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#692 Inside The Hunger Industrial Complex: How America Manufactured a Food Insecurity Crisis
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In this conversation, Jack and Tom Hampson discuss the paradox of food insecurity in America, despite its wealth. They explore the evolution of food banks into a multi-billion dollar industry that manages poverty rather than alleviating it. The discussion highlights the bureaucratic inefficiencies, the role of corporate donations, and the need for local, community-based solutions to effectively address hunger. They argue that the current system is failing the very people it aims to help and call for a reevaluation of how food assistance is structured and delivered.
Read Toms Investigation Summary Here!
If you care about hunger relief, public accountability, and the dignity of real help, this conversation will challenge your assumptions and offer concrete next steps.
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Why is there such a need for all these food banks if we're already providing food stamps to one in eight people? They started providing food to people that that were hungry, that needed food, and and they were they were providing a good service. And then these organizers got involved in the system and started to consolidate everything under one umbrella. The bottom line is what we're doing in this area and providing food is not working, and something else should be done.
SPEAKER_01:Today we're tackling a topic that almost no one questions. And maybe that's the problem. America is the richest country in the world, yet we're constantly told we're facing a hunger crisis. One in seven Americans we hear are food insecure. Food banks are expanding, corporate donations are up, government spending's up, and yet the problem never seems to get any better. Tom Hampson's with us today. He says that's not a coincidence. Tom's the author of a recent essay, The Hunger Industrial Complex, How America's Manufactured a Food and Security Crisis. In it he says that the hunger relief in the United States has quietly evolved into a multi-billion dollar industry, one that manages poverty rather than solves it, reward surplus rather than nutrition, operates with remarkably little public oversight. Tom, good to have you back. How are you? So let's start at the beginning. This wasn't an academic exercise for you, was it? Something concrete triggered this investigation. What happened, Tom?
SPEAKER_00:Well, you know, I've been involved in in law enforcement my whole career, and I saw that these churches around the around our area were providing delivery services to people who were afraid to go into food banks because they were afraid that they'd get arrested by ice. By ice, huh? So I, you know, it first of all, it's ridiculous. IC is not going to show up at any food bank, you know. Um unless there's somebody there that's like a Trin de Iragua guy is working at it or something. Then they might show up. Um but they're not they're not gonna show up at a food bank. So it just seems like a scandalous kind of defamatory attack on ice, just the very idea that they would do it. And then secondly, though, you know, I think that most of these places that are providing these delivery services are churches. And it just didn't seem right to me that they would be willing to harbor fugitives that way. I I'm all in favor of giving people food that need it. No questions asked. But when when you are intentionally providing food, delivering food to somebody that is is telling you that they're afraid to come in because they're an illegal alien, that is um that's harboring a uh uh uh an illegal alien, which is a felony. That's a crime. So it bothered me. So I started looking into it to find out, you know, who's behind this, and I what I found was something even a lot worse than that. The very idea. I also, you know, when I looked at the issue of that there's one in seven people who are food insecure in the country and and that there's one in eight people in the United States that are on food stamps, I looked at that and said, you know, that just doesn't make any sense. Why is there such a need for all these food banks if we're already providing food stamps to one in eight people? And why do we even need to provide food stamps to one in eight people? What's going on with you know, our economy is good, it just didn't seem like there'd there's all that much of a need that I see. So I looked into it a lot more and I found what I discovered was these food banks that started up spontaneously in places where there was need, where there was genuine need, and they started providing food to people. Most of them were in churches or community centers. They started providing food to people that that were hungry, that needed food, and and they were they were providing a good service. And then the you know, these organizers got involved in the system and started to consolidate everything under one umbrella that they started encouraging food banks everywhere, and and they are everywhere now. They they developed a national network. First it was under Second Harvest, and later it they changed their name to Feeding America, and they became kind of this umbrella organization over all the food banks in the country on a voluntary basis. It was kind of like a T group to help food banks, to guide them, provide expertise to help them set up food banks better. And then because there's so much government money involved in it, the government wanted to deal with a single entity, and so they became that entity that negotiated with the federal government, so the all the federal money goes through this feeding America, and if you're a food bank, you're not gonna get any federal um federal food unless you're part of this feeding America network.
SPEAKER_01:So they they so they they're connected right with the with the what the USDA is. Right, USDA.
SPEAKER_00:And then they also have negotiated deals with big corporations, because most of the actually most of the food comes from corporations that have made donations, quote, donations to to uh food banks. Um, but really they've they're donating food that they would otherwise throw away. And the way it is right now is that uh if a company paid$100 for some food and it and it's starting to spoil and they're gonna throw it away, uh they would get to write off$100. But if they donate that same garbage, what they consider to be garbage, to food banks, they could throw it away.
SPEAKER_01:It's getting old, it's expiring, whatever reason, right?
