What about apples? Should we let them buy apples?
Wisconsin is the latest state looking to
go Leviticus on the poors.
On Wednesday, a public benefits committee of the Wisconsin State Legislature approved a bill that would require food stamp beneficiaries to use two-thirds of their monthly allotment on healthy foods approved for a separate and much smaller federal nutrition program that serves pregnant women and moms with new babies. The bill would also prohibit them from buying "crab, lobster, shrimp, or any other shellfish."
Well now aren't you just God's gift to assholes. Mind you, one of the primary difficulties in poor neighborhoods is
access to healthy food in the first place, and that healthy food tends to be more expensive because of that, and so on, but I'm sure just telling the poors that their shopping lists will consist of your preferred ingredients will fix whatever perceived problem you have with them.
On the other hand, you can't have the poors actually buying more expensive foods. Or entire classes of foods that maybe look like they might be expensive. (I'm not sure what planet the Wisconsin State Legislature lives on where they think "shrimp" is a luxury item, but thankfully the Leviticus Diet removes the need for thought on these things.)
All right, so this plan wouldn't actually save any money. It wouldn't suddenly give poor Americans more access to healthier choices. It won't actually accomplish anything at all, since ...
State lawmakers don't actually have the power to limit SNAP purchases; the bill would direct the state government to ask the U.S. Department of Agriculture for a waiver from federal program rules. Other states that have sought such waivers haven't gotten them.
But some group of the usual conservative blowhards woke up one morning, stared at themselves in their bathroom mirrors, and said
you know what we really ought to do today? Let's shame poor people for fun. Again. Because some guy once saw a Fox News pundit claiming that poor people were all going out and buying crab legs and lobster and filet mignon, those lucky, lucky impoverished bastards, and we're basing all our new laws these days on whatever the stupidest person in any given room is willing to believe. We're willing to bar poor Americans from eating shellfish, but we're not willing to pass even a single law barring state lawmakers from watching
Fox & Friends? I can offer a very good guess on which one of those would actually save the government money.
As the real capper to all of this, a lot of Wisconsin business folks are cheesed about this bill because actually putting the new dietary restrictions in place would severely limit SNAP purchases of ... Wisconsin cheese. And a whole mess of other Wisconsin-produced dairy products. Yep, Wisconsin Republicans really managed to shoot the moon on this one.