The US Department of Agriculture has spent the past week notifying people that the country is (allegedly) overrun by individuals who are fraudulently claiming SNAP benefits, while (allegedly) driving luxury vehicles.
“In just ONE state, 14,000 individuals receiving SNAP benefits were driving LUXURY VEHICLES!” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins posted on X last week. The official USDA account made similar claims, which were then amplified by figures like Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Rand Paul.
Those numbers are questionable at best. For one thing, the report they come from doesn’t name the state where thousands of people are allegedly buying Ferraris while using government money to buy food. For another, that report doesn’t include any explanation of its methodology.
Frankly as a relatively well read Californian I hadn’t heard of Mr. Blackstone. Probably a side effect of what I like to call the Atlantic Gap where American and European namely British cultures started to drift and also weirdly mirror each other up until about the 1860s or so. So the Brits can have their quote from Mr. Blackstone and those of us under the American Empire get Ben Franklin.