Republicans claim widespread food stamp fraud. What's missing? Evidence.
The US Department of Agriculture has spent the past week notifying people that the country is (allegedly) overrun by individuals who are fraudulently claiming SNAP benefits, while (allegedly) driving luxury vehicles.
“In just ONE state, 14,000 individuals receiving SNAP benefits were driving LUXURY VEHICLES!” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins posted on X last week. The official USDA account made similar claims, which were then amplified by figures like Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Rand Paul.
Those numbers are questionable at best. For one thing, the report they come from doesn’t name the state where thousands of people are allegedly buying Ferraris while using government money to buy food. For another, that report doesn’t include any explanation of its methodology.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/05/republicans-snap-fraud-welfare-queen/Open linkView original on lemmy.ca
I'd rather a hundred people get benefits they "don't need" than have one person go without the support they require.
Not that it's even happening, but even if it were I really wouldn't care even a little bit. And furthermore, food stamp benefits are pathetic in the US.
I remember some Republican chud or another saying they'd rather have innocent people imprisoned than let a single criminal walk free. Absolutely cannot fathom that mindset. Completely ghoulish.
I mean i can imagine it, it's just patently anti-American. Benjamin Franklin is widely quoted as saying "I'd rather let 100 guilty persons go, than imprison one innocent person."
No, that was William Blackstone. Maybe Ben Franklin also quoted it, but he's not the one who was famous for it.
I feel like if someone quotes another person and then that quote becomes associated with them more thoroughly it would count as famously said. Doesn't stop the first person from being a thing just a matter of having less fame or relevance.
In principle, maybe, but I'm fairly well-read and I have literally never heard of that quote being attributed to Ben Franklin until the earlier comment so I don't think that's the case here.
Could be down to a bias of what you are exposed to, which can heavily influence what you hear. Anyways I think it was in one of his letters but I can't quite remember cause I just woke up.
Apparently you're right: the other reply cites the letter.
But still, Ben Franklin is famous for a ton of stuff, including actual published works full of quotable aphorisms like Poor Richard's Almanack (as opposed to some random private letter that was only published after-the-fact). Meanwhile, Blackstone is remembered mainly just for Commentaries on the Laws of England, of which the Blackstone's Ratio quote is part. Can't we let poor old Mr. Blackstone have this one thing?!
You're not fairly well-read enough i guess then: https://www.cato.org/policing-in-america/chapter-4/blackstones-ratio#_ftn76
Blackstone said ten, Franklin restated it as 100
Guess who said they're fine having legal Hispanic citizens abducted from their homes and thrown in
SSICE camps if it means they're actually getting some illegal immigrantsconcentration camps.
What they mean is innocent people who don't look like them. The moment there'd be any danger of them being locked up, they'd fine-tune their opinion to find a reason why it doesn't apply to their case.
They honestly waste more resources on gatekeeping and means testing than they would ever save, and it'd LITERALLY cost less to just provide the same baseline benefits to everyone
Yeah, why aren't we talking about all the fraud committed by billionaire oligarchs and trump and his inner circle?
When you influence or you are the people who write the rules, is not fraud, it's smart investing
Like the largest Medicaid fraudster in history currently serving in Congress?
Like maybe 25 years back I remember a viral video of someone in Cali or something buying a lobster with his food stamps and everyone was freaking out. I dont know much of the american food stamps system but I'm pretty sure just blew his budget or something. Really its just proved some idiot was doing dumb stuff for likes before TikTok.
Generally, any food product is going to be eligible. They give you a bank card that has your monthly funds on it. Prepared products such as from the delicatessen, alcohol, and cigarettes will be blocked but there's not much else to stop someone from letting their benefits add up and then wasting them on something like lobster.
You don't want to make this entire thing onerous for everyone, so there will be some activity like this occassionally. It's not even something that would appear outside the statistical noise.
I was on SNAP several years ago. We saved a small bit of the relatively meager amount every month for like 6 months, then had a really nice BBQ for my kids bday. In a vacuum, I'm sure someone would have lost their shit watching me spend like $150 on steaks and burgers and sides using my SNAP card.
