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by Brentin Mock, Thursday, May 23 2013, 10:13 AM EST (Reprinted from Color Lines.com)
Yesterday, Sen. Vitter of Louisiana offered up an amendment to permanently drop anyone ever convicted of a violent crime from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). According to Robert Greenstein, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Democrats in the Senate obliged him. The amendment is for a farm bill, which is currently being debated in the Senate.
Says Greenstein:
The amendment would bar from SNAP (food stamps), for life, anyone who was ever convicted of one of a specified list of violent crimes at any time — even if they committed the crime decades ago in their youth and have served their sentence, paid their debt to society, and been a good citizen ever since. In addition, the amendment would mean lower SNAP benefits for their children and other family members.
So, a young man who was convicted of a single crime at age 19 who then reforms and is now elderly, poor, and raising grandchildren would be thrown off SNAP, and his grandchildren’s benefits would be cut. … Democrats accepted it without trying to modify it to address its most ill-considered aspects.
Two-thirds of SNAP recipients are children, elderly or the disabled, and two-fifths of SNAP households live below half the poverty line.
According to Greenstein, if this amendment ends up in the farm bill and passes, it would hit African Americans particularly hard:
Given incarceration patterns in the United States, the amendment would have a skewed racial impact. Poor elderly African Americans convicted of a single crime decades ago by segregated Southern juries would be among those hit.
Sen. Vitter is claiming that his amendment is only aimed at preventing those convicted of violent crimes from obtaining benefits, apparently under the logic that stripping them of what may be their only form of income assistance will lead to less violence
Using the power of Eminent Domain, the city will tear down 1,500 homes in 11 neighborhoods around the city. While most of the homes are abandoned, 80 of them are occupied by home owners or renters.
Everett Whitley has spent the past decade fixing up his home, but within the next year he will be forced to leave and his home will be demolished. His entire block will be a grass field.
“I would like to keep it, but I guess I just have to let it go,” said Whitley.
City officials say the project will take residents out of unsafe conditions, but for some, they say it’s taking them out of the only real home they’ve come to know.
(REPRINTED FROM FOX NEWS mAY 22, 2013)