I'll take a chance and step in here.

Good story. :) In any government dole program I expect 5% fraud, waste, and abuse. If it's higher than that, that's too much and we have to look at it. Story. I'd give a bum in front of the grocery store a buck or two every time I'd see him. Sometimes I'd talk to him, I'd get the skinny on what was going at his level. He knew everyone, and every once in a while I'd see him tweaked out. I'd tell him, hey if you tweak out don't do it in front of people who give you money. He was taking care of a lady who had mental illness, some protein was eating her brain and she'd act drunk sometimes but was sober. She got food stamps and between that and his panhandling they got fed.

I didn't see him for a while and then he tapped me on the shoulder in the grocery store. I turned around to see a clean shaven, not scruffy guy who introduced me to his beautiful wife who was six months pregnant. He had a job. Two years later he was back in front of the store panhandling again. He had stopped working and in order to make ends meet she went back to Kentucky to live with her parents and was a UPS driver. He was back to being a bum. He couldn't handle the responsibilities of being a Dad, paying the bills, showing up for work every day, etc., etc.. I lost some respect for him because he didn't seem to care about his kid.

All the people at that level get some snap and that may be the best food they eat. I'm really not that concerned if now and then they do some drugs, drink some alcohol, smoke some cigarettes, eat some cheetos. There's a lot of mental illness at that level by default. Life isn't great down there, it doesn't have to be bleak, but if someone works all week, has SNAP, and that allows him a couple of tall boys, or a pizza, that's great. I don't understand people who focus on those tall boys, or focus on the fraud and want to destroy these programs.