RANT!

I need to rant. It won't be pretty, call me what you will.

I just got home from the grocery store. Before I begin, let me tell you we have many shopping options in our town for groceries. There are 2 major grocery chains which focus just on groceries. Jewel and Dominick's. Jewel is owned by SuperValu (used to be Albertson's) and Dominick's is owned by Safeway. Then we have Wal-Mart, Target, and a fairly new local grocer, Joseph's, whose main focus is on ethnic foods, fresh produce and deli. They have pretty good prices on most things.

I was at Jewel. I have done my research and Jewel is tied with Dominick's as having the highest prices around. I try to shop at Wal-Mart for most of my groceries, they are by far the cheapest. But I just can't get everything I want at Wal-Mart, particularly "Jewel Chef's Kitchen" frozen pizza. My youngest DD's favorite kind. So I had to go to Jewel today because I needed to get more frozen pizza's.

As I was checking out, a Hispanic man came in line behind me. He had food stamps or whatever it is they call it nowadays. He was buying cereal, milk, juice, bread and some meat. All of which I know is almost 1/2 the price at Wal-Mart vs. Jewel. Then he had a 12 pack of beer he was paying cash for. Too poor for groceries but we have money for beer? He left the store behind me and I saw him get into a very nice, fairly new model, Ford Taurus. He wasn't old, probably in his twenties.

So now to the rant: First, as I watched this man, who looked very able bodied (and could very well be working for somebody "off the books") paying for his groceries with food stamp money, I began to wonder why he was on them in the first place. He probably could have paid for everything except maybe the meat with the money he used for the beer. It enrages me to realize how I now need to keep close track of what I can spend at the store, and have begun to forgo things as food prices have risen. And yet, this man was getting his food for free off my dime. Off your dime too. And the kicker was he didn't even have the sense to go to the cheapest store in town so his free money could stretch farther. I guess when you are living off someone else's dime you don't need to worry about stretching your money further. You'll be getting another check next month.

I don't even want to get started on the fact that he could be here illegally.

I am disgusted by what we let go on in this country.

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

~ Ben Franklin~