Friday, August 14, 2009

"1 gallon of chocolate milk, 1 gallon of normal milk, 3 dozen donuts, 3 cases of mountain dew, and 2 packages of cookies"

Remember who I called the welfare state's new posterwhores? Maybe they haven't been supplanted today, but they've certainly been equaled. Good lord.

A friend just told me that his wife was grocery shopping, and the fat woman ahead of her in line was buying all those things enumerated in the title. With food stamps. I don't know how long ago it started, but the old stamps have been phased out in favor of debit cards, because supposedly "we the people" don't want people to feel "ashamed" for being on "public benefits." That's just the thing, they should feel ashamed. They should feel lower than scum to spend so much as a penny of other people's money that wasn't willingly given.

The woman had to pay a dime over the total (I guess her card didn't have enough of a balance), apologizing, and the checker said, "It all spends the same." Only to them. Thieves and those they trade with don't care where the money comes from. They never once consider, or if they do they dismiss it, that it's not at all "the same" to us who labor and have part of it stolen to be given as faux "charity."

This reminds me of something I forgot to mention from last year. Three Hispanic women were ahead of me in line at the grocery store, and they spoke exceedingly little English. They must have swiped their card a dozen times, at one point even insisting the cashier punch in the numbers, but it was always declined. This wasn't just swiping a card and getting a read error, either: this was swiping the card, then waiting 10 seconds to get the "Declined" message. So this took a very, very long time, and I didn't notice how, but they eventually paid some other way.

The cashier was so patient throughout. When it was my turn, I asked her what was the three's problem. She explained that their card, a food stamps debit card, had only $4 left. And the putas actually asked why it had so little left!

Yeah. America, "what a country" indeed.

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3 Comments:

Blogger Jeff said...

The big question - will these women boycott Whole Foods?

Saturday, August 15, 2009 9:03:00 PM  
Blogger John A said...

Erm, uh... I'm pretty sue the "debit card" thing with food stamps was for reasons of fraud.

I was on them during the transition (long story...). I used to buy a single banana with a one-dollar scrip, do that twice, then use the change for bus fare - so I could get to the store. This probably constituted fraud. As did doing the same thing to buy, say, toilet paper - which was not on the permitted products list. I also knew of several people who would pay 40-60 cents on the dollar for them, and beneficiaries would sell the stamps to get booze or drugs - That, I did not do, but it was common where I was at the time.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009 4:39:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You reminded me of the time my family was on public assistance.

The comment was too long, I moved it to my place.

Tatyana

Friday, August 21, 2009 8:31:00 PM  

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