• LordGloom@vlemmy.net
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    1 year ago

    Meanwhile, they literally get free lunch. It’s some ridiculous stipend over $100 a day. Tax corporations and the 1%, no never. Starving children though, excellent idea. Can’t get kick backs from a single parent who’s struggling. Plus we can use the money we saved to give Uvalde another armored vehicle. That’ll help the children. We are truly screwed.

    • NutWrench@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      The cruelty is the point with Republicans. The cruelty always has been the point. The cruelty always WILL be the point.

  • Myaa@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    You know, I try to keep an open mind and try to understand how the other side could come to the conclusions they do, but sometimes they really make it difficult. I genuinely don’t get how this could be construed as anything other than malicious. What’s the benefit in this? How is this “thinking of the children?” How did a political party come to represent views that are so aggressively anti-humanity? It’s such a bizarre platform to attach yourself to so proudly and openly.

    • End0fLine@startrek.website
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      1 year ago

      It is just so incredibly odd to me. I grew up in a baptist church (would never step foot in one again.) The people there genuinely seemed to do good work, caring for the poor, donating toys to children, food as well. I do not understand where this push from the right came from. This is incredibly cruel and inhumane.

  • Spzi@lemmy.click
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    1 year ago

    “There is no such thing as a free lunch”, they said :(

    To pull more of the article into the comment section:

    The Republican Study Committee (of which some three-quarters of House Republicans are members) on Wednesday released its desired 2024 budget, in which the party boldly declares its priority to eliminate the Community Eligibility Provision, or CEP, from the School Lunch Program. Why? Because “CEP allows certain schools to provide free school lunches regardless of the individual eligibility of each student.”

    Of note is that the CEP is not even something every school participates in; it is a meal service program reserved for qualifying schools and districts in low-income areas. The program enables schools that predominantly serve children from low-income backgrounds to offer all students free breakfast and lunch, instead of means-testing them and having to manage collecting applications on an individual basis. As with many universal-oriented programs, it is more practically efficient and, as a bonus, lifts all boats. This is what Republicans are looking to eliminate.

    It’s the kind of provision that many would want every school to participate in. Why not guarantee all our children are well fed as they learn and think about our world and their place in it, after all?

  • Gork@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    How did this get normalized? Why is this even something that is even considered debatable? As a society, feeding our children should be the first priority.

    I’m flubbered.

    • Ghostalmedia@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Echo chambers that reinforce the lie that democrats want to take your money to pay for irresponsible people’s children.

      • jabjoe@feddit.uk
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        1 year ago

        Maybe they are irresponsible, but that’s not their kids fault. Feeding kids regardless of who their parents are, is a basic morality thing.

        • Jazzy Vidalia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          1 year ago

          But that is the whole point of this. These people making and advocating for this kind of stuff are abusers. The GOP is a pro-abuse party. We need to stop pretending otherwise. The goal is to enable abusers. When these people talk about “parental rights” that is what they mean. They believe they have a right to abuse their kids including starving them. They also believe that anyone who tries to assist their children—even so much as feeding them—is interfering with their right as a parent.

          I know this because my step-dad was exactly of this type of mindset when I was a kid. They don’t see children as having rights or dignity. They are just property of their parents with zero personage to them. Food insecurity even when the parents have the ability to feed their children is used as a form of control. “If you won’t do as we say you won’t eat” was very much a thing in my household and a lot of others I knew growing up.

          Allowing free breakfast and lunch at school usurps their ability to use hunger and starvation as a punishment. I know it’s dark but it’s worth noting.

  • Storksforlegs@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    The fact that its been so normalized to be this openly shitty and callous toward frigging children… i dont even know how to react to this any more.

    Im not saying its hopeless, but I feel like a lot of people on the “lets not let children go hungry” side of the fence are almost left speechless by these idiots. But i feel like thats almost part of their strategy - stunning the opposition. There has to be a better response.

    What’s the best way to respond to this kind of brazen cruelty? (Besides voting and campaigning for candidates who arent sociopathic).

    • polygon@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Listen, this is hard thing for me to type but I think is relevant to the Republican mindset. Hundreds of children are being murdered in their classrooms. Literal murder. Of children. This is not enough to sway Republicans on gun control. If actual murder of 6 year olds doesn’t have any effect on them, surely 6 year olds being hungry is not even going to make them blink. This is the reality with these people. They simply do not care about you, or your children, and everything they do is governed only by money and power.

        • polygon@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          Because that is the goal of any totalitarian regime. You think Putin has the welfare of his country in mind? Or Kim Jong Un? No. Money and Power is the only goal. There was an article recently on North Koreans saying how they’re starving and just waiting to die. The people are simply the means to generate wealth and exercise power. Their welfare has nothing to do with it.

          I used to think the Republicans were wannabe dictators, but in the last few years they’ve demonstrated that they are actual fascists and a dictatorship is their endgame. There is no way to deny this anymore. If someone tells you who they are, you should listen to them. Republicans are no longer hiding it.

    • ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      What’s the best way to respond to this kind of brazen cruelty?

