Sami Scheetz, a state representative in Iowa, tweets today about a bill introduced by state Republicans that restricts the kinds of food that can be purchased with SNAP (food stamps):
It's obvious that this is intended to make low-income workers on SNAP even more miserable than they already are. But there's more. As the list of what's allowed and what's not gets longer and longer, it becomes more and more of a hassle for supermarkets and corner stores to keep track of it. Some will decide it's not worth the bother and just stop accepting SNAP.
So SNAP will be harder to use and will restrict you to a diet not dissimilar from that of your average American prison.
This single tweet encapsulates about 90% of why I'm not a Republican. They're just so goddam meanspirited.
And yet, this deeply red state demands to keep its "first in the nation" status for Presidential nominees. With caucuses, no less. Kick Iowa to the curb. We don't owe Ioway any more Democratic presidential nominations.
The cruelty is the point.
Purple states should go first. The purpler, the firster.
👍👍👍👍👍
True pieces of $hit. Snap in addition the structural poor serves this disabled. Amazing, like all these people don’t have hard enough lives. Scum of the Earth
Aaaagh. Return the edit function!
Maybe this is intended to pay only for "healthy" food, not "junk" food?
Geez, and they call us the advocates of the nanny state.
concern trolling
It's worse than Kevin's summary.
"Nearly 40 House Republicans have co-sponsored the bill led by House Speaker Pat Grassley — one that would limit SNAP food purchases (formerly known as food stamps) to only what is on the state's approved WIC list, a supplemental nutritional aid for women, infants, and children. ... 'Iowans on SNAP would not be able to buy meat, flour, butter, cooking oil, frozen prepared food,' said Luke Elzinga, Chair of the Iowa Hunger Coalition." https://www.salon.com/2023/01/20/its-a-huge-list-iowa-bill-would-ban-people-on-stamps-from-buying-fresh-meat--and-more/
No fresh meat? In *Iowa*? Iowa, which produces the most pork of any state?
If the restriction to whole wheat was accompanied by encouragement of fresh vegetables or fruit, I might be persuadable that healthy food was the motivation.
Instead we've got a restriction against processed flour and two restrictions against foods that require slightly reduced preparation -- You cannot buy beans that are ready to eat; you can't buy cheese that's conveniently cut. Obviously they figure that in between their three part-time jobs poor folks have all the leisure in the world to prepare meals from scratch.
If the goal is either health or less-processed food, only allowing canned meat flunks. (Mercury, anyone? sodium nitrite?). So that leaves the goal of making people miserable ...
Canned tuna apparently being okay in WIC really blows my mind.
Someone can correct me, but WIC is functionally a supplement to SNAP. That is, mothers with SNAP can also get WIC. So it stands to reason that SNAP has a broader selection of foods and ingredients.
Right. When I look for something to binge snack on, I reach for the classic junk foods in America: white rice, white bread, American cheese and baked beans.
Fck you, Doctor Jay.
Looks to me as if they are trying to impose slightly healthier food choices on the SNAP recipients.
Of course, not everyone wants to be told what they can and can't do, but don't people in prison live longer than those on the outside?
Or maybe it just seems longer. My ex-wife had similar meal-planning inclinations.
How is canned meat in any way healthier than fresh?
Exactly, or more affordable? Sure canned tuna or salmon is cheaper than fresh, but fresh chicken or ground beef is going to be more affordable.
The whole thing seems to be about making being poor as miserable as possible.
Right. The way cheese is cut influences how fresh or healthy it is. And as we all know, the healthiest meats and fish are the ones that have been sitting around in cans for months.
Fck you, Adam Strange.
For me, ‘mean-spirited’ competes with ’stupid’ for the most compelling reason not to be a Republican.
Stupid is why this bill is going nowhere. Tuna and salmon are OK but fresh meat is not? Where’s that
Iowa ocean-fishing port?
And, Yes, return the EDIT function.
The last thing I need is to be judged by my keyboard errors.
An edit function would be nice, but when I read comments I often wonder, "Doesn't anyone proofread?"
Highly recommend the Esquire article from a few years back about Devin Nunes' family dairy farm, which is in Iowa, not in Calfornia, and how all the labor there is Mexican immigrants but nobody wants to talk about it. Really a great piece, by Ryan Lizza.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a23471864/devin-nunes-family-farm-iowa-california/
As much as I hate Rethuglicans, Kevin's a bit off on this one. The original news article and the bill make it clear that the plan is to make the restrictions similar to the WIC program. Which means for most stores, it'll be easier to keep track of what is and isn't available. Beyond that, the bill makes it clear that they need to get a waiver to implement this. So they can pass the bill all they want, but this is mostly meaningless.
I agree--their database must already have a flag to indicate items ineligible for SNAP, or WIC, etc. I think maybe each state can have their own list of approved foods, so it's not that big of an additional burden. Though the whole thing shows the problems of federalism implementation of programs.
This makes more sense. Thanks for clarifying, I appreciate it.
“Which means for most stores, it'll be easier to keep track of what is and isn't available.”
Maybe although it’s not any easier to maintain a database of 100,000 items, 50,000 of which are approved, and a database of 100,000 items, 80,000 of which are approved. The task of flipping “yes” vs “no” on each barcode still needs to be done only once and then never again, until and unless the state keeps fcking with the list. Each new product introduced meanwhile still requires someone to scan it into the system and check “yes/no” - it’s not any faster to press the Y key vs the N key.
