One in 7 Americans receives food stamps and the government wants the number to be even higher.
Yes, I said higher.
The USDA is soliciting people to receive food stamps in the manner of a drug dealer on a grade school playground. “Psst – hey you! I’ve got something for you…it’s free…come on, try it. You’ll like it!”
Even though we are drowning in debt and going under after a last gasp of air, the government of the United States is encouraging more people to go on the dole, even if doing so had never crossed their minds.
Last year the USDA targeted Spanish speaking citizens (and non-citizens) with a radio “novela” – which was basically a soap opera outlining how the lives of the characters improved as soon as they went on SNAP. SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) has taken the place of traditional food stamps and is simply a handy-dandy little card that is automatically reloaded and can be used like a debit card at checkout. The characters in the novela saw many of their problems solved by accepting the assistance – the lessening of marital strife, happier children, and an affordably healthy lifestyle for an obese character after heart attack scare. (You can listen to the English version of these novelas HERE.)
In many locations, outreach programs are taking place – people don’t even have to go down to the benefits office to sign up. They can find out if they are eligible right in the grocery store parking lot. The USDA is spending an additional THREE MILLION DOLLARS not on providing food, but on providing outreach to convince people to accept the benefits. They are effectively hunting people down and talking them into accepting benefits that folks never realized they “needed”.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) even has a webpage dedicated to helping states create “SNAP Outreach Plans.”
The argument from the USDA is that “Food Stamps Make America Stronger” by stimulating states’ economies. States are responding to the call. According to The Washington Post: “Rhode Island hosts SNAP-themed bingo games for the elderly. Alabama hands out fliers that read: ‘Be a patriot. Bring your food stamp money home.’ Three states in the Midwest throw food-stamp parties where new recipients sign up en masse.” And Florida even employs recruiters.
The recruiter profiled in the Post’s story, Dillie Nerios, is required to get “at least 150 seniors” to enroll in “food stamps each month, a quota she usually exceeds.”
“Help is available. You deserve it. So, yes or no?” she tells prospective food stamp recipients. “State-issued training manuals” even provides responses she can use when individuals protest. (source)
The outrageousness of such actions is mind-boggling. Hard-working Americans are being sequestered into poverty, watching their pensions and life-savings disappear, and losing their homes and jobs at the rate of thousands per day. Meanwhile, the government is going out and purposely increasing spending? Going out and convincing people to accept handouts?
What?????
The reason is simple.
The government wants to be in control. They want to control what you eat, where you acquire the food, and how you pay for it. And eventually, they want the ability to use that access to food as a tool for manipulation. It’ll be great while it lasts – your family might end up with an extra $200 in groceries – “Hey, honey – want lobster for dinner tonight? Uncle Sam’s buying!”
But when it ends, you will be left poorer than you were before with no means of feeding your family except capitulation to the machine.
It is a gift of luscious fruit from a poisoned tree.
You may not think this comes at a price, but it does. And that price is your freedom. Your children’s freedom. And eventually, maybe even your lives, as you starve to death, waiting for that next handout.
Please, take responsibility for yourselves and your family. Don’t sell your independence for a bag of “free” groceries.
- Build a stockpile.
- Shop carefully.
- Grow a garden.
- Preserve food.
- Cook from scratch.
- Learn self-sufficiency skills.
- Live frugally.
- Eat nutritiously to stay well.
- Prepare for the economy to get a whole lot worse.
Thank you to NinaO for the link ~
Although I fear that the food stamp system may eventually be used to program what people are allowed to eat, I don’t have a problem with people using it. After getting screwed by government a thousand-and-one different ways, getting free food is the LEAST they can do. And it costs $80 billion? So what! The damned military spends that in a month! I’d carve three times that directly out of the Pentagon’s budget today & continue that until they choke to death.
The military spends that much in less than a month.
Walmart needs more people spending other people’s money. Food stamps keeps Walmart in the black.
Is anyone concerned about corporate welfare or just the poor who need food? t is okay to give it to billionaires who make money off the backs of the poor?
Now, I know people who misuse the benefits, sell them, and generally the benefits do not go to hungry children or people. I think illegal aliens should just go back to wherever!
quote “Hard-working Americans are being sequestered into poverty, watching their pensions and life-savings disappear, and losing their homes and jobs at the rate of thousands per day.”
maybe these are the people using food stamps?
Food stamps are a trap. One gives up their edge by not being directly attached to the means to obtain food.
Why push this program? – to normalise it.