SPEAKER_00:It's still edible, I guess. But it's still edible, but they're you know, it's getting to the point where they don't want to put it on the grocery shelves. They don't want to put it on the grocery shelves. So they're gonna throw it away. But if they give it to a food bank, um they get um half of their profit in addition to the hundred dollars to write off to the government. So if uh um so if it's uh if you're gonna get a sixty dollar profit, they get to write off thirty dollars of that sixty dollars, and that gives them a hundred and thirty dollar tax write-off rather than the hundred dollars that they would get if they just threw it in the garbage.
SPEAKER_01:So if I'm a company getting ready to throw this away, I d I don't only just write it off. I I get to write off the cost of the food plus the profit. Right. Part of the profit that I would have made on it. I mean, that sounds like a pr like a pretty good deal. Yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00:And and it's also, you know, what what is the profit gonna be? That you can that's very subjective. They can say, well, I would have made um$100 profit on that. And and they can only write up up to twice the cost for um the deduction. So if they say, well, I was gonna make$200 profit on this, they could write off$200. They couldn't write the full$300. But who's to say? I don't know how you know it's difficult. They're not auditing these programs either, um, that that closely. And the other thing that's the same thing.
SPEAKER_01:Just to back up a little bit, this system is worth somewhere around five billion dollars annually right now. Well, that's what the we're talking about a lot of money here, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And then the real the people that make the money are the what they call the it's the emergency food assistance program representatives in the states. There's in Illinois, there's seven. So, like in the Chicago area, it's the Greater Chicago Food Depository, is one of them, and also Northern Illinois Food Bank is another. They get they get money, they're the ones that provide the food to local food pantries. And in the Greater Chicago Food Pantry serves all of the count all of the uh food pantries in Cook County. So tell me real quick.
SPEAKER_01:So these are these are basically this umbrella group in the state, and they're connected to what the the this this group.
SPEAKER_00:North America.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, which is in between the feds and the states. Right.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. And what happens is that the there's a dual relationship because it is a little bit complicated because the Illinois Department of Human Services designates Chicago Food Depository, Northern Illinois Food Bank, and and uh five others as the TFAP, uh the the Emergency Food Assistance Program representative. And so that they're the ones that say that the Greater Chicago Food Depository is the TFAP for Cook County. The food goes from the federal government to the Illinois Department of Human Services to the TFAPs. But they can't be a TFAP unless they're related to the this uh Feeding America. So it's a real intricate network, but it's all it's all these are all politically protected political operations, really. All of the people that are involved in these in Feeding America and and the various TFAPs are pretty much progressive, have the progressive political backgrounds. Uh and and they and they make a lot of money. The the um uh executive director of Greater Chicago Food Depository makes uh half a million dollars. The the executive director or president or whatever she is of the Feeding America makes$1.1 million. These are for charity.$1.1 million. Yeah, every one of the nine people.
SPEAKER_01:How does SNAP before you get into that anymore, what how does the SNAP that we're hearing about so much? How does that does that fall under uh all this stuff too? Well the SNAP program?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think I'm thinking I think SNAP is part of uh the Department of Agriculture too, but that's just all they do is give money out to that. Again, uh it's the Illinois Department of Human Services is responsible for that, I think. Maybe public aid, I'm not sure. But that's a different thing altogether. And and so if you're already getting food stamps, you can still go to the food pantries. The food pantries are set up to feed the sick, the needy, and the and infants. If you don't fit in one of those categories, you shouldn't be using the food banks. But I can tell you, John Donald Trump could go into our food bank and they wouldn't bat an eye.
SPEAKER_01:So what you have is you know, these these organizations get involved and so then they monopolize what's going on. Right. And when I was a when I was a young guy, we used to our churches, and we still do this in our churches, you know, our churches set up these food banks for local areas. Now are these are these local food banks, Tom, can are they connected to this bigger organization? Because I from what I understand, some of these smaller food banks that I know from our churches, they they don't get I don't think they get federal money.
SPEAKER_00:Right, they may not. I mean you can you can set up a food bank on your own. In in fact, there's a Midwest food bank, I think it's out of Pupiori or something, that doesn't use it doesn't get any government money at all. That and they have a network similar to Feeding America, but they don't get government money. You can you can set up a food bank uh you know, it's a free country, but you have to get donated food and you have to have volunteers or raise money somehow to be able to pay people to do stuff. But most of the food banks, there's seven hundred and five of them here in the Chicago area, that get their food from the Greater Chicago Food Depository, and they get millions of dollars.
SPEAKER_01:It's uh So the majority probably Right.
SPEAKER_00:The majority of the food banks are supported. You know, and and I think one of the things that happens with these local food banks is you like if it's a church you can't really proselytize at your food bank because they get government money. There's government regulations, all those kind of gov government regulations over what you can and can't do at the food bank because you get because you get the government food. And on top of that, you're also supporting a system that that really is top heavy in bureaucracy. Like I said, the Greater Chicago Food Depository, all the nine officers there make over$200,000 a year. And they and uh on average Wait, back that up again.
