Missouri has decided to turn down millions in federal food aid for low-income children

https://lemmy.world/post/1538371

Missouri has decided to turn down millions in federal food aid for low-income children - Lemmy.world

Feds: “We have money that you can give to families so kids can eat over the summer.”

MO politicians: “That seems like it would be a lot of hard work for us, so nah.”

More hungry kids! I bet that will own the libs who dare to send money to help them!
Their response is probably: “If the kids are hungry, they can get summer jobs in a meat packing plant for under minimum wage. And then they can continue to work there when school starts back up. In fact, forget school and go right to packing that meat with your tiny, easily severed fingers!”
As usual, the cruelty is the point.
Billionaires and corporations want the American slaves working making them money. No handouts.

We’re now seeing red states refusing federal aid because 1) it shows the federal government isn’t the demon they make it out to be and 2) if they don’t accept federal funds, they don’t have to accept federal stipulations like “you can’t not give this to poor gay children” and “Black children deserve to eat too.”

Dark times are ahead.

Don’t forget the “welfare queens” lies that a lot of the right believes. I know a lot of idiots that believe poor people are poor because they’re lazy.
it doesnt matter how lazy they are - if poor people keep having children, they will remain poor.
Tell that to a $100,000 medical invoice that bankrupted you because you got sick.

My credit was destroyed while I was still in college and hadn't yet built up basically any credit. My crime for having my financial future ruined for the next 7 years? I was hit by someone who turned their SUV into me because they didn't look whether there was anyone in the crosswalk, and I was a broke college student, so I couldn't pay for all of the medical bills.

(Tangential note: I don't like the phrase "hit by a car". Until cars are fully autonomous, no one ever gets hit by a car; they get hit by a person driving a car. Also, fuck that lady and her trying to get out of the $67 ticket she got for hitting me and permanently injuring my knee. "I didn't see anybody" isn't an excuse. Especially when that person was wearing orange. If you do that, you just didn't look.)

Confused. How did she not pay for it if she caused it? If this just a major fuck up on your part for not holding her to account?
Not who you are responding to, but it happens all the time. Idiot driver is uninsured so there’s no insurance to pay the bills. Or they are under-insured and their insurance will only pay a fraction of the bills. What are you going to do? If you can afford it, you can sue them and maybe get some money out of them, but unless they are rich the odds are you won’t get enough wealth to pay the bills either. And if they are rich, they’ll tie you up in court for so long that your credit will be destroyed and you’ll run out of money to keep paying your lawyer to keep suing them.
None of this would be an issue if the medical bills were covered by single payer. I learned in other countries there’s no “ambulance chasers” because there’s no reason to have them - a whole parasitic industry nonexistent.
She eventually did, but her insurance company fought it for a long time.
Wooooooow. Some people really out themselves as ignorant and cruel in a spectacular way.
Good things happening while a Democrat is in the Whitehouse is bad for business. If anyone ever asks the GOP why they rejected the funds it’ll be some lie about illegal immigrants getting the money.

That’s exactly why they’re refusing.

Also how much you wanna bet they’re blaming the feebs?

Honest question, what’s a “feeb”? ^^
An FBI agent (or sometimes more broadly any federal agent, as here.)
nothing is preventing someone from creating a bill that would offer financial assistance to helping those who cant afford to move to “greener pastures”.
sadly you are correct. Ask most conservatives about feeding white or christian children they are for it. Sudden including all those other kinds of people and they would rather let their own starve rather give help to 1 person they think is unworthy.

Ask most conservatives about feeding white or christian children they are for it

I think you need to change that “or” to an “and”. Or maybe just remove the Christian part altogether.

The vast majority of immigrants crossing the southern are Christian after all, but that doesn’t seem to evoke much sympathy from the MAGA movement.

Well that because a large part of politically active christian only see white people as Christians

When Christians are hating Christians because of their ethnicity, it doesn’t seem like a problem stemming from religion to me.

I think it’s just racists plastering a thin veneer of “Christian” like talk over their racism to make themselves appear to be holy. Literally taking the Lord’s name in vain, which kinda goes against actual Christian values.

The problem here is that the federal government didn’t provide the framework and services for states to use this federal aid - it’s up to the states to each create the new infrastructure and data collection/reporting services themselves. That’s a backwards arse way of doing it. The federal government should have created the necessary services and given the states access.
We give states way too much power when it comes to these types of policies. I grew up on the free lunch program and a lot of times it was the best meal I can get. I could never in good conscience suggest that kids don’t deserve to have free lunch and breakfast. Especially if they have to be there.

Yep, this should not have been a state decision, nor should the states have to have been the ones to try and implement it, because as this shows many can’t and/or won’t.

If the federal government was serious about providing food aid for low income children, they would do it at a federal level.

You mean like the federal government offering millions of dollars to a state to feed hungry kids? That kind of federal level? Oh wait…

No, I mean like the federal government actually making the service that is required to give the millions of dollars to a state to feed hungry kids.

The difference is huge.

The difference is huge, and not hard to understand.

Apparently it is, for you.

The federal agency is called USDA, and it’s the one that runs the P-EBT program. The service is there, ready to dole out the cash, they just need the info to best disburse the funds. The onus is on MO to work with the federal gov to communicate information about its own citizens to those services.

