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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; food stamps</title>
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		<title>Welfare Stoners: $5,475 Withdrawn on Food Stamp Cards in Colorado Pot Stores</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/welfare-stoners-5475-withdrawn-on-food-stamp-cards-in-colorado-pot-stores/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=welfare-stoners-5475-withdrawn-on-food-stamp-cards-in-colorado-pot-stores</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/welfare-stoners-5475-withdrawn-on-food-stamp-cards-in-colorado-pot-stores/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 25 Feb 2014 15:12:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Colorado]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EBT]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food stamps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[marijuana]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=219623</guid>
		<description><![CDATA["Why do Democrats think it’s okay for welfare beneficiaries to withdraw  benefits in pot shops?"]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Colorado_Cannabis_staver_0911362524706.jpg"><img class="alignnone  wp-image-219624" alt="Colorado_Cannabis_staver_0911362524706" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Colorado_Cannabis_staver_0911362524706.jpg" width="424" height="283" /></a></p>
<p>I don&#8217;t think <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/371814/welfare-money-goes-pot-colorado-jillian-kay-melchior">pot is covered by food stamp cards</a>, but by <a href="http://weaselzippers.us/176340-ebt-cards-used-in-colorado-weed-shops-ay-least-64-times-in-january/">the time the left gets done with Colorado,</a> it probably will be.</p>
<blockquote><p>During the first month of Colorado’s experiment with legal marijuana, welfare beneficiaries withdrew thousands of dollars in public-assistance cash from ATMs at weed shops, according to records obtained by National Review Online.</p>
<p>At least 64 times, public-assistance benefits were accessed at businesses selling marijuana. A total of $5,475 in public benefits was withdrawn at ATMs in establishments that sell pot.</p>
<p>The amounts withdrawn ranged from $20 to $400, averaging $85.55, according to the transaction records. In Colorado, the average household receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits includes one adult and two children, and the maximum monthly benefit for them is $462.</p>
<p>Colorado lawmakers recently failed to pass legislation that would have prohibited EBT withdrawals at retail marijuana shops, medical-marijuana dispensaries, and strip clubs.</p>
<p>“When we passed Amendment 64 to legalize marijuana, the main mantra of the campaign was, ‘Legalize marijuana like alcohol,’” Representative Dan Nordberg, a Republican from Colorado Springs, tells NRO. “But the bill was killed in the state senate, party line. Truth be told, you would think this is common sense, yet I’ve still not received a straight answer for why [Colorado’s Democrats] killed our bill and think it’s okay for welfare beneficiaries to withdraw public benefits in pot shops and strip clubs.”</p></blockquote>
<p>Because that&#8217;s why they vote for Colorado Democrats in the first place.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>8</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>Refuting Robert Reich</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/refuting-robert-reich/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=refuting-robert-reich</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/refuting-robert-reich/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 14 Feb 2014 05:55:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food stamps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Government]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[moveon org]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Poor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Robert Reich]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Unemployment]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=218816</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Seven tired left-wing arguments and why they fail. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/6a012876c6c7fb970c019b00336fea970b-500wi.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-218824" alt="6a012876c6c7fb970c019b00336fea970b-500wi" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/6a012876c6c7fb970c019b00336fea970b-500wi-279x350.jpg" width="279" height="350" /></a>Former Clinton Labor Secretary and lifelong leftist Robert Reich has just released a new <a href="http://front.moveon.org/war_on_the_poor_reich/#.UvzUvV5CD1y">video</a> for MoveOn.org, <span style="line-height: 1.5em;">alleging that there is a &#8220;war&#8221; being waged on the poor and working families. </span></span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">&#8220;What are they really after?&#8221; Reich begins, never bothering to explain who &#8220;they&#8221; are. His rant connects &#8220;seven dots&#8221; that point to a conspiracy of class oppressors who are &#8220;sinking&#8221; the poor with their opposition to big-government dependency programs, such as Food Stamps and long-term unemployment benefits. And once &#8220;they&#8221; get their way, &#8220;you&#8217;ll do exactly as they tell you,&#8221; Reich says. </span></span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Reich&#8217;s seven spurious claims, as over-worn and tired as they are, deserve to be responded to individually. It should be no surprise that each of Reich&#8217;s proposed &#8220;solutions&#8221; does its own damage to the poor, while offering little in the way of genuine social improvement.</span></span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>1.</strong> <em>&#8220;They&#8217;re against extending unemployment benefits for people who have been out of work for more than six months.&#8221;</em> </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The framing of this issue is dishonest at best. On first inspection, someone unfamiliar with the recent history of unemployment compensation extensions on Capitol Hill might sympathize with the idea of extending benefits for those out of work for &#8220;more than six months.&#8221; Six months, after all, is not an unimaginable amount of time to be chronically unemployed in the Obama economy. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The problem is, the recent benefit extension fight in Congress was not targeted just at workers who find themselves still treading water after six or seven months. Combined with state emergency benefits that usually last 26 weeks, federal add-ons initiated after the 2008 recession </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">raised that total to 73 weeks, meaning people were eligible to collect benefits for almost a year and half. This was an unprecedented extension of the unemployment compensation program, and many Americans justifiably question the wisdom of such exceedingly long durations of unemployment benefits. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">One reason for this skepticism has to do with the indisputable capacity of benefit extensions to exacerbate long-term unemployment. <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/01/05/unemployment-insurance-extensions-competitive-enterprise-institute-editorials-debates/4330603/">Analyses</a> </span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) concluded that such extensions over the past five years have kept more than 600,000 out of the labor force by paying people not to work. Those claims were echoed in a </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://ideas.repec.org/e/pmu176.html">survey</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> of recently unemployed people in New Jersey commissioned by Alan Krueger of Princeton University and Andreas Mueller of the University of Stockholm. They discovered that after a burst of initial activity, people slack off on their job search and wait for something to happen. Moreover, it is likely more workers have been drawn into the mire of unemployment due to the benefit extensions: Another <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/368047/study-extending-unemployment-benefits-increased-unemployment-more-3-percentage-points">study</a> from the NBER concluded that unemployment benefit extensions have increased overall unemployment by over 3 percent. </span></span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Workers are not benefited by being encouraged to remain unemployed for such long periods of time. Long-term unemployment dulls skill sets and makes workers less attractive to potential employers. The longer workers are enticed to stay unemployed, prolong the job hunt, or even dismiss jobs with lower pay, the weaker their resumes become when they inevitably reenter the job market. </span></span></p>
<p>Leaving this aside, if Reich&#8217;s &#8220;they&#8221; bogeymen are meant to refer to Republican congressional leadership, his claim that &#8220;they are against&#8221; the benefits extension is also untrue. Republicans have approved renewal of the extension numerous times. This year, Republican lawmakers, led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner, requested that the renewal of the extension be <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303595404579321010229177576">offset</a> elsewhere in the budget and accompanied by job-creations measures, which Democrats refused. If Democrats had conceded to these commonsense compromises, it is more than likely unemployment insurance extension would have been approved for 2014.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>2.</strong> <em>&#8220;They don&#8217;t want to raise the minimum wage.&#8221;</em> </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">A 2007 </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=961374">survey</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> of </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">100 studies</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> on the effects of raising the minimum wage was conducted David Neumark and William Wascher at the National Bureau of Economic Research. It revealed that a &#8220;sizable majority&#8221; of those studies, including those with the &#8220;most credible evidence,&#8221; concluded that raising the minimum wage produced &#8220;negative employment effects, both for the United States as well as for many other countries.&#8221; Even more tellingly, &#8220;the studies that focus on the least-skilled groups provide relatively overwhelming evidence of stronger disemployment effects for these groups.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Furthermore, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.ibtimes.com/most-benefits-minimum-wage-increase-would-not-go-poor-households-1541342">according</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) only 5 percent of hourly U.S. workers made the federal minimum wage or less in 2012. Among those earning it, 63 percent were second- or third-wage earners from households with incomes equal to three times the poverty line or more. Only 11.3 percent of workers who would experience the increase live in households officially designated as poor. As the BLS survey also </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/02/who-earns-the-minimum-wage-suburban-teenagers-not-single-parents">reveals</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, most minimum wage earners are young, part-time workers with an average family income of $53,000 per year. If Reich wishes to help teenage, middle class burger-flippers he might have a point. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>3.</strong> <em>&#8220;They&#8217;re against extending Medicaid benefits.&#8221;</em> </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Unfortunately, the disaster known as ObamaCare is doing precisely this. More than </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://freebeacon.com/factcheck-obamacare-and-the-state-of-the-union/">double</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the number of people who have signed up for healthcare via the exchanges have enrolled in Medicaid. Since Medicaid is government-subsidized insurance, it is paid for by a combination of funds from state and federal budgets. </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">Prior</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to its expansion under ObamaCare, Medicaid had already become the largest line item in a typical state&#8217;s budget, exceeding such items as public safety, infrastructure, roads and, since 2009, education spending for kindergarten-through-12th-grade.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Yet there is a far bigger problem. Since Medicaid payments are 61 percent </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2013/11/physicians-hesitant-medicaid-patients.html">less</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that what private insurance pays, an increasing number of doctors </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/12/26/doctor-wont-see-analysts-warn-obamacare-plans-could-resemble-medicaid/">refuse</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to accept new Medicaid patients. &#8220;About half of the physicians in many communities refuse to take Medicaid patients because the payment system is just too low,&#8221; reports James Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Many doctors are still willing to take a certain percentage of such patients in order to fulfill a moral obligation, but they are not willing to put themselves out of business to do so. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In other words, many Americans enrolled in Medicaid are going to discover a reality that invariably eludes people like Robert Reich: &#8220;extending Medicaid benefits&#8221; isn&#8217;t remotely the same thing as getting actual healthcare. The end result will be rationing and denial of care for the millions of poor sold empty promises.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>4.</strong> <em>&#8220;They want to cut food stamps.&#8221;</em> </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">As with much of the progressive lexicon, &#8220;cut&#8221; is a euphemism. In reality, food stamp usage has </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/record-20-households-food-stamps-2013">exploded</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">, with a record-setting one-in-five American households on the program in 2013, </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/16SNAPpartHH.htm">according</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. Furthermore, the cost of the program has increased a whopping 164 percent over the last decade, and 36.8 percent since the Obama administration assumed control in 2009. Thus a program that cost the nation $58.2 billion in 2009 cost $79.6 billion last year. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The latest Farm Bill under which the food stamp program operates does cut food stamp spending, but those cuts </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.latinpost.com/articles/7126/20140211/president-obama-signs-farm-bill-what-will-the-cut-to-food-stamps-mean-for-you.htm">amount</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to $800 million per year, or approximately one percent of the overall total &#8212; a total that has grown exponentially, even as America remains saddled with a national debt of more than $17 trillion, along with unfunded liabilities that exceed $85 trillion. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>5.</strong> <em>&#8220;They refuse to invest in education and job training.&#8221;</em> </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In reality the federal government alone </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/may/16/mitt-romney/mitt-romney-said-there-are-49-different-federal-jo/">has</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> 47 job-training programs run by nine different agencies, according to the the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). These programs </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/05/17/senator-questions-18b-spent-on-job-training-as-study-suggest-rampant-waste/">cost</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the taxpayer $18 billion per year, and a 2011 report by the same GAO concluded that some of them are riddled with mismanagement, waste, fraud, abuse and corruption. The report further noted that since 2004, only 5 of the 47 agencies involved kept tabs on whether participants had actually secure jobs. &#8220;Little is known about the effectiveness of most programs,&#8221; the GAO concluded.