Shostack + Friends Blog Archive

 

TSA on PBJ: No way

United States congressman Tim Ryan is interested in bringing attention to the meager allotment the U.S. food stamp program provides. This program, for those who don’t know, provides what amounts to scrip which can be used for qualified food purchases to persons who meet a certain needs test. The average food stamp recipient receives $21.00 per week in benefits, and the allotment hasn’t been changed in eleven years. Representative Ryan decided to see what it was like to live with this amount as his food budget for a week.
Naturally, he blogged about it, too. Why am I bringing this up? Well, like many politicians, Ryan travels frequently by air. You guessed it: the TSA felt that the jars of peanut butter and of jelly that the congressman was traveling with were a little on the dangerous side. They were confiscated. This left him with nothing but cornmeal to live on for two days. As Ryan put it, “Too crazy to be made up“.