SPEAKER_01:So so when you say who who is the one making over a million dollars? Oh, that's the one at Feeding America. Okay, so that's this big umbrella group. They're in Chicago, too. They're headquartered in Chicago. Okay, so I'm working for uh a place that's supposed to distribute food, and I'm getting$1.1 million annually to do that.
SPEAKER_00:She used to be an executive at Walmart, I think, is what what she was, and she and then she went went to work there. But see, they they use these corporate executives to come in because they develop relationships with other corporations. So they they can be liaisons with corporations that, quote, donate money or donate food and and sometimes money. But you know, every all these big corporations they say, oh, we donate, you know, so many millions of dollars to food banks to keep people it's it just allows them to posture as being their great philanthropist when they're I know in the article, and I don't have the I don't have the numbers right in front of me, you some of those other numbers were astounding too.
SPEAKER_01:That the that uh you know, can do you have some of those other figures of what people are getting paid? Because I think this is the real story for me as I'm reading this, Tom, is that like all of these big programs, right? They're trying to find a way to to make it easy on everybody to distribute this down, and then they become bureaucracies and monopolies, and then you get professionals in there that they don't care if it's distributing food or whatever. If I can make a million one a year, I'm a happy person, right? But there's a lot of people making a lot of money, aren't there? It's not just the top people here.
SPEAKER_00:You know, all these c all these causes wind up becoming a racket, and the food the food bank business has become a political racket. That's that's just that's just a fact. I did an analysis of the and and have a chart in my in my article. I I did an analysis of the percentage of people that get who get SNAP benefits, the percentage of people that are supposedly food insecure, because they've been taking those that food insecurity measure for over thirty years. And then I also looked at at the distribution of food by food banks. So what you would expect is that if there really was food insecurity, if or if people really were hungry, if we're experiencing hunger in this country, what you would think is that the relationship of food insecurity would go down as food stamps go up. And as as food stamps are.
SPEAKER_01:So the more food we're given away, the more food pantries, the more money we're given away, the less we're alleviating this problem and it's gonna go away.
SPEAKER_00:And the problem one of the problems with the measure of food insecurity is it doesn't measure whether or not somebody is hungry or now malnourished or anything. It supposedly measures how they feel or how they say they feel. And so it doesn't, it it's really a totally subjective kind of thing, and and it it's it's not measuring anything other than maybe anxiety, but I think a lot of them are just saying, oh yeah, I'm I'm food insecure, so they get more, so they keep the benefits up. But so what you see in these numbers is that they all vary together. They have a positive correlation. You know, statistically, it should be a negative correlation. Uh perfect positive correlation would be one. One of the correlations between the amount of food that is being distributed by food banks and and uh um and uh and the um uh SNAP benefits, I think it is, uh, is 0.8. So it's almost a perfect like they go up together totally, not they have nothing whatsoever to do with with actual uh alleviating hunger. And so and and with the other measure it's like almost 0.6 or something. So they're both very highly correlated of going together when it should be negative one all the way across the board.
SPEAKER_01:So just like all of these programs, what you're saying here for people that are trying to get these, you know, this this idea in their mind, you say, okay, so people are food insecure. We send you a questionnaire, right? You say you're food insecure, which I mean, who's not food insecure if it's cold outside and I think I don't have enough food in my refrigerator. I mean, I could be food insecure. Your point is the more food banks we set up, the more money we throw at this thing, you would think that this would go down, but it's not. Like everything else in the government, you create more people that are dependent on this, and all the numbers go up. The more food banks, right? This is what you're saying, the more food banks, the more money we throw at this thing, the more food insecurity there is.
SPEAKER_00:And the more supposed garbage we're putting into these food banks from corporations that are masquerading as donations, the you know, the problem is still still is going up. The bottom line is what we're doing in this area and providing food is not working, and something else should be done. The way that works, the way that actually works was the original way when churches and community groups were finding people who really were hungry, who really were in need, and they met with them and they met those needs and they helped them get jobs, they helped them personally. First of all, one on one on one thing. And that's what we get.
SPEAKER_01:Before we get to the common sense solution, I love these programs, right? Because there's a need out there, we know, right? We're always supposed to feed the hungry and take care of the hungry, and that's what you're alluding to there.
SPEAKER_00:We're not supposed to harbor illegal aliens either, though.
SPEAKER_01:We'll get to that in a second. But first of all, it just shows you again the government gets involved, they put these incentives out, and then you got these organizations that are growing. So you got the, you know, it reminds me of this border issue that we were at at, right? Right. You you create the the border issue, you start making it easy for people, you give them benefits for coming over, they flood the border, you get the NGOs, right? The the churches and everybody involved in trying to help. Well, what does that do? That just floods it with more people. You end up with um rape, sexual abuse, child sex trafficking, child porn, all this stuff coming across the border, and we just make the issue worse.