The only reason thats any different than just saving your own regular money for it and blowing that on the exact same thing is the optics.
Like if you get the bennies, its not like people know that every single time you buy stuff, only when you use that specific payment method
My ex and I were on food stamps at one point so I hope that my message didn’t come across as spam on those who use them. I was trying to explain to who I thought was a non US person who was not familiar with how it works.
Oh, no, I didn't think that at all! I was just adding my own story to the mix.
Yeah thats really what I wanted know. Cheers.
I think its really cool it rolls over like that. My old boss losses his crap if he sees the old save on food to splurge later. "If the peasants can survive on less than they should" mentality. Bloke also said ppl should feel more shame on the system and the cards was bypassing that shame. Can really feel the privilege from that guy. Ugh
Fuck it. I'd rather give free meals to everyone than pay one fucking penny towards the missiles we hurled into an elementary school. People gotta get their fucking priorities straight.
Enjoy that BBQ, I hope you have long lasting happy and guilt-free memories about that day. Money well spent in my mind.
As a taxpayer, I'm glad you were able to do that. The poor deserve more than the bare minimum
Yeah, nobody commits that level of petty fraud if their life is going well.
If you want food stamps badly enough to jump through the hoops required, then that should qualify you by default.
This is literally just the '80s "welfare queen" lie.
The same people who believed that in their 20s when Reagan said it are now in their late 60s and early 70s. You can see the problem.
We need to get rid of means testing. The largest money line for any government programs is the army of people making sure Americans need the program. People that don't need government programs usually don't use them. So hiring someone to make sure a wealthy person doesn't cash in $150 worth of food stamps.
What do you want to bet they’re talking about poorly maintained 15+ year old lexuses and 30+ year old bmws? Just kidding, it’s most likely entirely unfounded.
I'd go even further and say that they are classifying vehicles themselves as a luxury, not even the make or model.
The good old “oh you’re poor? How come you have a phone then?”
Yeah that argument is so ridiculous.
You can buy lightly used phones on Swappa for a large discount even when we are talking about flagship phones. There are also situations where someone could be poor but have enough credit to get a phone financed with monthly payments that they can afford.
There are pre paid MVNOs in the US where you can get unlimited talk, text, and on device data, that also includes unlimited hotspot at fairly decent speeds (plus there are ways of bypassing hotspot speed caps, TetherFuseNet is an example open source app) for less than 30$ a month taxes and fees included. For about 30$ a month or so plans exist with QCI priority that are the same priority as premium post paid plans. I have known people who have used their unlimited hotspot as their only internet at home.
Just because some of these people making these types of comments may have a high cell phone bill does not mean everyone else does.
I think it’s because a lot of people are like Mother Theresa. They’re of the belief that if you’re poor, you should suffer, because not doing so would be a moral failing. Being poor makes you a bad person.
You want more than ONE door on your car?!?!
Then you get an Isetta and they're going to complain that you have a BMW.
🤣 exactly.
Remember when Fox News got all worked up because poor people had a microwave? And a refrigerator???
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-nation/fox-cites-ownership-appliances-downplay-hardship-poverty-america
In my state, if your apartment doesn't include a fridge-freezer and cooktop-oven, it's not considered habitable.
They're trying to bring back Welfare Queens. I'm sure almost everyone's forgotten, but this was the kind of accusation that led to Welfare being viewed so negatively and eventually being renamed entirely.
Ironically, it's middle-class suburban homeowners who are the real welfare queens. They may not get the actual government program called "welfare," but they get so many other kinds of subsidies for their lifestyle that the stereotypical urban renter single mom is probably subsidizing them instead of the other way around!
I think Walmart takes the cake. They purposely dont give a lot of hours or benefits so their employees end up on SNAP who then use SNAP at Walmart.
The government is essentially paying their employees wages to then be spent at Walmart.
Yep. Another Reagan lie.
Dude, it seems everything the GOP claims lacks evidence.
It's so depressing
My favorite term for this is "a post-truth society".
