You may have read in the newspaper lately, unless your newspaper folded, that Americans are facing starvation. What? Did a famine strike the Midwest? Were crops and cattle decimated by floods and pestilence of Biblical proportions? Will relief agencies in Congo and Ethiopia and China start collecting food to send to America?

Well, no. But it looks like a catastrophe when you see that 47 million Americans are eating on food stamps, almost double from five years ago. And one in every four children.

Now before you jump me for being cruel and uncaring, I have no doubt probably 20 million are truly deserving. They are temporarily on hard times and need a lift for a few months till they get back on their feet. And many are not able to work and deserve all the charity and assistance we can offer.

I happened to catch a program about food stamps (actually called Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP) on Fox News. Yes, even a taxpaying Democrat can learn a little from watching something besides NBC, CBS and CNN.

These news folks investigated the recent doubling of food stamps, to dig up a cause.
Well, it turns out there’s two big reasons, besides more people being out of work. First, there’s more able bodied people who see the government dole as a way to get out of work and still eat 3 meals a day. They spend their days (and nights) doing whatever they please. Surfing, fishing, drinking, chasing girls. That last one leads, unfortunately, to more babies on food stamps.

Second, there’s a whole boatload of people working for the USDA’s Nutrition division, which is 80 percent of the entire Agriculture budget, who spend their time rounding up unsuspecting folks and foisting food stamps on ‘em. These employees have replaced life insurance salesmen as civilization’s top annoyers. You accidently sit down beside one of them on a bus, before you can get off at the next stop he’ll have your signature on the dotted line, applying for nutritional assistance. You would think they was getting a commission.

An interview with one might go like this: How many people did you help find a job and get off SNAP? “None. That’s not my job. ”
Do you ask people about their assets? “No, they could own a nice house, and drive a new car, but if their income is low, they deserve free food.”
Do you think SNAP use will double again in five years? “I hope so. If I go over my quota, I can earn free trips and a plaque. And if I double my quota, wahoo, I might get promoted. ”

Well, I got carried away. But that’s what happens when the Congress (the joke factory) is off for the month, and the President goes to Martha’s Vineyard. Bet they’re eating well.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:
“Folks don’t like to be told they are living off the government…  When I (talked on the radio) about taking government money about a dozen people sent me the following article. It’s from Fort Gay, West Virginia: ‘Mose Maynard, 84 years old, and his wife, 90, and a widowed daughter and her four children are living in a cave. They were removed to a house in town and given government relief. $3.50 a week for food was supplied them, but they went back to the hills. Said he wouldent live on government money, they always lived without it, and they would continue it.’  We haven’t got enough with that spirit. We talk more independence than we practice.” WA #647, May 19, 1935

 “Our President left for a quiet vacation with twelve carloads of cameramen, reporters, cooks, valets, maids, butlers, doctors, military and naval attaches. I saw King George when he left Buckingham Palace in London last summer for vacation, and you could have put all he and Mary both had in a Ford truck.” DT#281, June 15, 1927