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">As for education, the federal government </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://febp.newamerica.net/background-analysis/education-federal-budget">spent</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> $138 billion in FY2013. In both real dollars and as a percentage of GDP, the United States </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-global-list-study-shows/">outspent</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> most of the world&#8217;s developed nations in education. When one factors in vocational training and college as well, the United States outspends all of them. Yet if bang for the buck counts, America comes up woefully short, routinely scoring well below other nations on international exams. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">But this is only part of the story. Every one of America&#8217;s true educational wastelands &#8212; namely, most of our major inner cities where graduation rates hover around 60 percent or less, where budgets are routinely on the verge of bankruptcy or already there, and where teachers unions fight tooth and nail for the miserable status quo &#8212; are Democrat </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/david-horowitz/atrocity/">strongholds</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. If Reich were truly interested in helping the poor and working class Americans he professes to care so deeply about, he&#8217;d be far more interested in challenging that status quo, which revolves around the unholy alliance of education unions and a Democratic Party beholden to their campaign contributions and marching orders.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>6.</strong> <em>&#8220;They don&#8217;t want to rebuild America&#8217;s crumbling infrastructure.&#8221;</em> </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Reich has an exceedingly short memory. The American Recovery and Investment Act of 2009, more familiarly known as the stimulus bill, was supposed to target the lion&#8217;s share of its $787 billion appropriation (</span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://useconomy.about.com/od/candidatesandtheeconomy/a/Obama_Stimulus.htm">increased</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to $840 billion in 2012) on &#8220;shovel-ready jobs.&#8221; One year later, President Obama </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/magazine/17obama-t.html?_r=3&amp;ref=magazine&amp;pagewanted=all%22">admitted</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> “there&#8217;s no such thing.&#8221; To be fair to Reich, infrastructure spending has </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/24/u-s-infrastructure-spending-has-plummeted-since-2008/">taken</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> a nosedive since its peak before the recession began, but it&#8217;s not because the state and local governments that provide the </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/why-cant-we-just-leave-infrastructure-spending-to-the-states/2012/03/21/gIQAjpYBSS_blog.html">vast majority</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> of infrastructure spending don&#8217;t want to spend the money. It&#8217;s because they </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">can&#8217;t</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> afford to do so.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Yet even in the midst of such cuts, America </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2013/04/01/infrastructure-gap-look-at-the-facts-we-spend-more-than-europe/">spends</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> more on infrastructure than the progressive stronghold known as the European Union, at 3.3 percent of our GDP from 2006-2011, compared to only 3.1 percent for the EU. The clamor for increased spending is all about doing it with more borrowed money, with the American Society of Civil Engineers (hardly a neutral entity) </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/">calling</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> for a $3.6 trillion &#8220;investment&#8221; between now and 2020. Congress&#8217;s most recently passed budget </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://news.agc.org/2014/01/18/congress-passes-spending-bill-to-fund-government-in-2014-2/">allocates</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> $108 billion for federal construction accounts.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The only way we will likely see more infrastructure spending is with a growing economy. Obama could contribute to that growth if he would approve the Keystone pipeline, among other things. Perhaps he could explain why he won&#8217;t to Robert Reich.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><strong>7.</strong> <em>&#8220;They&#8217;re out to bust unions.&#8221;</em> </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Unions are doing a good job of busting themselves. Nothing speaks louder to this reality than the debacle Big Labor perpetrated in Wisconsin, where their thug-like tactics were rejected by both Republican Gov. Scott Walker and the voters themselves. As a result of Walker&#8217;s triumph, a projected $3 billion-plus deficit </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://pjmedia.com/blog/hey-who-wants-to-talk-about-wisconsins-economic-miracle/?singlepage=true">turned</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> into a projected $300,000 surplus in 2011. Much of it was accomplished by getting government union members to pay for a portion of their own healthcare and pensions and eliminating automatic pay and benefit increases that are strangling states like New York, Illinois and California.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">On the national level, a recent </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.mackinac.org/19051">study</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> by the Mackinac Center reveals that right-to-work states have seen greater improvements in employment rates, income, and population growth than non-right-to-work states over the last 60 years. Critics attempt to obscure this reality by pointing to the fact that states with right-to-work laws have lower per capita incomes. Yet they </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/18222">fail</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> to factor in the cost of living, which is far more expensive in states where union monopolies push government budgets, and the taxes that pay for them, ever higher. When cost of living is factored in,  people in right-to-work states have 4.1 percent higher per-capita personal incomes than those in non-right-to-work states.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Furthermore, in cities that have gone bankrupt, such as Stockton, and Detroit, the primary drivers of that bankruptcy were out-of-control legacy costs for government union workers. Of Detroit&#8217;s $12 billion in outstanding debt, $9.2 billion of it is comprised of health and pension benefits owed to retired workers. When the city filed for bankruptcy, it </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/07/24/detriot-mess-why-future-stalled-in-motor-city/">had</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> 47 different public employee unions, and a worker at the Water and Sewer Department who collected $56,000 in pay and benefits for his job as a horse-shoer despite the department having no horses. Detroit also has three retired municipal workers collecting a pension for every two that are still working.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">According to Heritage Foundation&#8217;s chief economist Stephen Moore, more than 60 American cities may be </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2014/02/us-is-going-bankrupt-one-city-at-time.html">facing</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the same fate as the Motor City. “Keep an eye on ‘too big to fail’ cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York,” he warns.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Moore goes on to cite the progressive ideology in general championed by Reich and others as the primary impetus for such failure. “For at least the last 20 years major U.S. cities have been playgrounds for left-wing experiments—high taxes on the rich; sanctuaries for illegal immigrants; super-minimum wage rules; strict gun-control laws; regulations and paperwork that makes it onerous to open a business or develop on your own property; crony capitalism with contracts going to political donors and friends; and failing schools ruled by teacher unions, with little competition or productivity.”</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">If Robert Reich had any intellectual honesty, he would answer his question, &#8220;What are they really after?&#8221; by examining who really benefits from</span><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> large swathes of the population kept mired in poverty and being sucked into the mentality of dependency. It is no accident that every major American city </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/big-dem-cities-big-dem-poverty/">besieged</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> by poverty, crime, economic disfunction and failing schools is a Democratic stronghold. </span>Reich&#8217;s proposals offer more of the same. They merely reassert a long-held belief by the American left that success is measured by how many people they get <i>on</i> government programs, not <i>off</i> government programs. Americas would do well to &#8220;connect the dots&#8221; regarding the utter bankruptcy of such ideology.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Food Stamp Explosion</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/food-stamp-explosion/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=food-stamp-explosion</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/arnold-ahlert/food-stamp-explosion/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 23 Jan 2014 05:25:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food stamps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jobs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[poverty]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Unemployment]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=217102</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What it says about the fraudulent economic "recovery." ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/food-stamps.gi_.top_.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-217118" alt="food-stamps.gi.top" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/food-stamps.gi_.top_.jpg" width="266" height="176" /></a>Another dose of reality has trumped the Obama administration&#8217;s economic happy talk. According to </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/16SNAPpartHH.htm">data</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), one-in-five Americans were on the food stamp program in 2013. A staggering 23,052,388 households needed supplemental food assistance in FY2013, an increase of 722,675 households compared to FY2012. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The cost of the program, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), has also </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/record-20-households-food-stamps-2013">reached</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> an all-time high. For fiscal year 2013, the SNAP program cost American taxpayers $79.6 billion. That represents a 36.8 percent increase in expenditures over the last five years. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">And it&#8217;s not just households that have seen a huge jump in the SNAP participation rate. The monthly average for individual users of the program has also increased dramatically, as an additional 1,027,012 participants pushed the total number of individual users from 46,609,072 to 47,636,084 over the same time period. Since 2009, the number of individuals using the SNAP program has increased by 42.2 percent.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Obviously the global financial crisis of 2007 contributed to the increased number of people who lost their jobs and/or savings, and were forced to turn to supplemental assistance as a result. But the biggest bump in both the number of households and individuals on the program occurred between FY2009 and FY2010, when America was ostensibly in the beginning of the so-called recovery. Furthermore, the next three years saw a steady increase in usage as well.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The increase leads to one of two conclusions. Either the number of people gaming the system is getting out of hand, or the economy isn&#8217;t in recovery for a vast number of Americans.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Certainly a certain percentage of fraud exists. In Florida&#8217;s Palm Beach County, warrants were issued in December for 60 people suspected of </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/two-year-investigation-leads-to-60-arrests-on-publ/ncMBm/">cheating</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the system out of $2.8 million. The scheme involved a market that allowed SNAP users to illegally swipe their cards for cash. In return, the market got a 50 percent kickback for lying to state and federal authorities and saying that that groceries were purchased. In two Louisiana counties, a failure at Xerox Corp., temporarily taking down the electronic benefit transfer system, resulted in an unknown number of customers </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://theadvocate.com/home/7320109-125/state-taxpayers-dont-have-to">stripping</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> bare the shelves of two Wal-Mart stores and making purchases well beyond their EBT card limits.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) has </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://farmfutures.com/story-senator-wants-food-stamp-purchases-require-photo-id-0-107630">introduced</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> a bill, the &#8220;Food Stamp Fraud Prevention and Accountability Act&#8221; that would require SNAP users to show a photo ID when using their benefit cards. &#8220;Using a photo ID is standard in many day to day transactions, and most of those are not exclusively paid for by the taxpayer dollars,&#8221; Vitter said. &#8220;Food Stamps have more than doubled in cost since 2008 and continue to grow in an unsustainable way, and the events in Louisiana unfortunately highlight the fraud surrounding the taxpayer-funded program.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Naturally those on the left </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/16/david-vitter-food-stamps_n_4610560.html">resisted</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> the idea. &#8220;Many poor people do not have photo IDs, and it costs money they do not have to get them,&#8221; said Deborah Weinstein, executive director of the Coalition on Human Needs. &#8220;Senator Vitter&#8217;s proposal will be especially tough on elderly and poor people who do not have the documents needed to get their photo ID, and who will struggle even to get to the necessary offices. They will wind up going without food.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">A recent inspector general audit estimated that $222 million per year could be saved by cracking down on fraud. The audit found some of the more obvious scams, such as recipients using “erroneous” Social Security numbers, or receiving duplicate benefits in the same state. Others fraudsters were getting benefits from more than one state at the same time, or using a dead person’s Social Security number to collect benefits. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Yet if that number is accurate, fraud is not a large problem, since it comprises only .28 percent of the $79 billion spent on the program. That is not to say cheating shouldn&#8217;t be addressed. But it leads one to believe that a non-recovering economy is the more likely culprit.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Furthermore, there is far more evidence to support that scenario. Despite the president touting an unemployment rate of 6.7 percent, a </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-10/people-not-labor-force-soar-record-918-million-participation-rate-plunges-1978-level">record-shattering</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> 91.8 million Americans are no longer in the workforce, and the labor participation rate has reached its lowest level since 1978. That lack of labor force participation includes a </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://weaselzippers.us/americans-not-in-labor-force-at-all-time-high-91-8-million/">record number</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> of women (55 million), and the </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/01/black-labor-force-participation-rate-under-obama-hits-rock-bottom-lowest-level-ever-recorded/">lowest</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> workforce participation rate for black Americans </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">ever recorded</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The population of the United State is </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://weaselzippers.us/americans-not-in-labor-force-at-all-time-high-91-8-million/">approximately</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> 317 million. Thus, more than a few Americans might be wondering how we have an unemployment rate of only 6.7 percent when almost 92 million people no longer participate in the workforce. Surely some have retired and some are not eligible to work, but what about the rest?