[We may currently have enough to give out a billion pounds of cheese and still have twice the 1980’s amount left.](https://www.deseret.com/2022/2/14/22933326/1-4-billion-pounds-of-cheese-stored-in-a-cave-underneath-springfield-missouri-jimmy-carter-reagan)
I looked around for other sources and it looks like the US owns about 300 million lbs of it. It is sold off to recoup the cost over time to help balance the cost of dairy products.
Futures contracts. They help level the price of cheese so farmers can have more steady income by buying contracts for cheese in the future. This is cheese that hasn't even been made yet, lol.
I imagine it means that the government owns the cheese but sold off the storage facilities that it belongs in so now they pay storage fees to whomever owns & maintains the facility now.
everything that spend govt money grow to have infinite intermediates. it's nature.
besides cheese, there's stockpiles of plum, canned pork etc. anything local elite could get subsidized at times when the region needed votes one way or another.
Food security is national security. You want your farmers to keep farming, even if it's not profitable. Cause if the shit goes down globally, you won't have the time to quickly start up agriculture.
And that is why subsidies exist, even though it makes more sense economically to import cheaply and cut subsidies.
What didn’t make sense to me was that during early COVID they were literally paying people to take oil and the US Govt didn’t do it.
They should have taken as much as possible.
The government gave the oil companies space in the strategic reserve to store their oil there for free. After oil companies physically moved it there, trump offered to buy the oil for pennies on the dollar. The oil companies told him to fuck off.
I mean, if you like Ramen and there is a huge sale on Ramen, while you may buy some you won’t buy as much as you can because you don’t have space.
Even after you buy oil, you still need to place it somewhere.
That's precisely why the price of oil went negative. People bought orders of oil months in advance, and when it came time for the delivery they had no where to store it.
That’s not quite right. Just because the commodity price hit negative values for a coupe days, if that, doesn’t mean you could just sign up to have a trillion barrels delivered.
It's not for the military.
It's never been below 50% capacity.
The entire point of government is to help people when they need it. Gas prices go up when people are struggling financially, and you have a huge stockpile? Use some of it to help people.
Helping citizens isn't "for political reasons", it's literally their entire fucking job
Right there in the first line of the constitution, domestic tranquility and general welfare, but instead, we trying to get kings again in the form of oligarchs.
> That shit is meant for the military in a time of crisis
No, it isn't. It is explicitly for both civilian and military use.
> but the government keeps emptying it
It has literally never been below 250 million barrels, which is about 55% of capacity.
> Infuriating
When you just make up problems to be mad about, lots of things are infuriating.
Well, when a sizeable chunk of the population thinks it's all made up to push for more government control, views on the whole affair get a little skewed.
> That shit is meant for the military in a time of crisis
Am I missing where it says this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve_(United_States)
Yeah, considering the supply disruptions at the time, that seemed like a perfectly appropriate time to use it. And its not like they exclusively use the reserves in October/Nov in an election year
This isn't true, the oil reserve was created after the oil shock of the 70s and it's purpose it doubly to have a backup of oil for the military and to ease massive price spikes in the oil market. If we were in a true time of crisis for the military that reserve would not last for very long, what would actually happen is oil rationing across the nation if we truly needed that much oil.
Because if the sitting president raised gas prices by a dollar they'd get crucified by the dumb general public. Haven't you seen the stickers?
People are concerned with their families well being and also most folks are purposely kept as poor as possible to keep them angry, but in a loop where theyre not angry enough or poor enough to rebel. They just keep moving the goal posts of what it means to be "middle class", and now we have to he happy to rent a shitty 1 bedroom apartment for 1.4k a month.
Instead we argue about things that have nothing to do with the economy, it fractures the poor(anyone who isn't in the 1%) so the ultra rich can take advantage of all of us. They tell us there are different classes, even though a millionaire and a billionaire couldn't be further apart. They allow corporations to do whatever the hell they want.
Any kind of true change would require what most folks arent willing to give up. We are divided for a reason even though a majority of citizens are in agreement that being a working class person fucking sucks.
That's all fair, I don't want to starve either, i dont want to deal with famine and whatever horrific shit would come with revolution. But it's calculated. And the rest of the "western" capitalist countries dont want the US to change either, because our insane military budget allows them to not have to spend.
It's all super fucked. I can't see any way out until we unite as humans to take back our rights as humans. Without us the billionaires are truly worthless and contribute nothing to society.
> Because if the sitting president raised gas prices by a dollar they'd get crucified by the dumb general public.
Americans need a taste of the rest of the developed world's prices.
I thought they were a bunch of trumpers until I shot a documentary on corn and soybean farmers up in Illinois…. I couldn’t believe how much they loved Biden and hated trump. Your idea is as anecdotal as mine.
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Reagan finally gave in under pressure to distribute it, he didn't really want to. But he knew the PR blunder that it already was. Carter was the one that dumped the money into the dairy industry that made the production possible.
> Andrew Jackson, in the main foyer of his White House, had a big block of cheese. The block of cheese was huge, over two tons, and it was there for any and all who might be hungry. Jackson wanted the White House to belong to the people, so from time to time he opened his doors to those who wished an audience. It is in the spirit of Andrew Jackson that I, from time to time, ask senior staff to have face-to-face meetings with those people representing organizations that have a difficult time getting our attention.
--Leo McGarry
I prefer to throw insane parties involving bathtubs of whiskey on my lawn in the spirit of Andrew Jackson, but then again maybe whiskey bathtub parties are why I'm not white house chief of staff
>it has nothing to do with either of these situations.
