Jeff McDonald of the Union-Tribune staff reported this afternoon on a “plan” that the County Board of Supervisors just today unanimously approved to get more people on food stamps. Hot damn! And it’s a 3 year plan at that, too.
But, whoops, the plan continues to keep home searches and fingerprinting of applicants. Two community groups had pressured the Board to do more. McDonald reported:
Two community groups that conducted a months-long analysis of what clients experience during the application and recertification processes pleaded with supervisors to go beyond the recommendations of senior staff.
Among other things, they want to end home searches and fingerprinting of applicants, add caseworkers to process paperwork and give clients flexibility in selecting a county office to apply for benefits.
These suggestions of improving the process by the community groups were very reasonable. Getting rid of home searches and the insulting fingerprinting would go a long way in smoothing out the process for applicants.
The request for more caseworkers was also very good but untimely. The County just laid off 29 workers earlier for budgetary reasons, 18 of them worked in the food stamp department.
The Board did say that they would listen to recommendations by community groups at another session. And McDonald quoted board Chairwoman Dianne Jacob as declaring:
“I will be going out and doing some site visits and talking to some of the people who are applying and some of the staff to find out how this program is working,”
How wonderful. Jacob has been the Supe most concerned about food stamp fraud, in the federally-funded program.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
If you want to apply for TARP funds (the bailout)- here’s a copy of the application. No fingerprinting. No home searches. Fraud? Who cares about fraud?
(The application is on page 5&6) Anybody care to provide a copy of a food stamp application for comparison?
Food stamps are an economic stimulus. Moody’s reports that every $1 spent on food stamps generates $1.73 in economic activity. Sounds like a good investment. Here’s an analysis of the economic stimulus effects of food stamps from the Times-Standard in Eureka. http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_11971300
What part of economic stimulus does the County not get? Just the part that has to do with the poor.
I just looked at the comments to the article on the Union-Tribune link. Wow! What a pack of hate mongers. Anybody who knows anything about the labor statistics (employment & unemployement numbers, etc.) in capitalist economies knows that full employment is a mythological term. The U.S. govt. calls it “full employment” when ONLY 4% or so of the people who are ACTIVELY looking for work are unemployed (they don’t even count people who give up and stop looking). What that means is that there is always a vastly larger number of people wanting jobs than there are jobs to go around. Solution? Let people starve in the streets?
No. For starters (not the last word at all on solutions) we need to tax the rich more. Much more. Most of their wealth is, bottom line, the result of ripping off the full value of the work their employees do. We need to take a lot of that stolen wealth back and use it to make our society a more human community.
Maybe somebody will jump in on the comments section at the Union-Tribune. Maybe somebody will remind folks that food is a human right.
somebody has to support the UT. and judging from the comments over there it looks like they’re doing a great job of catering to the wingnut crowd.
I had heard some rumors about changes at the County level…unfortunately, it seems like the changes won;t actually assist in getting eligible, poor people food stamps.
Fresh – you are right on, its really scary reading the comments section. so much hate in such a small space!
I’m not completely against this… If that’s what it takes so people won’t abuse programs like food stamps, then it’s okay. I think the SNAP/food stamp program is great, but often it’s being taken advantage of by people who can get by even without these benefits.
when bank loan officers, elected officials and corporate officers for companies like AIG are required to submit to fingerprinting and home searches, i’ll agree that it’s okay for food stamp recipients.
Same old Jacob! We need to implement term limits on these bozos!