Cheese Whiz, Wisconsin

The US economy was destroyed for many of us in 2008. Since then, the jobs being created are low wage service jobs mostly. Poverty is on the rise, as are homelessness, and hunger.

That could only mean one thing to our right wing brethren - it's time to demonize the poor!

All over the country we've seen bills filed in state legislatures, attempting to tell food stamp recipients what they can and cannot eat. (Yeah, I know that SNAP is the supplemental nutrition assistance program, which is the formal name for food stamps. Everyone still calls them food stamps.) This is all based on mythology. Once upon a time some surfer dude in California announced he was buying lobster and steak with food stamps. He singlehandedly turned lobster into the new Welfare Cadillac. Then there are the stories we all hear, from indignant tax payers who have seen "those people" with a shopping cart FULL of soda and chips. Or steaks. Or ____ fill in the blank. EVERYONE has seen "those people." They have brand new iPhones, they have expensive purses, they have ......something other than sackcloth and ashes. 

It's eerily reminiscent of testimony I've heard at the NH House on voter fraud. Dozens of people swear they've seen a busload of "people from Massachusetts" go in to a NH polling place to vote. None of them have a photo or a license plate number for the bus. None of them went inside to speak to the officer on duty or the town moderator. But they saw it! They know! Them liebruls are coming to steal our elections!  I'm not sure how they square that with the outcome of our last election.

The average taxpayer spends about $36 of their federal tax dollars to support the food stamp program for a year.

The average taxpayer contributes $3,174 to military/war spending during that same year. The Pentagon can't pass an audit. The Pentagon can't account for at least $3 trillion. The Dept. of Homeland Security has never been audited either. Waste and fraud is epic.  Fraud in the food stamp program is about 1%.

Anyone who is more pissed off about food stamps than the outrageous defense budget is not paying attention.  Anyone who is more pissed off about food stamps than the defense budget is mad about the wrong things. 

Governor LeRamPage of Maine wants to dictate food choices to Mainers who receive SNAP benefits. He wants to ensure that those moochers can't buy prepared foods. Like pickles. Or spaghetti sauce. Easier than trying to bring jobs to Maine, I guess. 

Then there's Wisconsin, where Republican Rob Brooks wants to make sure the poors aren't eating shellfish. This guy has never seen shrimp on sale, one assumes. In fact, one further assumes he's never done his own shopping. His legislation even dictates cheese consumption. In Wisconsin. From the Chippewa Herald:

Rep. Andy Jorgensen, D-Milton, said the bill holds more questions than answers about rationale and implementation. 
To illustrate Democrats' opposition, Rep. Evan Goyke, D-Milwaukee, held a platter of four Wisconsin cheeses.
All four were cheddar. One was shredded and three were in block form. Three displayed flags that said "GOP Prohibited." One flag said "GOP Approved."
The approved cheese was a block of mild cheddar. Two sharp cheddars — one shredded and one block — were not approved. One mild cheddar was not approved because it was too large, Goyke said.
"The stated goals of this bill are nutrition and fraud," said Rep. Mark Spreitzer, D-Beloit. "When you look at something like this cheese plate, there's no evidence of sharp cheddar fraud. People are not buying sharp cheddar in order to defraud FoodShare, and there's no nutritional difference. So if those are the stated goals, the bill is not accomplishing either."

As you might expect, there's some pushback:

A coalition of businesses and associations in the food and beverage industry are opposing the bill. A memo to lawmakers from groups including the Wisconsin Cheesemakers Association, Wisconsin Agri-Business Association, Grocery Manufacturers Association, Kwik Trip, Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers and Wisconsin State Cranberry Association says the bill would harm their businesses, "dramatically increase government power" and place checkout clerks in a difficult position.

Cheese whiz, Wisconsin. This idea is no gouda. Only a muenster would pass this kind of legislation. 

Tanks for the Memories

Last year it was Keene. This year it’s Concord, trying to get a grant for over $250,000 from the Dept. of Homeland Security to buy a LENCO BearCat G3, an armored police vehicle (often called a “tank”). The BearCat could be used in the case of terrorist activity, including chemical weapons and gases, as well as weapons.

LENCO is, thanks to the Dept. of Homeland Security, the leading purveyor of armored vehicles in the US. The huge grants given out by the Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) to buy these vehicles have put LENCO firmly on the world map as a contractor.  Defense contractors that have been scoring big taxpayer dollars from the Pentagon are now trying to move into the lucrative market of arming police forces. We’ve seen an increase in the militarization of the police since 9/11. Vast sums of “homeland security” money have gone to  potential terrorist targets like Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.

