Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Food For Thought


So Li’l Donnie Trump wants to replace food stamps with food boxes

 

Say what?

 

Food boxes are all the rage these days with deliveries of fresh food and vegetables to make a nice meal with salmon and parsley. What’s being proposed here is nowhere near that nice but the idea is the USDA can buy food cheaper wholesale than people can at retail so it’s being pitched as a cost cutter for the government. These USDA food boxes would not include salmon and parsley but canned meats and vegetables as well as peanut butter and other non-perishable staples that can be put on a shelf.

 

Where the hell did this idea come from?

 

Conservative think tanks have never asked for this. 


Nobody in the food producing industry has ever asked for this.  
Previous administrations have never asked for this.




 

The proposal was so out of left field that some anti-hunger advocates initially thought it was a joke.

 

How would this box program address dietary restrictions due to health or allergies, due to religious beliefs?

 

What about delivery costs? How will this get to outlying rural areas? 

 

The Food Research and Action Center, a prominent nonprofit group, called the harvest box idea “a Rube-Goldberg designed system” that would be “costly, inefficient, stigmatizing, and prone to failure.”

 

Hey, all you poor people out there who voted for this moron, how you liking Trump now?  
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I've been on food stamps before. I was a kid and both my mom and dad were out of work. Being on food stamps was nothing to be proud of but it was a good thing to have in a time of need.


I'm sure we would not appreciated having to stand in line for a box of food. We had some dignity to decide what we wanted to eat. We didn't waste food stamps on junk food, I'll tell you that. 


We got food stamps as long as we needed them. When we didn't need them, we didn't get them anymore. Simple as that.   


This "harvest box" idea is just another way to ostracize the
already marginalized in society in a bid to save money that goes to those in need to pay for a tax cut for the wealthy who don't need it. 

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