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Comment count is 47
SteamPoweredKleenex - 2013-06-24

"Hey, remember Reagan's 'Welfare Queens' story that's been thoroughly debunked for the pack of lies it was? Let's do that again!"


kingarthur - 2013-06-24

Rednecks and willfully ignorant assholes still believe it, so go with it!

You think they'd really let him be Speaker? They'd be doubling down on everything that the press says cost them the election.


kingarthur - 2013-06-24

You know, you're supposed to whisper sweet nothings in the ears of the proles as you fuck them to death, just like Barry O.


Scrimmjob - 2013-06-24

This rep. is as shifty eyed as any poor asshole buying king crab legs using their ebt cards.


cognitivedissonance - 2013-06-24

I've never once seen a black person abusing food stamps, and I work at a store and have worked there for four years. It is a busy place.

White people wearing ICP merchandise, "Ya'll except EBT?", begrudging "yes", twenty minutes later they come back with an arm full of gummies, Red Bulls, Totino's pizzas and Kazoozles and drop , and I won't see them again until the first of the next month.


cognitivedissonance - 2013-06-24

*it should be noted that it's not "ya'll ACCEPT ebt". They pronounce it "ya'll EXCEPT ebt". With a hard X.


Ocyrus - 2013-06-24

Go ahead, debunk it then.
My family owns a small chain of neighborhood markets, and we're forced by the state to accept EBT cards... I'll start posting receipts from EBT purchases on Tumblr.
"Abuse" is in the eye of the beholder though. I also think that the people who begrudge others better watch out before circumstances strike them. "Waaaa.... I'm getting my hours at the widget plant cut", well guess what dipshit, perhaps you should've tried harder in school. Perhaps you should try to be innovative and inventive. Success in this economy comes from those two things alone. Hard work is for chumps that can be replaced by a machine.


EvilHomer - 2013-06-24

So what constitutes "abuse"? Where I'm at, most really desperate people spend their foodstamps on cigarettes.


kingarthur - 2013-06-24

Here in Mississippi, a lot of people need EBT just to survive. Most of the elderly who can't work, in fact.


SteamPoweredKleenex - 2013-06-24

Ocyrus: Yeah, if only they'd innovated at the plant, because that kind of shit is rewarded every day.

"What? You've been doing things I didn't hire you to do while at work? And they're not the policies I dictated? You're fired."

Or there's the best-case scenario: "Yeah, that's a neat way to improve things. Thanks for the idea that'll make me more money. Get back to work."

Because they should've opened their own widget factory. Oh, wait, no. That wouldn't work because corporatists have made manufacturing overseas tax-deductible by virtue of all the money they made. So now, if you want to compete in widget-making, you have to be able to buy a chunk of congress if you want to produce them domestically. I'm sure your average worker could do that, yeah.

Go suck some Koch.


SteamPoweredKleenex - 2013-06-24

And Ocyrus, from Gohmert's own gob:

"...from the amount of obesity in this country by people who we’re told do not have enough to eat..."

The average SNAP benefit is 3 a month or thereabouts. I challenge you to purchase enough King Crab or other "too rich" food on that and become obese. Rather, you might want to consider that the cheapest foods are high in calories and carbs when wondering how the poor can get fat.


kingarthur - 2013-06-24

I was coming back to further refute Ocyrus, but SPK did a great job.


Binro the Heretic - 2013-06-24

Ocyrus,

You realize the second sentence of your post earns you an instant "fuck you" from most of the population, right?


Oscar Wildcat - 2013-06-24

I own these stars for eating like a prince for a little under the SNAP figure. I keep careful records of receipts, and I wonder often if I should write a book or something to teach people how to feed themselves. It seems a lost art somehow, now.

That said, the urban poor most often don't have the local resources we have here. The rural poor used to, although I wonder now about how it is out there...


joelkazoo - 2013-06-24

You grow your own gardens in the country, but that only gives you enough fresh veggies during the season. You can do some homemade canning and freezing, but you need the stuff to do that with in the first place, and canning adds a shitton of sodium. But then, when you fry your vegetables in lard, it kind of defeats the purpose, as well.