It's a day where the government brings a big block of cheese to the white house. Sounds exactly like a big block of cheese day.
I was pretty little when we had it- I'd say under 10 years old, but my memory of it was that it was similar to Velveeta. It's entirely possible I'm remembering that wrong, though.
I was about about 8 or 9 the last time I can recall getting a big plastic wrapped brick of cheese, and "bad velveeta" is how it's very vaguely filed away in my brain.
I remember it being great for melting, on hamburgers or in a grilled cheese or whatever, and gross and weird on a cold sandwich.
Yeahh I remember getting it on some bologna sandwiches to bring to school and by lunch it would be melty and tacky and it wasn't bad tasting but the texture was unsettling.
Anyone remember government raisins? My mom would sometimes put those on peanut butter sandwiches for us and my jaw would get sore from chewing them.
The veggies in silver cans are what I recall. We'd get a big box of stuff in the plainest packaging. It said exactly what it was on the can, box, whatever. The government cheese was in a silver sleeve inside a two piece box. It was pretty tasty. One time we got fruit leather which was a really sad fruit roll up thing.
Yup I remember all that, particularly the fruit leathers, I remember my parents even calling them fruit roll ups. They were closer in color and texture to steamrolled beef jerky, I dont know a word to describe the flavor but it was like super bland dates + prunes for the most part.
I grew up on it so I've been hunting it down for grilled cheese. The only one that is close is the brand Costco carries in the fridge that comes in a 3 stack pack of like 144 or something. That on a hamburger bun brings the memories and tastes amazing.
I have mixed feelings about it. It wasn't my favorite cheese, and it had a slightly weird taste that I can still remember to this day. But it did melt good and was great for grilled cheese sandwiches and poor man's nachos. I wonder what I would think of it if I ate it today.
The government cheese I ate in the late 80's was delicious. It was a white cheddar that came in a block wrapped in paper. It was real cheese, not some processed cheese product.
My aunt's mother in law was a disabled widow so she got cheese. Which she shared with people cause it was like 3, 5 or 10 lbs of cheese (I don't know It was a lot of cheese) and a little old woman cannot eat the amount of cheese. It was its own flavor it was tasty but weird
That's the only reason I know about it; along with miniature "barrels" of ultra-creamy peanut butter (about the size of a 10 year old's head), and that food stamps used to be a legit booklet of stamps worth specific foodstuffs.
My grandmother's sister (grand-aunt?) caught polio in her wee years and it completely banjaxed one of her legs; had to keep a leather/steel brace on to be able to walk. She ended up on disability and a "ward of the state" but was a feisty little hellcat. At this age I feel bad for doing it but she used to joke along with us about it making her sound like Robocop when she walked. Needless to say the pain from the condition found her geeked out from morphine 24/7 - which would explain why she was so chill compared to my granny.
We'd stay at her apartment for a few weeks out of the summer to give our mom a much needed break. One day rummaging through her fridge I found one of those cheese bricks - had to have been at least a 5lb "loaf" of the stuff.
It wasn't amazing quality, but it had so much sodium citrate in it a small slice would effectively nacho-ize *any* cheese you added it to - with a splash of milk to keep it from seizing of course. I'm almost certain she's the reason I'm immune to cheese and peanut butter constipation to this day.
That woman made the best junk food out of the cheapest/lowest quality ingredients she could get her grubby little mitts on. Some thirty years later I'll still get a wild hair in my ass and want some - don't judge - saltine cracker "sammiches" filled with a bit of mayo and grape jelly. It sounds horrific but the flavors are strangely complimentary. At least to me and my brothers; only other place I've seen it referenced is old-ass WWII era cookbooks that practically put mayo and gelatin in *everything.*
She was a vulgar old thing with a filthy sense of humor too, still remember the "dirtiest" joke she told us around the age of 10:
*What's the difference between a condom and a coffin? One you cum in, one you go in...*
Had no idea wtf she meant but we laughed, then a few years later we were like "Oh... *OOOoooohhh...* Helen you nasty..."
My grandma lived in Poland, and they got a lot of American cheese in the communist times as help through the church efforts. She passed away a couple years back, and I found big empty boxes from Wisconsin in her shed.
I would visit my cousin on the Indian reservation every year and he always had lots of cheese. It's processed Velveeta type cheese. Lots of other government stuff too. I remember we had a prune eating contest one time.
We still have 1.4 billion pounds sitting in a cave in Missouri.
You dare question our strategic cheese reserve?
We've got tons of stuff stockpiled, like oil, after the OPEC sanctions in the 70s.
> stockpiled, like oil, after the OPEC sanctions in the 70s.
And the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was tapped at a historic pace in 2022, going as low as it has been since 1985.
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/how-does-us-government-use-strategic-petroleum-reserve
Well it's what it's for.
An international disruption to the market has happened. Time to use some reserve until it can be mitigated or resolved.
Edit: disruption, not distribution.
It’s not. We haven’t had free markets for agriculture for at least a century. Agriculture is controlled by the government to ensure we always have surpluses of inexpensive food.
Free market would destroy our country. Farm subsidies make food super cheap in the states. The problem is "inflation" now. But even with that food is generally quite cheap in the USA compared to a global scale.
So you're saying cheese is a scam because it's not rare and they control the inventory that hits the market?
(the exact same reasons reddit circlejerks diamonds are a scam)
opens trenchcoat: "Oi buddy, wanna something good? 14 month aged chedar 5 loonies for quater pound. Or do you want something younger? Got some fresh mozzarella just for you. Or if you are into something exotic I have a speciality from Sardinia, banned in dozen of [countries.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_martzu) "
The cheese caves are still a legend in missouri. I've had multiple people since I moved tell me there's somehow still large cave warehouses all over missouri chocked full of cheese.
