Its 11:00 am
Spanning the globe....
While Newt Gingrich run for President has faded into the wind...his legacy of words are still be tossed about by the American public. Like calling President Obama the "food stamp president". Telling blacks they should demanding a paycheck instead of food stamps.
Our society is goofy...we encourage people to donate food to the poor and needy,run PSAs about 1 in 7 children go hungry at night because of a lack of food.
The media covers the very poor at Thanksgiving and Christmas time at a food kitchen eating a hot meal delivered by churches,volunteers or even the station that is covering the story. Its a "feel good"kind of story designed to tug on your hearts. And for the most part,it does.
But when those same folks are standing in line at the grocery store and they pull out a Bridge (what we call food stamps in Michigan) you get a very different reaction...people aren't so tolerant and you see the stares and hear the nasty comments. Having a Bridge card is a symbol of shame in America,a sign of poverty.
I worked at a grocery store for 7 years as a cashier and later as a store trainer and I saw Bridge cards every day in my job. Saw the customer often trying to hide the card if anyone was behind them.
I never understood this,if you have a family and you're not making it,why should you be ashamed if you need help? I did my very best to help each customer no matter how they paid. Now I'm not going to sit here and not say every case was pure and innocent. I know far better then that..fraud does happen in the Food Stamp program,the USDA,which runs the program nationally kicked over 44,000 people off the program for fraud.
Stores also abuse the program...offering cash for the cards. I saw this often in the neighborhood I grew up in..you get 500.00 in food stamps but sell the card for 300 cash. A lot of folks robbing Peter to pay Paul (or their dealers). In Pennsylvania,over 175 stores were caught paying cash for cards.
States are now tightening up the rules,fingerprinting in New York,drug testing in Florida,set limits for individuals to get off the dole. Food stamp fraud costs the US taxpayer 375 million dollars a year...(but compare that to the 60 Billion that doctors rip off Medicare,including one doctor just busted for 375 million alone!!)
What exactly are food stamps? Its federal aid designed to help people affected by poverty buy food. The program started back in the 60s and actually used to come in paper booklets with dollar amounts attached to them. This was phased out in 2004 in favor of plastic debt cards. This made it easier to stop massive postal thefts which happened quite a bit and gave the person both protection and tried to hide the stigma that using food stamps brings.
Newt Gingrich has said that more people have been on food stamps then any other president in history.
Good ol' Newt says he is a historian,well if he is,I guess he must consider yesterday to be ancient because if he had done a little research he would have discovered that food stamp use has gone up under each President since Reagan back in 1980...
While we can't argue that more folks since 2008 have added to the food stamp program is larger then any president's term,lets look at the numbers a bit more.
Last year,45 million Americans used food stamps,that equals to roughly 15% of all Americans. In 2008,28 million folks were on the program when Obama took office. But the number of folks added has risen sharply the past 10 years and actually GREW BY A HIGHER PERCENTAGE under the 8 years of George W. Bush's presidency then Obama's. I hear the teapublicans start to stammer and sputter when reading this but it was under Bush's watch then this recession hit,not Obama's.
But was the recession totally at fault for the rise? Not all the way...millions of Americans lost their jobs and went from being middle class to sliding under the poverty line,thus making them eligible for food stamps.
15% of all Americans now live under that line,1 in 7 of everyone you may meet is officially poor. An average family of 3 living under 19,090.00 per year is the poverty line now.
The average family of 2.2 members now receives around 290.00 a month,or 73.00 a week to eat on. It isn't much to feed 2 people on but food stamp spending does add up quite a bit. It has risen to 80.5 billion during the past 10 years.
Critics blame this upsurge in spending on different factors..Bush relaxed eligibility standards and an boost to benefits that Obama had to put in his stimulus bill after those millions of folks started to lose their jobs.
Obama also increased the time limits that folks could stay on the program as well as people just weren't rebounding in finding a job as quickly as they had in the past.
"No program in our government has surged more out of control more dramatically then food stamps" Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama has said. He goes on,"Do you think there are 4 times as many people who need food stamps today as in 2001?"
That is a fair question....until you realize that Alabama ranks as the 3rd poorest state in the country with over 750,000 living under the poverty line. How exactly did Sessions get elected again??
And Newt made it a point to signal out blacks as the leading food stamp users. But the percentage is this...of all food stamp users,34% are whites,22% are black,16% are Hispanic and the rest (Native Americans,Asians,etc) are the other 28%.
40% of families that on food stamps do have at least one member who WORKS a job. Again...not only did folks lose their jobs but by the time they found another one,either they had used up all of their savings and or found a another job at much lower wages thus keeping them under the poverty line.