Feels like a new dark age.
especially coming from the mouth of the most infamous one, cruz.
The "fraud" they're talking about is Black people being allowed to access food.
I know someone on SNAP benefits. She drives a 25 year old Buick Lesabre with over 200,000 miles on it . Technically it’s a “luxury car,” which she got for $800.
Their stats are bullshit, spun in such a way as to churn up resentment towards the poorest , so the wealthiest can bilk more money from the middle.
I drove a '98 Lasabre for most of the 2010s. Absolutely loved it: parts were ready to find, could repair it myself at home, and the dashboard had so many weird sliders and knobs that it felt like piloting a TARDIS.
Anyone enjoying that kind of luxury should be starving to death. It's just not fair for someone to have both a beautiful, faux-wood paneled dashboard and three meals per day.
A Buick LeSabre was my first car. It was the 1989 model. Red "velvet" interior. That thing was sexy af
Same, we called it the boat and referred to the backseat as the couch. It was defeated by a young sapling in a low-speed head-on collision unfortunately. I wish theyd make something like that again but its probably past its time.
It should be noted that in some states (most? No idea), the value of your car and house don’t count against your application for food stamps. Which makes perfect sense when you consider that you would have to be a fucking moron to sell your home or car to eat, since after you eat you either have nowhere to sleep or no way to get to work independently. A “high value” (read: not a shitcan) car can also be more dependable than a junker, may vary by brand of course.
Anyway, anyone who has ever wanted to police food stamps is going to hell.
Plus that person could be swimming in payments but needs the reliable car or safe house to do as you mentioned.
Watch they are going to fight to increase restrictions on SNAP benefit "handouts", but a ton of rich people fraudulently took out COVID loans, actually bought cars, never paid them back, and there is legit evidence but they were never prosecuted.
The new slogan for America should be: Protect the fellow rich, beat the poor down into dust.
They don't need fraud, they just change the laws or get courts to approve it.
plus all the TAX breaks they get from hiring people.
It also doesn’t define “LUXURY VEHICLE”
The banged up crossover SUV that came with CarPlay and OnStar so your insurance and the government can track your every move could be considered a LUXURY because CONNECTIVITY
Guys, poor people are forced to buy the only things we’ll sell to them. How come they never try not being poor? Lazy!
I have a 2008 Infiniti. It's a luxury vehicle that I paid $5k for and runs like it's been smoking cigarettes the past 20 years.
I’ve known several people with a habit of buying old Volvos. Probably a luxury car ….. but like 20 years old
I got a call from the food bank thanking me for donating. She said the demand is shocking now. They don't have enough. She was all "don't worry we're just calling to thank you, not to ask for more, just keeping you updated." I shudder to think how much worse it will get by the time these gouls are through. I'll keep donating while I can, I suggest everyone else do the same. Donating money goes the farthest because the banks have deals with supermarkets and stuff.
I would rather 5 people abuse it than 1 person go hungry, but maybe I'm just civilized?
Either way we should attempt to curtail abuse, but with credit+debit+tax returns we could effectively combat egregious cases of abuse.
Should we? Sometimes it seems like the bureaucracy needed to do that costs more than the "waste" it saves. Frankly, I'm inclined to just ditch the means-testing entirely, declare that it isn't "wrong" for people who aren't poor to also use it, and (as you alluded to) make it up on the back end via income taxes.
this could also massively boost overall public health because if everyone automatically got SNAP, they'd have no incentive to try to save money by buying shitty cheap convenience food
a lot of people would be able to spend the extra few dollars to get the frozen dinner with more vegetables, the fresh (cold) deli sandwich, the whole grain higher fiber options, etc.
and since you can't use it on takeout/restaurants, a bunch of people are now more motivated to cook at home with their free food money (even if the cooking is just heating up prepared stuff that's often healthier than fast food)
after 10 years or so we'd probably save billions in public health costs alone
I think you would have to be a moron to not advocate for the curtailing of obvious abuse, or utilizing resources from other departments to assist with enforcement, or just have thorough screening that blocks abuse before it occurs.
I stand by my statement.