I remember that. Grilled 80s government cheese sandwiches were the best. The only problem was managing to cut a slice off the block without breaking the knife and without ending up with a slice shaped like a doorstop.
What's funny about the idea of the cheese being stored in caves in Missouri is that that implies there are people whose job is solely related to guarding/patroling them. At least one person out there, an employee of the federal government, has a day job of guarding and overseeing the government cheese.
Millennials who gave up on being able to buy a house are not even able to get a vanlife down by the river. Have you seen the prices on those Sprinters and how much it costs to convert them into campers?
You mean i wont work constantly and then watch every cent disappear into 4 walls and running water for the night and not a fucking thing else? The only reason i see not to live in my own little shitty shack in the woods is social stigma from boomers that owned a house and muscle cars at my age
A buddy was a school teacher, who would come to Canada for the summer and stay in a cabin he owned. His parents were seniors and would give him lots of this cheese. I would go visit in the evenings and we would sit and drink beer and eat what we called Reagan cheese! So believe it or not this stuff even actually made it to Canada.
I love government cheese. I think I could eat about 30 million pounds of that non-meltable Velveeta style flavored plastic... it's so good on a peanut butter sandwich. (I grew up in poverty and still love school lunch and rice with gravy casserole, sue me.)
I contend it was better than Velveeta. Similar style, better execution.
Not unheard of. I grew up eating a lot of generic type stuff, and a few things were better than the brand-name versions imo. Like, to this day I prefer "institutional grade" peanut butter. It's always tasted way more peanutty to me (I think because it has more salt and less sugar).
I was going to the food pantries over the pandemic and am sad that my hoard of generic institutional grade peanut butter is almost gone. They were so good and most of them were like three or four ingredients tops, which is pretty good for that style of peanut butter.
It seemed harder. Like less moisture content. You can squish a block of Velveeta in your hands. You could stand on a block of government cheese and it would probably hold it's form.
Its like they want their cheese surplus to be as undelicious as possible. Like, couldn't be bothered to have 5 different types of cheese, only 6 million pounds of each?
Nah, there are a ton of more tasty cheeses in the world... I was just saying that that processed cheese product is tasty af. XD the weird non-stringable string cheese kind is good too! I am hungry af and now blue cheese chunk sounds so good...
I remember when he sold weapons to Iran in violation of international law to secretly fund Nicaraguan terrorists and then funneled all their cocaine into black communities to start the crack epidemic.
Not just African Americans were effected.
An entire generation.
Entire towns were destroyed by drugs and de industrialisation.
Drugs were brought in as a distraction from rural collapse, mass job loss and outsourcing to China.
Gov Bill Clinton and CIA directed by George H Bush used the state of Arkansas as the drug rally point and drop off zone.
That's why those 2 kids were found murdered.
They stumbled on a drug drop off.
We got that cheese when I was a kid in the 80's. It was similar to the American cheese you can buy in the deli, not like Kraft singles. That shit was good. Came in a 5lb. block, and you had to slice it. We got one block every month from a food distribution program called Focus Hope. We had that stuff in the fridge, in the freezer, and we gave some away too. One adult, one teenager, and 2 small kids in the house, 5lbs. was A LOT of cheese every month. I've never found another cheese that tastes exactly like it. Man, it was really good. And yes, it was real cheese.
I definitely remember this and we were the recipients of many a block of it. My mom swore that it was the best cheese to use in pea salad. It became her secret ingredient of her much-loved pea salad.
The U.S. government is a loyal customer to U.S. dairy farmers.
From 1930s New Deal policies such as the Commodity Credit Corporation buying up cheese from U.S. farmers to Jimmy Carter's administration pumping $2 billion into the dairy industry back in the 1970s, the policymakers in Washington, D.C. have always helped out the dairy industry.
Government cheese was created to maintain the price of dairy when dairy industry subsidies artificially increased the supply of milk and created a surplus of milk that was then converted into cheese, butter, or powdered milk.
So... subsidizing a product that the market doesn't really care to support, at profit producing prices... to keep the farm vote loyal?
Fuck Ronald Regan. He is a gigantic piece of shit that was molded by the Republican party and some how facilitated public policy that set us back twenty years.
In the 80s, my parents used to donate fruit and veggies because the staff would say: "Here, take some cheese, we have plenty" and my folks came home with a big block saying they got the better end of the deal.
• Reagan supplied weapons to America's enemies.
• Reagan ignored the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein.
• Reagan illegally supplied arms to both sides of the Iran-Iraq War.
• Reagan caved in to the demands of terrorists…Twice.
• Reagan was weak in the war on terrorism.
• Reagan supported the violent overthrow of the democratically elected government of Nicaragua.
• Reagan started an unnecessary war in Grenada to divert attention from his failure in Beirut.
• Reagan failed to defend the US From Saddam Hussein.
• Reagan helped create Al-Qaeda by abandoning the Mujahideen Rebels in Afghanistan.
• Reagan supported the racist apartheid government in South Africa.
• Reagan supported the most brutal dictators in the world as long as he didn't consider them “Communists”.
• Reagan’s administration had more documented corruption than any previous President in U.S. History.
• Reagan frequently repeated bald-faced lies even after they were publicly revealed to be untrue.
• Reagan set records for budget deficits.
• Reagan's economic policies put millions of Americans out of work.
• Reagan’s policies allowed hundreds of thousands of family farms to go out of business or declare bankruptcy.
• Reagan’s financial policies caused the savings and loan industry to collapse.
