Heard a radio commercial tonight...

[AngryOldDem]

...touting the advantages of food stamps. "I was having trouble making ends meet, and was wondering how I was going to pay for my groceries. Then my neighbor told me about food stamps..." It went on with another such story, followed by, "You may qualify, and it's easy to apply. Just call..."

This is not the most note-worthy thing that's been posted here today, I'm sure, but it was the first time ever that I've heard a federal assistance program sold like this. I could hardly believe my ears.

Shouldn't this be a sign that PERHAPS things aren't going as well as some would want us to believe?

[NMDemDist2]

1. glad they are advertising there is an alternative to starving

but it's a sad state of affairs

[Philostopher]

2. It's the 'dirty little secret' of public assistance.

For all we've all been inundated with the 'welfare queen' stereotype, there are actually people out there who need food stamps to 'put food on their families' who honestly don't believe (because both parents are working and making at least minimum wage, pathetic as it is) they qualify.

The WIC and food stamp programs are underused, even in good economic times, because lots of people who are unemployed or underemployed don't think they qualify because they're employed, or don't bother to collect because 'we're not as pathetic as those people, even though their kids don't eat properly.

The working poor are the most abused sector of our economy -- they're made to feel like garbage because they're not 'pulling themselves up by their bootstraps' when, in reality, the entire economy relies on them and, at the same time, it's stacked against them.

For all that stories of abuse of public aid programs are 'sexy' and improve ratings for the local newscasts, the sad fact is that they're actually under-claimed. There are plenty of people who qualify who are ashamed or afraid to apply (due to Reagan-era and beyond stigmatism), or who simply think they don't qualify because they're employed, however pathetic their income may be. So their kids go hungry, or eat substandard diets, and grow up to develop Type II diabetes and other health problems, and are ultimately a much more severe drain on the economy than if they had been beneficiaries of such programs when they were young and eaten properly, developed properly, and learned to eat as healthy a diet as possible on subsistence money.

It's not the fault of the poor -- it's the institutionalized demonization of the poor that brings this situation into existence.

This may never change, and can only change when we stop viewing the unfortunate, marginally disabled and simply marginalized as stupid. Sadly, I see a day coming when there are 'morals clauses' to qualify for public aid, and even more kids go hungry because their mothers weren't 'married under God' when they were born.

My father used to say, "I hate to believe this, but I honestly have come to think that conservatives wish the poor and the elderly would just go die somewhere because they're inconvenient." How far are we from that day, now? We're a damned sight closer to it than we were when I remember him saying it, at least fifteen years ago, I know that much.

[FloridaPat]

3. The one I heard was aimed at the elderly. If they go on food stamps,

there is some deal with the wonderful new medicare bill that they get royally screwed if they get food stamps.