-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
The Food Stamp program, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), is a target for Republicans who voted to cut $40 billion from the program. The reasons that Republicans have given are so divorced from reality that one can reasonably suspect their true motivations lie elsewhere. The primacy of fantasy in the GOP has been recently evidenced by Michele Bachmann who sees signs of the End Times, a wished-for global apocalypse.
First up on the list of fantasies is by Rep. Rick Crawford (R-Arkansas) who said “the food stamp program [grew] exponentially because the government continues to turn a blind eye to a system fraught with abuse.” In reality, SNAP participation closely tracks the long term unemployment rate, prolonged by Republicans. The sale of SNAP benefits for cash, called “trafficking,” has been cut to $1 in every $100 of SNAP benefits. The reality is a one percent abuse rate, the fantasy is SNAP is “fraught” with abuse.
The next fantasy is that able-bodied people are getting food stamps instead of working. The reality is that 83% of all SNAP benefits go to households that include a child, an elderly person, or a disabled person. The average individual gets $133 a month in SNAP benefits. It is ridiculous to imagine that a person is going to quit their job for $133 a month that can only be spent on food, but Republicans bear ridicule well.
The next fantasy is that SNAP recipients use their benefits to buy cigarettes and alcohol. The SNAP program uses Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards, similar to debit cards, that can be used in the supermarket checkout line only to purchase food. The Right likes to point to Jackie Whiton, a Peterborough, New Hampshire, store cashier who declined to accept an EBT card as payment for a pack of cigarettes. In reality, the EBT card contained state assistance money, not SNAP benefits, which can be used to purchase tobacco products. The store she worked for has a policy of accepting EBT cash benefits. In reality, Whiton was fired for violating the company’s policies.
The Republican war on programs that benefit Americans in need isn’t based on a philosophical commitment to small government. If it were, the $20 billion in farm subsidies, a welfare program for agribusiness, would be near the top of their hit list. According to a Greenberg report, the Republicans “are very conscious of being white in a country that is increasingly minority.” The report goes on to say that the “race issue [is] very much alive.” There you have it. Obama is taking their money and giving it to “Those People.”
H/T: Dave Johnson, Paul Krugman, Dottie Rosenbaum, Amanda Marcotte, Brian Tashman, WMUR.
Who’s the lawyer of which you speak, OS???
I just had a nice email exchange w/ Mike. The man has a tough life but doesn’t blame anyone. He is proud of working to get his GED and has started a book on writers café that he invited me to read. He’s written a couple chapters. Mike told me he feels like he’s in over his head and he’s not good enough to comment here. Great job, folks. I’m still working on getting this guy back. However, I’m conflicted. This place needs him desperately. However, he got it backwards, he’s too good for some folk here. I see OS is doing a victory dance over running out a person of lower socioeconomic status. Wow. Just wow.
“Great job, folks. I’m still working on getting this guy back. However, I’m conflicted. This place needs him desperately. However, he got it backwards, he’s too good for some folk here.”
Nick,
Like everything else you do you fail to see your own role in this. Every new person that comes to the blog you warn off by denigrating the GB’s. I get it you don’t like us, but a good part of your dislike comes from your own making.
You always brag you’re just “busting balls” but in truth you’re merely another insecure blowhard with a deep inferiority complex and the tendency to pull stuff out of your ass. Pathetic you are in your own words, which you hate being quoted back to you because they reveal the inconsistency of your though processes. Carry on Nick, I’m not sure PMJ has left, but if he did you’ll find someone else to try to recruit.
Study: Low Fast Food Wages Cost Taxpayers $7 Billion Per Year:
More than half (52 percent) of the families of front-line fast-food workers are enrolled in one or more public programs, compared to 25 percent of the workforce as a whole.
…
“The families of more than half of the fast-food workers employed 40 or more hours per week are enrolled in public assistance programs.”
Gene,
I find it amusing when non-lawyers try to argue in opposition to fine points of law with lawyers, statistics with trained statisticians, and science with scientists. Then complain about hurt feelings and being misunderstood when beaten over the head with facts.
Bigfatmike,
“Rude” was probably not the right word to use and I agree, “controversial” is a better word choice for the thought I was trying express; coffee had not kicked in yet. Thank you for pointing that out.
Bron,
Any proof of any of that? Hm? I didn’t think so. Or does it fall under the rubric of “all government bad”, Oh Aynish One?
nick,
No one told your new pal to leave. If he indeed left, it was by his own volition. He wasn’t even told his participation was voluntary. He figured that out all on his own and opted to abdicate rather than suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fact, logic and substantive evidence. All are welcome in the marketplace, but it does get hot. Some prefer cooler climes. C’est la vie.
nick:
The disagreements are usually over minutia.
nick:
what do you mean? Pompous and exclusionary? Surely you jest, these people are bleeding hearts, come on.
I dont think you have any black buddies nick, its all anecdotal. 🙂
Bron, This blatant lack of skepticism is something we can bring back again and again. We need to bookmark this thread. I’ve reached out to Mike and will try and get his unique and diverse life back in here. This place needs diversity, particularly socioeconomic and racial.
Yes it is and it is probably as good as a study since even they have confirmation bias or controlled sampling or political oxes to gore.
