $2.4Billion is 'misallocated'. However, it gets spent in the economy unlike the hundreds of billions of earnings that avoid taxation and are spirited off shore.
As Triffin pointed out 50 years ago, a country that has the reserve currency must be a net importer. This means the price of cheap money for politicians to spend was the loss of America's industrial production. Bye bye furniture, machine tools, clothes, shoes, steel and eventually everything except the fine, fine paper produced by Wall Street now used by the entire to hold their wealth. We could still do all of those things but this time we will be at world wages. The government will hate it because they will have to tax to spend and wars will be seen as the waste they are....I can't wait...I'm ready to rebuild from Rockford to Akron, from Baltimore to Atlanta.
Until then I have no hard feelings for those who lost the opportunity to work due to the malfeasence of politicians and the unforeseen consequences of Bretton Woods....hey it took Triffin 16 years to figure it out..
The gobment could give EVERYONE an ebt card and load it up for them every month without it being noticible amongst the rest of the horsepoo they waste our stolen money on.
Food stamps were one of the tools the Obama regime used to get reelected. Food stamps, Free Phones, Extended welfare and more. With at the time almost 50 million people on food stamps,do you really think they would risk losing their goodies by voting against Obama and his Socialist regime.
Removed.
Holy greenbeans Batman... The FED was just buying $85 fucking BILLION a month and we're concerned about a couple of $B's. Shit Negro, according to Alyyssa Milano (Samantha Micelli to some) we can feed the whole wide world for just 50 cents a person <tear>. I say we listen to Sam. She was raised right.
"Ah oh, oh ah!?"
LOL.
who's the boss?
My right hand when looking at pictures/movies of Alyssa Milano.
WHen do we just say ENOUGH ALREADY and EVERYONE stop paying taxes? Without our money, this corrupt system cannot continue to steal from us. What are they going to do- put 50 million of us in jail?
"US Government Admits 1 trillion dollars mis-spent in Iraq invasion fiasco". "No one held accountable, everyone given medals, promotions and big pensions".
Business as fucking usual!
What about the trillions missing in the DoD?
Blacks...
With the trillions missing and the trillion mis-spent, the US probably could have bought every drop of oil on the planet. We could do so much better with 535 chimpanzees replacing our Congress; after all America is a banana republic...
Keynesians don't believe in "Mis-spending"...to them, any and all spending is GOOD! No such thing as a "misallocation of capital" or a "bubble" to them either...food stamps, resource extraction, manufacturing, flipping burgers and filling in and digging holes or breaking windows...same to them.
Or $2.4 billion used to fund somethin else.
I am so damn sick of seeing someone push up a heaping cart full of steaks, ice cream, etc...get it all for free...and still have hundreds on their EBT card balance remaining...all while talking on their Iphone...wearing brand new name brand perfectly white shoes...and then stroll out with their cart to their SUV with spinner rims.
"Welfare" should come from family/friends/church/community. People who see you the next week. People who don't want their helping hand taken for granted.
Women cleave to government as soon as they feel insecure. Breaking up families, the neighborhood, the local community, and churches causes them to vote for Big Government. As conservative women go through a divorce and become dependent, they vote for the state.
Allowing one income families again, would undo a lot of the social pathology. Women (or men) would be eyes on the street keeping crime low, and creating community. The economy would shift from being monetized to more gifting. Stress would go down and kids would be supervised and probably get better food and exercise.
An economy of this type would be small local government, and hence could more easily target only the truly needy. Chuches and community can help the others who are on the edge.
We don't need big banker government handing out goodies for votes. We do need the government to issue the proper money means, thus allowing us to create and have division of labor.
Because political government is a vacuum, private money powers have stepped into the void. All economies are planned, and those that aren't will have their planning done for them. Those that create money and control resources will do the planning. Actually political government was usurped, but bottom line, we have Kabuki theatre and no real political control. Politicians are bought and paid for.
If government is bad, so called "charity" is worse. Based on something like a total cost (payments+ administrative costs) of $150 per month per recipient for foodstamps, the 300+ food banks in the US can't even meet this standard -and this is just to get the food to the plethora of local agencies!
From form 990's:
2013 Corpus Christi Food Bank distributed to 140 local agencies
Total Expenses: $10,944,125
2013 San Antonio Food Bank
Total Expenses: $101,139,573 to 500 partner agencies
2013 Austin Food Bank distributed to 291 Non-profit & human services
Total Expenses: $59,716,645
Three city total expenses: $171,800,343 to 931 local agencies
Tax Revenue received from Government Grants:
-San Antonio: $6,818,913
-Corpus Christi: $3,435,968
-Austin: $1,396,811
3 city total: $11,651,692
San Antonio employees = 242 base salary $6,139,834 = $25,371
Austin = 101 payroll = $3,064,247 = $30,339
After-school hot meal preparation:
$22,237 to Alamo Heights ISD (San Antonio's richest school district?)