Miss Henson's 6th grade class - 2013-06-25

Ocyrus:

One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just isn't the same:

"My family owns...okay, so here's how you pull yourself out of poverty..."


theSnake - 2013-06-24

I always agree with the Republicans %100 when it comes to these stories, we should raise taxes on the rich


The Great Hippo - 2013-06-24

'Look, we'd love to help feed starving people but I heard this anecdote once about how they keep burning all their foodstamps on smoked crab legs and caviar'

Just, fuck you.


chumbucket - 2013-06-24

I forced myself to at least hit "play" on this. But once that accent hit the audio I was done.


Vaidency - 2013-06-24

This is the same guy who spent months ranting about "terrorist anchor babies."

He claims pregnant female arab terrorists have been sneaking into Texas and having babies, which will be American citizens by birth bu will be raised to be a new generation of terrorists. I swear I am not making this up.


SteamPoweredKleenex - 2013-06-24

Given that he's fought hard for the oil companies in Texas, shouldn't he encourage the eating of more seafood by those he wants to die of mercury poisoning?


Redford - 2013-06-24

There have also been some people ranting and raving about how Obama is going to give citizenship to millions of people, and then build entire cities inside our national parks in order to house them. Then, he will use these voters who will clearly only vote for him (because they are foreign, of course!) to overthrow presidential re-elections and become president forever.

I am not making this up.


Blue - 2013-06-24

Those king crab legs were for that guy's son's birthday. It's his first birthday since he lost his legs saving that puppy.


takewithfood - 2013-06-24

"The attorney general will not cast aspersions on my asparagus!" - Louie Gohmert


Squeamish - 2013-06-24

I knew this was going to be about my home state the moment I saw the title.

Seriously, fuck you, Texas. There are awesome people here. Stop putting assholes up to represent us.


Toenails - 2013-06-24

Where I come from, King Crab is used to refer to imitation crab meat, just fish paste shaped and colored to look like crab legs.

Is it possible that this is what he's unintentionally referring to?


SolRo - 2013-06-24

in America it's generally called Krab meat (with a K, instead of a C, because they're so clever!). I guess that's a lot less deceptive than calling it king crab, which is a real crab variety.


EvilHomer - 2013-06-24

Two hundred bucks is two hundred bucks; as long as it's edible, who cares what the consumer chooses to spend it on? If poor people are finding crab legs for the right place, fuck it, that's the market at work.

Stop being such a nanny state socialist crybaby, Gohmert.


joelkazoo - 2013-06-24

For you.


M-DEEM - 2013-06-24

^^ and I'll tell ya it's a helluva lot easier pulling the trigger on some KCLs when you're not thinking about in terms of lbs./hours worked at your crappy job


Raggamuffin - 2013-06-24

When people blow their EBT money the first day on something stupid, they will go hungry for the rest of the month. It's hardly the food stamps fault.

Incidentally, if the "constituent" is legitimately having trouble putting food on the table, they themselves most likely qualify for an EBT benefit. Although cuts from people like this make the card more useless every year...

I also keep thinking that "can't have all the foods I want all the time" is probably not as big a problem as "can't buy any food ever without an EBT card" but whatever, I could go on all day.


Bort - 2013-06-24

I know a number of poor people who rely on EBT, and I'll admit that I find a lot of their choices baffling. Let leftovers go bad on the counter rather than put them in the fridge? Check. Buy microwaveable meals at the gas station when there's a full-service grocery store just down the road (and they have a car)? Check.

But I'm not going to say that these folks are lazy or stupid; they just never learned some of the basic skills that you and I have. As with so many things, you only learn what you know to be successful, usually by watching a successful example. The main example these people have seen in their families is that things eventually blow up catastrophically, so be ready to run.

I wish that EBT / SNAP / etc. involved training on how to budget and how to be thrifty, not because I begrudge the poor their benefits, but because if you don't know how to spend it well, no level of benefits will ever be quite enough.


Raggamuffin - 2013-06-24

I couldn't agree more.


SteamPoweredKleenex - 2013-06-24

Sometimes the quickie mart is all they have, though. Look up "food deserts" and you can see how many poor areas (rural & urban) don't have any actual grocery stores, let alone ones that stock produce, for 10+ miles.


Bort - 2013-06-25

In cases of food deserts, yes, that is certainly something outside of their immediate control. I'm talking specifically about people who I know not to live in food deserts, who are content to get their microwaveable whatever from the gas station because that's what they've always done and aren't doing the math on it.

