SNAP!

SNAP! I don’t clutter up with links to sources. You can find confirmation of what follows. In tandem with the end of UCB for a million+ at year’s end (don’t get me started) the clowns in DC are fighting about reductions in SNAP benefits (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) that have already taken effect in part. The R’s want to cut forty billion (yes, with a B) and the D’s (pussies!) have offered nine. In round numbers fifty million Americans live below the poverty line. Seventeen million American children are included in that number. Seventeen million US American children are likely to go to bed hungry tonight. (I get to have my ice cream and pie.) If it’s a weekend or holiday they won’t get even the PBJ offered in their local school’s lunch program. It’s not that I was the one who figured this out so please bear with me. The food stamp program was basically birthed as a backroom gentlemen’s agreement between Big Farm (R’s) and Big Safety Net (D’s). The government would subsidize farmers and in return poor people would get non-fungible food credits to buy their products. It worked well (instances of true fraud by recipients of food assistance are minuscule) for a long time. That contract has broken down. Farm subsidies are at their highest since ‘73 and the poor are being trod upon and blamed for their lack of initiative and general torpor. Your tax dollars are helping Coke sell in China and Hershey sell in India. Forty billion in SNAP cuts, nine as a (meow) counter-proposal? Recipients (I’ve recently been one) of these non-fungible benefits do NOT eat lobster and Brie, media reports excepted. They plan, stretch, hoard and save in their budgets. OK, what to do? I’d say don’t throw money at mega-charities. Find a local place where your money can serve a community you identify with that is in need of help. Don’t take them your old canned goods. Inquire as to how your cash can buy real food for hungry Americans. I’ve sent my inquiry to NMAS and will report on their response. I’d like a dollar of mine to be turned into a bowl of soup for a deserving individual who can then say, “That was good!” At a right time a PBJ can be a great gift. A grilled cheese sandwich seems like a simple thing unless you can’t afford it.