Word: foodes
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...great dismay, no food was served prior to, during, or after the presentation. Maybe at our next meeting...
Just in case we needed more evidence of the hardship inflicted by the country's devastating economic crisis, earlier this month we got it: more Americans than ever are receiving food stamps. The Department of Agriculture reported that 35.1 million people relied on government help to buy groceries in June - 713,000 more than in the previous month and a 22% jump from the previous year's figure. The odds are better than ever that when a shopper wheels a grocery cart to the checkout aisle, Uncle Sam is picking up the tab. (Read about the state of homelessness...
...year history of food stamps in the U.S. began in May 1939, when unemployed factory worker Mabel McFiggin collected stamps to buy surplus butter, eggs and prunes in Rochester, N.Y. McFiggin was the first person to take advantage of the experimental program, designed to improve on Depression-era commodity-distribution systems developed to aid the needy and unload surplus wheat and other products bought by the government to support farm prices. Food stamps originally came in two colors: recipients bought orange stamps, which could be used for any kind of food, and they were given half that amount in free...
Advocates for the poor worked to revive the program over the following years. In 1959 - 50 years ago this month - Democratic Representative Lenore Sullivan of Missouri successfully championed a legislative amendment to launch a pilot food-stamp program to be run by the Agriculture Department. While the Eisenhower Administration showed little interest in the idea, President Kennedy's election the following year marked a major turning point: moved by the abject poverty he witnessed on the campaign trail in West Virginia, Kennedy authorized a three-year food-stamp program beginning in 1961. Following in McFiggin's footsteps...
...major change to the program came in 1977, when Congress stopped requiring payment for food stamps and distributed them to all recipients for free (the price had steadily decreased over time, until it represented just a fraction of the face value). The move dismayed a number of observers, who had supported the program as a means to help the poor help themselves, not as a direct government handout (the Agriculture Department had insisted on selling food stamps for fear of undermining the dignity of recipients). The policy created a backlash - some middle-class shoppers indignantly complained that food-stamp users...