Food stamps, there's a problem

One brisk Saturday evening you find yourself at your local gas station/convenience store combo. Nothing seems out of place. Yup there are your teenagers working the register. The tweens scoping out the candy isle. The old woman stealing sugar packets from the coffee island. Everything checks out. You grab your warm coffee, after all you have a long night of partying ahead of you. Eventually you mosey on up to the checkout line, only to find everyone in the county came to the store at the same time. Great, just great. Looking for something to do, you start to snoop on that person ahead of you in line - well the 10 cans of Red Bull surely caught your eye, quickly interrupted by the small child screaming that the top of their lungs that they want candy and lots of it.

Yup, nothing out of the ordinary...well until that person in front of you plops the 10 cans of Red Bull and various candy bars on the table. But that's not what caught your eye. It's the swipe of an EBT (food stamps) card and the transaction reading APPROVED across the cheap LED screen. That can't be right, can it? Are you telling me that person just bought $30 worth of junk using food stamps? I know that about only 1 cent of that probably came from my contribution to society but the concept still boggles the mind.

You're still trying to wrap you head around this idea when you notice the newspaper headline "Food stamps to be accepted at McDonalds." You're freaking kidding me right? This has to be the twilight zone where a $7 Big Mac meal with their large soda is being financed by the greater public. You pass out from the frustration, hitting your head on the 'Slippery when wet sign' (well no shit Sherlock) only to awake in a hospital bed hours later. What do you mean you only take Medicaid? Concussion from the fall? Kick me out on the street because my company has a good insurance company? Maybe this is the twilight zone...oh right, this is America.

What's that you say? You just bought a 70'' HDTV? Jeez, you must make a lot of money - I can see the 20" rims on your ever-so-fuel-efficient SUV. Thank the government? What, why? Food stamps? What the hell. Oh right, your $500 a month in food stamps let's you spend the $500 you would have normally spent on food on sneakers instead - don't think the government thought of that one.

So much for only being used for necessities. Food stamps, the next American dream.

UPDATE

I'm gonna have to get on welfare so I can hit up the local strip club: http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/06/news/economy/strip_club_welfare/index.htm?hpt=hp_t3