OWNS that Lexus? How does he know she is not helping a shut in - and she's actually a friend or family member?

He doesn't know. And if people would mind their own god damned business and stop being a nitpicky busy body and worry about their own god damned selves the world would be a better place.


He's falling for the 'Welfare Queen' meme and he doesn't know jack shit.

And the same s.o.b. watched The Queen of Versaille and felt bad for those assholes.

*****************

Not direct at you - directed at this selfish pompous s.o.b. spouting nonsense on Facebook.

Or -- and this one is to me a test of someone's morality -- she's someone who makes bad decisions with money but we don't want her or her kids to go hungry because of that.

It's infuriating.

means she's definitely shopping for another person, maybe two other people.

His story is patented bullshit that's been trolled around a million times by a thousand morons who each think nobody is going to notice the recycled stupidity.

If you don't want to call the asshole a liar to his face you could always post "Pictures or it didn't happen".

but I call bullshit on every one of these stories.

People buying scratch off tickets after checking out with EBT kind of beep on my personal annoyance radar, but it's not my business. There are plenty of people who have done everything right and still wound up in poverty, but there's also a whole lot of people who have made really bad decisions and ended up in poverty and part of living in a society is that we don't want them to starve.

It is false hope. I'll give you that, but I don't begrudge anybody a $1 here or a $1 there. It's degrading and demeaning to sit there and tell someone you can't buy something because you are on welfare. If people want to help those on welfare then let's invest in education and increase wages.

The people of Boston have a habit of leaving them out, and they are 5 cents per with a daily $5 limit at each liquor store and no limit at the redemption centers, including the one run by the guy who rented an apartment to me eventually.

Point 1: believe me, I know (I also grew up eating WIC baskets).

Point 2: I have the advantage of having a degree in math, so I know what a bad idea that is.

Point 3: Even I get annoyed when people do that, so politically we have to deal with the fact that this does resonate.

happiness to someone. Believing God will protect you and make you prosperous brings hope and happiness to people, and many think that is false hope as well, but I would never begrudge them their bit of hope either. Again the best way to approach it is not by telling people what they can or cannot buy but get them an education and a living wage so that they don't have to live off of welfare and listen to people tell them what they can or cannot buy.

Where public funds are at least nominally spent with the consent of the governed. We forget that at our peril.

tell someone what they can or cannot do. You chose not buy a lottery ticket when you were in financial trouble. That does not make someone who does a bad person. Just because you made a different choice does not make you better than them, and does not give you the right to tell them what to do.

I'm stating as a political reality that some of what happens alienates people to the right of me.

better solution than they do.

Well said

"I don't like to judge but.." what follows is some 1st class, award winning judgement.

This sounds like the same old, tired Welfare Queen BS.

If they can't even have an honest discussion then yes, they are part of the problem.

Besides that, corporate welfare is actually higher and they actually do drive off in expensive cars.

I found a chart right here on DU that compares: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021807581

It is possible that TANF(what people call welfare) is used for one and strictly SNAP for the other in some states. In Kentucky it is one card for both programs. You can use someone else's card for them, such as taking care of a aged, blind or disabled person so long as you are an authorized representative.

Though I think that's unlawful in most states.

or disabled. I had a card for a friends mother right after my friend passed. Each person is entitled to two cards and the card was in my name and everything. I didn't think about it at the time, but if I got her something and then used my own money to pay for it, I'd use the ebt card later to pay myself back. It was only about three months until her other daughter moved her, but the idea that the person using the card is the person on the program is not necessarily true.
I also saw something interesting; in the time it takes you to judge that person buying _________ with their ebt card, $8,000 was given to an oil company in the form of subsidies.

but what came to mind is that she works in a residence of some sort and was doing the wekly shopping. I worked in a residential facility for disabled children when i was younger and we'd use personal vehicles all the time to do the shopping.

Mostly these stories are total bullshit, and even when it's true, I don't give a shit. You will always have people that scam the system, that doesn't mean you do away with the whole thing because of it. Sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and bear it.

Many are cited above. Having said that, there will be abuse of the system. It's the nature of the beast. I personally know people who enjoy a comfortable middle class lifestyle who lie to social services to get an EBT card. They could afford to buy food but they spend money on interior design and housekeepers instead. Is it wrong? Yes. Is it annoying? Yes. Especially since I have worked my ass off all my life and have been close to living under a bridge more than once and have never received public support. Do I nevertheless support the system? Yes. Because I know nothing is perfect.

It's one thing to cook up any sort of societal system and another to apply it to the lives of real people in the real world. You just can't make it one hundred percent efficient or fair. So a few people get over on the system, and me, by buying drapes instead of beans. I might worry about that when the 1% stops raping all of us all day every day for trillions of dollars.

Don't be part of the problem. So many deserving people need EBT assistance and every instance of real fraud steals food from them.

