Why would MN Party of Trumpers crush Market Bucks?
From about a week ago, and from a search just now, there’s no change. There’s a chance it could get back in, but it doesn’t seem likely.
Farmers markets are a summertime staple in many communities around Minnesota, but not everyone shopping at them has the means to pay farmers for what they grow.
A program called Market Bucks was designed to encourage some of those Minnesotans to use federal benefits — what used to be called food stamps and are now known as SNAP — to pay for healthy food at farmers markets. Participants get a $10 match when they spend $10.
The program is popular, especially with seniors, said Colleen Moriarty, executive director of nonprofit organization Hunger Solutions.
“It’s important because it helps people who have limited food access, seniors and others, be able to have more fresh fruits, vegetables and Minnesota-grown products in their diet,” Moriarty said. “And that improves their health outcomes, and improves access to food that they might not otherwise have.”
The program doesn’t cost much compared to the overall $50 billion state budget.
The DFL-controlled House included $325,000 for Market Bucks in its agriculture budget bill, but the Republican-controlled Senate had nothing. The Senate position prevailed in negotiations.
(MPR)
“Doesn’t cost much” is right. 325K is .00065% of 50B.
Getting back to the title of this, the obvious, somewhat kneejerk answer, that you see a lot on the progressive internet, is that they’re just really cruel, vicious people, always looking for a chance to stick it to poor people in order to indulge their pathologically hate-based worldviews. There is truth to that, in some contexts, but I don’t think it’s dominant. Nearly all of the Republicans I know are not like that.
What’s going on is cognitive rigidity; maybe cognitive petrification would be more like it. Almighty Reagan said that government is bad, and that’s that. It doesn’t jibe with what Jesus says in the New Testament about helping the poor, or with all of the ways that conservatives use government to aggrandize the privileged, but the way cognitive rigidity works is that inconvenient facts just bounce off like dandelion fluff wafting off of granite.
An awful lot of people seem happy going through life in cognitive rigidity, and that’s their choice. But such people are certainly unfit to govern in a complex, changing world.
Thanks for your feedback. If we like what you have to say, it may appear in a future post of reader reactions.