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DENVER (AP) -- Food stamps for a pot brownie? It's an urban myth in Colorado, but state lawmakers want to make sure that doesn't happen. A bill proposed this week by several Republicans would add marijuana dispensaries to liquor stores, gun shops and casinos as places where recipients of public assistance payments and food stamps can't use their electronic benefits cards to access cash. There haven't been any reports of public EBT cards being used at marijuana dispensaries. But lawmakers say pot shops should be added to the law to make clear it's not legal.

At the end of 2013, after serving five years, Barack Obama is a complete failure as President, by his own standards, as reflected in his own words. How many times has President Obama told us that he is “fighting for the middle class”? But real median family income has been in a continuous downward spiral since he became President, actually falling more since the recession ended in the summer of 2009 according to the National Bureau of Economic Research than during the recession. That has added up by now to the middle class losing a month’s pay a year under...

"I bet it was better in the days of Martin Luther King, for real," Tiara said. "At least back then people were angry. They were doing something. How do they expect us to live? We got no jobs, no opportunities, and now they're cutting our benefits? What's Obama doing, for real? How can you be a good president when half of your own city is like this? Yo, Mr. President! We're here, right under your nose, living, struggling, going nowhere."

For Democrats especially, any talk about cutting billions from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is uncomfortable and certain to create internal strife. But negotiators on the farm bill believe they’ve found a way to make about $8 billion in savings from the program palatable for most Democrats. The key is eliminating a loophole that enables states to help some low-income residents with nominal subsidies to pay for their heating in the winter in order to trigger much higher food stamp benefits. Some states, such as New York, will make a $1 Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program payment to low-income...

Yesterday’s jobs report was tremendous … if you have been dumbed down. The sad facts are that U6 underemployment has been above 13% for 60 months, the last month below 13% was November 2008. U6RATE_Max_630_378 And there are still 91.27 million people NOT in the labor force. nilf120713 Income inequality, as measured by the GINI coefficient, continues to rise. ginicoef2005 While real median household income has been falling since 2000 and house prices have been rising rapidly for the past two years. realmedincomcase What are the solutions to the employment problem? Nancy Pelosi (CA-D) made the following statement this past...

As budget negotiators lurch toward their December 13 deadline for funding the government, another conference committee is struggling to reach an agreement over the farm bill. Unsurprisingly, the dispute is not over the bill’s completely unjustifiable subsidies for agribusiness (both parties support those) but food stamps. House Republicans passed a bill calling for $39 billion in reductions in the planned budget for food stamps (technically known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) over the next ten years. A bipartisan Senate bill included just $4 billion in cuts. A couple of weeks ago it looked like negotiators were ready...

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) told the Rev. Al Sharpton of MSNBC on Wednesday that Sharpton and the pope are "on the same wavelength." McDermott's observation on what he perceives as the similarity between Sharpton and the pope came up in a discussion of food stamps. McDermott noted that when Jesus fed five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish, “he didn’t charge food stamps.”(VIDEO-AT-LINK) “When Jesus had those five loaves and two fishes, he didn't charge food stamps. He didn't ask anybody how much money they had. He fed them because they were hungry, and that's really...

This Wednesday the governor of Kuzbass Mr. Aman Tooleyev urged the State Duma’s lawmakers attending the meeting of the provincial parliament to pass a bill against freeloaders and “professional unemployed” who number 4.4 thousand people in the province. “This is dangerous from the both economic and moral point of view. A stratum of “professionals” who don’t work, don’t want to work, won’t work has emerged. There are 4.4 thousand of such ‘professional unemployed’ in Kuzbass’, said Tooleyev. The governor added that there are 22 thousand of unemployed while the local labour registry offices offer 30 thousand jobs. “They [the professional...

GREENSBORO — Cathy Coons has been passionate about fighting hunger since she was a teenager in Westchester County, N.Y. It was there that she first joined in a fast to raise money for Save the Children, the well-known charitable organization for children in need in the United States and around the world. Since moving to Greensboro in 2004, Coons has continued to take part in a variety of volunteer initiatives to alleviate hunger and poverty, primarily through Starmount Presbyterian Church, where — as a member of the mission committee — she is actively involved in such local ministries as senior...

Obama Steals Food From The Poor To Pay For Michele’s ‘Let’s Move’ Program Posted 6 hours ago by Dave Jolly Filed under Entitlements, Ethics, Government Spending, Liberalism, Politics Millions of food stamp recipients are finding their government supplement smaller this month. The federal government made sizeable cuts to the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) otherwise known as food stamps. This cut will affect 47.6 million Americans or about 1 out of every 6 people. Under the new guidelines, a family of 4 will see their food stamps drop from $668 a month to $632 a month. While $36 dollars doesn’t...

