Romney/Ryan - 60 Minutes, August 12, 2012



Eligible Food Stamp (Card) Items

If you wonder how strict the eligibility for buying certain types of grocery products with food stamps (really an electronic food debit card), TheFundamentals was similarly curious.  So we did our research and here are the facts:

Eligible items:

·       The Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 (the Act) defines eligible food as any food or food product for home consumption and also includes seeds and plants which produce food for consumption

·         So. Lets gets specific:

o   Seafood, steak, and bakery cakes are food items and are therefore eligible items

o   Soft drinks, candy, cookies, snack crackers, and ice cream are food items and are therefore eligible items

o   Energy drinks that have a nutrition facts label are eligible foods (now let’s see, “Do you think energy drink manufacturers might add a “nutrition facts label” to their product?)

o   Gift baskets that contain both food and non-food items, are not eligible for purchase with SNAP (that’s what uncle Sam calls the debit card program) benefits if the value of the non-food items exceeds 50 percent of the purchase price.

·         Source:  http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/retailers/eligible.htm

What you can’t buy - Households CANNOT use SNAP benefits to buy:

o   Beer, wine, liquor, cigarettes or tobacco;
o   Any non food items, such as:
o   Pet foods
o   Soaps, paper products; and
o   Household supplies
o   Vitamins and medicines
o   Foods that will be eaten in the store
o   Hot foods

There is a website called – U, S. Food Policy run by a Parke Wilde, who “teaches and writes about U.S. Food Policy at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University.”  You can find it at:  http://usfoodpolicy.blogspot.com/2008/10/fns-opposes-limitations-on-foods.html   Here is what we found interesting – the comments section in a blog posting about a government proposal to NOT restrict items eligible for food stamps.  We quote from a few:

(Note: any spelling or grammatical errors in the above postings are purely the responsibility of the poster.)

“It's not that poor people don't deserve to eat certain foods, its that they shouldn't be able to buy crap with other people's hard earned money. I am a student, I work 2 jobs and I can only just afford to stay afloat. I can't tell you the last time that I bought potato chips or pop. Then I go to the grocery store and see people buying crap on foodstamps, with money that I and every other working american pay for. I work and I can't affod that stuff, are you telling me its right that my money should go for someone to sit on their butt all day and eat cheetos? You're freaking right this makes me angry.”

“The pupose of the progarm is to provide nutritious foods for families. I am a cashier and i see many people purchases soda, chips and candy with Electonic food card provided by government.”

“I can't believe they want to add to thier list. This is crazy that they have a list at all. Like poor people don't have the right to eat certain foods, and they should be punished because some people are obese. There are more obese rich people believe me! They eat out at resteraunts anytime they please. This is discrimination of the poor. Now these rich people can decide what you can and cannot have. This is humiliating enough for someone going through hard times to have to stoop to get help as it is, and now the upper class want to tell us poor people what we can eat as well?”

“You do realize that many MANY families on food stamps do have at least one parent who WORKS, right? My husband works a full-time job and works his butt off to provide for our family. Not everyone who receives food stamps sits on their a** all day and does nothing.”

So what does it cost the taxpayer?  Last year it cost $78 billion – more than double over just the last four years. One in seven Americans now get food stamps.  Well, not really stamps – they get a debit card which they can swipe through the machine – no stamps involved; no embarrassing moments at the cash register; don’t want to place any stigma on anything; sure don’t want to impact anyone’s self esteem.   It is projected to cost $770 billion over the next 10 years.  Recently, some senators, mostly republicans, tried to cut $20 billion from the $770 billion, about 3%.  They lost the vote.

Final comments – there is a lesson in this essay that may not just jump off the page.  Most every government plan or program or idea or agency or scheme or bureaucracy begins with a seemingly worthwhile purpose.  This one started with the idea of taking excess farm produced foods and distributing them to those who were poor or not able to buy nutritional items.  That beginning is well documented in a paper telling the story of the food stamp program.  It is available at:  http://www.nal.usda.gov/ric/ricpubs/foodstamps.htm   written by a government employee. 

Last comment:  The lessons available for us are several fold – first, whenever you plan a program that involves money – not food goods but cash or a credit card, know that money is fungible.  So if you provide money you are in effect just adding purchasing power to a recipient.  You can say that money is only good for food;  but by using it for food the recipient now can use other money they have to buy the things that they would not have been able to buy without the food card money.  Second, is the concept of the slippery slope – what starts out as a seemingly good idea of offering nutritional surplus food to hungry people now means getting free bags of potato chips and colas at the full price and profit margin that the store and manufacturer charge.  Hardly the same idea or the same program.

By the way, TheFundamentals agrees with the comments in the first posting quoted above – many working, taxpaying Americans do not buy crap food – snack, sugar items, soda pop and salty chips for both nutritional reasons as well as frugality.  Why is the US government promoting free access to crap foods that many taxpayers do not purchase and cannot afford to purchase?

Do You Know Raymond Gaster?

Friends,

 

 

When the prez of the U.S. stands up and says that "you didn't build that, someone else did" he insulted every businessman that ever started a business and tried to run a successful business. It's time we stood up and say "NO, Mr. President, you are wrong. I built this business." If you have a marque or a sign board you owe it to your country to answer back. This is my answer to Obama.

