?? Biden administration to provide summer grocery money to 21 million kids. Here's who qualifies. – CBS News https://t.co/Ot318n5Clu
— Jaime Harrison (@harrisonjaime) January 11, 2024
States NOT PARTICIPATING… who have tons of families that need the program! So tired of these damn grinches… Dammit do Better!!!
Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont and Wyoming.
— Jaime Harrison (@harrisonjaime) January 11, 2024
🎁 article. Nothing says pro-life like letting children starve.
We must oust every Republican everywhere out of government. #VoteBlueToSaveAmerica #EnoughIsEnough
There’s nothing pro-child about the GOP’s resistance to food aid https://t.co/4rg2aIRxn8
— Marie 🇺🇸🗽🌊🦅 True Blue (@Merrirrro) January 12, 2024
Catherine Rampell, at the Washington Post — “There’s nothing pro-child about the GOP’s resistance to food aid” [gift link]:
In the 18 months since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, Republican officials have had ample opportunity to prove they’re not merely antiabortion but also pro-child. They keep failing.
GOP politicians across the country have found new and creative ways to deny resources to struggling parents and children. Take, for instance, the summer lunch program.
Under a new federal program, children who are eligible for free or reduced-price school lunches can also receive food assistance during the summer. The policy, created as part of the bipartisan budget deal in 2022, gives eligible families $40 per month per child, or $120 total over the summer. It often works essentially as a top-up for food stamps, since these families must buy more groceries when their children lose access to nutritious school meals when classes go out of session. (It’s similar to a temporary program offered during the pandemic, though it’s much less generous.)
The federal government pays the entire cost of the benefits associated with this new food program and half the administrative costs. The program isn’t automatic, though; states had to opt in by Jan. 1.
Republican governors across 15 states chose not to, as my Post colleague Annie Gowen reported. Up to 10 million kids will be denied access to this grocery aid as a result…
So, potentially, almost half of the children eligible for this program live in just fifteen states.
The ‘administrative cost’ loophole will probably be cited by some states:
Vermont is citing administrative costs.
A good explanation here👇h/t @Suiter_LA https://t.co/g6sWDTKcVB
— JayJay (@jayjay827) January 11, 2024
… Anore Horton, executive director of Hunger Free Vermont, said state agencies currently lack the technical infrastructure for a successful launch of Summer EBT.
“Our state agencies are eager to participate in Summer EBT, and they are committed to starting Summer EBT in summer of 2025,” Horton said. “So it’s not that they’re saying, ‘We’re not going to do this.’ They’re saying, ‘We’re not going to do this in Summer 2024.’”
Horton said state employees at the Agency of Education and Department for Children and Families performed “heroic” work over the past three years as agencies found time-consuming workarounds to comply with pandemic-era nutrition assistance programs…
Horton said Vermont has enacted other nutrition-assistance measures in the meantime that will mitigate the impact of not enrolling in Summer EBT this year, including a federal pilot that subsidizes school meals when kids aren’t in the classroom.
“What’s going to happen this coming summer is many, many more communities in Vermont will be eligible to operate free and universal summer meal sites for kids,” she said. “And so we’re working very closely with the Agency of Education to make sure that many more summer meal sites are going to be open and operating this summer where kids can get free breakfast and lunches all summer long.”
But, for many, The cruelty is the point…
Mississippi, where 1 in 4 children live in poverty, declined federal funds to help feed poor children. Shameful. https://t.co/HgIA2tyZnJ
— Anita Henderson MD, FAAP (@babydocAnita) January 10, 2024
These people always existed in the GOP, but increasingly the whole party is just this. Clinton was too kind to them. https://t.co/f0Rx7Hjpkj pic.twitter.com/TuQKPLf07F
— Jean-Michel Connard (@torriangray) January 11, 2024
school lunch costs nothing. It's mostly an antiquated way to teach kids how to make change. The people who get mad at free school lunch have cash bars at their plantation weddings.
