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Thanks to EBT cards, American welfare transforms into international family stimulus plan

Thanks to EBT cards, American welfare transforms into international family stimulus plan

Many of us were appalled, if not surprised, that the Tsarnaev family (including the suspected Boston bombing brothers and their parents) benefited from more than $100,000 in taxpayer-funded assistance upon their arrival to this country.

Now, it looks like welfare beneficiaries don’t even have to leave the mother country. Thanks to a failed welfare system, the “Family Stimulus Plan” has expanded on a vast, international scale.

The New York Post has this report (hat-tip, Tammy Bruce): NY food stamp recipients are shipping welfare-funded groceries to relatives in Jamaica, Dominican Republic and Haiti

Food stamps are paying for trans-Atlantic takeout — with New Yorkers using taxpayer-funded benefits to ship food to relatives in Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Welfare recipients are buying groceries with their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards and packing them in giant barrels for the trip overseas, The Post found.

The practice is so common that hundreds of 45- to 55-gallon cardboard and plastic barrels line the walls of supermarkets in almost every Caribbean corner of the city.

The feds say the moveable feasts go against the intent of the $86 billion welfare program for impoverished Americans.

A spokeswoman for the US Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service said welfare benefits are reserved for households that buy and prepare food together. She said states should intervene if people are caught shipping nonperishables abroad.

Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, called it just another example of welfare abuse.

“I don’t want food-stamp police to see what people do with their rice and beans, but it’s wrong,” Tanner told The Post. “The purpose of this program is to help Americans who don’t have enough to eat. This is not intended as a form of foreign aid.”

The American Welfare program may not have been intended as a form of foreign aid, but the result logically follows from the usual “law of unintended consequences” that will always apply to government programs trying to solve all problems for all people.

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Comments

“Free stuff” is why we’re suffering for another four years of incompetence, coverups and social engineering…

    Yep! Tempted to link the video of the “free phone” lady, but..it would ruin my appetite FOR that breakfast.

      GrumpyOne in reply to JP. | July 22, 2013 at 4:29 pm

      I should have added, “a dash of voter fraud and outright lies,” to the mix.

      Those of us who have practiced personal responsibility will reap what the takers voted for and are demanding..

When will the working sheeple revolt? Pelosi said ‘No Justice, No Peace’. I say ‘No Work, No Food’.

Juba Doobai! | July 22, 2013 at 8:31 am

To end this, make sure non-citizens do not get welfare. Make sure citizens capable of working do not get welfare.

But then, this is Obama’s America. He’s made sure that the able-bodied cannot find jobs because he wants us all of welfare.

So, my fellow Americans, let’s adopt a Kenyan family to whom we can send a barrel every year. Ah! We don’t have to go as far as Kenya. We can send these food barrels to Detroit,

Uncle Samuel | July 22, 2013 at 9:36 am

YET ANOTHER OBAMA ADMINISTRATION FRAUD/CRIME/SCANDAL/ABUSE:
DHS IG this time: Put wife on payroll, took private trips on public dime.

Obama administration – corrupt from the top down.

My first thought – if these people don’t need all of the benefits they receive just for themselves, they’re getting too much in the first place.

LittleLaughter | July 22, 2013 at 9:57 am

“I don’t want the food police to see what people do with their rice and beans…”
rice and Beans my foot! I have been behind the folks in the grocery lines using eBT to purchase lobster and steaks.

    Observer in reply to LittleLaughter. | July 22, 2013 at 11:20 am

    No kidding. The idea that people use EBT’s for staples like rice and beans is laughable. I was in a local specialty store the other day, buying some almond flour (which I use to make low-carb muffins). This store carries regular groceries, as well as more exotic, hard-to-find stuff (like almond flour), but the prices are quite high. There are about a half-dozen regular grocery stores within a 5-mile radius of this specialty store, including a Wal-Mart super store that sells groceries.

    While in the specialty store, I stood in line (with my two items) behind a woman with a cart full of processed foods, who loudly announced to the clerk that she’d be paying for all but a couple of her items with her EBT card. Had she bought these same groceries at the nearby Wal-Mart, she could have purchased the contents of her cart for about half the price. But since taxpayers were picking up the bill, I guess she couldn’t be bothered.

Bruce Hayden | July 22, 2013 at 11:25 am

Being a bit cynical, the timing of this sort of scandal doesn’t surprise me too much. Food Stamp reform is heating up in Congress right now, esp notable with the FS program being potentially decoupled from the rest of the AG budget. Just more ammunition that reform is necessary.

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Henry Hawkins | July 22, 2013 at 12:17 pm

Rural Delivery 483
Possum Holler NC 27555

Mind you send me the good cuts of steak. No hot dogs, beans, or any of that cheap shit.

    Subotai Bahadur in reply to Henry Hawkins. | July 22, 2013 at 12:58 pm

    I’ll gladly take the rice and beans. Especially the rice [hey, I’m Chinese]; as I am stocking up since I believe it is going to “get hungry out” soon.

    Oh, yeah. I was born here, am a citizen who has worked a full career and raised a family, and not being a “protected class minority” I am counted with the White Males. That means I have to pay for the freebies and not get any.

    Subotai Bahadur
    Over-the-river-and-through-the-woods
    Colorado High Country.

not_surprised | July 22, 2013 at 1:29 pm

Two ideas come to mind:

Either

1) place restrictions on the EBT to specific product codes, Beef/Poultry, Milk, eggs, cereal, rice and vegetables

OR

2) establish a warehouse in major cities that dispenses perishable food. (Beef/Poultry, Milk, cereal, rice and vegetables)

Once you do that, the lines will quickly get shorter and people all of the sudden don’t need it no more.

At least this form of foreign aid actually goes to citizens in need, rather than dictators pockets.

And further, since this is a direct relief form of foreign aid, we can get rid of the foreign aid to foreign governments now. Cut out the middleman completely.

They see this as simple reparations…loot owed to them for an atrocity committed two hundred years ago.

Did you know that Caucasians are the only race that has ever fought a war to END slavery?

So your blaming the Obama administration for a system that was so bad for longer than he’s been President? We see here who hasn’t graduated high school.

The US Welfare system did not have any safeguards to prevent abuse nor does it even encourage people to become independant from the sytem. All the people I spoke to that are on Welfare feel a sense of entitlement and beleive they are owed that benefit. I as a taxpayer feel there really needs to be some change put in place.