SPEAKER_00:Well, we're doing the game, the NGOs are making fortunes doing it, too.
SPEAKER_01:So here's what I was going to ask you. So I brought that up because I mean they are making fortunes. Who's paying all these people, say these people that are running these programs in the state of Illinois say, because we're in Illinois. These are people making good money, aren't they? Right, yes. And the employees are didn't you put in your article the employees are making over$70,000 a year?
SPEAKER_00:Well, and and that uh, you know, the people, the employees, the 400 people at uh Feeding America make$150,000 a year on average. Plus, right.$50,000 on average. I mean, just and the and their officers are getting over the city.
SPEAKER_01:Are these not for profits?
SPEAKER_00:They're all 501 C3s, every one of them. And so they make most of their money and they and they can demonstrate all this good work that they do. So then they go out and they have these sob stories that they'll tell people, oh, we need money, we need money. And basically, most of them most of the cash they bring in seems to be going to the salaries of these guys, not the food that's all donated by Are they getting paid from donations, Tom?
SPEAKER_01:Or are they getting subsidized by the government? Well, part of it's subsidy to the government.
SPEAKER_00:The government doesn't have to be a good thing.
SPEAKER_01:Are my tax dollars going to
SPEAKER_00:Well of course they are. Yeah, sure they are. And so is uh so are your donations that go to you know to support all these charities. It's all a bunch of scam, big racket.
SPEAKER_01:It was that these people are making more than the state employees on average. They're making more than state and these are non-party.
SPEAKER_00:And you see her on TV. She's she's got a TV uh ad right now about all Greater Chicago Food Depository. And you know, look at all the wonderful work that we're doing. She makes a half a million dollars a year. She makes more than than the you know the top doctor in in in the state. This is this is just insane.
SPEAKER_01:I tell you what, I I work as you know, and so do you for a small uh non-for-profit, right? Well, I don't even get searches. Yeah. And I was gonna say the same thing. We barely get paid. There's most of the people that work for us are total volunteers. Right. The people that do get paid, it's it's because we do need a few key people that are and they have kids and families and stuff. So you trying to help them. But the point is nobody makes a lot of money. Everybody does it because of the goodness of their heart, and and nobody's making anywhere near this 150 to a million one.
SPEAKER_00:Well, you know, the other thing, the other thing you're not even looking you can't even uh factor in here is the we don't have any idea how much their expense accounts are. These people wander around the world going to wine and cheese parties all over the place. And they literally are doing that because they're expanding this globally now. Yes, exactly. They're doing they just had this uh global network, which is also in Chicago, and it was spawned out of the uh Feeding America, the global network. They just they had a global meeting down in Australia.
SPEAKER_01:So everybody wants to be part of this now, right? Right? Feeding the hungry for food insecurity, which we don't even know how to measure. We we only know that the more money we put in, the more food banks we help with this stuff, the more food insecurity there is. So we get more and more people dependent. And at the end of the day, we bloat this system, and and it gets down to again this government subsidized ideas. But you were alluding to it earlier, and I cut you off. The best way to handle this thing is where, Tom?
SPEAKER_00:It's in the local churches. You have to meet people face to face. You have to you know, charity, you can't you can't farm charity out to somebody else. You can't say, oh, well, I donate to my church, my church donates to this, and therefore look at all the wonderful things that I do. No, you need to get involved hands-on yourself. You need to become actively involved. But you know, and I don't begrudge anybody making money. Even people, very skilled people that that who uh contribute a lot to solving a problem, they should get paid a a really good wage. I don't have any problem with that. But we're spending this money on a program that doesn't work, it's not working. And they'll say, Oh, yeah, it's look at all the people that are getting fed. Well, how does it mean anything? It means absolutely nothing. On top of that, I know that a lot of these people go from one food bank to another to another. So they're all they're counting the same numbers. There's no master database that prevents people from going to the bank.
SPEAKER_01:If you make it easy enough, I I know plenty of people that instead of working hard would say to their oldest daughter, honey, you got a driver's license now, stop by the local food bank on your way home and pick us up dinner, you know? If you make it this easy for people, this is what they do. But the also the other thing is so many of those products are sugary, pop, and all empty calories. So these people, the the people that are actually eating this stuff are not getting healthy. There's not even any protocol for that, is there? We're gonna ask you to join us by helping us get the word out. So if you can make sure you subscribe and then hit like, no matter uh which platform you're on. Remember that the Become Who You Are podcast is on uh audio, on any music or podcast app. We're up on Rumble, YouTube, you can find us on X. When you do, subscribe, hit the like button. No. Are they counting nutrition or they're telling us how many vitamins we're getting from these meals? No, it's just whatever they want to put on the shelves, right?
