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For the last couple of months, after seeing lots TV news stories wailing about Food Stamp fraud, I’ve been paying some attention to what appears to be a coordinated assault on what’s left of the American social safety net, and particulary Food Stamps, by both elements of the corporate media and rightwing politicians. For example, there’s this Daniel Halper piece in the Weekly Standard:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/federal-welfare-spending-skyrocket-8…
After a Scary Graph put together by Senate Republican staffers, Halperin quotes Senator Jeff Sessions, ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee:
The best example of our broken welfare state may be SNAP, or the food stamp program: food stamp spending has increased every single year since 2000, even when the economy is improving. 1 in 6 Americans are now on food stamps and the USDA has an aggressive campaign to enroll millions more - whether they need the benefit or not.
Whether they need the benefit or not? I know quite a few people on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program(SNAP), fka Food Stamps. I know that neither their incomes nor their SNAP benefits have increased, but the purchasing power of SNAP has been steadily eroded by rising food prices over the last couple of years. Most SNAP recipients also work for a living, many of them are employed full time but still qualify for the program because their wages are so low that they truly couldn’t feed their families every day without some help.
I’d say they need the benefit. The Department of Agriculture, and local SNAP offices, have been trying to get the word out to people that if they qualify they should apply, that there is no shame in applying, and that they should apply before their kids go hungry for several days. Apparently, there are many who think this is a Bad Thing that discourages people from getting off of their lazy asses and going to work for whatever Corporate America deigns to pay them.
A good example is this Wall Street Journal editorial from the American Enterprise Institute:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732446160457819314169099317…
This bit particulary struck me:
Why are Americans working less? While there are a number of factors, the phenomenon is due mainly to a variety of public policies that have reduced the incentives to be employed. These policies include:
• Food stamps. Above all else, people work to eat. If the government provides food, then the imperative to work is severely reduced. Since the food-stamp program’s beginning in the 1960s, it has grown considerably, but especially so in the 21st century: There are over 30 million more Americans receiving food stamps today than in 2000.
The sharp rise in food-stamp beneficiaries predated the financial crisis of 2008: From 2000 to 2007, the number of beneficiaries rose from 17.1 million to 26.3 million, according to the Department of Agriculture. That number has leaped to 47.5 million in October 2012. The average benefit per person jumped in 2009 from $102 to $125 per month.
<snip>
Compare 2010 with October 2012, the last month for which food-stamp data have been reported. The unemployment rate fell to 7.8% from 9.6%, and real GDP was rising steadily if not vigorously. Food-stamp usage should have peaked and probably even begun to decline. Yet the number of recipients rose by 7,223,000. In a period of falling unemployment and rising output, the number of food-stamp recipients grew nearly 10,000 a day. Congress should find out why.
Wow! People are unemployed because they have incentive to be out of work! If only that socialist Obama hadn’t increased SNAP benefits from an average of $102 to $125 per month per person! Take that away, and those lazy takers will have to get jobs! That’ll teach ‘em!
Never mind that most SNAP beneficiaries are children, often living with single parents, who aren’t part of the labor force anyway. I suppose the Wall Street Journal thinks those kids should be forced to go to work for the good of their characters, too.
It’s true that part of Obama’s woefully insufficient stimulus increased SNAP, benefits, but that increase will be completely phased out before the end of this year, as this article from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities illustrates:
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3239
So even Obama thinks that an average SNAP benefit of $125 per person per month is too generous or too unaffordable. I urge the reader to answer this question:
Suppose you’re in a family of three,one adult and two children. Suppose the adult is working as, say, a cashier at Wal-Mart making $8 per hour 35 hours a week on average. That’s $1213 a month gross. Suppose the family’s on SNAP, so they’re getting about $375 a month for food. Suppose the kids are teenagers. Can you feed the family on that much?
If you pay attention to the prices in grocery stores, you know damned well you can’t. And later this year the SNAP benefit’s going to drop by about $70 a month? Surely Wal-Mart will give their hard-working employee a raise. Yeah, right.
There will be a lot of Congressional pressure during the next round of “debt ceiling” battles to cut the SNAP program even more, all for poor people’s own good, of course. So who will fight for Food Stamps?
