It would be difficult to expand the food stamp program (officially the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) much further. Posted on 03/03/2013 6:45:02 AM PST by Kaslin
It would be difficult to expand the food stamp program (officially the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) much further.
Between 2008 and 2010, the number of able-bodied people getting food stamps doubled, after the Obama administration lifted work requirements. One in seven Americans is on food stamps, which cost the federal government some $84.6 billion in 2011. One way to help SNAP recipients without spending more would be to teach them to stretch their dollars.
That’s where Stephanie Nelson, The Coupon Mom, comes in. She started her business years ago as a way to help others save money and “cut out hunger”. These days it’s a true story of the American dream come true, a simple idea that developed into a successful small business.
Her method is no secret; she details it on her Web site. She calls it “Strategic Shopping,” and says it’s “not about changing the way you eat, it is changing the way you buy the food that you like.” By planning meals and buying when things are on sale, shoppers can save big without having to run to stores all over town.
Nelson thinks she could teach SNAP recipients to spend more wisely with a few simple videos, roughly 90 seconds each. People use the Web to sign up for benefits, she notes. SNAP could require them to watch a video as part of that process. Those interested could select other videos showing more in-depth methods. Everyone would have a chance to learn easy ways to save money.
“The federal government has an opportunity to provide long-term life skills to people, even if they’re in the SNAP program for just a short time,” Nelson says. That’s an idea that should have the power to unite conservatives and liberals. It’s really just a variation of former President Bill Clinton’s campaign stump speech. “People know they need independence, not dependence,” he said in 1992. “They want a hand up, not a handout.”
Indeed, Americans are compassionate and want to help others. One way we do so is by spending roughly $1 trillion each year on welfare programs -- $109 billion of that on food aid. Some say even that’s not enough.
Late last year, for example, Newark Mayor Cory Booker decided to spotlight how difficult it is to live on food stamps. He tried to live on the benefit for a week. “Today I burned a sweet potato,” Booker blogged on the fifth day of his challenge. “[W]ith supplies dwindling it was eat around the severely caramelized root vegetable or go without.”
Booker’s $30 weekly allowance left him unable to afford even a single cup of Starbucks coffee. However he was able to afford a tablet computer and, presumably, a high-speed connection so he could upload photos of his sparse meals.
Nelson took the same challenge Booker did, but made it even more difficult on herself. Could she use food stamps to feed her family of four? Yes. “I came in 36 percent below my allotted amount,” Nelson says. She spent a total of $98 for a week of food, and came away kicking herself, to boot. “I forgot to use some coupons I had with me. I could have gotten the final bill down to $92.”
Washington isn’t helping anyone by promoting dependence on government. Lawmakers should cap and then roll back spending on food stamps, and demand that able-bodied recipients work (or at least train for work) in return for its benefits. SNAP should also teach people how to be smarter shoppers.
Stephanie Nelson has volunteered to do the teaching; it’ll be interesting to see if the federal government takes her up on it.
Its simple: buy in bulk and what’s on sale, use your store’s club card that are a sort of a store discount card and add up savings. And you can go an entire month on your food budget.
In these tough times - you can even treat yourself to a few luxuries if you shop for them wisely. When saving money becomes an acquired habit of your nature, you’ll be happier and enjoy life more at the same time.
So they destroy the family, frugal Western traditions, common sense, work ethic, etc.
Now I suppose we need mamma obama to teach us how to boil cabbage and make tea out of tree bark.
One way to “streach” food stamp dollars.
Block the pruchase of steaks and other high priced meats.
Block the pruchase of soda/candy/chips
Block the pruchase of anything the first wookie has said is un healthy.
My story is better, a local church for well heeled yuppies ran a food pantry out of one of its properties. Anyway one weekday I happened to spot a new Caddie pull into the parking lot and out stepped two very well fed women with expensive hairdos (straightened and styled) they went into the yuppy guilt outfit and came out with their hands full of bursting at the seems grocery bags put them in the large trunk of their new Caddie and tore out of there.