Growing your own food to help make ends meet? – that’s dirty work, here have an EBT card.
They are just chipping away at self-reliance / pride / self-worth with this push.
I like the title.
Like drug addicts, the people of United States of Junkies will never revolt against the pusher. 🙂 I guess there is a good reason for everything.
It’s a trap. Don’t listen to this guy. It is another example of pitting one group against another. Bullshit.., The government gave over 1.2 TRILLION DOLLARS to the banking industry so the Banking exec. can get salaries of 2 to 20 MILLION DOLLARS yearly.
Take the food stamps and get a fighting chance to compete with the big boys
in the latest Science Mag see:
“A new generation of genetically modified crops will kill insects by silencing their genes.”
I hope it does not silence genes that are not supposed to be silenced – like when I eat the stuff.
You are correct.
One must step back and ask why.
Well my friend, it is to create dependency on The Beast
while your economy is being delibertly imploded by design.
Don’t worry. Don’t prepare. All is well. Just turn on the
TV and go back to sleep. We will take care of you.
Happy…happy…happy!
ScribeCaveDotCom……The choice is yours.
I’m not happy that I have to use EBT but I also REFUSE to be a slave to the SEVERAL minimum wage jobs it would require to afford REAL food – places that treat people like disposable crap no matter how hard they work and do NOT pay a fair wage. I’ve also tried, very hard, to go to school and get a degree but I’ve gotten screwed in that aspect of my life as well. I’m sorry but this current system is designed for some people to fail. If you are poor, chances are you are going to stay poor. UNLESS… well, you can work and work and work, never see your kids, stick them in daycare, break your back, kiss asses, lose all sense of pride, go tens of thousands of dollars in debt trying to get a degree and then MAYBE get a decent job IF you can manage to hold onto it… and THEN buy your own healthy organic food. Right! Not to mention I’ve pretty much lost all sense of respect for our economy because it is based off of FAKE money with NO value that we continue to print, continue to spend on war after war after war. PLEASE. The LEAST this sad excuse for a democracy could do to make up for the damage they’ve done and continue to do is feed us!
Good for YOU!
Whoa, there sure are a lot of people who have mixed up perspectives posting on this blog lately. “I have to use EBT but I also REFUSE to be a slave to the SEVERAL minimum wage jobs it would require to afford REAL food […] they […]do NOT pay a fair wage.”
Oh my, such snobbery combined with condensation. What a disgusting slosh. Any job you take on is not slavery, it’s a step up, and an opportunity. If there’s any slavery going on, it’s the skimming the gooberment does when it takes a part of your paycheck.
There’s nothing ‘fair’ about life, why do so many expect such? As if the world owed them something?
One person says they’ve, “pretty much lost all sense of respect for our economy” Wowzer, are they bamboozled, what they mean is (if they thought about it, that is) they’ve lost all respect for their overlords who pretend to know what they’re doing. …As it should be. But they don’t think, and continue to misplace blame.
I’m so ashamed of my fellow American who asked, “The LEAST this sad excuse for a democracy could do to make up for the damage they’ve done and continue to do is feed us!”
That is so embarrassing to me.
The LocalHero says, “I don’t have a problem with people using it.”
What he/she means is, “I don’t have a problem with people stealing from their neighbors.”
If that’s America’s ‘Local Hero’ we’re in far deeper trouble than I thought. Maybe a better word for ‘Local Hero’ is phero? … Look it up.
Even a possum is smart enough to feed himself without help. ETB is not intended to help the poor, it’s corporate welfare. follow the money it doesn’t end up at the farmers market.
Here’s another angle (or is that financial angel),
#1
The government needs money for stuff (food stamps, weapons, call girls)
The Fed (the private banks) prints the money (electronically).
The money costs the government interest.
Accumulated interest is in the trillions.
The government cannot pay the interest.
The government gives the Fed collateral (national parks, war, the free labor of us citizens, government contracts, more power).
The Fed (private banks) uses the loot to consolidate their ownership of America (instead of 30 car manufacturers 3; buying up corporate america).
Democrats spend the peoples money.
Republicans spend the peoples money.
The Fed (the private banks) never looses.
Who was the biggest contributor to Obama and Romney campaigns?
The Fed (the private banks).
The Fed (the private banks) never looses.
#2
JP Morgan Bank (Jamie Diamond) runs the EBT food stamp network.
JP Morgan Bank prints money out of thin air (electronically).
JP Morgan Bank charges the government for operating the network.