I know SNAP recipients can’t count on Obama and the Democrats to help them because it’s the right thing to do; their track record proves that. They can’t even count on a conservative government that wants to maintain social stability on the old Roman principle of “bread and circuses.”
I find that disgusting and stupid, respectively.
Who can SNAP people count on? Oddly enough, Big Agra and Wal-Mart and the other corporate grocery store chains, which would take a direct hit in their bottom lines if SNAP benefits are reduced.
I find that sad.
59 Comments
I have been an educator for 34 years in relatively well off school districts. I can tell you that free and reduced lunches and breakfasts as well as SNAP benefits are the only thing keeping many of these kids from serious want.
What a heartless group of fools that would cut these bare necessities. What’s next? Workhouses?
Happy to recommend.
This is an excellent post. The idea that SNAP is an incentive not to work is absolutely absurd. When I was briefly on food stamps (EBD card) I worked. I got up every fucking day at 3 AM to ride my bike to a LaborReady office and I worked my ass off. Food stamps did not cover public health necessities such as toilet paper. Nor was I able to get a hot cup of coffee for the LaborReady line.
The family we most recently knew here on SNAP had a child, and a father who was working full time, but with the rising cost of groceries, could not make it without the help. SNAP is not like you can eat like a king, or even eat adequately- almost never can one afford anything fresh.
I look at WIC juices at Walmart, and they are many approaching five dollars per container of juice. Where does that leave a family?
I am offended that people would insinuate that SNAP is incentive not to work, and I am calling bullshit on that. People I have known on SNAP were just barely getting by, and they were scraping together any kind of temporary work they could get to do it. On foot. On bikes. Families, with children. There is so much red tape, we abandoned the idea a long time ago and went to the dumpsters.
How can these people be so utterly and completely disconnected from reality? Have they not even bothered to walk their candy asses through a grocery store lately and look at the cost of WIC-approved foods?
EBD should read EBT card.
As I encounter it, there are two Federally related Food Stamp programs available in Massachusetts: SNAP & CAP.
Homeless people are under attack here by the Food Stamp dispersal establishment. They are sent something in the mail that they must fill out. Homeless, right? So, they have problems getting their mail.
Many were on the standard $180-200/mo., which doesn’t really feed an adult for a month, but it’s a start. So, the mail comes, but not to the homeless person, so he loses his Food Stamps.
Eventually, after a month or more without Food Stamps, the homeless get back on Stamps, but there are two programs, SNAP & CAP. The Agency’s online computer tells the homeless how much they qualify for: The higher amount, but the department qualifies them for the lower amount, so they get $60 to $80 per month.
These are people (majority are veterans) who were so poor that they were on life support. If they have the ability, they can appeal it, but very few homeless people have that possibility. Here in Western Mass, they would have to go to the Holyoke Illegal Drug Open Air Mall to get anything on their Social Security or Food Stamps addressed.
That’s if and only if they can make it through that quarter-mile walk through the Illegal Drug Open Air Mall without falling off the wagon – you see, many or most of these guys also have addiction problems. So they really can’t appeal it. That would risk their safety.
The Food Stamp Dept. has cut off the life support tubes for the homeless of Massachusetts. They are dying off. It’s the middle of winter. We’re lucky for Global Warming this year: Only a couple local homeless dead so far, and at least one of them had not been reduced on Food Stamp amount recently.
Thanks for this important news.
I can’t believe it: The local news (NBC affiliate channel 22 Springfield, MA) just reported that people sponging Food Stamps is a big problem here, and something is being done about it. The clueless reporter interviewed ignorant people on the street who unanimously said to take the food away.
I’ll report back to you as more homeless die from lack of food.
Amanda just died, a few weeks ago. Lived in a tent with her husband Mike. Both had Liver Cancer. They used to joke with each other – to the horror of others – about which one would die first. The joke’s on Amanda.
They were getting “the maximum,” $180-$200 per month of Food Stamps. They can’t spend any of it in a restaurant. They live outside, so not much chance to cook. They were not abusing the system, but they were the ones who are targeted for cuts. They do not deserve a cut in Stamps. I will report back to FDL, as more of our local homeless die.
