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734

GOP governor slashing food program for kids ahead of Christmas sparks fury (www.newsweek.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

56 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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[–] [email protected] 210 points 10 months ago

When I was a real little kid, summer was always a hard time for me to eat because I was cut off from the subsidized lunch program. My mother was severely mentally ill and barely provided a meal a day sometimes. Food stamps, subsidized lunch programs and food shelves provided most of my nutrition, it was a benefit she couldn't divert away from feeding me and my siblings most of the time.

Anybody who supports removing these programs is legitimately a monster. It keeps so many kids alive or from developing horrific nutritional deficiencies. It has nothing but a positive impact on the community and economy.

[–] [email protected] 186 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Remember folks, the cruelty is the point.

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/08/1014208767/trumps-america-and-why-the-cruelty-is-the-point

Most of the time, you are not looking at someone who believes it’s for the best that food programs are cuts.

You are looking at someone who is prepared to do that, to activate their base.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I was wondering about this, like deep down inside does she really believe that this is the path to a better world? Doubtful.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

They don't believe in making a better world overall. They believe in making a better world for themselves.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

a dollar wasted on the homeless, on the starving, on the disadvantaged is a dollar wasted, that could have instead been a dollar given to the billionaires that own the Republicans and their party.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

They don't even want to make a better world for themselves. They are only concerned with making a worse world for people they don't like. They are fine being collateral damage in that.

[–] [email protected] 119 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Children should just fucking starve. They should think twice about being born poor.

THIS IS LITERALLY WHAT REPUBLICANS SAY. WHAT THEY THINK. THEY DON'T EVEN TRY TO HIDE IT. THIS IS A ACTUAL TALKING POINT

[–] [email protected] 54 points 10 months ago (2 children)

She literally said there's too many obese kids, so we shouldn't feed them with welfare.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

Kids are too fat. Don't feed them ever again.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (2 children)

If you prune their roots and little branches then you can keep them small. Also using wire to shape them can create a more interesting character.

I’m pretty sure that’s how it works.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

I forgot to water my bonsai and someone called CPS. Fortunately, Iowa stopped funding that department too.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

That’s how Mickey Mouse was born, he doesn’t like to talk about it so be nice.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

And some kids are fat because they go through periods of eating nothing but junk food to period of food insecurity, so they still aren't getting enough to eat and they live in a food desert.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

GOP presents: ~~intermittent~~ fasting

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Some kids are too fat. Therefore starving kids should just starve.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

Kids ARE fat because the poor feed their families the cheapest foods available which are high carb foods that make them crave even more high carb foods.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

They should think twice about being born poor.

Yeah! If you don’t have enough money to support a child, just abo- wait…

[–] [email protected] 70 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

She literally got up and argued that she hates the program that allows poor people to chose their own food and wants a programs where the state chooses food for you.

Small government my ass.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Worse than that: she said that Iowa will not help feed starving children because other children in the entire rest of the country are fat.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

For 40 dollars a month. This isn't some kind of program that needed major reformation. It's literally hanging by half a thread and she's hitting it with a baseball bat.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

We need more children on deaths door via starvation to bring the national average down! #republicanlogic

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

Small government They mean "rule by Republicans"

[–] [email protected] 61 points 10 months ago (5 children)

40 fucking dollars per month per kid. That might pay for a month’s worth of rice but isn’t a week’s worth for fruits, vegetables, and protein!

[–] [email protected] 49 points 10 months ago (1 children)

For sure... But $0 a month isn't going to buy much protein either

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Right. We should be offering way more than $40 a month per kid and the fact that republicans want to cut what is basically a pittance shows how cruel they are.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

It'd be added to the other EBT they likely get. It's only supposed to cover school lunches I'm guessing.

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The federal 2024 Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children (EBT) program, which provides low-income families with $40 per child per month to help with food costs while schools are closed...

What we should be really angry about is how shit that benefit is. $40 per month?? Really? That's like 5 days of canned food. Absolutely pathetic.

Anyone who doesn't want to feed kids is a monster. Children are not at fault for their parent's economic situation

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (2 children)

$40 per child per month.

That's still not much, but with a little budgeting and meal planning it goes further than you'd think, if not as far as it sometimes needs to.

I've lived on not much more than that per month.

It does mean zero luxuries, and that might be the worst part of it.

So I do agree with you that it should be more. We should all have a bit more. No one should ever have to scrip and save in order to eat each month.

