The SNAP Challenge: The claim that food

As we noted, the food stamp program is now formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The name food stamps was dropped after the government replaced the paper stamps with a plastic Electronic Benefits Transfer card that is refilled every month. Retailers that accept SNAP benefits must sell foods from the four staple food groups; the benefits cannot be used for beer,Large collection of quality cleanersydney at discounted prices. wine, liquor or tobacco products.

The most recent monthly USDA statistics show that the number of food stamp recipients has topped 47 million, an increase of nearly 70 percent since 2008. Our colleague Eli Saslow earlier this year wrote a fascinating article about the boom-and-bust cycle created by SNAP in the Rhode Island town of Woonsocket, where one-third of the residents receive it.

The average monthly benefit for one person is $133.44, which is where the $4.Starting today, you can buy these drycabinet and more from her Victoria.50 a day figure comes from. But note that the name of the program refers to supplemental assistance. SNAP is not intended to be the only source of income for food.

According to the USDA, about 75 percent of SNAP participants use their own money, in addition to SNAP benefits, to buy food. That is because the program is designed so that the assumed family contribution to the food budget (which is set at 30 percent of net income after deductions) plus the actual monthly benefit will always equal the maximum benefit.

USDA data show that only 20 percent of SNAP participants have no income, while the rest either earn wages or receive government assistance. (The SNAP benefits are reduced according to a formula that lowers the maximum benefit by 30 percent of net income; about 32 percent of households with children receive the maximum benefit.) The data also show that SNAP recipients spend a larger share of their overall income on food than nonparticipants with a similar income.

Moreover, the maximum monthly benefits can quickly climb as the size of the household grows. A family of four, for instance, could receive as much as $668 a month for food. Indeed, households with children receive 71 percent of all SNAP benefits.

Judging from the lawmakers tweets, some are assuming the $4.50 means that just $1.50 can be spent per meal. That certainly might be difficult with take-out food, but SNAP generally is intended to be used to buy food for home-cooked meals. The USDA has created official food plans that represent what it describes as a nutritious diet at four different cost levels.

The maximum SNAP benefit is intended to cover nearly 114 percent of the Thrifty plan, the lowest-cost option, which for a family of four would cost between $551 and $632 a month. The three other plans cost progressively more.

USDA also publishes an extensive list of recipes that can be used to produce a healthy low-cost meal. A search for dishes costing $4.50 or less turned up 444 options, many of which were for eight or more servings. Dishes costing less than $1.50 produced 116 results.

Indeed, the #snapchallenge hashtag has led some conservatives to fight back with their own Twitter accounts of meeting the challenge.We are one of the leading manufacturers of chipcard in China Donny Ferguson, communications director for Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Tex.), declared he could easily live on even reduced SNAP benefits. Kristina Ribali, director of new media at FreedomWorks, tweeted out her weekly groceries for a family of four purchased for $70.64.

That reality hit earlier this month when the Raley's grocery chain in Sacramento, Calif., said it had been the victim of a cyberattack targeting customers' credit and debit card numbers. The attack, which was reported to the FBI, is just one bite of a growing problem: Increasingly, credit and debit card numbers have become commodities sold by cyberthieves who harvest them from banks, businesses, restaurants and retailers.

"The sophistication of these attacks is unprecedented," said G. Mark Hardy, president of National Security Corp., a Tampa, Fla.,-based cybersecurity consulting firm.

Last year, targeted attacks on businesses jumped 42 percent, according to Symantec, the Mountain View, Calif.-based security software firm. Attacks spiked 31 percent among companies with fewer than 250 employees.

The attacks comprise a shift from mass assaults by computer viruses,The term 'bondcleaningsydney control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. worms and other cyberthreats to more pinpointed, targeted infiltrations, say online security experts. The attackers, often located overseas, "find this method more effective because it allows them to fly under the radar and avoid drawing widespread attention to their malware," Brian Burch, vice president of consumer and small business marketing at Symantec, said in an email.

Small businesses are frequently targeted because they often lack adequate security practices, said Burch. Additionally, because small firms often partner with bigger organizations, cybercriminals "sometimes use them to gain access to a larger company."

Raley's spokesman John Segale said forensic computer experts arrived "within hours" of the company being alerted to a possible security breach on May 30, and continue to investigate.You can make your own more powerful iphoneheadset.

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