1 in 6 Americans on Food Stamps

[InRareForm]

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/07/08/nearly-1-in-6-americans-receive-food-stamps/?mod=e2tw

[FuzzyLumpkins]

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2013/0709/Will-GOP-plan-to-cut-food-stamps-save-the-farm-bill-or-kill-it?nav=87-frontpage-entryNineItem

House GOP are trying to cut food stamps to pay for more farm subsidies. Government intervention and is bad except when it isn't apparently.

[mouse]

This whole country is accepting some type of help/bailout just ask China.

[boutons_deux]

‘Living wage’ mandate in D.C. sends Walmart runningWalmart on Tuesday threatened to abandon three planned stores in Washington, D.C. if the city enacted a so-called “living wage” bill targeting big-box stores.

The Large Retailer Accountability Act was passed in the D.C. Council in late June by a 8-5 vote. If enacted, it would require retailers that make more than $1 billion per year and occupy at least 75,000 square feet to pay employees at least $12.50 per hour, minus benefits. Stores with collective bargaining agreements would not be effected by the law.

“From day one, we have said that this legislation is arbitrary and discriminatory and that it discourages investment in Washington,” Walmart regional general manager Alex Barron said in an op-ed piece published by The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/wal-mart-in-wage-law-vote-the-dc-council-has-forced-our-hand/2013/07/09/dee907d4-e8c5-11e2-8f22-de4bd2a2bd39_story.html).


http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/09/living-wage-mandate-in-d-c-sends-walmart-running/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

Welfare Queen Walmart prefers to have taxpayers add "living wage" increment with food stamps, public housing, etc while Walmart pays shit wages and pockets the $Bs.

[RandomGuy]

‘Living wage’ mandate in D.C. sends Walmart runningWalmart on Tuesday threatened to abandon three planned stores in Washington, D.C. if the city enacted a so-called “living wage” bill targeting big-box stores.

The Large Retailer Accountability Act was passed in the D.C. Council in late June by a 8-5 vote. If enacted, it would require retailers that make more than $1 billion per year and occupy at least 75,000 square feet to pay employees at least $12.50 per hour, minus benefits. Stores with collective bargaining agreements would not be effected by the law.

“From day one, we have said that this legislation is arbitrary and discriminatory and that it discourages investment in Washington,” Walmart regional general manager Alex Barron said in an op-ed piece published by The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/wal-mart-in-wage-law-vote-the-dc-council-has-forced-our-hand/2013/07/09/dee907d4-e8c5-11e2-8f22-de4bd2a2bd39_story.html).


http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/09/living-wage-mandate-in-d-c-sends-walmart-running/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

Welfare Queen Walmart prefers to have taxpayers add "living wage" increment with food stamps, public housing, etc while Walmart pays shit wages and pockets the $Bs.

Pfft.

If Walmart doesn't want to build there, someone else will, and Wally World damn well knows it can still make money at those stores.

Empty bluster.

We can pay CEOs hundreds of millions of dollars per year, but we can't pay the old man at the door $12/hr? Really?

Typical ratios of CEO to worker pay are 350+ times.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2012/ceo-pay-ratios/

Walmarts CEO pay package: $13.5M

$8/hr at 38 hours a week times 52 weeks.... $15808 Just a smidge over the poverty line for one person(before taxes) http://www.irp.wisc.edu/faqs/faq1.htm

13,500,000/15808= 853

[boutons_deux]

The Mean Team Piles On Jobless Americans

“Come on, team, let’s get mean!”

This is not the chant of rabid football fans, egging on their favorite team to crush the opponents. Rather, it’s the raucous war cry of far-out right-wing ideologues all across the country who’re pumping up Team GOP to pound the bejeezus out of America’s millions of unemployed workers. Far from a game, this is real, and it’s a moral abomination.

I’ve been unemployed before, and I can tell you it’s a misery — all the more so today, when there are far more people out of work than there are job openings. This leaves millions of our fellow Americans mired in the debilitating misery of long-term unemployment.

But that’s not miserable enough for a feral breed of Ayn Randian political zealots who are lobbying Republican governors, legislators and congress-critters to punish the jobless for … well, for their joblessness. In this perverse universe, the conventional wisdom asserts that unemployment benefits and other poverty-prevention programs are sapping our nation’s vitality by allowing “moochers” to live the Life of Reilly and avoid work.

The GOP’s budget demigod in the U.S. House, Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI), expressed this dogma in a fanciful homily deriding America’s safety net as “a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency.” This from a guy whose family’s wealth was gained from government contacts and who has spent practically all of his adult life in the sweet-swaying hammock of congressional privilege, presently drawing $174,000 a year from Old Uncle Sugar.

As ridiculous and just plain mean as this attitude is, it plays well in the insanity that now defines “the debate” in Republican primary elections. So, state after state (as well as Congress) is succumbing to this pound-the-poor, right-wing screed by frenetically slashing unemployment benefits.

Behind this faux-philosophical push are the smiling barons of corporate America. Without jobless payments, you see, desperate millions will be forced to whatever low-wage, no-benefit, dead-end jobs the barons design.