Thanks for this post. What a country, indeed. A paltry $125 for starving children, whether they need it or not!
More cuts to food stamps will also affect the bottom line of all grocery stores. People with hungry children who have no other options may be forced to steal food. And, frankly, who can blame them? Stealing is one of our proud American values; the richer you are, the more you get to steal.
Oh, yes, we can count on the free school breakfast and lunch program being on the chopping block, too. I live in a poor district, but work in a relatively wealthy one, and lots of people there have only applied for assistance when after they completely ran out of food.
The local Job and Family Services keeps donated canned food in the basement, but they are running low, I hear.
I’m not familiar with CAP, and I admit I wasn’t thinking about the homeless, though I don’t believe anyone in this country has any business going hungry. I do know that in Cleveland, the homeless can register at one of the county shelters, and use that as their address. They can get food stamps just by walking in and applying.
Of course, they have to get there first. If they are in an outlying area with no public transportation, they’re in trouble.
Keep these reports and the reality coming, normanb. Apparently, we have a situation where people are totally clueless. And the media skew is like the blind leading the blind. The hell ever happened to good investigative journalism, good old fashioned reality.
Here’s a reality check. Sit at the metal recycle for a day and listen to your heart break, watching veterans roll in on wheelchairs with one piece of scrap stuck behind their back, living in a motel or on the street, disabled and unable to afford medication; watch the people with bags of cans, tied to the bikes or stuck in carts and wagons, just trying to get through a day.
This country probably spends the entire equivalent of a year’s worth on SNAP on any given day of non-stop unnecessary war, only to have troops return home to suicide, head injury, divorce, the streets, stressed, unable to cope with anything.
God. There are only so many words one can drag from the vocabulary. I could go on for hours on this rant.
Thanks, Crane-Station. I share your disgust. You say,
“How can these people be so utterly and completely disconnected from reality? Have they not even bothered to walk their candy asses through a grocery store lately and look at the cost of WIC-approved foods?”
Because they are so self-absorbed. And because many of them would never dream of rubbing shoulders with the hoi polloi in a Wal-Mart or a Kroger. Many shop at expensive specialty stores, and think nothing of paying $10 a pound for a cut of beef. Or they can afford to eat out all of the time.
This brings me to a secondary point, though. Enacting a policy that actually makes large numbers of people in a society go hungry is by no means conservative; it’s a radical ideology. Wacko, free-market worshiping, extreme libertarian, Tea Party, take your pick.
Also dangerous and foolish.
When enough grow hungry, the regime will fall.
One thing I have found somewhat heartening is the growth of the urban agriculture movement. Consider this excerpt about local farming within the Chicago city limits:
Source: http://www.climate.org/topics/international-action/urban-agriculture/chicago.htm
Many urban poor people are not well-served by supermarkets. They are said to live in “food deserts” where local convenience stores often charge high prices and provide very little in the way of fresh produce. Local agriculture could be a way to provide access to healthier nutrition.
This Sunday I’m going to participate in a food drive for the local Food Pantry that provides food to our neediest citizens. The list of foods we ask for is pretty bad. There are absolutely no fresh fruits or vegetables on the request list. That needs to change.
We’re also hoping to start a community farm that could supply both the Food Pantry and the local schools with GMO-free food.
As for the perversity of the continuing war on
povertythe poor, it is beyond unconscionable to deny any human being access to a nutritionally-balanced diet. A majority of those served by the SNAP program, by the way, are children. Is there any limit to capitalism’s inhumanity?Whatever happened to that “let them eat cake” lady? When will they ever learn?
We have had many discussions lately about true conservatism. And this is anything but. I agree.
Heh! There’s serendipity for you. For awhile last December and most of January, all of the local Cleveland TV news programs had story after story of people being arrested for food stamp fraud. “Stealing from the taxpayers!,” they wailed. “Lowlifes and deadbeats,” they solemnly intoned.
Now, food stamp fraud DOES happen. I myself have seen people buy cases of soda at grocery stores using an EBT card, and then see them again selling those same sodas on sidewalks downtown. It’s a problem, but it does NOT justify literally taking food out of the mouths of children. There will always be some who take advantage of the system. Any system.
