This Friday, 48 million people – including 21 million children – will see their food stamp benefits reduced. http://t.co/prq7ZXud2c
— BillMoyers.com (@BillMoyersHQ) October 29, 2013
.
From Moyers’ link:
… Tianna Gaines-Turner recently described the impact of cuts like these in written testimony she submitted to Congressman Paul Ryan’s War on Poverty hearing: “Cutting a person’s benefits by $10, or $15, or $20 might not seem like a lot to legislators, but it would cut meals out completely for families like mine.”
Families like hers are families with two working parents earning low wages while trying to support three children. Ms. Gaines-Turner is employed by a childcare provider and her husband works the deli counter at a grocery store.
The SNAP cuts come at a time when 49 million people — about 14.5 percent of all US households — are food insecure. That means they don’t have enough money to meet their basic food needs, and don’t necessarily know where their next meal is coming from. The Institute of Medicine already demonstrated the inadequacies of the SNAP allotment for hungry families even before this cut…
… Food stamps lifted a record 4 million people above the poverty line in 2012, but benefits will be cut on Friday and both the House and Senate are deliberating further cuts in Farm Bill negotiations…
Josh Eidelson, at Salon:
Food stamp recipients face a massive benefit cut set to kick in when stimulus funds expire Friday. The nationwide cut “is equivalent to about 16 meals a month for a family of three,” according to a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis using the USDA’s “Thrifty Food Plan.” CBPP called the roughly $5 billion annual cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program “unprecedented” in “depth and breadth.”
“If you look across the world, riots always begin typically the same way: when people cannot afford to eat food,” Margarette Purvis, the president and CEO of the Food Bank for New York City, told Salon Monday. Purvis said that the looming cut would mean about 76 million meals “that will no longer be on the plates of the poorest families” in NYC alone – a figure that outstrips the total number of meals distributed each year by the Food Bank for New York City, the largest food bank in the country. “There will be an immediate impact,” she said.
“The fact that they’re going to lose what’s basically an entire week’s worth food” each month, said Purvis, “it’s pretty daunting.” She told Salon that while policymakers “are attempting to punish people for being poor,” and “people are comforted by believing that they know that a person has to have done something wrong in order to be poor,” in reality, “I can tell you that more and more folks have more than one job and are still needing help.” (As I reported last week, audio recorded by a McDonald’s worker-activist showed a counselor on an employee hotline encouraging her to sign up for food stamps because it “takes a lot of the pressure off how much money you spend on groceries.”) Purvis added that cutting food stamps was “not even good business sense,” because each dollar of food stamps infuses over $1.70 of spending into the economy….
@NickKristof Pity she's not a middle-class person facing a $90 a month increase in health plan premiums. Maybe CBS would do a story on her.
— billmonster (@billmon1) October 30, 2013
C.V. Danes
George Orwell couldn’t have come up with a better label than this.
It’s one thing for a country as small as Syria to have to endure food riots when it looses a huge chunk of it food-growing capacity. It is quite another for a rich country like the US to impose food insecurity by choice.
People like Paul Ryan are just sick all the way to their souls.
BGK
Whether or not you’re a believer, I believe that ever-troublesome Matthew is most apropos:
Funny how the literalists never seem to take Matthew…literally.
Karen in GA
@C.V. Danes:
Congressman Paul Ryan’s War on Poverty hearing
George Orwell couldn’t have come up with a better label than this.
No, it’s pretty straightforward, when you know which side he’s fighting for.
(Can’t blockquote on my work computer for some reason.)
Face
But here I thought kids want rice and ramen noodles for every meal.
I’ve said this for years….people will NOT willingly starve to death. If you dont give them legal means to acquire food, they’ll steal it. It behooves the gov’t, for the sake of social stability and reduced crime, to supply basic necessities to the poorest, lest they riot, rampage, and pillage for what they need.
Shit’s gunna get real real soon.
aimai
I just signed a ballot initiative to raise the minimum wage in my state. It is obscene that a family with two working parents should be reduced to needing foodstamps. Make work pay and stop subsidizing corporations and businesses that won’t pay a living wage. Its not possible for people to work enough extra hours to earn the money they need when they are already stretched to the bone and working flat out. The Republican’s fake “tough love” attitude towards food stamp beneficiaries needs to be combatted by the Dems with a real push to raise the minimum wage and tie CEO pay to the lowest pay offered the lowest workers. No increase in CEO pay or remuneration without a raise in pay for the workers (ok, I’m just spitballing here). We have to stop playing defense and go on offense.
Ash Can
I’m sure Ryan enjoyed reading her testimony. I mean, really, really enjoyed it.
Linda Featheringill
I once was in a position where I had to steal food to feed my child. Not a happy place.
What are these people going to do?
