Food stamps: Taking what little we give

I'm in the food-raising business.   What I produce feeds people in my community, and honestly, even though I try hard to keep the cost down, I'm not the cheapest food option.

Price and food are something I think about quite a bit.  So I'm reading a local newspaper article about food stamps being reduced, and the comments are just plain vicious; accusations of fraud, and lazy poor people, and all sorts of just plain meanness.  Outright cruelty.  

Folks, think back about your interactions with people, and when you were impressed with someone.  I'm going to guess that at least some of those interactions are where someone was generous to you.  Gave you better measure than you expected; gave you something unexpected, went over the top for you for little or no gain on their part.  

And I sure hope that you thanked those folks, because they deserved it -- but realize that there is a virtue in doing the right thing even if you don't get thanked for it.  There's even a word for it in hebrew:  Mitzvah

"...In its secondary meaning, Hebrew mitzvah, as with English "commandment," refers to a moral deed performed as a religious duty. As such, the term mitzvah has also come to express an act of human kindness. The tertiary meaning of mitzvah also refers to the fulfillment of a mitzvah. ..."

The MAXIMUM food stamp benefit per person is $133/month, or $4.43 a day.  Did you know that?

Lets imagine that ALL food stamp recipients were fraudulent.  Every single person getting food stamps is doing so illegally.  Would that really be so bad?  

here's why I'm saying that:  For the cost of a single bomb dropped in afganistan we could provide food stamps to 10,000 people.  For the cost of a single month in afganistan we could provide food stamps to the ENTIRE US POPULATION for a YEAR!  Don't get me started about oil company subsidies, or that Apple (the smartphone company) paid either zero taxes on billions of dollars of income or very, very little.  Like 2%.  

And if by chance some child didn't go hungry, or some working poor person was able to buy themselves a chocolate milk and an apple...  are we as a country so poor that we'd begrudge them that?   Look, if you're earning minimum wage somewhere, brother have a cookie on me.  Honestly.  I'm right there for that.  This is my mitzvah; my tax dollars going to feed people, and give them something that their employer didn't.  That their family didn't.  That they wouldn't get any other way, because, honestly, most of these folks are scrabbling as hard as they know how, and if it's fraud, well so be it.  

Most people who get food stamps are living an existance that most of us cannot imagine.  They probably don't read this blog because an internet connection is a luxury that they don't have, much less a smartphone.  

Take a minute and figure out how far that $4.43 would go for you today.  And think about America, one of the richest countries on earth, were we begrudge even that little tiny bit of government/institutional generosity.  

Folks, lets make america somewhere where we are kind to our least, our smallest, our poorest, and our lazy.

"The quality of mercy is not strained.It droppeth as the gentle rain from heavenUpon the place beneath. It is twice blessed:It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.