Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
“A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration to release full funding for November food stamps by Friday.
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“Last weekend, SNAP benefits lapsed for the first time in our nation’s history. This is a problem that could have and should have been avoided,””
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/06/judge-orders-trump-administration-to-pay-full-snap-benefits-00640627
The shutdown didn’t force Trump to not fund food welfare. There was money available, and the administration chose not to fund it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5AU-yDO35c
“Mamdani said that he is going to pay for his grocery stores by “redirecting” $140 million worth of city funding that is already being spent subsidizing corporate grocers. As the Washington Examiner’s Timothy Carney was the first to notice, that number is based on a misreading of a city website. The city subsidizes some private grocery stores at a cost of about $3.3 million per year. As some Bronx residents told Fox News’ Kennedy in a new video published by Reason, the city should focus instead on helping the homeless, dealing with “rats the size of cats,” and cleaning “all of the needles on the street.”
Direct assistance is a more cost-effective and less destructive way to support low-income households than government-run supermarkets, and it’s something the federal government already does in abundance. Through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps, 1.79 million New Yorkers—20 percent of the city’s population—receive help purchasing groceries each month.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/30/3-reasons-why-zohran-mamdanis-city-run-grocery-stores-will-fail/
Even if they were real people, it would be misleading to cherry pick certain people out of the many losing benefits and present this like it is representative of who is losing benefits. 2/2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTn6IqEc_co
“Senate Republicans will block a Democratic bill that would keep federal food aid flowing to 42 million Americans as they try to build pressure to reopen the government, Majority Leader John Thune said Wednesday.
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Thune separately told reporters that if the Senate starts “going down the road of … take care of this group or that group … it just begs the larger question, how long is this going to drag on?”
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Democrats and even privately some Republican lawmakers argue the Trump administration has the legal authority to tap a $5 billion contingency fund, or other USDA funds, to ensure SNAP benefits keep flowing during the shutdown. Dozens of Democratic governors and attorneys general have sued the administration over its decision not to tap those funds.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/29/snap-benefits-set-for-first-ever-lapse-with-senate-set-to-reject-funding-patches-00627280
“The plaintiffs are disputing the Trump administration’s statements that it doesn’t have the legal authority to use the $5 billion it has in emergency funds to pay for at least part of SNAP, which requires more than $8 billion to pay for November benefits. They also argue that USDA could tap Section 32 funds, which it did to tide over the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, to fully fund SNAP next month.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/28/25-states-sue-trump-snap-food-aid-shutdown-00625431
“on one hand, the president believes he’s helping American cattle farmers by imposing tariffs on imported beef—particularly beef from Brazil, which is now subject to a 50 percent tariff. (Amusingly, that tariff is officially for “national emergency” reasons, but in reality, it exists simply because Trump got mad at the current government of Brazil for prosecuting his buddy, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.)
Leave aside the question of whether American cattle farmers are actually happy about this. Let’s just think about the mechanics of what Trump is describing. He says the cattle farmers are “doing so well” because of the tariffs. Presumably, that’s because they can now raise prices. That’s what tariffs do: by making foreign goods more expensive, they benefit domestic producers, largely by allowing them to raise prices in an environment with less competition.
Trump wants cattle farmers to be able to charge higher prices. Well, OK, what he really wants is the cattle farmers to appreciate him for creating the conditions in which they can charge higher prices—but same difference.
But, wait. Trump says he also wants those same cattle farmers to “get their prices down,” because consumers are unhappy about beef prices hitting record highs.
My dude. How is this supposed to work?
I understand that Trump sees tariffs as effectively a magic wand that he can wave around to accomplish literally any policy. But even by that standard, this is a wild set of claims to make in consecutive sentences. The cattle ranchers are supposed to applaud Trump for letting them charge higher prices, and then also save him from the direct consequences of his own policies, I guess?”
https://reason.com/2025/10/23/trump-says-he-wants-higher-prices-and-also-lower-prices/
“It was a no-name market in one of the city’s low-income districts — not much to look at from the outside. But inside were shelves packed with bread, lentils, cheese, oil and even basic household appliances. Most of the items were cheaper brands sourced from small manufacturers that I had never heard of — companies happy to donate goods to the city stores because they could write them off their taxes. The non-profit stores run by the municipality were only available to households whose low-income status had been verified by the city. Prices were low, and families received pre-loaded monthly loyalty cards that worked exclusively at these municipal markets. The balance wasn’t tied to wages or a bank account — it was direct public support, and it was very popular with residents of the neighborhood.
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the markets created both a safety net for the poor and a distribution channel for small producers who rarely made it into high-end supermarkets in wealthier neighborhoods.
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Across Europe, Latin America and Asia, local governments have long used targeted subsidies to ease the burden of urban living.
In Europe, subsidized housing and free health care are pretty much the norm. Berlin, London and Vienna have spent decades building and maintaining public housing that keeps rents within reach for working-class residents and young families. In Mexico City, programs like Leche Liconsa provide subsidized milk and other food staples to low-income households. Bogotá runs transit subsidies that lower fares for the poor. Seoul has built youth dormitories to help students cope with sky-high housing costs. Barcelona has experimented with rent caps and municipal housing support.
These programs aren’t revolutions. They don’t come with Karl Marx Boulevards or Rosa Luxemburg libraries. They’re pragmatic, relatively low-cost subsidies with outsized political impact — and a familiar part of modern urban governance around the world. And while Mamdani’s critics seem to suggest that such ideas are un-American, the truth is that the U.S. has its own history of subsidies and income support, from the New Deal to food stamps to Medicare and Medicaid — programs now recognized even by Republicans as critical components of public welfare.
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Mamdani’s municipal populism may or may not work in New York. But the idea behind it is hardly fringe.
Pragmatic, relatively modest redistribution that people can see and feel won’t be the end of capitalism — or America.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/10/20/mamdani-groceries-politics-turkey-00613292
“The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is making it harder for American farms to find seasonal workers and putting the nation’s food supply chain at risk.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/08/trumps-labor-department-admits-that-trumps-immigration-crackdown-is-causing-a-labor-shortage/?nab=1
“The world’s supply of chocolate depends on the global trade of cocoa beans, which are grown exclusively in equatorial climates across Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The United States produces more chocolate than any other country in the world, but there would be no American chocolate-making businesses, large or small, without imports.
A lot of American manufacturing is like that too: U.S.-based businesses rely on imported raw materials when making everything from candy bars to new cars. Policies that make those inputs more expensive or difficult to obtain—policies such as the Trump administration’s tariffs—are leaving a bitter taste.
Chocolatiers, in particular, say trade barriers are a recipe for higher prices, lower quality, less innovation, and smaller profits. Doesn’t sound very sweet, does it?”
https://reason.com/2025/08/01/trumps-war-on-chocolate-theres-no-way-for-us-to-source-this-domestically/