Rob in CT
Huh, I thought the Stimulus already expired and this had to do with the Sequester. Guess I was wrong.
Quick back of the napkin math… looks like about a 6.5% cut. Ouch. Even putting aside the moral/emotional response, it strikes me as particularly dumb economically. There’s austerity and there’s austerity, ya know? SNAP spending has to be among the most stimulative spending/least wasteful options the government has. That money’s gonna get spent, immediately. Gah.
PurpleGirl
Congressman Ryan is supposedly an observant Roman Catholic. I would very much like it if his parish priest would refuse him communion and absolution of sins in confession. So many want priests to do that over abortion, I’d like it done over social justice issues.
raven
@Rob in CT: Napkins have fronts and backs?
C.V. Danes
@Karen in GA:
Perhaps it should be “Congressman Paul Ryan’s War on those in Poverty” hearing :-)
Roger Moore
@C.V. Danes:
They really mean “War on Poor People”. Either that, or their victory plan is to let the poor people starve to death, after which there will be no more poverty.
C.V. Danes
@Linda Featheringill:
They’re going to do what you did: steal food to feed their children. And a good chunk of them will wind up in jail because of it. Because that seems to be the preferred method of Paul Ryan and his ilk.for guaranteeing three squares a day.
BGK
@raven:
Printed ones do. It would seem the ones set on the Republican Kool Kids tables in the House cafeteria read “f*ck the poor!”
GregB
The GOP keeps kicking their base in the teeth and they keep saying ‘thank you sir may I have another’.
70% of the counties with the fastest growth in food stamp use voted for Mitt Romney.
Belafon
@BGK: Today’s GOP:
Woodrowfan
I know when i face judgement that I’ll have my own sins to answer for, but at least “taking food from poor children” won’t be one of them. Good God these people are evil…
aimai
@C.V. Danes: Are there no workhouses?
Punchy
@Rob in CT: We cannot feed the poor because the Navy requires their new stealth warships. Because nobody has satellites and airplanes to see that a warship is actually a warship.
To deflect even 1% of the DoD budget to feed and clothe the poor would leave us facing terrorists at every stoplight. Especially stoplights in Lamoni, IA. Do you think Iowans want silo-bombers and Islamic cattle rustlers in their town? Hence the need for Navy warships to patrol the Missouri River.
rikyrah
These are some evil ass muthafuckas
BGK
@PurpleGirl:
The Jesuits would beg to differ.
I imagine we might be hearing from that meddlesome priest Francesco in Rome any time now.
Ocotillo
I don’t know how you convince a lot of low information people out there that there are people in need out there. Word of mouth is a powerful thing for folks who do not keep up with the political back and forth like most of us do.
For example, trying to defend SNAP to family member, one who has worked as a cashier at a grocery store cites examples of people using food stamps to buy decorated cakes from the store bakery rather than buying a mix and canned frosting to make one for less money, buying crab legs, buying name branded canned goods as opposed to private label.
I know this is a different version of the “strapping young bucks” that Saint Ronnie used to speak of but it carries weight in the small setting of family members sitting around talking.
In our family, we do live beneath our means. We make a good living but by eating private label items, the cheap (even the discounted because it’s near expiration) meat, etc…. we are able to save over half of our monthly net income. We are fortunate in that we are able to have a good life and save our “golden years” but my family lives like this and they just don’t buy into others needing extra to make ends meet.
Cognitively, I get it but am not able to convince my folks……….
Comrade Dread
@Face: But if we throw them in jail, our friends running the private prisons will make money and we’ll be removing potential voters from future elections. Win-win!
@BGK: Ah, but Supply-side Jesus says that if we give more money to rich men, they’ll have more means with which to give to the poor. Which they’ll get around to doing… someday… when they have more money…
Belafon
@Ocotillo: I found that when I didn’t have a whole lot of money – while I was in the Navy – I tended to want something special, like an occasional steak (I don’t do crab legs), more often than I do now that I can afford them regularly. It’s the need for something, anything, that says “I’m not really THAT poor” that occasionally leads to those things.
As for the cake, sometimes there are only 24 hours in a day.
BGK
@Comrade Dread:
I always lose the thread on which Jesus is trending. I guess I’m hopelessly Old School by following The Jesus who delivered the kicking of ass to the moneychangers. Then again, that story was in Matthew and I guess he’s way too DFH.
FlipYrWhig
@Ocotillo:
They might not have an oven, or mixing bowls, or a reliable refrigerator. Begrudging a poor person a _grocery store birthday cake_ is particularly spiteful and mean-spirited.
Rob in CT
@Punchy:
It’s partly the new warships (or, if we really want to work ourselves up, we could talk about the F-35) and partly a refusal to tax affluent people to pay for both.
