Today I’m going heavy on the topic of welfare and related fraud, as a followup to Sloopy’s morning link about Florida Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (who probably isn’t so cheerful now). Before I punch you in the ‘nads, here’s something completely different.
HOW TO GAME SNAP WORK REQUIREMENTS: A massive tax and spending bill signed into law in July by Trump expanded requirements for many adult SNAP recipients to work, volunteer or participate in job training for at least 80 hours a month. Those who don’t are limited to three months of benefits in a three-year period. While that will do some good, it opens new options for fraud, particularly the “volunteering” part. You gin-up a “volunteer” organization (with paid admin staff, or course) which purports to do park cleanup. You then offer to file paperwork on behalf of SNAP recipients certifying that they have met their 80-hour volunteer requirements without requiring actual labor. You could run this as an NGO scam where the only thing you’d get is a few paid positions, or as an actual profit-making enterprise where you charged the SNAP recipients (under the table, of course) for the privilege. This also works for SNAP training requirements. And where will SNAP recipients get the cash to pay these fraudsters? Read on, fellow Glibs.
HOW TO CONVERT EBT TO CASH AND DRUGS: Back in the old days the poor received nutritional assistance via “food stamps,” a special poor people currency that could (theoretically) only be used to buy food items. People regularly sold those for cash, netting 10-25% of face value. I have witnessed such transactions (Village Cafe, 1990s for those familiar with RVA). Now they issue EBT (debit) cards and recipients buy steak and lobster with their EBT card then resell the luxury food for cash. Or buy a can of powdered infant formula then do a no-receipt “return” of the unopened can for cash. And, of course, there are always fraudsters who are happy to facilitate this for you.
THE FOX GUARDING THE HENHOUSE: “Michael Kehoe and his co-conspirators misappropriated tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds meant to help low-income families put food on the table,” said U.S. Attorney Perry Carbone. “This fraud was made possible when USDA employee Arlasa Davis betrayed the public trust by selling confidential government information to the very criminals she was supposed to catch.
STRAIGHT-UP, BLATANT FRAUD: The Safari Restaurant / Feeding Our Future scandal, guilty pleas, convictions, and potential ties to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar bears mention here. FOF was operating in the open and they had a network. How many other fraud and fraud-enabling groups are operating?
WHY 5,000 DEAD PEOPLE ON SNAP MAY NOT BE A PROBLEM: The claimed 500,000 180,000 people double-enrolled in SNAP is a problem, but the 5,000 dead people potentially not so much. Potentially. There is an inevitable lag between the death of a recipient and the government learning of that death, and depending on when the death happens in the benefits cycle it is inevitable that someone will die on Tuesday, get SNAP on Wednesday, buried on Friday, and unSNAPed the next Monday. According to the CDC, the US annual death count was 3,090,964 for 2023 (latest year available), which means 8,468 per day. What is unclear from any reporting I’ve read is whether the dead SNAPers were the same people receiving benefits for months or years after their deaths, or the result of the inevitable lag described above.
THIS DIDN’T JUST HAPPEN; THIS WAS DELIBERATE: Troon sues private, Christian college after getting fired for being trans. And the ACLU is representing the troon, because of course they are. This is “bake the cake” on steroids hormones. And I hate having to stick up for anything related to Jerry Falwell, but here we are.
CRIKEY, THEY’RE ON TO US: KFF Health News, “a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues” (and I had to dig for that, they don’t make it easy to find their “about” page), discovers the Brownstone Institute and don’t like it none at all. Bonus points for the “has endorsed child labor” bit. [cuffs nearest orphan]
SAN DIEGO INSTITUTES TRASH POLICE: Teams of ‘lid lifters’ begin enforcement of City of San Diego trash rules.
FUCK RIGHT OFF: The increasingly shrill and globalist SpaceNews platforms Limey fuckstain who wants to save humanity from itself by UN management of Lunar resource exploration. […S]trengthen international oversight of space resource activities through the United Nations. It is notable that COPUOS has already established a Working Group to consider space resource utilization. In the longer term, as recently argued by Marko Filijović and ShahrYar Sharei, we might imagine structural changes in the UN that would strengthen its ability to manage space resources on behalf of humanity as a whole.
