PROUT

PROUT
For a More Progressively Evolving Society

Friday, April 12, 2013

Corporations, Not the Poor, Profit From $75 Billion Tax Payer Funded Food Stamps Program


I'd like to predicate this guest article by identifying some key principles operative within PROUT's attention to this most basic necessity of food.  

Food is a key industry, a basic necessity, and access to it an imperative right. Provided by the Universe to all its beings, commerce concerning it should hold these truths to be self-evident and imperatively respected. 

What factors could we say are essential to commerce concerning food? 

Being a basic necessity, an essentiality of life, commerce involving food should operate on a no-profit / no-loss basis; 

Food production, distribution and consumption should be, as far as possible, provided through cooperative enterprises, which addresses all fair trade concerns;

Food should be cultivated and consumed as locally as possible; 

Food should not be exported elsewhere until or unless there is excess food after everyone has been fed and has steady supply and ready access to food within a dominion;

Organic processes must be employed in soil cultivation and fertilization;  

Natural means, including companion planting, should be used as the method of pesticide abatement; 

These and more factors and concerns address through the PROUT paradigm can be explored HERE.


 
Corporations, Not the Poor, Profit From $75 Billion Tax Payer Funded Food Stamps Program

food_stamps“Boomtown 1: Washington, The Imperial City[1]” exposed the cronyism and luxurious lifestyle of Washington, DC’s power elite. On Friday “Boomtown 2: The Business of Food Stamps[2]” Government Accountability Institute (GAI) President Peter Schweizer and Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon exposed how politicians and corporations have used the country’s food stamps program to profit on the backs of tax payers.
Though the food stamps program was always meant to be a “safety net” to provide temporary assistance, Schweizer pointed out that it has “become an insider game of power and profit” for corporations who are attempting to get a slice of the $75 billiion provided by the taxpayers.
Schwiezer pointed out that as the food stamps budget increases, so do the market shares of the nations’ top companies who are attempting to get a piece of the action.
The GAI president points out that the food stamps program was intended to provide basic foods, but has grown to include all types of things including soft drinks and fast food. We have also pointed out that the food stampsprogram has been used to purchase guns, drugs and pay for strippers and massage parlors, not to mention that the USDA has targeted illegal aliens for the program.
The fraud of the food stamps program has grown since EBT cards were issued in 2002, which gave no reason for either government or corporations to look to reform the system or limit the fraud.
J. P. Morgan, which administers many of the EBT cards, like other companies, gets a cut from each transaction provided via the food stamps program. The entire system is a fraud and immoral.
Not only do corporations profit from this corrupt system, but companies like Coca Cola and Kraft Foods have “lobbied against laws” that would make sodas ineligible to purchase with food stamps Schweizer said.
He also said “”a nutrition program designed to provide supplemental nutrition to people having a hard time making ends meet” has become a stimulus and jobs program that politicians have tried to expand with no resistance. In fact, it was House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) who brazenly suggested that welfare stimulates the economy.
Schwiezer rightly points out that this kind of thinking is nothing more than “traditional Keynesian argument, that you spend government money and somehow it multiplies.” He then goes on to state that there is not economic evidence to support that claim.
While House Republicans were threatening to cut the food stamps bill last year, the gravy train just keeps rolling.


When economies collapse with food and water scarce, who will protect your meager resources? 


What are we leaving to posterity with the negligence and avarice we indulge in today, and how will our children be forced to deal with the consequences? 

Explore this and other articles covering alternative economics, ethical leadership, economic democracy, and a society without the weal and woe of social and economic vicissitudes HERE






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