• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

The Food Stamp Capital of the U.S. is WHITE and REPUBLICAN

Beaudreaux said:
Well said.
Click to expand...

The welfare system needs a complete revamp and it needs to be pushed in the way of getting people off of it.

requirements for welfare benefits will be.

Classes to get your high school diploma or GED. (most people making minimum wage do not have a high school diploma.)
Next you will enroll in either a trade school or local community college after your GED to get a degree or to learn a trade of some kind.

this is through grant money provided. day care for kids will be supplied by a licensed state agency.
you will have to submit report cards and or other documentation maintaining your proof of enrollment.

job counselors and other people will be there to help with internships or other jobs working with local businesses to help get you
experience in a position.

they will also assist in job placement afterward.

after you are placed benefits will continue for 1 year after your placement to ensure that you get on your feet.
 
Angelus said:
I'm fine if they respond with fact. If they respond with spin then they aren't worth talking to anyway.
Click to expand...


I guess you haven't read in this far. It's all I've seen. Maybe someone can find a clip of Trump saying he wants to expand food stamps? That would help
 
Fletch said:
I suspect he paid an equal or greater sum toward those services you mention than you did, so he is not being a leech. Plus there is a vast difference between paying for services you mention and direct wealth transfers that simply rob Peter to pay Paul. If you are looking for a leech, it is the Pauls of the world.
Click to expand...

Ironic - since you are obviously not a Christian, nor are you interested in a Christian nation.
 
Henrin said:
Welfare can't be empathetic since it doesn't rely on voluntary action.
Click to expand...

When did this conversation become about welfare? Oh, yeah - esier to be against welfare (which no longer exists as suc) than against helping poverty stricken, disabled and elderly get food.
 
But isn't that a good reason for republicans to oppose it?
Considering it effects their people the most?
 
Angelus said:
Good for you! I've been disabled for 10 years now - can't do a damn thing. So should I have my hypothetical food stamps cut because you can work? How do you tell the difference between the two.
Click to expand...

Do you receive SSDI or SSI?
 
austrianecon said:
Do you receive SSDI or SSI?
Click to expand...

Sure - why not. So the disabled and the elderly are okay.

But what about the family where one parent lost a job? What about the family in a place where there are no jobs? What about someone who never expected to be widowed with kids?

The current federal law is that any adult who is not elderly, disabled, or a parent can only receive food stamps for 3 months. The top amount here is $675 a month for a parent with 3 kids. Roughly $35 dollars a week. It's doable if you shop smart and know how to cook - not steak and lobster. I don't have a huge problem with feeding people who are down on their luck.
 
Welfare is a hand up for those who need it, and they shouldn't be marginalized for it.

I do get very pissed off when I see households abusing the system, and I see it up close and personal with a plenty folks. I see both blacks and whites abusing the SNAP program. I am talking about moms with 2-3 kids receiving Section 8 housing and EBT benefits while supposedly being a single parent household, and at the same time, reaping the benefits of undisclosed income of the live in boyfriend or father is some cases. One particular father I know makes about 60K-70K a year doing roofing and siding jobs mostly for cash, and and is living in the same house with with the mom and his kids. He pays the required child support of course, but they are raking in thousands of dollars in taxpayer money and it is very hard to prove as long as he keeps his 25' boat and their "His n Her" Harley's parked some wheres else. But technically, he doesn't live there.....wink wink.

You can drive by a few shopping centers around here that have ABC stores a few doors down from the food stores and see people with EBT cards exchanging steaks, hamburger meat, and ribs for booze in the back of the parking lots. The state has cracked down on the abuse for the most part, but you can still watch it go on now and again.

Some of the dump truck drivers I ran with for a year and a half used to openly coached each other about how to work the system like it was perfectly normal. They could care less.... because it was their right! A few of them, used to bring in meat to exchange to exchange with a driver who made "shine" on the side.
 
RetiredUSN said:
Welfare is a hand up for those who need it, and they shouldn't be marginalized for it.

I do get very pissed off when I see households abusing the system, and I see it up close and personal with a plenty folks. I see both blacks and whites abusing the SNAP program. I am talking about moms with 2-3 kids receiving Section 8 housing and EBT benefits while supposedly being a single parent household, and at the same time, reaping the benefits of undisclosed income of the live in boyfriend or father is some cases. One particular father I know makes about 60K-70K a year doing roofing and siding jobs mostly for cash, and and is living in the same house with with the mom and his kids. He pays the required child support of course, but they are raking in thousands of dollars in taxpayer money and it is very hard to prove as long as he keeps his 25' boat and their "His n Her" Harley's parked some wheres else. But technically, he doesn't live there.....wink wink.

You can drive by a few shopping centers around here that have ABC stores a few doors down from the food stores and see people with EBT cards exchanging steaks, hamburger meat, and ribs for booze in the back of the parking lots. The state has cracked down on the abuse for the most part, but you can still watch it go on now and again.

