Food Stamps In Crosshairs Of Republicans' Plan To Save Military
Source: Huffington Post
WASHINGTON -- The latest Republican plan to reconcile the budget and preserve defense spending extracts even deeper cuts from programs to help the poor and Americans still reeling from the recession.
Although spending levels for the budget were set in the Budget Control Act passed last summer in the deal to raise the nation's debt limit, Republicans are pushing ahead with another plan that cuts more while trying to prevent the beginning of $600 billion in cuts over 10 years to the growth of the defense budget.
They are doing so because the Super Committee, which was supposed to find $1.2 trillion in cuts on which everyone could agree, failed, leaving the slashing up to a pre-agreed sequestration plan that extracts half the savings from the military.
Unless Congress acts, the sequestration begins at the start of 2013. Democrats in the Senate are arguing that the Budget Control Act counts as a budget, and therefore they won't take up debate on a spending plan for 2013, much less address Rep. Paul Ryan's House budget resolution.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/27/food-stamps-military-republican-budget_n_1457020.html?ref=politics
Let me see if I got this straight: cutting spending on domestic programs that benefit the poor and middle class, while increasing spending on your Republican military industrial complex, is "less government"? Riiight. I can see the Republicans are really concerned about the "deficit" *sarcasm*.
oilpro2
(80 posts)because a considerable number military recruits were undernourished.
So let's go back to those days, when 17-18 year olds are not well fed and healthy!!!
Makes sense only in a parallel universe.
DocMac
(1,628 posts)"because a considerable number military recruits were undernourished."
Are you talking about the Revolutionary War or WWI?
A link would be cool too.
oilpro2
(80 posts)http://oregonhunger.org/history-food-stamps-and-snap
I'm sure you will find much more if you are really that curious.
Lifelong Protester
(8,421 posts)and I wonder if those Repubs who want to do this know how many military families rely on assistance?
DocMac
(1,628 posts)It was history that I wasn't aware of.
My initial thought was that you were talking about the military. Even if the recruits were malnurished, they wouldn't be by the end of bootcamp.
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)by even the best boot camp chow lines.
There are wide-ranging effects on opportunities for learning and development, completely dependent on nutrition, that can NEVER be re-addressed once they are missed. It also leads to higher rates of disease and earlier death later in life.
It's one of the best investments we ever made. We should be arguing with the Repugnants about making adult education free for everyone instead of this stupidity.
happyslug
(14,779 posts)During WWII, out of 17 Million pool of Draft age men, 3 million were ruled not physical fit to be drafted (please Note the 3 million did NOT include the "limited service personnel," who did not fully meet the Army's specifications but could be used for some duties, that was a different class of draftees):
http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwii/PreventiveMedicine/Chap1.html
I like the following paragraphs is that report:
The examiner's rigid or liberal interpretation of existing standards, shifting with the need to fill a quota, in effect caused these to fluctuate. The most drastic changes in the regulations themselves were those relating to visual acuity and dental requirements. The first MR 1-9 in August 1940 set the minimum dental requirements at a total of 6 masticating teeth and 6 incisor teeth properly opposed. As soon as the first statistics were available, it was discovered that failure to meet these requirements had resulted in rejection of approximately 9 percent of those examined. If that standard had been maintained, it has been estimated that by the end of 1943 nearly 1,000,000 men who were inducted under the liberalized dental standards would have been lost to the service.11 Dental requirements were revised downward, and an extensive reparative program by the Dental Corps initiated, until in October 1942 a man completely edentulous could be inducted if his condition was corrected or correctable by dentures.12
In 1940 minimum visual acuity for general service was set at 20/100 in each eye without glasses, if correctable to 20/40 bilaterally. This was the second most important cause for rejection, and these requirements were progressively lowered. The lowest visual acuity requirements were reached in April 1944,13 when 20/200 in each eye, or 20/100 in one eye and 20/400 in the second eye (if correctable to 20/40 in each eye, 20/30 in the right and 20/70 in the left, or 20/20 in the right and 20/400 in the left), was sufficient for general
Remember we are talking of 18-28 year olds 9% did not have more then 12 teeth!!!!!!!
20/200!!!! that makes you legally BLIND, unless correctable. 20/40 is still the lowest limit you can have and GET A DRIVER"S LICENSE In all the states that I know of.
Remember this is the FIRST LINE TROOPS NOT the Second line nor the 4f draftees
While going through the US Army Medical Department, Office of Medical history I found the following interesting facts:
During WWI 27% of draftees were rejected for Physical problems (Please remember until August 1918, you had to be over age 21 to be drafted, in August the US Congress reduced it to age 18):
http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/US_Army_1917_Draft_Information
8.8% of all Draftees during WWII was rejected for Dental reason (Lack of at least 12 teeth).
http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwii/dental/ch6.htm
Total medical rejects was 18-20% from 1958-1961:
http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/AnnualReportoftheSG1961/table8.pdf
AllyCat
(16,260 posts)AnneD
(15,774 posts)How is this going to help them.
That is one of those dirty little secrets they don't tell you about being in the military. When you are just starting out, your family qualifies for food stamps the pay is so bad.
burrowowl
(17,655 posts)Maybe feed the soldiers but not their families?!
