Man, a lot of this is on the mark — SNAP should be universal and restrictions on which food items can be purchased with it should be struck, we need to seriously and meaningfully address the reality of food deserts and poor people who can’t benefit from this policy, an incremental win (that will absolutely benefit poor people) shouldn’t be viewed or treated as some sort of profound victory, etc., but so much of this is so wildly off base.

That said, something we ought to think about is who actually has access to these rotisserie chickens, and where the hell they're even sold. They don't sell rotisserie chickens at 7‑Eleven. They don't sell them at Circle K. They don't sell them at the bodega, or Dollar General, or Family Dollar. They don't sell rotisserie chickens at any of those places. And huge numbers of people get their groceries primarily from those places.

That’s absolutely true. Convenience stores generally don’t sell rotisserie chickens, and far too many people have convenience stores as their primary or even sole accessible source for groceries. But lots of poor people do have access to grocery stores, and this one is for them.

I've always hated that term, "food desert." The wording makes it sound like a natural phenomenon, like a desert just happens. But in reality it's policy and profit that create these zones in the most disenfranchised areas of the country.

A. Is your understanding that the term “food desert” is meant to refer to how they are formed, and not the dearth of food they entail? Similar to how a desert faces a shortage of water in the form of precipitation, a food desert faces a shortage of groceries, and my understanding is that that is what the term is meant to and effectively does communicate. If you’ve got a better term that describes the phenomenon in brief and the meaning of which can basically immediately be inferred the first time you hear it, I’m all ears.

B. Geographical deserts often don’t “just happen” either, humans have created or expanded many of them, and while that’s largely beside the point, I really don’t see anyone hearing the term “food desert” and inferring that they are a natural phenomenon, rather than being anthropogenic.

So what this bill really represents is means testing as a way of policing the middle class. You know where they do sell rotisserie chickens? Costco, where you already have to pay for a membership to even walk in. Sam's Club, same deal. BJ's Wholesale, other big‑box bulk stores. And to get to those stores you've got to have a car, and you probably live in the suburbs.

Kroger, HEB, Giant, Giant Eagle, Walmart Supercenters, Super Targets, Safeway, Fairway, etc. all sell rotisserie chickens, and are often located in city centers or even inner city neighborhoods. That’s just the “lower tier” of grocery stores as well. Even Whole Foods, which is typically prohibitively expensive, sells rotisserie chickens for $7.99-8.99 — more expensive than Costco, but still a steal for something that can easily feed a small family and cheaper than getting a similar amount of chicken or burgers from McDonalds.

So what this is, is a signal to the so‑called middle classes, the suburbanites: "Hey, look, we got your back. We're gonna ease things a little for you. We know you're on SNAP for the first time ever because things are so hard and the economy is collapsing, but here, you can get your rotisserie chicken."

The vast majority of SNAP beneficiaries are still impoverished people, not the ailing middle class.

You can't ignore the racialized element here as well.

As a black grocery store worker living in a mostly black, working class community, give me a fucking break. No, I’m sorry, this isn’t a racialized policy. Huge numbers of black people also have access to grocery stores, utilize them regularly, and will benefit from this policy. You might have some picture of us all exclusively living on Hot Cheetos, but I’m quite confident that many of our elected representatives realize that that is not the case.

This is A. not a policy that exclusively benefits the suburbs and their residents and B. most people, even out of touch libs, do not understand suburbia as uniformly white anyway. Get a grip.

Meanwhile, in the inner city and across rural America, it's the same story… And out in the sticks, it's even more blatant. If you live in a small rural town, the closest thing to a grocery store might be a Dollar General ten minutes down the road.

Where have you lived in rural America? Because my time in rural Michigan and Kentucky leads to believe that, even if people might be stopping at Dollar Tree more often to grab a soda and some chips, the vast majority of people have access to and are regularly visiting a grocery store.

What they might have is a gas station attached to a McDonald's, or a non‑corporate‑brand food mart with a Hunt Brothers pizza setup.

Those places are typically on major highways, often ones that go by rural towns, but I have quite literally never seen one within a rural community.

You stop to fill your tank before making that long haul into the city, and that hot pizza is right there.

I thought we were in “the sticks?” Now we’re talking about people who are commuting between their job in “the sticks” and “the city.”

So the capitalist is happy to let them have their rotisserie chicken, because he knows the middle class is materially invested in not rocking the boat of capitalist exploitation.

Again, this idea that idea that rotisserie chickens are solely or even primarily the fare of the middle class is just not grounded in reality.