Conservative Food stamp micro-managers - they love to dictate!

With food stamps, once that is spent, no more money till next payday (first of the month) as well. I'm against them getting cash, I want them to buy food, not liquor, not cigarettes, not lottery tickets. They can do that with their welfare checks.

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Evidence for that? I've never heard of it. The only restrictions I've ever heard have been hot or prepared food (and even those rules are pretty loose), which pretty much just eliminates restaurant food. Other than that, caviar, candy bars, and soda can be bought.

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So what liquor company do you work for? Or do you work for cigarette companies?

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Of course we can ask our representatives to spend our tax money the way we want it spent. That is what a representative republic is all about.

 

Munter,

Please give us evidence that states restrict the buying of some food items (other than hot pre-prepared restaurant food), like biscuits (which I presume means cookies) and tea. You keep making this claim, but honestly, in my exposure to the food stamp program, I've never heard of this. If you can't find evidence, then please just shut up about the issue.

 

All food stamp recipients are lazy, use drugs, and are "takers." (even though most are actually military vets, elderly, and children with parents that work full time!)
We should be allowed to control who in this country gets to eat since we are the "makers." We should make all the kids receiving free lunch to wear dunce hats and sit a seperate table so that all of the rich kids can tease them. After all, that's a "teachable moment" and would motivate them to try harder in life!
Employers should be able to control who gets contraceptives and abortions too.

 

Moochelle is the one who decides what her husbands voting base can and cannot buy with our money.

Contact Moochelle's complaint dept.

 

Being out of work does not make you an alcoholic or smoker. Total red herring.

And you think they will listen to you , ha ha,

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As far as I know, diff states have diff rules, been through this argument before on another forum - southern states for example restrict many individual products, don't know the exact details though

 

too right, although I think a big Yellow star and the words 'Juden' tattooed into the forehead would be better...........

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food stamps should be spent at Macdonald's because that will help to provide jobs and increase Macd's profit margin - all good for the country of course

 

I've gotta say, this is a pretty spurious argument. Some tax payers want control over what people do with their food stamps because those food stamps were paid for with tax money. Seems pretty straight forward. The desire to control how ones own money is spent isn't a totalitarian impulse.

It seems like your vitriol for “conservatives” is personal. How did that come about?

 

Once you have paid your taxes then that money is no longer yours.

Come on, you should have learnt that at school - when you buy your sweets, your money is gone.

 

Neither supporting your expressed outrage or responding to the objection posed. Condescending, simplistic, true... all of this and yet completely irrelevant.

 

They do not cause these things, if that was true everyone who smoked would have them... They increase the risk of getting said ailments. There is a difference and for some reason it really bugs me when people screw it up... a pet peeve if you will.

Food stamps have been used for more egregious things than cigarettes...
Here is a government site: http://www.ct.gov/dss/cwp/view.asp?a=2349&q=304628

Now it is the Connecticut SNAP program, and different states have different rules, but it is funded with federal dollars.

 

They get spent at privately owned grocery stores, same concept according you your "logic"

 

It doesn't make any difference if they are paid in cash, as that money still goes back into the economy. And I don't buy the argument that it will all go on crack. That is just propaganda.

 

Ok then... I don't want my tax money going to fighting pointless wars. Seems pretty straight forward.

 

true, and I don't want my tax money propping up third world dictators, and corrupt businesses......

saying that you own your tax money is absurd, like saying I own the money in Wallmart's tills after I've purchased my latest Miley Cirus top 1000 hits!

 

It does seem pretty straight forward. Unfortunately, as munter so flippantly pointed out, your control over how your money is spent stops when it is taken from you. When you object to what you consider a miss allocation of your money, do you believe that this objection is born of a totalitarian impulse? Is it a desire to dominate that fuels your objections to funding war?
Perhaps it is. Perhaps we feel like we are owed that compliance because the money that fuels the government is ours and it feels like theft if our preferences are not inflicted on others.
I remember Jimmy Kimmel doing a bit on The Man Show, he was saying something along the lines of "on fathers day your wife will probably buy you a present you don't want and she's going to use your money. It's like being raped with your own penis.” Seems to sum up taxation pretty well. You got a war. They got to buy poor people cigarettes and Cheetos.

 

Just the truth, in my observation. Drinking alcohol doesn't make you an alcoholic.

Of course they do. I actually contact them. They listen and respond. They don't necessarily vote my way, but they listen--well, at least the Republcian ones do. The Democratic ones respond with nonsense unrelated to what I asked about.

Please show proof. I live in the South, and have lived in the South as a teacher in two different states (both school districts had a lot of free lunch kids, so I talked with them about stuff). Please show details, or shut up. The only restrictions are basically hot food, as far as I can tell. A local grocery store advertises that sushi (which is sold cold, of course) is eligible for EBT (food stamps).