I’ve never been poor, and my admittedly semi-elitist view has always been that when I pay taxes to pay for food stamps/welfare/medicaid/disability/etc that I’m buying something worthwhile with my money. A mixture of “be decent to the poor” and “make provision for them, lest they come for you in desperation.” This was basically the old liberal New England Republican way of looking at things. Granted, I’ve moved leftward as I’ve grown up, but that logic still holds (more than ever!).
Pennywise, pound foolish.
Comrade Dread
@BGK: Ah, but you forget that Matthew was a tax collector, fergawdssake. You can’t trust any of those government types.
schrodinger's cat
They want to bring back the Victorian era, with its child labor, smog and debtors prisons.
Emma
@Ocotillo: Maybe the cake was a one-a-year special treat for a child and they live exactly as your family does the rest of the year. Or maybe, please excuse me when I say this as I think your heart is in the right place and you sound like you love your family, some of them are mean-spirited in that even their love for their child wouldn’t extend to a treat a year? Or to comprehending why a parent would want to do that?
Roger Moore
@BGK:
Pshaw! What does he know about being a good Catholic? Everyone knows that Ayn Rand is the best resource on strict adherence to Catholic principles.
beth
@FlipYrWhig: I’ve got a disabled relative on food stamps and when I visited with my kids, she’d be sure to buy some treats for them to have. I always asked her not to do it but it was important to her dignity that the kids didn’t think of their aunt as a poor person with no food to eat. I’d leave money for her because I knew she’d go without for a day or two after we left. She also would splurge once a year on her anniversary so she and her husband could have a nice filet mignon dinner. Anyone standing behind her on those days at the supermarket might be inclined to think she blows all her money on expensive meats and bakery goods. A little empathy goes a long way.
ellie
Thank you for the reminder. I just gave money to our local food bank. The fact that people go hungry in this country makes me very, very angry. It is the one issue that makes me stabby.
MomSense
@Ocotillo:
And maybe that child never had snacks, wore clothes that signaled to the other kids he/she is poor, and didn’t get a present, and the parent was desperate to just provide one normal thing.
Kay
@aimai:
Yay! Raise the wage initiatives are great all by themselves because they matter to a group of people who get zero press and no politician attention. When “we” (well unions, actually) did it in Ohio I felt as if we were trying to reach this whole group of people who tune out because none of this stuff seems relevant to them. We’re never going to reach them with round tables on the earned income tax credit. It should be wages, wages, wages.
I think Paul Ryan and Co want to keep this on the level of The Helpless Poor-pity, in other words. Talking about THEIR WORK and what they make is the best remedy for that.
jonas
@BGK: Funny how the literalists never seem to take Matthew…literally.
Well, their response is that this applies to individuals, not the state. Jesus envisioned a welfare system where poor people would have to come beg at a church to feed and clothe their kids. But then they’ll turn right around and demand that the state enforce their morality in just about every other area, particularly women’s pelvises, claiming that the Bible demands the state act according to Christian principles.
Furthermore, if you look at Acts, the people who actually knew and spoke with Jesus of Nazareth were under the impression that he wanted them to eschew private property and hold all things in common. Silly early Christians — Jesus clearly wanted them to be non-tax paying plutocrats, as illustrated in the parable where the beggar Lazarus ends up in hell, wishing he had been harder working like the rich guy who goes to heaven. At least I’m pretty sure that’s what the story says. Might have to double check on that.
daveNYC
@FlipYrWhig: They might not have an oven, or mixing bowls, or a reliable refrigerator. Begrudging a poor person
a _grocery store birthday cake_because they’re not obviously suffering enough is particularly spiteful and mean-spirited.It’s more like that I think.
Rob in CT
Dumb, short-sighted ideas rooted in meanness make me furious. It’s the combo, see. Not just the dumb, not just the evil… both. Gah.
When people go on about all the good fer nuthin’ poors, I wonder… what do they think those people will go and do if cut off? Seriously. They don’t just helpfully disappear, ffs. Then the wingers will whine about having to step over bumbs in the street, or cower in fear of the urban youths and such.
Those who want to go back to the 19th century (or early 20th, if they’re relatively progressive reactionary sociopaths – yes, yes, let it go, I’m rolling) always seem to forget about the violent strikes/strikebreaking, all the death and injury from(preventable) workplace accidents, and the threat of revolution. Minor details, I guess.
beth
@ellie:On Anderson Cooper the other night, Dr. Drew said “I’ve heard we have an obesity problem in this country but I’ve also heard people claim that some people are hungry. Which is it?” with a big laugh like it’s all a big fucking joke. The fact that everyone else sitting around that table (I’m looking at you, Anderson, Andrew Sullivan, Ana Navarro, Charles Blow and Frank Bruni) didn’t immediately call him an asshole says a lot about why we have both those problems in this country.
aimai
@Ocotillo: I just ask people “If you think it was fraud why didn’t you report it?” Then when they say it wasn’t their business or that it wasn’t fraud it was just folly just ask them how they know that the person wasn’t buying the cake for a dying child*, or whether the crab legs story isn’t actually an urban legend they are just repeating for effect.