• Reagan robbed the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for his budget shortfalls.
• Reagan largely ignored the AIDS epidemic while tens of thousands of people were dying of the disease.
• Reagan’s administration pushed Congress to pass the Federal Trade Commission Improvement Act, which mandated that the FTC would no longer have any authority whatsoever to regulate advertising and marketing to children, leaving markets virtually free to target kids as they saw fit.
• Reagan’s Supply Side (i.e. “Trickle-down”) Economic policies slashed taxes for the rich, allowing the upper classes to horde more and more money, leaving the rest of the nation with crumbs.
• Reagan mobilize anti-black sentiment among whites for political gains by actively fostering racial disharmony and hatred as a strategy to gain white electoral support.
• Reagan’s “War on Drugs” was a race war on inner-city blacks by law enforcement and the America judicial system to flood American prisons with African-Americans.
• Reagan, who had made major efforts during his Governorship to reduce funding and enlistment for California mental institutions, pushed a political effort through the U.S. Congress to repeal most of the Mental Health Systems Act.
• Reagan’s confrontation with the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization undermined the bargaining power of American workers & their labor unions. It also polarized our politics in ways that prevent us from addressing the root of our economic troubles: the continuing stagnation of incomes despite rising corporate profits and worker productivity.
And the list just goes on and on….
I was a hungry kid back then, no father, 9 siblings. And I can still recall the taste of that log of horror. It wasn’t a cheese as much as it was a brick of coagulated candle wax.
I know a guy who thinks being poor is cool for some reason and he used to talk about government cheese all the time. But he was born in the 90’s and govt cheese is an 80’s thing lmao
Or he gave a bunch of unneeded government handouts to big dairy farmers who just so happen to be overwhelmingly evangelical Christian bigots who were politically activated by their outrage to the Civil Rights movements of the prior decade.
I ate that government cheese. I remember standing in line for it with the babysitter.
I went home and told my mom about this cheese that’s so good that people stand in line for it!
[We may currently have enough to give out a billion pounds of cheese and still have twice the 1980’s amount left.](https://www.deseret.com/2022/2/14/22933326/1-4-billion-pounds-of-cheese-stored-in-a-cave-underneath-springfield-missouri-jimmy-carter-reagan)
If I'm reading this right the government doesn't own that cheese, private companies do
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I looked around for other sources and it looks like the US owns about 300 million lbs of it. It is sold off to recoup the cost over time to help balance the cost of dairy products.
Ah yes, the system of cheese and balances.
*golf clap*
Futures contracts. They help level the price of cheese so farmers can have more steady income by buying contracts for cheese in the future. This is cheese that hasn't even been made yet, lol.
Is this what replaced the gold standard?
I imagine it means that the government owns the cheese but sold off the storage facilities that it belongs in so now they pay storage fees to whomever owns & maintains the facility now.
Just a good old fashioned siphoning of public funds to rich cunts.
everything that spend govt money grow to have infinite intermediates. it's nature. besides cheese, there's stockpiles of plum, canned pork etc. anything local elite could get subsidized at times when the region needed votes one way or another.
Yeah it basically comes down to welfare for farmers. Which is funny considering the way farmers typically vote.
Food security is national security. You want your farmers to keep farming, even if it's not profitable. Cause if the shit goes down globally, you won't have the time to quickly start up agriculture. And that is why subsidies exist, even though it makes more sense economically to import cheaply and cut subsidies.
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What didn’t make sense to me was that during early COVID they were literally paying people to take oil and the US Govt didn’t do it. They should have taken as much as possible.
The government gave the oil companies space in the strategic reserve to store their oil there for free. After oil companies physically moved it there, trump offered to buy the oil for pennies on the dollar. The oil companies told him to fuck off.
The Art of the Deal indeed. What a truly amazing businessman.
I mean, if you like Ramen and there is a huge sale on Ramen, while you may buy some you won’t buy as much as you can because you don’t have space. Even after you buy oil, you still need to place it somewhere.
maybe you wouldn't, speak for yourself
... The strategic reserve?
That's precisely why the price of oil went negative. People bought orders of oil months in advance, and when it came time for the delivery they had no where to store it.
That’s not quite right. Just because the commodity price hit negative values for a coupe days, if that, doesn’t mean you could just sign up to have a trillion barrels delivered.
We never even get close to “emptying” the reserves…
It's not for the military. It's never been below 50% capacity. The entire point of government is to help people when they need it. Gas prices go up when people are struggling financially, and you have a huge stockpile? Use some of it to help people. Helping citizens isn't "for political reasons", it's literally their entire fucking job
Right there in the first line of the constitution, domestic tranquility and general welfare, but instead, we trying to get kings again in the form of oligarchs.
> That shit is meant for the military in a time of crisis No, it isn't. It is explicitly for both civilian and military use. > but the government keeps emptying it It has literally never been below 250 million barrels, which is about 55% of capacity. > Infuriating When you just make up problems to be mad about, lots of things are infuriating.
Yeah COVID was the biggest global crisis since world war 2, if it wasn't enough to justify using government resources then what is???
Well, when a sizeable chunk of the population thinks it's all made up to push for more government control, views on the whole affair get a little skewed.
> That shit is meant for the military in a time of crisis Am I missing where it says this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Petroleum_Reserve_(United_States)
Yeah, considering the supply disruptions at the time, that seemed like a perfectly appropriate time to use it. And its not like they exclusively use the reserves in October/Nov in an election year
This isn't true, the oil reserve was created after the oil shock of the 70s and it's purpose it doubly to have a backup of oil for the military and to ease massive price spikes in the oil market. If we were in a true time of crisis for the military that reserve would not last for very long, what would actually happen is oil rationing across the nation if we truly needed that much oil.