And, in the larger scheme of things, food stamp fraud is insignificant when compared to the trillions of dollars the investment banks stole, or the hundreds of billions defense contractors suck out of the treasury, or he billions in subsidies and tax breaks large and profitable corporations take advantage of every year.
… X 2
… good look and see piece OB … commended
Thanks. As it happens, I do have some experience at getting a physical address at an aid organization:
At the Amherst Survival Center, which is not a shelter, but distributes food and other items to the poor:
They let people get their mail there. That’s it. Homeless people can’t be expected to be anywhere regularly, even aid organizations that feed people.
To cut to the chase: I maintained a separate mailing address, not trusting the “physical address” – and for good reason:
The Survival did once tell me that I had received a piece of mail – one piece of mail that I was told about during a time spanning several years
That one piece of mail never made it to me, and I never found out what it was or who it was from. Probably from the Government.
So, homeless can get an official address, but still can’t reliably get their mail.
Exactly.
Well, good for you helping out the local food pantry, Little Doggie. Every year at work, I decline to give to the United Way because my charity goes to the Cleveland Food Bank. In the summer, when people don’t make themselves feel good by giving, like they do around Thanksgiving and Christmas.
I know where that money goes, you see.
Cleveland is an exception to the urban food desert problem. Local farmer’s markets abound. They take the SNAP card, and sell good, wholesome fresh fruits, vegetables, and other produce, and many of them sell good, locally produced fresh meat, eggs, and cheese as well. There are also a number of community gardens scattered around Cleveland proper and the inner ring suburbs.
That’s one reason I love this place and its people(most of them, anyway). They know they have problems. They know poverty is a major issue. But they don’t try to hide it or ignore it. They face up to it and many people actually try to do things about it. Sometimes they even succeed.
Of course, the further out you go into white flight land, the more people try convince themselves that THEY don’t have those problems because THEY are better than “those people” in and around Cleveland itself.
In other news, the biggest and oldest of the urban farmer’s markets, the West Side Market, had a fire a couple of nights ago. Only one stand was destroyed by the fire, but the whole market suffered severe smoke damage. It will be closed for weeks, and that’s a real tragedy.
Thanks for the heartfelt post,OB. Highly recommended. Could it be backdoor population control? So right, no one should be hungry in this country. Do they realize hunger will not force people to get jobs when there are NO JOBS! Hunger will force criminal acts,especially to feed your children. What does it cost to feed someone versus imprisoning same? Maybe that’s the game, the ones who don’t die go to prison, keeping the prison industrial complex healthy and strong. Free labor, too. Paid for by what’s left of the taxpaying public. What a plan. What a sad,sad country we live in. PEACE
They won’t admit that there are no jobs, or at least none with wages high enough to buy the stuff(like houses, cars, and computer thingies) that keep the economy going. If they admitted that, they would have to admit that capitalism is in crisis.
Can’t have that. Wouldn’t be prudent.
Your points are all spot-on. I think part of the problem is our PTB are governed by investors to whom even three months away is forever. Spoiled brats, all. They know what they want and they want it NOW! Even Henry Ford had the sense to despise the investor class.
Thanks for the reply.
But you can count on the stupids to be all aggro about food stamp fraud and money coming out of their pockets but never make that same connection about the billions Goldman Sachs and the rest of the banksters have taken from them.
Yes, indeedy. People get desperate and angry when their kids don’t have enough to eat. If they get desperate and angry enough, they riot and revolt. Unsuccessful revolts are called rebellions. Successful ones are called revolutions. History is replete with examples of both.
That’s what makes this ideology that assaults the most basic and necessary thing for human existence besides air and water–food, so incredibly freaking stupid. Solid conservatives such as Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte would not approve.
Investors? Ye satanic gods are OWNERS!
They enjoy twisted con games. Bluffdale. Ha ha ha ha ha. WHAT! You aren’t laughing? They’ve got a diagnosis for that.