Some of the dump truck drivers I ran with for a year and a half used to openly coached each other about how to work the system like it was perfectly normal. They could care less.... because it was their right! A few of them, used to bring in meat to exchange to exchange with a driver who made "shine" on the side.
Click to expand...

There is some fraud in everything. You can crack down on it as best you can, but you will likely never get rid of all of it. There is a lot of fraud in American businesses and Wall Street as well. Do you want to shut all of them down too?
 
it's just me said:
Quote Originally Posted by SheWolf View Post

Yet the GOP complains the most about black people being on welfare...
Click to expand...

Who? Names, dates.
Click to expand...

Sure. Here is Republican strategist Lee Atwater discussing Nixon's Southern strategy in a 1981 interview later published in Southern Politics:

Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now he [Reagan] doesn't have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he's campaigned on since 1964 ... and that's fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster...

Questioner: But the fact is, isn't it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?

Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "Ni--er, ni--er, ni--er." By 1968 you can't say "ni--er" anymore— that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Ni--er, ni--er."
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Beaudreaux said:
I have. Racists do what you say, and there are racists in both parties. The GOP as a party does not condone or portray what you said. I'm a member of the GOP, and I don't think that poverty or dependence on government programs has anything to do with race.

Race doesn't, and shouldn't, enter into the conversation about Welfare Reform. I live in the country. A rural area where poverty knows no racial boundaries, as is the same everywhere else.

Let me set the record straight for anyone that cares:

1) The GOP is not a racist party.
2) Some people that happen to also be members of the GOP are in fact racist, as are some people that are members of the Democratic Party.
3) I am a member of the GOP, and have been for over 40 years.
4) I feel that Welfare Reform is needed.
5) I am not a racist.

That alone makes your statement inaccurate.

Trust me, I get it. I can understand how you or anyone else could think what you said was true, given the way the media portrays the GOP and how loud the racist few that exist can be. They can suck the oxygen out of any room they show up in. If you wish to call some right wing assholes on here racists when they act racist, then go right ahead. I do, so you should, too. However, don't throw the entire Republican Party under the bus because of a few racist assholes, just as I don't throw the entire Democratic Party under the bus because of a few racist assholes.
Click to expand...

The GOP is the only party in US history to be forced by the courts to stop engaging in race based harrassment of voters.

If harrassing voters based on their race is not racist, then nothing is racist.
 
ataraxia said:
There is some fraud in everything. You can crack down on it as best you can, but you will likely never get rid of all of it. There is a lot of fraud in American businesses and Wall Street as well. Do you want to shut all of them down too?
Click to expand...

Where did I mention shutting down anything?
 
sangha said:
The GOP is the only party in US history to be forced by the courts to stop engaging in race based harrassment of voters.If harrassing voters based on their race is not racist, then nothing is racist.
Click to expand...

Seriously? The only party in US history? I thought you were both, old enough to remember, and a student of history to the point that you could remember the Democrats and the South in the 1950's and 1960's and the reason for Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the subsequent federal cases that made their way to the Supreme Court - such as South Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966). What party do you think was in charge of the southern states back in the 50's and 60's? It damn sure wasn't the GOP.

Look, the truth is, there are currently a number of Republican legislators on the state and federal level that are racist assholes and wish to prevent blacks from voting for Democrats. There are also a number of Democrat legislators on the state and federal level that want to allow non-citizens to vote, which disenfranchises citizens just as equally as if they had been prevented from voting in the first place.

To state that the Republicans as a party willfully discriminate when it comes to voting for blacks because they know that blacks vote for Democrats, or that the Democrats as a party want illegal liens to vote because they know they'll vote for Democrats, are both hyperbolic and hackish statements.

You're better than that.
 
Last edited:
ataraxia said:
Sure. Here is Republican strategist Lee Atwater discussing Nixon's Southern strategy in a 1981 interview later published in Southern Politics:
Click to expand...

Ancient history. Back then the biggest racists in the world were Democrats. If I were to play it your way they would still be racist, maybe they are...
 
Beaudreaux said:
Seriously? The only party in US history? I thought you were both, old enough to remember, and a student of history to the point that you could remember the Democrats and the South in the 1950's and 1960's and the reason for Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the subsequent federal cases that made their way to the Supreme Court - such as South Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966). What party do you think was in charge of the southern states back in the 50's and 60's? It damn sure wasn't the GOP.
Click to expand...

Yes, I am old enough to remember the 60s, and I am old enough to understand that legislation is not a court order.


Look, the truth is, there are currently a number of Republican legislators on the state and federal level that are racist assholes and wish to prevent blacks from voting for Democrats. There are also a number of Democrat legislators on the state and federal level that want to allow non-citizens to vote, which disenfranchises citizens just as equally as if they had been prevented from voting in the first place.

To state that the Republicans as a party willfully discriminate when it comes to voting for blacks because they know that blacks vote for Democrats, or that the Democrats as a party want illegal liens to vote because they know they'll vote for Democrats, are both hyperbolic and hackish statements.
Click to expand...

