RAWK!

Good read, OGR! Hope all is well in your world!

ascertain from the article, this family

received money and food stamps.

Most people receiving food stamps can not

afford to save money, as the article states

this family did.

In my state you have to be practically destitute

to qualify for food stamps.

I am pleased this families situation has improved.

No person should go without food or health care

in this country or any other country.

They were almost getting by without them, by not really eating. With the food stamps, they could get the same food they'd been eating before food stamps and have some cash left over to save.

A story of self-sacrifice and hardship. Very well written.

Like when ODB (from the Wu Tang Clan) took a limo ride with his kids to get his food stamps.

At the time, Wu Tang had several platinum records, and ODB was on MTV nearly every day.

Not saying it's an accurate portrayal of the average family on food stamps, but I suspect this is what repubs envision.

find compassion and understanding?

before they can be freed from conventional thinking and prejudice.

HOW MANY TIMES, for example, did we hear from red-staters who were hit hard by tornados or Hurricane Katrina or some other disaster - and THAT was the one thing that finally forced it to occur to them that the federal government WAS something good to have around, to rely on for help in time of great need? "Oh gee, well, uh, I guess there ARE times when the gumnnnt is a good thing..."

That whole thing about walking in someone else's shoes, I suppose. But on the other hand, I hate to see it have to come to that. I don't want there to be ANYBODY in a dead-end struggle just to get by week-by-week, as this post described. NOBODY should have to live like that. Especially with kids to support. Why should a family have to decide who gets the hot dog and bun, and who has to make do with just the bun? It's just fucked. And at the same time, my mind wandered over to the 46 BILLION dollars that EACH of the koch brothers can boast having. EACH of them. That's an obscene amount of money even if it was their combined total. What does one person do with 46 BILLION dollars? How many houses can you live in? How many estates? How many cars can you drive at one time? RIDICULOUS. And just think what all that money could do to supplement the incomes of families like this one? OR actually CREATE jobs rather than socking it all away in hidey-holes like Bermuda and Switzerland and such locales in which you can hoard your money. You better do more with it than just support the Ballet in New York City or some such place. And I say that as a supporter of the arts, a big believer in supporting the arts, and somewhat of an artist myself. Sometimes it's more important to support families' ability to EAT.

THIS is where I start leaning toward mandatory redistribution of income.

especially in this bestest, greatest country in the whole world!! between the koch-roach brothers, our mic, the .00001% ers money, we could actually turn this into a decent, viable, worthwhile society.

Many here are under the mistaken impression that welfare provides more relief than they actually do, it has to do with class and perception.

In truth, If one has no friends or relatives to help augment your needs they really do not provide enough to remain in a lit heated apartment for very long as they give you less than what that costs (even in the poorest neighborhood where people such as myself reside).

Both parties get votes from the "center" by promising to be tough on crime, to keep taxes low, and to stop those welfare cheats from living high off the hog at the working man's expense. As long as that's the narrative BOTH parties are using to get votes (and Hillary is already exploiting that narrative of "the center" the "value of hard work&quot , people on welfare will continue to be stereotyped, shamed, literally tortured by situations that make no sense and drive them toward homelessness and make them mentally ill, and potentially set them up as targets for mob violence in times of scarcity.

WTF America! Could you please get a grip and start going after Corporate Welfare and the trust fund babies who will benefit all the more from the Paris Hilton Estate Tax Break?

There is a national obsession with monitoring, tracking, judging, disciplining, depriving, and over-scheduling anyone who doesn't have the connections to get into a good job. Of course there are lots of sucky minimum wage jobs out there - but these start you on the cycle of loss of autonomy to govt. bureaucracies (since you can't make a livelihood), the chaos of irregular hours, ill health from frequent job turnover/night shifts/bouts of homelessness and sleeping in your car...until you are broken and can't hold down those simple jobs anymore. Right now these people are viewed as ones who need to get organized and learn good work habits to get back in the game. I wish there was also some way they could also be viewed as victims of neglect and abuse so "whipping them back into shape" would be understood for the counterproductive (and largely ineffective) solution that it is. I'm not sure what the answer is, but in a big picture way I feel justice would be the compensation of a better working environment. (And perhaps some handholding to get back into it considering the trauma that drove them out).

charging 50 cents just to look at the Beef section in their stores.....

We never had to go on food stamps. But I can remember how tough it was when we were unemployed and had to ask for other types of assistance. It did not help that my husband was irresponsible and unable to manage money to begin with. I did not know that when we got married. He does better now. But we had quite a few hard years.

People looked down on us when we paid our bills late, had bounced checks and poor credit. Even after we found work, things were tough. It took several years to catch up.

I had to fight and scrap to get anything at all for my children. We closed the gaps, sent them music lessons, camps, and all the rest of it. They went to college and have done well. But I get it about dead end towns and hopeless lives. Many people simply stop struggling.

When I see crap articles on the internet about welfare mothers and welfare cheats, I remember those years. I wonder how some people think they are better than any of those poor people. Many of them are only a few paychecks or a couple of illnesses away from those things themselves.

People deserve to keep their pride, no matter how bad things get. Taking that is as bad as the poverty itself.

The real benefactor of these programs are the Big Corps. It is guaranteed money year after year. If you were to cut WIC there would be as many Repubes as Dems crying foul. Texas, New Mexico, and Idaho are huge Diary producers besides Cali, WI, and NY.

It is just soo much easier to vilify an ordinary person that really needs the help. Even if the stories of waste and abuse were even remotely accurate, how does it compare to other Gov't programs.

I know KBR just flat out lost(or stole) 7 Billion dollars on just ONE (JUST ONE)contract in Iraq. Money was never found and nobody held accountable.

Estimated theft from Food Stamps yearly 330 Million. Not even Close.

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".