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Washington Post Despairs: Parents of Toddlers Forced to Choose Between Food and....Tattoos
A lengthy -- 3,500 word -- anguished expose on the front page of Sunday's Washington Post, "Hungering for a new month to begin," about how people in Woonsocket, Rhode Island race to the grocery stores on the first of the month to spend their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payment, yet run out of food long before the month ends, didn't offer a word about President Obama's responsibility for the poor economy.

Deep in it, however, reporter Eli Saslow undermined his case when he sympathetically cited "a series of exhausting, fractional decisions" a couple with two toddlers face over having to choose between food "or the $75 they owed the tattoo parlor."
Except for the tattoo parlor, this is the very definition of poverty. Poverty is not fun. But it must be remembered that the SNAP program is intended to be a supplement, helping the poor eke out their limited funds, not complete support. It sounds like it is doing exactly that.
Saslow failed to explain why the couple, supposedly forced to consider a trip across town to pay 70 cents less for a gallon of milk, decided to get a tattoo (or pay for cell phones) when they can't afford to feed their kids from the presumably inadequate $518 a month SNAP giveaway:

For the past three years, the Ortizes' lives had unfolded in a series of exhausting, fractional decisions. Was it better to eat the string cheese now or to save it? To buy milk for $3.80 nearby or for $3.10 across town? Was it better to pay down the $600 they owed the landlord, or the $110 they owed for their cellphones, or the $75 they owed the tattoo parlor, or the $840 they owed the electric company

Posted by: Beavis 2013-03-20
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=364546