Peeps so poor in SD they can’t buy food;
MITCHELL, SD – A new study shows more people in the Dakotas are enrolled in a federal program that provides food assistance.
Data from the Urban Institute shows enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program increased by 58 percent in South Dakota between 2007 and 2010. North Dakota had an increase of 33 percent during that period. Nationally, the number of people using food stamps increased 69 percent between from 2007 to 2010.
Congress adopted the Federal Food Stamp Act in 1964 to help needy people buy groceries. The program cost approximately $60 billion in fiscal year 2010.
I saw a guy the other day pull up to the C-Store in a brand new car, nicely dressed, in his 30’s, grab a Mt. Dew and couple of candy bars and pay for it with his Food Stamp Card. I don’t have a problem with people getting food stamps, but it should be reserved for those in need of FOOD! Yet the good ole state of SD thinks we need to increase the sales taxes (on food to) to pay for stuff we already have money for. I call it the ‘stupidity cycle’.
I worked at a grocery store while in college, and I lost count of the number of people who would always come through with two “separate” orders; one was food – paid for with food stamps, and the second was booze and cigarettes paid for in cash.
Some of the booze & cig orders came close to the amount of my paycheck for the week.
So we are going to pass a tax on the poor and give the money to Sanford Health! Only in SD would that fly.
TP I worked in grocery store. There were 100 to 1 people that used the program correctly. It pissed me off that people exaggeration
John:
I said “some” – not all, or most who used food stamps for that matter. I’m glad you had better luck with the program. I won’t try to put an exact number on it, but I stand by the statement that it occurred more frequently than I could count.
John said: “It pissed me off that people exaggeration”
We all have our pet peeves. Mine is improper grammar.
Try:
It pissed me off when people exaggerated.
or
It pisses me off that people exaggerate.
I don’t get a paycheck at work because it goes towards income taxes and SS. A younger person asked me one day why I had to pay so much in taxes when I am single. I said, “Well first I am paying for GW Bush’s illegal wars, and Billionaire taxcuts. Then I have to support, feed and provide healthcare to all the kids whose daddies have disappeared. And after all that I have to send there mommies thru college so they don’t have to depend on uncle sam (me) anymore to feed their babies.” Of the 6 people listening to my rant. Only one laughed. And he said. “Your’e crazy Scott.”
John, Sandford needs the money for his one million dollar landscaping at Sanford Center.
OMG! Just got done eating DT and on my bike ride home I stop at Sunshine to get some snacks (I’m a Kit Kat addict) I was standing in line with a couple of punks that had their snack on too. Including a Red Bull. He whips out a food stamp card (which I am sure he snagged from either his mother or his baby’s momma) and the clerk told him he could not buy Red Bull with the card. He mumbled something derogatory. It took all I had in me (3 vodka tonics and a Peroni) not to go off.
I have to come clean hear. My mom depended on food stamps and welfare after she divorced my sperm donor. She hated it. And I don’t remember once my mom bringing home Mt. Dew and candy bars to us. Like I said, the food stamp program is wonderful, and I would never advocate it to be cancelled, but it needs to be reformed.
TP- auto corrections and work get in the way of a good rant. I am like Scott. Growing up we had to survive for a short time on food stamps.
Low income people do have a right to have candy or pop as a treat. When people see this happen, they don’t know how often that particular person uses food stamps to buy things like that. I kind of look at it like this, if people want to waste their food stamps on things like that instead of regular food, that is their problem. I have my own problems to worry about. Also if pop and candy were to be banned from food stamps, then that ban should also include coffee, and I am sure there are other things that could fall into the forbidden group. Then there is the problem of who is going to police these things?
There is no worries about ‘policing’ it. Everything has barcodes. Stores simply flag the items that cannot be purchased with a food stamp card. Like cigs and beer. It is pretty simple. And as far as I am concerned, if they are buying items like this instead of unprepared nutritional food, maybe they don’t need food stamps? Like I have said, a need is just that, a need. If you need food stamps, prove it, and we will give them to you. If you need something to supplement your Red Bull craving, tough shit, get a second job.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years reading internet posts and rants is that Americans truly dislike each other for a multitude of reasons. I hope I’m not around when society breaks down.
Too late matt.
Yeah, sorry Lewis, you seem every once in a while to fall into the LINE of typical “conservative” Repub thinking on osme of this budgeting stuff. I mean really. Individual welfare abuse is such a miniscule $$$ number compared to something like contract abuse by “defense” contractors – or the military “losing” 100’s of MILLIONS in CASH in Iraq – it’s just a pathetic whimpoering little thing. The “speding problem” facing the nations is NOT spending on poor people.
“sorry spending problem”.
Would have to agree about war spending, and you are right, it is our biggest problem. But the problem I see with food stamps is that the state, or any state for that matter has this attitude that, “Oh well if people can’t afford to buy food because of high taxes or crappy wages, the feds will step in and give them food stamps.” Seems like a bad attitude to have, when all we really need to concentrate on is how we can provide a higher standard of living for the middle class so they don’t have to stand in food lines.
I am with you Scott. If you need a food stamp card – it should be regulated on what you are able to purchase with it. If you want to fill your body with crap so in the future we can also pay for your health care bills – that is on your own dime. Florida is starting drug testing if you want to qualify for welfare. It’s about frickin time. Drugs aren’t free and you sure as crap shouldn’t be able to use government money to feed your habit. All these things come down to what these programs are intended for. They are intended to give you a leg up when misfortune ,such as a job loss, has come your way. It seems to me we have allowed it to provide people more advantages if they keep having babies. Where the heck did all of this go wrong?
Alice – that Florida drug testing program is gonna cost the taxpayers of FL millions more than it will ever “save”. Another case of “sounds good” (emotionally appealing) in theory. Put into action – sucks – big time. You watch – in 5-6 years – it will be history, and a lesson learned.
Drug testing is wrong on so many levels. To begin with
“the company that will be doing the drug screening is a company Scott owns. Before Scott was inaugurated, he tried to avoid violating ethics laws by putting the business in his wife’s name under the Frances Annette Scott Revocable Trust.”
Read more: http://www.insaneasylumblog.com/2011/06/fl-gov-rick-scott-mandates-drug-tests.html#ixzz1TLAZ5ChK
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial
I am against the drug testing program as well. Like Ruf says, it will cost more then what it is worth. And last I checked you can’t buy drugs with a food stamp card. I don’t have a problem with food stamp recipients drinking and smoking a little, I just want them to wise up about how to spend the food stamps. Like I said, reform is simple with the barcode system. Restrict what they can buy to unprepared NUTRITIONAL FOODS! I’m all about kiddies getting milk, meat, veggies and cereal. This ain’t rocket science or repug rhetoric.
The Food Stamp Program is a program created by the federal government to provide food to people with low income. Food stamps have been in use since 1939 and it was created by former Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace. At the beginning food stamps were used to allow people to buy farm surpluses that otherwise were going to waste.
The grocery stores around here can’t stand the fact that people who use EBT don’t have to pay taxes on their food, so they’ve all added 10% to every item in the store. So the sign above a bag of rice (for example) would read 1.69 + 10%. It’s cool for the EBTers, but people who are generally struggling and receiving no assistance have to essentially pay two sales taxes for food. On top of rising prices across the board.