</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">In a </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.emarotta.com/should-we-wallow-in-the-rising-stock-market/">memo</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> sent out to his clients, Wall Street advisor David John Marotta contends that the government&#8217;s statistics are </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://washingtonexaminer.com/wall-street-advisor-actual-unemployment-is-37.2-misery-index-worst-in-40-years/article/2542604">fraudulent</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">. &#8220;Unemployment in its truest definition, meaning the portion of people who do not have any job, is 37.2%,&#8221; he contends. &#8220;This number obviously includes some people who are not or never plan to seek employment. But it does describe how many people are not able to, do not want to or cannot find a way to work. Policies that remove the barriers to employment, thus decreasing this number, are obviously beneficial.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">He also explains the essence of the co-called &#8220;jobless recovery,&#8221; where Wall Street flirts with record highs, even as </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/07/28/americans-poverty-no-work/2594203/">four-out-of-five</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> American adults endure unemployment, near-poverty or reliance on welfare programs for some portion of their lives. &#8220;Given current government policies, it is specifically by avoiding U.S. workers that companies are keeping their profits strong,” he explains. “Obamacare punishes large companies for each full-time worker and provides strong incentives for small businesses to stay below 50 full-time-equivalent employees. Automation and outsourcing are making U.S. companies more profitable at the expense of U.S. employment.&#8221; </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">He further contends the government is manipulating the data used to calculate inflation, which is also being exacerbated by the Federal Reserve&#8217;s continuing bond purchases that devalue our currency. This combination of unemployment stats and inflation rate is known as the &#8220;misery index,&#8221; and Marotta believes it should be nearly double what the government officially says it is.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Marotta is not the only one accusing the government of fudging statistics for political benefit. The House Oversight Committee has </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://nypost.com/2014/01/20/commerce-muscles-in-on-congress-hearing/">begun</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> an investigation into allegations unearthed by the </span><i style="line-height: 1.5em;">NY Post’s</i><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> John Crudele. He contends a “knowledgeable source” told him the Census Bureau, which compiles the data used by the Labor Department to calculate the monthly unemployment rate, was manipulating that data in the months leading up to the 2012 election. The focus of the investigation is the period between August and September of that year, when the unemployment rate dropped from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent. </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">The Census Bureau is controlled by the Commerce Department. And in a familiar refrain, some Committee members assert that Commerce is stonewalling the probe.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Whatever the real statistics are, they are not the only indication that all is not well. CNBC </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/101353168">reports</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that the nation is facing a &#8220;tsunami&#8221; of retail store closings. They include Sears, which will close its flagship store in Chicago, adding it to the list of 300 closures the chain has made since 2010. J.C. Penny&#8217;s and Macy&#8217;s have also announced multiple store closings. Target will eliminate 475 jobs worldwide, and not refill 700 positions&#8211;assuming they can weather the massive data breach that </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.wjla.com/articles/2014/01/target-data-breach-info-begins-popping-up-but-source-still-hard-to-track-99508.html">affected</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> 110 million credit card users shopping at their stores.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Last year, retail jobs </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/lower-paying-industries-led-2013-us-job-gains-21491763">accounted</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> for the second-highest number of employees in the nation, after government jobs and those in the professional services industry. Thus, large numbers of store closings do not bode well for that sector this year. Yet even more telling, lower-paying jobs in general accounted for most of the nation&#8217;s job creation last year &#8212; with the largest percentage increase occurring in the temporary help industry.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Americans have noticed. A Fox News </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/interactive/2014/01/22/fox-news-poll-voters-say-us-still-in-recession-glad-know-snowden-secrets/">poll</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> published yesterday reveals that 74 percent of the public believes the nation is still in recession. Furthermore, they&#8217;re apparently not buying the administration&#8217;s populist solutions for fixing it. When asked what the most important economic issue facing the country was, 40 percent said jobs and unemployment, followed by government spending at 36 percent. Only 12 percent said income inequality, and only 6 percent thought taxes were the nation’s most pressing economic problem.</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">And then there is the proverbial 800-pound gorilla known as ObamaCare. On Tuesday, Target </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-21/target-to-drop-health-insurance-for-part-time-workers.html">announced</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> it would no longer offer health insurance to its part-time employees beginning April 1. Ironically, this announcement was made the same day the Associated Press (AP) ran a story </span><a style="line-height: 1.5em;" href="http://www.denverpost.com/obamacare/ci_24956054/law-affects-those-insurance-thru-work-too">contending</a><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"> that ObamaCare “isn&#8217;t expected to prompt sudden, radical changes for workers.&#8221; It further contended that &#8220;anecdotes of companies cutting employees&#8217; hours aren&#8217;t showing up in official U.S. employment numbers.&#8221;</span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">Note the word &#8220;official.&#8221; Last month, a paltry 74,000 jobs were created, even as 347,000 Americans left the workforce. That means for every jobs created, almost five Americans stopped looking for work. As far as the Obama administration and its media allies like the AP are concerned, the former number is &#8220;official.&#8221; The latter number is unofficial&#8211;or perhaps &#8220;anecdotal.&#8221; </span></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;">One suspects the more than 47 million Americans on food stamps, along with every other American enduring the slowest &#8220;recovery&#8221; since WWII have little interest in statistics. They want jobs, and dubious government employment numbers and empty rhetoric, courtesy of the president and his party, are not viable substitutes.</span></p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>. </b></p>
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		<title>Obama Free to Go on Advertising Food Stamps in Mexico</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obama-free-to-go-on-advertising-food-stamps-in-mexico/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-free-to-go-on-advertising-food-stamps-in-mexico</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/obama-free-to-go-on-advertising-food-stamps-in-mexico/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 15 Jan 2014 23:46:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food stamps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mexico]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=216524</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[“Nearly 1 in 6 people living in the US are now on food stamps."]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/food-stamps.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-216541" alt="food stamps" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/food-stamps-450x297.jpg" width="450" height="297" /></a></p>
<p>Magnet? What illegal immigration magnet? That&#8217;s <a href="http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=221224">immigration reform magnet</a>, now.</p>
<blockquote><p>The omnibus spending bill before Congress continues to fund U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) advertising programs for food stamps in foreign countries like Mexico, Breitbart News has learned.</p>
<p>The bill was hashed out between House Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY) and Senate Appropriations Committee chairwoman Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD). The funding will continue despite claims in a document the House Appropriations Committee published that the bill contains a “prohibition” on such programs. Page three of this press document states regarding food stamps that the omnibus spending bill contains a &#8220;prohibition on advertisements or outreach with foreign governments.&#8221;</p>
<p>The entire paragraph that contains that statement reads:   Requirements for the Secretary of Agriculture to help weed out and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in the SNAP program – including a directive to ban fraudulent vendors, and a prohibition on advertisements or outreach with foreign governments.</p>
<p>However, upon reading through the text of the bill and the bill summary explanatory document, there is no such “prohibition” included in it. Instead, the explanatory document that Rogers published just states that USDA is “strongly discouraged” from advertising food stamps programs with foreign governments.</p></blockquote>
<p>The more things claim to have been changed, the more they stay exactly the same. A Republican deal with a Democrat invariably ends with the Democrat getting everything he wants on policy issues and the Republican getting bragging rights based on meaningless language.</p>
<blockquote><p>Similarly, during the Senate Budget Committee markup of the Democratic budget that Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) offered last year, Sessions offered an amendment that would have ended the USDA’s partnership with Mexico on food stamp advertising in that country. Senate Democrats unanimously voted against that Sessions amendment.</p></blockquote>
<p>And <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/01/obama-usda-met-30-times-with-mexican-govt-to-promote-food-stamp-use-among-mexican-immigrants/">let&#8217;s not forget that</a>&#8230;</p>
<blockquote><p>Department of Agriculture personnel in the Obama administration have met with Mexican Government officials dozens of times since the president took office to promote nutrition assistance programs — notably food stamps — among Mexican Americans, Mexican nationals and migrant communities in America.</p>
<p>“Nearly 1 in 6 people living in the US are now on food stamps,” Sessions noted. “How can the administration justify trying to increase that number through outreach on the foreign soil of fifty consulates?”</p></blockquote>
<p>Somebody&#8217;s got to move here and vote for him six times.</p>
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		<title>The Problem Isn&#8217;t Just Welfare Abuse, it&#8217;s the Enablers</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/the-problem-isnt-just-welfare-abuse-its-the-enablers/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-problem-isnt-just-welfare-abuse-its-the-enablers</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 15 Oct 2013 23:38:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food stamps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[welfare state]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=207405</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[We don't just have a welfare state. We have a welfare economy.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/accept_ebt.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-207504" alt="accept_ebt" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/accept_ebt.jpg" width="436" height="331" /></a></p>
<p>At the National Review, Charles C. W. Cooke <a href="http://nationalreview.com/article/361237/louisiana-heist-charles-c-w-cooke">writes on the Walmart EBT rush</a>, &#8220;Whether or not local authorities had legal cause to arrest the shoppers on the spot, there really should be no doubt that widespread theft took place — or, perhaps, that widespread fraud took place. Neither that the beneficiaries evidently believe that they could get away with it, nor that the victim was the unsympathetically anonymous mass of Louisianan and federal taxpayers alters the plain fact. This was a crime&#8230;</p>
<p>We are not talking here about a moral grey area, in which starving people saw and took a rare chance to feed themselves. Instead, we are talking about people who, over and above their normal allowance, elected to steal from the millions of people from whose paychecks the food-stamp program’s funds are forcibly taken — and on whose beneficence they rely.&#8221;</p>
<p>We could of course go on some more about the character failings of the people on generation welfare. But the real criminal here is Walmart.</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;At Walmarts in the towns of Springhill and Mansfield, employees called corporate headquarters to ask what they should do. They were instructed to “keep the registers ringing.” This they did — and with a vengeance.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>I expect very little from the looters. This is how they live and how they have lived for generations. They have no sense of right and wrong when it comes to government aid.</p>
<p>I have no idea what it would take to change their character.</p>
<p>But Walmart, a huge corporate entity, certainly knew what it was doing. How much of Walmart&#8217;s income comes from food stamps? That&#8217;s interesting question.</p>
<p>I grew up in New York City and that means I grew up surrounded by the infrastructure of food stamps. My family never had them, but I still saw them around so often that they&#8217;re as familiar to me as currency.</p>
<p>They just were and are that ubiquitous. Looking through pictures<a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/redskins-unveil-new-name-and-logo-honoring-obama/"> for my Redkins photoshop yesterda</a>y, I recognized three different types I saw growing up.</p>
<p>Yesterday standing in line at the supermarket, I saw a woman actually buying some sort of black sea fish delicacy with an EBT card, hopefully not caviar.</p>
<p>But the woman in some ways interests me less than the supermarket which would probably go out of business if food stamps really were shut down. It wouldn&#8217;t be the only one.</p>
<p>How many of the bodegas and local supermarkets in minority neighborhoods would survive? How would the banks that cover their loans do? What about the Walmarts in those areas?</p>
<p>It would not surprise me too much if the impact of taking away food stamps would wipe out a huge chunk of what we might even think of as the legitimate economy.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s a reason we have a welfare state. And it&#8217;s not just because of Louisiana Walmart shoppers. It&#8217;s because there&#8217;s an equally parasitic economic infestation on top of them. And another one on top of them.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s not just true of food stamps. It&#8217;s true of every area of the welfare state. There is an infrastructure of</p>
<p>1. Government workers to administer the whole thing in the public sector,</p>
<p>2. Non-profits cashing on community service grants</p>
<p>3. Corporations and businesses making money from it on the other end</p>