SPEAKER_00:And the other thing is that there, I don't want to give the false impression, there are people that go to food banks that need it. I'm not saying that there's not. Of course, but it's it's a massively ineffective program in general. We need to, and and yet there's billions being spent on it. And and on top of that, the the hundreds of thousands of dollars the people that are running the show make, they are doing it and using it for political advantage. They are you are using their position to advance a political position that is contrary to what people like you and me believe in.
SPEAKER_01:You know, Tom, when you're no, that's a great point. You know, when when Jesus said go out and feed the poor, he said go you go out and feed the poor. Right. And I just had this conversation not too long ago with a relative of ours who votes socialists all the time. And he's an older guy. You'd think he'd be smart enough to do this where you know the debt in our nation is incredible. But he said, We vote we vote social. And I said, Well, why would you vote socialists? You're he he's in a he's a uh CPA. And I said, you know, how how insane do you have to be not to see what's going on with our country and the debt that we're doing, we're sending down to our kids and grandkids. He says, We do it, I do it, Jack, because they take care of the poor. And I said, they don't take care of the poor. That's the point. You know, they they never take care of the poor. If you give the government$100, Tom, by the time it gets to the poor, it's literally 10 or 15 cents, if if even that, right? Everybody else sucks the money all the way through. Every time a government agency, even when they get together with the church, the church builds up their organization, the government builds up their, and they build offices and they build all these distribution centers, they get this food, they finally get it down, and it has to be full of preservatives and stuff, right? Because they're not just giving it to the people. They got to go through all these different layers.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. It's all very unhealthy food.
SPEAKER_01:If you and I take$100 and we buy some food and we bring it right down to the food bank, those those people that need it get$100 worth of food.
SPEAKER_00:It's a little better model, Tom. Well, originally in my church, they would they would encourage people to bring in food at least once a month, maybe a couple times a month. And what we would do would they would say, This is the food we need, and they wanted you to go out and go to the grocery store, buy this food, bring it, you know, put a bag in your in your trunk. When you come to church, put the bag out behind your car, and people would come along and pick it up. Well, the thing, here's the advantage of that. Our kids went to the grocery store with us, they would help pick out the food. We would pack the food that's for the food bank into a bag, and we go to church, and uh they would they would watch the food being put behind the behind the car. Then you go in, okay, and then when come back out, if there's guys that go during the service along the behind the cars, picks it up, and then they take it to the food bank and sort it. But they get it's good food. It's not this, it's not the garbage process, not heavy with sugar. And then when they meet them in in the uh food uh food pantry, they would sit down and meet with each individual and get their story. It's not just like, oh, here's food, here's food, here w you know, we don't even know in today's food banks, they don't even know the people's story. They don't know what they need. They don't know maybe they need a job, you know. They maybe there's things that that you other things that you can help them with. Maybe you can invite them into church to come and and become involved in the community of the of believers. But that's not being done in food banks today. It isn't people aren't really being helped. They're just we're just throwing food at them, and most of it's crappy food.
SPEAKER_01:The other thing, and I I was involved in this uh not too long ago. It's a local food bank and and uh and uh and a homeless shelter too, where where really needy people could stay. And we'd actually make the food. So our church, I think it was Wednesdays, we made the meal. And so whatever everybody would bring in lasagnas that they made or whatever, you know, and bring in stuff that was really good. We'd all bring it over there at six o'clock for dinner, and we'd serve it to these people to your point. We'd get to know these people. And I actually worked there for that day on Wednesday, and you're right. You know, you get to know these people, you get to know their story, and you know, your heart really starts to go out to people that really need stuff. So again, I don't want to sound callous just like you said, too. There are people that really need this, but we have to get involved. Right. And if you're if I'm working all the time and I'm busy and traveling, whatever, I then I take that money, I give it to uh an organization within my church, and they have volunteers that go out and do this stuff, and that's the way it's called subsidiarity, right? That we bring it down to the local level, we take care of the people that we can, we get to know them, and to your point, if they need a job, there are people that we say, hey, you know what, I think my buddy can use somebody like you or whatever. And uh and you try to do the best you can with it. But whenever the government seems to get involved, Tom, and you you had all these people trying to make money on. I mean, if I'm making a million over a million dollars, I'm thinking half of that money I should cut out and put a half a million dollars into this organization to actually bring the food over and cut my salary, but they don't do that, you know.
