Tag: welfare

Pentagon to Troops: If We’re Not Paying You Enough to Feed Yourselves, Apply for Welfare

The U.S. army is recommending soldiers apply for SNAP benefits, also known as food stamps, to help cover their rising costs from inflation.

The U.S. Army cites the higher prices on a range of goods because of inflation in its recently released official guidance.

“With inflation affecting everything from gas prices to groceries to rent, some Soldiers and their families are finding it harder to get by on the budgets they’ve set and used before,” the guidance written by Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael A. Grinston reads.

“Soldiers of all ranks can seek guidance, assistance, and advice through the Army’s Financial Readiness Program.”

The guidance points soldiers to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and links them to the federal welfare program’s website.

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States Are Hoarding $5.2 Billion in Welfare Funds Even as the Need for Aid Grows

When Congress passed welfare reform in 1996, states were given more autonomy over how they could use federal funding for aid to the poor. They could demand welfare recipients find work before receiving cash assistance. They could also use their federal “block grants” to fund employment and parenting courses or to subsidize childcare.

Twenty-five years later, however, states are using this freedom to do nothing at all with large sums of the money.

According to recently released federal data, states are sitting on $5.2 billion in unspent funds from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, or TANF. Nearly $700 million was added to the total during the 2019 and 2020 fiscal years, with Hawaii, Tennessee and Maine hoarding the most cash per person living at or below the federal poverty line.

States have held on to more of this welfare money amid rising poverty. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 16.1% of children under age 18 lived in poverty in 2020, up from 14.4% the year before. The poverty rate also ticked up for people aged 18 to 64, from 9.4% to 10.4%. As unused TANF dollars have accumulated, applications to the cash assistance program have waned, though it’s not for a lack of need, say experts and people who have applied to the program.

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Influential neo-Nazi eats at soup kitchens, lives in government housing

A fan of Charles Manson and follower of Hitler, James Mason published essays in the 1980s that now act as the inspiration for a militant neo-Nazi group linked to multiple murders in the U.S.

“Revolutionary discipline must mean that WE will be the single survivor in a war against the System,” Mason wrote in 1985. “A TOTAL WAR against the System.”

But nowadays, Mason isn’t waging war with the system. He is, in fact, dependent on it.

The 67-year-old white supremacist lives in a government subsidized apartment in Denver and eats at soup kitchens.

In a brief interview last week, a few days after he was spotted picking up a meal at a city-run center for “homeless and hungry seniors,” Mason said he sees no contradiction between his writings and his lifestyle.

“Guerilla warfare, man. Guerilla warfare,” Mason told NBC’s Denver affiliate KUSA. “You’ve gotta take what you have to get what you need.”

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