I
n the category of do as I say not as I do, President Trump recently
proposed cuts in the federal food stamp program right around the same time
his family and business partners maneuvered to win a healthy handout from
taxpayers in Mississippi to build a hotel.
Which is much the same argument Mayor Rahm made when he closed six mental
health clinics in high-crime areas on the grounds that somehow fewer mental
health services would be a benefit to those who desperately need it.
But a payout to the world’s wealthiest company is seen as an investment in
our future.
Trump’s food stamp cuts work like this. Instead of offering electronic
coupons to eligible households, as the program does now, Trump wants to
deliver boxes of “shelf-stable food like cereal, peanut butter, beans and
canned vegetables,” as the Tribune puts it.
In the wake of the high school massacre in Parkland, Florida, Iowa
Republican senator Chuck Grassley declared: “We have not done a very good
job of making sure that people that have mental reasons for not being able
to handle a gun getting their name into the FBI files and we need to
concentrate on that.”
The governor agreed to sign another bill that distributed the school aid
only after Madigan backed a tax credit for rich people who donate to
private schools. Rauner hailed that measure as—you guessed it—school
reform. That word again.