<p>It&#8217;s not just that we have a welfare state. We also have a growing welfare economy backed by for-profit and non-profit lobbies.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s not much that can be done about people as degraded as these. But companies like Walmart should be held accountable for their complicity in this mess. Because they know exactly what they&#8217;re doing.</p>
<p>So do the grocery stores and supermarkets slapping EBT stickers on soda machines and deli counters.</p>
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		<title>Obama Express Owner Accused of Food Stamp Fraud</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/obama-express-owner-accused-of-food-stamp-fraud/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-express-owner-accused-of-food-stamp-fraud</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/obama-express-owner-accused-of-food-stamp-fraud/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 23 Sep 2013 14:31:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food stamps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[fraud]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=204916</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[. Steal 2 million dollars  and you go to jail. Steal 6 trillion dollars and you get a second term.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/19blog-obama-train.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-204917" alt="19blog-obama-train" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/19blog-obama-train-450x299.jpg" width="450" height="299" /></a></p>
<p>I guess it&#8217;s true what they say. <a href="http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/09/video-shocker-obama-express-store-owner-charged-with-food-stamp-fraud/">Steal 2 million dollars  and you go to jail</a>. Steal 6 trillion dollars and you get a second term.</p>
<blockquote><p>On September 17, WBAL reported that nine retailers in Baltimore County had been arrested for illegally redeeming food stamps for cash and kicking back a portion to food stamp recipients. The retailers did not sell them any merchandise or food.</p>
<p>One of those indicted was one Abdullah Aljaradi who allegedly obtained $2 million in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) cash from Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards.</p>
<p>Abdullah Aljaradi, age 51, of Baltimore; Second Obama Express and D&amp;M Deli and Grocery, 901 Harlem Avenue, Suite A and B, respectively. From October 2010 through July 2013, Aljaradi allegedly obtained more than $2 million in payments for food sales that never occurred.</p></blockquote>
<p>He should have just called it a stimulus program.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/b4s_obamaexpress0430_66349a_8col.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-204918" alt="b4s_obamaexpress0430_66349a_8col" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/b4s_obamaexpress0430_66349a_8col-450x299.jpg" width="450" height="299" /></a></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<title>Dem Congressman Who Has Never Worked for a Living to Live on Food Stamps</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/dem-congressman-who-has-never-worked-for-a-living-to-live-on-food-stamps/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=dem-congressman-who-has-never-worked-for-a-living-to-live-on-food-stamps</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/dem-congressman-who-has-never-worked-for-a-living-to-live-on-food-stamps/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 17 Aug 2013 14:28:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Democrats]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food stamps]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=192977</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Dan Kildee started in politics at the age of 18 when he was elected to the Flint Board of Education in 1977.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/KildeeAdd7.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-192987" alt="KildeeAdd7" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/KildeeAdd7-450x337.jpg" width="450" height="337" /></a></p>
<p>If a dictionary were ever in need of a charming woodcut picture to go under the word &#8220;parasite&#8221;, it would have a tough choice between a mosquito and Congressman Dan Kildee.</p>
<p>Dan Kildee started in politics at the age of 18 when he was elected to the Flint Board of Education in 1977. Since then he&#8217;s held down a variety of government positions and non-profits.</p>
<p>When his uncle Dale Kildee, who was famous for serving 35 years in Congress (after serving 11 years in Michigan State government and for being accused of molesting his cousin) finally decided to retire at the age 0f 81, naturally it was time for Dan Kildee to succeed to his family inheritance.</p>
<p>A congressional seat.</p>
<p>Dan Kildee ran unopposed (naturally) in the Democratic Party and now hopes to retire from Congress at the ripe old age of 81 when perhaps there will be another Kildee to pass the torch of not working for a living to.</p>
<p>Until then, <a href="http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130611/POLITICS03/306110053/1361/Rep.-Kildee-vows-to-eat-on-food-stamp-budget-in-protest-of-possible-cuts-to-nutritional-program">Kildee has announced plans to relate</a> to the not working class by living on food stamps, the way that people who can&#8217;t figure out how to get elected to Congress do.</p>
<blockquote><p>U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee said Tuesday he will be living on a food stamp budget for one week to protest potential cuts to the nutritional program House Republicans are poised to adopt.</p>
<p>Starting Sunday, the Flint Democrat will live on the average food stamp budget of $4.50 a day ($31.50 for the week) to shine a light on the struggles of low-income Americans who rely on the program.</p>
<p>“I hope to gain a better understanding of how difficult it is for many of my constituents to avoid hunger and try to meet nutritional needs,” the freshman representative said in statement.</p></blockquote>
<p>Let me help Dan out. Don&#8217;t buy fast food. Don&#8217;t eat at restaurants. Buy cheap bread. Buy cheap fruit. Throw in some canned goods and pasta. And then get elected to Congress on your creepy uncle&#8217;s seat. Eat at the Congressional cafeteria. There, you&#8217;re done.</p>
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		<title>Food Stamp Program Helps Feed Half the Caribbean</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/food-stamp-program-helps-feed-half-the-caribbean/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=food-stamp-program-helps-feed-half-the-caribbean</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/food-stamp-program-helps-feed-half-the-caribbean/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Jul 2013 13:22:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food stamps]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=197672</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Customers pay cash for the barrels, usually about $40, and typically ship them filled with $500 to $2,000 worth of rice, beans, pasta, canned milk and sausages.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/21.1N005.welfare1.C-300x300.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-197673" alt="21.1N005.welfare1.C--300x300" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/21.1N005.welfare1.C-300x300.jpg" width="300" height="300" /></a></p>
<p>I will<a href="http://weaselzippers.us/2013/07/21/ny-food-stamp-recipients-shipping-welfare-funded-groceries-to-relatives-in-haiti-dominican-republic-jamaica/"> admit to not seeing this one coming,</a> if only <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/it_on_y22owkLpsldSAjDVC9isjM">because it requires a level of thrift</a> I have yet to see displayed by EBT card users.</p>
<blockquote><p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>“Everybody does it,” said a worker at an Associated Supermarket in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn. “They pay for it any way they can. A lot of people pay with EBT.”</p>
<p>Customers pay cash for the barrels, usually about $40, and typically ship them filled with $500 to $2,000 worth of rice, beans, pasta, canned milk and sausages.</p>
<p>Workers at the Pioneer Supermarket on Parkside Avenue and the Key Food on Flatbush Avenue confirmed the practice.</p>
<p>They said food-stamp recipients typically take home their barrels and fill them gradually over time with food bought with EBT cards.</p>
<p>When the tubs are full, the welfare users call a shipping company to pick them up and send them to the Caribbean for about $70. The shipments take about three weeks.</p></blockquote>
<p>Recently we had a rash of publicity stunts involving celebrities talking about how hard it is to live on food stamps, if there&#8217;s enough money left over to ship thousands of dollars worth of food to Haiti, then clearly it&#8217;s not that hard.</p>
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		<title>1/3 of Americans Depend on Government for Food</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/13-of-americans-depend-on-government-for-food/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=13-of-americans-depend-on-government-for-food</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/13-of-americans-depend-on-government-for-food/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Jul 2013 13:28:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[departments of agriculture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food stamps]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=196153</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A country where almost a third of the population is literally relying on the government for food is hovering around the margins of being a failed state.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/barack-obama-creates-food-stamp-nation.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-196154" alt="barack-obama-creates-food-stamp-nation" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/barack-obama-creates-food-stamp-nation-450x293.jpg" width="450" height="293" /></a></p>
<p>Gingrich was criticized for calling Obama<a href="http://weaselzippers.us/2013/07/08/obamanomics-101-million-americans-now-receiving-food-aid-from-federal-government-more-than-the-total-number-of-private-sector-workers/"> a food stamp president,</a> but it&#8217;s a common sense observation that a country where almost a third of the population is literally relying on the government for food is <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/101m-americans-get-food-aid-federal-gov-t-more-number-private-sector-workers">hovering around the margins of being a failed state</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>The number of Americans receiving subsidized food assistance from the federal government has risen to 101 million, representing roughly a third of the U.S. population.</p>
<p>The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that a total of 101,000,000 people currently participate in at least one of the 15 food programs offered by the agency, at a cost of $114 billion in fiscal year 2012.</p>
<p>That means the number of Americans receiving food assistance has surpassed the number of private sector workers in the U.S.</p>
<p>According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there were 97,180,000 full-time private sector workers in 2012. The population of the U.S. is 316.2 million people, meaning nearly a third of Americans receive food aid from the government.</p></blockquote>
<p>So we now have more people eating through the government than eating through working. Whatever one may think of the social safety net, those are troubling numbers that indicate the recovery is mythical.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
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		<title>How Fed Food Assistance Fattens Corporate America</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/how-fed-food-assistance-feeds-corporate-america/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-fed-food-assistance-feeds-corporate-america</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/how-fed-food-assistance-feeds-corporate-america/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Jul 2013 04:14:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[corporations]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food stamps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[nutrition]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[snap]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[welfare]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=196352</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[One-third of Americans dependent on aid? Big business approves. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/101103-food_stamps.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-196365" alt="Image: Bloomberg Asks Fed Gov't For Permission To Ban Food Stamp Purchases Of Sugary Drinks" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/101103-food_stamps-450x337.jpg" width="252" height="189" /></a>On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) <a href="http://www.usda.gov/oig/webdocs/27001-0001-10.pdf">revealed</a> that a mind-blowing total of <i>101 million</i> Americans participate in at least one of 15 different nutrition programs made available by the federal government. That surpasses the 97.2 million of Americans who represent the total number working full time in the private sector, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This is a disgraceful indictment of the Obama administration&#8217;s big-government policies. Many of those policies are pushed by corporate entities looking to feed at the government trough.</p>
<p>First, a look at the scope of the problem. Since the total population of the United States is approximately 316 million people, nearly <a href="http://cnsnews.com/news/article/101m-get-food-aid-federal-gov-t-outnumber-full-time-private-sector-workers">one-in-three</a> Americans are receiving some kind of food benefits. The largest individual program is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) more commonly known as food stamps. An average of 46.7 million Americans from 22.5 million households participate in the food stamps program on a monthly basis, at a cost of $7.4 billion per month.</p>
<p>The food stamps program is followed by the National School Lunch program, which is used by a daily average of 32 million students. The School Breakfast Program is used by 10.6 million per day; Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is used by 8.9 million per month; the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program was used by 7,100 schools during the 2011-2012 school year; the Child and Adult Care serves daily meals and snacks to 3.3 million children, along with 120,000 adults receiving care in nonresidential adult day care centers; the Senior Farmers’ Market is used by 864,000 low-income seniors. Other programs include the Commodity Supplemental Food Program for infants, children and the elderly; the Special Milk Program; the Summer Food Service Program for needy children during summer or when schools are closed; and the Disaster Food Assistance program, which provides people with food following any number of emergencies.</p>
<p>Four more programs round out the list, including the Commodity Program (Schools-Child Nutrition), costing $1.1 billion in FY 2012; the Emergency Food Assistance Program at $483 million in FY 2011; the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations used by 276 tribes; and the WIC Farmers&#8217; Market Nutrition Program, which provides coupons to 1.9 million women infants and children.</p>
<p>In a remarkable understatement, the USDA notes that the Food and Nutrition Service’s (FNS) nutrition programs &#8220;may be duplicating its efforts by providing total benefits that exceed 100 percent of daily nutritional needs to program participants when households and/or individuals participate in more than one of FNS’ nutrition programs simultaneously.&#8221;</p>
<p>This kind of massive dependency is a boon to corporate America. In 2011, YUM! Brands, the parent company of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC, Long John Silver&#8217;s and A&amp;W <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-17/yum-s-campaign-to-allow-food-stamps-at-kfc-runs-afoul-of-usda.html">lobbied</a> government officials in Ohio Pennsylvania, Florida and Kentucky to allow its restaurants to participate in the SNAP program. “Everybody wants to get a piece of that action,” Marion Nestle, a New York University professor of nutrition and public health said at the time. “Right now it’s going to grocery stores; restaurants think that’s not fair.” According to the USDA, which was against the effort, &#8220;prepared foods&#8221; are not generally available under the SNAP program. However, the 1977 Food Stamp Act allows states to grant restaurants permission to accept food stamps from the homeless, disabled or elderly.</p>