JP Morgan Bank charges the government interest on the EBT money.
JP Morgan Bank charges the food stamp recipient fees for services.
Like a private prison, JP Morgan Bank claims that it needs an expanding pool of recipients to maintain the network and profitability.
The government (democrat & republican, i.e whores) agrees.
Guess who owns the national supermarket chains?
Guess who owns a major portion of the stocks related to national fast food chains?
The government (democrat & republican, i.e whores) are paid off.
The people eat the cost through inflation.
The only solution is revolution.
This lady has no idea about how money is created. Funding government programs, for better or worse, can easily be done by the Treasury just issuing the money directly based on the full faith and credit of the United States. That way the backing for the money spent by government is the extent to which the government’s programs result in the addition of real human value to the economy. Food stamps were always a support to agriculture and now can be a support to labor that has to work for nothing wages or just remain alive and in reserve for when they can work. This lady suggests that taxes pay for food for people, and further says that it is a bad thing. Neither is true. This is an evil and ignorant article.
.
People who work minimum wage or low income, retirees on SS or disabled people or people who lost their jobs, should receive food stamps and all the help available to them.
They worked or working paying taxes.
Unfortunately there is a people out their who breeding children, just to get on Welfare, TANF and Food Stamps.
There should be a stop of help after 3 children, when this people never worked, except as breeders.
If they want more children, well, then they should support them self and find work. Other working families also have to estimate how much children they can afford. .
It is sad enough that children are born, just so people can go and can stay on the welfare system. Now child deserves that.
Articles I have read estimate that nearly 90% of people who receive food stamps are children.
A congressional estimate, I think of 2010, stated that the average welfare family receives financial help of around 42.000 Dollars a year, which includes, section 8 housing, childcare, Medicaid and the earned income tax credit, and this ironically for people who paid no taxes.
This amount of Dollars equals the average amount people are making in my county before Tax Dollars.
So why should People work or work for minimum wage to support welfare abusers with their taxes?
It is estimated that around 50% of Food stamp users cheat the system.
I was aware of a family with six kids who received over 1000 Dollars a month just in food stamps, because they bragged about it. So far I know they received 130 Dollars per Month per Person. 130 Dollar is not a lot for a retiree or a single household in general but, plenty if it adds up for a big welfare family.
They did not need it, because they got a lot of food from the food pantries and sold it for drugs, cash and alcohol for 50 cents to the Dollar. Another practice was to go shopping with a list and then get paid in cash.
Btw. Mike Adams from http://naturalnews.com, had an article on this subject, with additional links a couple of weeks ago.
I am very well aware, that the cooperate and military welfare is a lot more, then the money spend on food stamps.
After witnessing the neglect and abuse of the children mentioned above, through their drug dealing “makers”, I came to the conclusion that more control of food stamps and welfare abuse would help to prevent, generational welfare families and give children like this chance in life.
Has your 90 day residency time over yet. There’s a good omak show coming up. We could get that arsenal started
people criticizing foodstamp prgrams should be required to live with food stamps as their only source of food for a few months, I think they would change their tune! I get organic and healthy vegetables with my $16 per month EBT – and thank God that I live in a country that does not want its’ poor, disabled, and elderly people starving – I would not get any organic or fresh food without EBT as the food give-away programs do not give perishable or sugar-free food….I worked all my life (until disability and aging) and aid into the system, and I am unable to work anymore…yet I still would like to live, and need healthy food to do so. I contribute to my community in other ways besides paid work, and so do most of the people I know in similar situation to mine. there is always going to be someone taking advantage in any situation, even people who work and pay their own bills (trying to cut taxes paid etc), but most individuals and families who receive foodstamps do so because they have proven a need to the program administrators. Please “walk a mile in their shoes” because you criticize people or programs you have no direct experience with. Be grateful if you don’t need EBT! nothing is ever really free
BJ ~
Please understand that this is not a criticism of those who are in a difficult position. It is a criticism of the government, going out and searching for people to make dependent on the system.
Thank you very much for your comment.
Best wishes ~
Daisy
So when is it undesirable to feed the hungry? If the government doesn’t do it, who will? Corporations? Private donations? Churches? Preppers?
The paranoia on this page is astounding. You’ve got yours and to hell with everyone else, eh? Yeah, that’s really American. Prep all you want, there will always be hungry and it just may be you one day, regardless of how well prepared you think you are. Then YOU will be the target and the tables will be turned. What will be your plan then?