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.
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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.
The BLM uprisings happened when a million people were dying of COVID.
This shit does spontaneously occur, the problem is that it also burns out just as fast. Then reaction seizes on the moment and uses it to advance their agenda, because they are organized. “Defund the police” went from a spontaneous slogan by people harmed by police to a rallying cry for increasing funding to police and removing DAs/judges that didn’t send children to adult prison.
Even that started as “abolish the police.” That was too radical, so they went with “defund the police.” That, too, was too radical, and turned into “fund them more, but include sensitivity training.” The sensitivity training was not included; too radical.
BLM uprisings happened because we got another high profile martyr. Not because of covid, in spite of it.
There’s hundreds of of martyrs a year in the US. I think it was the pressure cooker of COVID that helped push what would have just been yet another police murder into action.
Regardless, it was spontaneous.
They’re likely attempting to create a further mass culling of the poor and relying on Americans’ tendancy to fight each other for scraps rather than organize a legitimately leftist, continuous resistance against the parasite class that isn’t picked apart by liberal scum. Due to the U.S.’ glorification of every man for himself, dog eat dog, moralist, theivery culture. It’ll be very interesting if things don’t go entirely that way.