Is there abuse? Sure there is....in New York City,they found 2,000 people using two names to draw extra benefits costing tax payers 5 million. In Michigan we had a man win a 2 million dollar lottery jackpot and still be able to use his Bridge card.
And as I said...over 44,000 people have been kicked off food stamps for abuses....which equals one tenth of one percent of program participants.
There should be no shame tied to using this program....only shame if you are abusing it.
Thanks for reading and comments are most welcome.
Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts
Monday, March 5, 2012
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
So you're Pro-Life? But are you really?
Its 12:14 pm
Sitting here with the mighty Barbara Manning ripping shit up on the iPod....its 40 degrees outside,the snow we got is slowly heading into the curbside.
Today was my volunteer day for the TEFAP program my city runs. I stayed almost 3 hours helping out. I helped about 25 guests with their packages and broke down the boxes that the food came in.
The guests were chatty today,a lot of times they come in,we load the bags up and head out to the cars. Most,if not all,always say "thank you" or "have a blessed day". But today they wanted to chat...so I took a few extra minutes to to listen while they talked. Its the least I can do....a guest told me that one of the two food giveaways in Westland has been closed due to the lack of funds. The other one is so swamped,they have have about 300+ that wait in line. Westland also has a police car stationed at the site and she said they are so unorganized compared to our program. Of course we are only helping 70 people on a regular basis so it allows us to work fast and as a well oiled machine. But if we were suddenly hit with with hundreds of needy folks,I like to think we could handle it as a team.
So of cool to come in today and see my visitor tracker filled with different people from different places,including Russia. Now I don't know if they are really reading my blog or spambots but since I haven't gotten any goofy comments,I am thinking they are real folks and I'm here to say "welcome".
So....the gist of today's entry. As you all know the recent Obama decision to make churches offer birth control on any health insurance they offer is causing a little uproar. And I have to ask,why so serious?
The Catholic Church (and if I offend any Catholics...well,sometimes the truth does hurt) is leading voice against abortion rights as are many right wing teapublicans. But why are they? Why is a unborn fetus so much important then a living,breathing child or adult?
Nolan Finley is the editor of the editorial page and his voice is the voice of the Detroit News. And Nolan is about right wing leaning as they get,he is always taking potshots at any Democrat he sees fits that deserves it.
He is a frequent guest on the Let It Rip show that Fox 2 hosts on Thursday nights. Now I disagree with most everything he says...but after following the birth control flap and reading that 40 of the 50 most violent cities in the world are in Catholic countries,it got me thinking....are Pro-Lifers really pro-life?
Let me ask you,what is your idea of life here in America? Go to school,go to college,get married raise a family,own a home,have a pool,retire somewhere nice.
The American Dream,right? We all should be able to shoot for the dream,right? Not if you're a Pro-Lifer.
Nolan Finley,a teapublican,wrote a sobering editorial that bears to be read and talked about.
He writes in that if we here want to reduce violent crime,help kids quit dropping out of school,fight poverty...we need to really push the birth control here in Michigan. Michigan is awash in babies.
Nolan says "We have a baby problem here in Michigan. Too many babies are born to immature parents who don't have the skills to raise them,too many are delivered by poor women who can't afford them and too many are fathered by sorry layabouts who spread their seed like dandelions and then wander away from the consequences".
A joke I once heard "Whats the most confusing day in the ghetto? Father's Day". Yeah,some joke....
Back to Nolan's column:
"Last year in Michigan alone,43 percent of the babies born in Michigan were to single mothers. And though Medicaid pays for birth control,half the babies were born to mothers on welfare. 18% were born to teenagers who already had a child. And almost 20% were born to mothers with no high school diploma.
In Michigan,poverty is as much a cultural one as a economic one."
But lets be honest here....the Pro-Life movement is a racial attack on minorities,especially on the black and Latino communities. And of course,hiding behind the Bible to try and justify their hatred. Because how a so called man of God condemn a President for wanting to prevent anyone being born into abject poverty and call it murder yet stay absolutely quiet while this country drowns in a sea of app. 260 million privately owned guns. "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is not a subjective scripture to be applied at anyone's whim. And as we know,death comes in many shades and colors....be a murder,a drug addiction,being born in a society in which there is NO chance to live a worthwhile life. You see the PSAs of the guy showing poor kids living with no clean water,no food,no schools,no future....and you tell,how is he better being born then not. Instead of sinking our funds into welfare and encouraging the cycle of poverty to continue,by teaching and not rewarding these types of unwanted births,wouldn't be better to sink those funds in schools and colleges,allowing the kids we have now to be able to afford to go the school and improve both themselves and their communities?