The thing is that at a certain point you have to confront people about their prejudices and their willingness to believe absolute bullshit because it suits them. Does your family really think they are the only people “living beneath their means?” Do they not get that in order to qualify for foodstamps you basically have almost no means in the first place? You are already scraping the bottom of the barrell and going without food or clothing? That the amounts we are talking about are derisory?
*The argument that parents are wasteful and stupid and prefer a storebought cake to making theit on is merely ungenerous and rude. I’d take that on directly. I’d say “You know, most people on food stamps are holding down one or two full time jobs that simply don’t pay enough. How do you know she has the time to cook the cake? How do you know she even has a stove–people living in motel rooms or out of their car often don’t. How do you know this isnt’ the only thing that child is getting? How do you know she isn’t trying to keep up appearances in front of the other children in the child’s class? How do you know she isn’t accepting a hand from other people in the family to cover the rest of her food expenses and this is a choice her family has made to make her child feel special. And who the fuck are you to judge?
**The implication of the crab leg story is, for example, that the person blows the entirety of their food stamp budget on something extravagant and that therefore they must have a hidden means of income which enable them to eat the rest of the month. That would be fraud at a high level. It should be reported. It obviously has nothing to do with normal uses of foodstamps.
Cervantes
@beth: Thanks for the anecdote. I am surprised only by the fact that you can bear to watch these degenerates, ever.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@FlipYrWhig:
That’s a pre-requisite to being a modern day Republican. Feature, not a bug.
Matt McIrvin
@Ocotillo: My great-aunt just passed on some Facebook thing about how they should introduce drug testing for welfare recipients in all 50 states. I explained how the Florida program wasted more money than it saved; I hope I was sufficiently gentle about it.
NorthLeft12
I am sure that this shortfall will quickly be made up by the corporations, farmers, and richsters who will be shortly be benefitting from the passage of the farm bill and the further Food Stamp cuts.
Compassionate conservatives and all that, right?
aimai
Oh, I see that everyone else got [jeebus I’m having trouble with their/there today] got there, there, there, faster than me. Thats what I get for being so prolix.
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
Supermarket bakery cakes are pretty cheap. I say this as someone who is (tragically) sometimes asked to bring baked goods. I buy them. My friend Ann makes wonderful cakes. I think hers cost more. I think one has to buy a whole set of…things to decorate a cake. I bet you’d have to do it on a regular basis for it to make sense investment-wise :)
Chyron HR
@Ocotillo:
Your family sounds tough, but I’m sure if we ground them up the poor would be happy to have the meat.
Matt McIrvin
@jonas: It’s the rotten system Brad DeLong’s old friend was talking about back in the 1990s:
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/10/maeve-reston-reports-from-hugo-oklahom-obamacare-meets-extra-resistance-the-view-from-the-roasterie-xii-october-16-2013.html
Now, of course, it’s not Texas Republicans, it’s the new normal.
MomSense
@Kay:
I’ve noticed lately that there are new ads running about “get to know the real Walmart” with employees talking about how they receive good pay and benefits. Does this mean they are a tiny bit nervous?
aimai
@Kay: Yes, I was astounded by how inexpensive the cakes and little tarts at my (extremely expensive) whole foods are. It takes more than an hour and quite a few tools, as you say, to make a baked good (plus you generally have to use bulk supplies that not everyone has or can maintain) but you can buy a better product from a commercial bakery for a little over your hourly minimum wage cost.
I’m a good cook and could cook well and cheaply on a budget but in general when people talk about doing that seriously it turns out they aren’t counting all the staples and the time needed to do it right. The poor in this country aren’t generally eating nothing but lentils and rice but they are eating the foods that they can get in their neighborhoods from understocked grocery stores at cheap prices. Thats precisely why they don’t spend a ton of money on calorie low/high value fruits and vegetables when they can save money by eating an approximation of a higher status high protein/fat/carb diet.
jonas
@MomSense: I recall a couple of years ago some utter shitstain of a state legislator from Michigan or somewhere introduced a bill that would require kids in the state foster system to only buy second-hand clothes. He claimed that’s what he got when he was growing up, so why should taxpayers foot the bill for these kids to wear fancy-schmancy stuff from Target or JCPenny just because their mom was a meth-head and now they’re in a home? He withdrew it of course after it caused a public outcry.