I would believe a guy who lives in that before I would believe a study by someone asking questions to mine data.
“We don’t want no truck drivers on SNAP here. We just like poor folk in the abstract.” My blue collar and black buddies have followed this blog and had the same take as Mike. You folks are elitist, pompous and exclusionary. And, you’re proud of it.
Oooo. More anecdote.
bigfatmike,
I provided a link to the report. I’ll repost it for you:
The Extent of Trafficking in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program: 2009–2011
Nutrition Assistance Program Report August 2013
Food and Nutrition Service
Office of Policy Support
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_ZexM12e5xwJ:www.fns.usda.gov/ora/MENU/Published/snap/FILES/ProgramIntegrity/Trafficking2009.pdf+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
nick:
A friend of the family is a drug rehab guy, he works with kids in schools and their parents. From the stories I have heard him tell, pmjokes is not blowing smoke. He says these people BS him all the time, he wonders how they keep it straight.
I know a teacher who works in a lower income school and deals with parents BS all the time. She says the parents learn to game the system and tell the teachers what they want to hear. It isnt all of the parents but the ones who do it are master manipulators.
The upper middle class/rich are the same except they do it by bringing lawyers to parent teacher conferences. Of course not all do that but enough. Gone are the days when a note home from the teacher about bad behavior got you a some form of punishment.
And dont get me started on all these parents who raise their children to think they are leaders and that their dooty dont stink, holy bat guano, what a load that is. It has to be the reason these pols are so full of cretin. They are like the American Idol contestants who cant sing for their life and when they get told they suck, they dont know what to do.
“From the stories I have heard him tell, pmjokes is not blowing smoke. He says these people BS him all the time, he wonders how they keep it straight.”
Bron,
Fo this…friend of your knows people who are committing food stamp fraud to get drugs?
@Mike S
I said i was leaving, but since you did reply to me (email notify) I feel the least i could do was reply back.
You claim my first hand witnessing of everything I discussed is apocryphal, but claim the things you say are actual facts right?
How many drug addicts have you personally been around, while they ARE DOING the drugs, and actually watch them do drugs and listen to them discuss ways to get more drugs?
How many actual drug houses have you been inside?
How many kids did you baby sit while their parents were off doing drugs?
This doesn’t even make sense that you claim people will murder for their drug money, but to use the food stamp card is not happening.
This doesn’t even make sense that you claim your third hand at best, knowledge is more relevant than my first hand witnessing.
This doesn’t even make sense that you actually think your discussions with drug addicts is more relevant than the ones I have had with them throughout my life.
Again, have you ever even been inside a drug house?
Do you have that sort of trust with drug addicts and their dealers?
I said my peace and am done here, wont even bother this no more.
“will murder for drugs but there is no welfare fraud going on”
I am also unsubbing the blog and deleting cookies because I don’t have boots high enough to wade in this shyt no more.
And to those thinking you pushed me away, get over yourself,
The only thing that is pushing me away, is common sense and the stench of bullshyt.
PS, oh yah, you are now judging @bron’s knowledge because its not first hand, but neither is yours.
Holding down the fort while drug addicts are off doing drugs is not first hand knowledge of what they are doing.
Neither is what their friends tell you, what you hear on the news or what they tell you when they come in at night.
Peace out.
nick,
Apparently evaluating evidence on the merits is a skill that escapes you so you resort to false equivalences. How utterly predictable.
As to your other blathering, pmj “kicked his own ass” by relying upon anecdote instead of evidence. However, honestly, if anyone gets credit for the assist it’s Elaine, Mike and Tony. I mostly watched. It was funny.
Sounds vaguely familiar as a tactic though. Relying on anecdote as a basis to claim a typical truth. Wonder where I’ve seen that before? Hmmmmmmm . . .
But then again, its simpler and easier to just think “all government bad” than it is to evaluate each and every thing in and of itself.
“Sounds vaguely familiar as a tactic though. Relying on anecdote as a basis to claim a typical truth. Wonder where I’ve seen that before? Hmmmmmmm”
Gene,
Could that have been from someone who has been everywhere, knows everything and was supposed to be away in Europe recently?. Someone who claims to be a man of the people but buys decadently expensive breakfasts in European Hotels……Nah maybe not that type of person who thinks of himself as the most interesting man in the world is only a fiction in a Dos Equis commercial.
Bron, If the USDA did a report saying farm chemicals were totally safe these folks would be, rightfully so, jumpin’ up and down. I’m remembering a scene in a Woody Allen film. He’s a young Woody, talking w/ family members. His dad, talking about black folk says, “They’re poor, they steal, they got a right to.” I think that sums it up. We hate all waste and fraud. They have a selective moral compass.
nick:
no, no, it is just like the government tells us. They never lie or fudge statistics.
what are you thinking, nick?
lotta,
LOL! Thanks for the laugh.
But, You apparently have run a person who is a breath of fresh air away. He’s not one of your kind. He’s poor and real. What elitist a-holes. Now, beat your chest Gene. Another notch on your belt. Kicked pmjokes ass!! Despicable.
Bob Kauten
1, October 15, 2013 at 3:22 pm
Oh, hell, what am I typing?
I can’t see the keys. They’re covered in blood.
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Lol.
I love this cartoon: