Posted on 04/08/2015 5:53:55 AM PDT by cotton1706
Rick Brattin, a young Republican state representative in Missouri, has come up with an innovative new way to humiliate the poor in his state. Call it the surf-and-turf law.
Brattin has introduced House Bill 813, making it illegal for food-stamp recipients to use their benefits to purchase cookies, chips, energy drinks, soft drinks, seafood, or steak.
I have seen people purchasing filet mignons and crab legs with electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards, the legislator explained, according to The Posts Roberto A. Ferdman. When I cant afford it on my pay, I dont want people on the taxpayers dime to afford those kinds of foods either.
Never mind that few can afford filet mignon on a less-than-$7/day food-stamp allotment; theyre more likely to be buying chuck steak or canned tuna. This is less about public policy than about demeaning public-benefit recipients.
The surf-and-turf bill is one of a flurry of new legislative proposals at the state and local level to dehumanize and even criminalize the poor as the country deals with the high-poverty hangover of the Great Recession.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
You know I pointed this out to you yesterday but......YES you can buy alcohol with an ebt, the cash portion of it. If you are getting monthly cash benefits it is loaded right on the same EBT card as your food stamps. That EBT card with the CASH PORTION on it can be used almost anywhere to buy liquor just like a debit card.
EBT can have two sides. Some qualify only for the food side, some also get welfare and EBT loaded onto the same card.
You won’t ever get rid of food stamps. Big food processors and retailers are in love with this program, as it allows them to sell their product to people who have no money.
Likewise this Surf and Turf bill won’t ever see the light of day. The retailers do not want to be hassled with red-flagging all of those SKU’s.
By you’re answer you obviously don’t.
They still allow EBT card use at the Casinos in California?
True. However if you buy food with the EBT, that frees up cash you can purchase alcohol with. The same fallacy applies to foreign aid.
I don't know anyone who dines on filet mignon and king crab, but I definitely known plenty who eat much better than we do. One of the neighbor kids, whose family, both immediate and extended, has lived off the government her entire life, spent half or more of the afternoons of her teen life here, meaning she was here while I was preparing dinner.
Over the years it became clear she was not familiar with any of the budget meals I prepared. For instance, they didn't have oatmeal at home, they had cold cereals -- and not the off brand Cheerios and the like we got sometime, but "the good stuff." They didn't cook barley, or beans, or lentils. When they had hamburger, it was for hamburgers; they didn't do casseroles or stretch the meat in other ways. They never, ever, had pancakes or some other breakfast food for dinner, and, for that matter, only made pancakes from a mix, not from scratch. And potato pancakes, like all my other vegetarian meals, were considered "weird."
So I finally asked her, "What do you guys eat every night?" And she replied, "You know, normal food. Steaks, roasts and chops. Chicken, sometimes." The whole neighborhood seems to break down the same way. Working families are eating a lot of grain and legumes meals, with meat as a flavoring sometimes; families living off the government are eating meat as the main dish. PB&J for the kids is common to both, but it's only the working families who still eat it as adults.
I've worked some local food banks, and the people who show up after work are the ones happy to take organ meats or other obscure cuts of meat; the guys who come during working hours whine and moan over uncommon meats, and complain about the quality of chops, when we have them (the meats are all donated by local stores so the food pantry has no control over what they get, and it varies considerable). Plenty of people are grateful for whatever they get, but the number of people who complain and scold over free food amazes me.
How about because a few people using food stamps to buy steak or lobster have zero effect on the price.
The price of beef is driven by things like the cost of feed and transportation to bring it to market. Lobster availability, shelf life and transportation.
If you don’t like the food stampers getting steak and lobster because you can’t afford it just say so. You don’t have to try to think up a reason. :-)
Wow. I would have thought beef prices in Kansas City would be better than that. Of course, my wife does most of the shopping, and she, being a cheapskate, always finds the deals. She got some ribeye yesterday for a couple of dollars per pound (they were getting to the sell-by date, and thus were marked down heavily, and then she had a coupon or something, and there was the bonus card, and frankly, I'm a little surprised they didn't pay her to take the steaks out of the store, LOL.).
There are certain establishments around us that seem to cater to those who rely on government assistance. We have sometimes made the mistake of attempting to patronize these businesses the first day or two of the month, only to find ourselves nearly stampeded by such folks as they make their purchases. Having seen this sort of behavior myself, I'm inclined to think that many recipients of government assistance do engage in a bit of binge shopping shortly after the funds are released each month.
As well, many yeard ago, my wife, as part of her dietetic fieldwork, worked with benefits recipients, and found it important to instruct recipients how to make their benefit last the entire month, as there seemed a bit of an urge to splurge at the beginning of each cycle. I'm not really sure what promotes this kind of behavior, only that it does happen.
