On the left, Garth Algar. And on the Far, Far Left, Heather "Digby" Parton.
We report, You decide!
WhattaBabe!
Posted on 05/25/2015 10:49:19 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Last week my colleague Simon Maloy caught us up with the latest on Kanses Gov. Sam Brownback’s famous Arthur Laffer “petri dish” experiment, in which he slashed taxes and government programs in order to usher in a Republican free market economic utopia. The experiment looks like it’s blowing up the lab:
[T]he Brownback/Laffer tax scheme hasn’t goosed the Kansas economy and it doesn’t look like it will any time soon. It has succeeded marvelously, though, in redistributing wealth to the top of the income ladder, while, at the same time, screwing over the people at the bottom. While the rich soaked up the lion’s share of the tax windfall, the poorest Kansas families actually saw their tax burden tick up a little bit.
And when it comes to screwing the poor, Kansas Republicans are proving to be among the more creative and heartlessly depraved groups of legislators in the country. Last month, the Legislature passed a resolution barring welfare recipients from spending their benefits at swimming pools, movie theaters, casinos, tattoo parlors, and strip clubs. It’s a dehumanizing and paternalistic policy that assumes the poor are undeserving of simple diversions like going to see a movie, or are scamming the government to finance their gambling and/or stripper habits.
And that’s not all. He points out that Brownback and company have devised one of those cunning Scrooge-like plans to take money that’s needed to put food in little children’s mouths and give it to big banks. Here’s how Max Ehrenfreund at the Washington Post described it:
A dollar bill is a special kind of thing. You can keep it as long as you like. You can pay for things with it. No one will ever charge you a fee. No one will ask any questions about your credit history. And other people won’t try to tell you that they know how to spend that dollar better than you do.
For these reasons, cash is one of the most valuable resources a poor person in the United States can possess. Yet legislators in Kansas, not trusting the poor to use their money wisely, have voted to limit how much cash that welfare beneficiaries can receive, effectively reducing their overall benefits, as well.
The legislature placed a daily cap of $25 on cash withdrawals beginning July 1, which will force beneficiaries to make more frequent trips to the ATM to withdraw money from the debit cards used to pay public assistance benefits.
Since there’s a fee for every withdrawal, the limit means that some families will get substantially less money.
Imagine making it so that banks can collect extra fees from mothers with small children who are trying to feed them on less than four hundred dollars a month. How cruel do you have to be to think that making them only carry 20 dollars cash will somehow teach them a lesson?
But this is what’s happening in states governed by miserly Republicans who are determined to wring every last dime out of people who have nothing and give it to people who have more than they can spend in a lifetime. In Scott Walker’s Wisconsin, for instance, they are making long lists of prohibited foods for those who use SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programs.) The list of other prohibited purchases includes “herbs, spices, or seasonings,” all nuts, red and yellow potatoes, smoothies, spaghetti sauce, “soups, salsas, ketchup,” sauerkraut, pickles, dried beans sold in bulk, and white or albacore tuna.
They were particularly adamant that nobody on the program be allowed to eat shellfish, lobster in particular, which seems odd considering that it’s Wisconsin and the lobster catch there is decidedly small. (In fact, it’s non-existent.) I’m sure you’ll be surprised to learn that this lobster hysteria stemmed from a Fox News documentary which seems to have been the catalyst for these crackdowns on foodie welfare cheats. Media Matters reported on it back in 2013:
>>> Prior to its August 9 airing, Fox News hyped the special, “The Great Food Stamp Binge,” on Fox News Insider, FoxNews.com, and several of its daytime shows. Each preview focused on Jason Greenslate, a freeloading surfer who Fox correspondent John Roberts interviewed in Southern California. FoxNews.com described Greenslate at length in an article that teased the “new documentary”:<<<
“The Fox News Reporting documentary profiles, among others, a California surfer and aspiring musician named Jason Greenslate. Greenslate shows how he supports his beach-bum lifestyle with food stamps, while dismissing the idea of holding down a regular, steady job.
“‘It’s not that I don’t want a job, I don’t want a boss. I don’t want someone telling me what to do. I’m gonna live my own life,’ Greenslate tells Fox News’ John Roberts. ‘This is the way I want to live. And I don’t really see anything changing. I got the card. It’s $200. That’s it.’”
As promised, “The Great Food Stamp Binge” labeled Greenslate “the new face of food stamps,” devoting two full segments to his lifestyle in a shameless attempt to characterize SNAP recipients as freeloaders.
Yes, he was shown eating lobster on screen. Since Fox News viewers are the most misinformed people in the universe (well, America anyway) and elected Republicans seem to be among Fox News’ most ardent fans, it stands to reason that some California surfer hippie refusing to work would inflame them so much that they couldn’t see past it. Fox even had staffers deliver copies of the documentary to members of congress prior to a vote on cutting food stamps, just to make sure that hippie didn’t go unnoticed by even one Republican. You can bet it’s made the rounds of all the state houses as well.
AKA
Yet again, we see the Left campaigning off the plates of the poor - making a mountain out of a mole hill to stay relevant.
I see this as helping welfare recipients stretch their check and help them eat well on limited funds -- like the rest of us do.
Solution: Get a job and get off of welfare. You’re welcome.
Time for said author to make an appointment with an ophthalmologist.
We report, You decide!
WhattaBabe!
“....The recent revisions to the food packages are based, for the most part, on recommendations made by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies.