Yes, there are racists in each party but that was not the claim I took issue with. You also claimed that the GOP itself was not racist so I pointed out that the GOP is the only party in the history of the US that has had a court order them to stop engaging in racial harrassment - a fact you have not, and can not, dispute

If harrassing people based on their race is not racist, then nothing is racist.
 
Angelus said:
The Food Stamp Capital of the U.S. is WHITE and REPUBLICAN : Political Blind Spot

In spite of the prevailing stereotypes and assumptions about who uses SNAP Food Stamp benefits the most in the United States, the highest usage is not in Compton, Queens, nor the South Side of Chicago. Instead, a city that is 99.22% white and 95% Republican comes in the lead. Owsley County, Kentucky is a community of about 5,000, residents earning the lowest median household income in the country outside of Puerto Rico, according to the U.S. Census.

The decline in the profits from coal, tobacco and lumber industries led to a harsh toll being taken on the community.

The majority of food stamps users are white, Republicans living in the south - a large part of the Republican base. Food stamps are a necessary tool for survival in areas where jobs have disappeared. Work requirements for unemployed food stamps recipients, put in place in 1999, require that able-bodied adults between the ages of 18 and 59, and without dependents, can only receive food stamps for 3 months in a 3-year period unless they are working for at least 20 hours a week or engaged in job training, education, or community service for a certain number of hours each week.

The benefits are intended as short-term assistance for those who can be working, until they can get back on their feet. An increasing number of SNAP households have earnings, which means these are households in which one of the two wage-earners lost their job, or increasing numbers of Americans are in lower-wage jobs or not getting enough hours to cover rising rents, heating, health care costs, and other necessary expenses, including food. 62% of food stamp recipients are either working , disabled, or elderly. Only 18% are able bodied adults with no children.

All of food stamp income is immediately put into circulation in the community - hence cutting food stamps will result in fewer jobs available. Food stamps are structured to encourage people to work more hours - they lose 24 cents for each dollar earned. Overall they are less than 2% of the national budget, all of which goes into support for those living at 130% of the federal poverty rate, and to support stores in the affected areas.

So - now that a few facts have been added to the discussion - why are so many here so eager to cut food stamps.
Click to expand...
What this piece underscores is the basic disconnect between what Republican voters in general, and Trump voters in particular, perceive. As an example, West Virginia is 93% white and voted for Trump by more than 40%. In WV, 29% of the population is on Medicaid, almost 19% on food stamps. The expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare is the main reason the percentage of West Virginians without health insurance has halved since 2013.

What did West Virginians think they were voting for when they voted for Republicans? They voted for the party that was not shy about being against all the services and programs that they get from the federal government.

But these voters, who a large part get help from the government, don't think they are beneficiaries of social programs.
 
Last edited:
Lets not forget why some many are without means. Those Bible thumping white Christians were less important than satisfying environmentalists. Coal mines closed. Overly simplified of course.
That leads me to the conclusion that they voted for Trump because he seems to care about them. Of course the jury is still out on that.
America doesn't consist of only inner cities, and not only blacks are poor. All Americans want to be heard. It's damned time we take care of each other instead of engaging in bipartisan bickering.
 
it's just me said:
Ancient history. Back then the biggest racists in the world were Democrats. If I were to play it your way they would still be racist, maybe they are...
Click to expand...

Nope. By 1980 Nixon's highly successful Southern Strategy was complete, and the deep south had turned from solidly Democrat to solidly Republican. This had been finalized actually through the 1970s. This was, of course, no accident. It was carefully planned out Republican strategy. You guys wanted times, dates, quotes. So here is a quote from Kevin Philips, Nixon's political strategist, in 1970:

"From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that...but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats."[1]
Click to expand...

The strategy worked beautifully- and, of course, still is...
 
Lovebug said:
Lets not forget why some many are without means. Those Bible thumping white Christians were less important than satisfying environmentalists. Coal mines closed. Overly simplified of course.
That leads me to the conclusion that they voted for Trump because he seems to care about them. Of course the jury is still out on that.
America doesn't consist of only inner cities, and not only blacks are poor. All Americans want to be heard. It's damned time we take care of each other instead of engaging in bipartisan bickering.
Click to expand...
Coal employment began falling long before anyone was talking much about the environment, let alone global warming. In fact, coal jobs fell by two-thirds between 1948 and 1970, the year the Environmental Protection Agency was founded. This happened despite rising, not falling, coal production, mainly reflecting the replacement of old-fashioned pick-and-shovel mining with strip-mining and mountaintop removal, which require many fewer workers.

But I agree that Trump exploited miners, who wanted to hear Trump's promise to bring back coal jobs that are never coming back, instead of HRC's promise to retrain coal workers for today's jobs. That's the advantage of being a candidate without scruples, you can promise things to get votes and forget about the promises.

The miner's and Trump's falsely believe that making the air and water dirtier will bring back the days when the coal-mining industry employed hundreds of thousands of blue-collar Americans.

This article in the WSJ says that rural America is now the inner city. https://www.wsj.com/articles/rural-america-is-the-new-inner-city-1495817008
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom