Altimont owns Carmen’s Corner Store in Hagerstown, Maryland, a community where around 20 percent of people rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to buy their groceries. But a federal agency decided that Altimont can never accept SNAP as a form of payment at Carmen’s.
That decision isn’t because Altimont has done anything wrong as a business owner, but rather because of unrelated crimes from 2004, for which he’s already served his time.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) permanently bans anyone with drug, alcohol, tobacco, or firearms convictions from participating in the SNAP program—a harsher punishment than the agency dishes out to those who have actually defrauded the program. That’s not just irrational, it’s also unconstitutional, which is why Altimont teamed up with our organization, the Institute for Justice (IJ), to file a federal lawsuit against the agency on Tuesday.
Right. These people don’t know about loans. Or grants, or paying as you go. I was poor the while way thru college. One night I ate uncooked stuffing for dinner. Lol. It sucked. I lived off of the dollar store and 1 dollar bag of egg noodles, 1 dollar can of spaghetti sauce and butter and salt. Or ghetto pizza (saltines, 1 dab of spaghetti sauce per, sprinkle cheese onto, microwave)
And you still had access to tens of thousands of dollars in funding to pay tuition. So you weren’t comfortable for 4 years. Cry me a river and go talk to the guys that had to enlist at 17 to make sure their siblings could eat.