l****z 发帖数: 29846 | 1 Food Stamps for Weed? Yep, It's Happening in Colorado
by John Hayward 25 Feb 2014
This should not surprise anyone who has been paying attention to the growth
of Food Stamp Nation. According to National Review, EBT cards have been
used in Colorado to pull quite a bit of taxpayer cash at stores that sell
marijuana:
At least 64 times, public-assistance benefits were accessed at
businesses selling marijuana. A total of $5,475 in public benefits was
withdrawn at ATMs in establishments that sell pot. This figure includes
medicinal dispensaries, recreational stores, and at least one place that
combines the two. Some of these establishments sell groceries as well as pot
, so there is no way to know exactly how much welfare money was spent on
marijuana.
The amounts withdrawn ranged from $20 to $400, averaging $85.55,
according to the transaction records. In Colorado, the average household
receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits includes
one adult and two children, and the maximum monthly benefit for them is $462.
Previous misadventures have seen money withdrawn at casinos and bars, which
are now prohibited for allowing cash withdrawals on food-stamp cards in
Colorado, along with gun shops. Of course, as long as cash can be withdrawn
anywhere, there's going to be trouble. Forbidding the transactions in
unseemly proximity to the scenes of outrageous taxpayer abuse is a minor
inconvenience to EBT card holders. But Colorado Democrats didn't even
bother laying a thin veil of respectability over the weed shops.
To date, neither has the U.S. Congress, although existing federal
restrictions on the use of EBT cards to obtain cash largely predate the big
push for legalized pot; maybe they'll get around to amending the legislation
. Or, you know, His Majesty King Barack I could issue one of those royal
edicts he loves and command it. Or is this flagrant abuse of taxpayers not
the sort of thing that demands "we can't wait" pen-and-phone Constitution-
shredding action?
The food stamp program has evolved far beyond supplemental nutrition for the
desperately poor - a mission that could easily be controlled with modern
Information Age technology, although the government shows little interest in
doing so. Even if the EBT cards were subject to draconian controls, money
is fungible Every dollar a beneficiary doesn't have to spend on rice and
milk is a dollar that can be spent elsewhere, and the program has grown well
beyond the point where it's feeding people who don't have any dollars.
But "draconian controls" are for taxpayers and businesspeople, not Big
Government's favored clients. The name of the game is to get people well
into the formerly independent "middle class" dependent on at least partial
government assistance for the necessities of life: food and health care. It
doesn't take a whole lot of dependency to achieve meaningful political
control; even someone whose groceries are only 20% taxpayer-subsidized will
be very reluctant to cast a vote that leaves him paying 20% more for food.
And once you depend upon the generosity of the Ruling Class for the
essentials of life, you're not likely to make any choices they find
particularly troubling.
Getting high might the last illusion of freedom we retain. In fact, it's
the perfect distillation of the illusion that freedom can be obtained
without responsibility. What could more perfectly capture the spirit of our
age than using food stamp money to buy weed? |
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