Note To House Republicans: Many People On Food Stamps HAVE Jobs

House Republicans slashed food stamp funding yesterday and claimed the move will help poor people.

You see, poor people on food stamps don't have jobs because they get food stamps and don't need jobs.

But if the House cuts food stamps, that will force these lazy, welfare kings and queens to go out and get jobs.

Only one problem with that theory - many people getting food stamps already have jobs, but make so little a month in income that they STILL qualify for food stamps.

That's because many of these people work full-time jobs and are under the poverty level anyway.

Like at Walmart.

The famous Communists at Forbes even published a story about this back in 2012:

While it does appear to be true that most households receiving benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP is the new name for food stamps) are out of the work force, a significant fraction do have earnings and most of the rest are poor elderly or disabled households or single parents with children.  Only one in six SNAP households in 2010 is a nonworking family without kids or an elderly or disabled family member.

The USDA also reports that 28 percent of adult participants in SNAP were employed.  Another 24 percent were unemployed and looking for work.   When the economy recovers, there will be many fewer unemployed people who need assistance. But a more fundamental problem is that so many people work in jobs that don’t pay enough to support a family.

Amazing when you think about it.

But that's what we have in 21st century feudal America.

And now, they're cutting food stamps and soon they'll be forcing these people to buy crappy private health insurance as a tenet of Obamacare

 And they're selling it as a benefit to poor people.

With lies about helping them get jobs.

When many of them already have jobs or are in job training programs.

They use these bulletpoint myths from the Reagan Era to sell these food stamp cuts, but they're all lies and mistruths.

One more thing about this - don't forget that Obama cut $2.2 billion from food stamps back in 2010 to save, in part, his Race to the Top funding.

Cutting food stamps for struggling Americans - something both parties can agree on.

NY Post Publishes Devastating Article About NYC Economy - Never Once Mentions Bloomberg As The Culprit

Here's a taste of the Post article:

New York City is stuck in the economic misery lane of middle-class jobs flight and an unemployed and underemployed class faced with long-term joblessness and rising hunger, according to the latest economic research.

The city is emerging from the worst of the Great Recession, but this so-called recovery is nothing to write home about.

The unemployment rate is 8.4 percent and has eclipsed the nation’s average. More disturbing, the city’s “underemployment” rate surpassed New York state’s by just over 1 point.

The city’s “underemployment” rate stood at 14.8 percent in the first half of 2013.

That figure counts the underclass of workers officially unemployed, working part time, or who are no longer counted as unemployed but are willing to work, according to an analysis of New York State Department of Labor data by New York’s Fiscal Policy Institute.

“We do have an issue with lower-paying jobs coming in, and Wall Street is not back to where it was before the recession,” said Jim Diffley, regional economist for IHS Global Insight. “There have been a lot of job gains in the leisure and hospitality sectors.”

But on the whole, these jobs do not have the pay or benefits of the jobs lost in banking or other middle-class vocations.

...

“Much of the job growth that has occurred has been in jobs that will make it hard to build a stable future for working New Yorkers,” a Fiscal Policy Institute report says. “Trends have continued in which New York has lost tens of thousands of middle income jobs in manufacturing, construction and government.”

The rest of the article is just as devastating - a single mother of three who had her hours reduced from 40 a week to 20, had her benefits cuts and now must make it on just a few hundred dollars a week.

And this woman is the coordinator of the Park Slope soup kitchen Christian Help.

The article says that like 2 million other New Yorkers, she needs to get by with the help of food stamps.

The article also goes on to report that while "food insecurity" - a phrase used to denote a time when people do not have access to food - has remained stable across the nation, it has risen in New York State.

In the Bronx, 23% of households are food insecure.

The very same newspaper, the NY Post, writes glowing reviews of the Bloomberg years on their op-ed pages, slams Bill de Blasio as a "class warrior" for running a campaign that acknowledges the "Tale of Two Cities" economic divide in New York, and then publishes this devastating article about the economic "malaise" (their word, not mine) New York City is suffering through in 2013.

Who is at fault for this malaise?

Bill de Blasio?

You can bet if he's mayor in 2014, within a month or so, they'll start to blame this stuff on him around.

And yet, Bloomberg, the mayor who has done everything in his power to assuage and cajole the rich people of this city - including going down to Goldman Sachs and soothing the tears of the brain trust when a former staffer published a Times piece about how evil the firm is - gets off free and clear in the Post article.

It's not his fault he's rezoned huge swaths of the city and turned them into playgrounds for the rich, given tax deals to real estate developers to knock down tenements and build luxury apartments, refused to raise taxes on the wealthy, refused to negotiate contracts with unionized municipal workers (the core of the middle class in this city), demonized teachers as greedy, lazy scum even as he has praised the bankers and hedge fund managers on Wall Street who helped bring about the '08 collapse through their own greed and criminal activity.

Not Bloomberg's fault at all, say the Posties.

You can bet if de Blasio is somehow elected mayor in November, they'll make sure they make it his fault in February.

That is, if the Post is still in business.

As Bloomberg noted in that infamous New York Magazine article yesterday, the Post is suffering its own "economic malaise"" - it loses $100 million a year.

Let Me Know When The Education Reformers Address This

Here's some informational text for you.

The Grapes of Wrath, 21st Century Edition.

Food Stamp Users Doubled Under Bloomberg

Here's some telling data for our data-loving billionaire mayor:

Today the city proudly pointed out that when it comes to population numbers we're doing really, really well. But if you look at other stats, things don't look nearly as peachy. The middle class is screwed, the homeless population is booming, and let's not even get started on food stamps. Actually, let's. Because those numbers aren't any better.

Today the Independent Budget Office of New York's blog has a incredibly depressing series of graphs looking at city data on income support in the city under Mayor Bloomberg. And oof: "Over the last decade, the number of city residents receiving food stamps has more than doubled, while public assistance recipients have decreased and the number of blind and disabled New Yorkers receiving Supplemental Security Income benefits has remained flat."

I bet firing half the city's teachers and making class sizes standing room only will fix this problem.