$67,522 to Boerne's approx 2,126 under 20 year old population
$373,251 to 22 of Austin's public elementary schools
100% of "Food Stamps" are misspent. If you are beggarly, then you should be able to receive bags of beans and rice. No other Federal aid should be provided. Period. Ever. End.Of.Story.
Eat the Rich with Bambu Sauce.
Pay no attention to the trillions in fraud for the banksters. . .
So only about 3% are misspent? I would bet if you asked anyone here what that number was, they would have guessed significantly higher.
Why would anyone blog the Daily Signal. They are 100% Fascist Propaganda.
We've designed an economic system where destroying jobs, eliminating benefits and reducing wages makes the 0.1% fatter and richer. So that is exactly what they do. The poor shmuck on foodstamps has next to no say in the matter except act as a convenient scapegoat for the power elite.
Who cares about 2.5 billions when you mis-spent trillions giving to bankers and the top 1 percent?
Why is the money misspent? Because the tendency is ALWAYS towards greater complexity. So we get bloated bureaucracies and mystery budgets and bigger tax bills, but no solutions to the problem. In fact, the complexity makes things much worse.
Witness the attempts to 'solve' the problem of single welfare mothers by forbidding their men to live with them lest they lose all benefits. Not so easy to 'make a stand' when you have a couple of young children to support...so out the guys went.
They "solved" the problem by alienating kids from their fathers and splitting families. And it was during this time we also see a huge growth in gangs...where do you think all those young men WENT? Gubmint's gonna take care of the kids, and don't want the guys around anyway, so...
But, taxpayers got a whole new bloated bureaucracy to manage all those welfare mothers and their fatherless kids, so it's all good, right? Not to mention the gang units in every major city in the country...think of all those JOBS...
How can this conversation be complete without reminding us that, at last count, $13.3 - 15.6 billion is pissed away annually in "improper" payments of earned income tax credits -- that is, fraudulent claims based on on non-existant children and other fictitious "dependents"?
I don't care about EBT money being "misspent"; the gubmint probably gave it to the pentagon, anyway. "Misspent" is what gubmint does!
$2.5 billion is a droplet of piss in an ocean of piss. I'm a bit more concerned with the $303 trillion in derivatives liability shifted onto the taxpayer. Does anyone believe it's remotely possible to address that debt in any meaningful fashion?
GOOD!!!! I hope every scammer and con artist takes this shit system for every penny they can! While GE pays negative taxes, and teachers pay real money, the fucked kabuki that masquerades as a legal system is irreperably broken and can go stuff itself up its own ass.
If you have elderly relatives who are die-hard republicans, order them obama phones for the holidays. At least you can enjoy a chuckle of irony every time they call.
Same as it ever was. The following is from an article named Tramps that Charles Dickens wrote in the 1860's, roughly 150 years ago, and was probably true for at least 150 before his time.
"...He has no occupation whatever, this order of tramp, and has no object whatever in going anywhere. He will sometimes call himself a brickmaker, or a sawyer, but only when he takes an imaginary flight. He generally represents himself, in a vague way, as looking out for a job of work; but he never did work, he never does, and he never will. It is a favourite fiction with him, however (as if he were the most industrious character on earth), that YOU never work; and as he goes past your garden and sees you looking at your flowers, you will overhear him growl with a strong sense of contrast, 'YOU are a lucky hidle devil, YOU are!' The slinking tramp is of the same hopeless order, and has the same injured conviction on him that you were born to whatever you possess, and never did anything to get it..."
Black market (cash) economy....
Not talked about enough, imo. I bet a GIGANTIC number of those who are received SNAP/EBT are working cash jobs (or mostly cash jobs) in the service sector (from dogwalkers to hookers to movers to you-name-it).
If you're a gamer, you can work cash job(s) and make $10-50k a year (more if you're really industrious...hookers?). If you make, say, $15k in cash and get SNAP assistance, fully-subsidized health care, Section 8 housing, etc... you are really making the equivalent of a much higher paying "legit job".
Assuming average SNAP benefits of ~$250/month, average basic level Obamacare monthly premium of ~$300/month, and housing subsidy of at least ~$750-1500 month (NYC). This amounts to ~$1300-2000/month in government subsidies. Add this back to cash income of $15k (or $1250/month) and you get $2550-3250/month... or ~$31-39k a year NET (no taxes).
By this rough back-of-the envelop calculation, a person making $15k in cash a year could conservatively be just as well off as a person making $45,000-55,000/year at a ~30% federal tax bracket (not taking into account city/state taxes).
Winning..!!!
HEY PELOSI AND THE LIBTARDS SAY EBT AND HANDOUTS ARE "GOOD FOR THE ECONOMY"....
cut off all the handouts.... let em eat shit and die
charities will take caere of the legit needy, just like they did in the past