NOT QUITE A BUSSARD RAMJET, BUT STILL COOL AF: The spacecraft would collect trace molecules of atmospheric gases and feed them into an electric thruster. In theory, this allows a satellite to sustain flight in regimes that have traditionally been considered too low for long duration missions. The concept cuts into one of the biggest physical barriers of VLEO operations and, if proven, could unlock much longer lifetimes for platforms operating close to Earth.
Keeping on-theme with the opening song, here’s a cheery little tune as I turn this over to you for commenting. Peace out, Glibs.
When it comes to the UN, but especially on the topic of expanding any aspect of UN to give it some semblance of “power”… I can’t really add to that. It suffices.
I still have actual work for an hour or so — so not reading it just now… assuming this is an electrical / ion drive using trace gases above the stratosphere in lieu of fuel (so accelerate what gases it can find)… yeah, that makes sense. Anything that lets you use reaction mass that’s already lying around with any sort of efficiency is a step up to toting all your reaction mass with you, after all.
Yeah, “electric thruster.”
Old timey marital aid and a college band name.
STEVE SMITH NO NEED “ELECTRIC” THRUSTER
Tucker and Brownstone’s associates express libertarian views and promote distrust of government, including public health authorities.
I already like the Brownstone Institute. You don’t have to keep selling me on liking it.
They were a shining beacon of truth for me, and it warms my heart to know people there who were censored and deplatformed are now in charge.
They should’ve been putting William Howard Taft on those food stamps.
Admired, my fucking ass.
Sure, sure…totally believable and not a set up.
Wrong.
Well, I made it two whole paragraphs before tapping out.
The Sandra Fluke strategy.
I’m interested in what they think is a “conservative Christian”, because I’m pretty sure most of them are not on board with the QUILTBAG+ coalition.
It doesn’t even really need to be as complicated as all that. Coming from a white trash background, as I do, I’ve know friends and family who’ve been on SNAP since 20 years before it was renamed in ’08. When they initiated work requirements in WA, you were able to attend online or call in to “job search training” through a local social org. The programs were technically all compliant – they measured the “attendance” of whatever device logged or called in. Now that there are even more remote work and conferencing options, I’m sure it’s substantially easier.
Thanks for your perspective.
Another form of fraud associated with the volunteer requirement will be to slot in a rotating cast of volunteers on an activist NGO to do the grunt work, so that the paid staff gets to spend more time globalizing the intifada or whatever commie muck they’re up to.
Oh, that’s good. Basically USAID reborn, only with labor hours instead of tax dollars.
Don’t forget about the student loan forgiveness angle as well.
They do it already. The activist orgs thrive off of community service hours in whatever form they are mandated.
Liberty U: “She” lied by omission which seems like grounds for termination to me.
His institute’s covid contrarians seek to limit the government’s role in protecting Americans from disease.
Serious journalism for serious people.
This can also be done more simply. “Hey bro, I’ll pay for your groceries in there if you give me $20.” If you haven’t been approached with that offer by some junkie hanging out at the entrance of a discount grocery chain, congratulations, you are qualified to live in the better neighborhoods of Las Vegas and L. A.
Ah… here you need to go to the gas stations/convenience stores (that helpfully take EBT – which is a whole other rant) for that.
My best friend lives in Toronto, and when he told me about the trash pick up regime there I was dumbfounded. He has to not only properly sort, but then properly tag his trash; each tag having to be purchased separately from the monthly service fee for collection.
*strikes match, lights cardboard*
I burn 90%+ of my paper garbage.
Pictured.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a clip of the Penn and Teller Bullshit episode on Recycling when they had set up about a dozen cans for various things, with the capper being “lightly used toilet paper”.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hd_uVqEBrSk&pp=ygUZcG9ydGxhbmRpYSByZWN5Y2xpbmcgYmlucw%3D%3D
I recall reading about having to buy tags when I moved to this town a couple years ago but I rent so I don’t deal with that kind of bullshit. The tags are the fee, though. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Some places require “composting” – I will go to jail before some totalitarian asshole makes me keep a pot of rotting garbage in the kitchen.
in the kitchen
🤢 ours goes out daily to a compost pile over by the chicken coop, a good solid 75 feet from the house.
My compost pile is checked every days for edible garbage. Crows come first, when I first put out the stuff, after dark a fox will appear to eat any greasy stuff, summer a bear might be involved. After 30 plus years the pile remains non existent almost. Burnables go through a wood stove in the garage. Township has an annual day for free disposal of metal, tires, scrap.
I may have to rent a small dumpster in the spring for a day or two. Even at that it’ll be cheaper than garbage pick up.
