Posted on 02/12/2011 5:17:15 PM PST by BenLurkin
This week, state Sen. Michael Rubio will introduce legislation that would prohibit food stamps from being used to purchase "junk food" or prepared meals at fast-food restaurants.
"The question is what should we be using taxpayer funds to purchase," the Bakersfield Democrat said Tuesday. "In my opinion, we should be focusing on what people need, not what they want."
Those needs include foods found in the traditional food pyramid, he said, including breads and cereals, meats, beans, nuts, dairy products and other protein sources, and lots of fruits and vegetables.
Rubio's idea is not yet an official Senate bill. But it came to light Tuesday when he appeared before the Fresno County Board of Supervisors to argue against a proposal that would have allowed disabled and homeless recipients in that county to use food stamps -- now accessed through a debit card -- to purchase restaurant foods.
(Excerpt) Read more at bakersfield.com ...
See post #2.
I saw a woman at Safeway buy 7 cases of Pepsi with her food stamps card.
The clerk did not blink.
It’s statewide.
They use EBT cards, looks like an ATM card. They can use them at any location that accepts them.
The liberal argument is that the poor shouldn’t be denied fast food.
I think the slavery of dependency should hurt.
When I was in L.A, I was shocked to see food stamps redeemed at the local Wendys.
The advertisement for them was right in the window.
Never heard of such a thing.
Good.............
There are people who have children who don't own a pot, nor have the slightest idea how to use it.
It's not a rare occurrence, but it's a pretty good explanation of why they continue to be impoverished year after year.
The Lutheran building was an old church with a good church kitchen with many stoves. The church groups involved sponsored numerous Boy Scout troops and Girl Scout troops for inner city kids. They taught the kids cooking.
All I did was provide recipes handed down to me by my mother who grew up in a particularly large impoverished family during the Great Depression.
The recipes were great. The kids were great. A group of young priests and nuns came to visit with me about that.
Poor children must learn to do the cooking their mothers can't or won't. Get them a pan. Get them some recipes. They'll do it.
Food stamps, in general, are no longer in use. They use electronic credit cards just about everywhere.
Oh brother. As if there are only second-hand friend-of-a-friend urban legends. It's a rare Californian indeed who hasn't seen a cart mostly full of junk food being paid for with food stamps.
The amount of soda, chips, dip, and ice cream I saw in a cart being bought for a Memorial Day party last year with food stamps far surpassed any amount I have ever been comfortable paying for with my own money for my own party.
I do not agree with this. Most junk food are the cheapest. They provide the most energy for the least amount of cost. People can survive on this.
Forcing the the poor to only buy “healthy” food will only cost the tax payers to pay more. The government SHOULD NOT be micromanaging ppl’s diet. If we’re to pay for food, so ppl don’t starve, its to pay for cheap food, not expensive ones
Ive been in the grocery store where the people in front of me, a man a woman and a small child had steak, ribs, live lobsters, and crablegs..and I mean a lot! I figured they were having a very nice BBQ until she whipped out a Bridge card, which in Michigan is what food stamps are..
I was totally outraged, and the woman had a very nice engagement ring on.They were very well dressed. The system is a scam. I felt I was paying their grocery bill as well as mine, since I have to pay cash.
But an even worse story is this..a Muslim woman was in Farmer Jack’s, and she was loading up on all kinds of canned pop, bottled water, cheese, baby formula and stuff like that. She had a flat bed cart for all of it. When it came time to pay she whipped out a Bridge card (food stamps) and a WIC card for the rest.
The cashier was pretty upset, she was older and on the verge of crying it seemed..she said she was trying to retire and she couldnt and could she vent to get it off her chest..Sure!
She said the Muslim lady owned a gas station/convenience store up the road and that everything she buys, and she comes there often, goes to stock her store! We get to pay for that on welfare, and then again when someone buys it. She stocks her store for free.
>Most junk food are the cheapest. They provide the most energy for the least amount of cost. People can survive on this.
LOL You are plain nuts. This post belongs in a can in the peanut aisle.
Next you will be saying that a bag of chips can feed more than a 1 buck bag of rice,
Who knew all those Asians were wrong? Send em Chips!!
Before food stamps there was the surplus food program for indigents. Every month they got a supply of flour, grains, peanut butter, lard and sometimes sugar. You could make a lot of good food from that.
I just watched the video. The irony is that Rubio(D) is a lib do-gooder, trying to force people on foodstamps to eat
“healthy.”
People that tend to get dependent on these social programs
also tend to make poor choices with whatever money they manage to get especially when they know that there will be more next month.
If I didn’t have to buy and cook my own food, I could probably aford
a cell phone, bling out my pickup truck, and eat out at McD’s too.
Healthy food tends to be inexpensive compared to pre-processed or junk food.
A 42 ounce box of oatmeal will give you healthy breakfasts every day for the better part of a month — for the price of a single McDonald’s “value meal”.
Bottom line is this: He who pays the bills, calls the shots. If the gubmint gonna give you money, the gubmint gonna tell you how and when you can spend it. The sooner the dependents learn this, the sooner they’ll understand what we “teabaggers” are talking about when we say we are fighting for liberty.
You are exactly right. My mother was a home extension agent who moved to rural eastern North Carolina in 1950 to teach poor women how to plan meals and cook them as economically as possible, how to raise children, and in general how to keep house. Since that time the home extension program in North Carolina has evolved into a middle class affair teaching middle class women how to raise roses.
I am not familiar with the extension service in any place, except for NC, but if our state is a proxy for the rest of the country, we need to stop paying middle class extension agents to teach middle class folks how to play as long as there are so many poor people (who may be poor and ignorant of their own volition, but who are none the less charged with raising children) how to do what needs to be done.
I am a lawyer who eats beans and rice for supper at least 2 or 3 nights per week. Beans and rice are quite affordable, they are very good when cooked right, they can be made in a multitude of ways, and they are quite healthy. Unfortunately, I consume much beer, so my general diet is not the best in the world, but the point is we can have good, healthy food that is reasonably priced.
It infuriates me to see heaps of expensive potato chips and soft drinks in grocery carts that get paid for with government (read taxpayer) largess. Those items are expensive, deadly, and worse than useless.
I am not a big fan of the government telling we what I can and cannot eat, but it does not bother me a whit for the government to refuse to pay for food that is worse than useless. I understand that some folks just do not know how to cook, but it is pretty easy to learn that. We would be money ahead to remove extension agents from rose gardens and put them back in kitchens and nurseries.
A what? A $1 bag pf rice. You are going to have to tell us all in detail where to find such a thing. We just went through a severe world wide rice shortage. Check these charts: http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=rice&months=120
In Florida you can’t use them at restaraunts or for buying prepared foods. However, I do agrees with the homeless arguement. Where are they to store meat and a pack of asparagus?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.