So let me get this straight: you think spending more money overall to provide aid to fewer people is A-OK, and yet I'm somehow the moron for wanting to save money and help more people?
That's some hateful fucking bullshit on your part. You should be ashamed of yourself.
I'm sorry I called you a moron via the transitive property, I meant that more like its obvious, I realize that was a mistake.
You're making a lot of choices for me and putting words in my mouth, and I don't think our conversation will be productive from this point because you are not even considering my statements.
I hope you have an excellent day.
There are lots of things that seem "obvious," but are actually wrong. The idea that you have to means-test aid to avoid "abuse" (according to some presupposed definition of "abuse" that ought to itself be debatable, BTW) may or may not be one of them, but what is definitive is that you'd have to be a moron to not even be willing to think about it first.
Go after the real welfare queens. The Walton family, Elon Musk, the oil and gas industry. Big corporate farming. Ending subsidies for oil and gas alone would pay for Medicare for all
I feel like "luxury vehicles" is the same buzzword as "assault weapons." A meaningless buzzword to evoke emotion.
What's a "luxury vehicle?" What's the cutoff? Are they in a nicer Honda or a Lotus? Seeing as how this country's citizens are famously one illness or ouchie away from financial ruin, did they purchase this vehicle before or after needing assistance? Are they still making payments or is it paid off?
Facts and hard criteria or GTFO with this nonsense.
It's literally just trying to goad the struggling to pull the rug from the destitute, while the rich pop their champaign and laugh. It's class warfare rhetoric to take the heat off the Epstein class, and anybody falling for it is a damned fool.
they were using "entitlements" before.
The Tax Evasion and Avoidance of billionaires is many times the entire budget of this kind of thing.
You could literally make up for 100% fraud in things like food stamp by making somebody like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos pay the same effective tax rate as everybody else.
Even if these claims from the far-right of widespread fraud and abuses in social security were true, they would still be like distracting people from a raging forest fire by waving a sparkler.
We just need to implement something like a 1% wealth tax for any entity (people or businesses) with net assets over say $5M. Having more than that has minimal justified purpose
Businesses not paying workers fair wages like Walmart forcing 1.6 million by themselves to take public assistance like food support is going to effect a ton of people and be a huge draw on the system compared to any other fraud on the system.
26.8% of 41.7 million is 11 million people. How much do you want to bet they can't find 11 hundred people committing fraud against the system like employers are.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/11/14/what-the-data-says-about-food-stamps-in-the-us/
Tax payers subsidizing corporations to further exploit tax payers
The Gang of Pedos has never let something as trivial as evidence guide their world view. Also not big fans of consent.
this is exactly the welfare queen thing from the 80's. The myth is a black woman from the inner city, the reality was a white farmer bilking the system.
deadass the only people i ever met who bragged about intentionally committing fraud (hiding income and claiming dependents they didn't actually support, in their case) to qualify for benefits were also the pasty whitest trash I've met
also they were just generally mean horrible people
and i'd rather a million fuckers like them get their undeserved benefits if it meant nobody who needs it ever gets denied.
ideally I would like universal benefits with no means test. that way no one can cheat and everyone who needs it gets it.
Even if you had 14,000 SNAP recipients driving “luxury vehicles” in every state that is still less than 2% of all beneficiaries nation wide.
Food assistance keeps people productive. Even a capitalist should advocate for it.
Starvation killing the people that fail to generate wealth trims expenses. Fear of losing your livelihood makes the rest more pliable. In the short term, it absolutely is what a capitalist would want: to increase their own profit.
However, in the long term, a smaller workforce eventually blunts the threat of firing and replacing unruly workers. But the long term doesn't matter as much to the individual capitalists: their allegiance is not to sustaining the system, but to their own enrichment. They just need it to work long enough for them to make as much money as they can.
That's also why they jump so eagerly on the promise of AI replacing workers: If it turns out true, it would be an immense boon both for profit and control. It would offset the long-term downsides while exaggerating the short-term gains. And if it fails, we're back to the status quo ante, the long-term damage being borne by someone else.