I would have paid money for the privilege of spitting in this guy’s face. It boggles the mind to think that there are actually people out there who think what poor people really need is to be taken down a peg.
Bob2
‘Please, sir, I want some more.’
The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupified astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralysed with wonder; the boys with fear.
‘What!’ said the master at length, in a faint voice.
‘Please, sir,’ replied Oliver, ‘I want some more.’
The master aimed a blow at Oliver’s head with the ladle; pinioned him in his arm; and shrieked aloud for the beadle.
The board were sitting in solemn conclave, when Mr. Bumble rushed into the room in great excitement, and addressing the gentleman in the high chair, said,
‘Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! Oliver Twist has asked for more!’
There was a general start. Horror was depicted on every countenance.
‘For MORE!’ said Mr. Limbkins. ‘Compose yourself, Bumble, and answer me distinctly. Do I understand that he asked for more, after he had eaten the supper allotted by the dietary?’
‘He did, sir,’ replied Bumble.
‘That boy will be hung,’ said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. ‘I know that boy will be hung.’
ericblair
I heard one economist call austerity economics Aztec economics. You stood at the top of your tower and ripped the hearts out of the less powerful until the merciless gods are appeased and the harvest is bountiful again.
I gave more money to Feeding America, which seems to be a good charity. They’re going to need it.
Cervantes
@Kay: Supermarket bakery cakes are pretty cheap.
In our area, most of the up-market custom-cake bakeries are not allergen-free, nor are most of the mixes one sees in the grocery store. In fact, the only reliable source of ready-made allergen-free (specifically, nut-free) cakes in our area is the local down-market supermarket (inframarket?).
Anyway, I can hardly believe the bastards have us racking our brains thinking up excuses for poor people who buy cakes for their kids. Almost makes me want to believe in Hell, eternal damnation, etc.
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: So true, I mean who but dedicated bakers have pastry bags with different nozzles that one would need to bake and frost a cake that would look as good as the one in the grocery store case.
Roger Moore
@FlipYrWhig:
Or they might be working several minimum wage jobs to try to make ends meet and not have time. It all gets down to the same thing: judging people based on the most superficial impressions. I think that Jesus fellow had something to say about judging other people, also, too.
schrodinger's cat
As long as we have people voting against their own interests, these Republican office holders will not pay the price that they should.
RSA
@C.V. Danes:
Along similar lines, Ryan believes that rather than move toward “soc1alism”, it’s better to [let poor children] starve.
Karen in GA
@Ocotillo: I hope you missed my long-winded whine yesterday about how I’ve basically cut off my family. I just can’t deal with mean-spirited ignorance anymore. You’re stronger than I am, and you have my undying sympathy.
Elizabelle
To make a child’s birthday cake, you need:
a working oven
a working fridge
the time to make the cake
if not from scratch:
the mix, eggs, (vegetable oil, sometimes)
cake pans, which you have to grease
frosting: either purchased, or:
milk, butter, confectioner’s sugar, vanilla or flavoring agent, chocolate if child likes that
food colors — and the little box of 4 is not cheap!
candles
Oh: and plastic wrap or waxed paper and a box or dish, if you’re taking the cake anywhere.
I personally LOVE homemade cakes.
But they are an effort.
Mike in NC
GOP solution is to build more prisons. America has the highest incarceration rate in the world. U-S-A!
Karen in GA
@Matt McIrvin: Whenever I see the “drug test welfare recipients” thing, I go full-reverse-teabagger. “Why should some lying, pandering politician waste my tax dollars on a program that doesn’t work?”
Elizabelle
@Cervantes:
.
You said it. The Overton window moved, and took children’s birthday cakes with it.
As for the crab legs: maybe a very special purchase, for a beloved mom or dad’s birthday?
Or just outright an urban legend.
Kay
@Roger Moore:
It’s weird, too, because pre-packaged or pre-prepared food in an ordinary supermarket isn’t (generally) more expensive anymore. A lot of times it’s cheaper, because it’s lower quality. This whole thing seems to come from some 1950’s/1960’s perspective of “frugal housewives” or something. Do these people shop?
Keith G
@Face: Your concerns are 100 percent valid. I wish humanitarian ideals would be enough to lead us to fight poverty. Since that is not the case, at least we should act out of concern about instability.
Also too, there used to be a time that if you were a leader of the Democratic Party by necessity you were a leading voice in the push to take strong actions to fight poverty. Unfortunately, that is no longer seems to be the case.
Matt McIrvin
@jonas: What they really want is sumptuary laws, of the sort that restrict conspicuous consumption by social rank.
