Unintended consequences

That’s what this article is about.  It is a master class in why big government welfare programs need to be taken out behind the barn and killed with an axe.

When food aid was controlled by your local church, or township trustee, or other local organization, something like this could never have happened — because you’d have been caught immediately and probably sent to consider your sins in a jail cell or on the poor farm for a while.  At the very least you would have been shamed before your community, possibly to the extent that you’d pack up your old kit bag, hop in the Model T with your wife and kids, and head out for new pastures where nobody had heard your name before.

Today?  Big government hasn’t got time to talk to you, here’s your EBT card, take it to the carniceria or super mercado, buy a bunch of food and a 55 gallon barrel, and send it off to your relatives overseas.  Who cares?  It’s free food.

Paid for by American taxpayers like me.  Who already pay for billions of dollars worth of food aid to those same people overseas.

And who are damn well ready to see these programs ended and control of such things devolved back to the local voluntary associations and local (extremely local) government offices that used to handle them — in other words, those folks who probably know your name and your back story.  The state and federal governments did nobody any favors when they offered to take that load off our backs during the Great Depression.  Of course that was exactly why they did so, and then didn’t hand it back after the crisis was over — to make us dependent on the government rather than on whether our neighbors thought we deserved a handout.

Root, hog, or die.  Bring back the poor farm, and the pauper’s oath.

PS to EBT recipients:  EBT is not your money.  It’s my money that I’m being forced at the equivalent of gunpoint to give you.  Think about that the next time you use EBT for junk food.