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 Post’s Roberto A. Ferdman. “When I can’t afford it on my pay, I don’t want people on the taxpayer’s 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; they’re 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 ...
But the people are aware of it, and therefore their elected legislators are aware of it. So they're acting and the liberal media are very upset!
For they shop in their elite communities, not in the regular stores like the rest of us.
I am so sick of this. We need to cut off Food Stamps for over half the people who get them. They aren’t “poor” anymore. Obama opened up eligibility so far that lower-Middle Class and even Middle Class people with large families get them. Able-bodied men who are just lazy get them. Its the biggest advance of Socialism of the past 6 years. We need to get rid of Food Stamps at the federal level and let the states deal with it as they see fit. The whole program is an expensive mess that has no relationship to how poor recipients are.
I personally see the same thing at the beginning of each month.
Usually involves an obese obviously poor person and a full basket of various steaks. I’d estimate 50+ pounds.
I couldn't agree more.
I once was behind two Hispanic women at a store. The younger woman was well dressed, and had a well-behaved child with her. The older person--aunt or grandmother--and she were both pushing carts that were filled to well over the brim. She paid with an EBT card, which wasn't enough to cover the bill. So, she opened her purse and pulled out an American Express card to cover the difference.
They didn't need EBT, but who can turn down low hanging fruit?
IMHO, free food collection should be a bit unpleasant, and not anonymous. You should go to the truck and get the cheap butter, cheese, and canned meat. Anything at a store should be limited to a "Strictly Nutrition" list. I don't mind helping people who are on hard times eat, but I hate treating freeloaders to things I wouldn't buy for myself.
Most people aren't buying into this BS. I talk to people all the time that are infuriated at the freeloading EBT users. "High poverty hangover"? LOL!
Flour, butter, cheese, beans, sugar, salt.
All U need in times of trouble.
There is fraud but Republicans have no business playing food police.
If Battin wants to keep junk food off people’s tables, let him set the example for his own family.
And keep his nose out of other people’s shopping decisions. I hate fascist bullies, whether they’re on the Left or on the Right.
I don’t like government managing my personal life for me. We have enough government micromanaging in this country already.
Always confront EBT abuse. I once saw a gentleman in line ahead of me wearing his Sears Automotive work jacket and carrying a bigger cell phone than I had, paying for his groceries with the EBT. So yes, I called him out on it, saying he looked to be doing fine, why use the EBT. He said cause it’s free, and I tried, in vain, to explain to him that no it was not.
This is an otherwise mundane sentence but it reveals much about liberals, the DC bubble and Dana Milbank himself.
His MO is to convert his opinion to fact and then castigate a state legislator for confronting an obvious problem.
I have news for Mr Milbank, who has probably never set foot in a Kroger in Appalachia or a Piggly Wiggly in Alabama: the fraud, abuse and outright sloth are on CONSTANT display with the fraudsters more and more arrogant, even belligerent, about their sense of entitlement.
The stores DO lay out the expensive items at the start of each month and those items - along with the usual assortment of junk food and sugar water - ARE purchased with public funds no matter how high-tech the method of payment.
I know several pharmacists and they must double their staff in the first week of each month to deal with the flood of dole recipients obtaining medicines. Sadly for all of us, many of the prescriptions are for potent painkillers for non-existent maladies that will be abused and/or sold on the black market.
What is more 'humiliating' for the poor than to become de facto slaves to a government that demands their vote in exchange for a lifetime of rations?
Unless you know someone’s circumstances, don’t judge them.
And if people don’t do what you prefer, its a free country.
How someone lives their life isn’t for you to decide.
They don’t have any shame any more, period. They are LOSERS and USERS. The abuse in this program is astounding, frankly.
They should have turned down the low hanging fruit. That's theft.
Not for much longer.
How someone lives their life isn’t for you to decide.
Nope, it's now the government's decision.
What we need are EBT stores and let that be the only place the card is good. Limit the merchandise to basic need only. The card would be no good anywhere else.
Idiots like you have no acquaintance with poor people - you see one in the store and you rush to judgment.
Try juggling bills on a fixed income and see how far it gets you.
And in your certitude, you’re so sure people on Medicaid never buy legitimate prescriptions.
That reveals as much about you as it does about liberals at whom you take umbrage.
I read an article a long time ago that talked about the difference between receiving help when you truly needed it face to face with a real, live person .... and what ‘food stamps’ had become, a check in the mail (now EBT card). A study showed that people who went to a church to get bags of food, food that was paid for out of the pockets of the people giving them the grocery bags, did not need this ‘food assistance/welfare’ for very long. Once they started getting impersonal checks in the mail and did not have to look anyone in the eye, a good deal of the motivation to get off of the food assistance was gone.
A little “humiliation” as Milbanks puts it, for many on food assistance/welfare, might be a good thing. Then again ‘takers’ and ‘Liberals’ have little shame so it probably wouldn’t work ..... unless maybe they got tired of beans and rice. If they can buy anything they want with the EBT cards, there is little incentive to get off.
People confuse EBT with welfare.
I’m amazed at the level of ignorance on FR.
People confuse EBT with welfare.
I’m amazed at the level of ignorance on FR.
“How someone lives their life isn’t for you to decide.”
Unless you’re paying for it...
“Never mind that few can afford filet mignon on a less-than-$7/day food-stamp allotment; they’re more likely to be buying chuck steak or canned tuna.”
If that is true, then this law isn’t an issue and nobody should be complaining.
Of course it’s not true, because we all know that the welfare system is rife with fraudsters and criminals who do indeed buy this stuff with their EBT cards. We know this because we see them in the checkout line at the grocery store every week!
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.