Raymond Gaster
President

Celebrating 27 Years of Providing
Materials for Savannah's Finest Homes

 

 

What follows is an interview with Mr. Gaster --

 

 

 

Mr. Gaster didn't ask us but TheFundamentals approves his message also!

 

 

 

 

Question Authority

It is a fundamental of a republic form of government. Question authority.   It is a fundamental of a democratic form of government.  Authority must be constantly questioned. Constantly challenged.  Constantly made uncomfortable for the sole purpose of demanding and forcing it to do better; to change; to improve.  The concepts of speaking truth to power and questioning power are well established.  Frequently the follow through has fallen short – badly short. 

Who questions authority?  Anyone.  Anyone with some discipline.  Discipline meaning research, analysis, evaluation; anyone who is open to critique and suggestion.  It is not just journalists and writers and columnists and historians.

When the historians evaluate the presidencies of the incumbent and his two predecessors, ask yourself this question:  Will the historians conclude that these three men were always pursued with intelligent questions based on research and analysis – forced to question themselves; their policies; their decisions and their results?  Were they pushed to always examine the consequences of their plans and actions or were they given a free ride by an accommodating rather than skeptical audience?  Also, were they held to objective measurements?

Whose job is it to question authority in our country?  Is authority being effectively challenged?  First let’s ask, who is this “authority” to which we refer?  Is it Mitt Romney?  Hardly, Mitt has no power; no position; no job; no authority whatsoever at all. Is it the guy or gal in your district or your state running for office?  Trying to win a school board seat or sheriff badge or a job on the city council?  Or is the guy/gal who is in the job now and is trying to hold onto the job?

Our answer is the same as it was for Mr. Romney.  It is not the challenger that needs to be the primary focus of questioning and challenging.  It is the job holder; the incumbent; the sitting president or representative or judge or mayor or sheriff.

When the historians write their books; do their analysis; tally up the facts and figures and then find that the incumbent was neither doing a good job nor being challenged about the job they were doing, at whom will they point the finger of responsibility?  The president or governor or mayor who got the pass – was always treated comfortably by the media and the reporters and the bloggers and columnists?  Or the media and reporters and bloggers and columnists who didn’t do their job?  Will they write that by not challenging these office holders they neither did their readers nor the incumbent any favors? 

A catchy phrase that many self anointed journalists like to embrace in describing their job goes something like this – we are in the business of afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted.  Would that it be so.  We’ve got news for them.  They are not doing their job well at all.  Their inclination toward discomfort seems to be misapplied – it is aimed at the challengers; not the incumbents.  That means they will get poor marks from the historians.  Even worse, the incumbents have actually been cheated in the process.  They deserve much better questioning because it is required it they are to improve, change and do a good job.  The incumbents are not doing a good job and they are not being made uncomfortable.

So to our friends in the media, Hollywood and otherwise, remember your mission – always question authority.  You are not doing your job if you do not make authority your primary focus and you are not helping authority by giving them a pass.  All you are doing is assisting in creating the messes that we find in places like Chicago and Springfield, Illinois; Sacramento, California and Washington DC.  Focus on the people in power.   They should not be your friends. 

Always question authority.

Do You Know Mike Kelly?



 



Topic du Jour

Think of it as sitting down in a restaurant and the wait person stops by to take your drink order and tell you what the special(s) of the day are – could be a favorite of the owner/chef; could be something they got a good buy on; could be something left over from yesterday and they want to move it; could be something that a favorite customer who is coming in today always wants available.

More than likely us regular restaurant patrons didn’t have a lot of input in determining the specials on this day.  The agenda; the menu, was decided by others and we really don’t know how or why.

When it comes to politics and media attention a similar process is at play.  There is an agenda and it is determined for reasons determinable and not so readily determinable.

Today the agenda item is gun control.  Or "are the Brits ready for a sporting event?"

Last week it was Obama’s comments on who is responsible for business success – the business person or the government that build the roads.

Before that it was Romney’s overseas investments/banking accounts/job outsourcing and tax records/payments.

You get the idea.  Someone is deciding what goes on the menu and it changes every week or so.  Next week it may be Syria/middle east/Iran/Israel or it could be Europe and their impending implosion; recession; depression.

Could be the value of the Chinese currency or the LIBOR interest rate (no, that was last month wasn’t it?)

What won’t it be?

Debt – Deficits – Destruction.

What else won’t it be?

Military industrial complex.  Wars.  CIA spending.  Drones in the homeland skies.  NSA eavesdropping, in the homeland skies.  Troops in Korea, Japan, Europe.

Speaking of drones – what has killed more innocents – American drones or nut jobs in theatres?  Also, speaking of drones, we were wondering about the inevitable but, of course, accidental meeting of a drone and a commercial airliner in our skies.  Will that be mass murder or just homeland security collateral damage?   Do you get the impression that we are now making up things just to keep the bureaucrat PR machine busy?  Don’t worry, that’s not on the agenda either.

What else won’t be on the agenda?