And having worked in a grocery store in a previous life, I can tell you the more rules there are, the more likely a hapless customer will come up to the cash register, discover something doesn’t qualify and then hold up the entire line as a manager needs to be found to void the item off the total. Not sure how making more exceptions speeds up checkout, but it sure does dramatically increase embarrassment and animosity between customers.
Good point. Also note that states with sales taxes may exempt food, or only some food, and grocers sell lots of non-food items that are taxable, so the databases have to encode tax applicability per item as well. It’s the 21st century, folks.
Open up the caves full of Government Cheese and give them out for free.
The "trying to impose healthier food choices'" bit is hysterical.
Sincerely,
Kid stuck with only cheap fat, salt and sugar options in school lunchroom
I think the ‘no white grains’ bit is just to troll the libz.
I read that more as classism. Red-state outrage that the poors are using up hard-earned tax dollars (from the more productive Blue states) on their low-class foods and/or snobbery about not trusting the poors to make healthy decisions for themselves.
Sort of the flip side of the prohibition on using WIC for fresh meat instead of for canned tuna/catfood likely being the result of Red-state outrage about the poors using up hard-earned tax dollars on fancy t-bone steaks . . .
This. We’re going to force SNAP recipients to only buy stuff they don’t want to buy because “it’s healthier” somehow to eat wheat grains, canned meats and non-shredded non-American cheeses. But then when their kids go to school, we’re going to stuff them full of the shittiest (nutrition wise) processed foods that the school district could buy in bulk on a budget of like $2 per meal.
I really wish we could expel states for being immoral, disgusting dipshits.
As I was reading:
First bullet sounds like in league with health nuts
Second bullet, perhaps the same but not sure.
First bit of the third, vegans/vegetarians of the world unite! Oh, but there’s the rest..,
Fourth bullet: never mind. They can pry the floppy cheese from my cold, dead hands.
“No American cheese”
And only “Russian” salad dressing.
Since is March for life day, let’s ponder what else they have up their sleeves…
“The Catholic Church has long condemned the IVF process and the production of these embryos, but those warnings have gone unheeded, and there are now an estimated 1 million frozen embryos in the U.S. alone — giving rise to profound and continuing moral dilemmas.”
Indeed. So many moral dilemmas, so little food for poor people.
https://www.ncregister.com/news/frozen-in-time-catholic-ethicists-discuss-the-fate-of-the-estimated-1-million-human-embryos-on-ice
Are you suggesting a "modest proposal" solution?
Goodness no…ha! That’s funny though. No, all good pro-lifers should adopt a frozen child and birth them. Then starve them if they become slackers on the dole.
If only they would follow Eve’s advice they wouldn’t have to be on SNAP and they could eat all the refried bean and steak burritos they wanted.
Too funny. 🙂
I respect Kevin's 90% reason that he is not a Republican (because they are so mean-spirited).
Mine is:
50% mean-spiritedness.
50% they enjoy lying so much.
Let them eat quinoa!
On a more serious note, I did once run into a person who thought poor people should live on things like dried beans and not be able to purchase any convenience foods. She just could not fathom that a lot of poor people work long hours at inconvenient times and that they may not have kitchens. She was oblivious to the reality of poverty, which often means cooking in a microwave in a crappy hotel room rented weekly, while rushing to get from one minimum wage job to another.
These are also the kind of people who are angry when food shelves make "birthday boxes" for poor kids with cake mix and a jar of frosting.
That last sentence is why I really hope there is a purgatory. People who want to punish kids for their parents’ mistakes - which is all that denying a birthday cake to a poor kid is - deserve to be locked away all alone for a good hundred years to ponder how shitty they were on earth to their fellow humans before reaching their final spiritual destination.
Only fools or malicious actors would actually enact this behavior into legislation. Ye shall know them by their acts.
So much of America is worrying about whether someone else is somehow enjoying something they don’t deserve for some moralistic reason. And then when SNAP recipients are discovered just shoplifting the food they want (it’s not hard in supermarkets where you check yourself out) and/or engaging in massive fraud schemes like buying the non-American cheese and whole grain bread and then trading it with another non-SNAP family for the American cheese and white bread that is actually cheaper (seriously, there’s a reason why American cheese and white bread exists and it’s not because most people think they taste superior to everything else - it’s because they’re both really cheap), everyone will pretend to be shocked as they strip the kids from the parents and throw them into the more expensive foster care system.
Conservatives will universally think this is hilarious.
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Seeing as how it is IOWA, I am surprised that they didn't change the rules to only allow purchase of corn products.
I'm just surprised they didn't make poverty illegal as a clever way of eliminating it.
I grew up in Iowa. It's been really dispiriting to watch my former home slowly transforming itself into Mississippi.
Iowa used to be progressive. Iowa fought for the Union in the Civil War, and never had an anti-miscegenation law. More recently, Iowa is where computers were invented (see John Vincent Atanasoff).
And now this. Depressing.
Also, where Eskimo Pies were invented.
As the cheese becomes more scarce, the rats become more "meanspirited". But these rats in charge of the legislature are the source of the scarcity. Kinda circular.
Does anyone know the *stated* goal? It just seems bizarre. If the goal is to save money, well, whole wheat bread is more expensive than white bread. If the goal is to make poor people eat healthier (nanny state much?), canned meats are obviously worse for you than fresh meats.
I know that the actual goal is cruelty, but do they even have a claimed explanation?
According to Time, Pat Grassley (Republican Speaker of the House in Iowa), said the goal is to reduce costs. Time suggests that it won't actually reduce costs to Iowa.