On Wed, 14 Feb 2018 14:13:49 +0000 (UTC), "Dove Tail"
wrote:

Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 2/13/2018 2:34 PM, Dove Tail wrote:


Trump's approach to giving people a hand up is to dehumanize and
stigmatize them.

I am aghast at how so many people would deny their neighbors food
but are fine with $96 billion a year worth of corporate welfare and
interest free money for banks.



but his method also eliminates a lot of fraud. They should eliminate
things like soda. Forcing them to actually have food it eliminates
some of the fraud and waste.

Do you have reliable statistics on fraud and abuse in the federal food
assistance program?

USDA says they recovered $57 million from prosecutions in 2012 ($1.2B
since 92) and they are just skimming the tip of the iceberg. They only
analysed transactions at 15,000 locations and actually investigated
4500. There are millions of places that can take EBT cards.
This is just looking at the most blatant fraud, basically EBT cards
for cash in the store. This does not look at simply one crackhead
selling the value on their card to someone else who actually buys food
with it.


Any idea how many millions or billions of dollars
would need to be spent to create and operate a system to pack and ship
food to people?

Dunno but Reagan managed to do it and we did not hear of any huge
problems. They sent the food, in bulk to places that serve the needy
and it was distributed there. This was not "meals on wheels" bringing
boxes of food to your house. My grandfather got his from the senior
center. Anyone who was signed up for their programs got to graze what
they had and take what they needed in some reasonable quantity.

It all sounds ridiculous to me, but I don't have the need to manage
what people consume.



Want a good buy on food? I can go out tomorrow and use an EBT card
to buy my steaks and pay the card holder half the value so they can
buy smokes or weed. I know a few people that do that so it is
readily available.


Some people commit crimes, both retailers and beneficiaries. That does
not justify concluding that criminal behavior in the program is
statistically significant.

It is significant enough that more than half of the entire
investigative staff of USDA works on it along with state and local
LEOs and they say they are seriously understaffed for the job.
They admit to 1.5% fraud rate on a $70 billion a year program (over a
billion a year) but it may be a lot higher because they only look
fraud at the retailer level. Individual card holders are not usually
investigated.