— zeddy (@Zeddary) January 11, 2024
“Over there with the uncrustables? That’s Caleb. His defense stocks have done terribly well with the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. The one he’s eating with is Tyler. Tyler runs an M&A firm that killed the local steel mill, and he’s the reason a lot of these kids now need free lunch.”
— Tim Maher (@hathead82) January 11, 2024
ETA:
Translation: Neither I nor Brett Favre could figure out how to steal it for ourselves. https://t.co/WiNArusOJd
— zeddy (@Zeddary) January 12, 2024
Alison Rose
FEED KIDS.
JFC.
JUST FUCKIN FEED THEM.
Baud
Rich kids should only get massive tax cuts.
Alison Rose
Also that one tweet saying “my wife and I identify as children” buddy I am 1000% sure you have never said anything more accurate in your pathetic life
laura
Shite-bags- the lot of them. Absolute shite-bags.
Baud
@Alison Rose:
I would gladly accept their ineligibility to vote.
SiubhanDuinne
@Alison Rose:
This. I simply don’t want to live in a world where children needlessly go hungry.
Suzanne
I think of this every time I read about the FAFSA. Like, this country assumes that every kid’s family is well-resourced. And if they’re not, fuck them. And then when women want to hold off on having kids until they have money, the social conservatives say, “No, not like that”.
Layer8Problem
@Alison Rose: I expect “my wife and I identify and target children” is even more accurate.
RevRick
@Alison Rose: They think they’re being clever in their cruelty. What they’re really saying is that hungry kids don’t exist, and if they do it’s okay to make them suffer.
bbleh
Now listen, how do you expect these children to learn Valuable Life Lessons if people just go around willy-nilly feeding them when they’re hungry?!? Plus, quite apart from the obvious economic illogic, What Would Jesus Do?
Suzanne
@SiubhanDuinne: But, if we feed children, what’s their motivation to pick lettuce once they turn 12?! None! Lazy moochers.
Alison Rose
@SiubhanDuinne: The notion that it is HORRIBLE that some kids whose families can afford to pay might get free food is so baffling to me. Shit, they’re not taking them to lunch at a Michelin star restaurant or something, it’s fucking chicken nuggets and apple slices and a cookie or something.
HumboldtBlue
I say we make the square and let the kids fight for their meals. Kids ain’t nothing but moochers anyway, so make’em fight for their food.
Old School
Based on the linked Vermont article, the state is turning down $3.6 million for Vermont families as it would cost around $450,000.
The budget for Vermont is $8.5 billion.
Ksmiami
There is not one person in the GOP that is redeemable. Burn the party to the ground.
realbtl
Pleasantly surprised to see Montana on the accept list. I wonder how this got by the R assholes* in the legislature.
*I know, redundant
bbleh
@Old School: Hey lissen buster, instead of paying gummint bureaucrats to fill out some stupid paperwork from Washington, that $450,000 could be put to good use! Like, feeding hungry children!
@Ksmiami: take off and nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
@realbtl: ooo, I like “Rassholes.” Ima steal that.
Suzanne
@Ksmiami: Fire it into the surface of the sun.
Mart
The administrative costs in several states are about the same as transitioning an intersection with a roundabout.
Alison Rose
For jackals who have young kids or grandkids: Is the “rectangular pizza with cubed pepperoni served in a cardboard sleeve” thing still a thing? That’s the main thing I remember from elementary school cafeteria food.
(We only had the typical cafeteria lunches in elementary school, and even then we didn’t have cafeterias because Bay Area — there were just windows in the multipurpose room where you got your food and then you sat outside to eat. If it was raining they’d let us eat inside. By middle school, the food was all prepackaged stuff — premade sandwiches, Domino’s pizza, Taco Bell crap, bagged chips, etc)
Dan B
The governor of Nebraska said, “I don’t believe in welfare.” You could hear the contempt dropping from his voice. It’s not enough to dislike people who are beneath you and who deserve their poverty. It’s essential to despise them and find ways to punish them for their desire to “steal” from those who are hard working and morally upstanding.
