Archives for September 2013

Not while this is happening right here in our very own World’s Most Powerful Nation, right now:

DYERSBURG, Tenn. — As a self-described “true Southern man” — and reluctant recipient of food stamps — Dustin Rigsby, a struggling mechanic, hunts deer, doves and squirrels to help feed his family. He shops for grocery bargains, cooks budget-stretching stews and limits himself to one meal a day.

Tarnisha Adams, who left her job skinning hogs at a slaughterhouse when she became ill with cancer, gets $352 a month in food stamps for herself and three college-age sons. She buys discount meat and canned vegetables, cheaper than fresh. Like Mr. Rigsby, she eats once a day — “if I eat,” she said.

When Congress officially returns to Washington next week, the diets of families like the Rigsbys and the Adamses will be caught up in a debate over deficit reduction. Republicans, alarmed by a rise in food stamp enrollment, are pushing to revamp and scale down the program. Democrats are resisting the cuts.

No matter what Congress decides, benefits will be reduced in November, when a provision in the 2009 stimulus bill expires…

Surrounded by corn and soybean farms — including one owned by the local Republican congressman, Representative Stephen Fincher — Dyersburg, about 75 miles north of Memphis, provides an eye-opening view into Washington’s food stamp debate. Mr. Fincher, who was elected in 2010 on a Tea Party wave and collected nearly $3.5 million in farm subsidies from the government from 1999 to 2012, recently voted for a farm bill that omitted food stamps.

“The role of citizens, of Christianity, of humanity, is to take care of each other, not for Washington to steal from those in the country and give to others in the country,” Mr. Fincher, whose office did not respond to interview requests, said after his vote in May. In response to a Democrat who invoked the Bible during the food stamp debate in Congress, Mr. Fincher cited his own biblical phrase. “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat,” he said…

Now if Congress wanted to mandate a targeted strike on Rep. Fincher, I would be on board with that, because his removal would be a improvement even if it just meant one less One Percenter parasite on the farm-subsidy teat. But since that’s not happening, I’m glad my new Senator (and former Rep) had the balls to vote with his brain, not his… instincts:

… Markey said he cast his equivocal vote because he wants more time to analyze the situation. He said in an interview that the resolution was written too broadly and allowed for the potential that the United States would become far more entangled in the Syrian conflict.

“My one concern is that we not get on a slippery slope — that we understand all of the steps that this action could lead to,” he said. “It’s about the resolution being too broad. It’s about the need for more information. It’s about my worry about a greater involvement in Syria.”

Asked why he did not just oppose the authorization, as did some of his colleagues who had similar concerns, he said, “A no vote would have indicated I had sufficient information on which to base the decision. Which I did not.”…

It’s being said that the Administration has already “dismisse[d] U.N. inspections in Syria of alleged chemical weapons sites”, because why wait around for a bunch of peacenik scientists when our own “U.S. intelligence community” assures us that we’ve got as much [redacted] information as we need. This would not be a great precedent under any circumstances. But why are “we” so eager to discuss the exact parameters under which “we” will splurge a whole bunch of million-dollar targeted munitions, when so many of our fellow Americans are suffering because “we can’t afford” to care for our own?

Why are “we” discussing global send-a-message military expeditions on the other side of the world, instead of talking about the various (GOP-manufactured) Fiscal Crises right here at home?

We Can’t <em>Afford</em> to “Intervene” in SyriaPost + Comments (229)