Namely, cancer.
The real welfare queens are projecting again.
Someone driving a hand me down 90s Lincoln worth $2500 isn't exactly what I'd call luxurious.
An old friend from college is now trying to live on $1800 a month from Social Security--in Southern California. She just found out, she will get $24 a month in SNAP, and she had to wade through bureaucracy even for that.
Keep the poors poor, working shit jobs or kill them off if they can't work. That's a Christian Nation, puh-raise JEE-zuz-ah!
"Well it's the churches' job to give you charity. How else will the poor be preached to incessantly?"
she qualifies for MEDI-CAL, so it would be free healthcare for her. since shes making less the maximum for medi-caid in california. shes pretty close though, i assume shes aiming for that 1800 in order to stay with medi-cal.
Better give the orange dotard regime an extra $600mil they don’t need nor even requested for the ballroom bunker, just to show the peasants where our true priorities lie.
Republicans claim a lot of things without proof, and the illiterate masses eat it up.
There is a blatant AI post going around of a MAGA dad standing in front of a bathroom and refusing to let a caricature of a trans person in, so he can “protect his daughter”. It is very obviously AI, people in the background have melting faces, and a baby stroller is levitating off the ground with extra wheels.
Nevertheless, conservatives are rallying behind this “brave father” who doesn’t exist, praising him for keeping out the “trans person”, who also doesn’t exist.
When it is pointed out to them that the photo is AI generated and that none of it actually happened, I’ve seen several make the argument that since they believed it is real, that’s enough proof that it did happen.
So, we’re at a point now where making up a story and clearly lying is somehow evidence in and of itself.
And if there is widespread food stamp fraud I am willing to bet 1k that it comes from Republicans.
They’re deep in the lying and cheating game. They absolutely are speaking from experience. Remember the PPP loans?
A decade back I had a coworker tell me about her white upper middle class brother in law serving time in prison for benefit fraud. I literally cannot stress to you enough how many of these people think it's ok to lie on government forms to get more money.
There's also no knowing what folks had when the floor fell out from under them. That Escalade might have been half paid off when they lost their source of income. Conservatives've been on this same bullshit for decades.
"He obviously took advantage of the system or did something illegal like selling drugs. Everyone knows it's systematically impossible for a minority to get ahead on their own"
Maybe a little too on the nose, but all their arguments are some variation of that.
It's a fucking excuse to make fuck-you-got-mine policies.
When I lived in a poor area I saw a ton of luxury vehicles but they were a decade older than most non-luxury cars and were beat to shit. I'd believe the numbers but I don't think they say what this idiot is implying.
Its demoralizing that this type of messaging resonates with such a large portion of Americans, honestly.
I fixed the headline.
Musk is not a problem for them or the other 88 companies dodging taxes last year right.
A remix of the old welfare queen lie. smh. Some guy probably used his mom's food stamps card to get fast food once and they're going to make it seem like a billion dollars in theft.
The Welfare Queen was a real person best known by the name Linda Taylor but she was uniquely talented at defrauding the government and she went to prison in 1978 for welfare fraud.
I'm aware.
I'm also aware that she defrauded the government something like $10,000, was caught almost immediately, and as you said, punished. Reagan made her out to be a crime lord stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Real or not, the lie is the gross misrepresentation of who and what she was to the american people, used as a justification to cut social aid programs for millions in need.
source?
sure.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6eFBOBgRrdiSCrCwaxC25o
There you go. The dollop gives all their sources at the end each episode and posts a list for their audience. in fact...