History is repeating. Food stamps are the modern equivalent of the old Roman grain dole. Reality TV, Hollywood and pop culture in general are the circus and gladiator spectacles. Bread , circus and decline. That was the fate of Rome after the fall of the Republic. The decadent masses ultimately dictated ruinous policies implemented by gutless politicians and bizarre emperors. Fate of America?
Cut $40 billion out of this program to force people back to work at a job that pays a wage.
Nelson thinks she could teach SNAP recipients to spend more wisely with a few simple videos,..I THINK she’s full of shiite.
Best way to stretch them is to get rid of them completely.
Take away all welfare from both individuals and corporations because the collectivism being pushed in this country only benefits the poor and the rich. All the middle class can do is say, “BOHICA!” as they disappear from society.
The word “supplemental” is in S.N.A.P. for a reason.
Not exactly. The bread and circuses in the city of Rome were provided not to "the masses," but to a tiny percentage of the population of the empire, probably less than 1%. Those who happened to be in Rome.
Those who lived outside Rome got no such freebies and were instead taxed to support the freebies to Rome.
Also the Republic, especially for its last century, was nothing to pine over. It was much more like a mafia organization, complete with repeated civil wars between rival "families," than it was anything remotely resenbling a modern republic.
While Rome and particularly the Court often suffered under tyrant emperors, even under the worst emperors most of the empire was better governed than under the late Republic.
No steak, no lobster, etc.
Food Stamp programs are state run, so Bloomberg can load up the program with his nanny state fatty/sugary food bans he wants.
Heck, I'd even like to see a program where the state cuts a deal with distributors and food manufacturers to get a volume discount price on an item in exchange for having that item on the "approved" list.
I’d wager that food producers and retailers lobby to keep all foods allowable.
I wonder what percentage of Walmart receipts are gov’t scrip (via e-card).
Some exchanges from a previous thread on the subject last year, with an addendum at the bottom to the poor, snide Catsrus doofus addressing me below:Addendum: our food pantry doesn't have off brands. It distributes whole turkeys, chickens, sirloin hamburger, grass-fed beef, buffalo, fresh and frozen salmon (and over 1500 pounds freshly filleted every summer after a yearly fishing tournament), 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.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.
Self-righteous quote continued:
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 telling 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 [ALL OF WHICH I'VE SEEN AS COMMONPLACE AMONG MANY FOOD STAMP USERS) 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 multiple 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 you end up yourself sounding like the harping, bullying, end-justifies-the-means, my-exigency-justifies-my-robbing-you, haranguing of liberal Democrats.
And the poster's name, Catsrus, pretty much says it all.
See post 14 above.
the dirty little secret is that certain “ethnicities” are NEVER questioned on their eligibility (be it under the table—drug sales- or a fortune 500 job) so as not to appear “racist” and stir trouble from the community organizers.
Now if you are not in one of these “ethnic” groups you will be scrutinized to the max on your eligibility and denied several times even though eligible. I have PERSONAL evidence to prove this.
We’ve all heard the stories of little old WHITE widowers or widows being unable to qualify although quite penniless, whereas we see the standard welfare queen fashionably dressed and coifed with a nice set of wheels breezing through and collecting on every program imaginable. This “look the other way and keep those checks rolling in order to keep from being labeled racist” has been going on for at least 30-40 years now.
LOL. Why should they learn to do that?
Good arguments. Historians have well documented the inherent faults of the last years of the Republic. The depredations of Sulla were probably the death blow and made it apparent to Caesar and others that the Republic’s political machinery could not effectively govern such a big and diverse population. Some say the catastrophic genetic losses the Romans suffered fighting Hannibal doomed the Republic. Still the writings of Cato, Pliny and Cicero clearly reflect that the Romans understood the limitations of the Republic but rightly feared the mob and despots more. Their sentiments are often reflected in the comments posted on Free Republic. History does repeat.
Ban food stamps and watch obesity decline.
My most recent finds were Sabra hummus for 50c, vs about four bucks anywhere else (so I got five), and Jimmy Dean bulk sausage for a buck a pound vs four bucks elsewhere (so I got five and put them right into the freezer).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.