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Sunday, September 08, 2019

Money. Think of how much good would come if $394.5 million went to the poor.

OpenSecrets.org - Not to the poor, but to the DC machine. There has to be a better way than elections being for sale.

That slug of money could go to food stamps [a/k/a SNAP assistance] so that all those rural poor Trump voters reported by the Farm Bureau could get more to feed hungry offspring.


The pattern is clear, rural farmers get screwed by Trump's trade war, while the rural poor are about to get screwed worse by Trump budget proposals and work requirements when there is no rural work -
- and THEY LOVE HIM.

May we make that the past tense, like instinct of kittens whose eyes open. There is a hint of, perhaps, an awakening.

___________UPDATE__________
Hat tip to Bluestem Prairie, for a related but not greatly overlapping post, "In MN & ND, proposed USDA SNAP rule could cause 15 & 17 percent drop in food stamp users." With North Dakota a focus of that post, the question of the urban-rural divide came to mind, with a suspicion that rural poor as well as farmers in a new tariff world, exist, and are suffering. A quick web look disclosed the Farm Bureau item proving that is so, and yet Trump drew rural voters in 2016 - before the tariff impact.

If Trump's rural base awakens, there could be a greater movement toward progressive norms than otherwise with Bernie and Warren supporters seeming to be predominantly young urban job seekers or job holders at unfairly low wages and high debt burdens. Door to door organizing is easier in dense urban housing, so getting the message to the rural sufferers of Trumpmania is the challenge. The "I got mine, thank Jesus" suburb dwellers might be a written off loss, but that has been a constant for years with Republican and Republican-lite being the steady serving. Hopefully, the party elders may compromise, although Schumer seems a lost cause - and gee, check the links added to the current top sidebar item, for a hint of why Republican-lite is "leadership's" Koolaid flavor.

_________FURTHER UPDATE__________
Facts are not better than theories, they are the framework to test theories against. For those interested the USDA publishes SNAP data by Congressional District, and always remember the origin of food supplementation policy was to handle ag surpluses, not to be decent to the poor and hungry, that being the clear secondary purpose. Primarily it is to aid farming people. (Or am I wrong? Do your own web based fact-finding to see.)