Main
· Levin, Josh. “The Welfare Queen: In the 1970s, Ronald Reagan villainized a Chicago woman for bilking the government. Her other sins—including possible kidnappings and murders—were far worse. Slate. (Dec. 19 2013) http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2013/12/linda_taylor_welfare_queen_ronald_reagan_made_her_a_notorious_american_villain.html Josh Levin’s story has been expanded into a book, The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/031651330X/?tag=slatmaga-20 as well as a podcast miniseries: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/05/the-queen-linda-taylor-welfare-reagan-podcast.html
Other
· Black, Rachel, Aleta Sprague, and the New America Weekly. “The ‘Welfare Queen’ Is a Lie: Programs that should be crafted around people’s needs are instead designed to deal with a problem that doesn’t exist.” The Atlantic. (September 28, 2016) · https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/welfare-queen-myth/501470/
· Bazelon, Emily, John Dickerson, and David Plotz. “The ‘You'll Drag Me Out of the Supreme Court in a Pine Box’ Gabfest” Gabfest. [podcast] (December 20, 2013) http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/gabfest/2013/12/the_gabfest_on_judge_richard_leon_s_nsa_ruling_ruth_bader_ginsburg_s_refusal.html
All the sources used for a goofy little history podcast.
Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Taylor
There’s her wiki too. Taylor was a spectacle even back then, with the tabloids reporting she stole anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000. It was actually about $8,000. She was a petty criminal who got caught pretty much every time and was arrested for her crimes. By the time Reagan was talking about her, that number had been further inflated (lied about) to be around $100,000, but regardless, she was cooked.
thanks for the sources and podcast link!
You simply can't it won't work. POS systems cannot be configured to do this.
I haven't had a food card for a bit. It was just a prepaid card. I don't really know what small and insignificant way it's used that these fucks would complain about but I just made an example off the top of my head.
It’s prepaid with a Visa logo or something like that but it won’t work on anything you are not supposed to buy.
I think some people get other money loaded on it that’s not for food. Like mothers buying school supplies or clothing.
The "luxury vehicle" angle is clearly a scam, but there is evidence of SNAP fraud, at least here in Oregon, it's just being done with card skimmers stealing legitimate SNAP data and funds from the people who need it most:
https://www.doj.state.or.us/media-home/news-media-releases/attorney-general-rayfield-issues-consumer-alert-scammers-targeting-oregonians-with-ebt-skimmers/
"How the scam works
Scammers place an overlay device on card readers or keypads, often at smaller retailers such as dollar stores or community markets.
These devices look nearly identical to real machines but secretly collect card numbers and PINs.
Stolen card data is then used in other states to purchase high-demand items like baby formula or resold goods"
The fix for this should be simple: EBT funds should only be accessible in the state where the card was issued.
The solution to robbing from poor people should not be robbing them of more of their benefit.
The fix is just giving them actual money.
I wouldn't be a fan of blocking access of OR/WA folk from buying something if they cross the river, let alone all the interstate travel that happens on the East Coast.
True, but if an Oregon card is being used in New York, that's a problem.
Sucks for people like my mom then, who lives in a 600 person town on the border of two states, with no grocery stores or even gas stations for almost an hour north or east deepeer into "her" state, but with a Stop and Shop 11 minutes down the road in the neighbor state. But you're right, we don't want the poors being allowed to just roam free, ya?
Your opinion is ignorant of people's real life situations.
Then you set it up in the account so it's only valid in user specified states.
That is not a sollution. That's wildly restrictive, discriminatory, and overly complicated. Card skimming is theft, not fraud, for one thing, and that's a problem that effects any card that runs through it, not just EBT. It's the store's problem for not providing a safe means to conduct transactions,, and the burden shouldn't be placed on the most vulnerable populations. Cash and even debit cards don't need permission to be used outside of some designated range.
You're out of touch and need to practice your empathy skills.
If a user sets it up so "I only use the card in Oregon and Washington", that should block it from, say, New York or Florida. I really isn't rocket science.
A payment processor was compromised and my debit card info was caught in Berlin which prompted a call from my bank going "Heeeeyyy... you aren't trying to buy a Eurorail pass in Germany, are you?"
Yeah, no. They cancelled the card and issued a new one. The use pattern was out of the ordinary. Same thing should be applied here.
Cute story.
I once told a bank i was going to spend a summer working in Alaska and not to be alarmed when my card started having transactions there. They said "okay!" Then they frozen my card after my first use and when I called them to see why (they didn't call me) they said "suspicious activity on your card, it was used in Alaska!" Then on my return trip home, it was skimmed and used in NYC while I was on a bus in Arizona, I called the bank (again, they didn't call me) and said hey there's a weird charge on my card in NYC, but im in Arizona, and they said "huh weird, I guess we'll freeze it if you want".
