How Should Food Stamps (i.e., Lone Star Card) be Used. (Canadian: buy, price)
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I herd about this a few week ago while I was watching the news and they were describing the food stamp system and how they wanted to incorporate buying fast food and necessary essentials. That is a very bad idea. We already are in a obesity epidemic we need to keep it simple with groceries. I actually think that they should regulate what kind of groceries you should buy and have stricter regulations on entering the program. It really pisses me off sometimes when I see someone on food stamps giving all their stamps away, dont have no job and living off section 8 and I'm struggling trying to make ends meet. I'm a college student and I tried to apply for the program and they told me that I was not qualified. I was pissed.
The program needs to be reformed. They need stricter policies and they need to be very selective about who they give them too. I also think that you should have a 2 year max on the program. There is no way that anyone should be getting assistance like that for longer than 2 years. I think some people get the wrong idea of the program sometimes, Its not designed for people to live off it forever, It is designed to HELP you get on your feet. Some people need to start taking the necessary steps to better them selves. We live in the USA where we have opportunities to have anything we want if we WORK hard for them. This is a prime example of the "golden handcuff".
It really pisses me off sometimes when I see someone on food stamps giving all their stamps away, dont have no job and living off section 8 and I'm struggling trying to make ends meet. I'm a college student and I tried to apply for the program and they told me that I was not qualified. I was pissed.
Bet this'll upset you too. Children of migrant workers get their first year of college free. My friend dated a girl enrolled in a private university, she had her own apartment, and even had official USDA-distributed ground beef in the freezer, all courtesy of excessive government programs.
This will always be a contentious issue. There would be less opposition if the programs did not enable those who perpetuate the cycle of poverty, or provide in excess of those who don't qualify because they're too "rich".
Last edited by End Alzheimer's; 10-24-2011 at 04:33 PM..
There is no way that anyone should be getting assistance like that for longer than 2 years. I think some people get the wrong idea of the program sometimes, Its not designed for people to live off it forever, It is designed to HELP you get on your feet.
i hope your grandparents (if they're alive) saved and invested well and don't need to rely on social security for their retirement. you might be surprised at how hard it is to live off of that. when your grandmother, or your mother, has run out of benefits after 2 years and is 67 or 69, will you be glad that the system has put them in a position to have to be a greeter at walmart, saying 'hi' and annoying everyone who walks into the store, just so that she can afford cheap food in addition to half of her medication? except that those positions will soon be hard to get. maybe she'll be one of those slow cashiers at walmart, that annoy everyone. or maybe she'll just be selling cookies or tamales in the parking lot so that she can stay alive. or, like the video of the psychopatic killer that someone posted above, she'll have to resort to lying about being out of gas in order to buy the most basic foods and pay for everything that medicare doesn't (and that's a lot).
do you consider yourself a decent and compassionate person? just curious.
i hope your grandparents (if they're alive) saved and invested well and don't need to rely on social security for their retirement. you might be surprised at how hard it is to live off of that. when your grandmother, or your mother, has run out of benefits after 2 years and is 67 or 69, will you be glad that the system has put them in a position to have to be a greeter at walmart, saying 'hi' and annoying everyone who walks into the store, just so that she can afford cheap food in addition to half of her medication? except that those positions will soon be hard to get. maybe she'll be one of those slow cashiers at walmart, that annoy everyone. or maybe she'll just be selling cookies or tamales in the parking lot so that she can stay alive. or, like the video of the psychopatic killer that someone posted above, she'll have to resort to lying about being out of gas in order to buy the most basic foods and pay for everything that medicare doesn't (and that's a lot).
do you consider yourself a decent and compassionate person? just curious.
read post #33 it was referring to you
I am a compassionate person.
also, to fan the flames of hatred - foodstamps can used to buy grocery store sushi. happy birthday to me! thanks, texas. but my monthly allowance for a family of two (single parent) isn't enough to cover the food bills, even when we eat a lot of brown rice, frozen veggies, fresh fruit and veggies, inexpensive meat (but not the cheapest - that stuff's gross and so bad for you), potatoes, gorp, milk... it sure helps, tho. so go ahead and demonize me because my son has a pack or two of gummy bears a month, and we had a party 2 months ago that included a sara lee frozen cake and some ben n jerry's.
but to be fair, this is texas, and prisons create jobs (let's pretend it's not with huge amounts of taxpayer money), so maybe we should not help the despicable poor, including the recently unemployed, but instead should be imprisoning more people for stealing loaves of bread (or even, *gasp*, steaks) to feed their family. three strikes you're out is what it's all about.
it's stuff like this that makes me think the middle of the middle class will be first against the wall when the revolution comes, instead of the people who deserve it.
Awfully defensive aren't you? So how are people supposed to feel when they see a person use a Lone Star card to buy better quality food than they could afford themselves, talking on a cell phone, wearing nicer/newer clothes, wearing jewelry, able to afford tattoos, drive a new gas-guzzler with fancy wheels and expensive stereo system? Then this same person has subsidized housing, a big screen tv, cable tv, subsidized school lunches, subsidized daycare/after-school care, and subsidized utilities. Kids have expensive electronics, kids have bounce-castle birthday party. It's not bashing poor people, it's bashing abusers! Oh, and your kids gummy bears and your birthday sushi, did you ever think that there was someone out there that couldn't afford those small rewards for themself or their kid because they had to pay for yours. Nah, you're right, you deserve it. Btw, what library are you at to use the computer. Please don't tell me you can't afford food, but can pay for a computer and internet.
Yes, prisons create jobs. Instead of whining about prisons, maybe you should apply for a job at one so you can get off welfare. I know you're being dramatic, but a judge isn't sending someone to prison for stealing bread unless they robbed the store too. That was a ridiculous statement just like the rest of your post.