You’re right, of course. I remember a few years ago, in the middle of the Obamacare debate, when a couple of co-workers and I drove down to Columbus for a conference. I pointed out all of the “Keep your Goverment(sic) Hands Off My Medicare” signs out in white flight land and laughed at the ignorance displayed.
One of my coworkers, a government employee, I must add, didn’t get it. She didn’t know that Medicare was a government program. At least the other one did.
Oy.
The investor class are the owners now. That was not always the case in Henry Ford’s day. He hated them because they would only invest in Ford Motor Company if he only built cars for the well-heeled. They thought the Model-T would be an unprofitable boondoggle. Silly investors.
Ford was an interesting asshole.
As for “them” having a diagnosis for my severe mental illness in not laughing at them(or maybe with them?), I’m not surprised. Stalin would have done the same. Hell, there are a few posters right here on FDL who’ve come out and said I was insane for voting third party in Ohio last year. At least they’re in good company, no?
In CO, the free breakfasts are called Smart Start. I think what state lawmakers are doing is raising the eligibility standards. Dunno about free or reduced lunch tickets, but CHIP (CO health care for low income families kids) levels bounce around.
The other major concern is the cutbacks in all the agencies that handle the paperwork, including unemployment. Apparently it is seriously slowing down the work to provide needed help.
But how funny; I’d had a totally different take on Ford’s history, but I’m too lazy to google about it.
It’s a stupid place to cut funds; hunger tipping points are serious business, and all this time I’d thunk they were fuckin’ geniuses for funding food stamps, WIC, etc. LEAP? Has that funding been cut nationally, or is it a state administered program in block grants? I used to know…
What I don’t understand is the blind loyalty to the likes of the banksters, who are not their friend. And the utter hatred toward people who are barely getting by.
I also see a bigger issue, a public health issue. If you stress a large part of any population, say by taking away essential necessities like food, there is greater likelihood of illness. And disease doesn’t care how much money one has in the pocket.
The first sign of real change will be food riots, carpe diem!
LEAP or HEAP or whatever it’s called now is ultimately federally-funded block grants.
Which keep getting smaller and smaller. Obama incrementalism in reverse. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, now! Romney would be worse!
That is part of the American mythos, that everybody actually has a chance of living like the banksters, if they just work hard enough or are clever enough or lucky enough. Therefore, don’t make waves, don’t rock the boat, or you might miss your opportunity!
It’s a most powerful illusion. The old Hindu god Maya is alive and well.
In New York, Washington, and Springfield(pick a state).
“DOH!”
–Homer Simpson
There are some things to notice about SNAP. The benefits are administered by the states and set by the states. That means there is wide variation in benefits. Also, the benefits are means tested, with the amount of the benefit adujusted to some formula based on income, likely set by the states but approved administratively by USDA. Because of means testing, benefits can be extraordinarily small amounts, such as $16 a month for an entire family.
And SNAP is Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. There’s no illusion in Congress that they are covering the total grocery bill.
Finally, the program is kept around because it gooses demand for agricultural products and industrialized groceries. The agribusiness and food processing industries keep it alive. Which is why it is generally bundled into the farm bill.
We have a manipulated reality. When the Occupy movement started making the homeless visible to the rest of the population–that was when the police raids started coming down. When the Occupy movement started feeding people who were hungry, they became an “attractive nuisance” and had to be shut down for safety and health reasons.
Municipalities actively hide the poor because it “hurts the image of the community and its ability to attract new business”. By actively hide, I mean repress through repressive laws and abusive policing.
And for SNAP, it is state legislators and governors as much as the President and Congress who play out the negative imagery about abuse of Food Stamps. But…the amount of cash that was flown on pallets to Iraq and squandered could run the entire national Food Stamp program for the better part of a year.
All true. So what does anything you just said have to do with anything I said?
Besides, the name change from Food Stamps was quite deliberate; just another ploy to cut another entitlement. Once it’s “supplemental,” the political question becomes, “How much is supplemental enough? How much can we cut?” Just like Aid to Families with Dependent Children was changed to TEMPORARY Assistance to Needy Families. How temporary should it be? Surely you see that.
I don’t know where you get the $16 part. Probably from the smallest benefit for a family that barely qualifies that you could Google.