Genuinely so happy your bank was so attentive to you. That's not the normal. It is cruel and irresponsible to put restrictions on people's food cards, especially the way the pedophile and his cronies are gutting government offices. It's really hard to get in touch with someone from the EBT department, by design.
Say ive authorized my food card to be used in OR/WA. But what if I'm in Idaho for the weekend unexpectedly, but i need something to eat? What if I'm driving down to visit a relative in NoCal who is on a fixed income and doesnt have enough food for me and i want to pick up some milk and eggs once i get to california so i dont have to worry about keeping them cold? What if I live on the VT/MA border, so I authorize those states, but there's something I need to do in New York, and going to a MA or VT grocery store after going all the way to NY to run an errand would be miles out of my way and I just want to go to the grocery store in NYS, but uh oh, I didn't authorize that state and I can't get a hold of anyone other than a robot on the phone at the ebt office and gas is five fucking dollars a gallon and I can't afford to drive all over the tri state area, so I guess i'll just be fucking hungry again today.
Stop trying to die on this hill. You're suggestion is a bad idea, not because you're a bad person (giving you thr botd, but losing faith fast) but because you lack the life experiences and have experienced privilege that clouds your judgement.
Maybe you're a troll and I'm giving you exactly what you want, so this will be my last comment, but if you're being genuine, please try to see things from someone else's view. It is a bad idea to put restrictions on a food card. It's for FOOD. The rates of theft and fraud are over represented by bad actors like the republicans.
Not a troll, just explaining how the system works with current debit cards and SHOULD work with EBT cards.
Here's the breach that got me:
https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/subway-breach-exposes-pos-vulnerabilities-a-5125
So what you're saying is people in need are getting their benefits stolen. That's not at all what the administration is claiming or expressing concern about.
Nope, still fraud, just not on the part of the benefit holder.
So if these machines are skimming all cards numbers/pins then surely the answer is to restrict everyone's cards, credit, debit, everything to their own state?
Why is it your logic that only the poor people need to be restricted because other people are stealing from them? Where's the logic in going after the victims of fraud?
Other cards already have these protections, the EBT cards do not. That's the problem.
If they were secured the same way as credit/debit cards we wouldn't be seeing this problem.
I should say too... EBT cards are already restricted as far as what they can be used for, it only makes sense to flag where they can be used as well.
So then protect the cards without excessive restrictions that aren't put on other cards. Freedom of movement is a human right so to restrict someone's essential payment method state to state seems like a breach of that.
Again, EBT cards are already restricted.
https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/eligible-food-items
They just aren't restricted in a way that would prevent stealing the funds.
I wonder how many stores have checking for skimmers as part of their daily workflows.
Not enough apparently. 😔
Look over there at the guy stealing bread for his family, no mind the BILLIONS of dollars being stolen by this admin every week. God i hate the GOP.
Love to hear this kind of bullshit while we drain trillions into the pockets of war-pigs.
to MIC and being used as a proxy by israel.
Someone tell these people to shut the fuck up already.
Ah of course it's the poor that are ruining your country - that makes sense 🙄
Have Republicans ever provided evidence of anything they've ever said, ever?
All the time. Said evidence was false or cherry picked and they never bring it to the courtroom successfully but they provide it nonetheless
no they dont, they also dont actually report it on the news so they can twist the evidence however they want as long as the "evidence" is not verifiable.
No need for evidence. All these traitors need to do is say it and it is. When have Republican demons ever needed evidence?
Fuck all these lying sacks of shit.
fuck republicans
Fake news ,nothing too see
The cruelty is the point. Also, where are the Trumpstein files?
There are plenty of corporate leaders accepting huge sums of corporate socialism that are driving luxury vehicles.
When have they ever let facts get in the way of the narrative anyway?
if people are taking advice from LIZARD RAFAEL CANCUN CRUZ as a fact, its on them.
