Posted on 09/15/2007 1:48:59 PM PDT by dynachrome
"A two-person household can receive as much as $284 per month in food stamps, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Nevertheless, my wife and I spent the month of August eating for $159.04, or $2.57 per person per day"
"Welfare — the forcible transfer of wealth — should be phased out and replaced with voluntary charity such as food banks, even as political controls that hamper economic opportunities are repealed. "
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.rockymountainnews.com ...
My guess is that some/many welfare recipients are “large” and “need” a lot of food stamps. The author was probably a lean American.
I’m sick of subsidizing lobster, shrimp, and delivered take out for the welfare crowd. They need to learn to live within their means. Like, get a job and live off that, like the rest of us.
I need to lose a few pounds. I’ll have to try that diet!
(actually, people on food stamps tend to make money at other activities, legal or illegal, and are just are under the poverty line. None of them get their food strictly from food stamps)
“”Welfare — the forcible transfer of wealth —”
True, it’s also a failure. Despite the government doing this we have food banks, meals on wheels, etc, etc, etc. Actually, the charity sector and private donations takes care of the task already and we need to just end welfare. The non-volunteer transfer of wealth.
Most of the people that I know of on welfare seem to have booze and/or drug problems, also.
The left hates this because people with money and morals get to tell people without either how to live their lives. (i.e. "I succeeded by hard work, clean living and responsibility. If you demonstrate those to me, I'll help you out. Otherwise, you can continue to live in your squalor")
Would have been a much better article with links to shopping lists and menus.
I was in the grocery line one day behind a women that used food stamps and she had a Rolex watch. The rich Asians go buy the food stamps from the poor at 50 cents on the dollar and they get their drug money and the rich asians get to milk the system.
when you get to this country, you automatically get a lot of free stuff and they all know how to steal from Americans.
Yes, it would. I'm trying to figure out how to feed my bottomless pit of a teenage son without bankrupting the family.
The tear jerking anecdotes of the child who claimed he had only one hot dog weiner, no bun, all weekend, or that kids were coming to school lethargic on mondays due to a lack of food really moved me. However I was moved to wonder why the hell, if they qualify for free food at school, don't they have pantries loaded with food stamp groceries?
We aren't supposed to question what they do with the benefits; we can't ask why they have outrageous fingernails or hairdos and their kids are starving. No, we just have to keep handing over more and more of our hard earned money.
I need to go grill a steak or something.
I know some people who teach in a publik skool in a poor community. There are children who are truly malnourished. And I don't mean obese and malnourished from a junk food diet (although that happens too). I mean thin children who almost look like they just came out of a concentration camp. There are single mothers who sell their food stamps for money or spend most of it on junk food for themselves, I suppose, and their children don't get anything. So a certain percentage of welfare recipients neglect their children and just giving them more money won't make them all of the sudden provide for their children.
The Heritage Foundation recently published a study about how well off the poor really are. Another telling statistic is what percent of a state’s population is obese. Well, the Heritage study has a graph, based on Census Bureau data, that shows more than 50% of poor women are obese.
It is clear that the taxpayers are being taken for a ride with a lot of these programs.
Our federal government has over 85 different welfare programs on the books at this time. Budget for welfare is over $600. billion dollars. Some of these programs are a bit of a surprise in their scope. Most of us think of welfare as housing assistance, food stamps, TANF, and SCHIPS. Government reaches into your wallet for some pretty off the wall things, in the name of welfare.
I, like most conservatives, are anti-welfare especially to baby factory generational welfare types.. but there is a reality side to this issue that well off people never see.. I had to leave my first husband with a 5 yr old in tow. I lived in a small town where jobs were scarce.. I got a part time job at a restaurant but that didn’t pay all the bills so I went on food stamps.. we only got 60 dollars a month..and oftentimes I went without eating so my daughter could have food.. her father wasn’t paying child support and all they did was take away his contractor’s license..which didn’t put any money on our table.. not all people on welfare are bums.. and not every family gets enough every month to buy lobster and steak..
How right you are.
I am a rabid conservative and feel "welfare" is nothing more than a giveaway to the undeserving...however...there are exceptions.
I had to leave my first husband with a 5 yr old in tow.
My daughter had three, all under the age of seven.
The POS she was married to ran off with another woman.
I lived in a small town where jobs were scarce...
She lived in a rural area with a population density of about 1 person per 5 square miles...the nearest town with anything suggestive of employment had a population of only 14,000.
To make a long story short, he would not pay any child support and left her with the credit card bills, some outstanding hospital bills, the house payment, etc.
I was unable to support her, the kids, my wife and the one child we had still at home, on my retired pay and part-time work.
She applied for and received food stamps.
I never saw a lobster, a steak, or for that matter, hamburger meat more than 80% lean.
