Reply #56: I really (honestly) do not want to appear to be a contrarian here....

[demgurl]

and it almost seems to me I am asking you questions that would build your case and make it solid but here goes nothing anyway:

There would still need to be a definition under your belief. Just because they can buy meat or such does not mean it will be healthy. As much as hamburger meat has been talked about on this and many other threads, chicken is still much healthier and has much less fat. Cooking up hamburger 7 days a week is about equivalent to gong to McDonald's 7 days a week.

And not to get away from your topic of restrictions but it must also be addressed how much good restrictions are going to be when a family is living out of a hotel room (with no appliances) or a car. We just can't let the least among us fend for themselves and starve.

I am not sure about the $200 cap per person and I do understand that is an amount you were throwing out off the top of your head. I also understand there has to be a cap of some kind, I am just not sure what that cap would be. With the ever rising expenses, even with pooling the families capped amount, it would surely run out.

As much as I am against saying what the struggling can and can not buy, I do sort of like your subscribing so many lbs of this or that to each person in the family. I like this better than the system right now because they could buy amounts rather than worrying about the cost of the said amounts. They could use the pyramid and some sort of equation to figure out the age of people and what amount they will need per day and do that calculation for families to figure out how many lbs. of fresh meat, veggies, etc.... they can get in a month.

All of that being said, I still think there should be some money for miscellaneous items, yes, such as Twinkies!

I am still against restrictions and such but I do think you have a valid idea for our current system in trying to stretch it out for poor people who really need it. It would be wonderful if folks could get the cuts of meat and anything else they wanted and it would not be greatly different from the system they are used to now.

Just my two cents worth.