A regional group of grocery stores in conjunction with a local chain of gas stations offers a rewards program that discounts gas prices based upon the amount of grocery purchases. The more you spend on groceries, the more you save on gas.

As I stood in line, cash in hand, waiting for the proud, loud and obese welfare queen with 5 out-of-control kids to scan her food stamps card, the clerk announced that she had “earned” 30 cents per gallon discount on her next gas purchase.

“Earned?”

Dictionary.com defines “earn” as, “to gain or get in return for one’s labor or service.”

Maybe the new policy on the rewards program would be to give it to the next person in line that can produce proof that they paid taxes that make food stamps possible to begin with.

Public service announcements shame us into believing that 1 in 6 suffer from something called “meal uncertainty.” With over 50 million people on food stamps and roughly 300 million people in the USA, this must be how they concoct this preposterous number. Look around you at the grocery store and observe the folks on food stamps. There is no uncertainty as to the fact they are getting their food, and apparently plenty of it. As a group, those on welfare are more than twice as obese as the rest of society. Medicaid recipients use almost 70% of their medical benefit services addressing health issues directly related to being over-weight, yet the hunger-is-an-epidemic crowd would have you believing the poor routinely go hungry. If this were true, you would think that in Broome County we would see many incidents of malnutrition, but according to the NYS Health Department, not a single case has been reported in recent memory.

We don’t have a hunger problem in this country, we have a nutrition problem.

Food stamp recipients should be evaluated for their familial and health needs and then be given healthy, affordable, quantity controlled foods, chosen specifically for their circumstances. No more shopping without regard to price or healthy content, recipients would receive nutritional foods chosen and packaged at the most affordable cost.

Statistics show that those on food stamps are overwhelmingly making the wrong nutritional choices. Those of us who are being forced to pay their bills ought to be making healthier decisions on their behalf; after all, we’re also paying for their healthcare. Once self-sufficient, they can eat whatever they can pay for, but as long as they seek our help, they ought to be obliged to accept our guidance as well.

Now, if we could manage to have maybe one day a week where the only folks allowed into the grocery store are those with cash or credit cards, perhaps going to the local market would be less like a trip into a war-torn ghetto near a mental hospital and more like a nice opportunity to interact and socialize with your working, thoughtful, taxpaying neighbors without the need to carry a gun.