As Food Costs Soar, US Must Step Up to Plate
‘A hungry man is an angry man,” goes the old adage. And for months Haitians have compared their hunger to “eating Clorox [bleach]” because of the burning of their stomachs. Now riots have broken out and five people have died in a week of protests. A U.N. peacekeeper has been shot and killed. The Haitian Senate voted to fire the prime minister. With angry protesters demanding that the President Rene Preval step down, he announced a 15 percent decrease in the price of rice.
That won’t help. Food prices are up 40 percent on average across the world since the middle of last year, causing riots in countries from the Cameroon to Egypt to Haiti. For countries like Haiti, where 80 percent of the people live on less than $2 a day, the rising price of rice, beans and cooking stuff translates directly into hunger, starvation and rage. Those living on the knife edge of survival have no way to adjust.
Food prices have risen due to a “perfect storm.” Demand from industrializing countries like China and India is rising. Supply has been reduced due to climatic disruptions and because of use of crops for biofuels. China, India, Vietnam and other rice exporters have limited exports to meet domestic pressures. The high price of oil makes transportation ever more costly. The price of rice has virtually doubled in a year; wheat has risen even faster.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, predicted widespread economic disruption if food prices do not come down. “The consequences,” he warned, “will be terrible.” World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned that 100 million people might be pushed farther into poverty if nothing is done.
The World Food Program made an emergency appeal for donations for Haiti. It said on Monday it has received only 13 percent of the $96 million necessary for its Haitian program. Globally, the leaders of the seven leading industrial countries meeting in Washington agreed to support a World Bank “New Deal” for food, and called on donors to provide $500 million in funding for short-term relief. World Bank President Zoellick said that only about half of that sum had been pledged.
The Federal Reserve just spent $29 billion to bail out one investment bank. Grumbling from executives of the otherwise bankrupt Bear Stearns bank led JP Morgan and the Fed to raise the buyout price by $1.2 billion, essentially a giveaway to Bear stockholders. The change in the price alone is more than double what is needed to counter the threat of starvation across the world.
Haiti, of course, is right off our shores. The U.S. has a special responsibility there, having played a major role in dispatching Jean Bertrande Aristide, the elected president, and putting a new regime in his place. Worse, thousands of Haitian immigrants now face deportation back to Haiti. They came here under “temporary protected status” after tropical storms and economic upheaval. Now that status has to be renewed — otherwise the U.S. will be sending Haiti more mouths to feed, not more food to eat.
Our own economy is headed down, with Americans feeling increasingly pessimistic and hard pressed by rising costs of everything from gas to food to health care. This is a difficult time to feel generous toward those with even less. But surely, if we are shipping $29 billion to bail out Bear Stearns, then we can afford to contribute our fair share to help the “least of these” avoid starvation in a proud island nation off our shores.
© Copyright 2008 Digital Chicago, Inc.
Be careful what you ask for, Jesse, cause you just might get it.
The Bush Regime’s history of “stepping up to the plate” has consistently produced results that help 1% of the world’s population at the expense of the other 99%.
The US “stepped up to the plate” in 2007 and set the stage for this “food crisis”. Two examples of deliberate US actions contributing to the “food crisis” are 1) lowering interest rates, and 2) providing corporate welfare for ethanol production.
In August 2007 Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke started a series of interest rate cuts that would allegedly help victims of mortgage sharks. The cheap money provided the same crooks that brought you the housing bubble with funds to speculate on commodities, primarily food and energy. Less than eight months later, not only have the victims of the mortgage sharks not been helped, now they face higher energy and food costs.
In late 2007 Congress passed an “energy” bill that would allegedly reduce imported oil. The bill ignored renewable energy and provides boat loads of corporate welfare to the ethanol and nuclear power industries. With luck it may stablilize oil imports. More likely, it will increase oil imports (in the US, ethanol takes more oil to mfg. and transport than it replaces, and mining, processing and hauling uranium is also oil intensive). Any farmer with a 3 digit IQ is going to grow crops for fuel, not food.
These examples were not accidents or bad fortune, they are examples of what happens when the Bush Regime “steps up to the plate”.
In the face of such huge shortages worldwide our federal government still pays billions of $ for farm land to set idle. A recent documentary looked into the farm bill, hardly opposed by any elected official, and found countless examples of farmers collecting thousands of $ to NOT farm. The biggest government checks went to the big players and to the well connected. Our farm policy is more than shameful, more than outrageous, it is criminal to not provide food and sustenance when it is in your power to do so. How many people must die painful and prolonged deaths to satisfy the greed of the wealthy and powerful?
Well, this is one of the problems the government giving a $29 billion dollar bailout to its friends in the investment banking industry. That just opens the door for everyone else to come along and say, ‘if we did that, then surely we can give a few more billion to [fill in the blank]’.
I don’t mind Rev. Jackson making this argument. It points out the fallacy of giving billions of our tax payer money to scheming, fraud creating investment bankers.
But, one thing America is going to have to learn real fast. We seem to be heading for a crash of our own. So, at sometime we are going to have to be careful about who we give our money away to. We are borrowing billions from the Chinese to pay for our wars and our bailouts and our tax cuts to the rich. Its not like we are rich and just have this extra money laying around. We are already massively in debt ourselves and borrowing all this money.
At some point, we’ll have to say no. Now, me personally, I’d let the Bear-Stearns people starve and go broke and help the Haitians instead. Rev. Jackson is right in that we’ve helped make that problem, going back long before Aristide. But, the day is fast coming where we are going to have to start saying no to a lot of good causes that want our money. Because we are already broke, and just don’t realize it yet.
Of course, we know what would happen if the Bush administration did ’step up to the plate’ on this one.
They’d subcontract the food aid for Haiti to a firm that has strong Republican connections and a history of contributing to Republican campaigns. This firm would have little or no experience in food distribution or famine relief. The firm would basically steal most of the money through administrative costs and complicated sub-contractor deals. And the sub-contractors would of course steal their own pieces of the pie.
So, this government would announce a big plan to spend a few billion on relief for Haiti, and what would arrive in Haiti at the end of the pipeline would be three Big Macs in a paper bag.
“World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned that 100 million people might be pushed farther into poverty if nothing is done.”
NOTHING can be done!!!! If something is done, then how in the world would the wealtiest 1% continue to increase their profits??
The top 1% taking a smaller % of the world’s resources??? haha hahahaha HAHAHAHAHAH!
What are you talking about, Jesse? McDonald’s is building hamburger stands all over the world. They have no rice? Let them eat Big Macs and Happy Meals! Globalization is wonderful, as Reagan, Clinton and the two Bushes have repeatedly told us. Perhaps Laura and Hillary can team up and go on a Marie Antionette Memorial Tour to promote the idea. But this time they might really have to dodge bullets.
Jesse Jackson is REALLY eloquent here, just like he’s eloquent on the housing crisis. Moreover, I think his ANALYSIS is right on target. In a more open political system, there’d be a SIGNIFICANT “Jackson Faction” in the Democratic Party, or perhaps a Rainbow Coalition Party. Jesse’d be able to stand for election easily win a seat (consider a proportional system vs. our Senate). BUT, our GREATEST rhetorician, and one of our most RELEVANT figures– precisely because he’s addressing the real issues– is consigned, alas, to the wilderness. The more’s the pity. But keep at it, Rev. Jackson, we need your voice!
Our food aid should go through Oxfam or some reputable channel.
Robin Hood for President!!!