You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

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Scooter
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You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Scooter »

Social media users slam Ryan for tweet on $1.50 pay hike

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) was criticized Saturday on social media for citing a Pennsylvania woman whose paycheck went up by $1.50 a week as a success of the recently passed GOP tax-reform bill.

Ryan tweeted a link to an Associated Press report detailing how some workers have begun to see more take-home pay as the result of new withholding guidelines following the passage of the bill.

The AP featured multiple workers who have seen an increase in their pay, including Julia Ketchum, a high school secretary in Pennsylvania. Ketchum’s paycheck increased by $1.50 a week, and (anyone with the brain cells endowed to a habanero pepper would have recognized the sarcasm when) she told the AP the increase would cover her Costco membership for the year.

Ryan highlighted Ketchum’s story in a tweet Saturday that was later deleted. (gee, I wonder why)

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Sue U
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

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@pryan Delete your account!
GAH!

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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

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"If you don't have a seat at the table, you're on the menu."

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BoSoxGal
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by BoSoxGal »

:funee:



Or, not. :(
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Bicycle Bill
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Bicycle Bill »

Paul Ryan really, really, REALLY makes me ashamed to admit I'm from Wisconsin.
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by rubato »

It's the Cheeze! Paul Ryan wants mo' cheddar pleeze!


yrs,
rubato

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Scooter
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

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Bicycle Bill wrote:Paul Ryan really, really, REALLY makes me ashamed to admit I'm from Wisconsin.
Charles Koch really, really, REALLY makes me ashamed to admit I'm from Wichita.
A friend of Doc's, one of only two B-29 bombers still flying.

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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

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I am hoping someone who typically votes Republican and/or supports Republican values can explain this to me, because I cannot wrap my head around it:
Trump Administration Wants To Decide What Food SNAP Recipients Will Get

The Trump administration is proposing a major shake-up in one of the country's most important "safety net" programs, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. Under the proposal, most SNAP recipients would lose much of their ability to choose the food they buy with their SNAP benefits.

The proposal is included in the Trump administration budget request for fiscal year 2019. It would require approval from Congress.

Under the proposal, which was announced Monday, low-income Americans who receive at least $90 a month — just over 80 percent of all SNAP recipients — would get about half of their benefits in the form of a "USDA Foods package." The package was described in the budget as consisting of "shelf-stable milk, ready to eat cereals, pasta, peanut butter, beans and canned fruit and vegetables." The boxes would not include fresh fruits or vegetables.

Currently, SNAP beneficiaries get money loaded onto an EBT card they can use to buy what they want as long as it falls under the guidelines. The administration says the move is a "cost-effective approach" with "no loss in food benefits to participants."

The USDA believes that state governments will be able to deliver this food at much less cost than SNAP recipients currently pay for food at retail stores — thus reducing the overall cost of the SNAP program by $129 billion over the next 10 years.

This and other changes in the SNAP program, according to the Trump administration, will reduce the SNAP budget by $213 billion over those years — cutting the program by almost 30 percent.

Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, a hunger advocacy group that also helps clients access food-assistance services, said the administration's plan left him baffled. "They have managed to propose nearly the impossible, taking over $200 billion worth of food from low-income Americans while increasing bureaucracy and reducing choices," Berg says.

He says SNAP is efficient because it is a "free market model" that lets recipients shop at stores for their benefits. The Trump administration's proposal, he said, "is a far more intrusive, Big Government answer. They think a bureaucrat in D.C. is better at picking out what your family needs than you are?"

Douglas Greenaway, president of the National WIC Association, echoed that sentiment. "Removing choice from SNAP flies in the face of encouraging personal responsibility," he said. He says "the budget seems to assume that participating in SNAP is a character flaw."

It isn't clear how billions of dollars' worth of food each year would be distributed to millions of SNAP recipients who live all over the country, including dense urban areas and sparsely populated rural regions. The budget says states will have "substantial flexibility in designing the food box delivery system through existing infrastructure, partnerships or commercial/retail delivery services."

Critics of the proposal said distributing that much food presents a logistical nightmare. "Among the problems, it's going to be costly and take money out of the [SNAP] program from the administrative side. It's going to stigmatize people when they have to go to certain places to pick up benefits," says Jim Weill, president of the nonprofit Food Research and Action Center.

Stacy Dean, vice president for food assistance policy at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, called the proposal "radical and risky." The idea that the government could save money by distributing food itself, she said, is "ill-informed at best."