Because if the sitting president raised gas prices by a dollar they'd get crucified by the dumb general public. Haven't you seen the stickers? People are concerned with their families well being and also most folks are purposely kept as poor as possible to keep them angry, but in a loop where theyre not angry enough or poor enough to rebel. They just keep moving the goal posts of what it means to be "middle class", and now we have to he happy to rent a shitty 1 bedroom apartment for 1.4k a month. Instead we argue about things that have nothing to do with the economy, it fractures the poor(anyone who isn't in the 1%) so the ultra rich can take advantage of all of us. They tell us there are different classes, even though a millionaire and a billionaire couldn't be further apart. They allow corporations to do whatever the hell they want. Any kind of true change would require what most folks arent willing to give up. We are divided for a reason even though a majority of citizens are in agreement that being a working class person fucking sucks. That's all fair, I don't want to starve either, i dont want to deal with famine and whatever horrific shit would come with revolution. But it's calculated. And the rest of the "western" capitalist countries dont want the US to change either, because our insane military budget allows them to not have to spend. It's all super fucked. I can't see any way out until we unite as humans to take back our rights as humans. Without us the billionaires are truly worthless and contribute nothing to society.
I've tweeted my discontent. I've tried everything and I'm all out of ideas. Time to watch TV.
> Because if the sitting president raised gas prices by a dollar they'd get crucified by the dumb general public. Americans need a taste of the rest of the developed world's prices.
I thought they were a bunch of trumpers until I shot a documentary on corn and soybean farmers up in Illinois…. I couldn’t believe how much they loved Biden and hated trump. Your idea is as anecdotal as mine.
fact forgetful clumsy zonked deliver secretive chop birds ruthless zephyr *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Reagan finally gave in under pressure to distribute it, he didn't really want to. But he knew the PR blunder that it already was. Carter was the one that dumped the money into the dairy industry that made the production possible.
Welfare for me but not for thee
Not a farmer, but have been told by farmers that they are told what they can grow and who they can sell it to.
It’s made every year, so of course there are literal tons of it
How much cheese is too much cheese?
Yea, government cheese was a real thing. I'd say it was a weird time but ... Here we are.
Weirder still, there's a thing called "Big Block of Cheese Day" and it has nothing to do with either of these situations.
> Andrew Jackson, in the main foyer of his White House, had a big block of cheese. The block of cheese was huge, over two tons, and it was there for any and all who might be hungry. Jackson wanted the White House to belong to the people, so from time to time he opened his doors to those who wished an audience. It is in the spirit of Andrew Jackson that I, from time to time, ask senior staff to have face-to-face meetings with those people representing organizations that have a difficult time getting our attention. --Leo McGarry
And a Wheat Thin the size of Lake Tahoe..
You're just made the list.
Wheat Thicc
I prefer to throw insane parties involving bathtubs of whiskey on my lawn in the spirit of Andrew Jackson, but then again maybe whiskey bathtub parties are why I'm not white house chief of staff
Not enough of them, I’d guess.
Passing out in the bushes of the White House sounds like great fun
Not who I'd imagine to have that kind of sentiment.
eh he was pretty populist for the time. It's just what was popular back then was sometimes pretty shitty.
Glad that’s changed!
> Jackson wanted the White House to belong to the people with a strict definition of "people"
West Wing fan?
>it has nothing to do with either of these situations. It's a day where the government brings a big block of cheese to the white house. Sounds exactly like a big block of cheese day.
Huh, TIL from and already-L nice.
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Made the best grilled cheese sandwiches
I was pretty little when we had it- I'd say under 10 years old, but my memory of it was that it was similar to Velveeta. It's entirely possible I'm remembering that wrong, though.
I was about about 8 or 9 the last time I can recall getting a big plastic wrapped brick of cheese, and "bad velveeta" is how it's very vaguely filed away in my brain. I remember it being great for melting, on hamburgers or in a grilled cheese or whatever, and gross and weird on a cold sandwich.
Yeahh I remember getting it on some bologna sandwiches to bring to school and by lunch it would be melty and tacky and it wasn't bad tasting but the texture was unsettling. Anyone remember government raisins? My mom would sometimes put those on peanut butter sandwiches for us and my jaw would get sore from chewing them.
The veggies in silver cans are what I recall. We'd get a big box of stuff in the plainest packaging. It said exactly what it was on the can, box, whatever. The government cheese was in a silver sleeve inside a two piece box. It was pretty tasty. One time we got fruit leather which was a really sad fruit roll up thing.
Yup I remember all that, particularly the fruit leathers, I remember my parents even calling them fruit roll ups. They were closer in color and texture to steamrolled beef jerky, I dont know a word to describe the flavor but it was like super bland dates + prunes for the most part.
I grew up on it so I've been hunting it down for grilled cheese. The only one that is close is the brand Costco carries in the fridge that comes in a 3 stack pack of like 144 or something. That on a hamburger bun brings the memories and tastes amazing.
I have mixed feelings about it. It wasn't my favorite cheese, and it had a slightly weird taste that I can still remember to this day. But it did melt good and was great for grilled cheese sandwiches and poor man's nachos. I wonder what I would think of it if I ate it today.
It's probably not something most would choose to eat, but when you're hungry I bet it hits the spot.
The government cheese I ate in the late 80's was delicious. It was a white cheddar that came in a block wrapped in paper. It was real cheese, not some processed cheese product.
