OK, this has gotten to be
ridiculous.
In my summer of disenchantment, where everything that could go wrong has gone wrong, we received the latest wrinkle of this wrongness on Saturday, and it is bewildering to say the least.
As you know, my son is considered to be disabled by New York State and thus, there are programs and services that he gets and can get based on his needs.
Like millions of other Americans, he had been eligible for SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which is commonly known as the Food Stamp Program.
This was based on his disability and the amount of income that he has, and he received a minimum amount from the government for this each month, because his income was too high, believe it or not.
Anyway, the government has been cutting down SNAP for the past few years, due to many scofflaws and misuse of the program’s dollars.
Last year, I received a letter in the mail from Social Services alerting me that my son was making too much money, and that he could no longer get SNAP.
(Just as an aside, between his salary and his Disability Social Security, he makes an amount per month that you would barely have enough money to go to the bathroom with, if you know what I mean.)
So as any good person looking over my son’s welfare would, I questioned this determination, and I was flat out told by Social Services that I should “be proud” that he did not quality for the program anymore, because that basically meant that in the eyes of the government, he was making too much money, and “making too much money” is always a good thing, right?
We were told what his cutoff date was, and that last time we used his SNAP money was probably in the fall, where we used his money to purchase bottled water for him, pretty much what we used the money for since they were giving him less money than you could buy a Whopper meal at Burger King each month (something you can’t purchase using SNAP, but I think you get my point).
So the months went on, my son continues to work, and we don’t even think about SNAP, because we were told via letter and via a Social Services representative that he isn’t in the program anymore.
And then came the mail on Saturday …
We received notification through the mail that our son had money in his SNAP account, and since he didn’t use the account approaching 244 days, he would lose the money if it wasn’t used by the end of September.
OK, perhaps my wife and I miscalculated or we were told the incorrect date to stop using SNAP, so perhaps all we have to do is use the money one more time and that would be that.
No problem …
But that itself is not the problem.
The problem is that on Saturday, our son set what most certainly is a Guinness World Record by receiving this information in 84—yes, count them, I certainly did—84 separate letters affirming the same thing.
And the selection of the 84 letters that he received that I opened contained letters in not just English, but in other languages like Spanish, and they all have different dollar amounts related to how much is still in our son’s SNAP account, anywhere from $16 up to over $200.
So obviously today, I have to contact Social Services, which is akin to contacting the President of the United States for a one-on-one interview.
I have to ask then a few obvious questions:
1) Is our son still on the program, even though we were told that he was not many months ago?
2) If he is either on the program or has excess money in his account, what is the exact dollar amount that he has in that account?
And the penultimate question—
3) WHY DID WE RECEIVE 84 SEPARATE LETTERS ALERTING US TO THIS SITUATON?
If you wonder where your money as taxpayers goes, the 84 letters we received about this cost taxpayers more than $40 to send out, when one alert would have cost us 49 cents.
So yes, that is where the money you pay for taxes each year goes … right into the garbage pail.
I mean, can this summer get any more bizarre—or frustrating—for my family and I?
I can’t even go to the mailbox without shaking.
More on this tomorrow, I hope.
In my summer of disenchantment, where everything that could go wrong has gone wrong, we received the latest wrinkle of this wrongness on Saturday, and it is bewildering to say the least.
As you know, my son is considered to be disabled by New York State and thus, there are programs and services that he gets and can get based on his needs.
Like millions of other Americans, he had been eligible for SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which is commonly known as the Food Stamp Program.
This was based on his disability and the amount of income that he has, and he received a minimum amount from the government for this each month, because his income was too high, believe it or not.
Anyway, the government has been cutting down SNAP for the past few years, due to many scofflaws and misuse of the program’s dollars.
Last year, I received a letter in the mail from Social Services alerting me that my son was making too much money, and that he could no longer get SNAP.
(Just as an aside, between his salary and his Disability Social Security, he makes an amount per month that you would barely have enough money to go to the bathroom with, if you know what I mean.)
So as any good person looking over my son’s welfare would, I questioned this determination, and I was flat out told by Social Services that I should “be proud” that he did not quality for the program anymore, because that basically meant that in the eyes of the government, he was making too much money, and “making too much money” is always a good thing, right?
We were told what his cutoff date was, and that last time we used his SNAP money was probably in the fall, where we used his money to purchase bottled water for him, pretty much what we used the money for since they were giving him less money than you could buy a Whopper meal at Burger King each month (something you can’t purchase using SNAP, but I think you get my point).
So the months went on, my son continues to work, and we don’t even think about SNAP, because we were told via letter and via a Social Services representative that he isn’t in the program anymore.
And then came the mail on Saturday …
We received notification through the mail that our son had money in his SNAP account, and since he didn’t use the account approaching 244 days, he would lose the money if it wasn’t used by the end of September.
OK, perhaps my wife and I miscalculated or we were told the incorrect date to stop using SNAP, so perhaps all we have to do is use the money one more time and that would be that.
No problem …
But that itself is not the problem.
The problem is that on Saturday, our son set what most certainly is a Guinness World Record by receiving this information in 84—yes, count them, I certainly did—84 separate letters affirming the same thing.
And the selection of the 84 letters that he received that I opened contained letters in not just English, but in other languages like Spanish, and they all have different dollar amounts related to how much is still in our son’s SNAP account, anywhere from $16 up to over $200.
So obviously today, I have to contact Social Services, which is akin to contacting the President of the United States for a one-on-one interview.
I have to ask then a few obvious questions:
1) Is our son still on the program, even though we were told that he was not many months ago?
2) If he is either on the program or has excess money in his account, what is the exact dollar amount that he has in that account?
And the penultimate question—
3) WHY DID WE RECEIVE 84 SEPARATE LETTERS ALERTING US TO THIS SITUATON?
If you wonder where your money as taxpayers goes, the 84 letters we received about this cost taxpayers more than $40 to send out, when one alert would have cost us 49 cents.
So yes, that is where the money you pay for taxes each year goes … right into the garbage pail.
I mean, can this summer get any more bizarre—or frustrating—for my family and I?
I can’t even go to the mailbox without shaking.
More on this tomorrow, I hope.
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