<p>As of 2012, California, Arizona and Michigan were allowing restaurant participation in SNAP on a large scale, with Florida and Rhode Island committed to pilot programs. The USDA, which voiced opposition to YUM! Brands&#8217; efforts in 2011, is seemingly of two minds on the subject. Here is a <a href="http://www.snaprmp.org/">website</a> dedicated to promoting the Restaurant Meals Program, a federally approved effort implemented at a state and county level. In 2011, the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel characterized it as a &#8220;win-win for the recipients, the restaurants, the community and the economy.&#8221;</p>
<p>Between 2005-2010, the number of businesses approved by the USDA to accept food stamps grew by 33 percent, from about 156,000 to nearly 209,000, according to USDA data. They included convenience stores, dollar discount stores, pharmacies and gas stations. When YUM! wanted a piece of the action, they were supported by the National Restaurant Association. They were opposed by the Association of Conveniences Stores, whose spokesman, Jeff Lenard, was refreshingly honest in explaining why. &#8220;If the pie&#8217;s only so big, nobody&#8217;s going to want to see the pie sliced thinner,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I&#8217;m not sure that&#8217;s in the best interest of public health.&#8221;</p>
<p>In 2012, that &#8220;pie,&#8221; which is the largest part of a farm bill Congress <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/it-s-not-really-farm-bill_652901.html">enacts</a> every five years, <a href="http://blog.heritage.org/2013/06/18/farm-bill-barely-nibbles-at-food-stamps/">cost</a> American taxpayers a record-setting $80 billion &#8212; double the $40 billion it cost only four years earlier in 2008.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the machinations of food providers with regard to the SNAP program is only half the story. A <a href="http://g-a-i.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/GAI-Report-ProfitsfromPoverty-FINAL.pdf">report</a> by the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) reveals that “only three corporations have cornered the market for providing SNAP services to the needy and destitute.&#8221; Those companies are J.P. Morgan EFS, Affiliated Computer Services, and eFunds, and they provide &#8220;EBT services for 49 states and 3 US territories.&#8221; The largest player is JP Morgan, which says EBT is “a very important business to JP Morgan. It’s an important business in terms of its size and scale&#8230;Right now volumes have gone through the roof in the past couple of years or so. The good news from JP Morgan’s perspective is the infrastructure that we built has been able to cope with that increase in volume.”</p>
<p>The GAI report further illuminates the symbiotic relationship between such companies and the USDA, noting that since 2009 &#8212; when the recession officially ended and the so-called recovery began &#8212; 32 states have followed their suggestion to use Broad Based Categorical Eligibility to &#8220;increase SNAP participation and reduce State workloads.&#8221; The Broad Based Categorical Eligibility policy was implemented by the Clinton administration and heavily promoted by the Obama Administration. It allows states more &#8220;flexibility&#8221; with regard to asset and income limits, enabling more people to enroll in the program. The GAI estimates that such changes have increased food stamp participation by 70 percent from 2007 to 2011.</p>
<p>In 2009, as part of the &#8220;stimulus package,&#8221; the Obama administration also <a href="http://blog.heritage.org/2012/08/15/obama-administration-already-tossed-the-food-stamp-work-requirement/">suspended</a> the the food stamp program&#8217;s work requirements for able-bodied adults. Welfare reform enacted 1996 mandated that after three months of food stamp participation, able-bodied recipients had to be engaged in some kind of work activity for at least 20 hours a week. In 2010 and 2011, Obama requested the suspension be extended. Yet as is often the case with this president, Obama did not wait for Congress to act. The USDA issued waivers, and the number of able-bodied SNAP recipients went from 1.7 million people in 2009 to 3.9 million in 2010. Moreover, the administration has allowed the waivers to continue, despite the reality that they were only <a href="http://blog.heritage.org/2013/06/18/farm-bill-barely-nibbles-at-food-stamps/">supposed</a> to be temporary.</p>
<p>The trio of companies mentioned above certainly don&#8217;t mind. The lion&#8217;s share of their revenues come from the total number of people enrolled in the SNAP program on a monthly basis. This &#8220;Cost Per Case Month (CPCM)&#8221; is a fee for each individual enrolled in the program. It ranges from $0.65 to $1.45 depending on the state, with higher fees for the contracting company if the state combines multiple welfare services, such as SNAP and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), on a single EBT card. The corporations also make money on monthly fees garnered from Point of Sale (POS) machines that are used to make EBT purchases and transmit purchase information to the government, ATM machines that take EBT cards for cash withdrawals, card replacement fees for lost or stolen cards, and customer service charges for calls made by EBT users.</p>
<p>In other words, a combination of Americans&#8217; dependency and sense of entitlement is quite profitable. So much so that JP Morgan&#8217;s donations to members of Congressional Agriculture Committees have more than doubled, from the time they entered the EBT services market, through the 2010 election cycle. And for those who invariably associate Wall Street banks with the Republican party, it should be noted that JP Morgan contributed $345,505 to John McCain during the 2008 election cycle. Obama received $807,000 from the bank.</p>
<p>Several members of Congress and the Executive Branch have substantial holdings at JP Morgan. This might explain why legislation known as the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act was passed by Congress in December 2010 and signed by the president. The law requires every state to add the USDA&#8217;s WIC program to their EBT cards by October 1, 2020. Since WIC services 8.9 women and children, a host of new &#8220;customers&#8221; will be added to the corporate bottom line.</p>
<p>Yet that addition comes with a heavy price. In the same way EBT cards removed the stigma that actual food stamps carried, the &#8220;stigma&#8221; of dignity itself is being removed from a large swath of the American population. And lest anyone think that all of the increased usage in food programs directly correlates to increased levels of poverty, think again. In 2002, nearly 12 percent of Americans lived below the official poverty line. In 2012, it was 15 percent. Thus, in ten years poverty increased by 25 percent, while as spending on food assistance <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/it-s-not-really-farm-bill_652901.html">grew</a> by <i>400 percent.</i> Economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Manhattan Institute, who analyzed the disconnect in 2012, saw an ominous future. &#8220;Perhaps most troubling is that the expansion in the SNAP program means that even when our economy returns to full activity and much lower unemployment, the food stamp benefits will not decline commensurately,” she wrote. “Food stamps have become more of a permanent entitlement rather than a temporary stop-gap for the temporarily unemployed.”</p>
<p>No doubt the executives at J.P. Morgan, Affiliated Computer Services, and eFunds are thrilled.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>US Spending $41 Mil to Advertise Food Stamps</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/us-spending-41-mil-to-advertise-food-stamps/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=us-spending-41-mil-to-advertise-food-stamps</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/us-spending-41-mil-to-advertise-food-stamps/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 12 Jun 2013 15:21:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food stamps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Government spending]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[government waste]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=192960</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Spending on advertising and outreach for food stamps has increased six-fold since 2000]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/barack-obama-creates-food-stamp-nation1.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-168603" alt="barack-obama-creates-food-stamp-nation1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/barack-obama-creates-food-stamp-nation1-450x293.jpg" width="450" height="293" /></a></p>
<p>For some context, total food stamp spending in 1969 was 250 million dollars. Now food stamp spending has long since departed into out of control territory and <a href="http://weaselzippers.us/2013/06/11/obama-regime-spending-41-3-million-a-year-to-advertise-food-stamps/">we&#8217;re spending the entire national budget</a> of an 1840s year just to promote it.</p>
<blockquote><p>Spending on advertising and outreach for food stamps has increased six-fold since 2000 — reaching $41.3 million in 2011, according to a new GOP report.</p>
<p>ccording to calculations released by Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions Budget Committee staff, using data from the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service, in the year 2000 spending on advertising for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — or food stamps — was approximately $6.5 million.</p>
<p>In the ensuing years, spending on advertising and outreach steadily increased reaching $41.3 million in 2011, according to the calculations, which were confirmed by the Congressional Research Service, according to Budget Committee staff.</p>
<p>The increase in spending on SNAP advertising came as the program’s cost rapidly increased — quadrupling since 2001 and more than doubling since 2008.</p></blockquote>
<p>Just think, if this goes on, we can look forward to spending 2 trillion a year to advertise food stamps in 2061. Because how can people know they are entitled to free food unless we advertise it everywhere?</p>
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		<title>Boston Bombers May Have Financed Terror Spree with Food Stamps</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/boston-bombers-may-have-financed-terror-spree-with-food-stamps/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=boston-bombers-may-have-financed-terror-spree-with-food-stamps</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/boston-bombers-may-have-financed-terror-spree-with-food-stamps/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 12 May 2013 03:48:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food stamps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tamerlan Tsarnaev]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=189138</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Lenin famously said that the capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them. Today welfare will give them the rope for free]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/image1.jpg"><img class="alignnone  wp-image-189139" alt="image" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/image1-418x350.jpg" width="293" height="245" /></a></p>
<p>Liberals have repeatedly blocked efforts to prevent food stamp fraud. The Tsarnaev clan, like so many Muslim immigrants, were abusing the system in a big way and<a href="http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/05/state_records_show_tsarnaevs_quick_to_grab_ebt_cash"> may have even financed their terror spree</a> using EBT transfers.</p>
<blockquote><p>A mountain of new welfare records shows numerous EBT card cash withdrawals made by the Tsarnaev family, but so far there is no information about how terrorist Tamerlan Tsarnaev and others may have spent the money.</p>
<p>The EBT receipts were handed over by the state to the House Post Audit and Oversight Committee as part of its probe into the Russian family’s $100,000-plus taxpayer-financed life in the Bay State. The committee met yesterday behind closed doors to review Medicaid and welfare awards.</p>
<p>The purchases show specific stores, but not the items bought. But further details could be available to investigators.</p>
<p>The committee’s request for financial aid records from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth — where marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was a sophomore flunking some classes and owing a reported $20,000 — was rejected, the Herald learned. Federal officials have forbidden the school from releasing any records publicly.</p>
<p>Rafi Ron, a former top Israeli security official and past consultant to Logan International Airport, said the welfare cash could have been enough money to help the Tsarnaev brothers build their pressure-cooker bombs that killed three and injured more than 260 at the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15.</p>
<p>It is still unclear from the records whether any welfare cash was used to finance slain bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s journey to Dagestan from January to July 2012.</p></blockquote>
<p>Lenin famously said that the capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them. But that was when America was still capitalist. Today welfare will give them the rope for free and run an ad campaign to inform them that they can get the rope for free while providing them with an interpreter so that the rope giveaway will be culturally sensitive.</p>
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		<title>Food Stamp Program Signed Up &#8220;Vanloads&#8221; of Illegal Aliens to Make Money</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/food-stamp-program-signed-up-vanloads-of-illegal-aliens-to-make-money/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=food-stamp-program-signed-up-vanloads-of-illegal-aliens-to-make-money</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 01 May 2013 14:28:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food stamps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Illegal Aliens]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=187937</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[“Illegals would come in by the vanload and we were told to give them their stuff,” McNees said.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/obama-food-stamps.gif"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-187938" alt="obama food stamps" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/obama-food-stamps-450x196.gif" width="450" height="196" /></a></p>
<p>And by make more money, we mean steal more taxpayer money. Let&#8217;s start with <a href="http://conservativecalling.com/hot-topics/in-florida-a-food-stamp-recruiter-deals-with-wrenching-choices-quotas/">the tragic plight of a food stamp recruiter</a> in Florida who has only one job. To get people on food stamps to meet her quota.</p>
<blockquote><p>A good recruiter needs to be liked, so Dillie Nerios filled gift bags with dog toys for the dog people and cat food for the cat people. She packed crates of cookies, croissants, vegetables and fresh fruit. She curled her hair and painted her nails fluorescent pink. “A happy, it’s-all-good look,” she said, checking her reflection in the rearview mirror. Then she drove along the Florida coast to sign people up for food stamps.</p>
<p>In fact, it is Nerios’s job to enroll at least 150 seniors for food stamps each month, a quota she usually exceeds. Alleviate hunger, lessen poverty: These are the primary goals of her work. But the job also has a second and more controversial purpose for cash-strapped Florida, where increasing food-stamp enrollment has become a means of economic growth, bringing almost $6 billion each year into the state. The money helps to sustain communities, grocery stores and food producers. It also adds to rising federal entitlement spending and the U.S. debt.</p></blockquote>
<p>Shockingly quotas for food stamps means fraud&#8230; and it means signing up illegal alien dreamers as food stamp users. <a href="http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2013/04/case-worker-illegal-aliens-got-food-stamps-by-the-vanload/">Vanloads of them</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>For decades the U.S. government has knowingly given illegal immigrants food stamps, according to a former certification case worker who denounced the costly practice back in the 1980s but was essentially ordered to keep a lid on it.</p>
<p>The retired assistant case manager, Craig McNees, was in charge of vetting food-stamp applicants in north Florida and Indiana in the ’80s and says the program was infested with fraud and corruption that was perpetually ignored by management. “Illegals would come in by the vanload and we were told to give them their stuff,” McNees said. “Management knew very well they were illegal. It was so rampant that some employees would tell their illegal relatives to come get food stamps.”</p>