I take the view that most of these 'real' anecdotal instances of EBT fraud are propaganda from the 'not-my-tax dollars' crowd. And they all pop up, right on cue, every time there's an EBT bill in Congress, like right now.

why not mention that? probably more relevant to be anti-poverty programs as a group.

that is currently oppressed. I did not mention that he happens to be white, because, unlike other groups, white people are not oppressed.

i find it ridiculous that here is a person expecting dignity and not acting dignified toward other people. As I stated in a private message, if HE expects to focus that reich wing lens upon people less affluent than he is, he should damn well expect the EXACT same lens to be applied to HIM. In that regard, his homosexuality is indeed relevant here.

regardless of sexual orientation. so it actually relevant. probably what is driving his anti-poverty stance

poor people and gay people are oppressed but not exactly by the same things. so to expect gay people to have better attitudes towards poverty than straights, is just having a double standard for gays.

economic and social/religious oppressions are not the same things. to expect gay people to be "better" than straights on fiscal issues, literally makes no sense.

and they're more likely to be white, so i guess there's that. But mostly, if they dish it, they should be prepared to take it.

And conflating every which way but loose isn't going to detract from the facts here.

than they would a straight person.

which is jump to every 'lowest common denominator' conclusion, and demand he face the same lens. Not a higher one. Just the same one. No 'double standard' pretending socio-economic judgement is different than sexual orientation judgement. They're not different here. Suggesting it is illustrates the double standard.

i am not saying what he said was right or justifiable, its that believing in gay rights is not the same as believing in anti-poverty laws/rights etc.

there are plenty who believe in one and not the other.

you are two conflating two issues by pretending that gay people should understand the poor better. Just like the poor have no real reason for understanding gays better.

trying to justify it.

Stop trying to define or redefine the parameters here. If "there are plenty who believe in one and not the other", feel free to start a post and address it. *I* don't believe in one without the other. Apparently you do.

just that his gayness is not the issue here.

I said that it is relevant, because it is. I did not say his whiteness was irrelevant by the way...you did. I said that since he belongs to an oppressed community, he should know empathy.

And you are fishing for sanctimony. Really.

which is really rather irrelevant to whether or not one has sympathy for the poor.

and also lying about me is just plain tacky.

the same standard. Really.

This is getting quite silly. My mention of his orientation was not random, it was just a tangent. A relevant one at that. YOU are trying to make it something else. YOU are fishing for sanctimony by feigning some sort of moral high ground that does not exist.

Judge not, lest ye be judged.

She doesn't trust them with the Lexus.

Last edited Fri Jun 21, 2013, 04:39 PM - Edit history (1)

EBT recipients. A mental health clinician I know has several EBT clients for whom she food shops. She undoubtedly shops for all of them at the same time using her SUV. Home health care workers often have 2 or 3 clients and may shop for all of them in one trip to save time and effort.

There are soooo many explanations for what he observed that it would have been best to have withheld judgment. If he really thought he had a case of fraud he should have reported it. Otherwise, this just looks like a tired attempt to disparage EBT users under the guise of a "real" anecdote that is mass emailed in order to make it look like EBT users really don't need or deserve 'taxpayer' financial assistance to eat.

There have been several lately here on DU, and just in time for the farm bill vote trying to make deep cuts to the EBT food benefit program.

Meh.

and it's time we stop putting up with it.

By glancing at his facebook page, I don't think this customer was shopping at his boutique. But, if it bothers him he could have quietly complained to the grocery store manager or he could have contacted the Dept of Agriculture.

His complaining makes HIM look bad. Maybe he thinks this type of complaining will attract the Ann Romneys of the world to his boutique. However the complaining could backfire on him.

"You know... I don't like to judge but when the corporation in my state pays half its workers $275.00 a week and lays off the other half while getting tax breaks if even paying taxes, I dig as deep as I can into their books and find the CEO in her brand new top of the line Lexus I get a little pissed off... Am I doing something wrong by trying to stay in the right?"

Really, you'd think they would learn before they say such stupid things but really, $30 a week is like fucking nothing. And how can someone on EBT drive a Lexus? Where are they getting this BS from?

Foster parents also get food stamps whatever your income is.

I've seen potential abuse of benefits all the time. In my area, if you go to convenience stores a lot, you'll often see people with expensive clothes and new smart phones paying for food with EBT and buying a shitload of blunts... hopping out of the store into a lexus they are not...

a small part of me can't help but wonder, you can afford that shit, *and* weed, but not food?

the larger part of me doesn't give a shit because if they are scamming the system (and you don't really know if someone is just by looking at them), the amount of money lost to such shenanigans is probably .000000000001% of money skimmed off the defense budget by dodgy contractors.

that, and it's none of my business what other people do.

Oh noes! Someone got something! Kill them! More pissing on the poor garbage. Bad enough some here agree.

including our government. We blame each other for "mooching" while the 1% and the politicians they own happily take more and more from all of us.

People on food stamps have very little economic or political power. They make none of the decisions but we are supposed to blame them for all of our problems.

They may be on food stamps just until they get a new job.