The US Department of Agriculture has spent the past week notifying people that the country is (allegedly) overrun by individuals who are fraudulently claiming SNAP benefits, while (allegedly) driving luxury vehicles.
“In just ONE state, 14,000 individuals receiving SNAP benefits were driving LUXURY VEHICLES!” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins posted on X last week. The official USDA account made similar claims, which were then amplified by figures like Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Rand Paul.
Those numbers are questionable at best. For one thing, the report they come from doesn’t name the state where thousands of people are allegedly buying Ferraris while using government money to buy food. For another, that report doesn’t include any explanation of its methodology.
Ah of course it’s the poor that are ruining your country - that makes sense 🙄
Someone tell these people to shut the fuck up already.
People experience job loss, lose their income become briefly eligible for food stamps get a job get off food stamps ALL the time during this difficult period they don’t lose their homes, cars, fancy clothes or their iphones.
Businesses not paying workers fair wages like Walmart forcing 1.6 million by themselves to take public assistance like food support is going to effect a ton of people and be a huge draw on the system compared to any other fraud on the system.
26.8% of 41.7 million is 11 million people. How much do you want to bet they can’t find 11 hundred people committing fraud against the system like employers are.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/11/14/what-the-data-says-about-food-stamps-in-the-us/
Tax payers subsidizing corporations to further exploit tax payers
Go after the real welfare queens. The Walton family, Elon Musk, the oil and gas industry. Big corporate farming. Ending subsidies for oil and gas alone would pay for Medicare for all
When I lived in a poor area I saw a ton of luxury vehicles but they were a decade older than most non-luxury cars and were beat to shit. I’d believe the numbers but I don’t think they say what this idiot is implying.
Its demoralizing that this type of messaging resonates with such a large portion of Americans, honestly.
The Gang of Pedos has never let something as trivial as evidence guide their world view. Also not big fans of consent.
I know someone on SNAP benefits. She drives a 25 year old Buick Lesabre with over 200,000 miles on it . Technically it’s a “luxury car,” which she got for $800.
Their stats are bullshit, spun in such a way as to churn up resentment towards the poorest , so the wealthiest can bilk more money from the middle.
I drove a '98 Lasabre for most of the 2010s. Absolutely loved it: parts were ready to find, could repair it myself at home, and the dashboard had so many weird sliders and knobs that it felt like piloting a TARDIS.
Anyone enjoying that kind of luxury should be starving to death. It’s just not fair for someone to have both a beautiful, faux-wood paneled dashboard and three meals per day.
A Buick LeSabre was my first car. It was the 1989 model. Red “velvet” interior. That thing was sexy af
Same, we called it the boat and referred to the backseat as the couch. It was defeated by a young sapling in a low-speed head-on collision unfortunately. I wish theyd make something like that again but its probably past its time.
I’d rather a hundred people get benefits they “don’t need” than have one person go without the support they require.
Not that it’s even happening, but even if it were I really wouldn’t care even a little bit. And furthermore, food stamp benefits are pathetic in the US.
I remember some Republican chud or another saying they’d rather have innocent people imprisoned than let a single criminal walk free. Absolutely cannot fathom that mindset. Completely ghoulish.
I mean i can imagine it, it’s just patently anti-American. Benjamin Franklin is widely quoted as saying “I’d rather let 100 guilty persons go, than imprison one innocent person.”
No, that was William Blackstone. Maybe Ben Franklin also quoted it, but he’s not the one who was famous for it.
Blackstone said ten, Franklin restated it as 100
I feel like if someone quotes another person and then that quote becomes associated with them more thoroughly it would count as famously said. Doesn’t stop the first person from being a thing just a matter of having less fame or relevance.
In principle, maybe, but I’m fairly well-read and I have literally never heard of that quote being attributed to Ben Franklin until the earlier comment so I don’t think that’s the case here.
Could be down to a bias of what you are exposed to, which can heavily influence what you hear. Anyways I think it was in one of his letters but I can’t quite remember cause I just woke up.
Apparently you’re right: the other reply cites the letter.
But still, Ben Franklin is famous for a ton of stuff, including actual published works full of quotable aphorisms like Poor Richard’s Almanack (as opposed to some random private letter that was only published after-the-fact). Meanwhile, Blackstone is remembered mainly just for Commentaries on the Laws of England, of which the Blackstone’s Ratio quote is part. Can’t we let poor old Mr. Blackstone have this one thing?!
You’re not fairly well-read enough i guess then: https://www.cato.org/policing-in-america/chapter-4/blackstones-ratio#_ftn76
Guess who said they’re fine having legal Hispanic citizens abducted from their homes and thrown in
SSICE camps if it means they’re actually getting some illegal immigrantsconcentration camps.