Every man woman and child should be guaranteed food, water, and housing as a minimum.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Okay folks you have $40 to eat on for the next 30 days, and you need as much nutrition as a growing child. What you buying?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Let me preface this by saying I agree with you and this action is absolutely repugnant. But as the mother to a kindergartener, $40 is absolutely doable. That money is to cover the breakfast and lunch they are missing from school 5 days a week. Breakfast would be a bowl of cereal or oatmeal and a piece of fruit. Lunch is PB&J or chicken nuggets, fruit cup/apple sauce, something snacky like teddygrahams or chips and a glass of milk. It's not name brand foods or varied meals, but it is survivable and depending on the kid (like mine), maybe even preferable. (My kid would be in heaven if I let him eat chicken nuggets every day.)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

Yeah, point taken there, I was of course being a bit facetious in how I represented it, the $40/month is really a supplemental amount to what the legal guardian can already provide. It's just such a sad reality that there are kids with few options of their own in this world, and one of those options is being taken away because it's perceived as imperfect by the people in charge of it, with no regard for those that rely on it for things like staying alive and such.

$40 is a lot of money to stretch across 30 days, but it's peanuts for the state of Iowa to afford, compared to something like the Governor's salary, which I'm sure she thinks she deserves more than the poorest children of her state deserve a full tummy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

A single box of cereal now days typically goes for 5-9 dollars depending on what you get, then there's a gallon of milk for another 3-5. That's already a quarter of their monthly budget. $40 in current times is nothing when it comes to groceries. This is disgustingly low from the "think of the children" party.

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Didn’t even make it through the article because she’s so vile. She will let kids starve because aid, it seems, won’t fix the problem.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It's because they want the aid money instead to do what they want with it as opposed to directly giving the money to needy families who would likely only use it for food:

If the Biden Administration and Congress want to make a real commitment to family well-being, they should invest in already existing programs and infrastructure at the state level and give us the flexibility to tailor them to our state's needs"

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

turning down federal money (the now-permanent program is paid for by the feds, not by the participating states) because it would go to poor kids.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

The real reason with Republicans for shit like this is that it might stand a chance of going to at least one minority kid.

It's the same impulse that caused towns in the south to fill in municipal swimming pools instead of integrate.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 10 months ago

Disgusting, vile, putrid feeces filled flesh bag. And that doesn't even properly describe how horrible this woman is.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago

Oh wow it’s not even a state program. It would cost the state nothing to let families have that $40/month from the federal government.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago

Reynolds apparently doesn't know the part of the Bible where Jesus says that hurting kids is a one way ticket to hell. It's astounding how with every action, the people who scream the loudest about Christianity admit they know the least about it.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

With the excess produce in this country, everybody could be easily fed. Better for it to rot in a landfill than to help those in need all year long.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

The Grapes of Wrath was published in 1939

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Fun fact: She endorsed DeSantis for president.

(And now she's acting like him.)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

You know, it's funny when it rains it pours They got money for wars, but can't feed the poor Said it ain't no hope for the youth and the truth is It ain't no hope for the future And then they wonder why we crazy I blame my mother for turning my brother into a crack baby We ain't meant to survive, 'cause it's a setup And even though you're fed up Huh, ya got to keep your head up

Keep Ya Head Up

By: Tupac Shakur

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Republican Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds announced a few days before Christmas that her state would not participate in a summer federal food program for impoverished children, which has prompted backlash online.

Reynolds, who has served as the governor of the Hawkeye State since 2017, announced on Friday that Iowa would not be joining other states in the federal 2024 Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children (EBT) program, which provides low-income families with $40 per child per month to help with food costs while schools are closed, the Associated Press reported.

"Federal COVID-era cash benefit programs are not sustainable and don't provide long-term solutions for the issues impacting children and families," the governor said said.

While in the survey's lower half, she still outranked several other prominent governors, including Republicans like Greg Abbott of Texas and Tate Reeves of Mississippi.

Kim Reynolds had the audacity to cite child obesity as she defended her decision to deprive poor kids of food," author and journalist Mark Jacob wrote in his own post.

As explained in a September post from the Iowa Senate Democratic Party, certain aspects of this expansion violate federal child labor laws, specifically those allowing "16- and 17-year-olds to operate dangerous power-driven machines, engage in heavy manufacturing, and work in demolition," and not requiring "16- and 17-year-olds working in apprenticeship or student-learner roles to be registered by the U.S. Department of Labor or a state agency."

The original article contains 529 words, the summary contains 235 words. Saved 56%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

"An EBT card does nothing to promote nutrition at a time when childhood obesity has become an epidemic."

Reynolds has done something impressive. She has said one of the most stupid things I've ever heard from a republican. That's a very high bar to clear, saying something so inconceivably stupid that it has special distinction from all of the other inconceivably stupid things republicans say. Yet somehow she managed to pull it off.

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