This kind of thing frequently gets support from Very Serious People who consider themselves liberal and are worried about consumerism. I personally support taxes to limit environmentally damaging consumption, but that’s not the same thing as wearing clothes that are too nice for your social class (in fact, a problem we have today is that “green” products are usually luxury goods sold at a premium). Any such things would have to be offset by progressive rebates, social spending or other adjustments to the tax code.
aimai
The “food insecurity” thing relates to the discussion they had over at LGM about layaway. When people are poor or living paycheck to paycheck they often have to make decisions about spending which are somewhat marginal or problematic. If you have any familiarity with the “frugal” movement in the US one thing that becomes obvious is that to really make “frugality” work you have to be able to delay gratification, you have to have a system of forced savings, and you often have to be able to trade space and time for stock. For example: in order to buy in bulk and save that way you have to have money on hand for both the bulk product and your other necessities (enough extra for 10 pounds of potatoes or 25 pounds of rice as well as the flavoring agents) and you have to have adequate and safe storage where the potatoes or rice won’t spoil before you eat them.
But poor people may not have adequate storage and, in addition, they may not be living alone and/or their stores of food may be raided by other people living with them. A communal kitchen or a family kitchen may not permit you to buy in bulk and rely on it being there when you need it. If you actually read people’s accounts of their struggles with step parents, live in boyfriends, or shared space with boyfriend’s family you will find that people end up fighting to preserve very tiny elements of food independence against the depredations of the group. Buy your kid’s lunch snacks in bulk to save money and watch your sister-in-law use them for her kids without replacing them.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: The complaints about poor people having color TVs or Obamaphones are in the same category. Among other things, the complainants seem to have 50-year-old ideas about how expensive electronic goods are; a poor person can’t have anything they didn’t have in childhood, even if it was because it didn’t exist yet.
beth
@Kay: I saw those Banquet tv dinners – meat loaf, mashed potatoes and corn – on sale for $1.45 the other day. If you’re feeding four people, can you really make all that for $6, especially if you don’t have access to a refrigerator or oven? Yes, it’s not nutritious but it’s quick and easy and if you’re a parent working one or two jobs, it must seem like a godsend.
Cervantes
@beth: I saw those Banquet tv dinners – meat loaf, mashed potatoes and corn – on sale for $1.45 the other day. […] Yes, it’s not nutritious but it’s quick and easy and if you’re a parent working one or two jobs, it must seem like a godsend.
What a god that must be.
handsmile
@C.V. Danes:
Thus the first part of the Scrooge quote cited by aimai (#18), “Are there no prisons?” The response, “Plenty of prisons…” no less true today (indeed more so) than in mid-19thc. England.
@Linda Featheringill:
You are one of the kindest commenters on this blog. My heart panged when I read that. Mygod, I hope you and your children were not long in that awful “place.”
geg6
@ellie:
Our local grocery chain has periodic drives for the local food bank. Basically, they ask you to buy from a list of items and have carts set up (and labelled) in the checkout area you can drop them off in on your way out. I was happy to see that they had three carts, completely filled, when John and I were there on Sunday. It was pretty early in the day (prior to the usual Sunday after-church noon rush) and I asked if they had just set those up that morning. The manager (who knows me through her daughter who attends school at my campus) said they had and she was overwhelmed already with the response. We bought $10 in canned veggies and some bottles of V-8 and apple juice. The even better thing is that I knew that, probably, none of the actual store workers would be using the food bank since they are union and well-paid. People tell me not to shop at Giant Eagle because they are more “expensive” than Walmart and Target. I ask them what do they mean by expensive? Expensive because the slightly higher prices allows them to pay their workers a living wage? And then I tell them I’d rather pay that slightly higher price than to subsidize Walmart’s owners with my tax dollars because they refuse to pay their workers that living wage and, because of that, they depend on SNAP. Literally no one I’ve used this argument on has ever even considered that.
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
It isn’t really about saving money. It’s about making it ever more miserable and humiliating to be on public assistance. The theory seems to be that if only they make poverty sufficiently awful, poor people will finally be motivated to work hard and become middle class.
aimai
@Roger Moore: Well, technically, the Florida program (like the Maine program to ferret out waste and abuse in food stamps) make SOMEONE money, and lots of it. Didn’t rick scott’s wife’s company, also a republican donor, make a ton of money doing the testing?
handsmile
@Roger Moore:
Or failing that, to die “and decrease the surplus population.”
Keith G
@aimai: in addition to the excellent points you have made, many of the working for whom I work with live alone. Given even mediocre storage abilities, spoilage is still an issue with many bulk purchases, particularly animal protein.
Chris
@Face:
Which will only be further proof of the immorality of These People, and as an added bonus will allow the authorities to either lock them up or, if they can catch them in the act, shoot them on sight.
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore: And also about making the political implication that welfare recipients are all drug addicts who are poor because of their own bad decisions.
ellie
@geg6: The local food banks do that here, too. The last time I saw it was late September.
