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.
Besides that doesn’t Booker realize that the S in SNAP stands for supplemental? While it is debatable whether the government should be providing any food assistance, even the Socialist fools who created SNAP did not intend for it to cover an individual’s entire food budget.
Anyway, I took care of my children while they were growing up. Their needs ,and to the extent that I could , wants came first. There was a blind couple in our town that put two children through college without the government's help. He sold peanuts and she sewed.
Apparently, the scribbler of this piece is parasiting off the McDonald’s-only diet in order grab some attention.
It’s called “supplemental” for a reason, not that reason means anything to the scribbler of this piece.
If someone is eligible for SNAP, then they are eligible for other handouts. Total all the handouts possible and the average recipient makes nearly $60,000 a year to sit on his or her ass doing nothing but drinking and smoking and making illegitimate babies all day.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are working our asses off to pay for this, missing time with our friends and families, scrimping and saving just to get by and pay our bills.
That’s the difference between the takers and the givers in our society.
And the scribbler of this piece of junk is looking for “justice” for the takers of society?
We should demand justice. And we should start by “going Galt” and figuring out a way to cut the revenue stream to the legalized thieves that are supposed to represent US the productive members of society (the givers) NOT the takers.
My husband and I work with the poor on a regular basis. A good deal of them exert an enormous amount of energy trying to get others to buy them things when they could exert half of that energy and be self-reliant. It is amazing to me that so many are happy to sit under the table like dogs waiting for whatever scraps or crumbs may fall instead of just sitting at the banquet feast. Just too much effort to climb out from under the table.
Need coordinated pressure to end this program completely.
General welfare is not Personal Welfare.
In reality for every $60.00 the parisite gets from the government , they're actually taking about $100.00 from somebody who works. Can't forget the costs of the government bureaucrats needed to administer these programs.
This "experiment" is faulty in it's basic premise. Food Stamps were never designed as something to live on , isn't is called "supplemental" income (or some other Orwellian sounding name). This means it's only supposed to be a temporary thing to tide you over while you looked for work or because you only can get part time work etc.
I don't know of anybody who would deny help to someone truly in need, what most conservatives (and fair minded people) disagree with is the way these programs are implemented , and expanded to become a way of life.
Remember when the standard morality was that you didn’t have kids unless you could afford them?
And men didn’t consider themselves equipped to marry unless they could afford the kids that were presumed to follow.
Add in the rest of the morality of the time, and you had a darned good incentive for men to find a way to make a good wage.
You need to re-read that statement.
First, you give in to the liberal argument that we can’t let children go hungry. This implies that those children would go hungry if the givers in society do not provide them food.
That is false. They do not fend for themselves because we make it too easy not to. So they just continue to parasite off the workers and givers in society. And just how much are we supposed to sacrifice for their selfish decisions? If they are on welfare, they sure as hell ought to be using condoms when they fornicate.
Second, you say that the root cause is that money is involved. Even if money is not involved (or some sort of credit/debit system), the food and the distribution means have value. Whether you want to convert that value to a monetary replacement is irrelevant. It still have value, which means that it costs someone, that someone must pay for it in one way or another.
The root cause is very simple. Socialists have created a welfare class that feels entitled to live off the labor of others. They are fully capable of working, but the culture of the welfare class is that they shouldn’t have to and they don’t want to.
It is UNJUST to keep people ENSLAVED to a welfare class. It is also UNJUST to ENSLAVE those who work to provide for the welfare class.
We need to stop rewarding people for parasiting off the system and get them doing some sort of work that benefits those who are paying their way. Eventually they may get the idea, “Hey, I’m working anyway. Why don’t I go get a better job and one that I actually like?” This will help them to move themselves from the class of parasites to the class of workers and givers.
Food justice = starvation under communism
Does that include alcohol, cigarettes and a widescreen TV?
Or tips for Madame Velveeta down at the local exotic dancers bar (you know, the one that accepts EBT cards)?
I don’t have any problem with urban farming as long as its 100% privately funded. They keep talking about it in Detroit but it will cost billions federal dollars for soil restoration and the inner city Detroit attitude means they would have to import a workforce.
Any use of the word “justice” other than to describe the legal system or its functions always signals an intention to conceal or validate theft by the state on behalf of an aggrieved class.
What an ignoramous! The “S” stands for “supplemental” fir a reason: it supplements other income. Most people who aren’t crackheads will feed themselves and their children before running out of money even on such necessities as shelter. Water has greater priority, but that’s about it. Food stamps function primarily to defer other costs, such as satellite tv.
Which isn’t to say there’s no such thing as starving kids. Lock up their parents instead of paying them off, though, because they’re criminals. If they are criminal, why couldn’t they trade food stamps for goods beyond food? Because there are laws? There’re laws against child abuse and neglect too.
Stamps also magically create more putative starvation, since you gotta be starving to get free money. So, uh, yeah, I was “food insecure” last week. On Monday I wasn’t sure what I’d eat on Friday. So I turned off the flat screen, drove my car downtown, finished my cell phone conversation, put my keys in my designer Jean pocket, and said to the nice government lady, “I’m hungry.”
People in this country make me sick, we have the leader we deserve, just as Hamilton said, and we will get just what we as a nation deserve for allowing abortion to continue unabated, for the left to advance their agenda with the very help of people in the republican party, we never in the last 50 years did a thing to demand that this be stopped, we were all too busy, working and paying taxes and thinking everything was wonderful.
I look forward to my trip to the re-education camp where I can at least get some rest before my execution.
YOU can't be serious. These children haven't sprung from cabbage patches. If they have parents the children are their responsibility. If a parent does not fulfill their responsibility the parent should lose the children and go to jail. If they are orphans they need to be adopted or go to an orphanage.
Don’t confuse this writer with the facts! He got someone to publicize his article; he must know what the word “supplemental” means. Unless there’s a problem with our educational system, or something./s
In the 90’s my husband was in seminary. I fed a family of five (two of which were teenagers) on $35 a week and we got no government assistance at all. We ate oatmeal for breakfast everyday and beans and tortillas for lunch and dinner, everyday. It can be done, but only by people who are focused on taking care of themselves and not bilking their neighbors.
What sane person would “want” to live in Detroit?
Very sad situation.
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