It isn't clear whether the boxes will come with directions on how to cook the foods inside. "It could be something that [SNAP recipients] don't even know how to make," notes Miguelina Diaz, whose team at Hunger Free America works directly with families to help them access food aid. "We deal with different people of different backgrounds. Limiting them by providing them a staple box would limit the choices of food they can prepare for their families."

According to Dean, from CBPP, the Trump administration wants to trim an additional $80 billion from the SNAP program by cutting off about 4 million people who currently receive food assistance. Most of them live in states that have decided to loosen the program's eligibility requirements slightly. Under the administration's proposal, states would no longer be able to do so.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in early December that he wanted states to have more flexibility in doling out SNAP, announcing the agency wanted to hear about programs from states that don't increase the cost of the program and will combat what he said is fraud and waste. At the National Grocers Association conference over the weekend, Perdue said the budget has "common-sense reforms that call for greater consistency across nutritional programs."

Nutrition programs, including SNAP, made up about 80 percent of the USDA's budget in the most recent farm bill, making it the largest portion of agency spending. About 44 million people participated in SNAP each month in 2016, at an annual cost of $70.9 billion. Nearly two-thirds were under 18, over 60 or disabled, according to the USDA.

Congress largely ignored Trump's proposed budget for SNAP last year, when he wanted to cut the funding by a quarter. This time, it's a farm bill year, meaning many budgetary decisions will be made among the House and Senate agriculture committees.

Several critics we spoke with expressed skepticism that the proposed SNAP changes would pass in Congress. Even so, Weill says, "Whenever you see proposals like this that attack [SNAP] ... it harms the program even if it doesn't pass, in the long term reducing support for the program and stigmatizing people who use it."
So as I am reading this, these "reforms" will: (1) drastically reduce consumer choice, (2) create a massive new bureaucracy to implement this new model, (3) distort the market in favour of processed foods at the expense of farm-to-table foods, and (4) give an advantage to those suppliers whose brands will stock these boxes.

Do not all of these represent the antithesis of what the Republican Party is supposed to stand for? Please, anybody, correct me if I am wrong on this.

It's as if the entire middle section of this continent has fallen through the freaking looking glass.
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BoSoxGal
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

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I would doubt very much this kind of ‘reform’ could ever pass Congress - it would be a huge blow to the grocery market industry and I’m sure they have very good lobbyists. Plus it is beyond stupid. I’m not surprised some stupid evil Republicans could come up with such a mean spirited and stupid plan, but I can’t believe it would pass.

I worked several grocery stores and small mom & pop markets/convenience stores over the years I lived in Maine - a relatively poor state - and food stamp recipients were frequent customers. It’s money just like the real stuff, and basically it allows the business owner to get some taxes back while also keeping poor kids and vulnerable adults from going hungry. The fraud in the system is actually fairly minimal, despite all the welfare queen propaganda to the contrary.

Nowadays a lot of farmers markets accept SNAP and WIC benefits, in order to promote access to healthy foods. But frankly, why shouldn’t poor people have the same inalienable right to eat crappy food as every average American does?
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
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Scooter
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

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If poor people choose to eat crappy food, I figure that's their business; I just never imagined it would be Republican policy to force them to eat it by giving them no choice but prepackaged crap.
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Joe Guy
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Joe Guy »

One of the most often heard complaints from clueless people is that SNAP recipients don't use their benefit in a way that a clueless person thinks recipients should. This proposal is a stupid and ultimately more expensive way to administer the SNAP program in an attempt to appease the clueless.

I'm not surprised at this SNAP judgement by the Trump administration.

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Crackpot
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

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I'd figure the Trump administration would make Big Macs mandatory
Okay... There's all kinds of things wrong with what you just said.

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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Bicycle Bill »

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PLEASE, SIR, MAY I HAVE SOME MORE?
Good ol' Trump.  What a great idea!!  Issue peanut butter, mac and cheese, rice, beans, shelf-stable milk (that's 'powdered milk' to the rest of us), and probably a block of that government-surplus processed cheese — but no fresh fruits or veggies! — to those greedy bastards looking for a free meal off the government.  What the hell .... they're poor; they should be grateful for anything, even a bowl of gruel!

So what if they might be allergic to nuts, lactose intolerant, have a celiac disorder and can't consume gluten, or come down with scurvy?  Big deal!  Let 'em get sick and die; we'll save even more money once there are fewer mouths to feed!