Poverty is a syndrome and it involves a great many factors, most of which are imposed from the outside and are mostly out of one's control. But that's all the more reason to change the few things you can. Driving the extra mile to the grocery store (call it 25 cents worth of gas) to get your one frozen meal for a buck cheaper is a change you can easily make. If you don't like driving that extra mile, buy two meals so you don't have to go there as often; maybe even comb the aisles of the grocery store to see if there's something cheaper and more nutritive than a frozen meal.


Binro the Heretic - 2013-06-25

Bort,

You do realize things normal people can perceive as "laziness" can actually be signs of depression, right?

Gee, what could poor people have to be depressed about?


Bort - 2013-06-25

When did I say "laziness"?

Here's the problem we're going to run into: I'm speaking about specific people I know, and you're talking about problems the poor have in general. So you will go through your checklist of what the problem "could" be -- is it a single mom? (no), does she live in a food desert? (no), etc -- rather than take my word for it that I know these particular people's situations well enough to speak to them.

My point in all this isn't that the poor are undeserving of help or are scamming the system or anything like that. All I'm saying is that, in the specific cases I'm familiar with, I wish they would employ better strategies to help their benefits last longer. If it were in my power I'd increase all SNAP benefits everywhere by 100% just to do it, but since that's not likely to happen, we're left with utilizing those benefits more efficiently.


Jet Bin Fever - 2013-06-24

I wonder what Jesus would say about that Louie.


SolRo - 2013-06-24

You know, I started the 'get colon cancer and die' tag because jesus told me to.


Miss Henson's 6th grade class - 2013-06-24

Oh, whatever. Jesus could just multiply some loaves and fishes. He don't need no EBT card.


SolRo - 2013-06-24

"We're the party of freedom and letting you do things without government telling you what to do!"

"Poor people should only eat what I think they should eat, or not at all!"


Miss Henson's 6th grade class - 2013-06-24

Pretty much.


gravelstudios - 2013-06-24

When I was a kid, my family received food stamps for a short period of time (with my father working full time, btw), and have personally experienced how humiliating that can be. I've also worked at a convenience store and personally witnessed some of the worst abuse of government food assistance programs you can imagine. I've come to the conclusion that, in order to help the people who really need it, you have to accept a certain amount of fraud is going to happen.

I don't personally have a problem with someone on food stamps buying something extravagant once in a while just to feel normal for a change, while society is constantly grinding their face in the dirt over how terrible they are for being poor. If it's really such a problem, change the system to something like WIC, where only approved foods can be purchased through the program. It wouldn't be hard to do.


Nominal - 2013-06-24

If anyone can name a system that never had an ounce of abuse or corruption...

What about all those instances of KBR contractors setting fire to trucks that just needed a new oil filter because they'd make more money off of cost plus? Do you suppose Mr. Texas would be in favor of abolishing the military?


Bort - 2013-06-25

I do like the idea of SNAP being focused primarily on high-quality foods, while still allowing a person some luxuries because the point isn't to punish them. Here's how I'd reform SNAP:

1) High-quality foods are covered at 100%.

2) Junk foods, overly-processed foods, and the like require a copay.

3) Purchasing high-quality foods gets you credits that can be applied to the copay on junk foods.

The mental rule of thumb becomes: if you want a bag of Chips Ahoy! without any copay, be sure to pick up some meat, dairy, beans, vegetables, bread, or the like.


Mister Yuck - 2013-06-25

The main reason I wouldn't want us to switch to WIC is that humiliation thing. With EBT, if you care about people knowing you're on food stamps, it's just a two second swipe of a card and only the clerk has to know. Some of my customers have their technique down such that you barely even see that flash. But with WIC, it's a drawn-out process that backs up the line (now you have an audience, yay) and the clerk is forced to be the food cop.

"No, you can't have this juice, you have to get this juice. I'm sorry, you can't have the 2%, you have to get the whole milk. Our 2% doesn't have enough Vitamin A. Yes they do check. No I wouldn't be doing this if they didn't."

Of course, I sell an awful lot of Cheetos and candy to obese people who pay with EBT. For some of them, I know (cause I see them every day) that chips and candy make up a significant part of their meals, and it's sad.


RockBolt - 2013-06-25

I love how a few bad apples is cause to get rid of food stamps for everyone, but a few killing sprees is not one to do anything about gun control


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