I could care less that they have taken a couple of items off the approved list. The truth is that the program is as broken and corrupt as everything else our government has had its hand in.

I work as a service technician in the poor side of town, so I get to deal with hood rats and trailer trash on a daily basis, and see first hand exactly how bad the system is. Here in Ga the food stamp/welfare card is a green card with a large peach on it, it is very distinctive, and once you know what it is you can't miss it. Every time I go to the grocery store I see people using them, I would guess that in the part of town I live in more people use it than don't.

I haven't really checked, but I am pretty sure that my family would qualify, however I have enough dignity to suck it up and provide for my family on my own, and if I want to use what little I have on white potatoes (whatever the hell they are) and whole milk, that is my business and I am free to do so on my own dime, if you suck from the government tit, you don't have the right to complain about what comes out of the nipple.

In my area there are several small convenience/grocery stores, they all accept food stamps, the closest thing to groceries they sell is little one pound bags of sugar and stale candy bars. The way it works in these places is the food stamp recipients go in, they buy a carton of Newports and a case of Heineken or Corona for $150, pay with their food stamps, and the receipt shows that they bought a list of groceries that the store doesn't even sell. As long as the food stamp recipient doesn't mind the government paying grossly inflated prices for their items, the store owners are happy to serve them.

There of course are people on food stamps without cars living near reputable stores that actually won't sell them beer and cigarettes on their food stamp card, what these poor deprived individuals do is make deals with rich people (you know, the ones who don't get food stamps) to pay for the rich persons groceries with the food stamp card, and in return the rich person gives the oppressed individual a percentage of the bill in cash. Early in the cycle (the cards are replenished based on the last name of the recipient between the first and fourteenth of the month), say between the tenth and sixteenth of the month everybody has plenty of money on their food stamp card, so credit is sold cheap, an astute and clever buyer can get groceries for as little as 25% of the actual value, towards the end of the month credits get more scarce, and needs get more pressing, so the price of the groceries is usually closer to 50% of actual price. If you are interested in shopping in this fashion all you have to do is be in a poor neighborhood and look like a person who has a family, you will get offers to cut your grocery bill drastically. I bet three times a week a customer or some random person on the street asks me if I want $400 in groceries for $200, or even $100. I have never taken them up, but when you are paying for your own groceries out of your own meager paycheck it does get tempting.