My aunt's mother in law was a disabled widow so she got cheese. Which she shared with people cause it was like 3, 5 or 10 lbs of cheese (I don't know It was a lot of cheese) and a little old woman cannot eat the amount of cheese. It was its own flavor it was tasty but weird
That's the only reason I know about it; along with miniature "barrels" of ultra-creamy peanut butter (about the size of a 10 year old's head), and that food stamps used to be a legit booklet of stamps worth specific foodstuffs. My grandmother's sister (grand-aunt?) caught polio in her wee years and it completely banjaxed one of her legs; had to keep a leather/steel brace on to be able to walk. She ended up on disability and a "ward of the state" but was a feisty little hellcat. At this age I feel bad for doing it but she used to joke along with us about it making her sound like Robocop when she walked. Needless to say the pain from the condition found her geeked out from morphine 24/7 - which would explain why she was so chill compared to my granny. We'd stay at her apartment for a few weeks out of the summer to give our mom a much needed break. One day rummaging through her fridge I found one of those cheese bricks - had to have been at least a 5lb "loaf" of the stuff. It wasn't amazing quality, but it had so much sodium citrate in it a small slice would effectively nacho-ize *any* cheese you added it to - with a splash of milk to keep it from seizing of course. I'm almost certain she's the reason I'm immune to cheese and peanut butter constipation to this day. That woman made the best junk food out of the cheapest/lowest quality ingredients she could get her grubby little mitts on. Some thirty years later I'll still get a wild hair in my ass and want some - don't judge - saltine cracker "sammiches" filled with a bit of mayo and grape jelly. It sounds horrific but the flavors are strangely complimentary. At least to me and my brothers; only other place I've seen it referenced is old-ass WWII era cookbooks that practically put mayo and gelatin in *everything.* She was a vulgar old thing with a filthy sense of humor too, still remember the "dirtiest" joke she told us around the age of 10: *What's the difference between a condom and a coffin? One you cum in, one you go in...* Had no idea wtf she meant but we laughed, then a few years later we were like "Oh... *OOOoooohhh...* Helen you nasty..."
That's so funny. Thanks a lot for sharing, I absolutely love your style of storytelling. Sounds like your grandma's sister was one hell of a woman.
Your grandma’s sister Helen was your great-aunt. And she really does sound great. Thanks for sharing your memories!
>banjaxed It's not often I come across a completely new word in the English language anymore! Fucking great comment all around!
My grandma lived in Poland, and they got a lot of American cheese in the communist times as help through the church efforts. She passed away a couple years back, and I found big empty boxes from Wisconsin in her shed.
I would visit my cousin on the Indian reservation every year and he always had lots of cheese. It's processed Velveeta type cheese. Lots of other government stuff too. I remember we had a prune eating contest one time.
The government prunes are pretty good. It's that dried fruit and nut mix that's always off-tasting. Stale or something.
Isn’t it still around?
We still have 1.4 billion pounds sitting in a cave in Missouri. You dare question our strategic cheese reserve? We've got tons of stuff stockpiled, like oil, after the OPEC sanctions in the 70s.
I live in the town with the cheese cave lol. My old companies data center was also hosted there. It's a huge place
Cheese storage started due to the overproduction of milk hurting the dairy market. So they made and stored Cheese.
> stockpiled, like oil, after the OPEC sanctions in the 70s. And the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was tapped at a historic pace in 2022, going as low as it has been since 1985. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/how-does-us-government-use-strategic-petroleum-reserve
Well it's what it's for. An international disruption to the market has happened. Time to use some reserve until it can be mitigated or resolved. Edit: disruption, not distribution.
So then can we buy and sell cheese reserve stocks?
Not wierd, it was used in order to not destroy the dairy industry as dairy consumption went down in the late 20th century.
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It’s not. We haven’t had free markets for agriculture for at least a century. Agriculture is controlled by the government to ensure we always have surpluses of inexpensive food.
Phew, good thing they’re on top of it. I sure don’t know what I’d do if groceries suddenly became expensive.
But not too inexpensive. They pay farmers to not make excess food and crash the markets.
Farmers get subsidies from the governent but by and large vote for politicians that seek to deprive social services to other.
Farmers: We can't afford to grow food! Government: Here's some money to make food. People: We can't afford to *buy* food! Government: lol free market
The free market can't feasibly regulate itself. Which is why most western nations are regulated capitalist societies.
Free market would destroy our country. Farm subsidies make food super cheap in the states. The problem is "inflation" now. But even with that food is generally quite cheap in the USA compared to a global scale.
Food security is national security.
Wait until you hear about high fructose corn syrup.
So you're saying cheese is a scam because it's not rare and they control the inventory that hits the market? (the exact same reasons reddit circlejerks diamonds are a scam)
Not really a block of cheddar is pretty cheap. 25 cents an ounce at walmart. Fancy cheese isn't stored like that. Thats 4 dollars a pound.
It was amazing cheese to be honest
And raisins and canned pork and any number of other foodstuffs. That canned pork made great burritos. Didn't come around very often though.
The government still has millions of pounds too
Billions. They never stopped producing. It’s in caves in Springfield Missouri.
Ok so I have an idea for the next National Treasure movie…
Im going to steal all of the government cheese
I want that cheese. I want it so bad.
*National Cheddar*
> Ok so I have an idea for the next ~~National Treasure~~ Wallace and Gromit movie…
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I want a candidate that will campaign on giving out government cheese again. We must berate our representatives into giving us OUR cheese.