Although I should give him credit when he does deserve it.
At least he didn't take a page out of Marie Antoinette's book and say, "Let them eat cake."
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Lord Jim
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Lord Jim »

This proposal is a stupid and ultimately more expensive way to administer the SNAP program in an attempt to appease the clueless.
Well, since appeasing the clueless is central to Trump's whole political survival strategy, this proposal makes perfect sense...



ETA:
The proposal is included in the Trump administration budget request for fiscal year 2019.
This idea must be the "brain child" of Mick Mulvaney, erstwhile Radical Randian congressman, and current director of The Office of Management and Budget...

He's the charmer who early-on in the Administration publicly defended eliminating funding for school breakfasts for poor children on the grounds that their test scores hadn't gone up sufficiently to make them worthy of being fed...

(No, I didn't make that up...)

Mick really is the poster boy for the Liberal caricature of the evil Republican snatching food out of the mouths of the starving...

One gets the impression that he lies awake at night trying to think up new ways to screw over poor people...

He's deeply offended that they receive any help...
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Econoline »

Bicycle Bill wrote:...shelf-stable milk (that's 'powdered milk' to the rest of us)...
Yeah, I wondered about that, too, and decided to ask kindly old Mr. Google to look around for more information. Apparently "shelf-stable milk" is NOT the same as powdered milk. It's also called UHT (ultra-high temperature pasteurized) or ultra-pasteurized milk...which, when combined with aseptic packaging, results in liquid milk with a shelf life, without refrigeration, of 6 months (before opening). Apparently it's quite common in Europe but not in the US.

(Read more here.)
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

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Lord Jim wrote:This idea must be the "brain child" of Mick Mulvaney...One gets the impression that he lies awake at night trying to think up new ways to screw over poor people...
Yesterday I caught one of Bernie Sanders's clips on Facebook, he is questioning Mulvaney about cuts to a home heating subsidy (I can't remember the actual name of the program) that was helping 7 million families pay their heating bills. Mulvaney's justification was that there were 11,000 dead people receiving that subsidy. Sanders's utterly reasonable response was, fix THAT then, don't make 7 million families freeze as punishment for 11,000 cheats.
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Crackpot
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

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It has been my experience that those that get so wound up that someone might be cheating the system are the same people who actively search for/find ways to cheat the system.
Okay... There's all kinds of things wrong with what you just said.

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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

Post by Burning Petard »

I have been buying this UHT milk in one quart boxes for some time. I can buy a couple of gallons for about the same as the gallon price for 'fresh' milk. In larger than one qt containers it goes bad before I use it all. The boxed milk (unopened) can sit on my pantry shelf as long as the canned beans and brooks ketchup.

In 1972 when I moved to Delmarva (actually Cecil County Md) I was eligible for food stamps, in Maryland. The State of Delaware did not support them, but the Delaware grocery stores did. In Delaware, I could use the stamps (more like coupons) and not pay sales tax which was due even on food in Maryland.
Rather than food stamps, Delaware had another program involving surplus dried milk, cheese, peanut butter, and sometimes dried beans and rice distributed in bulk. My church in Delaware worked at the state distribution center as volunteers. People would come in , show some kind of state welfare id card and be given as sack full of this stuff. Depending on whether the id card was 'family' or 'single' the amount in the sack varied--two quantities, no choices. The distribution center was open two days per month.

With these food stamps I could not buy alcohol, cigarettes, or imported food items--such as the cheapest canned tuna, or hamburger because both were imported. I did get dirty looks at checkout--He is buying 'ground beef' with stamps and I have to buy the cheaper hamburger. The value of the stamps I received each month was allocated according to the age and number in my family, and my current payroll slip. By six months in the area my pay exceeded the ceiling for food stamps.

The commodity distribution system used in Delaware at that time was ended nationally by the GOP as welfare reform, so that the ignorant peasants would be forced to make their own choices for purchases which could be exploited by the food merchandisers.

snailgate

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Scooter
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Re: You really, really, REALLY couldn't make this shit up

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Econoline wrote:It's also called UHT (ultra-high temperature pasteurized) or ultra-pasteurized milk...which, when combined with aseptic packaging, results in liquid milk with a shelf life, without refrigeration, of 6 months (before opening). Apparently it's quite common in Europe but not in the US.
It may well have improved now, but I remember when I would go to Italy as a child, and I was a huge milk drinker, that I could not abide the taste of the stuff. My parents would have to buy what was called "latte di giornata" (milk of the day) that even though refrigerated, only had a shelf life of 2-3 days. Sometimes we would get sheep's milk from my grandparents' neighbours; while a bit strange to my taste it was way preferable to the UHT stuff.
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