Friday, June 8, 2012

Liberals Recruit More People Onto Food Stamps, Even As Unemployment Rate Falls


Boston Herald ^ | June 8, 2012 | Michael Graham



It’s a Massachusetts Rorschach test.

In 2009, the state unemployment rate peaked at 8.7 percent. It’s now down to 6.3 percent — a 28 percent drop. Meanwhile the number of Bay Staters on food stamps has jumped from 720,000 to more than 850,000, a 15 percent increase.
Here’s the test question: Is that a good thing, or bad?
Look, the economy still stinks, but it doesn’t stink as bad as it did in 2008-2009. And yet, from 2007 to 2011, spending on food stamps went up an astonishing 135 percent.
And it’s still going up.
How does this make sense? Shouldn’t “more jobs” equal “less welfare?”
It turns out, that’s all part of the plan.
Both the federal government and the Patrick administration have been spending your money to recruit more non-traditional “clients” to become dependent on . . . your money!
As James Bovard reported in The Wall Street Journal, “Thanks in part to vigorous federally funded campaigns by nonprofit groups, the government’s AmeriCorps service program, and other organizations urging people to accept government handouts, the number of food-stamp recipients has soared.”
Then Department of Transitional Assistance chief Julia Kehoe told the Dorchester Reporter last year, “The department reached out specifically to groups who had been under-represented in past years: the elderly, those who were unaware of their eligibility, and people who viewed the program as too burdensome to apply for.”
Notice who’s not on the list: the hungry, the destitute and the folks who’ve run out of options.
No, those folks have been on food stamps all along, which is in the minds of most Americans why the program exists. But once you’ve maxed those folks out, how do you keep growing your government program?
By expanding it to...
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonherald.com ...

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