Great post: "The day I bought steak with my food stamps"

[daredtowork]

16. I've repeatedly written along these lines

The current terms of welfare are a set up to drive people into homelessness in most places. This articles brings up a lot of the contradictions. Click my sig to see what happens if you try to do any work to buy basic necessities food stamps don't cover (like hygiene products and toilet paper). I've been able to hold out this way for three years because I have some light at the end of the tunnel: either I will go onto SSI (slight improvement over welfare) or someone will hire me since the ACA improved my condition a great deal. I can't imagine what it's like for someone who didn't have that hope to hold on to. If I were subject to the only-3-months-out-of-the-year welfare rule, I'd be homeless after three months went by because the sheer downward pressure of bureaucratic crap does and dealing with the various payments problems, transport difficulties, and other inconveniences of poverty eats away the time and energy you need to make "looking for a job a full time job".

Anyway, the world needs to hear from as many people as possible on this issue, and then we all have to collectively turn our moral eye on what is happening in Kansas before their poor-scapegoating becomes a national drumbeat. I also hope this underscores why the destructive effects of "welfare reform as we know it" and the ongoing waves of cuts it generated needs to be ADDRESSED: and Democrats have to understand that any candidate appealing to the "center" is going to be sweeping this problem under the rug since it's not part of the experience of who they visualize as the "center".