cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/5335
As the Trump administration continued its illegal freeze on food assistance, the US Department of Agriculture sent a warning to grocery stores not to provide discounts to the more than 42 million Americans affected.
Several grocery chains and food delivery apps have announced in recent days that they would provide substantial discounts to those whose Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits have been delayed. More than 1 in 8 Americans rely on the program, and 39% of them are children.
But on Sunday, Catherine Rampell, a reporter at the Washington Post published an email from the USDA that was sent to grocery stores around the country, telling them they were prohibited from offering special discounts to those at greater risk of food insecurity due to the cuts.
“You must offer eligible foods at the same prices and on the same terms and conditions to SNAP-EBT customers as other customers, except that sales tax cannot be charged on SNAP purchases,” the email said. “You cannot treat SNAP-EBT customers differently from any other customer. Offering discounts or services only to SNAP-eligible customers is a SNAP violation unless you have a SNAP equal treatment waiver.”
The email referred to SNAP’s “Equal Treatment Rule,” which prohibits stores from discriminating against SNAP recipients by charging them higher prices or treating them more favorably than other customers by offering them specialized sales or incentives.
Rampell said she was “aware of at least two stores that had offered struggling customers a discount, then withdrew it after receiving this email.”
She added that it was “understandable why grocery stores might be scared off” because “a store caught violating the prohibition could be denied the ability to accept SNAP benefits in the future. In low-income areas where the SNAP shutdown will have the biggest impact, getting thrown off SNAP could mean a store is no longer financially viable.”
While the rule prohibits special treatment in either direction, legal analyst Jeffrey Evan Gold argues that it was a “perverted interpretation of a rule that stops grocers from price gouging SNAP recipients… charging them more when they use food stamps.”
The government also notably allows retailers to request waivers for programs that incentivize SNAP recipients to purchase healthy food.
— (@)
Others pointed out that SNAP is currently not paying out to Americans because President Donald Trump is defying multiple federal court rulings issued Friday, requiring him to tap a $6 billion contingency fund to ensure benefit payments go out. Both courts, in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, have said his administration’s refusal to pay out benefits is against the law.
One labor movement lawyer summed up the administration’s position on social media: “Can’t follow the law when a judge says fund the program, but have to follow the rules exactly when they say don’t help poor people afford food.”
From Common Dreams via This RSS Feed.
Horrendous. But also telling that they’re not in the least afraid of going this far.
Either:
they’re deluded enough to think that people on SNAP are going to turn their ire on Democrats
they think Americans are so propagandized and beaten down with atomization, individualism, the protestant work ethic and other myths and bullshit that nothing will come of this so why not kill off some poors
they believe this will lead to riots and such and desperately want that and believe they can control it and use it to their own ends
or I suppose there could be 4) which they think is this will force the traditionally spineless Democrats into capitulating by putting more pain on people which I guess fair enough, not a bad bet even if it is an awful angle to have to stand behind with your brand flag waving.
Also bad on the supposed opposition (Democrats) for not noticing how this was written and could be interpreted to do just this and not just rewriting it in some sort of rider bill 10 years ago when they had huge majorities. “treating them more favorably than other customers by offering them specialized sales or incentives” What is the point of this even? Oh I know. They wanted it in there because the frothing mass of poor hating people in this country which includes many who vote Democratic would be scandalized and enraged to see the “moochers” on food stamps getting special deals and great pricing and being “rewarded” for being poor so in a pure optics move that makes sense only in the diseased context of the American civil religion and the Protestant work ethic they did this to avoid the Republicans hammering on about it.
#3
Any push to make a media spectacle out of any level shoplifting will be propagandized as “a riot” or “looting” or “organized shoplifting” on a mass scale. No actual riots or organized looting needs to actually happen.
Yeah, if two people shoplift in a single day from the same store it’s going to be classified as a riot and looting.
its 2