Can WE solve the homeless problem?

[hawaiian by heart]

Originally Posted by Pence Farthing

Its simple. Just read the jackboot language of Mr by Heart.

As far as doing what works, you may be right inthe ultra-short term, but all you are really doing is kicking the can down the road until it becomes a 55 gallon drum, and starts kicking society down the road.

Gee i don't know if your calling me a nazi with your jackboot term or not? But the only superiority i see is the ideal that the only ones pulling down this country are the poor collecting welfare etc. I don't know i see examples of welfare and waste everyday. I just walked by one example earlier today in an upperclass neighborhood. They built some sculptors to make the neighborhood more pleasent looking. Guess what? It was paid for by the city with tax money.

One of the richest neighborhoods, why can't they be self sufficient and collect money to pay for there art. Instead i and others from other communities contribute to pay for it. The cost of it could of fed and housed alot of people.

[hotzcatz]

Someone told me today about some places on the mainland that have subsidized the food stamp program so the recipients get twice as much if they buy local produce. The program is apparently sponsored by grants and not the government, too. That sounds like a good way to help folks who need good food as well as help folks who grow the food and keep the money in the neighborhood as well. Seems like a win-win-win situation. Not sure how to make it work for housing, though.

[whtviper1]

Originally Posted by Pence Farthing

You tried to intimidate white viper into silence by comparing him to Nazis, ot did you forget.

I feel I must chime in here. While I know the comparing my position to the Holocaust is crossing every possible line by HBH - my username for the record is about a car, a White Dodge Viper. It's not about race.

[OpenD]

Originally Posted by hotzcatz

Someone told me today about some places on the mainland that have subsidized the food stamp program so the recipients get twice as much if they buy local produce. The program is apparently sponsored by grants and not the government, too. That sounds like a good way to help folks who need good food as well as help folks who grow the food and keep the money in the neighborhood as well. Seems like a win-win-win situation. Not sure how to make it work for housing, though.

I wonder if that person might have been confused about a historical fact, because at the start of the Food Stamp program, in 1939, they actually used special stamps, in denominations like money, and people purchased them at a discount in order to incent them to make purchases that would reduce farmer's food surpluses. It was a farm support bill, and it worked like this...

The program operated by permitting people on relief to buy orange stamps equal to their normal food expenditures; for every $1 worth of orange stamps purchased, 50 cents worth of blue stamps were received. Orange stamps could be used to buy any food; blue stamps could only be used to buy food determined by the Department to be surplus.

A Short History of SNAP | Food and Nutrition Service

That lasted 4 years, until the food surpluses were eliminated and unemployment was reduced due to the war effort.

The program was revived in the early 60s as a Department of Agriculture program to stimulate the sale of fresh, perishable foods, and thus, provide indirect farm support to the farmers who grew them. The secondary intention was to improve the nutrition of poor people. Over the years other changes were made, and it became somewhat of a political football. Electronic Payment Cards began to be used in 1998 in place of paper scrip in order to reduce fraud and provide more accountability. Those are now referred to as EBTs (Electronic Benefits Transfer). So even before the Food Stamp Program was formally ended in 2008, the actual "food stamps" were no longer in use.

What replaced it was a somewhat different program called SNAP, for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program, and it uses the EBT card system. But in the same way that people still call steel food cans "tin can," even though no tin has been used for over 50 years, many people still call SNAP benefits "food stamps" even though it's now an obsolete term.

As is, I believe, the information your friend shared with you, because I don't see that being true for many decades.

What can I say? I'm the partner everybody wants for Trivial Pursuit.

[Mikala43]

Take your debates to the appropriate forums.