The Poor Don't Deserve Nothin Good

A state Senator in Florida thinks that if you are using food stamps to make ends- meet, you should rightly suffer for it. It's OK to buy staples like milk and bread- but buying chips, cookies, and cakes is just going too far, and she wants this abuse of tax-payer money stopped immediately.

No snacks for you -- spoiled entitlement taking loser!

The bill would also require the state to launch a campaign education to teach dumb poor folks on how to eat right, and stop tax-payer funds from being used to purchase "luxury foods" like in store bakery items when the poor could just as easily whip up a cheaper version of a day old baguette or yesterday's cake at home.

Let them eat cake -- no more!

"Most individuals using public assistance dollars are using the funds to get by and to provide for their families. However, we should do what we can to prevent dollars intended to help Florida's poorest families from being spent in the wrong places or on the wrong things," Storms said in a statement.

But critics say the government shouldn't dictate what people eat.

"What I choose to ingest even though I may be on food stamps, that's at my discretion. I don't need government telling me what I can and cannot purchase," said Rep. Gwyndolen Clarke-Reed, a Pompano Beach Democrat who voted in committee against the bill (SB 1658). She said the bill is demeaning and invasive and she worries the education campaign would imply to "minorities and low-income folks that they're not intelligent enough to make selections on the foods they want."

Are poor people stupid or just lazy? If you are a right-winger the answer is both. They just hate to see all those tax dollars going to fund things for average Americans instead of war.

How can you maintain the Empire if you go around shelling out cash for your own citizens when there are so many hungry corporations to feed?

The state Department of Children and Families, which oversees the food stamp program, would have to get federal approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to implement the bill if it passes, which may be tricky since no other states have been successful. The federal government spent nearly $5 billion last year to help about 3 million Floridians, as an increasing number are relying on the program in a sour economy. The average monthly benefit in the state is about $140 per person, that breaks down to $35 a week for groceries according to the USDA.

Try living on $35 a week for food, and see how luxurious it is.

In 2004, Gov. Tim Pawlenty tried to make Minnesota's welfare program the first in the country to ban recipients from buying candy with food stamps, but feds didn't go for it. Last year, New York City applied for a waiver to restrict the sale of soda and sugary drinks, but that was also denied. Iowa, California and Texas have proposed similar bills in the past two years, but nothing has been passed into law, according to at the National Conference of State Legislators.

All that money wasted to try to pass dead-in-the-water legislation.

The proposal comes months after another attempt to clamp down on welfare spending. Gov. Rick Scott and the Republican-led Legislature passed a law last year supporting drug testing for welfare recipients. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of a military veteran and single father and it's now a class-action case.

Maybe there needs to be a bill that imposes fines on lawmakers who waste tax-payer money on stupid bills that don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting passed.

So how exactly do people think this is going to be enforced? Rely on the cashier's due diligence? Create a brand new agency to manage this sort of thing?

For all the people crowing about their tax money being wasted they don't seem to realize how much more tax money will be needed to enforce this kind of broken legislation.

Only broken lawmakers create broken legislation.

And that is the Republican meme. If it ain't broke- break it- then sabotage it - so it breaks again,

then blame it on Obama.


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