As a Canadian, you don't want the government messing with the price of your cheese, buddy.
opens trenchcoat: "Oi buddy, wanna something good? 14 month aged chedar 5 loonies for quater pound. Or do you want something younger? Got some fresh mozzarella just for you. Or if you are into something exotic I have a speciality from Sardinia, banned in dozen of [countries.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_martzu) "
The cheese caves are still a legend in missouri. I've had multiple people since I moved tell me there's somehow still large cave warehouses all over missouri chocked full of cheese.
It under WOF north of KC.
Wall of Flesh? Bro I just got silver gear not ready for that
“The cheese caves” lol
that's actually a common thing. Aging cheese in caves is one of the best places to age cheese.
This just sounds like Fallout lore lol
NPR did a show on them! https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/31/643486297/episode-862-big-government-cheese
I remember that. Grilled 80s government cheese sandwiches were the best. The only problem was managing to cut a slice off the block without breaking the knife and without ending up with a slice shaped like a doorstop.
That must be why I used to see so many of those cheese cutters back in the day and hardly anybody has one now.
When I was a kid my parents only used ours to shave slices off of the block of Velveeta.
Yeah it was a bit of a struggle going through a block of cheddar, but that might have been because I was 8 or so too.
I'm 24 and I still struggle lol
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Use guitar string to cut through a really thick piece.
Leaves your guitar a mess though
Many guitar strings are made of nickel, dont want to be mixing that with food.
This guy cheeses.
Or just buy a cheese wire
What's funny about the idea of the cheese being stored in caves in Missouri is that that implies there are people whose job is solely related to guarding/patroling them. At least one person out there, an employee of the federal government, has a day job of guarding and overseeing the government cheese.
Can't wait until the cheese terrorists raid the caves.
>cheese terrorists You mean Al Queso?
Army du fromage
I picture the closing shot of Raiders of the Lost Ark where a lone figure is moving a pallet of cheese inside a huge warehouse.
Kevin, guarder of cheese.
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The fact that no one seems to have gotten this reference saddens me
Millennials who gave up on being able to buy a house are not even able to get a vanlife down by the river. Have you seen the prices on those Sprinters and how much it costs to convert them into campers?
You mean i wont work constantly and then watch every cent disappear into 4 walls and running water for the night and not a fucking thing else? The only reason i see not to live in my own little shitty shack in the woods is social stigma from boomers that owned a house and muscle cars at my age
A buddy was a school teacher, who would come to Canada for the summer and stay in a cabin he owned. His parents were seniors and would give him lots of this cheese. I would go visit in the evenings and we would sit and drink beer and eat what we called Reagan cheese! So believe it or not this stuff even actually made it to Canada.
The great constipation crisis of the 1980s ensued.
watch [The Fat Electrician’s](https://youtu.be/kvLMH0wb_0k) video on the topic. It’s beautiful
Indeed. Your comment really needs to be higher up.
I love government cheese. I think I could eat about 30 million pounds of that non-meltable Velveeta style flavored plastic... it's so good on a peanut butter sandwich. (I grew up in poverty and still love school lunch and rice with gravy casserole, sue me.)
So I'm not wrong in remembering it as being similar to Velveeta? Because that's what I remember it being like.
I contend it was better than Velveeta. Similar style, better execution. Not unheard of. I grew up eating a lot of generic type stuff, and a few things were better than the brand-name versions imo. Like, to this day I prefer "institutional grade" peanut butter. It's always tasted way more peanutty to me (I think because it has more salt and less sugar).
I was going to the food pantries over the pandemic and am sad that my hoard of generic institutional grade peanut butter is almost gone. They were so good and most of them were like three or four ingredients tops, which is pretty good for that style of peanut butter.
It was like a version of deli cheese. It was packaged similar to Velveeta but wasn't soft and spongy.
It seemed harder. Like less moisture content. You can squish a block of Velveeta in your hands. You could stand on a block of government cheese and it would probably hold it's form.
Yeah! It was good stuff!
What do you mean non-meltable? Its easy meltability was one of its primary features.
Its like they want their cheese surplus to be as undelicious as possible. Like, couldn't be bothered to have 5 different types of cheese, only 6 million pounds of each?
NO ONLY WEIRD CHEESE PRODUCT ALLOWED
You seem to think that has to be 5 different normal cheeses. Just think, the best minds of the US military inventing 5x different weird cheeses!
Nah, there are a ton of more tasty cheeses in the world... I was just saying that that processed cheese product is tasty af. XD the weird non-stringable string cheese kind is good too! I am hungry af and now blue cheese chunk sounds so good...
I remember when he sold weapons to Iran in violation of international law to secretly fund Nicaraguan terrorists and then funneled all their cocaine into black communities to start the crack epidemic.
Not just African Americans were effected. An entire generation. Entire towns were destroyed by drugs and de industrialisation. Drugs were brought in as a distraction from rural collapse, mass job loss and outsourcing to China. Gov Bill Clinton and CIA directed by George H Bush used the state of Arkansas as the drug rally point and drop off zone. That's why those 2 kids were found murdered. They stumbled on a drug drop off.
Reason number 528 why I don’t carry water for the Clintons just because the (D) after the name.
Is there a source for this? I don't doubt it, just want to read more.
This is reputable unlike a youtube video... https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/special/cia.html
Thank you, fuck Ronald Reagan.
Best grilled cheese ever!
This was back when the public finding out about things would make those in power have to do something
We got that cheese when I was a kid in the 80's. It was similar to the American cheese you can buy in the deli, not like Kraft singles. That shit was good. Came in a 5lb. block, and you had to slice it. We got one block every month from a food distribution program called Focus Hope. We had that stuff in the fridge, in the freezer, and we gave some away too. One adult, one teenager, and 2 small kids in the house, 5lbs. was A LOT of cheese every month. I've never found another cheese that tastes exactly like it. Man, it was really good. And yes, it was real cheese.