One of my points is that SNAP is already woefully underfunded and way, way insufficient to meet the original goal of the program, which was to insure that all Americans had enough to eat, regardless of their financial circumstances. Yes, it is kept alive, now, by agribusiness, food-processing, and food distribution businesses, but it should not be that way.
It should be a program that actually prevents hunger. The fact that powerful interests want to eliminate it is outrageous to anyone with half an ounce of human decency.
“Congress should find out why” says the WSJ in superior tones.
Wow.
Just read here, Congress! Save those consultancy and commission fees and put them towards shoring up these vital programs instead.
I guess the Wall Street Journal can take the tone it does because it knows folks on Food Stamps are not using their last dimes, nickels and cents to grab the latest edition – they have to save those for toothpaste and toilet paper!
Thank you, Ohio Barbarian. Recommended.
Thank you, Juliania.
“You can’t turn on the news without hearing what the Dow Jones average is. I want to know what the DOUG Jones average is. How ya doin’?”
–Jim Hightower
Absolutely.
Also, I wonder what concrete things we can do to change the imagery, about all people on SNAP abusing food stamps, for example. It reminds me a bit of the early-on imagery and negative press about dumpster diving. For a while, they tried to make it seem as if all dumpster divers were identity thieves, drunks and criminals. I have been diving dumpsters for close to ten years, and I have never seen a single drunk person, identity thief or person committing a crime, associated with this activity.
I think it has taken great effort from people to keep educating to turn this imagery around to where, now, there are even a couple of reality cooking shows that focus on dumpster food. Also, we have seen the advent of freeganism, a form of voluntary poverty where people actually choose to live by scavenging.
How can we turn this around, so that the public has a more realistic view of SNAP? Write about it more often? I would like to see more coverage, from OB and others.
I get the $16 from the fact Social Security is my only support and my wife works retail part-time. And that’s our benefit in NC.
It’s been outrageously insufficient from the beginning. And it was instituted in its current form by agribusiness in 1964 in order to keep urban states from cutting the cotton and wheat subsidies, a classic case of legislative logrolling by LBJ. Of course, the program goes back to the New Deal when it was seen as way of relief during the depression where stamps in the cities relieved the agricultural depression in the countryside.
What it should be–at this point that looks like “after the revolution”.
Dow Jones vs Doug Jones:
Contradictory phenomena like, surging financial markets (unlimited financial speculation) and economic stagnation dictates that every basic right must be eliminated in order to ensure the continued flow of funds into the banks. I’ve no other words than “we’re screwed.”
Rec’d, thanks.
I think that the economy begins to do that job as people understand what hardworking family members are going through. People on SNAP, like me, have to be less stigmatized and reluctant about sharing their stories.
There is a huge shift going on in the relationship between work and support of families that is only going to become more dislocated in the future. In the absence of government action, it’s classic contradiction of capitalism stuff.
Damn. I deserved the snap in your first sentence. Forgive my kneejerk cynicism; I had no idea. “Outrageously insufficient” indeed; no argument there, at least not from me.
I don’t know the bit about LBJ and agribusiness, but it fits with what I know of LBJ, which happens to be quite a bit. He was an acquaintance of my father’s, and I met him in person a few times, but I was just a kid. I know you’re right about the New Deal part; FDR was trying to stimulate demand to get agricultural prices back up.
I can’t argue with your last sentence, either. I fear the whirlwind gets closer.
Thanks for getting out and getting your hands dirty. Urban agriculture needs to become widely spread, especially in communities that have not rebuilt after the 1965 and 1968 riots. Will Allen, Growing Power, has pioneered some impressive urban farming techniques, being able to deal with soil that has leached lead from lead paint of a hundred years of houses or on urban abandoned parking lots.
The land ownership problems to massive reclamation in cities are immense. Some ownership has gotten so fragmented that a decision to sell is impossible; other owners have simply walked away from any responsibility with a huge tax lien hanging on the property. And once ownership is settled, you have the danger of developers seeking to gentrify the neighborhood through public-private eminent domain.
Urban agriculture projects deal with unemployment and food security at the same time, just like urban housing rehabilitation deals with unemployment and housing issues at the same time. Once you have some protection from predatory gentrification.
