The neoliberal attack on poor people
The two political parties are more alike than they are different, but there are differences.
One of those differences is the Republican's outright demonization of the poor.
Remember now, what happened with the SNAP program, if you go back, even to the Bush Administration, prior to President Bush, there were like, food stamps. So they had this stigma about them, so people wouldn't want to be on even if they qualify. But now it's like an EBT swipe card, it's a debit card. So they take the shame out of it.
...People here in Washington, in particular AEI [American Enterprise Institute], has done extensive studies on this to show that what they're calling them now are watchers. These guys are not working. They're watching. They're watching porn, they're watching TV, they're watching women, they're watching everything, but they're not working.
Let's forget that millions of working poor need foodstamps to eat.
Let's forget that 70% of foodstamp recipients are children, the disabled, and the elderly.
Let's forget that the fraud rate for SNAP is around 2%.
Instead let's assume that the worst accusations of the right-wing against SNAP are true.
The terrible crime that conservatives get so outraged about is poor people getting free food.
These are not people with Christian values, or even human values. These are people that need to be called out on their immorality.
SNAP will run out of money in February should the government shutdown go that long.
But that is hardly the only threat to SNAP.
Currently, able-bodied adults ages 18-49 without children are required to work 20 hours a week to maintain their SNAP benefits.
...Work-eligible able-bodied adults without dependents, known as ABAWDs, can currently receive only three months of SNAP benefits in a three-year period if they don’t meet the 20-hour work requirement. But states with an unemployment rate of 10 percent or higher or a demonstrable lack of sufficient jobs can waive those limitations.
...
The USDA’s proposed rule would strip states’ ability to issue waivers unless a city or county has an unemployment rate of 7 percent or higher. The waivers would be good for one year and would require the governor to support the request. States would no longer be able to bank their 15 percent exemptions. The new rule also would forbid states from granting waivers for geographic areas larger than a specific jurisdiction.
Free food for poor people isn't the only sin that the GOP is declaring war on. They also think that poor people shouldn't have health care.
The nation’s first active Medicaid work requirement, approved by the Trump administration in Arkansas, has now led to nearly 17,000 people losing health coverage.
...Arkansas has exempted many people — those who are working full-time, who are already meeting the work requirement for food stamps, or who are medically frail — from needing to report their activities. They are assumed to be in compliance.But about 10,000 people were still required to report their work activities to the state. Only 1,428 actually satisfied the reporting requirement, continuing a trend from previous months; more than 8,300 people did not report any work activities at all.
The trend has become so worrisome that in November, a nonpartisan panel that advises states and the federal government on Medicaid urged Arkansas to stop disenrolling people.
Arkansas is only the first state. Almost every Republican state wants to strip Medicaid from poor people, despite the voters in several of those same states voting to expand Medicaid.
Let's keep in mind that the sin that Republicans want to eliminate is sick poor people getting free health care, when obviously they should be left to suffer and die like God intended.
This catastrophe in Medicaid is probably why Trump’s Medicaid Director quit after just 3 Months on the job.
And then, just to prove that Democrats aren't the solution, there's Joe Biden. He's such a working class hero. His solution to wealth inequality is to cut Social Security and Medicare.
Comments
"This kind of assistance"
"Back on your feet. Not to stay on them forever. Not to hurt them, just help to get them back on their feet so that they can start helping themselves."
F'ck you people! Why don't you ever address the corporate welfare that big oil, big pharma, big Bezos, big every successful business gets when they are raking in billions in profits? This is what real welfare reform needs to take place and yet it's people working 2-3 jobs that you constantly attack.
People like you that look down your noses at people who take advantage of the system put in place to help the less fortunate have no idea what it's like using food stamps where people are constantly judging you for it. People who have disabilities don't always look like they are disabled, but could be in severe pain. Or have difficulty seeing. Or any number of issues that don't show on the outside but qualify for them. Or they lost their jobs or their spouses had their hours cut or any number of financial problems and don't deserve to be sneered at. Many people would rather be working a job that pays a decent wage or in my case being behind a fundus camera than being in constant pain and poor. You should remember that you are one accident or incident away from needing to use the program. It just takes a second.
As quoted above people who work 2-3 jobs and are on SNAP have to report their hours and wages sometimes every week and if they don't have time or access to a computer they will be terminated from them and then reapply.... Bottom line is that people shouldn't have to jump through hoops that are put in place to make things harder for them. And the amount of welfare fraud is very low and it's usually the people who own businesses that take them that are committing it. There is a lot of oversight to get and stay on the program. Anyone think that Bezos and his cronies aren't committing some type of fraud and getting away with it?
Good lord, Joe. First off WTF are you saying? You don't see the huge gap in wealth inequality? Open your f'cking eyes! The guys at the top aren't bad guys? Ryan was correct? That after the tax cuts the first thing we have to go after is SS and Medicare? This gap is yawning and gaping? Of course it is you dimwit! This is what happens when you give rich people another f'cking tax break.
All kidding aside... f'ck you! You have sold out the lower classes your whole time in office. So find a broomstick and twist it sideways and .... I hope that you do get stuck in a home with no view.
divineorder posted this in Friday's EBs and it's a great read about why pay go is a farce and doesn't need to be implemented.
The pay go bullsh*t
Yep this is a rant.
Fraud for SNAP
Fraud for SNAP is extremely low. I wonder what the rate of corporate fraud of our government is. I suspect it is far greater that the less than 1% of SNAP fraud.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Thanks gulfgal
does the report breakdown where the fraud comes from? Right wing sites were full of the news of SNAP fraud recently which included both people who have the EBT card and the stores that take them. I don't remember the details, but I will look for it later and post it.
