Posted on 12/04/2012 5:02:27 AM PST by from occupied ga
This morning, I will begin living on a food budget of $30 a week / $4.32 per day. This is the financial equivalent of the budget provided to people participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, in the State of New Jersey. I will live only on a SNAP equivalent food budget for the next seven days.
Undertaking what is referred to as the #SNAPChallenge began with a social media-based conversation on Twitter. A Twitter user tweeted me her opinion that "nutrition is not the responsibility of the government". This comment caused me to reflect on the families and children in my community who benefit from SNAP assistance and deserve deeper consideration. In my own quest to better understand the outcomes of SNAP assistance, I suggested to this specific Twitter user that we both live on a SNAP equivalent food budget for a week and document our experience.
A simple conversation on Twitter drew me into the #SNAPChallenge I am beginning today. My goals for the #SNAPChallenge are to raise awareness and understanding of food insecurity; reduce the stigma of SNAP participation; elevate innovative local and national food justice initiatives and food policy; and, amplify compassion for individuals and communities in need of assistance. Over the next seven days, I plan to highlight the voices of people involved in local food policy, the SNAP program, and other related initiatives.
As I begin this journey, I am doubling down on my commitment to the Food Justice Movement that is gaining awareness and participation in this country. We have much work to do at the local level to address a legacy of structural inequities in the American food system. As more and more working people and families - many holding down more than one job - face greater and greater challenges to juggle housing, medical, and transportation costs, meeting nutritional needs becomes a serious problem and a social justice issue. The struggle of children, seniors, and families to have access to essential nutrition is a struggle we are all invested in and we all benefit when families succeed. Now more than ever we are all in this together.
Throughout this week, I will document my #SNAPChallenge experiences and reflections on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and through video on #waywire. If you are interested in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, I encourage you to click the reference links below.
I disagree. He's deliberately misinterpreting it to push his socialist point. When have you ever seen a black Democrat mayor of a large city who wasn't a liar?
I disagree. He's deliberately misinterpreting it to push his socialist point. When have you ever seen a black Democrat mayor of a large city who wasn't a liar?
Booker is the mayor of Newark, NJ. He's playing to his audience of parasites and hand wringing liberals.
They started with Timothy McVeigh, and I didn't hear anyone on this forum do anything but condemn him. If anyone is serious about resistance to tyranny it's going to get real ugly.
So, he assumes his readers/constituents are the ones with the reading comprehension/logic problem? Since he's the Democrat mayor of a large black city, that is a good assumption.
And because the money to purchase it was "lent" to us by China.
Not a good test. Many, many crumb-crunchers get free breakfast and lunch at school. Some places even give them a free dinner!
So Cory should go to a local school everyday, eat breakfast and lunch and then take his extra SNAP cash and go get his nails done.
In addition, many, if not most, of the people receiving food stamps also get a bunch of other taxpayer funded freebies. I imagine their kids get 3 meals a day at school and during the summer, they get subsidized housing and utilities, and “free” medical care. They even get free cell phones!
Boortz was talking about some woman waiting in line to get help with her utilities. While waiting, she was eating a salad with hard boiled eggs and watching the latest movies on her portable DVD player. As Stossel has demonstrated, the poor in the US are rich by the rest of the world’s standards.
I'm with you on that, but the hand wringers will be wetting themselves at the though of "the children" not getting enough to be obese. There was an amber alert around here about a month ago, and the child was described as a 14 year old girl weighing approximately 185 lb.
Excellent post.
The real problem is that in urban communities, the basics of life skills have been lost and are no longer transferred to the next generation.
Home economics is a term that is obsolete.
It’s no coincidence that 80% plus of McDonalds commercials feature black people.
That is also know as "fairness" And anyone not wanting to be robbed is "selfish" (as opposed to the parasites who are NOT selfish)
People like him are why I created the blog in my tagline.
Justice to liberals means getting whatever they want and having someone else pay for it. Another older word for that fits the liberal definition of justice is "theft" or maybe "robbery"
You can buy some cuts of beef and pork about as cheaply as you can buy chicken.
People like him are why I buy ammunition. Sooner rather than later the Cory Bookers of the world get tired of going through the middle man and go directly to the source. Then of course you CAN legally shoot them.
The second week would be easier. You wouldn’t have to buy everything on that list again the second week, like the rice, the beans, or the cereal, and maybe a couple of the other items if you were careful. That money would be freed up to buy even more stuff.
Eventually, you’d be eating comfortably, again, if you were careful.
But, that’s too much to ask of the people who get free money from us. They deserve steak and lobster, because they’re POOR, dammit!
I keep remembering, however, my mother’s tales of growing up in a coal camp in northern WV.
They ate beans and potatoes through the week, and had meat on the weekends. My grandmother would keep the potato skins, fry them up and make a sandwich with them that she’d put in my grandpa’s lunch to eat at work.
They probably spent less than $30 a week on food for the whole family of five, even in 2012 dollars.
There was no “snap” or “ebt” or whatever then. Somehow, they survived.
Makes my hair AND my teeth hurt.
Everyone’s commenting on the ‘justice’ line, but the one that gets me is;
‘amplify “compassion” for individuals and communities in need of assistance...’
Compassion. Get it? Same old same old.
We’ve had how many decades of so-called coerced gubmit compassion?
My brain hurts too.
That's not the point. You wouldn't want the poor to actually have to have a lifestyle anything less than the middle class would you? As you put it,
that’s too much to ask of the people who get free money from us. They deserve steak and lobster, because they’re POOR,
Where’s the compassion for those who are actually WORKING THEIR ASSES OFF TO FUND THE FREEBIES FOR THESE LAZY WORTHLESS PARASITES? Every dollar that the government wastes on these useless bundles of want has to come from someone who actually WORKED for it.
“Justice to liberals means getting whatever they want and having someone else pay for it. Another older word for that fits the liberal definition of justice is “theft” or maybe “robbery””
The left believes in equality of outcome but cannot grasp the concept that outcome must be EARNED. To make one man work for a decent living while giving a similar outcome to someone who doesn’t earn it is not justice by any rational definition. We can argue over whether people are entitled to the necessities of life (food, water, shelter) but there should be no argument that the able bodied should be required to work MUCH harder for that than someone not living off the state.
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