Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Guns or Butter?

 In 1970 President Richard Nixon said: "That hunger and malnutrition should persist in a land such as ours is embarrassing and intolerable."

 Under Reagan, 20 million  Americans were hungry; George HW Bush, 30 million; Bill Clinton, 33 million ; George W. Bush, 49 million; Under President Barack Obama, almost 50 million including one in six children, who either go to bed hungry or cannot afford nutrition food. This in a country with so much wealth and abundance.

Most food stamp recipients are children, the elderly, and people with disabilities; average monthly benefit for one person is $133.44 or $4.50 a day. The average family receiving food stamps has an average of $101 in savings.

85 percent of families with food and hunger issues have at least one working adult in the household.

In 1980, there were 200 food banks in the United States. Today there are over 40,000.

America's  six largest banks reported $23 billion in profits. That’s for one quarter—three months. 

In 2011, Congress approved a measly $4.5bn over the next 10 years for the Child Nutrition Act.  More than half of that amount will be paid for by cutting the Food Stamp program, rather than the bloated and wasteful military budget. In contrast the military budget, the armed foces , the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, and every other aspect of the military industrial complex, the grand total is $1.2 trillion a year.  When healthcare for veterans is factored in, the cost of the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan could reach $6 trillion over the next four decades.

From here

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