[a fool in paradise]

How many people on EBT cards have cable television, cellphones, and high speed internet, let alone cartons of cigarettes?

Necessity is a thing of the past, apparently.

[aruanan]

How many people on EBT cards have cable television, cellphones, and high speed internet, let alone cartons of cigarettes?

I know families with all those things except cigarettes. EBT simply frees up money to be used on all sorts of other things.

Some exchanges from a previous thread on the subject last year, with an addendum at the bottom to the poor, snide doofus addressing me below:

To: Catsrus; PapaBear3625

Jesus said in the gospels: I was hungry and you fed me not. Are any of you helping to feed the poor? Yes, you are, with your tax dollars. Sure, there is some waste in the system, and some buy luxury items. If you’ve ever worked at a voluntary food bank - you’d get an idea of what some of you good-hearted folks think the poor should eat. Can after can of off-brand tomato soup, that the donor and family wouldn’t eat themselves. Cheap boxes of mac & cheese - lots of them, and the list goes on.

Don’t judge a few who have milked the system by those honest people who really do need the help. Some have the idea that food stamp recipients drive fancy cars. None that I’ve seen do - just as there is abuse in everything - there is abuse in food stamps, but some want to punish everyone because they pay taxes and think they should tell others to be good food stamp recipients and eat their beans and rice.

A. Jesus wasn't talking to the U.S. federal government or to a handful of bureaucrats to use government power to extort money from one person to give it to another.

B. From what I have seen in over 7 years of very intimately watching food stamp use, most of it is unnecessary and serves as a means of freeing up dollars to be used for drugs, tobacco, alcohol, entertainment, lottery, bling, and a bazillion other things that are simply not necessities of life by any stretch of the imagination. Yes, food stamp use should be tightly regulated and restricted to the purchase of basic foodstuffs that must be prepared at home in order to be used. No swordfish. No ice cream. No Doritos or candy. No FRIGGING BUBBLE GUM OR BOTTLED WATER!!!!

43 posted on 08/26/2011 8:24:10 PM PDT by aruanan

To: Catsrus

You sound like a liberal Democrat. Eat what I tell you to eat. What a bunch of hypocrites on this forum.Oh, so because someone is poor, they aren’t entitled to some ice cream once in a while?

Start exercising your mind a bit and you may work away some of that crust. A liberal Democrat tells you what you can eat with your own money. Are you familiar with the founding fathers' attitude toward using public money as a means of charity? It was not to be used this way at all. If someone who is "poor" (which most so-classified in the United States are not by almost any historical measure) is relying on the state to take money away from another citizen by threat of force to give to him, he should be limited in the choices available to him for the use of that money. That's not his money. If he doesn't like the restrictions, he doesn't have to take the money. And the restrictions will serve to make sure that folks (the majority of them who are on foodstamps) will use it as little as possible. For whose benefit? For us, the people the government is threatening with fines and imprisonment if we don't surrender our income for redistribution.

No, they're not entitled to ice cream. No one in this society is entitled to anything. They can scrape their pennies together (or give up high speed internet or multiple cell phones or some jewelry purchases or lottery purchases or alcohol or drug or designer clothes or shoes purchases or CDs or iPods or iTunes downloads or movies) and buy it for themselves.

So, what have some of you control freaks on here done to help the poor, other than run your mouths because they are getting help when needed?

Your self-righteousness is matched only by the extent to which you think you can read people's minds and know anything about their actions. How many tens of thousands of dollars of your own personal money have you spent on the needs of refugees? How many years have you spent carrying them around to government and doctor and dental appointments and enrolling them in schools and talking to counselors and taking them for job interviews and dealing with rotten landlords and making emergency runs to the hospital in the middle of the night or leaving work in the middle of the day to do it?

You really need to get an education in both political history and economics. Just because A has a perceived need doesn't give him any warrant at all to take something away from B to alleviate that need or to use C to take it from B to give it to him. A good moral case can be made for preventing the robbery of one person by another. There is no good moral case to be made justifying the robbery of one person by another. And it's funny that you should start out saying that I sound like a liberal Democrat when, in fact, I sound pretty much identical to the political philosophy espoused by the founding fathers of the United States and end up yourself sounding like the harping, bullying, end-justifies-the-means, my-exigency-justifies-my-robbing-you, haranguing of liberal Democrats.

