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Don’t Let Them Take Food Off the Table of the Hungry
In the 1990s, the conservatives in charge - under President Bill Clinton - almost eliminated access to government-funded victuals because, quite frankly, if you give low-wage people free food they'll just eat it.
Or as The New York Times more politely put it, "the Bush administration led a campaign to erase the program's stigma, calling food stamps ‘nutritional aid' instead of welfare, and made it easier to apply. That bipartisan effort capped an extraordinary reversal from the 1990s, when some conservatives tried to abolish the pro-gram."
I was curious why Bush would work to get more people access to taxpayer-financed food. It wasn't public pressure. Millions protested him over the years and he didn't care. Heck, you couldn't get within a mile of his speeches if you disagreed with him and he let them haul grannies away if they snuck into his rallies wearing anti-Bush T-shirts.
But no matter how much I thought about it, I couldn't throw a shoe and hit the real reason why Bush would care about feeding the poor with government money. Isn't that what the right wing feels private charities are for? Even when we discuss the military men and women who qualify for SNAP, it doesn't make sense. Why would he make food more available to the military that he and Congress packed off to war without body armor or properly outfitted Humvees.
By the way, Progressive magazine says in 2005 25,000 military men and women qualified for SNAP.
I just couldn't figure it out until I let my cynical side take over. Actually, pick a side, they're all cynical.
But the reality of "pull the wool over the public's eyes" politics is that you can make Wall Street tycoons rich beyond any ordinary person's ability to imagine, you can privatize education loans and make for-profit banks more important to a student than what they are actually supposed to be learning, and you can tie a person's home ownership to a balloon payment that makes the Hindenburg look like a safe ride - so long as you don't let the masses get too hungry.
A despot's own people will let him starve people in a foreign land and everyone will continue to sleep at night. But once the ruler's own people start starving, they'll burn his house to the ground. Just ask Louis XVI. Starving folks in his own country went out of favor after his wife, Marie, dropped that whole "let them eat cake" insensitivity bomb. The starving masses took matters into their own hands and the well-fed lost their heads.
We have an example right here in the U.S. of people rebelling when it looked as though someone was about to take the food off their table. We call it the Civil War. Everyone knows that the South's attempt to overthrow the federal government wasn't about slavery. It was about the feds threatening their means of production and bringing their agrarian economy to a standstill.
So if you want to wage a war without raising the taxes, if you want to allow your buddies in the oil industry, the banking industry and the insurance industry to treat the U.S. economy like the captain's daughter on pirate visiting day, then you had better make sure you have a plan in place to feed the masses when your debauchery destroys the economy. And that's where we are now. Last month The New York Times reported that SNAP is "expanding at a pace of about 20,000 people a day."
Twenty-thousand people a day!
The same article says that "nearly 12 percent of Americans receive aid." That's about one out of every eight or nine people in the country. And the Bangor Daily News says that one of every six Mainers is fed by SNAP.
Here's an idea. Don't let our full bellies stop us from insisting on a decent government. The new year is next week. Resolve to stop financing Wall Street and wars. If the bomb and bond makers get hungry, why let them eat cake.
22 Comments so far
Show AllImpressive and correct.
And I thought I was a cynic.
One in eight Americans is on food stamps. The end result of 30 years of conservative policies.
This is the result of 800 years m/l of capitalism.
It won't be enough to "fix" the system.
The system is flawed morally and pragmatically.
Morally, capitalism pits nation against nation, neighbor against neighbor, even family member against family member in competition.
The pragmatic results are seen in the failing ecosystems and nations, as wealth funnels to the hands of few.
Darwin postulated that the greatest competition/threat to any living organism comes from its own specie.
I see mankind's quest for higher spiritual understanding based in the struggle to shed the latent primal competition and move towards a world of mutual benefit.
Don't wait for government to help.
Donate food or money, ask your local grocery store if they are donating food, ask local farmers if they drop their unsold or excess produce off to the local food bank.
Mutual benefit is always accomplised by mutual help. Please help this time. Food banks are struggling under the demand.
"Everyone knows that the South's attempt to overthrow the federal government wasn't about slavery. "
Bunk. No slavery, no Civil War. And they didn't actively try to overthrow anything, they seceded.
jakenewton
I would suggest that you take another look at the times and you would see that slavery was already on the way out. But I must agree that anyone that believes that slavery was not part (but not the main part) of the reasons for the civil war is uninformed. If that weren't true, then why the dust ups about how new states came in, Slave or Free?
I'm glad to know someone here knows the difference between Rebellion/overthrow and secession.
" slavery was already on the way out."
Agreed, the trend was there before the founding of the country.
"Wage slavery is MUCH more profitable than chattel slavery. "
Maybe, and I would point out other differences, like that the wage slave can quit anytime, and the boss can't beat the crap out of him without serious legal repercussions.
Good points.
Its a shame that we can't eradicate slavery in this day and time. People owning other people just shouldn't be happening now.
"If you "beat the crap" out of your slave and he can't work for two weeks you lose money."
You are out even more if he escapes. Slaves, of course, were often severely treated, and I pointed out in contrast that a "wage slave" is *free* to quit. A real slave cannot.