I know the Giant Eagles in Toledo, OH are not unionized: that is why I didn’t shop at them when I lived there. I have not seen them in Colorado.
geg6
@ellie:
All of Giant Eagle’s corporate stores are unionized. They also have franchised stores that may or may not be. I’m guessing Colorado is too far west for them. They are Pittsburgh-based.
aimai
@Keith G: Yes. This. Also: the working poor often have very chaotic commutes since they can’t use money to make their commutes easier (owning a car) and they have limited child care potential and may have to place their child far from their workplace. I don’t have a link but the NYT ran a heartbreaking article about a woman who was working full time and had her child to pick up after work–the complexity and duration of their public transportation commute meant that although she tried to cook and bag lunch for the two of them it just wasn’t possible. The food spoiled or spilled during these marathon bus sessions, couldn’t be eaten at the right time, and if she’d tried to return home with him before eating at the end of the day they wouldn’t have been eating until 9 at night. Instead they needed to break their commute and eat at a fast food joint on the way home. These people who insist that it would be “so easy” to change one thing and “save money” are full of shit. Poor people are not stupid–money makes things easy. Everything else is hard.
Chris
@Rob in CT:
IANAAccountant, but from my layman’s perspective the budget looks like this; we can have a world-class safety net, we can have a world-class army, or we can have record low taxes on the rich. Pick two.
The best economy we ever had was when we picked the first two over the third, but since 1980 the third has been an absolute theological principle in the political class (and in far too much of the public, which still buys the “we’ll cut your taxes too, and everything’s going to be all right!” bullshit).
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
I thought it was Lisa Meyers (who I thought had retired years ago) at NBC who was flogging the OBAMA LIED! story? No matter, I’m sure no one at either network, certainly not the ones who make decisions, would be given a nanosecond’s pause by this.
ruemara
@Ocotillo: Christ man, sometimes people don’t have access to a real kitchen. Jesus, this fucking is an issue? Motherfuck. I have a kitchen, I could use some food stamps and being able to buy some convenience foods would cut into the hours I have to spend cooking because my health requires it. Why begrudge a small splurge when many working poor are so pressed for time?
Chris
@jonas:
Moreover, it’s true that if you ask them to pay taxes for a welfare state they’ll say “we love charity, we just don’t think it should be the government’s job.”
But if you ask them for charity, they’ll tell you that’s bad too because “it creates a culture of dependency” (or “entitlement” depending on just how big of an asshole they feel like being that day).
It’s not the way you give money to the poor. It really is giving money to the poor, in itself, that offends them.
(A related concept is how if you try fundraising to help poor people in America they’ll tell you “there are no poor people in America! Haven’t you heard they have color TVs? You should be fundraising for the people in all these unexceptional countries like Africa who aren’t as lucky as us!” but when you try to raise money for kids in Africa it becomes “why are you do-gooders always worried about the other side of the world? Don’t we have enough problems here that we should be focused on?”)
kc
What the . . ?
Howlin Wolfe
@schrodinger’s cat: They want to bring back the medieval age, with its landed gentry and serfs scrambling to make a living, and private armies to keep them from overrunning the castle.
Howlin Wolfe
@schrodinger’s cat: They want to bring back the medieval age, with its landed gentry and serfs scrambling to make a living, and private armies to keep them from overrunning the castle.
Howlin Wolfe
@schrodinger’s cat: They want to bring back the medieval age, with its landed gentry and serfs scrambling to make a living, and private armies to keep them from overrunning the castle.
Roger Moore
@Howlin Wolfe:
And they always assume that they’ll be the patricians/landed gentry/antebellum slaveholders/gilded age plutocrats rather than the plebeians/serfs/slaves/poor factory workers. They’re kind of like the people who claim to remember past lives, when they were always somebody important rather than a nobody.
cckids
@aimai:
Yes. I’ve lived it, thankfully many years ago, and even though things get tight nowadays, it isn’t anything like when we relied on food stamps.
Every legislator in this country should be made to watch “Nickle & Dimed”. It breaks your heart.
JustRuss
@geg6:
That’s a great con benefiting the store, they get you to pay them the full retail price for food going to the foodbank, and they get the PR for “donating” the food you paid for. Our local foodbank buys in bulk and can get way more food per dollar (orders of magnitude more) than you or I can at the grocery store. Plus, your donation to the foodbank is tax deductible, good luck claiming the items you leave behind at the store.
Seriously, your money does a lot more good if you cut out the middle man and give it straight to the food bank.
Xboxershorts
@PurpleGirl:
I’d like to see Paul Ryan excommunicated. Directly from the pope.
