Posted on 07/01/2012 10:49:03 PM PDT by QT3.14
A convenience store clerk who was fired recently for refusing to sell cigarettes to a customer trying to pay for them with state welfare benefits has been fired, but her story has gained traction in local and national media.
According to press reports, Jackie Whiton was working at a C.N. Brown Big Apple convenience store recently when a man in his 20s attempted to purchase cigarettes using an electronic benefit transfer card, which is issued to families in New Hampshire and Maine who are on the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF program. Whiton, a six-year employee of the store, refused to sell the man the cigarettes.
(Excerpt) Read more at bangordailynews.com ...
Unfortunately, this is a normal problem. Those that have these cards are not necessarily poor but they do have the card to purchase extravagant items. The is just the way it is!
Until the Federal Government/Local Government actually cares about their expenses nothing will change. Changes will happen if the Federal Government stops payments and the State Government stops payments for illegal customers (used in a derogative sense).
So you realize that almost all of this will not stop - you would be a fool to expect otherwise...heh.
Too bad that this is our money...
Another thing pointed out on the radio talk show I alluded to also pointed many lobbyist behind relaxed rules on what can be purchased are from junk, snack and soft drinks companies.
The Clerk may have been technically wrong, but this is not a firing offense.
I hope The Boss loses his business.
He could have corrected her and let her stay on but NO he fired her for having a conscience.
The Food Stamp program has little to do with helping the “poor” and everything to do with paying out big money to agricultural businesses. Just try to curtail any program or subsidy that benefits farmers or big ag businesses, and you will see so-called conservative lawmakers fight it tooth and nail. Most government programs benefit the wealthy and toss crumbs to the poor. The liquor and cigs are updated versions of bread and circuses.
“The liquor and cigs are updated versions of bread and circuses.” Top original wriiting of the day! Never thought of it quite that way. Well said, Pining_’ PS, I long for the FL Keys, finally moving back next month! Hope you get back to TX.
Hmmm, that is a new angle to me (agricultural payoff) when you are talking about the poor and their benefits.
I can of course see that it is a problem for all (taxes etc.A) but I’ve never heard of anyone specifically blaming the benefits to the agriculture business.
Okay, so please tell me how that works? Do you think that farmers should receive subsidies?
Really not sure where you stand here...are you for taxes reduced on all or just on farmers and ag businesses?
You sound like a Democrat with your rant though... Programs for the wealthy and problems for the poor farmers, ag businesses, and liquor sellers (just kidding there).
Just what are you advocating?
Glad you understood his rant. To me is just seemed to be another plus for sin taxes.
At least that sign says discount Cigarettes! /s
The store owner is obviously an asshole willing to leach off taxpayer dollars just like the freeloading jackwagon.
NH is a police state...don’t let them fool you.
Maybe he’s not a freeloader, maybe he just lost his job because of Obamacare’s mandates and hasn’t been able to find a new one yet because of those same mandates? There’s going to be a lot of people like that in coming months and years. How many thousands of pages of regulations are you willing to write to manage what such people can and cannot buy with public assistance?
80% of the federal “agriculture” department budget goes for food stanps
The food stamp program is a part of agriculture bill recently passed. Of course, that bill is filled with subsidies. The reason the bill passed was because no one is willing to cut farm subsidies to curtail the food stamp program.
Liberals applaud this Govt intervention.
But using food stamps to buy pastry, chips and cigarettes is a matter of personal choice and the heartless GOP better not cut it.
He wasn’t using food stamps, he was using TANF cash assistance. And nicotine is addictive, it’s not like he can quit cold turkey the moment he lost his job because some self-righteous busybody thinks they know better than he does how he should spend money.
I give a rats ass how he spends his money
I get some say in how he spends my money
When foodstamp curtailment comes up th big supermarket chains always support maintaining the current system.
You mean how he spends OUR money!!!
You do not have to do any of that - You simply go back 10 years to where there was an approved list of foodstuffs that one could get with food stamps.
Easily understood, known by everyone in the business
The silver lining in this story is that he won’t be getting EBT cards much longer. Keep smoking away, buddy.
Maybe not a ‘freeloaders’; just a ‘Free Stater’...
Or maybe just an a**hole.
Looks like that rock thrown onto a pack of dogs just hot a ‘Free Stater’...
Again, this is not about food stamps, it's about cash assistance through TANF. There's more to life than just food. It's already not possible to buy tobacco, alcohol, aspirin, vitamins, etc with SNAP funds on an EBT.