What they mean is innocent people who don’t look like them. The moment there’d be any danger of them being locked up, they’d fine-tune their opinion to find a reason why it doesn’t apply to their case.
They honestly waste more resources on gatekeeping and means testing than they would ever save, and it’d LITERALLY cost less to just provide the same baseline benefits to everyone
Yeah, nobody commits that level of petty fraud if their life is going well.
If you want food stamps badly enough to jump through the hoops required, then that should qualify you by default.
Yeah, why aren’t we talking about all the fraud committed by billionaire oligarchs and trump and his inner circle?
Like the largest Medicaid fraudster in history currently serving in Congress?
When you influence or you are the people who write the rules, is not fraud, it’s smart investing
Like maybe 25 years back I remember a viral video of someone in Cali or something buying a lobster with his food stamps and everyone was freaking out. I dont know much of the american food stamps system but I’m pretty sure just blew his budget or something. Really its just proved some idiot was doing dumb stuff for likes before TikTok.
Generally, any food product is going to be eligible. They give you a bank card that has your monthly funds on it. Prepared products such as from the delicatessen, alcohol, and cigarettes will be blocked but there’s not much else to stop someone from letting their benefits add up and then wasting them on something like lobster.
You don’t want to make this entire thing onerous for everyone, so there will be some activity like this occassionally. It’s not even something that would appear outside the statistical noise.
I was on SNAP several years ago. We saved a small bit of the relatively meager amount every month for like 6 months, then had a really nice BBQ for my kids bday. In a vacuum, I’m sure someone would have lost their shit watching me spend like $150 on steaks and burgers and sides using my SNAP card.
As a taxpayer, I’m glad you were able to do that. The poor deserve more than the bare minimum
The only reason thats any different than just saving your own regular money for it and blowing that on the exact same thing is the optics.
Like if you get the bennies, its not like people know that every single time you buy stuff, only when you use that specific payment method
I think its really cool it rolls over like that. My old boss losses his crap if he sees the old save on food to splurge later. “If the peasants can survive on less than they should” mentality. Bloke also said ppl should feel more shame on the system and the cards was bypassing that shame. Can really feel the privilege from that guy. Ugh
Fuck it. I’d rather give free meals to everyone than pay one fucking penny towards the missiles we hurled into an elementary school. People gotta get their fucking priorities straight.
Enjoy that BBQ, I hope you have long lasting happy and guilt-free memories about that day. Money well spent in my mind.
My ex and I were on food stamps at one point so I hope that my message didn’t come across as spam on those who use them. I was trying to explain to who I thought was a non US person who was not familiar with how it works.
Oh, no, I didn’t think that at all! I was just adding my own story to the mix.
Yeah thats really what I wanted know. Cheers.
Look over there at the guy stealing bread for his family, no mind the BILLIONS of dollars being stolen by this admin every week. God i hate the GOP.
The Tax Evasion and Avoidance of billionaires is many times the entire budget of this kind of thing.
You could literally make up for 100% fraud in things like food stamp by making somebody like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos pay the same effective tax rate as everybody else.
Even if these claims from the far-right of widespread fraud and abuses in social security were true, they would still be like distracting people from a raging forest fire by waving a sparkler.
We just need to implement something like a 1% wealth tax for any entity (people or businesses) with net assets over say $5M. Having more than that has minimal justified purpose
There’s also no knowing what folks had when the floor fell out from under them. That Escalade might have been half paid off when they lost their source of income. Conservatives’ve been on this same bullshit for decades.
“He obviously took advantage of the system or did something illegal like selling drugs. Everyone knows it’s systematically impossible for a minority to get ahead on their own”
Maybe a little too on the nose, but all their arguments are some variation of that.
A remix of the old welfare queen lie. smh. Some guy probably used his mom’s food stamps card to get fast food once and they’re going to make it seem like a billion dollars in theft.
You simply can’t it won’t work. POS systems cannot be configured to do this.
I haven’t had a food card for a bit. It was just a prepaid card. I don’t really know what small and insignificant way it’s used that these fucks would complain about but I just made an example off the top of my head.
It’s prepaid with a Visa logo or something like that but it won’t work on anything you are not supposed to buy.
I think some people get other money loaded on it that’s not for food. Like mothers buying school supplies or clothing.
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The Welfare Queen was a real person best known by the name Linda Taylor but she was uniquely talented at defrauding the government and she went to prison in 1978 for welfare fraud.
I’m aware.
