Food desert? How about brain desert

State social services officials in Louisiana have decided to enact new limits for welfare recipients. No longer will you be able to use your welfare card at lingerie shops, tattoo parlors, nail salons, jewelry stores, video arcades, bail bond companies, cruise ships, psychics, adult-entertainment businesses, nightclubs or bars. Which begs the question, why in the world were you ever able to use your welfare card at these places?

The Louisiana legislature is trying to codify the changes into law. How many other states are allowing our tax dollars to pay for a cruise for some deadbeat? It’s absolutely infuriating.

State officials say there’s only so much they can do about the abuse because the cards can be used at ATMs to get cash. Hello! This is the easiest thing to fix I have ever seen.

The leftists think tanks and advocacy groups do their level best to shroud the obvious but there’s no denying that poor people in this country are the fattest. The liberals claim all sorts of nonsense like “food deserts” and “food insecurity.” The fact of the matter is there’s no excuse for anyone to be food insecure. They hand out EBT cards like candy, especially if you have children. And food deserts? Please. The poorest people live in the cities and there are grocery stores all over the place.

So what’s the answer to why so many poor people are obese? This is the obvious answer the liberals try to keep hidden. People getting free food make poor choices. Now, in all fairness, junk food is generally cheaper because it’s subsidized through the farm bill. Oh, yeah. A lot of the junk food consumed in this country comes from corn, soybeans and wheat, three crops that get huge subsidies from the federal government. Your vegetable farmer gets virtually nothing from the government.

The answer is not to subsidize the vegetable farmer but to stop subsidizing everyone else. If lettuce and carrots were cheaper then, perhaps, more people would buy them but don’t bank on it. A large part of it is taste. Poor people seem to be suckers for junk food. They love it. Heck, I love it but I know it’s not good for me so I limit my intake of it.

And now we’re getting to the crux of the problem. How do you solve obesity among the poor and save the taxpayers a ton of money? 

First, no more cash advances from your welfare or food stamp card. That’ll keep welfare recipients from buying things they don’t need to be buying like beer, cigarettes and lottery tickets. Anything you need to purchase can be bought at stores with the card. 

Second, items need to be coded so that you can only by essentials with the cards. No lobster. No steak. No chips and cookies and soft drinks. You buy hamburger and chicken and fruits and veggies. Did you know that Papa Murphy’s Pizza now accepts EBT cards? And you wonder why poor folks are fat.

If Michelle Obama really cared about the obesity problem she’d be all over this idea but you’ll never hear her advocate limiting the food you can buy with an EBT card. Why? Because that’s how Democrats get re-elected. Why do think the food stamp rolls have exploded since Barack Obama got into office? Yeah, it’s all about keeping that base constituency satisfied. You talk about a riot, take away the junk food from the food stamp crowd and see what happens.

Fat and happy means one thing: Democrat votes. And they’re buying elections with your money.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.

Curing American poverty

The Associated Press recently conducted a study based on all manner of government statistics and national surveys and determined that Americans’ economic security is low compared to prior decades.  They based their determination on how many Americans have either lived below the poverty level, taken government assistance or been unemployed or a combination of the three.  Aside from the government assistance, I’ve been there.  Many of us have.

The point of the study was to try and figure out how to make Americans more economically secure but they sidestepped a major factor.  Many Americans are economically insecure for the very reason that they’re trapped on public assistance.

We hear the president and others complain about a shrinking middle class.  If the middle class is shrinking it’s because some are moving up, not down.  The poverty rate was arrested by LBJ’s Great Society.  After a decade of decline in the poverty rate prior to the big social programs the poverty rate has remained pretty much steady since the mid-‘60s.  It fluctuates a point or two depending on whether or not we’re in a recession but the percentage of people in poverty hovers between 12 and 15 percent.  From 1959 until the Great Society the poverty rate dropped from around 22 percent to 14 percent.  Since then we’ve sort of been locked in a holding pattern.

Before I make this next point I want you to suspend your emotions and think logically.  Poverty, by and large, is the product of bad choices.  Yes, I know there are some exceptions but the vast number of poor people are poor because of the choices they’ve made in life.  Whether or not you’re poor is based largely on whether or not you can find and hold a job.  The recession notwithstanding, many people can’t hold a job either because of their personal habits – i.e.: drugs and/or alcohol – because they don’t show up for work or because of their attitudes while they’re at work.

Plenty of people show up for a job interview ill-prepared, improperly dressed and lacking basic personal hygiene.  These are easy fixes but for reasons unknown some people don’t want to be told what to do.  But a major culprit of cyclical poverty is the very Great Society that was designed to lift people out of it.  You know the drill.  We have people now in third generation dependence because that’s the way they were raised.  Living free of government shackles is not even an option for too many Americans.  It should be.

Conservatives judge success of their policies by how many people are off welfare.  Liberals judge their success by how many people are on it.  Take the food stamp program, for example.  The number of people on food stamps has exploded during the Obama administration and they crow about it.  It’s a national disgrace.  Abuse is rampant and Obama made it even easier to get on the program.  He justified that by saying he needed to do it because of the recession but think about that for a moment.  If there’s a level at which one needs public assistance then hard times will bring more people to that level.  We don’t need to go out to the street to greet them.

We also need to come to terms with the fact that plenty of people are poor and happy.  Elitists love to look down their noses at poor people and assume they can’t be happy unless they surround themselves with the trappings of wealth.

I’m all about showing poor people a way out but first they have to want to go.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning, nationally syndicated talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show.