And the good governor believes he’s Christian, a good Christian!
jonas
Well, a lot of these states are very religious and we all remember the story in the Bible when Jesus was preaching and someone brought to his attention that the crowd was hungry and there were only a couple of fish and loaves of bread, Jesus responded very clearly: “Amen, verily they can go fuck themselves. If they were too stupid to show up here without lunch, that’s their problem. Especially the kids.”
In the following chapter, though, Jesus does miraculously multiply a number of dangerous weapons to distribute to the crowd, telling them to “stand back and stand by” and “blessed are those who live by the sword, for they shall always kick ass…”
I’m having trouble with this new MAGA edition of the Bible someone gave me, but that’s what it says.
SiubhanDuinne
@Suzanne:
Right? I just can’t wrap my head around the idea that a child population that is underweight, underdeveloped across a range of metrics, and has low or no energy and cannot learn (ETA: or work in the fields!!), is a good thing. These people are so fucking punitive. As Betty Cracker said, I hope they fall in a sewer and are swept out to sea where they are eaten by lobsters. Or as efgoldman said, Fuckem.
RevRick
@Old School: Phil Scott is the Republican governor of Vermont. Nuff said.
Alison Rose
Suzanne
@SiubhanDuinne: It’s because they are terrible people. I have looked for other explanations. There are none that I can find.
Those are kids, for fuck’s sake.
Tony Jay
“It’s a scandal, an absolute atrocity, that Democrats waste our nation’s money on so called ‘foreign aid’, most of which gets diverted to fund terrorism, by the way, when there are children, your children, right here in the United States of America, going without food.”
“So we should use our taxes to feed American children?”
“What are you? Some sort of Commie?”
It’s not just America. Thanks to the corporate domination of News Media there’s not a single country in the world that’s ready for Prime Time.
AlaskaReader
In Alaska, Republicans do their best to deny food to anyone who may be hungry,
…and they use that as their excuse not to feed children.
https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2024/01/11/alaska-opts-out-of-federal-program-offering-summer-grocery-money-for-families-with-kids/
Another Scott
@Old School:
What is that, 2-3-4 full time people (including over head)? For roughly 85,000 students in the Vermont public schools? About $5.30 per student (assuming they all get the free lunches)? It doesn’t look like a huge burden to me.
And of course, those 2-3-4 full time people would be paying taxes and buying stuff and so forth, so it would generate additional economic activity in the state, so the net cost would be substantially less.
The “cost-benefit analysis” people in the GQP seem to have all died out. Everything is a cost, all tax money sent to DC is set on fire, all money sent from DC to the states doesn’t exist if there are any strings at all – no matter how thin.
Grr…,
Scott.
bbleh
@Another Scott: analy-wut? izzat some kinda ee-leetist thing? damn ee-leetist libruls tryin’a take mah money ‘n’ give it to some dumb kid, probably inna Inner City or somethin’ ….
eclare
@realbtl:
Same here in TN.
H.E.Wolf
Vote ’em out and elect Democrats instead.
To that end… this is a great year to sign up with PostcardsToVoters.org.
They have a very organized and elegantly simple GOTV postcard program. The campaigns they work with provide 3 sentences that everyone writes, always “fun and friendly” – no scare tactics or rage-farming.
They allow a small minimum number (4 addresses at a time, with the option to ask for a larger batch), and a 3-day window to write (4 days if you game the system like me, and request addresses on a Thursday).
Volunteers provide their own postcards and stamps. Prices go up on Jan. 21, so this week is a good time to buy stamps at the current, lower price.
SiubhanDuinne
@Suzanne:
Nope, no other explanations. I don’t give a flying fuck how gracious they may be in person. I don’t give a big inflamed rat’s ass how much time they volunteer to their church. If they let kids go hungry, they are, as you rightly say, TERRIBLE PEOPLE.
