Hungry for Reform
Posted: Monday, November 30, 2009
by Joel Hirschhorn
http://www.delusionaldemocracy.com
Every time I hear someone refer to the US as the greatest nation on Earth I cringe. I feel shame as an American. Shame because my government is willing to continue to sacrifice its citizens to wage two unnecessary, imperialistic wars despite a terrible economy with huge unemployment and a national debt that will wreck havoc for many decades to come. Worst of all, besides many millions of my fellow citizens lacking access to affordable and routine health care, is the growing awareness that an incredible number of Americans can no longer afford adequate food. The facts are numbing.
Use of food stamp is at record highs and climbing every month. This once much maligned program now helps feed one in eight Americans and one in four children. More than 36 million people use inconspicuous plastic cards for staples like milk, bread and cheese, swiping them at counters in blighted cities and in suburbs pocked with foreclosure signs. That equates to some 12 percent of the population, but is far from the full story on food shortages and insecurity.
From the most affluent to the poorest places in the US, food stamp use has been exploding. Since 2007, the 600 counties with the highest percentage of people on the food stamp rolls added 1.3 million new recipients. So did the 600 counties where use was lowest.
The US Department of Agriculture said earlier this month that 49 million people, or 14.6 percent of households, struggle to put food on the table, the most since the agency began tracking food security levels in 1995.
Private charities are being hit hard. Overall, 4.7 million households used American food pantries in 2008, compared to about 3.7 million in 2006. Food banks across the country report about a 30 percent increase in demand on average, but some have seen as much as a 150 percent jump in demand from 2008 through the middle of this year, according to Feeding America.
The number of seniors living alone who seek help from food pantries in the US increased 81 percent to 408,000 in 2008, compared to 225,000 in 2006, according to the US Department of Agriculture. Federal agencies and national organizations have just started tracking first timers. But information from individual pantries is clear: More and more new faces are appearing among the approximately 25 million Americans who rely on food pantries each year. Logically, many people are probably using both food stamps and local pantries to try and survive, but many are not getting access to food stamps.
True, the program is growing at a record rate, but the federal official who oversees it would like it to grow even faster. "I think the response of the program has been tremendous," said Kevin Concannon, an under secretary of agriculture, "but we're mindful that there are another 15, 16 million who could benefit." Nationwide, food stamps reach about two-thirds of those eligible, with rates ranging from an estimated 50 percent in California to 98 percent in Missouri. "This is the most urgent time for our feeding programs in our lifetime, with the exception of the Depression," he said. "It's time for us to face up to the fact that in this country of plenty, there are hungry people."
And also millions of homeless and unemployed people without access to good health care.
Despite all this bad news, the Obama administration is still willing to spend nonexistent financial resources on fighting two unnecessary wars and even to host a lavish state dinner the other day at the White House. Nor are the billions spent on economic recovery doing anything meaningful to help ordinary Americans coping with unemployment. And the expected health care reform law is unlikely to help ordinary people very much. Is this what voters wanted and expected when they supported Obama's presidential campaign?
When will Americans revolt?
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)Nicely done. I don't share shame, however, in that I have to remind myself (constantly) Americans are separate from their government. As a people (or society) I do believe we are the greatest country, yet follow the actions of our government (both this one and the previous) and I tend to agree with you: there is a disconnect with reality present. We can use all of the money we ship overseas to help those here at home, and we can reinvent the American dream in the process since that dream, though still alive, seems tainted. We as a people have to understand who we are and what we stand for. We also have to stop the entitlement mentality that prevents those who know better from doing better. Good job, sir.
As Ralph Nader says, "You need "fire in the belly" for real action.
That and resources (big money) fueling tight and continual organization among the many.
If people got really organized, with 2000 people or so in each district across the nation, coming together to regular meetings and events and had substantial resources (billions of dollars donated by the richest people out there (Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, etc.) we could get a huge amount done quickly. Nader says, Single Payer Health Care would be a reality in a year with about a billion dollar backing to get the juggernaut rolling. The media would soon sit up and take notice. Once that happens, the ball starts rolling faster because more and more people will become aware and join the bandwagon.
It's all spelled out in detail in Nader's first work of fiction, "Only the Super Rich Can Save Us"
As it is, most people do not know what to do, and even if they do and want to do something, huge amounts of money are needed to get anything REAL happening.
Protesting seems to accomplish little. Many are arrested, the rest go home and continue to live with the nonsense, the media ignores it, Congress doesn't seem to give a hoot (they're safe and secure in the pockets of corporations) and the corporations continue to hold all of Washington D.C. in the palm of their hand.
Even books and DVDs seem to have little affect. There have been more books and DVDs out in recent years exposing the corruption and deception in America than I have ever seen in my entire life. Great big piles of them. What have they accomplished? Probably not much. People read the book or watch the DVD and exclaim, "Wow, that was enlightening, wasn't it !!!" and that will be the end of it.
And for now, it's life as usual with the gap between rich and poor widening by the day and the "race to the bottom" gaining speed.
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Put a frog in a pot of boiling water and it will quickly jump out. Put the same frog into a pot of cool water then slowly and gradually turn up the heat. The frog might end up being boiled to death. The question is: Will the American people remain in the pot too long ?
"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take everything you have." - Thomas Jefferson
I am totally with you. A "good war" would be a war on poverty and joblessness.- G
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