Posted on 02/15/2018 11:15:25 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
In his big budget proposal Monday, President Trump offered a novel idea: Instead of giving needy people stamps they can redeem for food, why not just give them actual food?
As you might guess, liberals were enraged by the notion. How dare Mr. Trump try to take food stamps away from hungry people and give them — of all things — food?
Here’s how the liberal HuffPost saw it: “Facing a trillion-dollar deficit because of his just-passed tax cuts, President Donald Trump has an idea for how to get some of that money back: making poor people eat beans and rice.”
Oh, the humanity!
Currently, food stamps — known officially as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — are provided for some 42 million people, 80 percent of whom get food vouchers each month worth at least $90 per person. They can be redeemed at many stores for food, but the program is rife with abuse.
*SNIP*
Under the Trump proposal, those 80 percent of all SNAP recipients would get about half of their benefits in the form of a “USDA Foods package,” NPR reported. “The package was described in the budget as consisting of ‘shelf-stable milk, ready to eat cereals, pasta, peanut butter, beans and canned fruit and vegetables.’”
The program would be called “America’s Harvest Box.” Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue called it “a bold, innovative approach to providing nutritious food to people who need assistance feeding themselves and their families — and all of it is home-grown by American farmers and producers.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
A graduate high school in 1956 and our school had no such thing as lunches. The local restaurants however fed pretty well for a quarter. Hamburgers were dime, Stew was a dime and chili with no beans was 15¢, soda was 5¢.
If you have a decent job, sure.
Cheap meat means pork which was about $2.00 a pound for pork loin a couple months ago, now $4.00 a pound. Bacon up to $6.00 a pound.
I won't even go to the store anymore because when I see the price I just lay it back down. I was in the local Wal-Mart recently. A 1.5 pound bag of new potatoes $3.49 a bag. Cheapest potatoes are around 69¢. If you go with the Red or one of the Yellow varieties they can be near $2.00 a pound.
McDonalds on the other hand still offers a McChicken sandwich for a dollar and it is an adequate lunch. You may notice that their french fries costs more than a McDouble.
Come on, I’m in an expensive area and there is always a selection of chicken (e.g., usually boneless breasts), turkey, pork (such as chops and loins) and even beef (London broil, roast or maybe for another 50 cents hamburg) for $2 a pound. Ham, liver, or whole or partial chicken is $1 a pound, with any kind of a special. Even bacon is usually on sale down to $4/lb.
And you can make yourself a coleslaw salad served with chicken for $1—with a bigger serving than what you can get for $1 from McDonald’s. Healthier too.
The internet.
enter < mre for sale > in your favorite search engine.
Go shopping.
Yes, back in 1957 through 1963, we had an hour for lunch. The elementary schoolers had to stay on-campus and buy or bring a lunch from home. But middle and high schoolers were allowed to leave campus to get done whatever they needed to do. Middle schoolers usually walked, but many high schoolers had cars. Some had bicycles or motorcycles at home but seldom rode them to school anymore because of the stigma associated with them. Cars were cool and the dudes who drove them ruled our social lives! Incidentally, cool dudes also carried money and the rubber they bought from the quarter vending machine at the gas station in their billfolds.
Off campus destinations were nearby hamburger/hotdog/rootbeer walkups or drive-ins and neighborhood grocery stores. If you relied solely on your feet without benefit of transportation you had to choose wisely or run swiftly to avoid the lunchtime crowd buildup caused by the early arrivals at your destination.
We could purchase the items you mentioned for similar prices at these places. The grocery stores also carried school supplies and other items if we were out of theme paper, pens, gum and candy, BC powder, firecrackers (seasonal), comic books, under the counter tobacco products and men’s magazines, etc. I recall the school didn’t supply me with anything beyond school books and a desk back then. The rest was up to me and my parents.
You could buy a lot for under 25 cents. Most of us from blue collar families worked around the house for allowance money or in the neighborhood for extra money. Some were lucky to have paper routes if they had a bicycle or motorcycle to deliver the papers. So we often had more than 25 cents we could spend wisely or spurge without parental oversight.
Many times I brought my lunch from home and only purchased a cold drink or candy bar from one of the above. Other times a Moon Pie and a cold RC Cola from the grocery store was all I needed. Others bought a package of peanuts and a Coke to pour the peanuts in. Lunch for ten cents, what could be cheaper.
Anyway that was then...
Ah, the old peanuts in the coke (or pepsi) bottle trick. Remember it well.
When sanity ruled there were three classes before lunch and three after lunch. With an hour off for lunch you day matched closely with a working parent day, Classes started at 9:00 and ended at 4:00. No air conditioning in those days made summers unpleasant enough without starting at 6:00 and ending at 5:00 like some schools today. Busing schedules make a lot of things untenable not like my school where one bus handle it all.
