Word: stamped
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...call themselves "parliamentary democracies," where leaders are drawn from the political party with a majority in the legislature, genuine independent lawmaking is a rarity. Legislative proposals are drawn up in the executive, with the assistance of permanent bureaucrats, and handed to diets, assemblies or parliaments for a ritual rubber stamp. Very occasionally, in Britain or Germany, Japan or France, a politician will make a name for what they do in national legislatures - in Britain, there was a long tradition of leaving socially controversial legislation over matters such as abortion or capital punishment to backbench MPs - but such reputations are most...
...year history of food stamps in the U.S. began in May 1939, when unemployed factory worker Mabel McFiggin collected stamps to buy surplus butter, eggs and prunes in Rochester, N.Y. McFiggin was the first person to take advantage of the experimental program, designed to improve on Depression-era commodity-distribution systems developed to aid the needy and unload surplus wheat and other products bought by the government to support farm prices. Food stamps originally came in two colors: recipients bought orange stamps, which could be used for any kind of food, and they were given half that amount in free...
Advocates for the poor worked to revive the program over the following years. In 1959 - 50 years ago this month - Democratic Representative Lenore Sullivan of Missouri successfully championed a legislative amendment to launch a pilot food-stamp program to be run by the Agriculture Department. While the Eisenhower Administration showed little interest in the idea, President Kennedy's election the following year marked a major turning point: moved by the abject poverty he witnessed on the campaign trail in West Virginia, Kennedy authorized a three-year food-stamp program beginning in 1961. Following in McFiggin's footsteps...
...major change to the program came in 1977, when Congress stopped requiring payment for food stamps and distributed them to all recipients for free (the price had steadily decreased over time, until it represented just a fraction of the face value). The move dismayed a number of observers, who had supported the program as a means to help the poor help themselves, not as a direct government handout (the Agriculture Department had insisted on selling food stamps for fear of undermining the dignity of recipients). The policy created a backlash - some middle-class shoppers indignantly complained that food-stamp users...
Today, literal food stamps are a relic - purchases are made electronically, on plastic cards resembling credit cards. In fact, it's not even called the food-stamp program any longer; in classic bureaucratese, it's now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Recipients' incomes and property values must be below a certain level for them to qualify. In June, the average monthly benefit came to $294 per household and $133 per individual. Recently, officials have worked to make the program more convenient, distributing electronic benefit-card readers to farmers' markets so food stamps can be used there...