Gvg
What i worry about is the Florida republicans will find out about the food for kids programs we already have and find a way to stop them.
Florida schools keep feeding the children all summer when school is out. It used to be just the ones who were on free lunches. At some point that changed to anyone under 18 who showed up. They have to go to the cafeteria but thats it. At some point someone figured out that the seriously hungry could be homeless or “homeschooled” or have disinterested parents. This is not new and there are billboards advertising it every year.
Its morally great. The bigshot florida Republicans don’t seem to know.
H.E.Wolf
@H.E.Wolf:
Also: The current Postcards To Voters GOTV campaign is for Tom Suozzi, the Democrat running to replace “George Santos” in a Long Island, NY, district.
Related to our “hungry children” topic: When Suozzi was a student at Fordham, he volunteered in a soup kitchen and “helped unleash a wave of student interest in public service, which led to the Fordham Law School’s Public Service Project, which lives on to this day.”
Jay
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/austrian-heiress-giveaway-1.7081044
SiubhanDuinne
@eclare:
Completely O/T, but did Memphis end up getting a tornado this morning? I ass u me you’re safe, or you would have said something.
pat
And most of the forced-birth children will end up in poverty.
I sometimes wonder if my former friend, evangelical, who thought that trump’s election would be “OK”, who was adamantly against abortion, is pleased with the way things turned out.
Suzanne
@SiubhanDuinne: I don’t even give a shit if they wrote a big check to the food bank or the history museum or a public university. That’s the barest minimum I expect from my social betters. Fuck you, those are kids.
Again, I will just point out that these same people are:
lowtechcyclist
@Alison Rose:
This.
And to those governors and other state officials that didn’t want to feed these kids, who undoubtedly all consider themselves good Christians, let them hear what Jesus had to say:
Then [the Son of Man] will say to those on his left hand: “the curse is upon you; go from my sight to the eternal fire that awaits the devil and his angels. For when I was hungry you gave me nothing to eat; when I was thirsty you gave me nothing to drink.”
-Matthew 25:41-42
AlaskaReader
They are Republicans, imposing harm on ‘others’ has always been exactly who they are.
Sadistic psychopaths vote for and elect other sadistic psychopaths who will craft laws and policies which will cause harm to others.
It’s who they are.
Standard Republicanism.
We need to remove every Republican from all levels of our government.
Suzanne
I am still stuck on this damn train and I haven’t had a real meal yet today. Bagel, almonds, Doritos, granola. Looking forward to getting home.
zhena gogolia
@Alison Rose: Immortal words from the great statesman. Let us not forget.
Dan B
@Suzanne: #3. Yelling at the “wrong kind of women” having any children at all.*
*and sex, and time to rest and recharge, and a fair playing field, and attractive clotges, etc++.
Leto
Just in case it hasn’t been posted: Trump Ordered to Pay The New York Times Hundreds of Thousands Over ‘Frivolous’ Lawsuit
smith
@Suzanne: Or, even more to the point (channeling Kay here):
Josie
@Gvg:
The South Texas town where I used to live did the same thing. After retirement, I taught at a bird sanctuary there. We had summer sessions, and the public school lunch was trucked out to us every day to feed the kids who were attending the summer sessions. The food was good and the kids enjoyed it.
smith
@Leto: The icing on the cake is that this genius lawsuit was lawyered by Alina Habba.
laura
@Alison Rose: (We only had the typical cafeteria lunches in elementary school, and even then we didn’t have cafeterias because Bay Area —
I’m a tab bit older than you, and man, do I remember how good our cafeteria food was in unincorporated Santa Rosa’s Roseland District. Between Governor Reagan and Prop.13, every good thing was stripped out of public school. I don’t know if your dad was working for the DG when the SNACK Concert was held, but I was there as a young teen spending my babysitting moola being pissed off at what was being taken away for no good reason.
