ellesence:

bjornwilde:

amey-winehouse:

fuck-me-barnes:

carmanitaknits:

wagrobanite:

think-progress:

Members of Congress are living off food stamps for a week to protest Republican cuts. It’s a challenge for them, but GOP cuts would hurt millions of everyday Americans. 

Why does this not have more publicity. This needs it!

I want a reality tv show where politicians have to live in poverty for a month. They have to live in Government housing, shop with food stamps, and get only a limited amount of money for clothes. Because here, they still have all their trappings, lilke nice cars and thousand dollar suits. I want them in Walmart jeans trying to determine if they can afford a carton of milk. 

Give them a full calendar year. I want to see them confident in January, and sometime around June choking back tears at the Safeway because they are tired, so tired, of eating 25 cent cup noodles, eyeing other peoples’ full grocery carts with a dull bewilderment.

Let me see them despair because they have a persistent nagging cough that won’t go away and might be turning into pneumonia but the minute clinic is $60, which might as well be as six million dollars, either way they ain’t got it to spare - and that doesn’t count the cost of prescriptions. Let me hear them tell people about the muscle cramps they get at night due to eating non-nutritious garbage for months, the weakness from persistent hunger. 

Let them know the shame and frustration of only owning one pair of cheap polyester pants for work and one pair of thrift-store jeans, and both persistently have ripped crotches and seams coming undone, no matter how many times they get sewn back up.

Let the women know the particular sort of despair that comes once a month when you can’t afford even the cheapest pads or tampons.

Let them understand the frustration of being charged a $35 fee for a $2 overdraft. Let them watch as the bank holds charges from different days in “pending” till they all come through on the same day, and the bank charges them four times for a single overdraft because “the charges all cleared at the same time”. 

I want them to know the particular pain of having to decide between food for the week, or transportation costs to and from work. You can’t have both. Choose wisely.

You do not truly understand poverty until you’ve lived it and a month isn’t enough to encompass it. Not even close.

^^^

But they have to also go through the application process and the appointments and shit needed to maintain such assistance.

I wish they would understand that even the free monthly phone minutes aren’t much of a help. 250 free minutes might seem like a lot to anyone who owns a car and can keep conversations short, or prefer to text, but it’s just the tip of the ice berg for those who depend on these plans to help with keeping in contact. With each appointment they make, they must then schedule transportation, which they can be on hold for 30 minutes or more each time they try to call. Combine that with the personal calls they make, the doctors offices they call first, and any questions about their health care coverage or any other services they receive, my clients go through those minutes in the first week or so of the month.

Yes, they can buy 250 more minutes for $5, but they are only allowed to put $10 into the phone at a time, then they must call and request to turn the first $5 into phone minutes because the company isn’t allowed to turn the full $10 at the same time. If the client runs out of minutes and forgets to request the remainder to be changed over, they’re charged 10 cents per minute, resulting in only 50 minutes rather than the 250 they should get. AND regardless of how much they have purchased and left over at the end of the month, the system resets and they are back up to 250 minutes but loose the minutes they’ve paid for.

However, waiting until they receive more minutes is also usually not an option; they have so many people who need to keep in contact with them just to receive the help they need and ensure they will be attending their appointments; they have no choice but to pay for extra minutes they will lose in a few days when they receive their free minutes.

These phones are like any other American plan- that is, no matter if you are making or receiving a call, you are charged for the time. In Britain, you are only charged for the calls you make to others.

I called the phone company and complained about all of this, and they said they can take suggestions to submit to the govt. but nothing will change unless enough people make the same suggestions. Please- if you have time, suggest that the purchased minutes don’t expire, they’re only charged for outgoing calls, and to allow for people to pay for more minutes at one time. The people using this service have the same type of budget described in previous posts (seen above), and losing $5 worth of minutes is devastating to them.