I was actually just wondering if Diane Rhem was still on, but was too forgetful and/or lazy to check my local NPR line-up. I used to love listening to her show every morning when I lived in Washington (and my then-boyfriend and I went to see her show live, which was very cool).

I gotta give her credit, she really does air all sides of a discussion, and she asks good followup questions. I often do wish she were better at moderating people who just talk over the others. It's not perfect but it's one of the few shining lights of actual journalism we have left.

Norquist, though, man, what a clown.

Today, she has some guy on flinging all sorts of unattributable mud at food stamp and assistance programs. I had to turn it off before "Welfare Cadillac" came out of his mouth.

Did you stick around long enough to hear him complain about standing in line at the store and watching a customer using food stamps to buy Sea Legs, the fake crabmeat? And how that food-stamp user got dressed down by the cashier, who insisted that he couldn't use food stamps to buy, y'know, food of his choice?

The speaker was so smug, as if he'd witnessed fraud or unforgiveable indulgence instead of an adult making a choice given his budget and circumstances. I broke The Rule of The Car and started yelling at the radio. Fortunately, both of the other speakers chimed in with the importance of the client-choice model to make public assistance programs valuable.

In addition to the actual relevant points you make, Elsa, isn't fake crabmeat made out of fish, anyway? It's not like it's unhealthy.

Or was the idea that it was *too* nice for poor people and they should have been buying beans instead?

Man, food, politics, and poverty -- it's a trifecta of ignorant judgey smugness!

Or was the idea that it was *too* nice for poor people and they should have been buying beans instead?

The speaker (whose name I didn't catch) didn't even feel the need to clarify the point; he apparently thought his (and the cashier's) objection would be obvious to listeners. But yes, my take-away from that was that he thought Sea Legs (a low-cost alternative to unprocessed seafood*) was Too Fancy for someone using public assistance. He spoke as if witnessing the single purchase of [something he defined as] a treat was an indication of fraud in the system.

When the other speakers talked about the usefulness of a client-choice model both for maximizing the utility of the budget and for honoring the clients' dignity and autonomy, Mr. Sea Legs followed up with "Should they be able to choose lobster?" (with his implied answer "no," I suppose. I hollered "YES, IF IT SUITS THEIR BUDGET AND NEEDS!" at the radio. Shortly after I started yelling uncontrollably, I turned off the radio.)

*And y'know: I don't even know why I bother defending it by IDing it as "low-cost," because the point of a client-choice model is that the program gives people an assistance package and then they get to decide how it fits into their budget, whether and when they splurge or scrimp.

As to your point about the Sea Legs themselves: that's something my own mother, who stretched a terribly lean budget to feed a family of seven, would buy to make a special dinner once in a great while because it felt fancier than fish but was much cheaper than actual shellfish (at least when we lived in Texas). Even better, it was something everyone in the family would eat cheerfully.

Sigh. Who knew K-rab was so decadent?

That sounds awful.