Attesting to the program’s widespread adoption by families, half of the infants in the U.S. are enrolled in WIC, according to USDA.
Through WIC, participating families receive “monthly food packages” geared toward good health, growth and development. The foods are chosen based on USDA’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans and established dietary recommendations for infants and children up to five years of age.
The food packages are actually checks made out for specific food items (not for cash). Participants can go to participating stores and use the checks to “buy” those items.
In selecting foods for the WIC program, key nutrients such as Vitamins A, B, C, D and E, iron, zinc, calcium and fiber are an essential part of the equation. Among the foods the families receive are low-fat milk, whole-grain bread and cereals, tuna, salmon, beans, eggs, peanut butter, soy-based beverages, tofu and fresh produce.
In addition to healthy food, WIC provides nutrition education and services, breast-feeding promotion and education, and access to maternal, prenatal and pediatric health-care services.
The National WIC Association describes it as a “short-term intervention program designed to influence lifetime nutrition and health behaviors in a targeted high-risk population.”....
Quite an indictment of the Democrats. Oh, wait...
Dingbat Digby can’t even spell “Kansas” right.
Women, Infants and Children (WIC)
WIC Benefits and Services
Last Published: 07/17/2014
WIC Food Packages
Background: Revisions in the WIC Food Packages
Interim Rule: Revisions in the WIC Food Packages (Published December 6, 2007)
Maximum monthly allowances of WIC supplemental foods in the new WIC food packages
Foods for Children and Women
Foods for Infants In Food Packages I, II and III
Regulatory Requirements for WIC-Eligible Foods in the new WIC food packages
Questions and Answers about the WIC Food Packages
Information for Food Manufacturers
Breastfeeding Promotion and Support
Revitalizing Quality Nutrition Services (RQNS) in the WIC Program
WIC Works Resource System
Nutrition Services Standards
WIC Special Project Grants
VENA (Value Enhances Nutrition Assessment)
Immunization Screening and Referral
WIC Special Project Grants - Full and Mini, and Concept Development RFAs
Salon sure publishes some really stupid krap.
Then the Democrats must be the party of the poor, since they make so may of them.
And their readership laps it up; comments over there are a real walk on the wild side.
I looked, there are a ton of stories pushing this angle:
“Since there’s a fee for every withdrawal, the limit means that some families will get substantially less money.”
But I really doubt there isn’t a way to get around the fee, Who ever is the bank issuer of the card typically doesn’t charge a fee. I couldn’t find information on the cards in order to validate this though.
“....But the new provision limiting what the poor can do with their debit cards is causing particular problems for Kansas because it could conflict with federal rules that appear to require that states provide beneficiaries with “adequate access” to their benefits, putting more than $100 million in funding for the program in jeopardy. Brownback told McClatchy last week that he planned to work with administrators in Washington to make sure that money remains available for poor families. It is not clear what that would involve.
Lawmakers said they implemented the provision because they wanted to be sure that beneficiaries weren’t wasting the federal money available through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a small program that, unlike food stamps or housing assistance, provides parents and children funds they can use for all kinds of purchases. A single mother with two children is a typical beneficiary, and a family of three in Kansas received an average of $354 a month in 2012, according to the most recent federal data.
About 11,000 households received money through the program in Kansas that year, and a third of recipients were working. The rest have to show they are looking for work to be able to qualify.
The legislature was worried that those receiving benefits might withdraw their entire benefit in cash at once and spent it extravagantly....”
you’re not wrong... the TRUE party of the rich is the democRAT party.
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php
How about bringing back those manufacturing jobs that Bill Clinton, DEMOCRAT, (and the two RINO Bushies) sent over to Communist China in the 1990’s and 2000’s...and maybe we would have a LOT fewer people on public assistance?! We can’t all be lawyers, CPA’s and investment bankers...we have to MAKE stuff also!!!
BTTT!!
These same liberals have no problem with forcing local schools to have to deal with federal govt strings tied to money they receive from Uncle Sugar’s confiscations from taxpayers.
These same liberals have no problem forcing local cops to be highly regulated by govt strings when they take federal money.
These same liberals have no problems forcing charter schools and such to be regulated if they take state education money.
These same liberals have no problem forcing any small business who wants to deal with the federal government to have to deal with lots of strings if they receive business contracts.
These same liberals have no problem forcing any group they despise to be as highly regulated as possible at the slightest connection or dependence on government at any level.
Yet they cannot handle government having rules for what you can spend government charity money on. They can’t handle drug tests for welfare recipients, when the people working jobs that govt takes money from to give the welfare folks, have to take drug tests at their jobs, in order TO WORK.
I never thought I’d ever see hypocrisy get so bad in this country. It just shows how infected and warped it is when your worldview is liberal. Your foundation is marxism, communism, socialism, atheism. Your idea of fairness is bringing everyone down to the same level of suffering, not trying to improve and raise the lowest up. Fostering dependence and doing everything possible to keep people down, and bring more down.
BTTT!
Kind of related,....
Have you noticed how the national debt is no longer a problem?
Do you think if any republican has done what Obama has, they’d be running pieces about how the money policy is going to destroy the dollar as a world reserve currency, and that it is now impossible to repay the debt?
And the BLAME that would be the focus of these articles? Calling for impeachemnt and removal for destroying the country’s currency, bond ratings, stealing unrepayable trillions from kids that haven’t even been born yet, ....
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