I know that a "wage slave" can have a tough life, but to compare that in any serious way to a real slave is chuckleheaded.
Just as the absence of the draft has blunted youthful rebellion against the immoral and unjust wars of choice that the United States is waging in foreign lands the distribution of more food stamps has helped to quiet protests against neoconservative economic policies that have transferred huge amounts of wealth from America’s working poor and middle class to the wealthy elite.
It’s the exact opposite of the policies during World War II when ration cards allocated a very meager share of basic food items and gasoline to a public that was willing to sacrifice comforts for a moral and just larger cause.
"The starving masses took matters into their own hands and the well fed lost their heads" If the bonds and bombs makers get hungry,take matters in
to our own hands and OFF WITH THEIR HEADS.
The Democrats under Obama have a solution to the food problem in this country. Everyone will be mandated to purchase $50.00 of food per person, per week. Because everybody will be in mandated to be in this program it will drive food prices down dramatically.
All food must originate from large corporations like Kraft, Tyson, Nestle, and Smithfield foods. Only the largest food companies can be used in this new system. Wherever possible Monsanto crops should also be purchased.
Food that originates from the above companies can be purchased at large food "cooperatives" such as Walmart. Again you can only use the largest "cooperatives".
The poorest people will be subsidized. Those that do not buy the required amount of food will be fined. The fines will be divided up equally and sent directly to the CEOs of the companies mentioned above. But don't worry these fines will quickly trickle right back down to you, stimulating the economy beyond your wildest dreams as it makes its way back into your hands.
In order to stimulate the economy further all unused food must be destroyed rather than given to someone who might need it. Think of it as a "Cash for Clunkers" style program but in this case for food.
Don't bother getting your shorts all twisted up over this, because we the Democratic party really don't care what you think about it. We have resisted all lobbying attempts, ;-), and are doing this because we feel this is reform that the American people need and deserve.
We also have a bridge in Brooklyn that we will be selling you shortly...
Excellent.
Because everybody will be in mandated to be in this program it will drive food prices down dramatically.
NC - Love the post, but I believe the above quote to be in error. The supply and demand economic system that would dictate under your supposition would not necessarily apply when the purchase is a manditory one. Since the companies know that the food purchases would be made, they would RAISE the price, knowing full well that people would then be force to spend even more than the manditory limit.... Sort of what has happened with the military equipment and medical equipment industries. These manufacturers KNOW that the military and hospitals must purchase new equipment each year, thus they can set what ever price they wish...
My sealed bid on the bridge is in the mail... peace
I know in the crazy political times we live in it can be hard to discern irony from what they try to pass off as reality, but my entire post including the part about driving down the cost of food was satire, meant to be ironic, in no way to be taken as truth.
Well OK maybe NOT the part about the bridge. ;-)
But then again maybe you meant your reply to be satire too. I just can't be sure of these things any more. I'm getting politically confused. President Obama help clear this up for me, please, tell me what the truth is please!?
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
"Everyone knows that the South's attempt to overthrow the federal government wasn't about slavery. It was about the feds threatening their means of production and bringing their agrarian economy to a standstill."
In the Old South slavery and their means of production were the same thing. They cannot be separated out.
re: Neo-con Shrublette's support for food stamp expansion. I think Pat LaMarche has half the picture. The other half is that George W. Bush (or more likely his handlers) stole an idea from the FDR playbook & tremendously increased FDR legacy agricultural subsidies in the bread-belt Red States to buy votes. This worked well (and like other old school liberal ideas stolen by the GOP the Dims were too cowardly to call him on it) but also led to bumper production in the era of competition from "free trade" imports from Central and South America & elsewhere.
I strongly suspect that to placate wheelers & dealers in the commodities markets as well as farmers Team Duhhbya had to expand the food stamp program to give subsidized farmers a government "fixed" outlet for their surplus production (and buoy up the commodities market to some extent).
"In the Old South slavery and their means of production were the same thing. They cannot be separated out."
Not separated cleanly, no, but there was plenty of labor provoided by free citizens. Slavery at the time of the war was much more about King Cotton than "food on the table". They easily could have fed themselves without it.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
"Slavery at the time of the war was much more about King Cotton than 'food on the table.' They easily could have fed themselves without it."
Cotton was King and tobacco and rice were large markets as well. These were the three pillars of much of the economy and upon which several secondary, mostly agriculture-related economies of scale were dependent. The transition to the post-slavery economy that saw many former slaves flee the South, many who remained convert to share-cropping, and the rise of more non-union, company town textile and timber mills was, thanks to the North's imposed Reconstruction and its related political turbulence, the North's lock on rail distribution and reluctance to extend manufacturing technology to the South 100 years slow in allowing only the most gradual industrialization of the South which remained very backwards in this respect compared to the North until the 1960s. Jim Crow, low wage non-union jobs and share-cropping were not "easy" to convert to without commensurate growth in industrialization and industrial jobs.
I agree with you generally, but the author was in error in seemingly thinking that basic sustinence in the form of food required slaves. There is no evidence that this is true. Have a nice Christmas.