SPEAKER_00:No, you know, that's the thing. They they have this attitude that they deserve this money. That's that elitist mindset that bothers me most about the now one of the things that that uh you mentioned about food, fixing food for people. There are within the food bank system, there are food banks that do fix hot meals and they use the food that comes from the government that they that they'll fix hot meats. And in in a lot of the food that comes into a food bank, you can fix healthy things from it. One of the problems that many of the people have that go into food banks, they don't know what good nutrition is. They don't know what a balanced meal is. But there's no educating them on that kind of thing in the typical food bank. They just go in there and they get a bag of groceries, or in some places like in ours, they can go in and pick out what they want. So they pick out whatever they want and then they they leave. Yeah. It may or may not be nutritional. It may or may not be a good a good balance for for them. Most of these people need a lot more help than just food. Yeah. And so what what you can see in these numbers in this examination that I did, you can see this massive program that's been set up simply is not working. We we want to fix it. It's gotta be wiped out and something different. You gotta try something different. Um that so many things that the government gets involved in, they they spend billions of dollars on things that don't work. And instead of just, hey, well, let's get rid of this and find something that does work, they're not solving the problem. They're just they're just throwing money at a program that they thought at one time might have solved the problem.
SPEAKER_01:At the end of the day, the government has never been good at doing this kind of stuff, and that's really not the government's role. No, it's not. The government can set tax policy to to give me a write-off for my donations, right? They can give incentivize us to go out and and give things away, right? To be charitable and stuff. Well, they didn't make any more.
SPEAKER_00:They're good at making war and collecting taxes. That's about the only things that they're any good at.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And any other time you're gonna set up a bureaucratic state.
SPEAKER_00:Even in the uh even collecting taxes they're not so good at because uh you know, 10, 10 to 20 percent of the people in this country aren't even in the tax system. They're they're all on a cash economy.
SPEAKER_01:Well, show me how to do that, will you?
SPEAKER_00:So they're probably smarter than us, Tom. Well, a lot of the people that are getting food stamps are part of that cash economy because it looks like they don't make any money.
SPEAKER_01:Here I suppose I suppose you know part of the problem with our culture today and the Western civilization as a whole is that our families are torn apart, and so we're not there to help one another like we should be, and we're not going to church. So when we are not going to church, the the the standby then is somebody's gonna have to help these people, and that's the government uh almost uh gets pushed into some of these things. I mean, how many people go to church, Tom, today? The percentage of people.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. Well, even those that go to church, the figure is that somewhere around only nine percent of the people that regularly attend church even have a biblical worldview. So they're not doing a very good job in in uh making disciples in our churches either.
SPEAKER_01:Unless you know we get our charitable heart back, unless we start loving God and loving our neighbor, you know, this isn't brain surgery, Tom. It's a it's the two great commandments, right? Love God and then go love your neighbor. And so we've taken God out and we've taken love of neighbor out, we get in between, and we we take as much money as we can for ourselves, leave a few peanuts for the poor people that actually need the stuff. And when we do give them food, we're giving them crap at the end of the day, right? Oh yeah, they're unhealthy people, and they become dependent on the government. So, you know, they you know, it's it's it's uh it's a mad cycle right now.
SPEAKER_00:We're imagine imagine the you know the uh corporate executives that go to heaven and say, hey, you know, I or meet St. Peter and say, hey, you know, look at all that I did, look at the good good that I did. We gave hundreds of millions of dollars in food to the poor. And St. Peter says, You gave him all your garbage. You gave him all your garbage. Isn't there something in the Bible about that? I don't want your he wants the first fruits, he doesn't want the dregs off your table.
SPEAKER_01:No, give him the first, the 10% right off the top.
SPEAKER_00:And what they're doing is they're giving, they're literally giving the food away that is that they're going to throw away, and then they make even more of a deduction because of it. And then they posture as though they're these great philanthropists. It just drives me nuts.
SPEAKER_01:St. Peter's gonna say, and I want to talk to you about that million one salary that you got for doing that too, right? Unbelievable, Tom.
SPEAKER_00:I just it just beyond, I just can't even stand it. So it pales in comparison to my, you know, my offense at harboring illegal aliens.
SPEAKER_01:Well, what do you you know, now that we're on the subject with that, you know, I mean, there's really a pushback going on, isn't there, in in some so many of these cities that uh, you know, that for some reason I guess they got in their mind now that if you're here illegally, but you you haven't killed anybody yet or robbed anybody yet, then you're then you're legal. Right. It's like you realize that some people have been in this country for a long time, flying underneath the radar, have kids and everything now. It it it gets to be a tough situation for them, but they're still, you know, we're flooded with illegals and something's gotta be done, you know. Any uh any thoughts on on on that? I mean, I I do know people that have been here for a long time that married somebody now from the United States, but they're still illegal, but it's uh it happens to be a father and he actually has a job. Right and now if they take them out, uh they don't leave the family in a good situation. I mean, those are tough situations, whether they're gonna be able to do that.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and they I I think uh this administration is trying to work out some options that they that they can do. I think they have uh I think one of the pathways that I heard was that they wanted to give them first of all, they they were they were gonna find them. They were gonna make them go through several hoops in order to, you know, they they can't be on welfare, that they've just been been sucking off of the system for ten years that they've been here, they're out, you know. But if they've been if they've shown that they are contributing members of society, they have a pathway that they can become citizens, that they that's what they've set up.
