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Food stamp math
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About one in six West Virginians receive food stamps, according to the Charleston Daily Mail. This amount of government aid marks the state’s highest level of participation in at least 30 years, and the article attributes the increase to the fact that aid allotments don’t adjust for rising food and gas prices. The Daily Mail claims that as more people take advantage of Food Stamp Program benefits, the value of the aid decreases, so families are struggling to get by on the amount of aid offered.
However, as Tom Blumer, contributing editor to Newsbusters.org, points out, this isn’t true.* As the USDA Web site shows, the state determines maximum allotments on a family-to-family basis, using a low-cost model diet plan called the Thrifty Food Plan. The state calculates the amount of aid a family receives by subtracting 30 percent of the household’s net income from the TFP’s maximum allotment for their household size.
The TFP is based on dietary allowances from the National Academy of Sciences, and it is also modeled after the food choices of low-income households, so the provisions should be realistic for each family to cover their grocery bills. The state adjusts the amount for annual changes in food costs and for inflation, so maximum allotments in 2008 are 4.4 to 5 percent higher than previous years.
On the other side of the spectrum, an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Reporter in 2005 shows that at the time, half of Seattle’s residents who qualified for Food Stamps chose not to use them. Many families are confused about who qualifies, but others simply do not want the government handout. These excuses are becoming null because the state replaced paper coupons with debit-like cards that offer more anonymity and sophistication in 1999. Regulators are also working to report rules in simpler terms and drop some of the restrictions that keep families from obtaining needed aid.
Correction: WoW originally misidentified Tom Blumer as CEO of News Busters. He is contributing editor.
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A matter of life
You mean there’s poverty in the Appalachians?
Stamps are a temporary fix to empty bellies. (Although in the USA even our poor folks are fatties, no?) Better than stamps how about vouchers for the costs of relocating to an area where the jobs are. Take a leaf from the book read by illegal aliens, West Va!! Gotta go where the jobs are!
Hey! You used that picture before for a totally unrelated subject! What DOES that picture have to do with food stamps anyway?
Wiglaf, dont you get it? In West Va they must pass out food stamps to same sex couples. Or else these are two gals whose husbands abandoned them. Or maybe the husbands died needlessly way way underground due to regulations against open pit mining
I’m so glad the polygamist cult (why wont the media call them Mormon fundies?) didnt have a huge arsenal like the Koreshites in Waco. By the way, most polygamous marriages require all sorts of food stamps and other govt assistance.
I don’t see why a polygamous situation would necessitate governmental assistance. One or two of the women could be primarily responsible for the children while the others work full-time.
The folks in Appalachia and elsewhere are not stupid; as long as Uncle Sam provides anything free of charge, they’ll be there with their hands outstretched. But require them to WORK for their food stamps, etc and you’ll see a mass exodus to a more deadbeat friendly area.
wow i am really feeling Jesus moving here. those crappy appalachians. jesus surely don’t love them either. and jesus surely wants mountain top removal, right sawgunner?
I have received food stamps in the past. I have also refused them in the past. It sounds so easy to just move when there are no jobs. That is not the case. One gets government assistance when there are no resources left in the family for moving. It is not as simple as people make it out to be. It’s like rearing children, childless people have all the answers until they have their own difficult child.
food vouchers are degrading just give them the money .
Erasmus: It’s all Republican Jesus in these parts.
You cannot just give money to people, because there are some who will not use it for food. Even under the old system, some people illegally sold there food stamps. That wouldn’t be so bad if only the individual was involved. Children are too often the ones who go hungry.