What’s at work here is a profoundly awful ethical phenomenon that has seeped into the top strata of American society: Our nation’s corporate and political elites have developed an immunity to shame.

It has become morally acceptable in those lofty circles to enrich themselves while turning their backs on the rest of us. Even more damning, they feel free to slash America’s already tattered safety net, leaving more holes than net for the workaday majority of Americans who’ve been knocked down by an ongoing economic disaster created by these very elites.

For a look at how shameful these privileged powers have become, turn to North Carolina. Until recently, this Southern state maintained a fairly moderate government with a populist streak, taking pride in its educational system and other public efforts to maintain a middle class. No more. A shame-resistant political leadership has recently taken hold, consisting of corporate-funded Tea Party extremists who loathe the very idea of a safety net.

The new bunch has been gutting everything from public schools to health care, and now they’ve turned on hard-hit citizens who’re out of work. In a state with the fifth highest jobless rate in the country, and with no recovery in sight, the right-wing governor and legislature recently whacked weekly unemployment benefits by a third, leaving struggling North Carolinians with a meager $350 a week to try to make ends meet, while simultaneously eliminating millions of consumer dollars that those families would otherwise be putting into the state’s economy. Then, just to give the jobless another kick, the petty politicians cut the number of weeks people can receive unemployment aid.

This official stinginess automatically disqualified the state from getting $700 million a year for long-term jobless payments from the federal government. Yet Gov. Pat McCrory issued a cockamamie, Kafkaesque claim that the gut-job ensures that “our citizens’ unemployment safety net is secure,” while providing “an economic climate that allows job creators to start hiring again.”

Yeah, we’ll all hold our breath until those “job creators” get going. Meanwhile, the GOP wrecking crew doled out a fat tax break for the corporate elites — for doing nothing. Take from the poor, give to the rich: backward Robin Hood. If ignorance is bliss, McCrory must be ecstatic.

Meanwhile, his shameless immorality has unleashed a growing storm of weekly demonstrations known as “Moral Mondays.” For information about this remarkable citizens’ uprising, link to the North Carolina Justice Center: www.ncjustice.org (http://www.ncjustice.org/).


http://www.nationalmemo.com/the-mean-team-piles-on-jobless-americans/

[DMX7]

Anyone watch Frontline last night? That shit is scary.

[RandomGuy]

Anyone watch Frontline last night? That shit is scary.

Which story? Link maybe?

[DMX7]

Which story? Link maybe?

Right here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/two-american-families/

[RandomGuy]

The Mean Team Piles On Jobless Americans

“Come on, team, let’s get mean!”

This is not the chant of rabid football fans, egging on their favorite team to crush the opponents. Rather, it’s the raucous war cry of far-out right-wing ideologues all across the country who’re pumping up Team GOP to pound the bejeezus out of America’s millions of unemployed workers. Far from a game, this is real, and it’s a moral abomination.

I’ve been unemployed before, and I can tell you it’s a misery — all the more so today, when there are far more people out of work than there are job openings. This leaves millions of our fellow Americans mired in the debilitating misery of long-term unemployment.

But that’s not miserable enough for a feral breed of Ayn Randian political zealots who are lobbying Republican governors, legislators and congress-critters to punish the jobless for … well, for their joblessness. In this perverse universe, the conventional wisdom asserts that unemployment benefits and other poverty-prevention programs are sapping our nation’s vitality by allowing “moochers” to live the Life of Reilly and avoid work.

The GOP’s budget demigod in the U.S. House, Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI), expressed this dogma in a fanciful homily deriding America’s safety net as “a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency.” This from a guy whose family’s wealth was gained from government contacts and who has spent practically all of his adult life in the sweet-swaying hammock of congressional privilege, presently drawing $174,000 a year from Old Uncle Sugar.

As ridiculous and just plain mean as this attitude is, it plays well in the insanity that now defines “the debate” in Republican primary elections. So, state after state (as well as Congress) is succumbing to this pound-the-poor, right-wing screed by frenetically slashing unemployment benefits.

Behind this faux-philosophical push are the smiling barons of corporate America. Without jobless payments, you see, desperate millions will be forced to whatever low-wage, no-benefit, dead-end jobs the barons design.

What’s at work here is a profoundly awful ethical phenomenon that has seeped into the top strata of American society: Our nation’s corporate and political elites have developed an immunity to shame.

It has become morally acceptable in those lofty circles to enrich themselves while turning their backs on the rest of us. Even more damning, they feel free to slash America’s already tattered safety net, leaving more holes than net for the workaday majority of Americans who’ve been knocked down by an ongoing economic disaster created by these very elites.

For a look at how shameful these privileged powers have become, turn to North Carolina. Until recently, this Southern state maintained a fairly moderate government with a populist streak, taking pride in its educational system and other public efforts to maintain a middle class. No more. A shame-resistant political leadership has recently taken hold, consisting of corporate-funded Tea Party extremists who loathe the very idea of a safety net.