SPEAKER_01:But uh, you know, here here's the thing about When you say they set that up, is that the program where they have to leave the country and come back in?
SPEAKER_00:Or there's something about they they were I don't know if it's formally adopted, but I heard this talked about at the end of the year. I hope they come up with something like that. Right. And so it uh they realize that it's not just black and white. That you you know that's right. The black and white one are the ones that are the criminals. And a lot of these people are saying, well, they're not criminals. Well, yeah, they were picked up and they were arrested for DUI, okay? That's a criminal. And so you got the criminals that are here that are real criminals that came across the border, the Trin de Aragua guys, the MS-13, those and you know, the the guys that are actively involved in drug dealing. We may not have any criminal. Those are the easy ones, yeah. Right. We might not have any criminal convictions on them, but we've got intelligence. Like when I was when I was with the state, we knew every mobster in the state, okay? Every one of them, we knew who they were. We knew what they were involved in, but trying to prove it, trying to get a criminal case on them, now that's a different story. Now, if all of those mobsters that we knew were engaged in this criminal activity, which a lot of a lot of these illegal aliens are involved in in drug dealing, if all of those mobsters we knew were illegal aliens also, we wouldn't have to make a criminal case on them. We just go out, pick them up, send them back to wherever they came from, okay? That's great. That's what you want to do. So, but if you go out and do that and you pick them up, now all of a sudden everybody says he hasn't been convicted of any crime. He hasn't been caught for anything. You know, he hasn't he hasn't gotten a DUI. You know, uh Tony Accardous. Tony Accardo is the leader of the mob in Chicago, never got convicted of anything. Nothing. So he he would have been, we would have left him here if it was according to the progressives today. He had ordered murders. We know that he ordered these murders. But at least he was a citizen. Yeah, right. He was a citizen. So but we couldn't do a thing for him because we couldn't get a criminal case on him on a lot of these guys. So a lot of these illegal aliens that they're saying, well, they haven't been convicted of anything.
SPEAKER_01:That's a good point, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:There's there's intelligence about them. They're not just picking them up for no reason. And then then when they go out there and they find somebody, so this this illegal alien who that's a criminal is living with six other people in the same building who are also illegal aliens, they they are not allowed to be here in this country. Are they supposed to ignore them? No. No. Yeah. They're gonna take the people.
SPEAKER_01:But if they're associated, if they're associated with this person, they're probably doing something with them. That's right.
SPEAKER_00:If you're hanging out with a bad guy, you're probably a bad guy. You're known by the company you keep.
SPEAKER_01:And the other and the other thing that you alluded to just a little while ago, if if you've been just, you know, just living off of uh welfare, then that's another reason you should go back. Because if if you've been here for a couple of years and you still haven't got a job and you're not supporting anybody, the the report I read, I think was from the UK. It wasn't from the United States. But it said the majority of the people that had come in the last few years in the UK, the immigrants were not working. Now, I don't I don't I don't know if that's the same in the United States or not.
SPEAKER_00:I I I'll give you an exam another example, a specific example of somebody who was a criminal that we got a case on that wound up becoming he was my informant in a gangs investigation that we were working on years ago and back in the early eighties. And he was the leader of a street gang on the on the west side of Chicago. Very bad guy, okay? Um he was he was getting food stamps. He got Social Security disability. He was um he got all he got other uh public aid. His kids got uh WIC program money. Um all of it was a scam. He was able to get on on uh disability because uh he got a sign off by his doctor. His doctor wasn't gonna say, well, no, I'm not gonna not gonna say not gonna say that. So there the guy was the guy got all of these uh benefits. Meanwhile, he's actively involved in drug dealing, and he's he's actually, you know, he's they're they're killing people out there in the streets. And so here is a guy who's engaged in all this activity. You know, he finally got him, but we used him to get other people first. So this is the kind of uh people that they're going after. This guy was a this guy was a citizen, but if he had been a a lot of the Latino gangs in Chicago, same thing. A lot of those guys are illegal aliens, they're up here. The MS-13 guys, MS-13 and Trenday Aragua have have uh become very insinuated into the street gang system here in the country in in the country too, because they're they're using it to um to engage in all kinds of criminal activity. It isn't just drug dealing.
