15 percent of American's are "Food Insecure"

The food stamp program ensures that Americans don't go hungry.  One in eight people now use food stamps.  My son and his family account for 4 of the 42 million Americans using this handout.  They get $400 a month right now, down from $650 (because he now has a job making $2,000 a month).  Poor them.  It's now just half way through the month and they've spent $300 of it.  They also used up their WIC checks.  What are they going to do?  They only have $100 left for the rest of the month.  They are going to starve!!!! 

I wrote up a meal plan for them to get them through the rest of the month.  In fact, this meal plan will feed them for about a month on their $100 and they would eat well.  The problem with my meal plan was that they had to make stuff from scratch.  They have to take out the Starbucks drinks at $2.00 a bottle.  No more beef jerky, Luna bars, or bags of potato chips.  Poor them.  The cruel taxpayers of America want them to suffer. 

There is fraud all over the place.  The grandkids that live with me don't get food stamps but they do get free lunch at school because they are technically foster kids, even though I make plenty of money to support them.  They bring lunch from home but still eat the free hot lunch at school so they can eat with their friends.  According to the latest government reports one million more school children are getting free hot lunches at school this year than last.  The school my grandkids go to gives free breakfast to all the kids.  (No they don't reduce the parents food stamp money even though the school feeds the kids two of their three meals each day)  The grandkids eat breakfast at home but sometimes take a second breakfast as well.  If the kids need the food because the parents don't feed them...after all, there's not enough money for their Starbucks drink and to give the kids a sack lunch...then by all means the school should feed the kids.  But fraud is rampant.  I know.  Today the school suggested I commit fraud. 

I went to the office to tell them that on Friday the grandkids were noo longer going to be foster kids.  I'm adopting them and it's final on Friday.  No, I don't need to hear the backwoods jokes about how my grandkids are my kids, or their sister is their mother, or any of those stupid things.  It's more a tragedy that they have crappy parents and have to move in with "old folk". 

Anyway, back to the fraud story.  Since the kids were not going to be foster care, they aren't going to qualify for free lunch once they come back to school after Thanksgiving vacation.  Does the free lunch qualification start the day of adoption, the first of the month, or when?  I was told that it's the day of the adoption.  OK, I need to pay for their hot lunch.  Just because they bring lunch from home doesn't mean that now I don't want them getting a second lunch if they want it.  I just need to put the money into their lunch account.  Let's see, $2.00 per kid per day is $10 a week.  How about if I give you a check for $100.  That will cover 10 weeks of school which should take us to the end of February. 

No, said the office personnel.  Nobody follows up on the free lunch qualifications.  Since the kids qualified at the beginning of the year nobody will know that now they don't qualify.  You can save your money and not have to pay for their lunch until next school year. Yes, the school was telling me to commit fraud.  Who do they think pays for the school lunches of all the kids whose families don't pay?  Oh yeah, me, the taxpayer.