The new bunch has been gutting everything from public schools to health care, and now they’ve turned on hard-hit citizens who’re out of work. In a state with the fifth highest jobless rate in the country, and with no recovery in sight, the right-wing governor and legislature recently whacked weekly unemployment benefits by a third, leaving struggling North Carolinians with a meager $350 a week to try to make ends meet, while simultaneously eliminating millions of consumer dollars that those families would otherwise be putting into the state’s economy. Then, just to give the jobless another kick, the petty politicians cut the number of weeks people can receive unemployment aid.

This official stinginess automatically disqualified the state from getting $700 million a year for long-term jobless payments from the federal government. Yet Gov. Pat McCrory issued a cockamamie, Kafkaesque claim that the gut-job ensures that “our citizens’ unemployment safety net is secure,” while providing “an economic climate that allows job creators to start hiring again.”

Yeah, we’ll all hold our breath until those “job creators” get going. Meanwhile, the GOP wrecking crew doled out a fat tax break for the corporate elites — for doing nothing. Take from the poor, give to the rich: backward Robin Hood. If ignorance is bliss, McCrory must be ecstatic.

Meanwhile, his shameless immorality has unleashed a growing storm of weekly demonstrations known as “Moral Mondays.” For information about this remarkable citizens’ uprising, link to the North Carolina Justice Center: www.ncjustice.org (http://www.ncjustice.org/).


http://www.nationalmemo.com/the-mean-team-piles-on-jobless-americans/





+1

I have just about had it with the immoral policies being pushed by the Republican party.

LOL "job creators"

It is shocking how willingly some drink the cool-aid set in front of them and parrot that term mindlessly. I can imagine a roomful of Romneys laughing their asses off at the dirt-poor wing of the Republican party over that one. "They bought it, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA"

[TeyshaBlue]

an op ed from Jim Hightower. Ok.

[101A]

It is very sad that our economy is such that 1 of every 6 among us is reduced to relying on the government for their meals.

Every politician should be held responsible for this travesty.

[boutons_deux]

an op ed from Jim Hightower. Ok.

nothing from TB :lol OK

[101A]

The more people learn to live with less (meaning the little that is provided through govt. assistance), the more likely it is those people will rely on government assistance for longer (or forever). As far as I know there has never been a significant trend of FEWER people requiring assistance. With the Social Security roles about to swell, this country needs more people earning more money paying more taxes so that we can support the framework we have created.

I am not condemning those on assistance, nor am I suggesting simply throwing them overboard. But if our economy doesn't start creating jobs real soon, I'm afraid we may reach a tipping point that is not going to be easy to pull back from.

Blasting people as "heartless" who are alarmed at these trends is ridiculous, and unproductive. It is demagoguery of the worst sort.

[boutons_deux]

It is very sad that our economy is such that 1 of every 6 among us is reduced to relying on the government for their meals.

Every politician should be held responsible for this travesty.

only $$$ holds politicians responsible, and those 1/6 of us don't have in high-rollin scumbag lobbyists buying politicians.

[101A]

only $$$ holds politicians responsible, and those 1/6 of us don't have in high-rollin scumbag lobbyists buying politicians.

What would a lobbyist for people on food stamps lobby for?

[boutons_deux]

What would a lobbyist for people on food stamps lobby for?

federal minimum wage at $18 and indexed to CPI

federal law requiring paid sick days and paid vacation, paid maternity leave, income tax deductions/credit for child care (so single mother could work), hard core public insurance option

and any other stuff that helps people on the low end.

[101A]

federal minimum wage at $18 and indexed to CPI

federal law requiring paid sick days and paid vacation, paid maternity leave, income tax deductions/credit for child care (so single mother could work), hard core public insurance option

and any other stuff that helps people on the low end.

Many of the people on Food Stamps don't have jobs; how would any of that help them? Wouldn't those laws create more unemployment, necessarily - and make that 1 in 6 possible 1 in 5, or even 4?

[boutons_deux]

"how would any of that help them?"

a lot of single women can't work because they have kids, so subsidized child care would least allow they to look for work (not that this shitty country provides enough jobs anyway, 8M jobs lost in the Banksters Great Depression)

women who get work but have to take a day off to care for a sick child often get fired, or work sick in fear of getting fired if they stay home sick.

[101A]

"how would any of that help them?"

a lot of single women can't work because they have kids, so subsidized child care would least allow they to look for work (not that this shitty country provides enough jobs anyway, 8M jobs lost in the Banksters Great Depression)

women who get work but have to take a day off to care for a sick child often get fired, or work sick in fear of getting fired if they stay home sick.

"Looking for work" and "finding work" are two very different things. With salaries and benes as high as you suggest; businesses would necessarily have to trim to only the MOST efficient and productive workers in order to stay afloat. If the bottom salary in society is ~40 K per year; those workers with actual skills and education are rightfully going to want to be compensated for those relatively.

[TeyshaBlue]

nothing from TB :lol OK

Sorry I didn't cut and paste a blog and then tack on some moonbat talking points.http://homerecording.com/bbs/images/smilies/facepalm.gif

[TeyshaBlue]

Many of the people on Food Stamps don't have jobs; how would any of that help them? Wouldn't those laws create more unemployment, necessarily - and make that 1 in 6 possible 1 in 5, or even 4?

It wouldn't. Shocking.