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Origanalist
07-21-2013, 08:01 PM
NY food stamp recipients are shipping welfare-funded groceries to relatives in Jamaica, Dominican Republic and Haiti
By KATE BRIQUELET and ISABEL VINCENT
Last Updated: 11:35 AM, July 21, 2013
Posted: 12:34 AM, July 21, 2013

Food stamps are paying for trans-Atlantic takeout — with New Yorkers using taxpayer-funded benefits to ship food to relatives in Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Welfare recipients are buying groceries with their Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards and packing them in giant barrels for the trip overseas, The Post found.

The practice is so common that hundreds of 45- to 55-gallon cardboard and plastic barrels line the walls of supermarkets in almost every Caribbean corner of the city.

The feds say the moveable feasts go against the intent of the $86 billion welfare program for impoverished Americans.

BIN OVER THEIR HEADS: Pioneer Supermarket in Brooklyn sells plastic barrels that customers use to ship food to family members in the Caribbean.J.C. Rice
BIN OVER THEIR HEADS: Pioneer Supermarket in Brooklyn sells plastic barrels that customers use to ship food to family members in the Caribbean.
A spokeswoman for the US Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service said welfare benefits are reserved for households that buy and prepare food together. She said states should intervene if people are caught shipping nonperishables abroad.

Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, called it just another example of welfare abuse.

“I don’t want food-stamp police to see what people do with their rice and beans, but it’s wrong,” Tanner told The Post. “The purpose of this program is to help Americans who don’t have enough to eat. This is not intended as a form of foreign aid.”

The United States spent $522.7 million on foreign aid to the Caribbean last fiscal year, government data show.

Still, New Yorkers say they ship the food because staples available in the States are superior and less costly than what their families can get abroad.

“Everybody does it,” said a worker at an Associated Supermarket in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn. “They pay for it any way they can. A lot of people pay with EBT.”

Customers pay cash for the barrels, usually about $40, and typically ship them filled with $500 to $2,000 worth of rice, beans, pasta, canned milk and sausages.

Workers at the Pioneer Supermarket on Parkside Avenue and the Key Food on Flatbush Avenue confirmed the practice.

They said food-stamp recipients typically take home their barrels and fill them gradually over time with food bought with EBT cards.

When the tubs are full, the welfare users call a shipping company to pick them up and send them to the Caribbean for about $70. The shipments take about three weeks.

Last week, a woman stuffed dozens of boxes of macaroni and evaporated milk into a barrel headed for her family in Kingston, Jamaica. She said she didn’t have welfare benefits and bought the food herself.

“This is all worth more than $2,000,” she said. “I’ve been shopping since last December. You can help somebody else, someone who doesn’t live in this country.”

A man helping her pack the barrel said: “We’re poor here, and they’re poor. But what we can get here is like luxury to them.”

kbriquelet@nypost.com

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/it_on_y22owkLpsldSAjDVC9isjM

aGameOfThrones
07-21-2013, 08:07 PM
CHARITY!

bolil
07-21-2013, 08:07 PM
Cant blame them, only the system.

oyarde
07-21-2013, 08:24 PM
There should be no food stamps.

oyarde
07-21-2013, 08:25 PM
That is the role of private charity.

Origanalist
07-21-2013, 08:26 PM
There should be no food stamps.

The human race managed to survive without them somehow. But that was then..............

heavenlyboy34
07-21-2013, 09:24 PM
:eek:

Feeding the Abscess
07-21-2013, 10:17 PM
Better to be in their hands than at the hands of some drone operator or MIC contractor. Good on them, they're doing yeoman's work.

Occam's Banana
07-21-2013, 11:48 PM
Cant blame them, only the system.

Exactly. What's wrong with folks trying to feed their peeps?


The feds say the moveable feasts go against the intent of the $86 billion welfare program for impoverished Americans.

Incentive -> Action
Irrational Stimulus -> Rational Response

IOW: The Feds' "intent" ain't worth doodly-squat.


Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, called it just another example of welfare abuse.

“I don’t want food-stamp police to see what people do with their rice and beans, but it’s wrong,” Tanner told The Post. “The purpose of this program is to help Americans who don’t have enough to eat. This is not intended as a form of foreign aid.”


Oh, shut the hell up, Tanner! If you really gave a damn about "abuse," you and the Feds would a little more aware of the inexorable power of a little thing called the Law of Unintended Consequences. And if you really gave a damn about what was "wrong," you'd be saying that the government shouldn't be stealing from one group of people (and then giving what they steal to another of group of people) in the first place. THERE is your "abuse" ... not some people doing what decent people everywhere try to do when they have the opportunity (namely, helping to feed their family and friends) ...

Bman
07-21-2013, 11:52 PM
Every time I'm behind someone using food stamp it some how always makes me wait in line. I feel like pushing for full out socialism for these people to give them a fire under their ass to get off of them. I start forming my own laws I would push. Such as having your nuts chopped off or your tubes tied if you can't get off food stamps within 6 months.

Mani
07-22-2013, 12:12 AM
I bet the food is going to better use over there then otherwise.

Here if your donated goods are not approved by the state, they will be DESTROYED. FUCK the system.


At least the story is about food going to hungry mouths. Not like the Bagel story from the other day or the donated DEER/MOOSE meat story (from a while ago) where state workers TOSSED out the donated meat and then poured fucking bleach on it.

For once it's a story of food being consumed not destroyed. The system is FUCKED and broken.

oyarde
07-22-2013, 12:14 AM
Every time I'm behind someone using food stamp it some how always makes me wait in line. I feel like pushing for full out socialism for these people to give them a fire under their ass to get off of them. I start forming my own laws I would push. Such as having your nuts chopped off or your tubes tied if you can't get off food stamps within 6 months.

Nah , as far as I am concerned , if you had to vote for fuckers to steal money from me to buy food with, you have no nuts anyway.