CONGRESS MULLS CUTS TO FOOD STAMPS PROGRAM AMID RECORD NUMBER OF RECIPIENTS
May 31st, 2011Millions of broke, hungry, armed people? What could possibly go wrong? Besides, there are robotic, long range nuclear bombers to be built.
Via: ABC News:
Congress is under pressure to cut the rapidly rising costs of the federal government’s food stamps program at a time when a record number of Americans are relying on it.
The House Appropriations Committee today will review the fiscal year 2012 appropriations bill for the Department of Agriculture that includes $71 billion for the agency’s “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.” That’s $2 billion less than what President Obama requested but a 9 percent increase from 2011, which, critics say, is too large given the sizeable budget deficit.
A record number of Americans — about 14 percent — now rely on the federal government’s food stamps program and its rapid expansion in recent years has become a politically explosive topic.
More than 44.5 million Americans received SNAP benefits in March, an 11 percent increase from one year ago and nearly 61 percent higher than the same time four years ago.
Nearly 21 million households are reliant on food stamps.
Starving the unemployed will not make them more employable but it sure will make government budget sheets look nicer. Instead of picking on the poor how about they cut some of the fat from the bloated military.
Yeah, those robot bombers are REAL important.
Poor people just need to get jobs. And if their kids want honors classes, well, they can get jobs, too.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703864204576313572363698678.html
In the end, it doesn’t matter if the people behind these decisions are actively conspiring towards enlarging and entrenching a permanent american underclass – it’s still the obvious end result of these actions.
Though I have no remaining faith whatsoever, I am forcibly minded of the bible passage: “By their fruits ye shall know them.”
Zeke
@zeke
What about one of those Ten Commandments (I think that’s where my Catholic memory sends me)
“Do unto others as you would have them do to you?”
I think this was Jesus interpreting the law of Karma taught to him by the Buddhists. These guys (sorry menfolk thats just my slang) are dessicated corpses. Skeletol remains inhabiting a human body bereft of any human emotion, elected to office because they had the “best” blown dryed hair do, had a web site, and 75% of humans in
America don’t know that voting in local elections is the “best change” you can vote for.
I’m so tired of Americans and their total not caring to vote. This yawn and watch TV attitude instead is what the PTB is counting on and I am thankful I don’t know anyone to throttle locally for their not caring in this regard.
@Eileen
Isn’t that the Golden Rule? My fading protestant memory so claims.
I snipped a long rant from my previous comment. Suffice to say, I believe that we’re all just damned dirty apes, and that, unexamined and unmoderated, the urges that drive evolution engender a culture which spawns a government whose drive for self-preservation, ever-increasing hunger, and general paranoia leads us to where we are today.
If we really want to get off this nasty trip to self-annihilation, whatever replaces what currently passes for government and culture will have to have some of the mindless hunger bred out of it.
I’m not trying to suggest that I believe in the notion of original sin; rather I believe that we need to consciously build culture that will help moderate some of the inbred traits which make us dangerous to ourselves and to the rest of the world. Not so much by enforcing mindless curbs on individual behavior, but rather by esteeming respect and thoughtfulness about individual actions in the context of their effects on the larger world, and by treating the non-human world as something of value and interest.
But, honestly, in the end I expect the monkeys to eat all the bananas and go on a final poo-flinging spree before most of them sullenly starve.
Zeke
@zeke
well said, though i’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that.
does japan have a food assistance program for their “lower class?” do they even need one? not to idealize any one population excessively, but after what they displayed of their consideration and rationality during a disaster that would have led to mad looting and chaos in the US, i have to wonder… a hypothetical society that truly values community and the collective would have no need for such a program.
if you ask me, public assistance programs are a handy way to delineate the lower classes and keep a census of them, from the government’s perspective. i doubt they will raise the bar for who gets to receive assistance; more likely they will simply reduce the allotted benefit per person. that way it still “feels” like *they* care…
“Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” (let them eat cake)
it didn’t work out very well last time, either.
I recently read that ~ 2.2 million long rifles and ~ 3.5 million handguns were sold last year … along with 1.22 billion rounds of ammunition, and that number does not include reloaders, who are the heaviest users of ammunition.
swell.
here is the social equation as I see it: ((millions of starving people with nothing to lose + 5.7 million guns sold last year alone) / small economic elite) * (draconian law / police state enforcers) * (resource depletion / currency collapse).
=
population reduction of about … what ? 75 % ?
do any of you ever feel that you got off at the wrong stop ?
cybele
Instigating civil war is treason. Making a generation dependent on handouts then pulling the plug is not very bright unless you also prepare policy enforcers for mayhem. Inflating the money supply and then switch to stamps/debits is still unsustainable and unrewarding parasitical behaviour without a benefit that can be delivered kills incentive. The beast awakens as gulliver.
…except that nobody is going do anything about this. those getting the shaft will whine, complain, and then go back to the couch to watch more american idol or whatever else is on the zombie box.
just like always.
(because growing a garden and raising chickens in order to buck the system AND feed yourself is beyond the creativity of the average american…)
(because growing a garden and raising chickens in order to buck the system AND feed yourself is beyond the creativity of the average american…)
In-N-Out Burger – Opening Day, Allen, Texas??
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQowy9DdY8k
@Kevin: LOL
@neologiste: except, when the electricity gets cut off and the car repo’d, and there is no confetti left to exchange for pHood at the local BigBox or In-N-Out, or the BigBox runs out of crap to sell because Chinese wage slaves have told their bosses to get fcuked and gone back to the farm… well watching Idol on the sofa is going to get trickier…
@neologiste: thanks – although I’m certainly not writing anything new. It’d be nice to be proven wrong.
@tochigi: except, as is pretty obvious, the plan in the US is a fun-park slide into poverty for 90% of the population with enough diversion along the way and sufficient bread and circuses at the other end to prevent any kind of mass uprising. The signs are all that TPTB are heavily invested in preventing any kind of serious mass expression of discontent.
And if the plan in China isn’t to convert as much as possible of the ponzi-scheme gains into internal development before the dollar becomes worthless, I’d be surprised. That’s what it sure looks like from here.
Of course, when Uncle Sam’s coffer is officially dry, the ‘engine’ of chinese growth will have to turn elsewhere. I expect chinese imperialism to take off rapidly when that happens. ‘Growing internal consumption’ will only take them in the same direction as the US.
@zeke:”sufficient bread and circuses at the other end ”
we shall see… wildly optimistic, imho.
it all comes down to fiat currency, and resource depletion. if an argument breaks out among elites and the USD confetti goes “poof”, well, all bets are off. the only good bet is a good garden and a bucket to fetch water.
@tochigi:
Wildly optimistic? Probably. But I expect it’s the official not-for-public-consumption plan A, with ever-uglier plans B-Z in the locked filing cabinet.
Given the steady rate at which the machinery of fascism is being rolled out these days, I’m sure that even the most optimistic subscribers to the “Bread and Circuses” endgame expect a fair number of hicups along the way.