A unique, hard-hitting report just completed by a California attorney exposes a largely unknown federal food-stamp racket involving large grocery retailers, food manufacturing giants and other private players, including the Federal Reserve and JPMorganChase, which combine to channel food stamp spending into a gravy train for the heavy hitters in the food industry.

And the report’s author, Michele Simon, says administrative costs added by these privateers inflate the overall price tag of the Supplemental Nutrition Allowance Program (SNAP). And high program costs are prompting potentially deep legislative cuts to SNAP in the pending Farm Bill - when a record 46 million Americans use SNAP, of which 47% are children.

A major fear is that SNAP cuts could wrongly target the program’s central mission to feed the hungry, when cuts should target the private players who harness the program for their own gain.

‘If we want to cut, let’s look at administrative cuts-not [necessarily] cutting the benefits themselves,’ Simon told this writer. She’s disturbed that JP Morgan and the Federal Reserve are well positioned in this debacle. Yet, her 28-page report, for all that it reveals, just begins to explore this fathoms-deep issue, since critical data is being withheld by the USDA.

Over the last […]