re: What Are Your Thoughts Of Food Stamps

Are you saying the elderly and disabled don't get food stamps?

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The most common scam now is the local convenience store that either checks out non-food items as food for an inflated price or gives cash in exchange for imaginary food items.

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Pretty much. The most common scam is one you touched on where they simply convert the card's value to cash for cents on the dollar. Here's a big case from earlier this month in Alabama. In the story, the DA acts like the scheme is new to him, but it is pretty well known in LE circles.

I've even seen a stocked meat freezer in a pawn shop that was loaded with steaks I can guarantee you were purchased with EBT cards and immediately 'pawned'. I've also seen two people purchase a buggy full of nothing but cuts of meat at Winn-Dixie and pay for the entire purchase using no less than 5 different EBT cards.

The cards are real money savers for the government, but they haven't done one thing to reduce fraud. They've only changed the game a little bit.

With the old WIC system, you got a card for 2 gallons of milk, 32oz of cheese, 2 dozen eggs, ect. They had to be items that said WIC approved on them too. So someone couldn't get chocolate milk or a block of Velveeta for example .

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Should disabled people who can't work be able to receive food stamps, or should we let them fend for themselves too?

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Depends on what you're defining as disabled. A kid who has ADHD can get disability checks if the family pushes the issue hard enough with the disability office, school, and the family psych. We recently had another who is trying to get a check for "headaches". The student missed 85 days of school this year, refused home hospital services, and is jumping from doctor to doctor to get enough of a "diagnosis" to get disability. The disability office got pissed at us when we didn't provide enough "data" on the student, despite the fact we hadn't seen him for majority of the school year because Mom had kept him home through excused doctor's extensions.

I've also been cussed out by parents who thought we didn't "do enough" on the paperwork for their kid to get a check.

Much like food stamps, the disability system is broken largely because there is no legitimate reinforcement to stop fraud.

Who's to say anyone here (or their family) hasn't been in that situation? That's awfully presumptuous of you to assume that people can't be critical of a system they've experienced first hand.

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God forbid any of you guys ever fall on hard times and need ebt to help you feed your family. Don't punish everyone just because of those scum that do abuse the system.

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Who defines what "hard times" are? The taxpayer or the recipient?

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It's pretty obvious that those folks who are so anti-ebt have never needed it or else they likely would not stand against it.

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No when I first got sober and couldn't find any work I needed it, but I didn't qualify for it and refused to lie to qualify (as was suggested by the people working there) so I did what you're supposed to do and found any odd job that paid as well as went to a temp service so I could eat until I found a steady job.

Is it? My family was on welfare when I was younger while my Dad was laid off from the shop that closed here. Before you could buy a bag of Cheetos with your EBT at a major chain grocery store. It was government cheese, meat, and powdered milk. Yet somehow my parents managed to feed myself, my brother, and themselves.

I'm absolutely against the system as it's set up today. I think you'd have to be blind to not be against how it's run.

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It's pretty obvious that those folks who are so anti-ebt have never needed it or else they likely would not stand against it.

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There's been a couple times I would've qualified. But I didn't need need it. So I skipped it.

I do recognize there are legitimate needs for it. And that the legitimate needs and actual usage of it are two separate things altogether.