I’m also aware that she defrauded the government something like $10,000, was caught almost immediately, and as you said, punished. Reagan made her out to be a crime lord stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Real or not, the lie is the gross misrepresentation of who and what she was to the american people, used as a justification to cut social aid programs for millions in need.
source?
sure.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/6eFBOBgRrdiSCrCwaxC25o
There you go. The dollop gives all their sources at the end each episode and posts a list for their audience. in fact…
Main
· Levin, Josh. “The Welfare Queen: In the 1970s, Ronald Reagan villainized a Chicago woman for bilking the government. Her other sins—including possible kidnappings and murders—were far worse. Slate. (Dec. 19 2013) http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2013/12/linda_taylor_welfare_queen_ronald_reagan_made_her_a_notorious_american_villain.html Josh Levin’s story has been expanded into a book, The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/031651330X/?tag=slatmaga-20 as well as a podcast miniseries: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/05/the-queen-linda-taylor-welfare-reagan-podcast.html
Other
· Black, Rachel, Aleta Sprague, and the New America Weekly. “The ‘Welfare Queen’ Is a Lie: Programs that should be crafted around people’s needs are instead designed to deal with a problem that doesn’t exist.” The Atlantic. (September 28, 2016) · https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/welfare-queen-myth/501470/
· Bazelon, Emily, John Dickerson, and David Plotz. “The ‘You’ll Drag Me Out of the Supreme Court in a Pine Box’ Gabfest” Gabfest. [podcast] (December 20, 2013) http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/gabfest/2013/12/the_gabfest_on_judge_richard_leon_s_nsa_ruling_ruth_bader_ginsburg_s_refusal.html
All the sources used for a goofy little history podcast.
Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Taylor
There’s her wiki too. Taylor was a spectacle even back then, with the tabloids reporting she stole anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000. It was actually about $8,000. She was a petty criminal who got caught pretty much every time and was arrested for her crimes. By the time Reagan was talking about her, that number had been further inflated (lied about) to be around $100,000, but regardless, she was cooked.
thanks for the sources and podcast link!
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This is literally just the '80s “welfare queen” lie.
The same people who believed that in their 20s when Reagan said it are now in their late 60s and early 70s. You can see the problem.
We need to get rid of means testing. The largest money line for any government programs is the army of people making sure Americans need the program. People that don’t need government programs usually don’t use them. So hiring someone to make sure a wealthy person doesn’t cash in $150 worth of food stamps.
luxury vehicles
What do you want to bet they’re talking about poorly maintained 15+ year old lexuses and 30+ year old bmws? Just kidding, it’s most likely entirely unfounded.
I’d go even further and say that they are classifying vehicles themselves as a luxury, not even the make or model.
The good old “oh you’re poor? How come you have a phone then?”
Yeah that argument is so ridiculous.
You can buy lightly used phones on Swappa for a large discount even when we are talking about flagship phones. There are also situations where someone could be poor but have enough credit to get a phone financed with monthly payments that they can afford.
There are pre paid MVNOs in the US where you can get unlimited talk, text, and on device data, that also includes unlimited hotspot at fairly decent speeds (plus there are ways of bypassing hotspot speed caps, TetherFuseNet is an example open source app) for less than 30$ a month taxes and fees included. For about 30$ a month or so plans exist with QCI priority that are the same priority as premium post paid plans. I have known people who have used their unlimited hotspot as their only internet at home.
Just because some of these people making these types of comments may have a high cell phone bill does not mean everyone else does.
I think it’s because a lot of people are like Mother Theresa. They’re of the belief that if you’re poor, you should suffer, because not doing so would be a moral failing. Being poor makes you a bad person.
Remember when Fox News got all worked up because poor people had a microwave? And a refrigerator???
In my state, if your apartment doesn’t include a fridge-freezer and cooktop-oven, it’s not considered habitable.
You want more than ONE door on your car?!?!
Then you get an Isetta and they’re going to complain that you have a BMW.
🤣 exactly.
They’re trying to bring back Welfare Queens. I’m sure almost everyone’s forgotten, but this was the kind of accusation that led to Welfare being viewed so negatively and eventually being renamed entirely.
Ironically, it’s middle-class suburban homeowners who are the real welfare queens. They may not get the actual government program called “welfare,” but they get so many other kinds of subsidies for their lifestyle that the stereotypical urban renter single mom is probably subsidizing them instead of the other way around!
I think Walmart takes the cake. They purposely dont give a lot of hours or benefits so their employees end up on SNAP who then use SNAP at Walmart.
The government is essentially paying their employees wages to then be spent at Walmart.
Yep. Another Reagan lie.
