Food Stamps

If you think Bluetooth is a rare dental condition and an app is what you eat before the entree, you might not be a candidate for today's high-tech, whiz-bang smart phones. Instead, you might be happier with a mobile phone geared toward seniors. Those phones typically don't have Web-surfing capability, GPS maps and video games. Instead they have large buttons, oversized digital readouts and hearing-aid compatibility, along with a relatively simple calling plan. Although senior-friendly phones aren't new, their lower prices and variety are. A recent price skirmish among wireless companies means seniors can get an easy-to-use cellphone and cheap service to go with it, said Mac Haddow, senior fellow on public policy for the independent and nonprofit Alliance for Generational Equity.

WASHINGTON - The Republican-led House approved a plan for deep spending cuts in food stamps, Meals on Wheels and other domestic programs - while sparing the Pentagon - in a vote that showcased the party's election-year priorities. The legislation to cut $240 billion over a decade is expected to stall in the Senate, where Democrats have the majority, but the exercise Thursday allowed the GOP to contrast its agenda with President Obama's efforts to reduce the deficit. Democrats decried the bill as "literally taking food out of the mouth of babies," in the words ofRep.

WASHINGTON - The Republican-led House approved a plan for deep spending cuts in food stamps, Meals on Wheels and other domestic programs - while sparing the Pentagon - in a vote that showcased the party's election-year priorities. The legislation to cut $240 billion over a decade is expected to stall in the Senate, where Democrats have the majority, but the exercise Thursday allowed the GOP to contrast its agenda with President Obama's efforts to reduce the deficit. Democrats decried the bill as "literally taking food out of the mouth of babies," in the words ofRep.

Los Angeles County spent $390,000 last year to send a million pieces of mail, essentially to itself. Much of it was then sorted by workers and, after awhile, sent to the shredder. County supervisors this week called it a cumbersome and costly exercise in futility, born of a federal requirement that the county send letters to the 1 million or so residents who receive food stamps. Because tens of thousands of those recipients are homeless, however, there are few places to send their mail.

It used to be that when children in foster care turned 18, their surrogate parent — the county — would wash its figurative hands, wish the youth well and hope to never see them again. But the county too often does see them again, in court, in jail, living on the street, in substance-abuse treatment, in mental healthcare or in other programs for the traumatized and the have-nots. Even 18-year-olds with loving, functional families and the best care and support are seldom ready for independence and self-sufficiency, so it would be foolish to believe that foster youth aging out of the system without traditional family help will find jobs, get apartments and otherwise get on with the business of living without transitional assistance.

The next time we are asked to help feed the starving in Somalia, let's just send food stamps instead of troops (Feb. 25). LYLE TALBOT Lancaster

Another Senate charade? Re "Questions for Kagan," Editorial, June 27 The otherwise-reasonable areas of inquiry The Times' editorial proposes seem to exist within a journalistic bubble. In fact, don't we know in advance -- even if the actors refuse to acknowledge it -- how all but perhaps four to eight senators will vote on the nominee, barring any seriously disqualifying disclosure by or about her? The only real import of the hearings will be to sway (or not sway)

The United States has more poor children now than it did a year ago. As more families are hammered by the recession, more are using food stamps to feed their kids, according to a study by the Brookings Institution and First Focus, a bipartisan child advocacy group. "They are a really good barometer, a kind of economic-needs test," said Mark R. Rank, an expert on social welfare programs at Washington University in St. Louis. "If you're receiving food stamps and you're a child, by definition, you're in poverty."

Despite persistent economic woes, California leaves billions of federal food stamp dollars on the table each year that could help ease hunger and boost the local economy, officials say. Only 48% of eligible Californians are enrolled in the nutrition program, according to federal figures from 2007, the most recent year available. That is well below the national average of 66%. Only Wyoming has a slightly lower rate. California officials dispute the way the figures are calculated and say they do not reflect recent steps to improve the state's record, including greater outreach and simplified procedures.