<p>The retired case worker who contacted JW says in the three years he worked in a Sarasota food-stamp office, he found more than 500 cases of fraud but management ignored them all instead pushing a yearly quota. “They just said that if we don’t give out as many as last year, we don’t get our money,” McNees said. “It was crazy, like a three-ring circus; like the inmates were running the asylum.”</p></blockquote>
<p>There are families that do genuinely need food stamps, but this isn&#8217;t about helping people, it&#8217;s about creating and promoting poverty to move more money from one massive government bureaucracy to another, getting as many voters as possible used to not working and then warning them that if your good friend Congressman Y or Representative X loses, they&#8217;ll be kicked off public assistance.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s about cash in pocket for contractors with connections and a political machine built on creating poverty where there doesn&#8217;t have to be any because it&#8217;s easy to control people who don&#8217;t bring home a paycheck than people who do.</p>
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		<title>Obama Vacations While Economy Tanks</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/obama-vacations-while-economy-tanks/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-vacations-while-economy-tanks</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 01 May 2013 04:43:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[crisis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food stamps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[golf]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[TIME]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vacation]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=187844</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The cold, hard figures showing the president's lack of concern for suffering Americans. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Obama-Golf.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-187859" alt="Obama-Golf" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Obama-Golf-450x281.jpg" width="270" height="169" /></a>One in five Americans are on food stamps. The number of Americans in the labor force fell to its <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/04/07/march-labor-force-participation/2057887/">lowest level</a> since 1979 in March, when another 500,000 Americans simply gave up hope of finding a job. Median household income has <a href="http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/median-household-income-down-7-3-since-start-of-recession/">declined</a> 5.6 percent since 2009, when the so-called economic <i>recovery </i>began. Given these grim realities, Americans might expect President Obama to make the economy his greatest priority. Americans would be wrong. According to a new <a href="http://g-a-i.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/GAI-Presidential-Calendar-Report.pdf">report</a>, “Presidential Calendar: A Time-Based Analysis,” compiled by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute (GAI), Obama has spent only 3.6 percent of his total work time on economic issues, during his entire tenure in office.</p>
<p>Yet even that dismal number may be a generous estimate. As the &#8220;Methodology&#8221; section of the report reveals, &#8220;generally wide parameters were used to include anything that may have constituted an &#8216;economic meeting.&#8217;” This is to account for the fact that not every presidential conversation about the economy is officially recorded on the presidential calendar. Moreover, if Obama&#8217;s official schedule did not indicate an end time for a particular session, the GAI allotted a minimum of two hours per meeting. And, as the Appendix describing the nature of these meetings indicates, including &#8220;Obama delivers remarks on middle class tax relief at a campaign event,&#8221; and “Obama delivers a statement about the action we need to take to keep our economy growing and reduce our deficit,” political campaigning is included in the total.</p>
<p>In one such appearance before UPS workers in 2011, Obama&#8217;s speech <a href="http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/04/obama-i-wake-up-thinking-about-jobs/1#.UX_FIIIjH1y">reflected</a> the disconnect between his words and his deeds. &#8220;I know there&#8217;s a lot going on in the world, and the news is filled with images of the Middle East and Japan,&#8221; he said. &#8220;But you should know that keeping the economy growing and making sure jobs are available is the first thing I think about when I wake up every morning. It&#8217;s the last thing I think about when I go to bed each night.&#8221;</p>
<p>Perhaps that is what the president thinks about. What he actually does however, is another story. The report reveals that the president has spent 976 hours on vacation and playing golf, versus just 474.4 hours on economic meetings of any kind. That is a two-to-one ratio of fun compared to work, yet once again this may be a generous assumption. The report assumes the president works a six day, 10 hours per day work week, that he spends only six hours of each vacation day relaxing, and that he spends only fours hours per round playing golf&#8211;despite the fact that Obama <a href="http://nation.foxnews.com/obama-golfing/2013/04/29/report-obama-spent-twice-much-time-vacationgolf-economy?intcmp=fly">told</a> CBS News last year that playing golf is “the only time that for six hours, I&#8217;m outside.&#8221;</p>
<p>GAI president Peter Schweizer explains the discrepancy. “Like most people, presidents still do work while on vacation,” he said. “So we really went out of our way to fairly and accurately reflect how the president spends his time.”</p>
<p>Since 2009, the time Obama spends on economic matters has steadily declined: in 2009, he spent 187.2 hours addressing economic concerns; in 2010, it was 127.8 hours; in 2011, 73 hours; in 2012, 80.4 hours.</p>
<p>For the first three months of 2013, the numbers are even worse. Through the end of March, the president has spent only six hours dealing with economic issues, compared to playing six rounds of golf and spending four days on vacation, that account for 48 hours of his leisure time.</p>
<p>In 2012, Obama <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57454890-503544/president-obama-plays-100th-round-of-golf-draws-fire-from-critics/">received</a> some criticism when he played his 100th round of golf. But he has not received anywhere near the level of <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/04/21/the-medias-double-standard-on-presidential-golf.html">criticism</a> George W. Bush got, despite the reality that Bush played a total of only 24 rounds during the first two years of his presidency, before giving it up completely six months after the beginning of the war in Iraq. &#8220;I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal,&#8221; Bush said in a 2008 interview with Yahoo and <a href="http://Politico.com/">Politico.com</a>. Even the leftist Daily Beast, which further noted that Obama has spent more time playing golf than meeting with the press, was repulsed by the media&#8217;s double standard.</p>
<p>It is a double standard that still applies. The media hammered Bush for his vacations, with the <i>Washington Post</i> <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/02/AR2005080201703.html">characterizing</a> his frequent trips to his ranch in Crawford, Texas as something his critics consider &#8220;a lackadaisical approach to the world&#8217;s most important day job, an impression bolstered by Bush&#8217;s periodic two-hour midday exercise sessions and his disinclination to work nights or weekends.&#8221; Yet even the <i>Post </i>was forced to admit that Bush &#8220;rarely takes the type of vacation one would consider exotic&#8211;or, to some, even appealing.&#8221;</p>
<p>Obama, on the other hand, is a lavish vacationer. Just the four vacations to Hawaii he and the First Family have taken every year since his election, have <a href="http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2013/01/04/taxpayer-bill-obamas-hawaii-vacations-20-million/">cost</a> more than $20 million. The First Lady and and her daughters, Malia and Sasha, have visited exclusive ski resorts in Colorado each of the last four years as well. While they were there this year, the president spent three days at an exclusive club in Florida, where he was joined by Tiger Woods. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/senator-obamas-golf-weekend-tiger-cost-much-341-federal-workers-furloughed_704915.html">estimated</a> that golf outing alone cost a million dollars, which was &#8220;enough money to save 341 federal workers from furlough.</p>
<p>Those furloughs resulted from the sequester, a reality that is a testament to the president&#8217;s disinterest in economic issues. Aside from the reality that it was the <a href="http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2013-03-07/news/bs-ed-sequester-20130307_1_sequester-rob-nabors-jay-carney">president&#8217;s idea</a>, between the time he got his tax hikes at the beginning of 2013, and the beginning of sequestration on March 1, there was plenty of time for Obama to bring members of Congress together and work out an alternative. Instead, heembarked on a fear campaign that fell flat despite, the publication of a White House <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/02/08/fact-sheet-examples-how-sequester-would-impact-middle-class-families-job">&#8220;fact sheet&#8221;</a> filled with doom-and-gloom predictions. As a result of that campaign, both parties and the president finally got <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/02/president-obama-to-meet-congressional-leaders-friday/">together</a> for their <i>first meeting</i> on sequester negotiations&#8211;on March 1, the same day the sequester began.</p>
<p>As the GAI researchers have documented, such behavior is, if you&#8217;ll excuse the expression, par for the course for a president far more interested in the status and trappings of the presidency, than the job requirements of the position.</p>
<p>Schweizer, reflecting the nonpartisan nature of the GAI, remained above criticizing the president. &#8220;As a government watchdog group, we just tabulate the numbers and let others decide how to interpret them,&#8221; he explained. &#8220;People understand that presidents have the most stressful job in the world and need a break from time to time. There will be some who will be encouraged by the numbers, and some who will wish the president spent more time in economic meetings.&#8221;</p>
<p>One suspects millions of un- and under-employed Americans are part of the latter category. Ironically, a <a href="http://www.urban.org/publications/412802.html">study</a> released by the Urban Institute may put some of the president&#8217;s most ardent supporters on that side of the equation as well. It revealed that the loss of wealth that has occurred during both the recession and recovery of the last five years, has affected blacks and Hispanics far worse than whites, and that this &#8220;wealth gap&#8221; may still be growing. In other words, it&#8217;s <i>still</i> the economy, stupid&#8211;even as the president remains appallingly disengaged from that reality.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Food Stamp Fraud More Than Doubles Under Obama</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/food-stamp-fraud-more-than-doubles-under-obama/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=food-stamp-fraud-more-than-doubles-under-obama</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/food-stamp-fraud-more-than-doubles-under-obama/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 03 Apr 2013 13:50:55 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barack Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food stamps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[government waste]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=184207</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Three-quarters of a billion here and three-quarters of a billion there and pretty soon you're talking about some real money]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/food-stamp-fraud-more-than-doubles-under-obama/alpine-liquor-store-food-stamps/" rel="attachment wp-att-184208"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-184208" title="alpine-liquor-store-food-stamps" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/alpine-liquor-store-food-stamps.jpg" alt="" width="528" height="400" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://weaselzippers.us/2013/04/02/food-stamp-fraud-balloons-to-750-million-each-year/">Three-quarters of a billion here</a> and<a href="http://cnsnews.com/blog/joe-schoffstall/cost-food-stamp-fraud-more-doubles-three-years"> three-quarters of a billion there</a> and pretty soon you&#8217;re talking about some real money, son. That $750 million is out of a total of $75 billion which tells you how huge food stamps have gotten under the Great Obama Depression.</p>
<blockquote><p>In 2012, a U.S. Department of Agriculture official said that food stamp fraud totals $750 million each year &#8211; a number that more than doubles the cost of trafficking reported in a 2006- 2008 USDA study.</p>
<p>CNSNews.com reached out to the USDA to verify this number. A spokesperson stated via email, &#8220;In 2011, program costs totaled $75.7 billion. Using the most recent data on trafficking available, USDA estimated that trafficking would be 1 percent of $75 billion, or approximately $750 million.&#8221;</p>
<p>This number is $420 million more per year than a report released in March of 2011 that wrote on fraud within the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) from 2006-2008.</p>
<p>&#8220;Trafficking diverted an estimated $330 million annually from SNAP benefits – or about one cent of each SNAP dollar – between 2006 and 2008. About 8.2 percent of all stores trafficked,&#8221; states the Extent of Trafficking in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (2006-2008).</p>
<p>That&#8217;s an increase from $330 million annually in 2008 to $750 million in 2011. The &#8220;USDA doesn&#8217;t tolerate fraud which is why we are aggressively strengthening our anti-fraud policies and tactics,&#8221; said the USDA, noting the rate of fraud is at 1 percent of total expenditures.</p></blockquote>
<p>Total expenditures have ballooned and so has fraud. But while food stamp fraud is approaching the big 1 Billion, any GOP attempt to rein it in, even through minimal efforts such as banning the use of EBT cards at liquor stores, casinos and strip clubs is met with furious attacks on the Republicans taking things away from the poor.</p>
<p>There&#8217;s an entire economy built on food stamps. Supermarkets run on it and so do bodegas and seamier places. And the Dems are interlinked with it.</p>
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		<title>Food Stamp Use 50% Higher Under Obama Than Under Bush</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/food-stamp-use-50-higher-under-obama-than-under-bush/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=food-stamp-use-50-higher-under-obama-than-under-bush</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/food-stamp-use-50-higher-under-obama-than-under-bush/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 09 Dec 2012 16:49:03 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[The Point]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food stamps]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=168602</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[At the center of government in Washington DC we can see a preview of the new feudalism. Food stamp use has gone up in Washington DC by 35 percent and at the same time the Beltway counties have gotten rich twice as fast as the rest of the country to the extent that they now represent 7 of the 10 wealthiest counties in the country. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/food-stamp-use-50-higher-under-obama-than-under-bush/barack-obama-creates-food-stamp-nation1/" rel="attachment wp-att-168603"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-168603" title="barack-obama-creates-food-stamp-nation1" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/barack-obama-creates-food-stamp-nation1-450x293.jpg" alt="" width="450" height="293" /></a></p>
<p>In September the food stamp program hit another record high of 47,410, 324 people making use of it. 47 is an iconic number thanks to Romney&#8217;s remark and 47 million is also 75 percent of Obama&#8217;s 62 million popular vote total. Or to put it another way, if every food stamp recipient turned out to vote, they would have made up 75 percent of Obama&#8217;s electorate.</p>
<p>Under Bush, <a href="http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/34SNAPmonthly.htm">food stamp use was at 30 million</a>. It is 50 percent higher than it was four years ago and that bridge was crossed in the summer of last year. The cost of food stamp programs has also nearly doubled in that same time. If this rate of growth continues, we can look forward to as many as a 100 million people on food stamps by 2016.</p>
