The US Department of Agriculture has spent the past week notifying people that the country is (allegedly) overrun by individuals who are fraudulently claiming SNAP benefits, while (allegedly) driving luxury vehicles.
“In just ONE state, 14,000 individuals receiving SNAP benefits were driving LUXURY VEHICLES!” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins posted on X last week. The official USDA account made similar claims, which were then amplified by figures like Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Rand Paul.
Those numbers are questionable at best. For one thing, the report they come from doesn’t name the state where thousands of people are allegedly buying Ferraris while using government money to buy food. For another, that report doesn’t include any explanation of its methodology.
People experience job loss, lose their income become briefly eligible for food stamps get a job get off food stamps ALL the time during this difficult period they don’t lose their homes, cars, fancy clothes or their iphones.
Ah of course it’s the poor that are ruining your country - that makes sense 🙄
Go after the real welfare queens. The Walton family, Elon Musk, the oil and gas industry. Big corporate farming. Ending subsidies for oil and gas alone would pay for Medicare for all
I’d rather a hundred people get benefits they “don’t need” than have one person go without the support they require.
Not that it’s even happening, but even if it were I really wouldn’t care even a little bit. And furthermore, food stamp benefits are pathetic in the US.
Yeah, nobody commits that level of petty fraud if their life is going well.
If you want food stamps badly enough to jump through the hoops required, then that should qualify you by default.
When I lived in a poor area I saw a ton of luxury vehicles but they were a decade older than most non-luxury cars and were beat to shit. I’d believe the numbers but I don’t think they say what this idiot is implying.
Its demoralizing that this type of messaging resonates with such a large portion of Americans, honestly.
I know someone on SNAP benefits. She drives a 25 year old Buick Lesabre with over 200,000 miles on it . Technically it’s a “luxury car,” which she got for $800.
Their stats are bullshit, spun in such a way as to churn up resentment towards the poorest , so the wealthiest can bilk more money from the middle.
Look over there at the guy stealing bread for his family, no mind the BILLIONS of dollars being stolen by this admin every week. God i hate the GOP.
A remix of the old welfare queen lie. smh. Some guy probably used his mom’s food stamps card to get fast food once and they’re going to make it seem like a billion dollars in theft.
The Welfare Queen was a real person best known by the name Linda Taylor but she was uniquely talented at defrauding the government and she went to prison in 1978 for welfare fraud.
I’m aware.
I’m also aware that she defrauded the government something like $10,000, was caught almost immediately, and as you said, punished. Reagan made her out to be a crime lord stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Real or not, the lie is the gross misrepresentation of who and what she was to the american people, used as a justification to cut social aid programs for millions in need.
source?
sure.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6eFBOBgRrdiSCrCwaxC25o
There you go. The dollop gives all their sources at the end each episode and posts a list for their audience. in fact…
Main
· Levin, Josh. “The Welfare Queen: In the 1970s, Ronald Reagan villainized a Chicago woman for bilking the government. Her other sins—including possible kidnappings and murders—were far worse. Slate. (Dec. 19 2013) http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2013/12/linda_taylor_welfare_queen_ronald_reagan_made_her_a_notorious_american_villain.html Josh Levin’s story has been expanded into a book, The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/031651330X/?tag=slatmaga-20 as well as a podcast miniseries: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/05/the-queen-linda-taylor-welfare-reagan-podcast.html
Other
· Black, Rachel, Aleta Sprague, and the New America Weekly. “The ‘Welfare Queen’ Is a Lie: Programs that should be crafted around people’s needs are instead designed to deal with a problem that doesn’t exist.” The Atlantic. (September 28, 2016) · https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/welfare-queen-myth/501470/
· Bazelon, Emily, John Dickerson, and David Plotz. “The ‘You’ll Drag Me Out of the Supreme Court in a Pine Box’ Gabfest” Gabfest. [podcast] (December 20, 2013) http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/gabfest/2013/12/the_gabfest_on_judge_richard_leon_s_nsa_ruling_ruth_bader_ginsburg_s_refusal.html
All the sources used for a goofy little history podcast.
Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Taylor
There’s her wiki too. Taylor was a spectacle even back then, with the tabloids reporting she stole anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000. It was actually about $8,000. She was a petty criminal who got caught pretty much every time and was arrested for her crimes. By the time Reagan was talking about her, that number had been further inflated (lied about) to be around $100,000, but regardless, she was cooked.
thanks for the sources and podcast link!
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You simply can’t it won’t work. POS systems cannot be configured to do this.
I haven’t had a food card for a bit. It was just a prepaid card. I don’t really know what small and insignificant way it’s used that these fucks would complain about but I just made an example off the top of my head.
This is literally just the '80s “welfare queen” lie.
The same people who believed that in their 20s when Reagan said it are now in their late 60s and early 70s. You can see the problem.
We need to get rid of means testing. The largest money line for any government programs is the army of people making sure Americans need the program. People that don’t need government programs usually don’t use them. So hiring someone to make sure a wealthy person doesn’t cash in $150 worth of food stamps.
luxury vehicles
What do you want to bet they’re talking about poorly maintained 15+ year old lexuses and 30+ year old bmws? Just kidding, it’s most likely entirely unfounded.
I’d go even further and say that they are classifying vehicles themselves as a luxury, not even the make or model.
You want more than ONE door on your car?!?!
Then you get an Isetta and they’re going to complain that you have a BMW.
🤣 exactly.
They’re trying to bring back Welfare Queens. I’m sure almost everyone’s forgotten, but this was the kind of accusation that led to Welfare being viewed so negatively and eventually being renamed entirely.
Ironically, it’s middle-class suburban homeowners who are the real welfare queens. They may not get the actual government program called “welfare,” but they get so many other kinds of subsidies for their lifestyle that the stereotypical urban renter single mom is probably subsidizing them instead of the other way around!
I think Walmart takes the cake. They purposely dont give a lot of hours or benefits so their employees end up on SNAP who then use SNAP at Walmart.
The government is essentially paying their employees wages to then be spent at Walmart.
Dude, it seems everything the GOP claims lacks evidence.
Have you seen what the MAGAtards do when confronted by evidence? They say it’s all either fake news or AI. They’re a cult and cults don’t require evidence to maintain their beliefs.
It’s so depressing
My favorite term for this is “a post-truth society”.
Feels like a new dark age.
“Look at them! They’re driving luxury vehicles like a fancy foreign Honda civic and the urban elite bicycle”
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
The luxury cars are probably 15 year old Cadillacs or something.
fuck republicans