But see,that is what the Pro-Lifers are scared of....they WANT the unwanted births,the baby mama drama,the shows on Springer where a mom is DNA testing 9 men to see who is the baby daddy is.
They WANT the poverty,the continued cycle of violence and death,all the more for their own kids to have less competition for the classrooms,colleges and jobs.
From Nolan's column:
"I spoke to a educator who is dealing with a single mother in her 30s who has 12 kids with a 13th on the way. The kids have a assortment of fathers with one thing in common,no one wanted to marry their mother. This woman's womb is a poverty factory.
And who is supporting these kids? We,as taxpayers,are....the roughly 45,000 kids born on the welfare rolls is a major reason why Medicaid will eat up 25% of Michigan's entire budget for the YEAR!!!!"
That comes out to 16 Billion spent on these babies. 16 Billion that could be spent on better schools,equipment,AMBULANCES,job programs,road improvements,etc....instead we are losing these funds to so called Pro-Lifers who then sit back in their teapublican palaces and order cuts to the same social programs that these folks cling too to survive and call it an "entitlement". Aye,the snake has a forked tongue indeed,doesn't it?
Again...Nolan Finley writes:
These kids are more likely to grow up to be a strain on Corrections spending or become welfare recipients themselves. They will drain money from the schools and universities that could break this cycle. In the 1990s Michigan considered penalizing women who had more babies while on the welfare rolls but PRO-LIFE groups killed that idea out of fear it would lead to more abortions".
But not because that would have been unfair to the women because it takes two to tangle. Pro-Lifers don't care about women or their rights....never have,never will. And you are telling me there couldn't be a system designed to stop a woman from abusing the abortion process? Its not birth control and should never be considered as such.
Nolan,one more time.
Now the state is trying other measures,including attacking school truancy and the new 4 year limit for welfare benefits. (After an initial outcry about that 4 year limit,there has been a upsurge in job training programs participation).
Now,says state Human Services Director Maura Corrigan,the state is trying to get at generational poverty. "We're studying positive incentives to change."
But she says the cultural breakdown is a strong tide to row against.
"We watching marriage move from being part of the social fabric to being merely optional",says Corrigan,who devotes her personal time to working with disadvantaged children. "The kids I mentor don't know people who are married".
They do know people whose irresponsible behavior is being subsidized by their neighbors. And as long as taxpayers of Michigan keep paying for them,those babies will keep coming.
So apply this column to your own state,your own inner cities and the next time someone says they are Pro-Life,ask them "Are you really"?.
Thanks for reading and feel free to comment.
Sitting here with the mighty Barbara Manning ripping shit up on the iPod....its 40 degrees outside,the snow we got is slowly heading into the curbside.
Today was my volunteer day for the TEFAP program my city runs. I stayed almost 3 hours helping out. I helped about 25 guests with their packages and broke down the boxes that the food came in.
The guests were chatty today,a lot of times they come in,we load the bags up and head out to the cars. Most,if not all,always say "thank you" or "have a blessed day". But today they wanted to chat...so I took a few extra minutes to to listen while they talked. Its the least I can do....a guest told me that one of the two food giveaways in Westland has been closed due to the lack of funds. The other one is so swamped,they have have about 300+ that wait in line. Westland also has a police car stationed at the site and she said they are so unorganized compared to our program. Of course we are only helping 70 people on a regular basis so it allows us to work fast and as a well oiled machine. But if we were suddenly hit with with hundreds of needy folks,I like to think we could handle it as a team.
So of cool to come in today and see my visitor tracker filled with different people from different places,including Russia. Now I don't know if they are really reading my blog or spambots but since I haven't gotten any goofy comments,I am thinking they are real folks and I'm here to say "welcome".
So....the gist of today's entry. As you all know the recent Obama decision to make churches offer birth control on any health insurance they offer is causing a little uproar. And I have to ask,why so serious?
The Catholic Church (and if I offend any Catholics...well,sometimes the truth does hurt) is leading voice against abortion rights as are many right wing teapublicans. But why are they? Why is a unborn fetus so much important then a living,breathing child or adult?
Nolan Finley is the editor of the editorial page and his voice is the voice of the Detroit News. And Nolan is about right wing leaning as they get,he is always taking potshots at any Democrat he sees fits that deserves it.
He is a frequent guest on the Let It Rip show that Fox 2 hosts on Thursday nights. Now I disagree with most everything he says...but after following the birth control flap and reading that 40 of the 50 most violent cities in the world are in Catholic countries,it got me thinking....are Pro-Lifers really pro-life?