<p>At the center of government in Washington DC we can see a preview of the new feudalism. Food stamp use has <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/11/28/food-stamp-use-up-nearly-10-percent-in-2011">gone up in Washington DC by 35 percent </a>and at the same time <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/the-government-class-got-rich-twice-as-fast-as-the-rest-of-the-country/">the Beltway counties have gotten </a>rich twice as fast as the rest of the country to the extent that they now represent 7 of the 10 wealthiest counties in the country.</p>
<p>This is the new feudalism. A sharp divide between the rich and the poor, with the middle class being ground under the wheels and reduced to an atavistic class of government employees. It begins in DC but it&#8217;s coming for all of America.</p>
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		<title>Showdown in America: Workers vs. the Welfare State</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/showdown-in-american-workers-vs-the-welfare-state/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=showdown-in-american-workers-vs-the-welfare-state</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/showdown-in-american-workers-vs-the-welfare-state/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 05 Nov 2012 04:55:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Daniel Greenfield]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Capitalism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Election]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food stamps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[free enterprise c]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[oligarchy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Romney]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[welfare state]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=163985</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What happens to a country when more benefit from its economic decline than from its success?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/showdown-in-american-workers-vs-the-welfare-state/article-earlyvoting2-1102/" rel="attachment wp-att-163991"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-163991" title="article-earlyvoting2-1102" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/article-earlyvoting2-1102.gif" alt="" width="315" height="232" /></a>The 2012 presidential election is coming down to a contest between those who want the economy to succeed and those who want it to go on failing. Hope and Change is dead, at least the brand that depended on oratorical inspiration injected via teleprompter from between Greek columns taken out on loan before they were due back for an arena rock show. Anyone capable of balancing a checkbook has done the math, and come reluctantly to the conclusion that it’s a choice between Romney and ruin.</p>
<p>No one seriously believes that another four years of Obama will fix the economy, mend race relations or restore international relations. Those things didn’t happen in four years and they won’t happen in eight. But even with lowered expectations, few of those voters who walk into the booth and go for the zero even expect any of these three areas to stay at their current level after another four years. Most of them know that the economy will be worse, the racial pool will be more poisoned than ever and the world will be a more dangerous place. They aren’t stupid. What they are is selfish.</p>
<p>We assume that it is in everyone’s interest for the economy to rebound, for the jobs to come back, for the factories to hum and the cash registers to sing their song. But what if it’s not?</p>
<p>The election is no longer a race between Democrats and Republicans; it’s a race between those who hope to benefit from an economic recovery and those who benefit more from the lack of an economic recovery. It’s a race between the entrenched interests of failure and the revolutionary surge of success. It’s a death match between the state of free enterprise and the welfare state.</p>
<p>Forget your traditional image of the welfare queen. Sure she’s out there, but she isn’t buying lobster with food stamps. She’s serving as a consultant to the State of Michigan on how to improve the dietary balance of the diverse populations of SNAP food aid recipients in compliance with a federal directive that her partners had a hand in drafting. The take home pay on her end is in the six figures and it’s all rolled into the cost of the welfare state, toted up as cost-savings measures for preventing heart attacks in the children growing up on food stamps and fated to live on them for the next 60 years.</p>
<p>Barack and Michelle Obama are the perfect power couple of the welfare state, not because they would ever touch it, but because they are a testament to how much money there is to be made feeding off the infrastructure of the welfare state, filing lawsuits, managing patients and organizing the hell out of every living dead voter in the State of Illinois.</p>
<p>Parasites like Barry and Michelle used to be a dirty little secret, vital links in the chain stretching from the vast treasuries of the national budget down the favor network over to the urban neighborhood and the people who get rich helping the poor. They were there for a long time, but they rarely got past the House of Representatives. Mostly they were satisfied grabbing their chunks of the aid pie and living a cheerfully upper-middle class life on the dirty trade in souls of the welfare state.</p>
<p>Barack Obama is a trailblazer, not on account of race, but on account of his profession. This isn’t a racial or class conflict, but a power struggle between those who work and those who work them over. It’s a power play by the professional organizers, activists, trainers, representatives and all the other players in the machinery of the welfare state who used an economic crisis to move one of their own into a position of ultimate power.</p>
<p>The welfare staters aren’t interested in an economic recovery. Like every company, they want to expand their sales territory, and what they are selling is dependency and false promises. Their stock in trade is promising their clients freebies which they get through agitation, activism, protests, lawsuits and deals that all end with the clients voting Democratic while the middlemen and middlewomen pocket 9/10<sup>ths</sup> of the take while their clients get the other 1/10<sup>th</sup>.</p>
<p>This scam is no different than the one practiced by every ambulance chasing lawyer. The difference is that the welfare staters make their scam seem benevolent. And their clients are often willing to accept the tenth, because while it may only be 10 percent of the total being spent on their freebies, it’s still free. And those clients will vote for the welfare staters and fight to the death to preserve their hold on power, because it’s the only form of economic participation that they know.</p>
<p>This is the living dead vote and it won’t be easy to beat. Its constituents are quite satisfied to see that the economy is a shambles and that race relations are in the toilet. They have no aspirations beyond making things worse and these two sets of conditions are the ones that favor their agenda the most.</p>
<p>The worse the economy becomes, the more clients turn up and the more violent the opposition becomes to enacting any financial reforms. The economic failures of the last four years are not a disappointment to them, but an encouragement. If they can move a majority of the population onto the welfare rolls and make it impossible for them to leave, then they will have won.</p>
<p>Their victory is defined by creating a political climate in which their economic position cannot be challenged and an economic climate in which their political positions cannot be challenged. Once the linkages are in place, then there will still be elections, but they won’t mean anything because the only purpose of such elections will be to reaffirm the political bosses who negotiate the payouts of the welfare state. America will become Chicago and Chicago will finally become the sum of America.</p>
<p>Even left-leaning Democrats are starting to pull away from the prospect of living under such a system, and as invested as they are in the networks of non-profits, many of them are none too enthusiastic about instituting economic failure and reducing the political and economic potential of the United States to the same system of bureaucratic collectivism and political patronage that has taken over its cities.</p>
<p>In a few short days we will see a critical clash between those who want to turn the United States of America into another Cuba or Venezuela, a corrupt dysfunctional oligarchy masquerading behind socialist ideals and rent-a-mobs, and those who want to see the restoration of a functional country of free people. It is a contest between those who still hope that individuals can use their creative abilities to fulfill their destinies and those who believe that reform requires investing total power into unaccountable institutions.</p>
<p>This election is nothing less than a showdown between the vitality of a living America and the living dead vote of the welfare state.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Obama Policy Encouraging Immigrants to Go on Public Dole</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/volpe/the-obama-policy-encouraging-immigrants-to-go-on-public-dole/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-obama-policy-encouraging-immigrants-to-go-on-public-dole</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/volpe/the-obama-policy-encouraging-immigrants-to-go-on-public-dole/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 05 Oct 2012 04:44:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Volpe]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food stamps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[immigrants]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[public charge]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[state department]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[US Department of Agriculture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[welfare]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=146947</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Food stamps don't count as public assistance? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/100824_tom_vilsack_ap_328.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-146957" title="100824_tom_vilsack_ap_328" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/100824_tom_vilsack_ap_328.gif" alt="" width="375" height="245" /></a>FrontPage Magazine has acquired evidence that suggests that the Obama administration is actively promoting a little-known regulation first created by the Clinton administration. In so doing, the Obama administration is actively recruiting immigrants and encouraging them to sign up for things like food stamps, reminding that under this obscure regulation they suffer no marks against them in any future immigration proceeding if they receive food stamps and other non-cash benefits.</p>
<p>According to a recent US Department of Agriculture (USDA) publication geared toward immigrants called &#8220;Guidance on Non-Citizen Eligibility Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,&#8221; the USDA emphasized that the rules on receiving food stamps and being approved for all sorts of immigration-related procedures are not what many may think they are.</p>
<blockquote><p>There is a perception that participating in SNAP could affect immigration status or hurt a non-citizen’s chances of becoming an American citizen, but this is not true. It is important for non-citizens to know they will not be deported, denied entry to the country, or denied permanent status because they apply for or receive SNAP benefits.</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/01/obama-usda-met-30-times-with-mexican-govt-to-promote-food-stamp-use-among-mexican-immigrants/">The Daily Caller recently reported that USDA officials met with officials from the Mexican government</a> on a number of occasions to discuss encouraging more use of SNAP and welfare-type programs by immigrants from Mexico into the US.</p>
<p>“Since the partnership began, Vilsack wrote, USDA personnel have met at least 151 times with officials from the Mexican government ‘to discuss nutrition assistance programs as well as to provide program updates.’ Those instances included 91 meetings with embassy and consulate staff in 25 U.S. cities; 29 health fairs in 19 U.S. cities; and 31 roundtable discussions, conferences and forums in 20 U.S. cities,” read part of the story.</p>
<p>Both revelations together suggest the Obama administration is actively encouraging, promoting, and recruiting immigrants to take advantage of public non-cash benefits by reminding them repeatedly that they face no punishment for applying for non-cash benefits, said Jessica Vaughan, a policy analyst with the Center for Immigration Studies.</p>
<p>The entire brouhaha revolves around an obscure regulation first instituted by immigration authorities in the Clinton administration. The controversy has received added attention since a group of four Republican senators from the Senate Budget Committee demanded answers, as part of their oversight duties, in a letter in August 2012. The letter came after a staffer noticed that this regulation was referenced in the Question-and-Answer section of the US Citizen and Immigration Services&#8217; (USCIS) website under the “public charge” section. A “public charge” is an individual that is deemed to be highly likely to wind up taking public funds.</p>
<p>In 1999, the Clinton administration changed the definition of public charge by bureaucratic fiat. In a white paper published in 2011 also for the Center for Immigration Studies, James Edwards Jr.<a href="http://www.cis.org/PublicChargeDoctrine-AmericanImmigrationPolicy"> explained how</a> the Clinton administration accomplished this. With a new regulation, the Clinton administration first introduced the idea of food stamps no longer necessarily meaning that a person would be considered a “public charge.” (According to his bio, James R. Edwards, Jr., Ph.D., is an adjunct fellow with the Hudson Institute and teaches government in the Claremont McKenna College Washington Semester Program.) He wrote:</p>
<blockquote><p>The Clinton administration in 1999 proposed its own definition of &#8220;public charge&#8221; by regulation. Its definition allows immigrants broad usage of public assistance.<span style="font-size: 11px;"> </span>The INS rule defines &#8220;public charge&#8221; as an alien who has become or likely will become &#8220;primarily dependent on the government for subsistence, as demonstrated by either: (i) the receipt of public cash assistance for income maintenance or (ii) institutionalization for long-term care at government expense.&#8221;</p>
<p>The INS rule lists welfare programs counted under the rule as cash assistance for income maintenance or long-term institutionalization: Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (formerly AFDC), state and local cash assistance programs helping recipients maintain income (known as &#8220;general assistance&#8221;), and programs that support institutionalized long-term care. The INS also lists a number of non-cash benefit programs that it does not count in a public charge determination (see Table 3). These include Medicaid and other public health benefits, housing assistance, and child care services.<span style="font-size: 11px;"> </span>Even receipt of cash assistance does not automatically render an alien a public charge, but must be considered in one&#8217;s &#8220;totality of circumstances.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
<p>In other words, Clinton carefully changed the definition of “public charge” to someone needing public <em>monetary</em> assistance. This left those who would receive &#8220;non-monetary&#8221; assistance, like food stamps, to still apply for immigration benefits.</p>
<p>At the time Clinton imposed this regulation, little was made of it. In fact, it took about thirteen years for almost anyone to notice. In August 2012, four Republican members of the Senate Budget Committee &#8212; Jeff Sessions, Charles Grassley, Pat Roberts, and Orrin Hatch &#8212; were concerned by an answer to the Q-and-A section of the USCIS website. In particular, the four were concerned about the numerous programs listed in answer to the question, “What publicly funded benefits may not be considered for public charge purposes?”</p>
<p>The answer included programs like food stamps. The answer indicated that immigrants with a high probability of becoming the recipients of such programs as food stamps were not necessarily going to be denied a Visa.</p>
<p>Since then, as FrontPage previously reported, the four senators have tried, with no luck, to get answers from both the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Both State and DHS have oversight over Visa applications.</p>
<p>The answer appears to be this little-known regulation first instituted under President Clinton.</p>