      Voting is a must. Political apathy is how this stuff happens. Outside of voting, just being vocal about your distaste for these policies might help let people around you know that not everyone supports this. And if you come face to face with someone who is outspoken in their belief that some children deserve to starve, then you know who to avoid being around.

      • sin_free_for_00_days@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        More people voted for trump after his disastrous 4 years in office than did when he first got elected. I don’t think voting is the answer because we are stupid. Educating these idiots would go a long way, but they don’t believe in education. Being controlled by their extended, daily, two minute hate is all they seem to know or want.

        I taught at a couple school where the majority of the students got their only 2 meals a day when at school. And these fuck heads think that’s too much. It makes me sick.

  • Bri Guy @sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    what they fail to understand is that for poorer communities, kids rely on these lunches for meals when their families can’t afford to buy food

    • bdiddy@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      “those deadbeat parents should’ve got an abortion if they can’t feed their kid” --republicans probably

  • UnderlyingLogic@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    It’s just cruel. A disgusting, cruel mindset from those who genuinely just want to hurt others.

    Anyone supporting this lacks the most basic of morals. There is no excuse for this.

    • Mummelpuffin@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Literally everyone in this comment section is missing “regardless of the individual eligibility of each student”. Everyone is getting hysterical over something that isn’t even in the cards.

      Of course a lot of kids rely on free school lunches and they aren’t trying to take that away. They’re trying to restrict free lunches to kids with parents who are actually incapable of feeding them. If parents can afford food for their kids, feed your fucking kids.

      • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgM
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        1 year ago

        They’re trying to restrict free lunches to kids with parents who are actually incapable of feeding them. If parents can afford food for their kids, feed your fucking kids.

        i honestly have to ask here: who cares if the children of people who can afford to feed their kids benefit from this policy? means testing is dumb in basically all circumstances, you can’t count on parents to do this (and if a child goes to school without a lunch they should still be able to eat!), and even if you don’t care about those considerations the policy as a whole is basically a budgetary rounding error. this isn’t the F-35 program, your tax dollars aren’t being thrown into a black hole because someone with an income of $100,000 has a child also being fed by universal school lunch.

        • Mummelpuffin@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          If you want to make that argument, great! I pretty much agree. What’s deeply upsetting to me is that this entire comment section is willfully misrepresenting the move as “haha they want children to starve”. I guarantee you that everyone here will also claim to be super concerned about how far political rifts have become. Republicans do a lot of awful shit but this is just choosing to characterize people as deeply cruel villains for the sake of entertainment. I can’t blame “casual conservatives” from looking at responses like this and deciding that their characterization of the left as overzealous is completely true.

          • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgM
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            1 year ago

            What’s deeply upsetting to me is that this entire comment section is willfully misrepresenting the move as “haha they want children to starve”.

            okay but they kinda do. you are giving charitability to people (Republican politicians in Congress) who have clearly demonstrated they do not deserve it and that what they want is for people to be worse off–whether they accept that or not. more children starving because free school meals are restricted to certain income groups is possibly the most straightforward cause-and-effect outcome there can be. the benefits of having them (without means testing) are also undisputable. we literally just had those for two years without issue during the pandemic.

            • Mummelpuffin@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              No, see, this is a willful mischaracterization of their ignorance. These are people who are convinced that parents who can afford their feed their children just will if they lack other options. The idea that some would simply choose not to anyways or that means testing is often faulty is further than they’ve ever actually thought about it. Still cartoonishly evil? Yeah, but it’s not “haha I sure do love kids not eating”, it’s a lack of empathy of a different sort. Telling people that they want children to starve when that’s the last thing that probably crossed their mind will never, ever sway someone’s understanding of a problem. It will only convince them that your position is based on a strawman. We need to appeal to people’s sense that they’re good people who want to do good things.

              • alyaza [they/she]@beehaw.orgM
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                1 year ago

                Telling people that they want children to starve when that’s the last thing that probably crossed their mind will never, ever sway someone’s understanding of a problem.

                too bad? literally just don’t advocate for policy that’ll starve children if you don’t want to be accused of making children starve–again, we had universal, non-means tested meals in this arena for two years and nobody complained about it then. if you’re the type of person who objects now, i don’t think that’s worth coddling–i think it’s worth begin honest, which is that it’s a policy that leads to more starving children and it’s a deeply inhuman policy overall. you should feel bad for agreeing with it as a person.

                We need to appeal to people’s sense that they’re good people who want to do good things.

                as for this legislatively: me trying to nicely appeal to a Republican legislator is never going to make them see reason here and not starve children. these people are bad, their policy is worse, and trying to coddle them in particular is a waste of time. they know what they’re doing.

                • Mummelpuffin@beehaw.org
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                  1 year ago

                  This whole reply makes me even more negative towards the future of humanity than I was. Discourse like this is exactly why things are as bad as they are.

  • BrewJajaja@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Why would they alienate their voter base that mainly reside in impoverished red states? A portion of those poor brainwashed right-wingers have children too.

    Can you guys see the parallel with a certain spiteful CEO who is the reason for our exodus…

    • arefx@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      They know their voter base is too dumb and enraged by right wing propaganda to realize they are voting against their interests.