I have been known to burn a tire or three from time to time.
It’s even more enraging when you know that half the ‘recyclables’ get shipped over to Vietnam and the Philippines, where they are thrown in a river. Guess who gets to pay for that?
The ocean, because that’s where it finally ends up.
When I was in Livingston, I was in line behind somebody at the grocery store and the cashier’s display screen was visible to me. I noticed the “EBT” in the payment display. I thought, “Everybody needs a break”. But I started watching more often. I had to stop looking when I began to think everybody in Park County but me was getting food stamps.
I saw a lot of obese families living on expensive free steak and lobster when I was a starving college student and checking out their groceries at the supermarket. Any sympathy I might have had got ground out of me a few decades ago.
This is exactly what happened to me. Bloomingfoods, in Bloomington, is the deepest darkest Blue co-op I worked at for a spell. People would buy expensive lamb and bison meat with their EBT /equivalent. And bottles of wine.
The people doing it looked exactly like you think, and in their mid 20s. My weed dealers, who lived in the upper flat of our shared, 3-tiered house, were among these folk. That really pissed me off. They looked so damn smug about it, too. (Good folk. Useful Idiots, feeling they were somehow doing something noble, I suppose by doing something idiotically useful (to their puppeteers).
I have stood in line behind three full carts as a college student paying his way and when told their foodies would t pay for the dog food they sent a kid back to the meat cooler to get four packs of steak.
I couldn’t afford to dream of steak in those days.
I was buying a quarter sheet birthday cake, the woman ahead of me bought a 1/2 sheet with EBT
I’m trying to imagine you and Mrs. Fourscore going through that much cake.
Many years back, before Mom retired and was diagnosed with dementia, dad bought a cake on her birthday.
A sheet cake. For three people.
Mom brought half of it into work for all of her co-workers.
I still remember when I was a kid, we would line up for the Govt cheese and powdered milk.
I would get so angry because my mom and dad both knew we didn’t need it, but it was free.
Not sure why I always got drug along with her to get it.
My brother gave me a huge block of gov cheese, 5 lbs? They were out of refrig space. My brother delivered for Fair Share, some kind of free food thing, some 20 years ago. Then he made local deliveries for those unable to pick up their allotment. The widow ladies always treated him to pie/cake and coffee and he never refused.
My folks got food stamps of some kind back in the ’60s, after I’d left. The local store would allow pipe tobacco/dish detergent under the counter.
OTOH when rationing was a thing in WW2 almost everyone had a go to place for extra sugar/butter, etc. My mother would call the local corner store and then send me up to make the pick up. I was the 7-8 year old bag boy.
Where I grew up, the small town had a surplus of government cheese and powdered milk, so they gave it to the senior citizens.
We got some of what my grandparents got.
The cake was for some birthday party, I can’t remember whose. Mrs F doesn’t eat sweet stuff so I always get 2 portions.
So investors were giddy yesterday when Nvidia posted better-than-expected revenues after the markets closed. Today, the Dow shoots up 700 points, Nvidia stock goes down, and the Dow closes almost 400 points down. Maybe I should exit the markets and invest in something more sane, like tulips or Beanie Babies.
Labubu dolls.
Ammo.
Buy the
dipcollapse!On the more serious side, I’ve been wondering the same thing for a while now. I’m holding steady, putting money into funds (on a regular schedule) and some precious metals. Thankfully, I’ve got a while before I should need the money… unless that employee survey wasn’t as anonymous as they said it was.
The disconnect between what I actually think of the company I work for and the utter bullshit I put on our employee evaluation forms actually makes me uncomfortable. The more so since I etched a phrase that translates to “Live not by lies” into my arm. Owing to a recent promotion I was the “Spotlight Employee” in our monthly newsletter for November, and trying to come up with the requisite blurb that was suitably fawning, but ambiguous enough not to be entirely untrue was torturous. My only solace is that no one in the company other than whoever has to slap the PDF together and send out the mass email will have actually read it.
Pat:
I was making myself sick letting the job bother me. I’m at the point IDGAF anymore. They want to fire me, they can. For the question: “What motivates you to come to work everyday?”, my answer was “A paycheck.” There’s a handful of us in my group that are at the same level. It’s made for some entertaining all hands calls.
It’s so absurd that this is considered the “wrong” answer.