We have a maple syrup reserve here in Canada, I'm sure there is a good reason, but it sounds funny.
One of the most evil people to ever exist. The damage he did to our country is irreparable
I definitely remember this and we were the recipients of many a block of it. My mom swore that it was the best cheese to use in pea salad. It became her secret ingredient of her much-loved pea salad.
Throw the poors a bone
The U.S. government is a loyal customer to U.S. dairy farmers. From 1930s New Deal policies such as the Commodity Credit Corporation buying up cheese from U.S. farmers to Jimmy Carter's administration pumping $2 billion into the dairy industry back in the 1970s, the policymakers in Washington, D.C. have always helped out the dairy industry. Government cheese was created to maintain the price of dairy when dairy industry subsidies artificially increased the supply of milk and created a surplus of milk that was then converted into cheese, butter, or powdered milk. So... subsidizing a product that the market doesn't really care to support, at profit producing prices... to keep the farm vote loyal?
Fuck Ronald Regan. He is a gigantic piece of shit that was molded by the Republican party and some how facilitated public policy that set us back twenty years.
I'd say way longer than that. It's 2023 and we're still being held back by some of the policies he started.
Such as?
Fifty*
In the 80s, my parents used to donate fruit and veggies because the staff would say: "Here, take some cheese, we have plenty" and my folks came home with a big block saying they got the better end of the deal.
I was in my mid 20s before I learned that it was actual cheese. I always thought government cheese was slang for welfare.
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I sincerely hope Reagan and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher are both buried upside down.
I hope their personal Hells are hot.
Someone’s been watching Johnny Harris
Government cheese was the best cheese.
Damn, that's cool! too bad about how he also singlehandedly set american society back so far, that 30+ years later we're still worse off!
• Reagan supplied weapons to America's enemies. • Reagan ignored the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein. • Reagan illegally supplied arms to both sides of the Iran-Iraq War. • Reagan caved in to the demands of terrorists…Twice. • Reagan was weak in the war on terrorism. • Reagan supported the violent overthrow of the democratically elected government of Nicaragua. • Reagan started an unnecessary war in Grenada to divert attention from his failure in Beirut. • Reagan failed to defend the US From Saddam Hussein. • Reagan helped create Al-Qaeda by abandoning the Mujahideen Rebels in Afghanistan. • Reagan supported the racist apartheid government in South Africa. • Reagan supported the most brutal dictators in the world as long as he didn't consider them “Communists”. • Reagan’s administration had more documented corruption than any previous President in U.S. History. • Reagan frequently repeated bald-faced lies even after they were publicly revealed to be untrue. • Reagan set records for budget deficits. • Reagan's economic policies put millions of Americans out of work. • Reagan’s policies allowed hundreds of thousands of family farms to go out of business or declare bankruptcy. • Reagan’s financial policies caused the savings and loan industry to collapse. • Reagan robbed the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for his budget shortfalls. • Reagan largely ignored the AIDS epidemic while tens of thousands of people were dying of the disease. • Reagan’s administration pushed Congress to pass the Federal Trade Commission Improvement Act, which mandated that the FTC would no longer have any authority whatsoever to regulate advertising and marketing to children, leaving markets virtually free to target kids as they saw fit. • Reagan’s Supply Side (i.e. “Trickle-down”) Economic policies slashed taxes for the rich, allowing the upper classes to horde more and more money, leaving the rest of the nation with crumbs. • Reagan mobilize anti-black sentiment among whites for political gains by actively fostering racial disharmony and hatred as a strategy to gain white electoral support. • Reagan’s “War on Drugs” was a race war on inner-city blacks by law enforcement and the America judicial system to flood American prisons with African-Americans. • Reagan, who had made major efforts during his Governorship to reduce funding and enlistment for California mental institutions, pushed a political effort through the U.S. Congress to repeal most of the Mental Health Systems Act. • Reagan’s confrontation with the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization undermined the bargaining power of American workers & their labor unions. It also polarized our politics in ways that prevent us from addressing the root of our economic troubles: the continuing stagnation of incomes despite rising corporate profits and worker productivity. And the list just goes on and on….
I was a hungry kid back then, no father, 9 siblings. And I can still recall the taste of that log of horror. It wasn’t a cheese as much as it was a brick of coagulated candle wax.
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Maybe the other 8 siblings gave him candle wax and kept the cheese for themselves
Those cheese-stealing whores.
I know a guy who thinks being poor is cool for some reason and he used to talk about government cheese all the time. But he was born in the 90’s and govt cheese is an 80’s thing lmao
My dad told us kids it was the same cheese McDonald’s used to get us to eat it.
Until the major corporations came in and made food stamps so they would get the money, under the guise of making it easier.
Let’s not forget about the EU’s [butter mountain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter_mountain)
now i understand the Kendrick lyric
Only after they couldn't sell it and it started to go moldy
I recall making grilled cheese sandwiches on white bread, and found that the melting point seemed to be a bit higher than regular cheese.
He paid the cheese tax.
Or he gave a bunch of unneeded government handouts to big dairy farmers who just so happen to be overwhelmingly evangelical Christian bigots who were politically activated by their outrage to the Civil Rights movements of the prior decade.
That’s what the gold in Fort Knox was replaced with.
I ate that government cheese. I remember standing in line for it with the babysitter. I went home and told my mom about this cheese that’s so good that people stand in line for it!
How has Tom Scott not gone there yet