Food stamp abuse that makes one laugh....

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.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.
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.
The feds say the moveable feasts go against the intent of the $86 billion welfare program for impoverished Americans.

[FONT=arial !important]J.C. Rice​

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[FONT=arial !important]BIN OVER THEIR HEADS: Pioneer Supermarket in Brooklyn sells plastic barrels that customers use to ship food to family members in the Caribbean.[/FONT]

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A spokeswoman for the US Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service said welfare benefits are reserved for households that buy and prepare food together. She said states should intervene if people are caught shipping nonperishables abroad.
Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, called it just another example of welfare abuse.
“I don’t want food-stamp police to see what people do with their rice and beans, but it’s wrong,” Tanner told The Post. “The purpose of this program is to help Americans who don’t have enough to eat. This is not intended as a form of foreign aid.”
The United States spent $522.7 million on foreign aid to the Caribbean last fiscal year, government data show.
Still, New Yorkers say they ship the food because staples available in the States are superior and less costly than what their families can get abroad.
“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.”
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.
Workers at the Pioneer Supermarket on Parkside Avenue and the Key Food on Flatbush Avenue confirmed the practice.
They said food-stamp recipients typically take home their barrels and fill them gradually over time with food bought with EBT cards.

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MaggieD said:

Oh, come on!!! Just how stupid are we??

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MaggieD said:

Oh, come on!!! Just how stupid are we??




New York food stamp recipients are shipping welfare-funded groceries to relatives in Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Haiti - NYPOST.coms

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jamesrage said:

This is why I think food stamps should be similar to the WIC program, they should only be given the amount of food they actually need and the vouchers should only be good for certain periods of time,For example one voucher is good for the first week while another is good only for the 2nd week and so on. It shouldn't be a food credit card where they can buy who knows what with it.

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DiAnna said:

Apparently we are pretty damned stupid!!! :lol:

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