Food-Stamp Nation: another proud moment for Barack Obama

**Posted by Phineas

Currency of the Obama economy

Here’s something that jumped out at me over the holiday weekend — there are more people on food stamps than theΒ  total population of 24 states combined:

In November, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that a record 47,102,780 individuals receive food stamps.

According to US. Census Bureau data, that figure exceeds the combined populations of: Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

Since January 2009, the number of individuals on food stamps has skyrocketed from 31.9 million to the current record high 47.1 million. By comparison, in 1969 just 2.8 million Americans received food stamps.

Wynton Hall’s article also points out the hundreds of millions in revenue (tax dollars or borrowed money) being made by companies such as J.P. Morgan that handle the processing of EBT cards, the meteoric rise in the program’s cost (more than double from 2008), and the inevitable corruption.

Meanwhile, it was noted earlier this month by the Republican minority (1) on the Senate Budget Committee that, since 2009, the number of people on food stamps has grown at a rate 75 times that ofΒ  job growth.

But then, what do we expect from a president and a party (that would be the Democrats, for those of you without a program) who are obsessed with reform and redistribution, rather than on creating the conditions for economic recovery and growth, which would in turn create productive jobs and help people get off food stamps and other forms of welfare?

Ah, the light goes on!

The whole point of getting as many people on food stamps as possible is to create dependency on wealth redistributed by the government, that dependency then making the “beneficiaries” more likely to vote for the candidates and party that promises to keep the crack money coming. Clients and dependents, in other words, as opposed to free citizens. It’s a time-honored Democratic strategy, as LBJ made clear when he mentioned one of the benefits of the Great Society. For the more radically-inclined among the Democratic leadership and its allies on the Left, this vast expansion of the food stamp program could also be seen as an implementation of the Cloward-Piven strategy.

Whichever is true (and both can be at the same time), this nauseating milestone really is a gold-star achievement for the Obama Administration. Well done.

Footnote:
(1) In the “to be fair about it” department, the libertarian Cato Institute points out the Republican role in expanding the food stamp program in the 2002 pork fiesta farm bill. In short, the “Party of Stupid” sold the Left the rope they’re using to hang us all. There’s also an interesting chart there illustrating the growth in food stamp use.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

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