Food Stamp Corporate Welfare

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/10/20-1


“Discussions about government spending are inherently bogus because the elephant in the room, big business, is absent.”


The federal and state governments operate under a system which is of the corporations, by the corporations, and for the corporations. Ordinary governmental functions which could easily be carried out with public money are instead privatized, depriving the public sector of revenue and jobs and making the neediest citizens unnecessarily dependent on the private sector. Governmental largesse on behalf of big business is focused primarily on poor people, the group most at the mercy of the system. Corporations collect child support payments and then imprison the poor people who can’t pay. While imprisoned, another corporation provides what passes for medical care. The crime is a perfect one.

When the Republicans demanded cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), better known as food stamps, the debate revolved around human need versus the call for fiscal austerity. Scarcely anyone mentioned that JPMorgan Chase, Xerox and eFunds Corporation make millions of dollars off of this system meant to help the poor.

It all came to light on October 12th, when many SNAP recipients in the states of Alabama, California, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Mississippi, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia were unable to make purchases with their Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards because of a computer system malfunction at Xerox.

It may at first have seemed odd for a Fortune 500 corporation to have anything to do with the SNAP program, but Xerox, JPMorgan Chase and eFunds Corporation have all successfully turned poverty into a profit center. Food stamps were once literally stamps until the 1996 welfare reform act required all state SNAP benefits to be digitized. At that point JPMorgan, Xerox and eFunds were quite literally in the money. Only the state of Montana administers its own SNAP program. Every other state pays one of these three corporations millions of dollars in fees to do what they could do themselves. Since 2007, Florida has paid JP Morgan $90 million, Pennsylvania’s seven-year contract totaled $112 million and New York’s seven-year contract totaled $126 million.

[marmar]

1. k/r

[xchrom]

2. hey you!

[marmar]

3. Hey man. Back from a week in Toronto.

[xchrom]

4. nice!

how was the food?

i hear it's a very good foodie destination.

[marmar]

5. It is.....It's become a great foodie destination.

It's such a multicultural place, perhaps the most multicultural city anywhere, and it's reflected in the multitude of restaurants.

[Brainstormy]

6. And isn't it

the CLEANEST damn city you've ever seen? Don't know how they do it.

[marmar]

7. For a big city, it is very clean.

[xchrom]

8. it's on my list! nt

[reflection]

9. love Toronto.

I take the train there quite often. Although we are from the South, the wife and I want to settle down in Missassauga pretty soon.

[Doctor_J]

10. But "privatization" saves us all money, doncha know?

Just like our so-called health care.

[hfojvt]

16. It could

and the OP, unfortunately, provides no evidence that it doesn't.

So Pennsylvania has a contract for seven years and $112 million. Would it cost less to run the program in-house? Does the article provide comparable figures for what it used to cost? Why wouldn't digitizing it save money?

[G_j]

11. K&R

[Laelth]

12. Kickback to our overlords on Wall Street.

That just gives me all kinds of warm fuzzies!



-Laelth

[ybbor]

13. Want to make a million bucks fast?

SNAP!

[daleanime]

14. K&R....

But people would rather worry about some one buying an energy drink with food stamps.

[leftstreet]

15. DURec

[progressoid]

17. Rec!

[TBF]

18. K&R nt

[BelgianMadCow]

19. The elephant in the room

"Discussions about government spending are inherently bogus because the elephant in the room, big business, is absent."

Hell. Yes. Get a nice blame game going between the young & the babyboomers, the left and the right, the poor and the middle class, and meanwhile....