A Place At The Table.....America's Dirty Little Secret

I saw a great Bill Moyer's special with the director of the movie A Place At The Table and the head of an organization called Witness to Hunger. This movie is about the epidemic of hunger in America, something no one wants talks about. I was involved in a free food program in the late 70's in Redding California, and we were distributing food to a couple of thousand  people a month.

I think this movie has been out for a while and I'm behind the loop, as usual. Congress doesn't think that the government is solely responsible for hunger in America, and would like to shift more of the burden onto charities, that's us, an old Ronald Reagan/Casper Wineberger tactic from 1980, and slash the hell out of the SNAP program, which currently is helping 48 million people in the US.

That's right, 48 million people in America are getting food stamps, and are going hungry on a monthly basis, 17 million of those are children, our future.  Speaking of 1980, at that time there were some 400 food banks in the US, now there's 4,000.

Poverty level in the US is $18,000. for one person, $32,000. for a family of 3. Try operating on those numbers. Quite a large number of the people who are receiving food stamps are people who are working full time for companies like Walmart, making $7.25 an hour. That's $290.00 a week before taxes, which would leave you around $220.00, at the end of the week. Good luck with that.
Another dirty little secret is that a large number of service men and women's family who are protecting our country are on the food stamps program or SNAP as it's now called.

Congress doesn't want to "subsidise" the poor. It's OK to subsidise the oil and coal industry, the railroads, the large agriculture business interests like Jolly Green Giant, but not poor people. Those kids don't need to eat food to get ahead. They can breeze through school with no breakfast or lunch. It'll keep them nice and thin.

Obesity and poverty go hand in hand. The price of fresh produce and fruit has skyrocketed by 40%, but the price of processed foods has gone down. Forced with hunger anyone would take the higher calorie diet for less money. $3.00 a day is what food stamps doles out. Try eating on three bucks a day.

Funny thing is that in the 70's we almost had hunger in America licked, but it came back with a vengeance. Problem is we have more poor now. The "middle class" is shrinking. It was a documentary back in the late sixties that led to the decline in hunger in the US. Maybe this one will get us back on track. I don't believe it will but I applaud the folks who fight the good fight.

It seems to me that less and less people care about our most unfortunate, and have bought into the political line that it's the poor that are dragging this country down, not the corporations and the wealthy, many of whom pay little to no taxes.

I hate to be a downer, but that show really pushed my buttons. We have the power, we're just so divided it's sad. For a generation that stopped a war, we sure have turned out to be big assholes.

Watch this movie.

That's it.

Peace,

Make Food/Not War

What I ate today;

Breakfast; 2 piece of herb bread w/butter, 2 poached eggs

Lunch: With my friend Buzz....sandwich, with salad, glass of wine

Dinner; Turkey sandwich, handful of chocolate covered raisins.

Exercise; 6 miles walking

Exercise; 7 miles walking