To appropriate another well known saying about owing money... If one person believes easily disproven misinformation, that's on them. If a large percentage of the population believes it... That's on all of us... We need to bring back critical thinking to education but we also need to remove these corrupt assholes from power asap
"Look at them! They're driving luxury vehicles like a fancy foreign Honda civic and the urban elite bicycle"
Why should it ever stop them? There has never been any evidence in anything they have ever accused.
They make the accusations then they rely on their propaganda machine, AKA literally all of media at this point, to put out their version of things to the entire nation before the truth has a chance to even circulate locally.
The luxury cars are probably 15 year old Cadillacs or something.
Liars gonna lie.
They don’t think of it as “throwing the baby out with the bath water”. They think of it as “two birds one stone”
Meanwhile, there's strong evidence… well, facts, at this point, that taxpayers' money is fueling a silly war for ego, possibly funding a gigantic ballroom, personal enrichment of high-profile in the administration. I wonder why they're not complaining about that.
evidence has never been a concern when it comes to the right.
If I could, I think I can explain why they feel this way. This is not justification, but some insight. I believe all people should be allowed to live and flourish to the best of their free will and ability without harming others.
Those with siblings, think of this: it's your birthday party. You're 8. Your younger sibling is 5. All day, your younger sibling has been whining, complaining, and ruining "your day." You are forced to share with this sibling, this sibling has stolen and broken your stuff, and embarrassed you. You are forced to play with this sibling, let him hang out with your friends, and this has translated into a kind of inner resentment. Anything that they do wrong, things that you would get punished for, is excused and waved away. "He can't help it, he is young." Then, as your birthday cake is being served, he gets the bigger piece. You have the feelings and emotional control of a small child. How does that make you feel?
The deepest feeling of rage and anger, the unfairness of it all, the entitlement that was taken from you.
This is how they feel about "the others." They see handicapped and poor people "getting away with something." They feel they worked hard to achieve their position in life, and now someone just hands them food and shelter. A kind of jealousy of them skipping some process. That they didn't earn it. It's a sense of revulsion usually reserved to rotting meat. But above all, they are projecting all their unaddressed issues of playing second fiddle to someone they perceive as having it easier than they had. And this is what the liberal side fails to address, because they are like the parents in this scenario. "They can't help being poor/handicapped/disadvantaged." They are right, of course, but that doesn't address the feelings. The rich know it, as they themselves have the same emotional disconnection. Unaddressed childhood pain distanced by nannies, au pairs, and "please don't play in the main areas, Stewart. You'll soul the Matisse." Raised by parents who have kids for prestige and legacy.
The conservatives listen to their inner, unresolved feelings. And those are very easy to manipulate by the rich, wealthy politicians. And being different makes it easy to label.
People experience job loss, lose their income become briefly eligible for food stamps get a job get off food stamps ALL the time during this difficult period they don't lose their homes, cars, fancy clothes or their iphones.
Has anyone seen Rick Scott? Has he found something else to steal from?
Well when they claimed there was a lot of voter fraud it turned out to be them with trump trying to manipulate state govs and now with gerrymandering.
The problem isn't the person taking $5000 in food benefits, it is the corporate, and their cronies, kleptocracy.
LOL. Ferrari only sells about 14,000 cars a year WORLDWIDE!
So food stamp fraud fraud?
These stupid mother fuckers also think people on food stamps should not have phones because they are a "luxury". Not that I'm modern times you have to have a phone basically to do anything.
Always the same, there's never evidence with their constantly empty claims. It's usually more of an admission of guilt than anything else.
Where are my class action lawsuits against these cunts? Can we have a Citizens of the United States vs. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins? I don't give a shit if I only get a penny, so long as these people are financially and politically ruined.
Temu grandpa Munster.
They use the old "repeat a lie until people believe it as true" method.
Food stamps were discontinued in 2008. Incorrect title.
Sure, but that's also what most people know them by. See also: people using old names for stadia or skyscrapers.
Oh nooo
poorrich people using money nooo! Our system of government is in peril