There’s about zero chance in hell that red states are going to allow the feds to roll in to town and pull school district information that it would need to disburse the funds. The states already have those records, and they best know how to aggregate them. They just need to <gulp> swallow their hangups about gov bureaucracy and actual spend some tax money to serve their citizens.

Again, the federal agency makes the program available but doesn’t actually build the infrastructure required for the states to use it. This very article we’re commenting on points that out a number of times.

You can shout “Republicans hate kids!” as much as you want, but aren’t republicans the ones encouraging people to have more kids and less abortions? How does that logic work?

But that would be “communism”!
No it wouldn’t, and no one would say that.
No, of course it wouldn’t, but you really haven’t been paying attention to American politics if you think the Republicans wouldn’t say that immediately.
Either communism or socialism. Both are the Republican boogyman.
Just another reason I'm trying to get the fuck out of this hellhole
STL checking in. I hate it here so much.

Yknow, it felt like 5-6 years ago you could make a legitimate argument that things wete looking up. Don't get me wrong, we've always had tons of problems, but it seemed like there was a chance.

I've given up. If the tides change enough for me to stay/come back if I make it out, I gladly will. I truly do love this state, it's absolutely gorgeous. There's so much good here, and so much more good that could be, but we just have to keep voting in people to fuck it up it seems.

Where are you trying to get to?
Waiting to have some more experience in my field, and we'll see from there. Ideally in the New England area because I actually know people there, but frankly it'll be where ever I get a job.
I’ll say that my life improved greatly the moment I moved out of the Midwest.
Missouri is the Mississippi of the Midwest.
thought that was ohio
Ohio is the armpit of the Midwest

commondreams.org/…/oligarchs-against-democracy This. Is. One of the Best. Hidden Political History. Ever.

blew my mind. see also anything else by thom hartmann and the Lewis Powell memo. and The Democracy Project by David Graeber (buy it at a used bookstore with cash)

Why Oligarchs Don't Just Want to Be Rich, But Kill Democracy Too | Common Dreams

Why are America’s plutocrats funding efforts to weaken our democracy and replace it with plutocracy and oligarchy? Is it just about money? Or is there something much deeper that most Americans rarely even consider?

Common Dreams
“The cruelty is the point.”
Are there federal bodies it third parties that can assist in these measures? Just because the state is fucked and run by terrorists, shouldn’t mean that someone can’t step up and help. I knows it’s not that easy geographically, but every little bit helps.
just because you disagree with someone, there’s no reason to refer to them as terrorists. having a sound fiscal policy isnt terrorism, after all.
They are self proclaimed terrorists. Also, withholding funding so that children starve is pretty fucked up and calling them terrorists is gentle compared to what they deserve. That’s not sound fiscal responsibility, that evil incarnate. Defense of that view is completely fucked as well, terrorist.
someone’s salty
You could say that. Most reasonable people think starving children and domestic terrorism is something to be upset about. It appears you are not a reasonable person, terrorist.

seems to me that it’s the parents direct responsibility to feed/shelter their progeny - but sure, let’s blame the evil state govt

you folks are literally brainsick

You’re the one advocating for starving children, terrorist, you’re the brainsick one.
wow, you’re like Dr. Sbaitso with a learning disability

Our governor is sitting on a tax surplus that was $5,000,000,000 a few months ago. (That’s billion, with a ‘b’) Just over the state line the state of Kansas literally just handed its surplus back to taxpayers in the form of a special tax cut. That five billion of OUR MONEY could do a lot to mitigate the problems in our state, but the folks in Jeff City haven’t figured out a way to feasibly give it away to their golf buddies yet.

Maybe the ‘terrorist’ tag is a little dramatic, but the Republican Party here in Missouri is literally making bad things happen in order to blame the consequences on the Federal Government.

I don’t know that it is dramatic - these people are willingly (and often happily) starving kids. What else would you call someone who looks at a child whose only meal that day may come from school and says, “Nah, it wins me points with my base, go ahead and starve”? Monster, maybe, but they labeled themselves terrorists, and I always like to use people’s preferred names.
I think you can find better terminology to make your point. People have overused ‘terrorist’ since the 9/11 attacks, and yeah, it comes off as a little dramatic and likely makes it harder for you to get the buy-in you want on the point you’re trying to make.
If I have to soften my language to get buy in on the issue of “children shouldn’t have to starve in one of the richest countries in the world,” I think that says everything it needs to about anyone opposing it, namely that they’re both incredibly hateful, and also huge crybaby bitches.

True, but you kind of do have to.

Unless someone self-identifies as a terrorist or fascist, I try to avoid that using that terminology when I’m working to change someone’s point of view. My rule of them is to try to approach things the way The Satanic Temple would, seeing as how they tend to be more effective at politicking than most.

The thing is that they did self identify as terrorists. It was a giant banner at cpac some years ago. “We are all domestic terrorists” I believe were the words.

Not only that, but the actions here can actually fall in the definition of terrorism. For the last 4+ years, I’ve also heard similar arguments to yours about calling the right, Nazis, but here we are with literal Nazis eaving the flag, disturbing the peace, and spreading hate.

If it looks like a shit and smells like a shit, it’s not a stick, it’s a Republican.