Look at the for profit colleges that were guilty of fraud. And the private defense contractors that over billed the government, were found guilty, paid a fine, got more contracts, and rinse and repeat. Or the many other frauds in other industries that defraud the government and do the same thing. Picking on poor people is just more class warfare.
In the social heirarchies of right wingers....
Yah, I used to wonder why right wingers don't attack corproate welfare. Was it just plain out hypocrisy? I think it is an expression of their moral universe. In the social heirarchy of right wingers, the elites, rich, etc. deserve the largess of the state as they are better people. A single parent with two kids is low in the moral pecking order and thus does not deserve help from the state.
This goes all the way back to the middle ages
Back in the 15th, 16th, 17th Centuries vagrancy could get you branded, whipped, even executed.
Meanwhile, enclosure by the wealthy (i.e. stealing the commons) was driving small farmers off their land.
The thinking was that economic poverty = lack of morals.
The ruling class had no reason to question the system.
The right wingers in my area say that corporations
deserve to get their subsidies and tax breaks because they are the job creators.
Bah! Small businesses create jobs too, but do they get huge tax breaks and subsidies? Maybe some, but definitely not on the scale as the big guys. And I bet if small business people send their money offshore Uncle Sam is not going to overlook it. Or let them pull any of the other stuff that allows big business to not pay taxes at all but still get refunds.
This woman just needs to apply herself harder as do others who work in low paying jobs according to some wingnuts here and then there's the people who are on them, but think that blacks and other non whites are abusing them.
I can't find the article I read recently, but here's how people and stores can misuse their SNAP benefits. It's a doozy.
‘Food stamps’ fraud investigator extorted convenience stores
That is one way people abuse the system
I don't understand how anyone can put the money in their bank unless they are ringing up false purchases. Or people will sell their card for cash to buy other things and then the person who bought uses it on food. There is a yearly review for making sure that people are still eligible to receive them and my review this year took two months. Not because I was abusing the program, but to make sure I wasn't.
Read that Obama cut 13% of the budget in 2013 and used the money for the school lunch program that Michelle created. Guess this is what pay go looks like?
The job creator arguement is bogus
Just recently I got into a back and forth with a winger who argued that businesses and the wealthy deserved massive tax breaks because they are job creators. My response was that DEMAND is what creates jobs. And if you have a public that does not have enough income or disposable income, then they cannot create enough DEMAND that leads to the creation of more jobs.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Exactly.
Demand drives everything.
dfarrah
Seems that kind of fraud is only possible in small stores
And the amounts would be very small. In my area, large supermarkets dominate, and any item not covered will not be posted against the EBT account. For example, if I purchased toilet paper using EBT, the toilet paper would not be counted, and would have be to be paid by me out of my own pocket.
I do remember with disgust that the last time the democrats controlled the Senate, they cut $5 billion from SNAP (I guess those were Obama's cuts). When it went to gop controlled House, the gopers essentially tried to gut the entire program. Nancy Pelosi came out as some sort of hero and defender of the poor by opposing the gutting of the entire program. A program hit with major cuts by democrats previously. I read party apologists say that the Senate cuts okay as the economy was improving. Food experts said bullshit. I think even Bush the Younger increased benefits when the economy started tanking....
As someone who receives SNAP benefits, is disabled,
and was forced back into college to 'compete' with the kids and the elderly for jobs that will never exist, these fucking pigs and their boot lickers can go grab a sharp iron bar and impale themselves through their rectal cavity. Oh, and the fuckers just declared me ABAWD despite being in college full time and registered with Voc Rehab.
I've had it with this shit.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
The Medicare rep told my deaf grandson
"If you can go to college, you can work. You are not disabled".
But if you are a boozer or a doper, then you can collect disability, but not if you are deaf or blind but can get by with accommodation? How many employers, as opposed to schools have accommodations? The only place I worked with deaf people was the US Postal Service, which, despite all their faults, really does ignore race, age, and disability in hiring. Otherwise they wouldn't have hired me at age 60. Actually you get bonus points on the acceptance test for being disabled as well as for being a veteran, double if you are a disabled veteran. I never resented those extra points for any of the categories, although someone who didn't make the cut might. I'd love for my grandson to have a postal career even just as a mail handler (as the title suggests, that job is physically moving mail) a good union job with decent pay decent subsidized heath insurance and decent pension benefits as well as sick leave and vacation. But jobs keep on being eliminated as the friends of UPS, FEDEX, et al in Congress keep trying to squeeze the service out of existence by forcing it to make a profit. Before you say "the Postal Service runs at a loss", consider that the profit is the money they have to send to the Treasury to provide benefits for workers yet unborn (will retire 75 years from now). The "loss" is in not meeting that profit target. There is an actual operating surplus.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Funnily enough, even if an employer pig does hire you...
...They do everything they can to get rid of you once the people watching them on the disabled person's behalf go away. Cut hours, erratic schedules, pointless busy work, anything short of straight up firing said employee.
They really don't want us there, and they're telling us in every way they can short of saying it to our faces.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
Neoliberalism, one of my favorite things to hate!
The SNAP program has one of the highest returns into the economy. That means that for every dollar spent on SNAP, it returns far more back into the economy.
In a nation in which the percentage of poor and nearly poor has risen significantly in the last two decades, we need to be aware that these social programs are beneficial, not just to the recipients, but to the rest of us as well. Cut backs in SNAP have forced non-profit charitable organizations to help pick up the difference. These organizations, such as food banks, are already stretched very thin and more cut backs will negatively impact them.
I found this short but sweet article in the Des Moines Register about the cost of welfare programs and SNAP as compared to the cost of corporate welfare.
snip
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
There is a reason why the Agriculture Department runs the prog
If the poor have to tighten their belts, grocery store sales will fall and agricultural commodity prices will follow the decreased demand. Nowadays, I guess they can sell to China and let the poor here starve.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.