Been there, lived that. I’ve been brutally honest, I’ve been saccharine, but I’ve settled on honest but optimistic and not volunteering any more information than required. Answer the questions as written and nothing more.
Fact is, regardless of the issues with my group and my company, I get to work from home, am mostly self sufficient, get to shut my laptop when the work is done and get rave reviews from my clients. Why would I upset that apple cart?
The more so since I etched a phrase that translates to “Live not by lies” into my arm.
Another reason not to get a tattoo….
*hastily covers up “Trump whore” carved into stomach*
I’m gunning for 12 years.
15 at the most.
Your Party’s tantrum over transvestites is the tonic Britain needs right now
I’m going to apply for SNAP (not joking).
Dont blame ya but dont expect to get all the goodies the “right” people are getting
Flying solo, it’s more difficult to qualify and the amount will likely be fairly trivial. Think in the range of ~$60/mo. The trick is to qualify with kids; all the better if you can get the kids declared disabled for, e.g., ADHD. Your SNAP allowance just went up into the ~$200-$500/mo range, depending on the quantity of your crotch goblins, plus they automatically qualify for free school lunch (and breakfast, in most places), and, if “disabled,” Medicaid (even if you can’t get them declared disabled, they’ll automatically qualify for CHIP based on the income requirements for SNAP).
One of the lifetime welfare recipients I mentioned upthread – a friend of my mom’s – got on disability with her first kid in the late 1980s, and has been on some form of welfare continuously ever since. For a couple of years she worked part time as a hair dresser while still receiving benefits during one of those “return to work” reform programs they instituted in the ’90s, and bred and sold Dachshunds on the side. She otherwise has never worked, and is flirting with death at the age of 62. I still sporadically keep in touch with her older daughter, who herself is now an early-40s single mother to 2 kids and has been on disability, Medicaid, and SNAP continuously since childhood, excepting a ~2 year period when she was living with one of her baby daddies who was actually working.
They need to be spayed.
In trash-related news, we live in an unincorporated part of town where you have to hire your own garbage pick up. Mrs. TOK out of curiosity called the competitor of the service we were using. They were hundreds cheaper per year and picked up more big items and yard waste. We got our new trash cans yesterday and it was exciting. This is what it’s like to be old.
Don’t forget to set your VCR to record Matlock tonight.
Great idea, I’ll be in bed by then.
I, too, live in unincorporated area where we pick our own trash service. My brother and I split a small dumpster for a while and it was great, $35 a month for the both of us and we could dump big(ish) stuff in it. Every month it seemed the rate increased, fist small increases, then larger “fuel surcharge” increases, until it was close to $300 a month (for one, my brother sadly passed away.)
We built a house on our property and dumped the dumpster to go with a roll cart service. They have been great, the same $36.14 for the last 4 years. They will pick up larger items, but I incur an extra charge, so I try to keep that to a minimum.
Being old is fun. Puts an onion on my belt.
I think we get to put out one large item, or some lawn bags, every week. The other place charged extra for that.
$32 here. Occasionally they’ll take a box or something, but more often than not it’s neighbors scavenging for metal and other items that get the extras. They’re okay with the lid not fully closing but they get fussy if it won’t close at all.
There are so many wonderful surprises to leave for lid lifters…
fta:
Yes. Everybody knows that the moon is made of green cheese.
Hey, the moon is a harsh mistress. You have to be careful who you let up there.
The moon has no safe word.
Charles Schwab sent me an email saying if I refer friends to them, my friends will get $1000 bonuses. Bitch, I need the $1000 for myself. Fuck my so-called “friends”.
In the spirit of EBT fraud, just find a few people you trust enough, refer them, split the cash.
I’d be your friend, but I already have a Schwab account.
Apropos of nothing, it is my conviction that every man, woman, and child in this community should watch Severance, having recently finished the 2nd season.
every man, woman, and child in this community should watch Severance
I don’t know what that is, but I’m pretty sure it’s not available to me.
There isn’t much action but the music is nice.
COP30 full of hot air
https://nypost.com/2025/11/20/us-news/wisconsin-teen-weighing-just-35-lbs-allegedly-starved-and-neglected-by-grossly-obese-family/
I’d be fine with the death penalty here. I’d even let the girl administer the lethal dose if she wanted to.
I can’t even look at that. Causing a child to suffer is about the most inhumane thing I can think of.
Yup, not clicking
It was horrible. Do not click.
Fly me out there and ill put and end to them.