Mr. Ramirez (again, literally) draws inspiration from a nineteenth-century source. Shown in happier moments:
I usually try to find something related to link to here… hm… well, if we got a big egg, there must have been a really big chicken, right?
And in that topic, Craig Richardson wonders: Why Can't Food Stamps be Used for a Rotisserie Chicken?.
Low-income families and individuals can qualify for the Electronic Benefits Card (EBT), which is issued by the federal government and comes from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as the Federal Food Stamp Program. The EBT card looks and functions like a bank debit card, and monthly benefits for individuals average around $200. About 12.6% or about 1 in 8 Americans get benefits from an EBT card, according to USDA estimates. That’s about 42 million people.
![[Amazon Link]](/ps/asin_imgs/B075SCD7H1.jpg)
Upon receiving their EBT card, SNAP recipients are eligible to buy any fresh or frozen food in grocery stores, but also are free to purchase candy, ice cream, soft drinks, donuts, chips, and even birthday cakes. If it’s a consumable food or drink item and non-alcoholic, it’s fine to put it in the grocery cart. Amazon even has EBT-eligible gift baskets overflowing with luscious chocolates, fine nuts, and toffees.
[Amazon link at your right]
Yet these same families can’t use their EBT card to purchase a freshly roasted rotisserie chicken, hot soups, steamed vegetables, warm pasta, or other prepared foods that are available for convenient takeaway at grocery stores. All these items are banned since the early 1970s.
Well, that's Uncle Stupid for you. Craig points out that the number one commodity purchased via SNAP was soft drinks. ("Fluid milk products" comes in a poor second.)
Soft drinks? Yes. For more on that, I refer you to Kevin D. Williamson's classic, albeit controversial, 2013 NR article, The White Ghetto.
Gee, this got kind of meandering. But I hope informative and entertaining. And now…
On to other topics:
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Will economic growth save Social Security? That's the question politicians are desperately wondering about. Because otherwise they will have to make unpopular, painful decisions. But Romina Boccia and Dominik Lett throw some cold water on the idea: Economic Growth Won't Save Social Security.
Hoping that economic growth will solve Social Security’s financial woes, as some politicians have suggested, is a pipe dream. Because Social Security benefits are indexed to wages, higher economic growth brings both higher revenues and higher benefits, leaving the long-term fiscal problem unresolved. In the best case, faster economic growth would only push back the trust fund insolvency date by a few years at most.
Take the 1990s, for example. During this decade, the US experienced a boom in productivity and capital investment thanks to technological innovations, favorable demographics, reduced global tensions, and globalization. However, these circumstances barely improved Social Security’s budgetary future, leaving insolvency looming on the horizon. Per the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, even if the US returned to the levels of capital growth, productivity growth, and labor force participation seen in the 1990s, it would fail to fix budget shortfalls driven by growing benefit costs and worsening demographics. In short, growth buys time but not solvency.
The authors link to their Cato Policy Brief: Congress Can’t Outgrow or Inflate Away the Social Security Financing Problem.
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As Douglas Adams said… "Don't Panic!" (Although it's an understandable reaction if you get your news from the Contrarian, or the like.) Instead, like Jonah Goldberg, take some Comfort in History.
America has slipped the bounds of constitutionality many times in the past. Andrew Jackson may or may not have actually said “The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.” But that basically captures his attitude. The Republic survived. Woodrow Wilson was an affront to the Constitution on numerous fronts. The Supreme Court pushed back against Wilson on some fronts while he was in office and on others after he left office. But it also let many of his transgressions stand. The Republic survived.
Then there’s FDR. I’m one of those cranks who thinks FDR—a Wilson administration retread—ruled like an anti-constitutional autocrat. It didn’t seem like it to many at the time—though he did not lack for critics who shared my opinion—because he had so much political capital. He won in back-to-back landslides that delivered massive majorities in Congress. When Congress is a rubber stamp, voters are desperate, and the press is fawning, it’s really easy to act like an autocrat.
In other words, when autocracy is popular no one wants to hear that autocracy is bad. Because people have a really annoying tendency to think anything they like must also be good and constitutional.
I won’t go down a lengthy rabbit hole on this, but I do keep thinking of something FDR’s commerce secretary, Harry Hopkins, told New Deal activists in New York. “I want to assure you,” he said, “that we are not afraid of exploring anything within the law, and we have a lawyer who will declare anything you want to do legal.” That pretty closely tracks the Trump administration’s approach these days.
Have I said lately that we wouldn't be in this pickle if Nikki Haley were president? No? Well, there you go.
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Always trust content from Veronique de Rugy. In her syndicated column, she outlines The Upside, Risks and Limits of DOGE. Her bottom line: DOGE is fine, but:
No amount of discretionary cuts or anti-waste initiatives, no matter how worthy they are, will solve our long-term debt crisis. Ultimately, lasting reform must be legislated. President Donald Trump and Musk deserve credit for highlighting the debt crisis and taking action, but pretending that the job ends with them would be dangerous.
Just think of us as Ralphie on the bus, with Donald Trump at the wheel, pestered by…
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She was DOGE before it was DOGE. Marina Nitze is not as famous as Elon Musk. But attention must be paid when she confesses: I tried to fix government tech for years. I'm fed up.
When I helped create the United States Digital Service (USDS), it was not on my bingo board that it would become the U.S. DOGE Service a mere decade later. As a lifelong libertarian, the years I spent trying to make government more efficient at the Department of Veterans Affairs (V.A.) and USDS required a lot of patience. Now I'm fresh out.
We have been making tiny, barely perceptible "improvements," paid for with years of compromise and hand-holding in endless pointless meetings, and then celebrating this as success. I can't get Alana Newhouse's description out of my head: "Half the time our institutions feel like molasses, and the other half like concrete." I'm fed up with a government that can't implement its way out of a paper bag.
Apparently most of America is fed up, too.
I care deeply about trans people, immigrants, and others who are targets of so much hate right now. I do not support the harmful actions being taken against them. At the same time, I could not possibly care less that someone plugged in a server to create a new email list without a Privacy Impact Assessment. If no one ever adheres to FIPS 140-2 again—great, it's about time we took that "kick me" sign written in Mandarin off our back. Much of the current system hurts everyone and needs to go.
It's a rare inside look at how frustrating things inside Uncle Stupid's bureaucracy can be.
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And then there's the party who thinks it can spend your money more wisely than you can. NHJournal says what our local legislators are up to: NHDems Propose Property Tax Hike, Return of I&D Income Tax.
Rep. Tom Schamberg (D-Wilmot) told the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee he would need 15 minutes to present HB502 to the committee — an unusually long period of time for a body that must consider hundreds of bills.
But when Schamberg got behind the mic, he barely mentioned his legislation, instead launching into what acting Chairman Rep. Jordon Ulery (R-Hudson) called a “diatribe” against Gov. Kelly Ayotte and her fellow Republicans in the legislature. He denounced what he called “tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy” and claimed GOP tax cuts had “downshifted” costs onto local property taxpayers.
As Schamberg read his political speech to the committee, the chairman interrupted several times asking him to discuss the specifics of his bill. “What does the bill do? How does it do it? And why should the bill pass?” he asked.
Schamberg refused to answer but continued to read his speech attacking GOP tax policy. When he was done, the Wilmot Democrat refused to take any questions from the committee.
Why?
I'm sure it's something deeply psychological.