67 posted on 08/27/2011 10:30:56 AM PDT by aruanan

Addendum: our food pantry doesn't have off brands. It distributes whole turkeys, chickens, sirloin hamburger, fresh and frozen salmon, fresh fruits and vegetables, especially from the local farmer's markets, a variety of cheeses such as Amsterdam gouda, Morbier, Double Gloucester, many different bleu cheeses, Stilton, Manchego, wedge parmesan, eggs, milk (cow and goat), many different types of bread, pasta, seitan, cereals, cakes, pies, orange juice, etc. And, yeah, it's our church that does it.

[aruanan]

Jesus said in the gospels: I was hungry and you fed me not. Are any of you helping to feed the poor? Yes, you are, with your tax dollars. Sure, there is some waste in the system, and some buy luxury items. If you’ve ever worked at a voluntary food bank - you’d get an idea of what some of you good-hearted folks think the poor should eat. Can after can of off-brand tomato soup, that the donor and family wouldn’t eat themselves. Cheap boxes of mac & cheese - lots of them, and the list goes on.

Don’t judge a few who have milked the system by those honest people who really do need the help. Some have the idea that food stamp recipients drive fancy cars. None that I’ve seen do - just as there is abuse in everything - there is abuse in food stamps, but some want to punish everyone because they pay taxes and think they should tell others to be good food stamp recipients and eat their beans and rice.

A. Jesus wasn't talking to the U.S. federal government or to a handful of bureaucrats to use government power to extort money from one person to give it to another.

B. From what I have seen in over 7 years of very intimately watching food stamp use, most of it is unnecessary and serves as a means of freeing up dollars to be used for drugs, tobacco, alcohol, entertainment, lottery, bling, and a bazillion other things that are simply not necessities of life by any stretch of the imagination. Yes, food stamp use should be tightly regulated and restricted to the purchase of basic foodstuffs that must be prepared at home in order to be used. No swordfish. No ice cream. No Doritos or candy. No FRIGGING BUBBLE GUM OR BOTTLED WATER!!!!

[aruanan]

You sound like a liberal Democrat. Eat what I tell you to eat. What a bunch of hypocrites on this forum.Oh, so because someone is poor, they aren’t entitled to some ice cream once in a while?

Start exercising your mind a bit and you may work away some of that crust. A liberal Democrat tells you what you can eat with your own money. Are you familiar with the founding fathers' attitude toward using public money as a means of charity? It was not to be used this way at all. If someone who is "poor" (which most so-classified in the United States are not by almost any historical measure) is relying on the state to take money away from another citizen by threat of force to give to him, he should be limited in the choices available to him for the use of that money. That's not his money. If he doesn't like the restrictions, he doesn't have to take the money. And the restrictions will serve to make sure that folks (the majority of them who are on foodstamps) will use it as little as possible. For whose benefit? For us, the people the government is threatening with fines and imprisonment if we don't surrender our income for redistribution.

No, they're not entitled to ice cream. No one in this society is entitled to anything. They can scrape their pennies together (or give up high speed internet or multiple cell phones or some jewelry purchases or lottery purchases or alcohol or drug or designer clothes or shoes purchases or CDs or iPods or iTunes downloads or movies) and buy it for themselves.

So, what have some of you control freaks on here done to help the poor, other than run your mouths because they are getting help when needed?

Your self-righteousness is matched only by the extent to which you think you can read people's minds and know anything about their actions. How many tens of thousands of dollars of your own personal money have you spent on the needs of refugees? How many years have you spent carrying them around to government and doctor and dental appointments and enrolling them in schools and talking to counselors and taking them for job interviews and dealing with rotten landlords and making emergency runs to the hospital in the middle of the night or leaving work in the middle of the day to do it?

You really need to get an education in both political history and economics. Just because A has a perceived need doesn't give him any warrant at all to take something away from B to alleviate that need or to use C to take it from B to give it to him. A good moral case can be made for preventing the robbery of one person by another. There is no good moral case to be made justifying the robbery of one person by another. And it's funny that you should start out saying that I sound like a liberal Democrat when, in fact, I sound pretty much identical to the political philosophy espoused by the founding fathers of the United States and end up yourself sounding like the harping, bullying, end-justifies-the-means, my-exigency-justifies-my-robbing-you, haranguing of liberal Democrats.