Repukes are not logical except for give more money to the owners of military businesses.
usrname
(398 posts)you know that. It's to pay for private contractors to feed the soldiers at 10x the cost that it used to be when soldiers fed themselves.
That money is getting stolen by those in the MIC.
The soldiers are just as neglected as their families are.
Javaman
(62,534 posts)in other words they serve the MIC and not the soldiers.
atreides1
(16,106 posts)The only thing they want save are the defense contractors, because the military doesn't give these evil f**ks millions in campaign donations(bribes), defense contractors do!
raouldukelives
(5,178 posts)They love to talk about how government shouldn't create jobs. I'm not sure I can even begin to fathom the amount of government created jobs through the DOD, DHS & the MIC. From the smallest military ranks to the largest defense contractors.
At least feeding people is something my conscience allows me to feel good about it. Killing people for the benefit of corporations to exploit & use lands is about as far from sowing good seeds as one can get. At least it is in my leftist weirdo handbook, the New Testament. Not that they would ever put any weight behind what it says. That kind of stuff is bad for profits.
shawn703
(2,702 posts)Just have a prime time address to the nation and play the part of a great compromiser trying to work with both parties:
"On one hand we have the Democrats trying to save the programs for the poor and needy, and on the other we have the Republicans trying to save the military from across the board cuts. In the spirit of bipartisanship, I propose we save both the programs for the poor and needy AND the military's budget. We can do this by listening to the American people who say overwhelmingly that the rich should pay their fair share. I call on both parties to put aside their differences and work together to fix our budget problems the way the American people say we should do it. After all, it's unAmerican to not listen to the people who elected us."
DocMac
(1,628 posts)And this DHS department dismantled. I don't know what the numbers would be, but it has to be a shit load.
This is the first leaking hole I would plug up. They don't do squat but harass handicapped and terrorize children. They are the enforcement arm of the police state.
DocMac
(1,628 posts)even mention cuts to something like DHS or TSA. I might pass out from the shock.
I mean, what good is all this security if people can't eat or pay their bills? It just seems like social plans are all they can go after. It's sickening.
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)sinkingfeeling
(51,493 posts)lack of integrity of the House Republicans. They're refusing to honor their agreement.
louis-t
(23,310 posts)makes money on.
nobodyspecial
(2,286 posts)while people in that country go hungry and starve? Sure sounds like the same policy.
And, since so many relying on aid for food stamps are children, I guess we should start putting them back to work. I hear they are well-suited for janitorial work.
Daniel537
(1,560 posts)I guess that's one thing the GOPers like about the NoKos. Let them eat ballistic missiles!
RC
(25,592 posts)Apparently they don't send the memos out as they used to.
4th law of robotics
(6,801 posts)where the author tries to connect the expansion of government, universal democracy, and the social welfare state to the increasingly broad support necessary for warfare (as it progressed from knights who could basically arm themselves to gunpowder armies that required a centralized state to raise taxes, mass levies, and ultimately to industrialization that included every able bodied individual in the war effort).
Basically he makes a very good case for the expansions of rights and social services for any group either concurrently or shortly following that group becoming essential to the war effort.
So at first that meant noblemen received all the attention of the state. Then later draft-age males. Then women and minorities and so on as they were needed in the factories.
I'm representing it poorly but it's a good read and he makes some valid points.
And I keep thinking: if all the rights/privileged we enjoy now are an offshoot of our value in supporting the military what happens when we finally take the last human out of the process? An automated industrial base churning out automated weapons doesn't require a healthy or happy population to support it.
We won't get skynet but we'll be gradually sidelined as irrelevant and archaic.
madrchsod
(58,162 posts)nanabugg
(2,198 posts)underpants
(183,007 posts)when REpubs are Prez there are no military on food stamps obviously
sarcasmo
(23,968 posts)lovuian
(19,362 posts)the food stamps are to feed the families of which women are the head of households
tabasco
(22,974 posts)There are just a lot of evil people in the world.
stillwaiting
(3,795 posts)...of security/social safety net.
In that way, many of us will simply have to join their military to obtain any form of financial security for ourselves and our family (much less quality access to health care for ourselves and our loved ones). I don't see how the outsourcing of so many of our jobs that paid living wages was a bad thing in any way for the multinationals for so many reasons. Of course, the losers are the American people, but the multinationals win and win big.
The multinationals have chosen our country to be their strong man to secure their access and rights to natural resources in countries that are not already puppets to their greed and treachery.
It makes me sick to see what they've done to our military, and I just can't not speak out about what I strongly believe they have done to our armed services. Joining the military today seems to me that you would be joining a force that has a primary intent of securing access to natural resources for multinational corporations by forcefully taking it from foreign people. That is NOT something that I could ever die for (much less kill others for), and I have to speak out against what our military has become.
This does not mean that I don't support our troops. I support them fully. I want them to be safe at home and preparing to defend our country. I hope that one day we can get the corporate powers that be behind our government fully exposed and excised from abusing our military, our national wealth, and foreign peoples' sovereign rights. We could have money for things like food security and access to health care for our citizens. Things would be so much better for all of us (except for the multinationals and the 1% bankers and they can suck it).
underpants
(183,007 posts)and I grew up in Hampton Roads which would not exist without Uncle Sucker money