Kasich Grants Food Stamps to Whites, Denies Them to Minorities

2seaoat wrote:It could be discrimination.  It might be a number of other reasons we are unaware, but it certainly does not appear to be by accident.

Ohioans will see a half-billion-dollar tax cut proposed when Gov. John Kasich unveils his two-year state budget proposal on Monday.

The Republican governor rolled out the first piece of his plan yesterday: eliminating state income taxes for 1 million small businesses, spurring them to reinvest and possibly create jobs, while also reducing income taxes for 3 million low-income and middle-class families.

And he wants the working poor to hang onto some state-subsidized child-care benefits longer instead of having them completely cut off as families make more money.

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While most of Kasich’s plan remains under wraps, it is expected to be touted as “tax reform” that raises some taxes while lowering the income tax in order to get to the net $500 million decrease. The income tax already has been chopped by about $3 billion since Kasich has been in office.

Kasich’s sneak peek was embraced yesterday by those working to assist the poor.

Two standing ovations, and applause along the way, greeted the governor as he burnished his compassionate credo in remarks before the Ohio Association of Community Action Agencies’ winter conference.

“He means what he says,” said Phil Cole, executive director of the group. “He’s putting people first. The focus is on people, and I like that shift.”

The tax cuts for businesses and families would total nearly $1.1 billion over two years. Kasich did not say yesterday which taxes would be increased to offset those savings.But Scott Milburn, the governor’s communication director, said Kasich would seek an increase in the cigarette tax. Advocates have suggested a jump of $1 per pack. Higher oil-and-gas drilling taxes and other increases also are likely to emerge.

The administration also is touting savings through efficiency, such as a 10 percent reduction in the state payroll in the past four years, as well as extra revenue from a growing state economy.

Small businesses with less than $2 million in annual gross receipts would pay no income taxes, and an increase in personal income-tax exemptions would leave many of the working poor tax-free, Kasich said.

Most of the governor’s remarks, built atop his expansion of Medicaid to cover more than 450,000 additional low-income Ohioans, centered on public assistance and jobs for the needy.

The welfare system will become “person-centered,” he said, in a bid to stop dependency and joblessness from taking root in the young. People no longer will be “widgets.”

He would spend $14 million over two years to pay for an income-based expansion of child-care subsidies to reward cash-assistance recipients working to overcome poverty.

Kasich wants to move more people off public assistance and into jobs, with an initial focus on those ages 16 to 24 to “break the poverty cycle before it starts.” He would use $310 million a year in federal and state funds to help low-income people become self-sustaining.

Improved case management and an employment initiative by 2016 would focus on supporting at-risk youth, single parents, ex-felons and the homeless to help them begin work. Once the new setup for younger Ohioans has been in place for a year or so, it would be expanded to the state’s entire welfare population.

Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Foodbanks, said, “I think these are some of the boldest initiatives I have heard as it relates to transforming the current system.” She was excited by the focus on youth: “By the time some of these kids get to 18, it’s too late.”

Kasich took a hard line with county jobs-and-family-service agencies, saying they will have to meet higher expectations in achieving results for recipients or face having their funding transferred to a nonprofit agency, another county or the state.

“Those delivering it are interested in maintaining power or control, which leads to a government operation that cheats the taxpayer, and even more important, cheats the person who needs the help. This can’t stand,” he said.

Douglas Lumpkin, director of the state Office of Human Services Innovation, said counties “agree with the concept” of transforming assistance delivery. “This will assure better outcomes for the individual and the family,” he said.

Saying social services and government assistance for the needy are under attack, Kasich said he is making a stand for those willing to work to better themselves. He hopes lawmakers, many of them GOP conservatives, will agree.

“I’m beginning to see the rhetoric among my colleagues at the Statehouse changing a bit — a little more concern, a little more softness, a little fewer hard edges,” the governor said.

Salinsky wrote:

2seaoat wrote:It could be discrimination.  It might be a number of other reasons we are unaware, but it certainly does not appear to be by accident.

By March 2014, six months into the new system, the six counties with the highest rate of terminating food stamps for able-bodied, childless adults were all counties populated mostly by minorities.