Maybe Coulter as well.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@JustRuss: OTOH, a lot of people fill those bins (or buy the pre-packaged bags the stores here have available) who would never take the time to donate directly to the food bank.
Ksmiami
I seriously hate these greedy mutha:@&$.
Mnemosyne
@JustRuss:
As Sister Rail Gun said, the people who donate at the grocery store like that do it because it’s easy for them — they don’t have to make a special trip or look up the number/website for a food bank in order to donate. They just fold their donation in with their weekly groceries, put it in the drop-off location, and go on with their day.
I understand that it’s better to donate directly, but should the food banks go without those donations because they’re not done in the best possible way?
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
@Mnemosyne: When my grocery store does it, they sometimes have a volunteer there to collect cash from them what’s willing. I think it serves to remind people that food banks exist, also, too.
beth
@Jim, Foolish LIteralist: Our local groceries ask if you would like to donate and add the amount to your total bill. I think they probably raise more that way – I always give at least $1 every time so I don’t look like a cheapskate and I probably do it 4 or 5 times a week. The key is having every cashier ask at checkout. Our store does it by offering a free bottle of soda if the cashier doesn’t ask you. I’m mixed on it – I already give to charities but feel like a schmuck if I don’t give something. But I think in the long run, even if the store gets credit for the donations, the charity makes more money they can use as they see fit.
geg6
@JustRuss:
I’m not going to condemn them for this. No one is buying the top of the line stuff they sell (truffle oil or kobe beef or organic vegetables) to put in the buggy. I got 10 cans of veggies for $10 (a special they run especially for this). In addition, they asked people to contribute cash both on the flyer as you walked in the door and again at the checkout as you paid (I always use the self-serve and I got a message to contribute before completing my payment transaction). And I also contribute monetarily to the GPFB (Greater Pittsburgh Food Bank) on my own. But the GPFB have been all over local media screaming about the SNAP cuts and how they are low on inventory at the food bank. Since Giant Eagle is one of the main suppliers and financial supporters of the food bank, I’m really not all that exercised about the $14 I spent on house brand veggies and juices. It put something on the shelves right away and they are a pretty good corporate neighbor. I especially like that they support local farmers, stocking produce and meats from local farms and even highlighting them with special displays.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@geg6:
Our CSA has an option to add a “food pantry box” to our weekly order. A double whammy of benefits.
And the “donate anything” bins are very convenient for couponers. Lots of free or nearly free stuff can be dropped off before you even leave the store.
Johnnybuck
Perhaps you should remind them that the SNAP program greatly contributed to them having that job.
People seem to think that punishing the poors will have no affect on their bottom line because they stupidly assume that government assistance takes away from, rather than add anything to the economy. it is particularly galling to hear it from someone directly affected by it.
NorthLeft12
@Xboxershorts: This is exactly what I want to see my [former] church start doing. They are giving so many a free pass for basically abusing the poor, the weak, and the powerless.
The media sure won’t attempt to shame or guilt them for those actions, you would think the Roman Catholic Church and other Christian religions might do it.
Unfortunately, you would be wrong.
fuckwit
They’ll be happy when they can just line us up against the wall and shoot us.
Let’s be real, this is eugenics, is what this is. It’s not a War on Poverty, it’s a War on the Poor.
I’m going full metal Godwin on this, because that is absolutely and unquestionably what is going on here, if you take it to its logical conclusion. This is ethnic cleansing. Simply kill off all the poor people! If you can’t get away with that, starve us to death, make housing unavailable, and deny us medical care so that we die early.
Unfortunatley, this fundamentally genocidal attitude is deeply embedded in American consciousness and American history. Just ask any Native peoples or African-Americans (and, maybe some people who grew up in southeast Asia, parts of central America, or the middle east at various times in the last 40 years might also agree as well).
Gene108
@Keith G:
The fight against poverty starting dying, when LBJ’s political career went into the toilet, because he championed the War on Poverty, I guess it got his losers stink on it.
I do not think Democrats abandoned trying to help the poor completly. The politics of what could be done just got harder. Clinton’s championing of universal health care and the continued push for it is one thing Democrats have been on about that will help the poor.
Also, I think the politics is going to change, with regards to anti-poverty programs. The rising crime rates, drug use, etc that soured people on “big government” solutions in the 1970’s are not as threatening anymore.
It will be harder to build resentment based unwed mothers and drug use, because those issues are not as bad as they used to be. The suburban middle-class voter just is not as spooked by the deterioration of our moral fiber, as they were 30-40 years ago; they are though spooked by their economic insecurity.
Dream On
Joy upon joys. I’ll keep you all updated on my dramatic weight-loss and deteriorating physical condition starting Friday…
As for the GOP? Austerity for thee but not for me? Happy fucking holidays you sociopathic creeps.