Too, there are many of these households with more than four persons receiving benefits. So, $500 worth of steaks may not represent as large a percentage of total benefits as we're imagining.
I'm not sure that laws like this can do much more than shave off a few of the rough edges of the counterproductive behavior of the long-term poor. Sadly, those who receive this aid usually become morally bankrupt, without any sense of accomplishment, or shame from a failure to accomplish, without any feeling of obligation to make their own way in the world, without any empathy toward those who pay their way.
sitetest
We would go food shopping, and he would contribute his food stamp money towards the household food bill. So, yes, we would occasionally buy steaks using his food stamp money, but we were not scamming the system.
On the other hand, I can see people scamming the system too, by working off the books and then buying steaks and such for a friend, who would pay cash. I can also see a person scamming by being registered for food stamps in more than one address, getting multiple allocations, and (again) buying steaks to sell to a friend.
“”Never mind that few can afford filet mignon on a less-than-$7/day food-stamp allotment””
Where’s this coming from? I thought the EBT cards were filled with xxx $$$ and the holder of the card uses it until it’s gone. Who’s out of touch here?
It’s not just a few that are buying steak and lobsters on other peoples dime it’s the vast majority.
With over 45 million getting some kind of food assistance even if it was just 25% it makes a difference in the price.
It’s called supply and demand.
It wouldn’t matter if I was the richest person on the face of the planet, people eating on someone else’s dime aren’t entitled to eat steak and lobster.
“even if it was just 25% it makes a difference in the price.”
Which you have no clue or facts that ever happens.
Steak and Lobster have always been expensive.
Gwinnett County, GA is EBT central. I stand in line behind these people 3-4 times a week and for the most part they are buying bread, milk, eggs, cereal, soda, juice, pork and ground beef and frozen junk a lot of frozen junk. I have never seen one person buy a lobster ever. Ever. Off the top of my head I can’t even remember seeing steak or seafood. They buy mostly low end food. That’s why so many of them are fat. High carbs high fat.
I live in deep SE Texas and I see people buying steak and lobster tails with their EBT all the time.
Just a few weeks ago 2 girls bought themselves shrimp salads with their EBT but because of all that green stuff, lettuce, there wasn’t enough “shrimpies” for them so each got themselves a 1# bag of extra large precooked shrimp.
Not the small popcorn shrimp.
Not the medium shrimp.
Not just the regular large shrimp.
They had to have the extra large shrimp.
Lunch for the 2 of them was close to $40.
Screw that welfare trash.
Taxpayers don’t need to be paying for their “shrimpies”.
I don’t think shrimp is steak and lobster. A few people probably do it but that’s not what makes steak and lobster expensive. As far as I know there are zero stats on how many EBT’s are living on steak and lobster. My guess very few or I would see it.
It is proven that most poor people eat a poor diet of fat and carbs. That is statistically proven. that’s because cheap food is fattening.
I didn’t say shrimp was steak and lobster.
I said shrimp was shrimp.
What I did say I often see people buying steak and lobster tails with EBT.
I used shrimp as another example of what the welfare trash shouldn’t be buying on someone else’s dime.
You’re problem is you try and put words in peoples mouths to make your point because you can’t make your point without distorting what other people say.
I didn’t say welfare trash was living on steak and lobster only as you imply. They also buy nice big pork roast, ground sirloin, center cut pork chops, and anything else they want with their EBT.
People eating on someone else’s dime don’t need to be eating high on the hog.
It’s not going to hurt them in the least little bit to learn how to eat cheaper cuts of meat.
You can make a hell of a lot of chicken stew for the price of one steak.
Well I just think you have not given any statistics that show any percentage of EBT people buy steak and lobster. You just want to blame the high price of steak and lobster on EBT people because some loony legislator is saying it.
If you have a study or govt statistics that show 25% of EBT people are gorging on steak and lobster then put it up for all of us to see. My understanding is that the legislator has no proof to show either. Its a myth. Just speculating about things doesn’t make it true.
The actual real studies that are in existence that I know about say that poor people eat cheap food that is high in carbs and fat and sugar which is why you see so much obesity.
I’m not putting words in your mouth. I’m just challenging the words that are coming out of your mouth with zero statistics to back it up. That’s all. I personally have seen no evidence that any significant amount of EBT card users are gorging on steak and lobster. None at all.
Everybody sees it but you, so you are right and everyone else is wrong.
Got it.
I think nobody sees it or there would be polls and studies with statistics. I have not seen any and apparently neither have you.
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