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In a bit of a departure from the usual Food Stamps article format, we’ll be taking a look at some of the headlines that have popped up, or responses to recent events in the last couple of weeks concerning food stamps.

Jon Stewart Loses a Fan

Last week, we published an article talking about Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show episode where he lampooned Fox News reporters for grossly misreporting information on food stamps. With his trademark zinging wit, he showed clips of reporters complaining SNAP recipients were buying cigarettes, iPads, gambling tokens, and chicken legs at Disney Land.

Well, it appears that a columnist from the conservative website townhall.com, Christine Rousselle, took issue with Stewart’s show, calling it “hypocritical” and that the “real controversy” is taxpayers’ money being used by food stamps recipients to buy “unhealthy food”. It should also be noted that townhall.com occasionally lends its guests to Fox News.

Ohio Changes Schedule

We also wrote before that food budgets don’t always last until the end of the month, leading to a short period of famine-waiting until the next batch of food stamps comes out. One consequence of this cycle is really shortsighted thinking, where people spend what they have as soon as they get it because they don’t know when the next surplus will come in.

In Ohio, though, grocers have reported huge lines and food shortages at the beginning of the month when food stamps are sent out, and stores have to alter their employees’ schedules. To counterbalance this, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Serviceswill start a new schedule in April where recipients will get their benefits on a random date during the first 20 even-numbered days.

Delawareans Need Help

If food stamps are in use in a state, then neutral growth means the number of food stamps users is in direct proportion to the state’s population growth. Positive growth means that as the population rises, food stamps recipients decrease in number.

The opposite is happening in Delaware, and by quite a dramatic rate. In the last 10 years, the state’s population has increased about 14 percent, and the food stamps population has tripled. A combination of job losses and bad luck has led to Delaware’s food stamps usage growing 196 percent in the last decade, compared to the national average of 124 percent.

To-may-to, To-mah-to

This is a quick lesson in why it’s important to get your news from more than one source, as even one source can report the news in three different ways.

The recent news of New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut finding ways to get around the closing of “Heat and Eat” with the latest Farm Bill has been nicknamed “Cheat and Eat” by the Wall Street Journal, and “a way to avoid the cuts” by the Washington Post.

Go figure.

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