SPEAKER_01:Well, before we as we wind down here on time, anything new with the Somalias up in uh in Minnesota? You know, I mean, you know, they've been busy working, but unfortunately it's just working the system, isn't it? Again.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'm trying to find out who you know the that uh feeding our future started up in like 2016, and I'm and it came up, these people came out of the Somali community. It looks like they had connections with uh Ileon Omar, but I'm trying to find out uh there there was a woman who was in charge of the Minnesota Department that that uh set these programs up, Casilius, and I'm trying to find out what her connection was with the Somali community because this this group was able to go in and become a designated provider or a designated agency that set up these programs to be run by other people. Okay, they so they had to have some kind of clout. So that's what I'm trying to find out now. But it was uh clearly the whole pattern is one that that reeks of political connection.
SPEAKER_01:It's big money getting thrown around, tax money in a lot of cases, government agencies, nobody really knows what's going on underneath. And and you just get too big, and then everybody's on the dole. The Congress people are on the dole, the politicians, right, with the with the big corporations. Everybody's got a system going. Well, we and you're sucking our country dry again. I guess the point I I want to make is that this can't go on. We're wasting way, way, way too much money, and it's hurting our our again, our kids, our grandkids. We're we're not gonna have a country left if we keep this stuff up. So we have to take all of this stuff seriously. I mean, these are tough issues, but the government gets too big. Uh, you lose control over what's going on, and if you don't take this back into local communities with good people trying to watch these things, it's just there's always gonna be people that are greedy and lazy that don't want to work or are just want the easy money, you know. It's just the way it goes.
SPEAKER_00:Take your focus away from the poor people right now. The poor people are the ones who aren't really being served. But they're they're not really they're not they aren't being served. We're not taking care of the poor right now with this program. It's it's clearly not working, and we're not taking care of the poor. This system has been set up where taking care of the poor is secondary to advancing political power. This is a political power system. It's part of a network that's been set up in this country, not just by the people that are advancing the poor. It's these nonprofit networks that have it is like a web of enormous power that has been created and this not and this poor, this poverty system has been set up again to advance political power, not just in the United States, but globally. And it is progressive, it's Marxist. Uh and and so it's like it's insidiously infecting our entire culture with this idea that this is a good way to do things when in fact it's not working. We have to get rid of it. Forget about even if it's even if you say, well, we you know we're against this politically, we don't like their attitudes. No, it's not working. Get rid of it for that reason.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell And we see what happens, though. Once you get these these organizations like this, that like you outlined in the article, once they get so big, it's hard to take them out because everybody's involved. The politicians, the big corporations, everybody's getting paid too much money. Like you said, there's no records, there's no control. We actually don't even have the meeting notes you said in your article, right? The board meeting notes and stuff. No, nothing.
SPEAKER_00:And we don't have their we don't have their travel records.
SPEAKER_01:We can't get any of that stuff.
SPEAKER_00:Look at this. In 1988, Reagan talked about.
SPEAKER_01:How many lobster dinners do you think these people are eating while we're while we're shoveling some uh some uh uh sugary pop too?
SPEAKER_00:I guarantee you they're not getting the food that they're eating out of the food bank. Um, but especially not at these conferences that they go to. But in 1988, Ronald Reagan tried to get rid of this T FAT program, and the they already had gained too much political power to get rid of them. And so he he failed in doing that. Now it's nine, it's 2025. Imagine the power that they have. Imagine the political power that these groups have right now. It's enormous. And it's all directed, it's all it is all directed at the left. It's a it's a leftist political power base that's gonna be very difficult to root out, but it's got to be, we have to dismantle it. It's not working, even if you don't care about the political power thing. It's not working, we need something else, and they're not gonna fix it because they have they have more interest in advancing their own power than they do in fixing the problem.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Don't pay any attention to what they say. Oh, we care about the poor. They do not.
SPEAKER_01:Thomas, the only way to do this is to is for the average person, right? And there are no average people really, right? But God's children, to step up to the plate and say no more. I uh unfortunately, I think we're probably about half and half in this country. You could see it on the elections that half the people are on the dull, half of the people are benefiting from this system in all different ways. Uh, and and and it's not the poor, like you said, but the poor will get a few crumbs, and and they're told that if they don't go along with this system, they won't get nothing. So they won't even get their sugary pop later on. And uh and so we we're we're at the precipice here. You know, you see uh Western civilization, Western Europe is is done already, I think. I I think they've declined to the point of no return, but we're pretty damn close, I think.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I'll tell you what, Germany's fast descending into fascism again, I think. I don't know what the heck's happening with that country.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's a scary thing because now, you know, you know, uh we're we're not gonna give them all that NATO backing, right? And and they don't have so what are they gonna do? They're gonna build up their military again, and uh and I don't know if that's such a good thing, but hey, it is what it is.
SPEAKER_00:We only have nine panzer tanks that are functional right now, so they got a long way to go. Yeah, they do.
SPEAKER_01:Hey, God bless you, Tom. Good to be with you. Good to be with everyone. Thanks a lot. Thanks for joining us. Talk to you again soon. Bye-bye.