The level of fraud in the food stamp program (officially the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) is so high that it amounts to a moral cancer on the civic body.  Millions – probably in the tens of millions – of people are cheating taxpayers by working off the books or otherwise receiving food stamps they are not entitled to.  Mass cheating, knowingly stealing from others, and thinking it is fine or at least normal. Over time, the ethos spreads that only suckers play by the rules, that cheating is natural, that get-as-much-as-you-can is the essence of smart citizenship (and permanent residenceship, and illegal alienship, too, apparently).  The deepest damage that decades of communism did to Russia was the creation of an ethos similar in kind, but to even a greater degree of corruption.  But then again, communism had seven decades to erode and distort values, and we are just getting started with corrupting the populace on a mass...(Read Full Post)