It's funny that you say the middle-class will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. Open your eyes, the middle-class are already against the wall from government programs to subsidize the poor, did you think the rich paid for your sushi.
I don't want to get nostalgic because these things happened in the past too, but whatever happened to the poor stretching their every dollar and getting by with the bare necessities until they could provide for themselves. Certainly some still do, especially those that don't qualify for assistance.
At least we can surely agree on the idiocy of spending 3-5 trillion dollars on the Iraq war, not to mention the social costs. That money was/is needed here. Put that into Social Security and we could all retire at age 60.
Last edited by End Alzheimer's; 10-24-2011 at 10:32 PM..
illegal immigrants can't get food stamps. if a family getting food stamps includes an illegal immigrant, the illegal doesn't count at all in figuring how much they get. it's like they weren't there.
they can get WIC, tho. WIC isn't that much, and is just for the baby or young child. it pays for formula or a breast pump until the child is one year old, and then it pays for some, but not much, milk, peanut butter, cheap cereal, juice... not much more. nobody's living off of WIC, but it helps a lot of small children. you'd rather they starve?
my son's mom is a canadian who overstayed her 6 month visa-free visitation period because she was pregnant. she got free prenatal care and a free baby-birthing. but it's not true at all that undocumented immigrants get free health care. they get free emergency care at government run hospitals, and they have to be given emergency care at private hospitals, but they get charged for it. of course, it's very difficult to hunt them down and damage their credit (which they don't have) if they don't pay, so i guess you can call that free. but if they have a rotten tooth that needs to be pulled, or a non-life threatening infection, or anything that you would see your family GP about instead of rushing to an emergency room - they don't get that for free.
First, you don't know how the game is played. It is against the law to ask a person if they are an illegal alien, not even a policeman can ask someone he pulls over (in TX) if they are illegally here. Therefore illegals can apply for these services without a major problem.
i truly wonder how many people would complain about this sort of thing, or how much misinformation would be spread about this sort of thing, if most undocumented immigrants were canadians or western-europeans instead of mexicans and people from part south of mexico.
You can waste your time wondering all you want, but the fact of the matter is that the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of illegals in this country are from Mexico and not from Canada.
Yes, we did, if you count those who died in the 90s (when Clinton was president) as a result of our enforcement of sanctions, which caused death by malnutrition, lack of health care, no safe drinking water, disrupted transport and infrastructure,etc., by The Secretary of State's own admission that a half a million children is acceptable collateral damage:
"When asked on US television if she [Madeline Albright, US Secretary of State] thought that the death of half a million Iraqi children [from sanctions in Iraq] was a price worth paying, Albright replied: "This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it.""
From Wikipedia's published references, "Iraq Sanctions", deaths of children alone before 9/11:
* Unicef: 500,000 children (including sanctions, collateral effects of war). "[As of 1999] [c]hildren under 5 years of age are dying at more than twice the rate they were ten years ago."
* Former U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq Denis Halliday: "Two hundred thirty-nine thousand children 5 years old and under" as of 1998.
* "probably ... 170,000 children", Project on Defense Alternatives, "The Wages of War", 20. October 2003
* 350,000 excess deaths among children "even using conservative estimates", October 2001
Back to the main topic, what would be the effect of "sanctions" against families now receiving food stamps in the USA? Is the death of American children one of those very hard choices, whose price is worth it?
Again, the US is not to blame for those deaths:
Quote:
Since the Clinton Administration’s policy went into effect, Treasury has approved licenses that have resulted in U.S. sales of corn to Iran, durum wheat to Libya, and hard red winter wheat to Sudan. Also, President Clinton, in issuing executive orders in 1999 to impose U.S. economic sanctions on Serbia and the Taliban in Afghanistan, specifically exempted commercial sales of food and medical products from prohibitions imposed on all U.S. exports to these destinations.
Sanctions are not intended to harm the people of Iraq. That is why the sanctions regime has always specifically exempted food and medicine. The Iraqi regime has always been free to import as much of these goods as possible. It refuses to do so, even though it claims it wants to relieve the suffering of the people of Iraq.
• Iraq is actually exporting food, even though it says its people are malnourished. Coalition ships enforcing the UN sanctions against Iraq recently diverted the ship M/V MINIMARE containing 2,000 metric tons of rice and other material being exported from Iraq for hard currency instead of being used to support the Iraqi people.
• The oil-for-food program has delivered $3.7 billion worth of food, $691 million worth of medicine, and more than $500 million worth of supplies for electrical, water/sanitation, agricultural, education, oil industry, settlement rehabilitation and demining projects.
• In 1995,*over Iraq's protests--the Security Council adopted another oil-for-food resolution. Again, Iraq refused to accept it. It was only after another year and a half of Iraqi delays and international pressure that the Iraq regime agreed to accept oil-for-food.
The August 1999 UNICEF Report on Child Health demonstrates that Iraqi mismanagement, -- if not also deliberate policy -- not sanctions, is responsible for malnutrition and deaths.
Location: North Downtown Houston (Northside Village)
157 posts, read 558,580 times
Reputation: 127
Quote:
Originally Posted by Proud Texan
By the way, where did you get your facts about felons stealing loaves of bread to feed their families and going to prison for life because of it? I would bet the number is trivial, meaning a few percentage points under 1%, so your point is moot. Nonetheless, it sounds like you have a bigger axe to grind and I'm interested in hearing more.
I think he/she pulled this fact from a movie called murder in the first... it's about a orphan boy who steals a loaf of bread to feed his sister, then gets shipped off to Alcatraz for life.
So, for the record, the lonestar card won't buy credible facts either.
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