additional commentary by Rep. Timothy Horrigan; July 9, 2012
See Also:
part 1 of this story: a busybody cashier becomes a rightwing heroine
Every so
often, a story goes viral in the right wing media about lazy
welfare recipients using their EBT Cards to rip
off the taxpayers. EBT stands for "Electronics Benefits
Transfer": these EBT cards are issued by the Department of
Agriculture. They look like— and are— ordinary debit cards,
and they are used for several welfare programs. The most
common program is the Supplemental
Nutritional Assistance Program (aka "food stamps")
which can only be used for food. But there are a few other
programs which pay cash benefits which can used for
anything.
The Speaker
of the New Hampshire House, Bill O'Brien, got a lot of
criticism for banning the Concord Monitor from a July 6
press conference about EBT cards. He was angry
with them over an op-ed columnist's cartoons which
compared him to Groucho Marx, Karl Marx and Adolph
Hitler. Two weeks later, he was still angry, and he
clearly has no intention of letting go of that anger.
Ironically, the EBT card controversy has been going well for
Da Speakah: no one (aside from a few oddballs like myself
and rightwing gadfly Grant
Bosse) has dared to defend the right of the poor and
powerless to decide how to spend their tiny cash benefits.