Bubbles in government spending/health care/education.  Bernanke’s odyssey.  Print money to keep the bubbles going.

Medicare costs.  Medicaid costs. 

Debt ceiling.  Debt repayment.  Debt anything.  No one wants to touch debt.  Debt is off the menu; just like foie gras in California.

The topic du jour is going to be anything but what the topic du jour should be.   One group of politicians won’t touch it because they want to keep it (DEBT) going.  The other group won’t touch it (DEBT) because they are afraid to not keep it going.

So why not talk about guns and soda drinks; small private companies and their investment policies; statues of false gods and candidate tax records?   Aren’t you more interested in LIBOR and Dodd – Frank than stopping the spending and the $4 billion of debt added each day while we wring our hands over a Pennsylvania pervert?

Hey, maybe next week we can talk about melting icebergs?  Sure hope they put that on the menu.  May have to wait another week or so because the chicken restaurant guy exercising his freedom of speech is now the topic du jour.

Piling on JoePa

Every day, in America, great lessons are on display.  Please allow us few minutes to explain.

Focused on Happy Valley, Pennsylvania, we Americans are watching the demise of a national icon.  Just a few years ago, Mr. Paterno was glorified as some form of demi – god for that combination of his age, endurance, leadership and accomplishments.  He was a football coach.  Many times he was either so incapacitated or injured that he could not even make it to the field.  His empire paid daily homage to him.  He earned much more than the president of the university and multiples of what was being earned by the lowly teaching assistants who conducted many of the learning classes at his university.  Reporters had to sue to even find out how much he was being paid.  Do you think Penn State and the JoePa regime were anomalies?  Do you not think the JoePa regime bears similarities to other regimes in major college towns across the country today?

Over 20 years ago, the Knight commission on intercollegiate athletics started an investigative process that focused on the many documented derelictions in college athletic programs.  Here, taken directly from their own reports, are observations about the state of college athletics in America:

• In 1989, as a decade of highly visible scandals in college sports drew to a close, the trustees of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation (then known as Knight Foundation) were concerned that athletics abuses threatened the very integrity of higher education.
• Except for the Ivy League, the schools which were involved were the most visible institutions of higher education in the country.
• Can colleges and universities continue their traditional posture of upholding the highest values of personal character and integrity when they themselves display so little of either?
• Public faith in higher education cannot be sustained if college sports are permitted to become a circus, with the institution itself little more than a supporting sideshow.

Arrogance in the athletic department of large public higher education establishments is rampant; fawning (actually terrified) sycophants both within and without the state payrolls of these schools stand around waiting for some false god or some athletic department head to rule on some kid or coach who has violated someone or something.   And it all revolves around money; and winning and power and excess.  There are no term limits; no mandatory rotation of duties and responsibilities.  Money runs the show – coaches are paid as if they were Hollywood entertainers.  Come to think of it, that about describes the way the way they act and the way they are treated.

The Knight commission issued reports in 1991, 1992 and 1993.  Again, every report, every finding, every recommendation is available at:  http://www.knightcommission.org/  They issued a ten year status report in 2001 and we are offering below just one summary observation from that report –

“We find that the problems of big-time college sports have grown rather than diminished. The most glaring elements of the problems outlined in this report – academic transgressions, a financial arms race, and commercialization – are all evidence of the widening chasm between higher education’s ideals and big-time college sports.”

Their most recent report came out in 2010.  Here is part of their summary recommendations:  

This report sets forth reforms that are achievable and that, if implemented, will create a foundation upon which future reforms can build.  Our blueprint for restoring educational values and priorities begins with strengthening accountability for intercollegiate athletics in three ways:

1.  Requiring greater transparency, including better measures to compare athletics spending to academic spending

2.  Rewarding practices that make academic values a priority

3.  Treating college athletes as students firs and foremost - not as professionals

Where have you heard some of these words before - transparency; better measures; values a priority?  Does anyone besides us see any connection; any analogy between the power and corruption in college athletes and the power and corruption in American governance?  Does anyone see this cult of the personality rampant; the money more important than any values; a justification process that always points to the protection of the insider; the lax enforcement of violations and other forms of trespasses?  Are we the only ones that see a direct tie-in between America being just about money; not limits; not discipline; not values and, if so, how on earth can we complain about colleges – athletic programs, coaches and athletes when the top elected jobs in the country are operating on similar distorted values?

One of the most disappointing aspects of the Penn State mess is the rapidity with which sycophants who two or three brief years ago were fawning over JoePa, may he rest in peace, are now removing his statue (what kind of fool builds statues to football coaches at a public institution of higher learning?) and shutting down the football team (what the heck did the current football players do?) and fining the fat cats some chump change for their transgressions (did anyone consider banning the fat cats entirely?)

It is not just JoePa who is to blame even though he got caught up in the nonsense and the power and the money and its all encompassing corruption.  He was just a coach; just a man; same feet of clay the rest of us have.  Even JoePa needed someone to set some limits and discipline on him.  We failed him by not doing so.

If you want to change things start at the top.  In the federal capitol and the state capitols - Term limits; spending limits; debt limits; repay the debt and stop this madness that creates a mythology of men, money and their plans overwhelming common sense and values.