Let me ask you,what is your idea of life here in America? Go to school,go to college,get married raise a family,own a home,have a pool,retire somewhere nice.
The American Dream,right? We all should be able to shoot for the dream,right? Not if you're a Pro-Lifer.
Nolan Finley,a teapublican,wrote a sobering editorial that bears to be read and talked about.
He writes in that if we here want to reduce violent crime,help kids quit dropping out of school,fight poverty...we need to really push the birth control here in Michigan. Michigan is awash in babies.
Nolan says "We have a baby problem here in Michigan. Too many babies are born to immature parents who don't have the skills to raise them,too many are delivered by poor women who can't afford them and too many are fathered by sorry layabouts who spread their seed like dandelions and then wander away from the consequences".
A joke I once heard "Whats the most confusing day in the ghetto? Father's Day". Yeah,some joke....
Back to Nolan's column:
"Last year in Michigan alone,43 percent of the babies born in Michigan were to single mothers. And though Medicaid pays for birth control,half the babies were born to mothers on welfare. 18% were born to teenagers who already had a child. And almost 20% were born to mothers with no high school diploma.
In Michigan,poverty is as much a cultural one as a economic one."
But lets be honest here....the Pro-Life movement is a racial attack on minorities,especially on the black and Latino communities. And of course,hiding behind the Bible to try and justify their hatred. Because how a so called man of God condemn a President for wanting to prevent anyone being born into abject poverty and call it murder yet stay absolutely quiet while this country drowns in a sea of app. 260 million privately owned guns. "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is not a subjective scripture to be applied at anyone's whim. And as we know,death comes in many shades and colors....be a murder,a drug addiction,being born in a society in which there is NO chance to live a worthwhile life. You see the PSAs of the guy showing poor kids living with no clean water,no food,no schools,no future....and you tell,how is he better being born then not. Instead of sinking our funds into welfare and encouraging the cycle of poverty to continue,by teaching and not rewarding these types of unwanted births,wouldn't be better to sink those funds in schools and colleges,allowing the kids we have now to be able to afford to go the school and improve both themselves and their communities?
But see,that is what the Pro-Lifers are scared of....they WANT the unwanted births,the baby mama drama,the shows on Springer where a mom is DNA testing 9 men to see who is the baby daddy is.
They WANT the poverty,the continued cycle of violence and death,all the more for their own kids to have less competition for the classrooms,colleges and jobs.
From Nolan's column:
"I spoke to a educator who is dealing with a single mother in her 30s who has 12 kids with a 13th on the way. The kids have a assortment of fathers with one thing in common,no one wanted to marry their mother. This woman's womb is a poverty factory.
And who is supporting these kids? We,as taxpayers,are....the roughly 45,000 kids born on the welfare rolls is a major reason why Medicaid will eat up 25% of Michigan's entire budget for the YEAR!!!!"
That comes out to 16 Billion spent on these babies. 16 Billion that could be spent on better schools,equipment,AMBULANCES,job programs,road improvements,etc....instead we are losing these funds to so called Pro-Lifers who then sit back in their teapublican palaces and order cuts to the same social programs that these folks cling too to survive and call it an "entitlement". Aye,the snake has a forked tongue indeed,doesn't it?
Again...Nolan Finley writes:
These kids are more likely to grow up to be a strain on Corrections spending or become welfare recipients themselves. They will drain money from the schools and universities that could break this cycle. In the 1990s Michigan considered penalizing women who had more babies while on the welfare rolls but PRO-LIFE groups killed that idea out of fear it would lead to more abortions".
But not because that would have been unfair to the women because it takes two to tangle. Pro-Lifers don't care about women or their rights....never have,never will. And you are telling me there couldn't be a system designed to stop a woman from abusing the abortion process? Its not birth control and should never be considered as such.
Nolan,one more time.
Now the state is trying other measures,including attacking school truancy and the new 4 year limit for welfare benefits. (After an initial outcry about that 4 year limit,there has been a upsurge in job training programs participation).
Now,says state Human Services Director Maura Corrigan,the state is trying to get at generational poverty. "We're studying positive incentives to change."
But she says the cultural breakdown is a strong tide to row against.
"We watching marriage move from being part of the social fabric to being merely optional",says Corrigan,who devotes her personal time to working with disadvantaged children. "The kids I mentor don't know people who are married".
They do know people whose irresponsible behavior is being subsidized by their neighbors. And as long as taxpayers of Michigan keep paying for them,those babies will keep coming.
So apply this column to your own state,your own inner cities and the next time someone says they are Pro-Life,ask them "Are you really"?.
Thanks for reading and feel free to comment.
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