Watch out, 7-Eleven! There just might be a Wal-Mart convenience store opening up next door. According to an Arkansas news site, the retail giant is testing out a convenience store format next to its corporate headquarters in Bentonville. The Northwest Arkansas Business Journal says the new C-store "will offer customers a quick and easy solution for gas, snacks and beverages, and other staples like milk, bread and eggs." As Wal-Mart experiments with smaller-format concepts that step away from the previous superstore expansion model it championed, it's drilling down to the most basic level. While this will be something it uses...

Rumor has it that Porsha Stewart uses food stamps to buy her food at the local market in Atlanta. A Kroger grocery store insider spills to MediaTakeOut that the Real Housewives of Atlanta star was spotted in line using an EBT card, a system that allows state welfare departments to issue benefits via a payment card. PREVIOUS: Porsha Stewart Fuels Kordell Stewart Gay Rumors The insider dishes that they believe they saw Porsha at “Krogers on Piedmont in Buckhead [Atlanta] and she used an EBT card to make her purchases. I couldn’t see exactly what she bought because she was...

<p>As you dig into your Butterball with all the trimmings this Thanksgiving, remember that millions of famished schoolkids around America may be forced to forgo classic turkey — and chow down instead on vegan black-bean patties and organic locavore quinoa salad.</p>

The continuing attention devoted to the blunders, incompetence, and lies surrounding the Obamacare rollout is much deserved. But we shouldn’t forget that the President’s health-care monstrosity is merely the latest and biggest of scores of government entitlement programs suffering from the same flawed progressive assumption––that government “experts” armed with coercive power alone can solve problems better left to the states, civil society, and the free market. In reality, such programs relentlessly metastasize, increasing as well fraud, waste, abuse, and costs. One such program is SNAP, the kinder and gentler name for what we used to call food stamps. Apparently the...

McAllen, Tex. — They were already running late for a doctor’s appointment, but first the Salas family hurried into their kitchen for another breakfast paid for by the federal government. The 4-year-old grabbed a bag of cheddar-flavored potato chips and a granola bar. The 9-year-old filled a bowl with sugary cereal and then gulped down chocolate milk. Their mother, Blanca, arrived at the refrigerator and reached into the drawer where she stored the insulin needed to treat her diabetes. She filled a needle with fluid and injected it into her stomach with a practiced jab.“Let’s go,” she told the children,...

How are they doing it? How are the Liberals winning, forcing their social agenda on America and winning elections despite an economy that employs only 60 million of more than 300 million and has 48 million on food stamps? How do they keep winning when the nation is 17 trillion in debt and their policies are destroying the health care system? It is almost more generally accepted than global warming that the American economy is default. The most recent article on Nolan Chart asks the question "Do you want to boost our economy?" Though extremely brief in substance, the article...

"....Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal's office will cancel food stamp benefits for anyone who participated in a fraud and shopping spree catalyzed by an EBT malfunction....More than 12,000 people were sent an insufficient funds notice when the problem with the EBT cards was fixed on Oct. 12; those who transgressed may lose their EBT cards for a year....On October 11-12, at least 17 states experienced problems with their EBT card systems. In Springhill and Mansfield, Louisiana, cards indicated they had no spending limits, so EBT holders went wild with purchases..... The stores that were cheated are bound to come up with...

The Louisiana governor's office said Wednesday night that it would strip food stamp benefits from anyone who took advantage of an EBT card malfunction that in some cases caused an all-out shopping frenzy in some stores across the state, The Advocate reported. It is unclear how many recipients stand in line to lose benefits for a year, but more than 12,000 received an insufficient funds notice when the EBT card system was corrected on Oct.12, the report said.

Once all of the new ObamaCare mandates, regulations, and taxes are fully priced into the healthcare market we may all be lining up for government butter and cheese, but that’s not the story here. No, apparently the multi-million dollar ObamaCare marketing campaign signing up new Medicaid recipients by the millions will come with an unexpected bonus for fans of the entitlement state. Lots and lots of people finding out for the first time that in addition to free healthcare they are also eligible for a shiny new EBT card. Via Politico. The Obama administration has ordered a study to determine...

It’s a welfare fraud scheme costing U.S. taxpayers $750 million a year. People are illegally selling their electronic food stamp cards on Craigslist and other social media sites for cash. CBS13 found two people here in Sacramento, both with the same idea, using Craigslist as free advertising to blatantly and illegally sell their state benefits. Our hidden cameras were rolling as a woman, who we’ll call Lorie, told our undercover producer about her brilliant idea to game the system for a quick buck. “Everyone said I was crazy, but I thought they’d say, ‘that’s freaking brilliant, man,’ ” she said....