Posted on 08/01/2013 11:58:40 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Well, I am NOT hearing any more of those commercials on the radio advising people to apply for food stamps because “everyone is doing it”. However, my blood boils when I am standing behind a well-dressed person or someone at least clearly not in rags in a grocery store checkout line and see them popping out their EBT card to buy all kinds of food I’d never buy, either because it’s too expensive or because it’s junk food. They certainly don’t look like they need food stamps. And there’s not a shred of embarrassment on their faces. They just smile and take away their multiple bags of food. Right out to their SUV or BMW.
Yeah, I know about those. Was just wondering what the previous poster was seeing when they identified a “food stamp” transaction. Even use of the EBT card in itself doesn’t guarantee a SNAP transaction because the funds could be coming out of the TANF side.
I don't doubt that at all and didn't dispute it. All classes of people visit relatives.
What I am questioning is whether a cut in SNAP benefits will lead to a noticeable reduction in luxury vacations, or conversely, whether the present benefits are enabling luxury vacations.
How about we make food stamps only good for the purchase of rice and beans?
One can live a very healthy live on rice and beans.
No? Then you don’t give a crap about hunger, only taking from the haves to give to the have-nots.
It would have been better if the benefits were limited to basic foods from the beginning.
However, you will find the main resistance to any change to come from huge multinational and vertically integrated food producers and distributors, and retail chains, who would lose HUGE amounts of revenue if food types were restricted.
Going back to the basics simply won’t happen short of a world war or something.
Gosh at $200/person per month that can visit their relatives once a month. How often do they need to see them???
If they cannot afford food then why are they flying back and forth to Puerto Rico??? After all they have Obamaphones for visiting relatives.
They could supplement with shredded poultry downstream of Baraq’s wind turbines.
The family to which I referenced gets $200 total benefits/month or $50/person. They do have a Lifeline landline but no taxpayer-financed cell phones. They have never taken a trip out of the country.
Yeah, and every time I get behind one it seems I have to wait twice-—once while the guy pays for his bean sprouts and canned shrimp with stamps, zip cards or whatever——and then again when he pays for the smokes, likker, porn magz, and all the rest of the non-SNAP stuff with a wad of fifty dollar bills. These might be the ones saving up for the Bajama cruise?
Sure, let’s cut those too! Good idea! Cut all three at once.
Actually the cardprevents abuse because tbe food is coded as to hot or coldand other non food items. other than the occasional gas station acting illegally its helped a lot.
If that’s the case then they need their foodstamps and should get them bumped up.
Truthfully, the very best the Republicans can do is to turn food stamps into block grants, with incentives to include local agricultural surplus along with the stamps.
To see why this is the best solution, you have to go back several steps.
To start with, American farmers have been very over-productive since at least the 1920s. There has to be some controls on the market, or it will seriously hurt a lot of farmers *and* consumers.
Ironically, having a bumper crop can hurt farmers worse than having a scant crop.
But when government both limits production and buys up the surplus, warehouse storage is ridiculously expensive. So if you can get rid of the surplus by giving it away, more the better.
Another irony is that people who buy their own food prefer processed food, so if you give away a lot of produce, it doesn’t dramatically hurt the price of food.
But if states are given block grants for food stamps per capita, with them controlling what can be purchased, and throwing in bonuses of surplus food made in their state, then the poor actually get more and better food, at less cost, farmers have less pressure on them from surplus, and it costs taxpayers a lot less.
Looks like the teachers and idle, local, federally funded regulatory employees are afraid of layoffs and want more funding. They’ll run out of food stamp funding pretty fast, though ($40 billion being nearly half of it), and go after the pensioners with government incomes very soon.
I know it won’t happen, but anyone who suggests food stamps should only be good for rice and beans would simultaneously neuter every Democrat argument. They could also argue it would lower the obesity rate.
Thought I agree this is a good first step, IMHO, the rest of your post is dog squeeze (no offense). ALA, the Fed gov’t, having no authority to institute these programs in the FIRST place, does not NEED the States telling them to but out and kill the programs...they should be TOAST already!
Sorry, pet peeve of mine where ‘our side’ starts the discussion off on their rules.
No. I EXPECT them to do the right thing AND be able to tell the rest of the American people WHY.
They SHOULD be hammering O’s $1T+ ‘stimulus’ that hasn’t created any jobs to lower the unemployment figures; more people sign-up for ‘disability’ that CAN work, than new jobs are created; that businesses, because of O’Care (there’s $1T+ right there), etc.
Point.by.point...But I know I’m spitting into the wind w/ that wish-list.
The loans are based on income from employment, not government programs. If you don’t believe me ask a used car salesman. So I’m having trouble following your implication that the taxpayer is paying for these vehicles.
Worked enough hours in the public health dept. to know they are illegal, NOT paying any taxes either. They work under the table, live two to three families to a house pool the welfare checks and share the vehicles. If you can’t see this happening, you are blind.
Who crosses the border and in less than a few years amasses enough wealth to purchase a luxury vehicle? Explain that to me.
There was recently an article about people in larger cities using food purchased with their food stamps and sending large barrels of food back to relatives in countries like Cuba, Haiti, Mexico and many others.
I would say after reading those articles that maybe food stamps need to be cut. Nothing to do with Republicans making a bad decision. I think taxpayers are fed up with this crap.
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