Now I am beginning to understand where the local children are picking up all that ‘colorful’ language from...oops...’hot’ should have been ‘hit’.
Woof.
When I moved to New Hampshire in November 2003, I met a fellow who'd moved here 20 years earlier for exactly the same reasons I did. The "Free State Project" has been going on for decades in New Hampshire, it just wasn't called that.
So I don't know why you're throwing out gratuitous insults like that based on your bigoted notions about so-called "Free Staters." In reality most Free Staters I know would probably have to think long and hard when choosing between starvation and accepting government welfare.
If you don’t gratuitously insult people you know nothing about, you’re much less likely to see colorful language.
Sidestepping the issue. If it were cash--HIS money--the clerk wouldn't have batted an eye. Financial assistance monies should not be spent on items such as alcohol and cigarettes. And I smoke.
Wow...a mind-reader, as well. To paraphrase another Freeper; it's a good thing that you edumacated Free Staters came along, or the people of Red Hampshire might have wandered off into the sea and drowned.
Of course, you fine folk know what is best for the people of Red Hampshire, so they should sit down and shut up. (Where have I heard THAT before?)
Double-wow...I haven’t even used any ‘colorful language’...guess I don’t qualify as a ‘Free Stater’. (Tip to parents: if you’d rather your children weren’t exposed to the ‘f’ word or ‘m’fer’ every few minutes; you might want to avoid New Hampshire).
Judging by the election of John Lynch, you earlier movers and natives needed all the reinforcements you could get.
Why so hostile? We moved here in order to help you protect New Hampshire's long tradition of limited government, after all.
Good luck. This 'half-native' couple is leaving in a few months.
Agree there...Lynch is a particularly vile son of a b*tch. 'Colorful language'; but well deserved in this case. Spit.
This story was up last week. She wasn't fired for "having a conscience." She was fired for belittling the customer (whether he deserved it or not), embarrassing him in front of the other customers. Stigmatizing welfare recipients is a cardinal no-no to the gummint.
(If I were the boss, I'd have given her a raise and a bonus, but I'm evil.)
The thing is, he and his family presumably, at the moment, have no other money besides Our Money thanks to Obamanomics and the fact that it’s illegal for any business to hire him for less than $7.25 an hour, even if it’s just to scrub a few toilets. And soon enough, it’ll also be illegal for any business to hire him without giving him health insurance.
Maybe he’d been nursing his last pack of smokes for the past month, and this pack was going to be his last for the next two months? Who knows. What if he was trying to buy Nicorette with the cash assistance instead?
I myself had absolutely zero income in February 2009 - zilch, nada, zip - and while I was blessed with supportive family, decent credit, and some money in the bank and we scraped by without needing to resort to SNAP or TANF, I can’t help but think “there but for the grace of God go I,” and although I wouldn’t be buying smokes, since I don’t, I can’t help but wonder what other things I might want buy that someone, somewhere, would find offensive.
You Tube
The internet
Rap/hip-hop "music"
Cable TV
High schools
Parking lots
Liberals
Washington DC
New York City
any place there are people.
I haven't been to New Hampshire, but I have heard the terms in every state I have been in.
I was talking about everyday conversation around the neighborhood...I only heard the ‘f’ word ONCE during my ten years in Tennessee. In Red Hampshire? DOZENS of times every day...
In some circles, the words are unacceptable, in others ordinary.
The terms have become far more common over the years, not just in music, film, and the written word, but in ordinary conversation.
After the '60s, I heard them a lot more, and from people who generally did not use the words before. Since rap and hip-hop the words have become all too commonplace and discourse has coarsened significantly.
You are absolutely right...
Oh, dear, I hope never to be mistaken for a liberal of any kind. No, I was merely pointing out that in almost every case you should follow the money. Farmers and big agricultural businesses have been our nation’s richest welfare recipients for decades. Government programs, from “free” cheese to food stamps to price supports to supplying an excess of food to the military, are really designed to keep farm states happy. Yes, there are lots of freeloaders in the welfare system who are more than happy to take what is offered, but I suspect that farm state politicians would scream just as loudly as welfare queens if the food stamp program were to be cut in any way.
The irony of it is, though, that instead of helping farmers, these programs actually hurt them. Thus, we have seen the decline of the family farm and the rise of big business farming (another form of crony capitalism).
All government programs distort the market and make all problems worse. Government is the problem, not the solution.
You might find this interesting: http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/our-economic-past-subsidies-hurt-recipients-too/
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