With many families struggling to feed themselves, Los Angeles County officials announced new efforts Tuesday to encourage eligible residents to apply for federal nutrition benefits. The efforts include an outreach campaign next month and a new online application form , Philip L. Browning, director of the Department of Public Social Services, said at a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors meeting. More than 1.7 million L.A. County residents were at risk of hunger in 2009, more than in any other county in America, according to research published recently by Feeding America, the country's largest network of food banks.

Republican presidential candidates recently have found themselves battling over who cares most for the poor. But their demonstrations of empathy sometimes collide with their plans to cut back the programs on which many of the poor depend. After he appeared to dismiss the very poor, Mitt Romney was forced to backpedal from his politically perilous remarks. But he and other candidates stand by bedrock conservative principles of cutting entitlement programs and government spending. "We have to be concerned about those who are at the very margins of society," Rick Santorum told the Detroit Economic Club last week.

The nation's food stamp program is an essential part of the American safety net. Why? Because people can't be productive - in school, at work or looking for work - if they are hungry and fearful about not having enough food to feed their families. The program serves 46 million people, almost as many people as Medicare. And that's despite the fact that more than one-third of those eligible for the benefit are not receiving it. If all those who qualified for food stamps enrolled in the program, it would include 20% to 25% of Americans.

Newt Gingrich unveiled a slashing new line of attack against Mitt Romney on Friday, arguing that his main rival for the GOP nomination does not understand the free market, is not a genuine conservative and is against “American ideals.” “It isn't good enough for the Republican Party to nominate Obama-lite,” Gingrich told about 100 supporters gathered at Stoney's Rockin' Country bar, some of whom smoked and drank beers during the morning rally....

To many liberals, the thing that distinguishes them from conservatives is that those on the right lack empathy. It's not a particularly fair criticism of an ideology more informed by a love of individualism and distrust of collective solutions to social problems than a failure to understand the plight of the unfortunate, but in the case of Florida state Sen. Ronda Storms, it seems to apply. Storms is pushing a bill that would prohibit recipients of food stamps from using them to buy soda, candy or snacks that she considers unhealthful.

Ronda Storms is a Republican state senator from Florida. She is also a mom who buys the groceries for her family of four. A few months ago, Storms, 46, started noticing that some fellow shoppers were using federal food stamp money to purchase a lot of unhealthful junk. And it galled her - at a time when Florida was cutting Medicaid reimbursement rates, public school funding and jobs - that people were indulging in sugary, fatty, highly-processed treats on the public dime. "If we're going to be cutting services across the board," she said, "then people can live without potato chips, without store-bought cookies, without their sodas.

Newt Gingrich, displaying the combativeness that helped him rocket to the top of the GOP field back in November and December, faced off against Fox News commentator Juan Williams at the debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C., over his suggestion that impoverished youths take janitorial jobs to learn the value of work. Williams asked Gingrich if his comments weren't “insulting to all Americans," particularly, he said, black Americans. Gingrich refused to leaven his past comments, saying that for the amount of money one New York City janitor earns, 30 kids could work.

The Republican presidential candidate stood at the pulpit at Jones Memorial AME Zion Church, but, unlike most campaign stops in South Carolina, he was not preaching to the choir. Newt Gingrich, who routinely ridicules the first black leader of the United States as "the food-stamp president," calmly and patiently explained his conservative views to about 80 people who half-filled the pews, a few more than half of them African American. He did not back away from the biting label he has glued to President Obama.

Newt Gingrich planned to hold a town hall meeting for Latinos at a Mexican restaurant here Sunday, an odd enough event in New Hampshire, where Latinos are a tiny sliver of the population holding no sway in Tuesday's Republican primary. But then: chaos. Occupy protesters, kicked out of the event, banged drums, rattled the windows and screamed through a bullhorn: "Newt! Newt! Come outside with your hands up and your pants down! We have you surrounded!" Inside, Gingrich was hammered by a voter incensed by a recent statement he made about blacks and food stamps, and he was questioned about his commitment to immigration reform and his stance on corporate influence in politics.