Well, I would like to see that stigma go away, and see some reality set in. I appreciate you and others sharing experience, and I support more sharing.
Seems like the war on the poor has gathered steam to where it is a war on the working poor (we used to call that the middle class, I think) as well as a war on the homeless and then an additional war on the folks with mental or physical compromise. Wow. That’s the honest-to-God best effort the 1 percent can come up with. Huh, well at least they are consistently hateful, they always find the most vulnerable to hate on, don’t they?
No problem OB; we’re on the same side of this struggle.
Coincidence, my folks were in LBJ’s congressional district. My dad loved him after he responded to a concern in writing. I voted for him in a mock election at school– he won.
War on the educated middle-class. I have degrees from top universities, worked a decade in non-profits trying to deal in the 1970s with eliminating poverty through technocratic solutions. Worked in IT for a variety of industries as a contractor for 25 years after that. Lost my middle-class status through three years unemployment in the IT depression 2001-2005.
You wouldn’t believe the reduction in IT wages and salaries over the past 30 years as more people entered the field, technology reduced the necessity of custom programming, and the H1B immigration flooded the US with programmers and other STEM workers.
It is not going to get better even as economic activity picks up. Except in some new technology areas that have a temporary labor shortage because of picky employers.
Work in the money economy and sustainability of families are becoming rapidly separated. Older patterns of domestic production are becoming more sustainable strategies again–but only if you limit the range of what you consume.
Fred and I can relate to your comment, although we were not in your field. I have always looked up to you, TarheelDem. I love that you are an activist, out there walking the talk, and you bring intelligence to the discussion. Thank you, and we hope to hear more.
I am helping a man get back on his feet who fell out of the middle class to prison and then homelessness. He has no assets or possessions apart from his clothes and, recently, a car that is worth about $300. In PA he gets $120 a month from SNAP but it is almost a full time job dealing with the state bureaucracy. Happy to say he is working part time now and has reconnected with his ex-wife, children and grandchildren. But with his history he will likely never have a good job although he is a good, honest man who works hard.
I’m not surprised because I work with a couple of IT people with advanced degrees from respected universities who consider themselves lucky to be making around 40K a year gross.
And the management works them like dogs. They really need more help, but will get none.
I also understand that the state of Ohio laid off most of its IT people in more than one department, and it shows. Promised computer updates seldom materialize or are delayed for years, improvements that are contracted out to the private sector simply don’t do what they are supposed to do and are sometimes uninstalled because they create too many problems, and the politicians use all of this as “evidence” of public sector inefficiency and call for still more cuts.
Meanwhile, the county agencies that are supposed to provide services are under budgetary cutbacks of their own, and simply don’t have enough people to keep up with public demand.
In short, it sucks. Governor Kasich seems to realize that this systematic setting government agencies up for failure is foolish, and I understand he is at least privately considering the idea of imposing an excise tax on natural gas extraction to restore funding to local agencies. Publicly, he wants to use the money to offset a proposed cut n the state income tax.
Realistically, it is doubtful that his fellow Republicans in the Legislature, safe in their gerrymandered districts and devoted to the cause of demonizing government and people in need, will allow that to happen.
One of the reasons I retired from the field after 30 years. Got to where people who could barely spell computer were becoming project managers.
OY !
Thanks for this. I have volunteered in Food Pantries from time to time. Not part of the Food Stamp program, but often an adjunct used by those on Food Stamps. It’s heart-breaking. In my experience, the majority of people on Food Stamps really need them, and need more than what they get. Most have to use Food Pantries to bridge some gaps.
The people I’ve had the privilege to serve in Food Pantries are often ashamed that they have to come into a pantry; wish that they did NOT have to avail themselves of such services; and most would only be TOO HAPPY to have a decent-paying job that would enable them to pay their own way – which is allegedly the Rand-Roid “dream.”
As was stated earlier in the commentary: yes, there is undoubtedly some Food Stamp and welfare fraud. But ANY program will have *some* fraud involved. What these pious self-righteous jerks don’t explain is that the fraud involved with Food Stamp programs is a *pittance* in comparison to the gargantuan mega-fraud heists of our tax dollars by the Military Industrial Complex (no bid contracts anyone???), the Banks, Wall St, etc.
