Food Stamps

THE CORBETT administration policy of requiring asset tests for food stamps sounds a lot better than it actually is. Put in place last May, it ostensibly preserves government resources for the neediest while insisting that those with their own resources use them. Seem sensible? In fact, it's a restrictive step, shunned by most states. It needlessly punishes already-struggling low-income citizens, and it won't save Pennsylvania money. But it is consistent. It falls somewhere between stripping basic health care from the working poor in 2011 (a court just ordered Gov. Corbett and the Legislature to restore it)

IT REALLY angers me that there is still hunger in America, knowing that we are more than capable of feeding each and every citizen - but don't. As far as I'm concerned, access to healthy food should be an inalienable right. Don't you agree? Sadly, every day in these United States, 50 million people, including one in four children, are food insecure, which basically means that they're hungry and not sure when or from where their next meal is coming. The recent documentary "A Place at the Table" removes the veil on this hidden-in-plain-sight national disgrace.

Amid the lawn grass and grace of a middle-class patch of Montgomery County, families aren't getting enough to eat. So people crowd each week into the Seeds of Hope food pantry in Dresher, part of Upper Dublin Township, where, outwardly anyway, all seems well. "The need is here," said Jim Galloway, a nondenominational Protestant minister from Abington Township who can find only part-time work and uses the pantry to get by. He was visiting Seeds of Hope to find food for dinner for his 64th birthday that day. "This pantry keeps us afloat.

IF MOST OF US shrugged when sequestration kicked in on Friday morning, chalk it up to the cry-wolf Congress that already took us to the so-called fiscal cliff before retreating. But this time, it's real, and the random hacking cuts that the government is now forcing on itself - $1.2 trillion over 10 years - is the equivalent of using a chain saw to cure a hangnail rather than a more-thoughtful surgery. The cuts won't be fairly distributed - the chain saw will be lopping limbs from defense, immigration, education, housing, and disaster and emergency relief.

Advocates can argue back and forth about whether it's a good idea to tax sugary drinks as a way to fight obesity and reduce the costly diseases that result. But should taxpayers routinely offer those sugary drinks free to millions of people? That's what happens in the federal food stamp program, now known as SNAP, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Clients can spend their aid on sodas, which means the rest of Americans are paying to provide them free. The Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare says SNAP's purpose is to help people "obtain more nutritious diets by increasing their food purchasing power.

ALTOONA, PA. - Authorities say a Pennsylvania sex offender paid another man $50 in food stamps to use his address. Donald Guess, 42, allegedly used the address in Altoona as a mail drop while actually living in nearby Bellwood. The Altoona Mirror reported that Guess is required to register as a sex offender for 10 years following a 2007 indecent assault involving a child. The friend told a district judge on Wednesday that Guess gave him the food stamps to use his address to get mail, but stopped after learning Guess was a sex offender.

A Darby woman who pled guilty to allowing patrons at her food market to exchange food stamps for cash was sentenced today in federal court in Philadelphia to 21 months in prison and ordered to pay $225,000 in restitution. Federal officials said Florence Kingsley, 59, the former owner of Aunty Florence's West African Food Market, would give food-stamp recipients cash in exchange for the stamps and then falsify register transactions. In one instance, officials said, Kingsley purchased $200.23 in Food Stamp benefits and gave the Food Stamp recipient $120 in cash, keeping the remaining monetary value for herself.

NEWARK, N.J. - Mayor Cory Booker and a Twitter follower plan to try to live on food stamps for at least a week, the mayor has announced. The idea stemmed from a back-and-forth conversation between Booker and a woman who goes by the name TwitWit and uses the handle @MWadeNC. They began talking about the idea Sunday night while discussing the role the government should play in funding school breakfast and lunch programs. Booker said Tuesday that he intended to follow through with the plan.

Neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney has said very much during the presidential campaign about helping the poor. There may be a good reason for that: Elections are won by appealing to the middle class, not the impoverished. "Most Americans see themselves as middle class, and that's where the votes are," said Rogers Smith, a University of Pennsylvania political science professor. "Also, the poor don't vote in high numbers. That's why neither candidate is running on what he can do for the poor.

Neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney has said very much during the presidential campaign about helping the poor. There may be a good reason for that: Elections are won by appealing to the middle class, not the impoverished. "Most Americans see themselves as middle class, and that's where the votes are," said Rogers Smith, a University of Pennsylvania political science professor. "Also, the poor don't vote in high numbers. That's why neither candidate is running on what he can do for the poor.