Anyhoo, show of hands- who’s been around a hungry child? A child who doesn’t eat is a child who has justifiable rage, and that rage filled hungry child is ripe for harvest by the carcereal state.
Spanky
@laura:
And man, is there some government money to be had there!
Elizabelle
People used to understand that school lunch programs were farm support programs as well. Weren’t they?
I guess these people aren’t cosplaying farmers as much as we thought.
Cannot think of a better example of the difference in voting for Democrats vs. Republicans. Make sure that children — everybody’s children — get enough to eat and grow up healthy. This one is simple enough that perhaps even the social media manic progressives can twig it.
You guys were discussing Nick Saban in an earlier thread. (1) Maybe he actually lives in Alabama, unlike Tuberville, the Pentagon manipulator who bunks in Florida. (2). I bet he understands the worth of feeding young athletes and young anyone properly.
bbleh
@Alison Rose: @zhena gogolia: and I swear to all the gods old, new and red that, quite apart from his Impeccable Credentials as a Titan of Business, he is considered a Good Moderate and practically a walking embodiment of Christian Virtue, and yet he is also considered impossibly RINO by a solid majority of the Rasshole Party.
It’s almost amazing that even he isn’t evil enough for them anymore …
Mike in NC
Once read that nothing gave Fat Bastard more pleasure than forcing families off of food stamps and school lunch programs. Born a sociopath, he’ll die (not soon enough) a sociopath.
Martin
That’s why I thought VT might opt out. It’s a tiny state, and where CA already has all of that infrastructure running and this program is just a marginal time cost on existing infrastructure, that’s probably not the case in VT.
There’s also that CA is pretty directly structured now to build out social programs ahead of the feds, and then maximally claw back federal dollars. That’s how our Medicaid program works, and how this program works as well. The state provides free breakfast and lunch funding, but schools are mandated to participate in federal low-cost meal programs and utilize those dollars first. It does incur administrative cost, but there are things that states can do to organize and mitigate that. CA is a mixed bag on that front, but they’re at least trying.
JaneE
So wealthy kids should not get the same benefits as everyone else?
They also complain about wealthy retirees getting Social Security, even though those “wealthy” enough get taxed on a percentage of it as if it were ordinary income.
And at the same time they advocate for a flat tax rate so everyone will pay equally because the wealthy should not be treated differently.
It all depends on which way that money is flowing.
@Gvg:
Alison Rose
@laura: Heh, I live a few hops from the Roseland area!
And yeah, Dad (and Mom) were working for the Dead at that time and were both at that concert. You might have walked right by them :P
mrmoshpotato
@Alison Rose:
Ain’t that the fuckin’ truth. And that guy and his wife can both go fuck themselves.
Chief Oshkosh
@Dan B: Boy oh boy, the gov. of Neb. is a real piece of work. Check out his Wikipedia entry. Totally privileged shitheel
ETA: And a “farmer” to boot! Would be GREAT to take away all farm subsidies for Nebraska for just ONE season. Motherfuckers would be crawling, begging to Unka Sam to save them.
JaneE
@Gvg: They did that here when Covid closed the schools. Some genius figured out it was cheaper, not to mention faster and more efficient, to just pass the lunch sacks out to everyone who showed up with a student ID. It probably depends on the percentage of eligible vs. total enrollment, but here and in far too many other places the number of eligible kids is half or more of all the kids in school. It was that way even when my mother worked cafeteria in the late 50’s and 60’s in a supposedly middle class district. The least recession would make over half the children eligible, and it seemed like the recessions were frequent if short.
wjca
Oh, they’re still as big on farm price supports (carefully never called that) as ever. They just don’t want the food doled out to the undeserving.
Besides, how much simpler to just “land bank” the farm land. Simply pay the farmers to not grow anything** on it. Presto! No surplus food to get rid of as school lunches, etc.
EDT ** But on no account return it to the original ecology!