It is truly galling that these so-called “captains of industry” – via their shill-hack mouthpieces in the Wall ST Journal (and other corp owned propoganda media) – can so casually just write off citizens and essentially consign them to an early grave.
Where oh where is the Tundra Trash Grifter to wail and shriek about about Death Panels now? Oh right: too much reality for Bible Spice to handle, plus she’s now knock, knock, knocking on everyone’s door to figure out where her next GRIFT can come from since Roger Ailes gave her the boot. Who knows? Maybe Caribou Barbie’ll find out how the rest of us in the 99% live??? Would certainly be a cold dose of reality for her and her entitled spawn.
I was watching a somewhat slanted piece on the ‘secret’ Cuba last night on PBS, and it struck me that the way you instill patriotism in people, fundamentally speaking, is not to provide a few with largesse, as we are currently doing, but to care for everyone from the bottom up, which the state has as its fundamental purpose for being. It is the state that makes all the overarching decisions. In the case of Cuba it was to bring in tourism to support a very poor economy – in the case of this country it seems to be to become, after ‘financial overlord failed,’ the weapons tsar.
But guns, tanks, and missiles do nothing for the lowest stratum. And that not only undermines the poor and weak; it undermines every level above them as far as love of country and pride in it is concerned.
America is fast losing its identity. All we get excited about any more is super bowl ads.
Revolt already. Damn palaver. All genius would-be advisers imagining smartness is the criterion to rule. Bah, humbug.
Here’s a shocker for you from ‘Khordorkovsky’. Yukos’ (Khordokovsky’s “company”) former Head Analyst (and former KGB general), Alexei Kondaurov, is relating a conversation he had with oiligarch Khordorkovsky about Yukos’ fraud:
The revolting capitalists are already in revolution!
They aren’t stupid. They’re monsters.
Thank you for the story! Good for you for helping him! I’m glad he has a part time job now and is reconnected with his family. I hope he can find a full time job at some point, and I can just imagine how hard that is to do with a prison record. SNAP is vital for him and for so many others.
Going back to the original stupidity…quoth Senator Sessions:
Yes, you idiot, because the population keeps increasing. More people means more poor people, more poor people means more Food Stamp receipients.
Is Sessions that stupid, or is he just being mendacious? Is the reporter also a moron, or is he deliberately trying to spread right-wing propaganda? Yes.
Well, in case anyone thought that it couldn’t get any worse:
I just went to Northampton, Mass., and spoke to one homeless/sheltered person who has been reduced to $22 per month, apparently because she is staying in a shelter. She said that other women in the shelter get widely varying amounts per month, some getting as low as $13 per month.
(How) Will these people survive?
If I understand you correctly, you’re saying the capitalists driving this are not stupid, just sociopathic monsters. Stupid or insane doesn’t matter much, either to the victims or the end result to the PTB themselves.
Many of both groups will be destroyed. I find longterm self-destruction stupid. Maybe I’m just funny that way.
Indeed. Yes to all of the above.
I don’t know how.
One thing to point out here is that shelters have strict requirements. No alcohol/drugs, of course, but many also require residents to be out and looking for work every day. So, 8 hours a day, five days a week, let’s see, that’s 20 outside meals. On $20.00.
Yeah right. Give me a break. The people hating on SNAP are not interested in survival, dignity, helping people to turn lives around, or helping people to barely get by. They are interested in destroying people.
They don’t see you as part of the whole. If they have to sacrifice you for their betterment, they will. You are not part of their “self”. You must make your case that you are useful to them, which you are apparently willing to make, and they must make no such case to you.
Furthermore, it is as if you think you can argue on capitalist terms why they should not kill people; as if you would make a better capitalist than they. Do you want to argue on their terms?
But most important, this is the death-throe of capitalism; capitalists do not follow your wise advice not because they are stupid. They do not follow it because they now organize for a future you would not chose from your vantage point but is necessary from theirs.
Smugness may goose your dopamine; I wonder where’s yer battle-cry barbarian?