US lawmakers vote to cut food stamp benefits from 2014…
You can read it and weep here.
And let’s be clear. It’s not “cutting entitlements”. This is called, “forcing people to go hungry legislation.”
Can we re-name this please? Let’s call is for what it is: “Allowing the Poor, Disenfranchised, Handicapped, and Children to go without food legislation.”
The United States is the wealthiest country in the world.
Our leaders can easily find money to wage a war or two. Have you noticed that not one headline questioned where the money would come from for military intervention in Syria? Our leaders in Congress can easily find the money to drop bombs on people or send drones out to kill terrorist suspects and anyone in their midst, but in the greatest economic downturn since the 1930’s, when unemployment remains very high and the general economy is just grinding along, these bastards will cut and cut and cut “entitlements” to the general public without batting an eye. To say the least they are a-moral and stupid. At worst, they are just evil. I dislike that word but I can find no other under the circumstances.
For anyone who thinks, “Yeah…but…the fraud…”
Let me clarify. There is about 1% waste in the food stamp program. In any other enterprise it is estimated that there is 4% waste from damages or theft. I think many capitalist enterprises would be happy to have only 1% waste.
I’ll end my rant with the following quote which sums up nicely why I scream at the television on a regular basis:
How our representatives spend our taxes reveals in stark black and white our nation’s values and concerns. And how we respond to their decisions reveals, too, our own souls, our own deepest values. These responses show where we stand in relation to our neighbors and to those across the country who share our humanity, who look to us for a ladder up from the pains of poverty, illness, and hunger.
– Bhikkhu Bodhi, “The Attack at Home”
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With you, whole-heartedly. I simply cannot see any good in this decision. A nation of hypocrisy!
I recently had a discussion with a friend about Florida wanting to test food stamp recipients for drugs. When I questioned him about the why of that concept, he told me “Well they’re breaking the law.” I asked him what about other laws that poor people on food stamps working for minimum wage might be breaking. Speeding ticket? J-walking? What about the poor bastard who might steal a loaf of bread from the 7-Eleven store because he only makes $311 a week, with which he has to pay rent, feed his child, and pay other bills? Oh wait, that last one was Les Miserables. Anyway, he changed his mind about that drug thing.
Excellent! Clever, funny, relevant, profound.
Ken Blackwell, way back when he was a city councilman in Cincinnati in 1984, told a reporter that if you didn’t vote you didn’t exist. As Ohio’s republican secretary of state in the Bush years he took that to heart, making it extremely difficult for people to vote if they lived in poor precincts. Now he is with the “Family Research Council,” and yesterday he opined that there is “nothing more Christian” than cutting millions from food aid.
In our part of the country the food banks are overwhelmed with people looking for food because our General ASSembly cut off extended unemployment benefits and reduced by one-third the maximum that people on short-term unemployment can receive. That maximum was $535 a week for 26 weeks. It is now $350 a week for no more than 20 weeks. An editorial cartoon in our paper yesterday showed a house conservative looking at the food stamp bill and asking “What Would Jesus Cut?” What indeed.
Reminds me of Mouseland: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqpFm7zAK90
Brilliant post. Now if everyone just begins speaking out …