Sure bacon can be had for $4.00 a pound but try eating it. Hamburger is $3.99 where I live and it isn't a big town. You may find some 70-30 cheap pre frozen stuff for $3.00 but hamburger is not cheap. I eat the cheaper cuts cooked in my instapot but edible steak is 12-14 dollars a pound. I use a Sous Vide cooker to tenderize cheaper cuts.
We have all the major stores including Costco within 30 miles. Chicken is not real meat and I grow my own eggs.
Your foodie snootiness really doesn’t belong in a discussion of food costs for the indigent.
Yes! I remember the school year started after Labor Day and ended sometime in May. We had three whole months vacation away from school and homework assignments to rest our weary minds.
But our parents had to contend with us being around the house and on a new daily schedule during this time. For some of us, it meant we could get a real job and make some quick money to buy that car or save for whatever else our hearts desired. Others got invitations to spend and experience a week with grandparents, relatives, or others in diverse places. It broadened their horizons they said. (It sure did for me, a week with grannie and I was glad to be back home.)
Never rode a school bus because I lived within the city limits where the school was situated. Students within the district but outside the city limits got bussed to school. I don’t even know if they were charged a fee for this service. All I remember is I walked or biked until I bought my first car. I still remember the exact number of minutes it took me to get to school in time for the first bell.
And I remember a certain school bus route loaded with students from the rural dairy farms always arrived barely in time for the first bell. The bus driver must have been on a tight schedule because those students (having milked, fed the cows, and finished other chores at the dairy farms) were stilled dressed in their bib overalls and boots splattered with wet cowsh*t and other assorted stains when they arrived at school. I still remember the fragrance of cowsh*t, chewing tobacco, and cheap aftershave in the morning air as I watched them exit the bus and scatter out to the vocational arts buildings to spit and whittle the day away. The scene looked like the aftermath of a 4th of July horse parade. I have no knowledge of who cleaned up the mess each day. I hope they cared enough to issue the poor bus driver a shovel, broom, and industrial strength deodorizer to cope with any emergencies though. I have no knowledge of when and how they got back home since some had afternoon jobs with employers in the community.
Anyway, I think our public schools have lost focus. They do not strive to teach the three basic fundamentals and education we received during this time. They tend to bend to political pressure and instead focus on teaching political correctness in areas outside their educational bounds. I could name a few instances being taught today, but I think you know what I mean. I was never questioned about my gender, morals, or religious beliefs by my teachers as are the students of today. Both school administrators and parents worked together to concentrate on the educational needs of the students before releasing them to into our society. Conflicting schedules have always been one of the issues. Today, graduating (releasing) failing and illiterate students does not seem to be an important issue anymore. Retention is barely uttered within the halls of our public schools and grading is next to go because all students have been taught they are all equal.
I didn't assume a smily face after snooty so... What, a sous vide makes me snooty? Buy one on eBay for 69 bucks makes cheap meat edible. Instapot for 79 bucks cooks beans in 30 minutes longer if you like a gravy consistent soup in the beans.
Schools are so big if they failed everyone that was a failure they would have to build a new school every year to hold them. That isn't going to change because there is no place to put them and they don't leave and go to work anymore. No major college today graduates students in 4 years, student loans allows them to make a career out of attending.
No—sniffling at “cheap” hamburg and saying a steak needs to cost $14-16 a pound to be edible is snooty. Though yeah, sous vide isn’t really the top priority for people claiming not to have enough money to buy their own food.
Right on! As long as they can get a student loan, they seem to care less about getting a degree in one of the STEM fields that is in demand, pays good wages, and offers career advancement.
Instead. they choose to pursue degrees in fields where there is no demand. As a result, they can barely earn back the cost of the loans, much less the interest they have accrued on their loans.
When I graduated from high school I had three choices. Go into the military, go to work for the railroad shops (everybody in the family and their relatives worked there), or go to college and earn a degree.
I tried and failed at all three. In order to survive, I joined a rock band as the lead vocalist and a backup musician. It didn't pay much but it enabled me to survive while I got my act (no pun) together. I decided to go back to college and earn a science degree in Math/Physics while supporting myself as a musician. With much determination (failure, poverty, and starvation are great motivators) and a little help from mom and dad during the shortfall financial periods, I achieved my goal.
These people are not pushing their envelopes to attain sometime worthwhile. Instead they are killing time and wasting their money waiting for a ship that will never come in. Soon they will be whining because they have to pay back the money they borrowed and can't land a good job with the degree they have chosen. Sucks to be them!
As taxpayer I don't like to see the colleges and universities getting rich off my federal dollars by scamming the dumber-than-dumb students into acquiring more useless education. Same for the fly-by-night vocational schools who want students to take out a loan to learn something an apprenticeship with a good company will teach them for free.
I started college when I was 17 finished when I was 45. There are some stories in between those years but mostly the ending is better. Married to the same woman for 44 years and I am 79 now.
See my post #129. It could create a new industry, provided it is overseen by a bi-partisan entity and contracts are not given for favors. Probably asking too much there, knowing how quickly Fegov programs become corrupted and bloated. Still, with transparency and an Inspector General to oversee, it could be doable.
Yes, I'd rather the Fedgov not be involved, but there is little chance of going back to Charities and Churches providing for the truly needy.
Congratulations on staying the course and finishing college. I also started college at 17 (1963) and barely graduated in (1967). I was lucky to have a night job (band musician) working mostly on the weekends with various bands over those years. I had ample time to study at night and between classes during the week.
Congratulations on being married to the same woman 44 years. I also will be married 44 years to the same woman next June. I am in my early 70s and a little younger than you.
College can be an experience (good and bad). Everyone should give it a try if they think it would be beneficial to them (of course providing they have the time and money to invest). Just going to college without any real goals is a waste of resources that could be better utilized elsewhere. Witness the current snowflake generation bitching about the student loans they will have to pay back and the useless degrees that have no value to them in todays economic marketplace.
Unfortunately, many of this current generation will spend the rest of their lives trying to overcome all the resources they have wasted. They failed to do their homework to see what was happening in the real world. If they had taken the time, they would have seen that a college degree was not the ticket to success as it was to many of the previous generations. Now they are stuck in the basement of their parents home waiting to inherit whatever their parents leave behind.
If they have parents.
The fact that we had parents and so did most everyone else, there was always family so little begging went on.
I was born in 1938 in North Eastern Oklahoma, no sewers or paved roads or trash collection, barely had electricity running at 25 cycles. Grand Dad cooked on wood stove heated with wood as well, no such thing as a fan other than the ones he made from cereal boxes and catalpa sticks. We could get factory made fans when there was a funeral. God I miss those days.
Yes, that was then and we had families to fall back on. Snowflakes cannot image what we have seen, but like you, I think God and family for leading me through it.
I wasn’t born with privileges and comforts like many of the snowflakes we see today. What little we had was all we had. It was the worst of times, it was the best of times. We decided and made the best of it. We did alright.
I didn’t even think of us as poor and deprived of very much until I reached my teen years. That’s when I learned mom and dad weren’t financially able to give me a new car or the finer things of life like many of my friend’s parents. That’s when I accepted the fact I would have to earn and learn more if I wanted these things.
I know all about living as you did. I would like to add the first 6 years of my life I spent in a two room shotgun house near the edge of town on the wrong side of the tracks. One room served as a kitchen/dining room and the other as bedroom/living room. We had a single faucet in the kitchen for water, a wooden icebox for refrigeration, an old gas cook stove for cooking, and a dining table with two old rickety chairs. In the living room was an second hand mismatched bedroom suite and and a single light bulb fixture mounted on the ceiling complete with a string hanging from for us to find in the dark to turn it on. If we had guests we moved the chairs around and entertained them in either room. Outside we had two outhouses, a garden, and a chicken pen.
As for baths, we carried unheated and heated water outside to a galvanized bathtub which hung on the back porch. There we would take our bathes as needed. When I was a baby mom would bathe me in the kitchen sink.
For our entertainment we had an old second hand radio sitting on top of the clothes bureau that grand paw had given mom and dad after they were first married. I spent many pleasurable hours tuning and listening to that radio.
The kitchen stove provided all the heat in the house. We turned off the heat (to save money and prevent CO2 poisoning) and slept under blankets at night if it was cold. During summer we sometimes moved the mattress and slept on the back porch under sheets if it was too hot in the house.
As I mentioned earlier, we lived on the wrong side of the tracks. Some of our neighbors would try to enter on to the property and steal whatever from the house, garden, or chicken pen. All we had for protection was a hand gun loaded with some ammo that was probably older than dad and a club (baseball bat) we kept under the bed. Mom kept a kitchen knife handy in various places in case the gun failed to fire. Incidentally, dad would test the gun every 4th of July if it hadn’t been fired recently in the course of discouraging thieves. Gunfire in our neighborhood was normal back them. After one shot into the darkness of the night, dogs quit barking, birds quit singing, people turned off their radios, and all you could hear was the silence of the night air. If one shot didn’t do it, a second or third usually did.
If there is a snowflake out there reading this, then they need to ask themselves if they could ever live like this realizing this is where I came from and where they are headed if they sit around waiting for the government to provide.
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