Betty
Your comment about Saban understanding the value of nutrition to athletes reminds me of comments I heard in Brazil after they ousted the dictatorship. They realized that the poor nutrition was affecting their ability to produce Olympic level athletes and healthy recruits for the military and took steps to address it.
Eta: this was in response to Elizabelle’s comment.
Leto
@smith: the parking lot attendant, that Alina Habba? *Charlton Heston Planet of the Apes laugh gif
wjca
I’m betting that the current Speaker is denounced as a RINO before the month is out. Anybody here want the other side of that sucker bet?
Citizen Alan
@AlaskaReader: This is why I’m so utterly depressed at the state of the nation. Every other individual problem pales in comparison to the simple undeniable fact that a minimum of 25% of the adult population is nothing but sadistic assholes. Other countries aren’t like this! How did this happen to us?!?
TBone
Heard at a backwoods swimming hole when a group of teens showed up one hot afternoon: “We’re inner country kids!” I can’t believe people would decline to feed children for any reason and not be shunned for life.
smith
@Leto: Yep, Melania’s understudy, the one who on one stop of her busy PR schedule, said she’d rather be pretty than smart, because you can always fake being smart. Or, at least that’s what she’s heard, never having accomplished it herself.
Anoniminous
@Citizen Alan:
Other countries are like that. Rightwing Populism is on a global rise. Due to our wretched Infotainment mediascape it is hard to get news about them, e.g., the Freedom Party of Austria.
Gvg
@Betty: Not just Brazil. The US had trouble finding enough healthy draftees for WWII and the government began funding food and nutrition research that lasted through the 1970’s. As many as 40% of American men were failing the physicals. Remember we had a decade of depression before the war. I just googled it and apparently all those posters about food groups and nutrition I recall from childhood were originally produced by the military.
zhena gogolia
@Citizen Alan: You think other countries aren’t like this? Have you taken a look at Europe? Not to mention Russia.
Ksmiami
@Suzanne: they aren’t worth the cost. Pitchforks, torches and shovels are effective and cheap. America should take care of its vulnerable citizens. Kids need to be fed, housed, medically treated and educated. There’s only one party that is actually trying.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Letting kids go hungry is the latest in conservative virtue signaling. Why should hard working American patriots have their tax dollars taken from them to pay half of the administrative costs of a program that the government is funding to feed worthless poor kids who will never amount to anything?
Children going hungry means nothing to these cold fuckers. Absolutely nothing.
Elizabelle
@Gvg: Yes. School lunches flowed from WW2 military readiness.
Thinking on these Republicans. They were not hungry, as those who were born in the 1920s might have been, given the Great Depression.
(I met a woman who never wanted to eat another fresh tomato in her life, because that is what her family survived on. Their own, and bags of tomatoes that the neighbors would drop off on their porch.)
These Republicans didn’t fight fascists, either. In fact …
bbleh
@smith: … never having accomplished it herself.
So, that would be which one now?
Bill Arnold
@JaneE:
One point of means testing is to divide the polity between takers and not-takers. To turn benefits into welfare. To then exploit electorally the division between those who get benefits and those who do not (and ,might even pay for them), with e.g. benefit cuts providing budget space for tax cuts, mostly for the rich.
Tony G
@Dan B: The dictionary definition of the word “welfare” is: “the health, happiness, and fortunes of a person or group.” So, this psychopath — and, more importantly, the Good Christian Citizens who put him in office — are opposed to health and happiness. The toxic theology of Calvinism is one of the bedrock principles of the United States.
AlaskaReader
@Citizen Alan: How did it happen to us?
The nation kept giving Republicans the benefit of the doubt.
When Republicans said they wanted to starve government to death, too many people said to themselves, ‘they don’t really mean it’, and too many other people said to themselves, ‘that sounds just fine and dandy to me’.
The cure is to remove all Republicans from any position of public trust.
AlaskaReader
@Gvg: That their policies are always ultimately self-defeating never crosses their small minds.