The Government Makes It Harder for the Formerly Incarcerated to Be Good Citizens
Altimont owns Carmen’s Corner Store in Hagerstown, Maryland, a community where around 20 percent of people rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to buy their groceries. But a federal agency decided that Altimont can never accept SNAP as a form of payment at Carmen’s.
That decision isn’t because Altimont has done anything wrong as a business owner, but rather because of unrelated crimes from 2004, for which he’s already served his time.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) permanently bans anyone with drug, alcohol, tobacco, or firearms convictions from participating in the SNAP program—a harsher punishment than the agency dishes out to those who have actually defrauded the program. That’s not just irrational, it’s also unconstitutional, which is why Altimont teamed up with our organization, the Institute for Justice (IJ), to file a federal lawsuit against the agency on Tuesday.
Tell us more about how you don't know the first fucking thing about what it's like to be poor.
He said in another comment that he was poor, and then he went to college... dude doesn't have a clue.
Im poor and went to college. Most of the people in college seem to be poor. I know very poor kids who got full scholarships. I know people deeply in debt from college.
I'm just saying one does not preclude the other.
There's a vast difference between living on a budget and being so poor that loans aren't enough, you didn't finish high school because the family had to eat, and scholarships are laughable for most people.
Eating ramen to afford your on campus housing is not being poor.
Right. These people don't know about loans. Or grants, or paying as you go. I was poor the while way thru college. One night I ate uncooked stuffing for dinner. Lol. It sucked. I lived off of the dollar store and 1 dollar bag of egg noodles, 1 dollar can of spaghetti sauce and butter and salt. Or ghetto pizza (saltines, 1 dab of spaghetti sauce per, sprinkle cheese onto, microwave)