Whether they knew in advance that this would cause racial discrimination or not, they've had ample to time to recognize the effect and have done nothing to alleviate it.

Salinsky wrote:The entire state qualifies for the waivers.

Just under two thirds of food stamp recipients are white.

Over 94% of the waivers went to white recipients.

Regardless of the intent, the effect remains the same, and Kasich has had ample time to correct it.

Markle wrote:
The 1996 Welfare Reform Act which was passed by the Gingrich House and reluctantly signed by President Clinton. That Act moved millions of people from RECEIVING tax payer money, to WORKING AND PAYING taxes.

Semi-retired President Obama REMOVED that requirement when he forced through the Trillion dollar Stimulus package.

Is that what was changed? Recipients are required to work?

Bob wrote:

Markle wrote:
The 1996 Welfare Reform Act which was passed by the Gingrich House and reluctantly signed by President Clinton. That Act moved millions of people from RECEIVING tax payer money, to WORKING AND PAYING taxes.

Semi-retired President Obama REMOVED that requirement when he forced through the Trillion dollar Stimulus package.

Is that what was changed? Recipients are required to work?

If all this is true,  with emphasis on if,  it's a good question.  But if it's more partisan spin than truth,  it's not a good question.

We need to find out which.  And I'm too lazy to look it up.

Markle wrote:I was hoping for confirmation that the change is in the work requirement but my good friend Salinsky seems reluctant, or refuses to answer.

Salinsky wrote:

Markle wrote:I was hoping for confirmation that the change is in the work requirement but my good friend Salinsky seems reluctant, or refuses to answer.

Yes, you are correct, Markie.

And, over 94% of the waivers to that work requirement have gone to white people.

Why are white people so lazy, Markie?

Hahahahahahahahahaha ......

Markle wrote:

Where is your proof?

From a RELIABLE source.

Salinsky wrote:He seems nice ....

In 2014, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS) had the option to waive time limits on food stamps for the entire state. Due to a struggling economy and high unemployment, Ohio had qualified for and accepted this statewide waiver from the US Department of Agriculture every year since 2007, including during most of Kasich’s first term as governor. But this time, Kasich rejected the waiver for the next two years in most of the state’s 88 counties. His administration did accept them for 16 counties in 2014 and for 17 counties in 2015. Most of these were rural counties with small and predominantly white populations. Urban counties and cities, most of which had high minority populations, did not get waivers.

The decision would result in a drastic downsizing of food aid in the state, but the administration moved with surprising speed given the enormity of the impact. “It was really fast,” says Kate McGarvey, deputy director of the Legal Aid Society of Columbus. In August 2013, she says, the legal services community had heard that Ohio qualified for a statewide waiver, and was setting up meetings with the ODJFS to discuss how the state might proceed. “Within a week or two, we were told, ‘It’s going to be a partial waiver, it’s already been submitted, it’s done,'” McGarvey says. “No advocates that I know of were given a chance to give feedback on the wisdom of the partial waiver.”

The policy went into effect in October 2013. By January—the three-month mark where those without waivers began losing their food stamps if they couldn’t meet the work requirement—it had become clear that the policy had spawned a stark racial disparity in food aid. Across the 16 counties the state had selected for waivers, about 94 percent of food stamp recipients were white. Overall in Ohio in December 2013—immediately before the new policy’s effects began to surface—food stamp recipients were 65 percent white.

By March 2014, six months into the new system, the six counties with the highest rate of terminating food stamps for able-bodied, childless adults were all counties populated mostly by minorities.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/09/law-john-kasich-wrote-now-keeping-food-stamps-minorities-ohio

Salinsky wrote:

Markle wrote:

Where is your proof?

From a RELIABLE source.

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2014/08/food_stamp_discrimination_alle.html

Hahahahahahahahahahaha ....

Salinsky wrote:But in the counties granted a work requirement waiver last year, white Ohioans accounted for 94.18 percent of all recipients.

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2014/08/food_stamp_discrimination_alle.html

Hahahahahahaha .....

Markle wrote:
You don't know what a source for that information would look like do you?  You have no clue if it is accurate and worse, you do not care.  It says what you like.