I would think it would be ridiculously simple for you to look up the rules. They are online, if they exist. I just don't think they exist, and you are talking through your ass.

Here are the federal rules, they go with what I have been saying (and even count being able to buy seeds to plant for food, which I didn't know):

http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/mobile/benefits/what-can-i-buy.html

I doubt very much that state rules can be more restrictive than federal ones.

 

I'm convinced the food stamp program is an extermination program designed to kill slowly without causing riots. Why? Because those reliant on foodstamps can't afford healthy food, but you also can't buy multivitamins with foodstamps.

 

It is more a conspiracy to keep people hooked on food stamps and the DNC than that I think. It is a sliding scale system and people could afford to eat healthier on food stamps if they elected to cook more from scratch. The same is true for people off food stamps. We are a nation too busy/self-important to make a loaf of bread because we have oh so much other stuff to do.

 

My theory is that the reason the Obama Admin. has no problem with more people being on food stamps (other than that's more people who will vote for whoever is promising to keep them -- it's getting a voting base by bribery and exploiting weakness) is that it will allow them to do exactly what the starter of this topic (who attacked CONSERVATIVES over it) was complaining about: micromanage, specifically what people eat. This means by controlling people's ability to purchase food they can ensure they buy healthy foods, which fits in line with Michelle Obama's anti-obesity crusade.

 

I get accused of being a conservative a lot, so I will say that I have no problem with food stamps. I would be okay with giving more people food stamps and letting them buy more with them on condition that there was a realistic fraud detection regimen which is currently lacking.

 

I'm a Libertarian and am against food stamps because the funding that provides them is taken by force and wealth redistribution. That said, if you were to make a list of government programs I'd love to cut, food stamps wouldn't be near the top.

 

I am a leftist libertarian who thinks that starving people don't enjoy liberty so much. I would eliminate the EITC and put that money toward food stamps, but no, the military budget would be my first target. I support a hybrid version of civil economics without all that take everybody's property and call it the commons nonsense.

 

I think it's up to people to enjoy their obtain their own liberty and we should strive to create a society where they're free to do that without impacting or negating the liberty of others and when you take from someone to give to someone else, that's exactly what you're doing. In such a society, true liberty cannot exist because in order to accomplish the taking legally force is used, aggression and volunteerism is tossed out. There's nothing Libertarian about that. There's nothing wrong with someone voluntarily helping someone, that I believe in and encourage, but to take from someone by force and give to another... there's no liberty in that. That's taking from one person's freedom and giving to another in an attempt to make things "equal" and create "social justice," but to accomplish such things by force is wrong and these activities have more in common with Socialism and Communism than a free or Libertarian state. It's also hard for people to "enjoy liberty" by making them dependent on the government for food. There's no liberty in dependence by definition and the more troubling thing is people who go down this road often become sheep, voting for more and more "free" help, while refusing to ever bite the hand that feeds them no matter what else it does to take away their liberty (along with everyone elses). If enough people fall into this trap, they become a docile, despotic society, crushed under foot of government and the few that aren't like this, that speak out against this, are labeled as uncaring and ostracized and that's when the class warfare begins because the people on these government programs will still want more and because of the negative fiscal impact they have had on the economy they'll want more than ever and will be more worse off than ever. And who will they blame? The government? The programs we can't afford? The Central Bank? No, they'll blame the wealthy, the haves, the 1%, Wall Street for all of their plight. This is the direction we're going down right now.

But in the end, I think it's just wrong to force someone to give the fruits of their labor to someone else. That's not freedom and a true Libertarian rejects the use of force in all cases. Think about it: lets say the government wants to collect taxes from me to pay for food stamps and I say "no." What happens? Do they say "oh, ok." No, I'd go to jail. Everything the government does is backed by force. IRS carry guns now, they have a SWAT team. That's the world we're in now.

That said, the military budget would also be at the top of my list.

 

I support state-owned enterprises so that government or quasi government owned business can compete with others to generate revenue for programs beyond just tax dollars. If you can buy my building and rent it to someone for $1K a month, I see no reason the government directly or indirectly shouldn't be able to buy it for the same price and rent it to the same person for the same $1K a month.

 

You're wrong about that last bit, calorie for calorie, junk food is far cheaper than any healthy food. Given a choice between affording 400 calories of healthy food or being able to buy 1500 calories in junk food, then getting a bonus 2000 to make me fat, as a poorer shopper myself, the choice is pretty bleak. Starve or constantly battle with my weight. At least I take a multivitamin, which is more than many can get. So I understand the problem well.

As for the DNC, their programs are pathetic. Cutting off foodstamps and letting people starve to death seems to be the Republican plan, however, and that is more pathetic. Though it would surely lead to some lively riots to make life in America more interesting.