"The Official Portrait of Miss InDiana"

"The Official Portrait of Miss InDiana"
aka "Miss Victory"

Saturday, November 17, 2012

EBT CARDS: Really Bad Business Model for Human Actualization

Everyone human, with a heart, 
wants free nutrition and health care for the poorest among us.

A just, humane, and enlightened society should ensure that the poor, 
by virtue of being born, 
can eat, have health care, education, and a chance 
to thrive and be given opportunity
to make a creative and fulfilled life.   

The joyful job of an enlightened and free society, 
who enjoys real Liberty, 
is to create Liberty, 
defend Liberty, 
and ensure it continues.

Liberty can mean that we choose to make decisions that raise up the weakest in society toward Actualization. Maslow defined that a person cannot advance toward actualization unless their basic physical needs are met first.  I contend that includes health, along with food, clothing,  and shelter.   Food should equal health via proper nutrition. 

Those among us who cannot afford food should be entitled to taxpayer funded EBT cards to spend on nutrition, right?

But what if our poor were entitled to spend their taxpayer funded EBT cards at gas station convenience stores on the worst foods money can buy at the highest prices charged anywhere? 

What if the foods we are funding with our EBT dollars actually cause diabetes, cancer,  and heart disease and we are funding poisons to the very people we are attempting to save?

What if our welfare tax dollars are buying and promoting illness that we are going to soon have to pay for with socialized healthcare?

Yesterday I interviewed a clerk who works the Speedway gas station on Washington Street about a mile east of the Angie's List campus.  He said people are in there all day long buying candy bars, sodas, chips, and every other 'food' product the store carries with EBT cards.

He made it sound like EBT sales were mostly what was happening at his Speedway store apart from the gas sales.   He told me that people can buy anything in the store with their EBT cards except the hot food. 

How do you feel about our EBT tax funds being spent on a massive amounts of junk food?

How do you feel about knowing our tax dollars buy 'food' which directly causes the expensive life long 'incurable' illnesses our health care tax dollars are now going to have to pay to treat?

The real question is can our society afford to spend its nutrition dollars earmarked for the poor on products that are proven to cause diabetes, cancer, and a whole host of other ailments?

Our inner city poor need first be provided and shown alternate places to spend their EBT dollars before we cut off their junk food. We also need to provide nutrition education.

Then once we have enough easily connectable places for them to shop to get a good value for nutritious food, we need our legislators to define that their credits can only be spent on foods that provide solid and basic nutrition. 

Don't you think junk food and sodas should be luxury, just like it was when we were kids?

As a society, I believe we need to work toward to goal of eliminating junk food purchases on EBT cards.
Doesn't this food look like a much better buy for the taxpayer who wants to help raise up our poor and keep health care costs low?  EBT card holders could afford to buy all of this organic produce for what they spend in a week at the Speedway on premium-plus-priced junk food and corn syrup laden beverages.

Above is part of the produce I brought home on Saturday, which I will juice and cook into meals and eat over the next 10 days.

I want our inner city poor to have access to this nutrition too and believe our community can make it available to the inner city to spend their EBT on.

Our ailments melt away when we consume raw food and "phyto nutrients" (phyto = sun or light)

Our local farmers can eventually provide most of the produce for them,  provided there is support from City Hall, who does not dare get spanked over this issue.

For the premium money our welfare recipients are spending at Speedway and other gas station convenience stores for junk food, we can fund local farmers and save our poor at the same time.

Do our politicians really care about the health of our poor?  Their policy decisions that allow junk food purchases with taxpayer funds (their actions) tell us everything we need to know about their priorities.

The question is do we as as a society want to change the laws that enable our tax dollars to directly poison the most vulnerable and poor among us with unlimited access to high priced junk food?










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