Keene received a grant for $285,933 to purchase the BearCat. Keene has a population of about 23,000. It’s not exactly a hotbed of criminal activity. There have been about 2 murders in the last decade. Why did the police need a $300,000 armored vehicle? They didn’t. But they could have one, and that’s the difference. The money is there, and police love shiny new toys more than just about anything. That’s why the war on drugs is still being funded, not because it’s a success, but because police departments rely on the funds they get to perpetuate it.

The increasing militarization of police should be of concern to us all. When the Boston PD broke up the Boston Occupy encampment, they had a sound cannon with them. The LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device) can produce sounds that induce pain, and can result in permanent auditory damage. The LRAD is commonly known as a sound cannon. They’ve been used by the US military against Somali pirates. US police departments have used them to attack non-violent protestors. The sound cannon brought to the Boston Occupy encampment wasn’t used on the unarmed, nonviolent protestors. Not that day, anyhow. In 2011, an LRAD was used when the Oakland police busted up the Oakland Occupy encampment. One was used against Occupy Wall St. protestors. An LRAD was used during a NATO march in Chicago in 2012. A portable LRAD was used on nonviolent protestors this year in the capitol building in Madison, WI. Police across the country are responding with increasing violence to non-violent protests.

The widespread use of the oxymoronically named Free Speech Zones during the Bush administration was the first sign that our Constitutional rights to peaceably assemble were under attack. Anti-war protestors were put in these zones, to keep them from getting media attention. Political protestors were kept out of the view of the media and visiting dignitaries. The Bushistas were desperate to sanitize the media viewpoint for their protection.

The ginning up of fear around terrorism has been steady and constant since 9/11. That manipulation translates into the bulk of our tax dollars being spent on defense and homeland security. It’s also worth pointing out that the Dept. of Defense and the Dept. of Homeland Security are the only cabinet level agencies that cannot pass an audit. We the people have no way of knowing where our money is going, or what it’s being used to do in our name.

Meanwhile, we’re being told that we have to cut food stamps and Social Security because “we’re broke.” Yet we aren’t too broke to buy tanks for small town police departments. Funny how we never hear the conservatives who cry about food stamps saying a word about shoveling money at defense contractors. We can afford weapons. We just can’t afford poor people. A mindset that only serves to increase the population of impoverished US citizens.

Does the Concord PD need a BearCat? About as much as Keene did. The grant will cover the price of the vehicle, but the Concord taxpayers will be the ones paying for the care and feeding of the tank. A friend in Keene tells me that the Keene Bearcat has never been out. Various suggestions have been made at City Council meetings about what to do with it, including using it as a planter in Central Square. Given the trouble that the meter readers in Keene are having with harassment by the Free Keene branch of the Free State Project, perhaps the meter readers could use while they work.

That leads us to the second part of the story. Chief Duval of the Concord PD cited groups like Sovereign Citizens, NH Occupy, and the Free State Project as potential agents of domestic terrorism. The Sovereign Citizens movement does have a history of racism and violence. Occupy does not. Occupy was/is a very intentionally non-violent movement. Occupy NH fell apart because it was co-opted by members of the Free State Project, people who insisted on wearing guns to meetings and events. There were peaceful Occupiers who were uncomfortable with this, but the FSP’ers weren’t willing to leave their strap-ons at home, because FREEDUMB. They have the “right” and that’s all that matters. Their rights always trump those of others. The group splintered into the guns and gun nots and that was the end of that. Citing Occupy as a group with domestic terrorist potential is completely wrongheaded. If Chief Duval can come up with an act of violence perpetuated by a NH Occupy group, I’d be interested to hear about it.

Of course the same is true of the Free State Project. They haven’t engaged in any acts of domestic terrorism, either. They are an armed group of insurgents moving in with the intention of taking over our state – but so far they haven’t hurt anyone. They openly disdain our laws and our courts, and they harass the police whenever possible, but again, so far they haven’t hurt anyone.  By naming them on the grant application, Chief Duval has given them the greatest gift possible - the opportunity to do what they love best: crying victim.  The story of the tank is now all about the Free Staters. The wasteful use of our tax dollars, the outrageous amounts of money DHS appears to have to give away, the skewed priorities that this spending reveals are all going to be obscured by the ceaseless whining of the FSP.

BearCat fever hasn’t spread to the North Country yet. Who will be the first? Chatham? Albany? I’m pinning my hopes on Hart’s Location.



© sbruce 2013  Published as a regular biweekly column in the Conway Daily Sun newspaper.