I have added two new charts to my food-stamps page showing the breakdown by presidential administrations (click to enlarge):

Sorry Democrats, but last night on MSNBC, Al Sharpton said that more people were added to the food-stamps program by Bush 41 than by Obama, so I felt compelled to reply to that blatant lie. Of course, Newt Gingrich acts like everybody on food stamps is black. But that is literally impossible. We have 46.2 million people on food stamps, but the African-American population of the USA is only 37.7 million! There’s got to be some white people in there too, no?

This is all a moot point though. In the bad old days of “protectionism”, the food-stamp rolls would expand during recessions, and recede during recoveries. But here in our fabulous, futuristic, free-trade utopia, poverty just grows and grows. Is it a coincidence that the food-stamp rocket blasted-off shortly after China was admitted to the World Trade Organization? I don’t think so:

Not only was the launch of the food-stamp rocket a tri-partisan project, but so is the rocket’s continued flight. Newt Gingrich was one of the chief rocket scientists, President Obama rubber-stamped more free-trade laws, and Ron Paul’s libertarians provide the moronic ideology.

Read it and weep Gingrich:

Note to lazy, shiftless white people: get a job losers!

Here is the link to the USDA report. Scroll down about half way through the PDF.

Also, see my food-stamp charts here.

Further reading: It was Gingrich who offshored all the jobs in the first place.

Zero Hedge failed to “report” on the food-stamp data last week. See if you can guess why.

If your guess is that the data did not fit ZH’s “impending Armageddon” thesis, then you get a gold star on your paper. Tell your Mom that I said it was OK. If you’re a girl, you can have some glitter too. Go nuts. If you think that Zero Hedge is trying to give you an objective view of reality so that you may make intelligent investment decisions, then tell your Dad to get the belt because you need some sense beaten into you.

The food-stamp rolls declined by a small number in the latest data. See the third chart on this page. This is only the second month that the rolls have declined since the Great Recession began.

Maybe this is a turning point, maybe not. I don’t know. But what I do know is that within the next two days “Tyler Durden” will write a post sneering at the 43,535 decrease.

Sneering. That’s his thing.

The number of people receiving food-stamps has declined for the first time in over three years. See the food-stamps chart.

As you can see on the chart, there is a spike in May. That was due to the tornadoes in Alabama. In total, the USDA says that they added 1.1 million people to the food-stamps program due to natural disasters in several states. So, was June’s decline just people coming off the emergency programs? Maybe, but I think there would have been a decline anyway.

The peak number reported in May was 45,410,683. If we subtract 1.1 million from that, we get 44,310,683. And that is lower than the March total of 44,587,275 – before the emergency programs began. The USDA did not break down the 1.1 million number by month, so we can’t know for sure, but I think it’s safe to say that the rolls would have declined from March if the food-stamp program had not been used for disaster relief.

Now, you might be asking yourself:

“Why didn’t I read about this on “Zero Hedge”, or Lee Adler’s “Wall Street Examiner”. They report on the food-stamp data, so what happened?”

I’m glad you asked me that. Look at the word “report” in your question. There’s your trouble right there. You see, un-objective perma-bears only report bad news.

Note: The USDA released this data last week, but I knew there was no rush. There was no way the likes of “Zero Hedge” or the “Wall Street Examiner” were going to scoop me. I knew they would ignore it, so I just took my time. The bear camp had four solid days to maintain a facade of objectivity, but they declined.

On August 6th, Lee Adler reported in his Wall Street Examiner a “sudden acceleration of the decline” of the economy based on the latest food-stamp data released by the USDA. That data showed an alarming surge in the number of people receiving foods stamps for the month of May (the latest reporting month).

But if Adler had downloaded the spreadsheet, he would have seen that the bulk of the increase came from one state: Alabama (click image to enlarge):

Well, it just so happens that Alabama was mauled by massive tornadoes in April, and Alabama state officials say they used the food-stamp program for disaster relief. And if Adler had asked the USDA (like I did), they would have told him that there was also an error in the reported number, which will be adjusted downward soon.

Adler got it totally wrong. This surge in food-stamp usage had nothing whatsoever to do with the economy. Adler simply typed up his prejudices instead doing actual research.

This chart shows the number of people added to the food-stamps program using the currently released data (click chart to enlarge):

The May bar looks pretty scary, right? But what would it look like if there had been no tornadoes in Alabama? In this next chart, I back out the May data for Alabama (1,762,481) and add back in the state’s April number (868,813):

Without the natural disaster, we probably would have seen about 211,000 people added to the rolls. While that isn’t the greatest of news, it is well below the 12-month moving average shown by the red line on the chart.

The moral of the story is that the actual situation is exactly the opposite of what Adler reported: The number of people being added to the food-stamps program for economic reasons continues a months-long steady decline.

If you want an objective and competent analysis of the food-stamp data, my page here is always up-to-date.