<p>The Obama administration has been interpreting it the same way as it was originally written. In fact, Christopher Bentley, a spokesperson for USCIS, told FrontPage Magazine that USCIS changed nothing during the Obama administration in their internal policy regarding the definition of public charge.</p>
<p>“We haven’t made nor are we aware of any changes to our Public Charge materials.”</p>
<p>During the course of investigating this story, FrontPage Magazine also confirmed that an internal State Department manual also treats food stamp and other such welfare programs as not necessarily impacting public charge considerations. In that manual, the new Clinton definition of non-cash payments was specifically cited.</p>
<blockquote><p>There are many forms of U.S. Government assistance that an alien may have accepted in the past, or that you may reasonably believe an alien might receive after admission to the United States, that are of a non-cash and/or supplemental nature and would not create an inadmissibility.</p></blockquote>
<p>All of it is, in fact, right in line with the way that the Clinton administration regulations were written. The Clinton regulation exempted all alleged &#8220;non-cash&#8221; benefits from the definition of public charge, which would include programs like food stamps.</p>
<p>Jessica Vaughan, a policy analyst also with CIS, said that where the Obama administration differs from prior administrations is in its promotion of this rule. The Bush administration was never accused of meeting with Mexican officials to promote food stamps for their citizens that were likely to come to the USA. Nor did the Bush administration draw attention to the food stamp rule, said Vaughan.</p>
<p>“There’s no way that the Bush administration would produce a USDA piece highlighting to immigrants that they can get on the public dole and still get immigration approval.”</p>
<p>That may be one reason that all of this is coming out now, said Vaughan.</p>
<p>Far from being an obscure bureaucratic issue, the above policy and culture of dependency promoted by the Obama administration have a very real impact on ordinary Americans. Studies have shown that <a href="http://www.cis.org/immigrant-welfare-use-2011">close to 60% </a>of immigrant households end up using government programs. Yet the &#8220;public charge&#8221; regulation was implemented to ensure that as few immigrants as possible become dependent on public assistance. Something has gone terribly wrong. It is quite clear the dual efforts of the Clinton and Obama administrations, through their bureaucratic tyranny, have played a substantial role in undermining this protection for American taxpayers.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Obama Admin. Stonewalls on Immigrant Welfare Controversy</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/volpe/obama-admin-stonewalls-on-immigrant-welfare-controversy/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=obama-admin-stonewalls-on-immigrant-welfare-controversy</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Oct 2012 04:30:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Volpe]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[assistance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[department of state]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[DHS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food stamps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[public charge]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[visa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[welfare]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=146759</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Have officials axed a requirement prohibiting entry to new immigrants likely to go on welfare? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/grassley1-431x287.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-146844" title="grassley1-431x287" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/grassley1-431x287.gif" alt="" width="375" height="250" /></a>Four members of the Republican leadership of the Senate Budget Committee are furious with the Obama administration, claiming that both the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are stalling in providing data on federal Visa approval for immigrants with a strong likelihood of government dependency.</p>
<p>The whole controversy got started when staffers noticed that the answer to a Q-and-A section on the website of the US Citizens and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency in regard to Visa approval suggested that people with a high probability of winding up on certain forms of public assistance were now being considered for Visa approval.</p>
<p>The four Republicans &#8212; Orrin Hatch, Chuck Grassley, Pat Roberts, and Jeff Sessions &#8212; fired off a letter asking for clarification in August both to State and DHS, because each have some form of oversight over Visas. Following a number of missed deadlines for response, the four sent out a press release on October 2, 2012.</p>
<p>“Basic annual data on visa applications is easily and readily producible. But yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security missed yet another deadline to provide this info as requested by four Senate committees. DHS, along with the State Department, has also refused to explain why departmental guidelines effectively waive the legal requirement that individuals are ineligible for entry into the United States if they are likely to become reliant on welfare,” said Jeff Sessions, Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee.</p>
<p>He continued, “Our initial assessment of State Department data on ‘public charge’ denials further indicates that eligibility standards are being waived. Given what we already know, and the otherwise inexplicable refusal for DHS to reply to such a simple inquiry, it necessarily suggests that the executive branch is trying to prevent the public from discovering its failure to follow U.S. immigration and welfare law.”</p>
<p>In early August, Senate Budget Committee staffers noticed that USCIS was using a new interpretation of something called a &#8220;public charge.&#8221; &#8220;Public charge&#8221; is a catch-all category of welfare programs. Visa approval is supposed to be done strictly to exclude anyone that has a chance of winding up on public welfare doles.</p>
<p>At issue was the answer to a question on the Q-and-A section of USCIS website. The answer to, “What publicly funded benefits may not be considered for public charge purposes?”<strong> </strong>seemed to indicate that things like food stamps were no longer considered public welfare benefits.</p>
<p>As such, people with a high probability of winding up on programs like food stamps might no longer be automatically denied Visas by USCIS. It was following this revelation that the four Republican members of the Senate Budget Committee &#8212; Sessions, Orrin Hatch, Pat Roberts, and Chuck Grassley &#8212; fired off a letter on August 6, 2012, asking for clarification from both DHS and Department of State. They wrote:</p>
<blockquote><p>We write to express our concern with agencies’ interpretation of section 212 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) regarding inadmissible aliens. It was recently brought to our attention that the U.S. Department of Agriculture welfare programs.</p>
<p>It is our understanding that the materials distributed by the consular offices assure those being recruited that reliance on SNAP benefits, or food stamps, will not be taken into account when considering the merits of an application for a visa or adjustment of status.</p>
<p>Further review of Department of State and Department of Homeland Security protocols indicate that this policy applies to dozens of other welfare programs as well.“ Read the beginning of the letter.</p></blockquote>
<p>So far, two deadlines set up by the four members of the Senate Budget Committee have been ignored by DHS and State. The second missed deadline on October 1, 2012 caused the most recent press release.</p>
<p>The presence of USCIS is itself disconcerting. USCIS, the DHS agency at the center of this storm, is normally an obscure agency in DHS. It has already been put in the spotlight because it’s been given a leading role in implementing the President’s very controversial deferred-action program (essentially administrative implementation of the DREAM Act, an amnesty program), first announced in the Rose Garden June 15, 2012.</p>
<p>The head of USCIS, Alejandro Mayorkas, appears to be a far-left ideologue who is also tied to one of the most controversial pardons by Bill Clinton at the end of his presidential term. He’s been head of USCIS since April 2009.</p>
<p>Mayorkas is no stranger to being in the middle of controversies. In August 2009, his deputies, acting on his orders, drafted a memo that seemed to suggest that the Obama administration would be implementing some form of comprehensive immigration reform internally through executive action. The title of this memo was &#8220;Administrative Alternatives to Comprehensive Immigration Reform.&#8221;</p>
<p>It listed all sorts of categories of potential illegal aliens and enumerated ways in which the Obama administration could act unilaterally and make them effectively legal. Included in this memo was the administrative amnesty Obama implemented in June 2012.</p>
<p>The USCIS was also the subject of an award-winning investigative series by the Daily, in which that publication exposed how pressure from higher ups was forcing the rubber stamping of thousands of Visa applications.</p>
<p>Mayorkas was a very successful bundler for President Obama in 2008, leading the way to his appointment to head USCIS.</p>
<p>Mayorkas also gained notoriety in the late 1990s, when as an Assistant United States Attorney, he found himself in the middle of the controversial commutation of Carlos Vignali. Vignali was a convicted drug dealer whose sentence was commuted in Clinton’s last days after only serving seven years of a fourteen-year sentence.</p>
<p>Mayorkas, as Assistant US Attorney, was one of those that <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15651.html">recommended</a> the commutation to President Clinton.</p>
<p>The House Committee of Government Reform cited Mayorkas, among several individuals, following an investigation of the pardon. The investigation found that Vignali’s dad, Horacio Vignali, had funneled several hundred thousand dollars to a number of California-area politicians prior to the pardon.</p>
<p>The four Republican members of the Senate Budget Committee believe that in their role as overseers as laid out in the Constitution they are entitled to an explanation. Christopher Bentley, a spokesperson for USCIS, said, “USCIS wasn’t able discuss the issues raised by the Senators.&#8221; The State Department has previously responded that they believed most of the questions fell under the purview of DHS. The Obama administration will likely continue this game of feigned ignorance until the public demands that it be held accountable.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Marketing Dependency</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/marketing-dependency/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=marketing-dependency</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/arnold-ahlert/marketing-dependency/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 13 Jul 2012 04:39:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Arnold Ahlert]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[food stamps]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Obama]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[snap]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[US Department of Agriculture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[welfare]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The Food Stamp President ramps up efforts to break down self-sufficiency ethics among the poor. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/food-stamps.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-137370" title="food-stamps" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/food-stamps.gif" alt="" width="375" height="245" /></a>As exposed by the Daily Caller, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is apparently unsatisfied with the fact that a record-setting <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/305894/rise-food-stamp-nation-rich-lowry">one-in-seven</a> Americans, totaling 46 million people, are currently receiving food stamps. In an effort to get that number even higher, the Department has created a series of radio &#8220;novelas&#8221; aimed Spanish speakers, promoting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). &#8220;Our common goal is to increase participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program )SNAP) (sic),&#8221; <a href="http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/outreach/tool-kits.htm">reads</a> the opening paragraph at the USDA&#8217;s Food and Nutrition Service website. &#8220;Our purpose is to ensure that those going through difficult times can feed their families healthy, nutritious food. By working as a team, we can accomplish these goals.&#8221;</p>
<p>The goals include a series of <a href="http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/outreach/radio/default.htm">ten</a> novelas, with titles such as &#8220;At the Park,&#8221; &#8220;Celebration,&#8221; &#8220;Success,&#8221; and &#8220;Kid&#8217;s Talk.&#8221;  They are available as both MP3 files and written radio scripts. Each one of the written scripts begins the name of the episode, its purpose, its setting and a &#8220;myth buster.&#8221; For example, episode one, &#8220;At the Park&#8221; (At El Parque&#8221;), states that its purpose is &#8220;program introduction.&#8221; Its setting is &#8220;at a neighborhood park.&#8221; Then come the myth busters. &#8220;1) MYTH: SNAP IS NOT WELFARE. FACT: SNAP IS A <em>NUTRITION ASSISTANCE PROGRAM. </em>2) MYTH: ONLY UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE CAN GET SNAP FACT: <em>MOST PEOPLE WHO WORK LOW WAGE JOBS CAN GET SNAP BENEFITS. </em>(italic, caps, and the apparent mistake in myth one, which should read SNAP <em>is</em> welfare, all in the original).</p>
<p>One of the myth/truth exchanges is aimed at de-stigmatizing the program. The myth expresses the concern &#8220;that other people will know I use SNAP.&#8221; The fact section reassures the potential user that &#8220;the SNAP EBT card makes it discreet.&#8221; Another myth-busting fact assures potential users that they can &#8220;own a car and still get assistance.&#8221;</p>
<p>All of the scripted scenarios consists of characters convincing skeptics to join the program or explaining how much healthier it is to be on food stamps. The majority of the stories end as &#8220;cliff hangers,&#8221; with an announcer encouraging the listeners to tune into the next program to see if the character skeptical of using the program is convinced to apply for benefits, or at least begins to understand how important the program is for maintaining one&#8217;s health.</p>
<p>A USDA <a href="http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/outreach/pdfs/toolkit/2011/Community/Special-Populations/engaging_special_populations.pdf">guide</a> titled &#8220;Engaging Special Populations&#8221; is a blueprint detailing the most effective ways to reach Americans and get them in the program. It begins with a section that emphasizes the &#8220;importance of effective SNAP outreach across cultures.&#8221;  And while the section provides &#8220;suggestions&#8221; and &#8220;practical tips&#8221; for doing so, it warns that these are not &#8220;intended to provide specific strategies and tactics for reaching individuals of distinct races, ethnicities, cultures, or other demographic groups.&#8221;</p>
<p>That last bit is disingenuous at best. As the the <em>Daily Caller </em>reveals, there is no English-language equivalent program being produced by the USDA, and telenovelas are a popular form of entertainment in Spanish-speaking countries. The radio novelas overcome the &#8220;lack of knowledge&#8221; the USDA contends is one of main hurdles hampering greater participation in the SNAP program.</p>
<p>Furthermore, as far as the USDA is concerned, outreach to American citizens is insufficient. Another <a href="http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/government/pdf/Non-Citizen_Guidance_063011.pdf">guide</a>, &#8220;Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Guidance on Non-Citizen Eligibility&#8221; outlines the various non-citizen categories under which one is still eligible for the program. Some of these &#8220;qualified aliens&#8221; include green card holders, people granted asylum, parolees, Iraqi and Afghan special immigrants, non-citizens who may be victims of human trafficking or domestic violence, and others. The guide bemoans the lack of participation by such non-citizens. “In 2008, the participation rate for non-citizens was 51% and the rate for citizen children living with non-citizen adults was 55% as compared to the national participation rate of 67% among all eligible individuals,” it reads.</p>
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