Hungry, hungry hippos
The Washington Post has an article in today’s paper entitled “Report: More Americans going hungry” – it’s a headline right out of the battle for Lyndon Johnson’s war against poverty;
In 2008, the report found, nearly 17 million children — more than one in five across the United States — were living in households in which food at times ran short, up from slightly more than 12 million children the year before. And the number of children who sometimes were outright hungry rose from nearly 700,000 to almost 1.1 million.
Among people of of all ages, nearly 15 percent last year did not consistently have adequate food, compared with about 11 percent in 2007, the greatest deterioration in access to food during a single year in the history of the report.
Taken together, the findings provide the latest glimpse into the toll that the weak economy has taken on the well-being of the nation’s residents.
Yeah, a weak economy did it. I wonder if they also surveyed the same households which didn’t have “adequate food” for the presence of an X-box, cable and a big screen TV.
Poverty and food shortages are linked but not the same thing, according to the report. Just half the households in which food is scarce have incomes at or below the official poverty level, the data show, while most of the rest have slightly less than twice the poverty level.
In other words, it’s not that people are too poor to buy food – they’re too stupid to buy food. So what’s the President going to do? Send us some groceries and cooks to prepare our food for us? There are so many government programs and not-for-profit organizations in this country that are set up for feeding people, how can anyone be hungry?
I’ll tell you who the hungry families are – the same people that are waiting for you to buy their healthcare. Waiting on their sofas, game controller in their greasy oversized paw.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Media, Society
Maybe this is a good thing. Obesity is one of the biggest health hazards in the nation. Hell I was so damn poor that when I went Basic Training that was the most food I had ever gotten to eat. Now poor people are more likely to be obese than skinny.
There is another reason why inadequate food is in the home, because we as a nation eat out a lot more. There just weren’t as many restuarants when I was growing up.
I know for a fact that calorically we eat a hell of a lot more food than we did twenty years ago.
“Among people of of all ages, nearly 15 percent last year did not consistently have adequate food”
This is because they’re in line at BURGER KING slurping down soda and double cheeseburgers.
It’s been the same for 20+ years. Newsweek ran an article back when my older kids were little about this woman and her FoodStamps. For her two kids and her, she bought frozen food, pizzas, chips, pop, etc etc etc… OHHH and poor woman RAN OUT of Food Stamps.
Learn to boil some effing potatoes for God’s sake.
People need to shift their perceptions of what it means to be poor.
Hit the outskirts of any Mexican boarder town for a day. Then hit a Walmart Super Store on the first of the month when the food stamp debit cards are reloaded…..
Im with justplainjason, hell the second time in my life I had ever seen ice cream was in basic.
Cambodia is a poor nation, we are not.
“The presence of an X-box, cable and a big screen TV”. Not to mention, an iphone, or at least a “free government cell phone” and satellite TV, not that funky old cable.
The majority of monies for our farm programs go to nutrition programs always have and always will. I remember speaking to one of our older generation farmers years ago telling him they should not call it a farm program since the majority of the expenditure is in food programs and he promptly told me that if it was not set up that way a farm program for farmers alone would never be passed. Logical comment. Anyway here is the breakdown on the current farm program.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/November08/DataFeature/
WE can add cell phones and what kind of cars they drive, too. I am a greedy, non-compliant American extremist, after all. I want people to be responsible and I want the Government accountable.
So far it’s sucking big wind as the MSM spins the stories.
Quite a few crude, gross generalizations in this article……
Sometimes generalizations are true.