The only "extravagance" that I saw was the fact that she would buy a product called "Capri Sun", an indulgence that I disagreed with, until I realized that my grandchildren had never drank a coke or any of the sugared fake drinks (not that Capri Sun is that much better).
I ignored that and once a month would have them over and would cook up a sumptious meal on the grill (If you call beer-butt chicken and bratwurst sumptious.)
I would occasionally take them out to a fast-food joint and allow them to indulge in the dollar-menu.
It gave the kids something to brag about with their peers.
Anyway, I gave her the money to get started in a Community College about 30 miles away that offerred on-line course...she eventually got a skill/craft whatever that she could do from home, she met a guy that accepted her as his ideal, even with the three kids and I can now say that she is off food stamps, off medicaid for the children, has worked out of debt, except for the mortgage, and her ex-POS has been jailed four times for non-support and has now been garnished for child-support on an involuntary basis.
My point is this: Her very survival and the survival of those kids depended on the government giveaway.
I am sure there are many more out there with the same situation.
The unfortunate part of the whole thing, though, is the fact that it is abused and grossly.
I have seen persons on food stamps purchasing hamburger meat to feed their dogs, as dog food is not an allowed item.
I have seen them purchase several bags of food items from a list, take them outside the store and exchange them immediately for cash to some other person, usually on about a half-price basis.
Catching these people was my part-time job. Enjoy the irony.
Anyway, my apologies for the soap box, but even an old die-hard conservative such as myself can see the benefits of a well-administered welfare program.
The key is the "well-administered" portion.
Liberals and "progressives" would prefer it just be a "gimme, gimme and gimme some more and no questions asked" program.
And that is the problem.
http://freecolorado.com/2007/08/challenge.html
A long article, but the shopping lists are in there.
exactly!
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 17, 2007 Last modified: Friday, September 14, 2007 11:21 PM CDT
Use Drugs, Lose Aid
By Jo Ann Hustis
Herald Writer
MARSEILLES - New legislation before Congress is the offshoot of an issue a local anti-drug coalition raised last spring.
“This is an example of why constituents should not be afraid of offering their suggestions,” Congressman Jerry Weller noted Friday, during an informal briefing with members of the Marseilles Concerned Citizens Against Drugs.
Weller (R-Morris) is co-sponsoring legislation requiring states to implement a policy of testing welfare recipients suspected of drug use.
“If they test positive, they will be retested for another 30 to 60 days,” he told the group. “If they continue to test positive, the state terminates their cash assistance for three years.”
Weller is co-sponsoring the bill with Congressman Phil English (R-Penn.) who introduced the measure in the past.
Known as the English-Weller Bill, the measure will require states to cut off cash assistance to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program participants for three years if three consecutive drug tests are returned positive.
Weller said the state of Michigan found it unconstitutional to require blanket drug testing. This is the reason the new measure mandates testing of TANF recipients only in cases of suspected drug use.
CCAD spokesman Angie Bowyer told Weller she is aware of an instance wherein a habitual drug and alcohol user is still receiving government assistance.
“That is money not being used for what it should be used,” she added. “If you go on welfare, I guess you should be drug tested.”
Weller said these kinds of instances are the reason for the legislation. The question is whether welfare caseworkers will be properly monitoring welfare recipients.
“The spirit of welfare reform is for those who need help to receive it,” he said. “At the same time, we want them to develop a plan on how they will move on to a better life.”
Weller noted the welfare reform plan is working, with fewer children living in poverty today than there were in 1996.
He said he supported the welfare reforms of 1996, which are assisting millions of people to become self-sufficient.
Weller said the government has a responsibility to continue to give people assistance, and to ensure federal assistance is being spent in the best way possible.
“The bottom line is, our legislation requires states to drug test welfare recipients suspected of drug use,” he told the group.
Weller said the individual states will be required to develop the drug testing policies.
“The vast majority of constituents I represent want a drug-free Illinois,” he added. “Children want drug-free parents.”
Bowyer told Weller of the new Helping Hands program the non-profit CCAD developed out of its budget.
She said the program provides assistance with such items as transportation to anti-drug clinics.
“We have $2,100 in our budget now,” Bowyer said. “Thirty percent of that goes to Helping Hands.”
In a printed release, Weller applauded CCAD members for the desire to better their community.
“And, I look forward to working with my colleagues in Congress to pass this common-sense reform,” he was quoted as saying.
Weller also met afterward in private with Marseilles Mayor Jim Trager, who was also present during the CCAD briefing.
http://www.morrisdailyherald.com/articles/2007/09/15/news/739bdrugs.txt
The welfare system needs to be exactly that, a safety net. Sadly, too many people use welfare as a hammock.
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