Community | February 14, 2012 | 44 comments

Piss On The Poor... Kids Eating Rats for Dinner Yes, Right Here in The U. S. of A.....

source: http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/02/14/kids-eating-rats-for-dinner/

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Anonmaly
(video @ link, am unable to embed it) Poor Early Nutrition Stunts Mental Development

No folks, I would not pull your leg about something this serious. Hungry kids are not on my satire writing list. I’m still in a bit of shock myself…me, who is not shocked by anything anymore, but I was.

Having no kids I was not up to speed on the school lunch programs. A nurse friend from North Georgia told me once that they even had breakfast programs. This was back before the crash, in the boom times, which surprised me.


And are you ready for this? The kids were sometimes bringing relatives to eat lunch with them on the school program. The land of food and plenty was upon us. Names were not taken, as none were needed.
There were many Mexican kids, families working in the textile mills in Dalton Georgia where the $15 to $20 an hour jobs got pulled down to $10 to $12/hr…or zero if you got replaced by someone south of the border.

It seems that because the Feds were paying for it all the schools did not mind loading up the numbers. It pumped more money into the local economy as the families had more money to spend in the stores. So that had me thinking that kids going hungry was impossible with parents only have to cover dinner.

But the British Panorama show had a segment up today called ‘We don’t have dinner at home’...and it was a heart breaker. They were shooting in Las Vegas where cafeteria managers were describing how kids were loading up on ketchup packets to take home to make tomato soup for dinner.


Our wonderful system has downloaded feeding hungry kids...onto kids.

Weekends were another tough time for them and groups have stepped in to put weekend care packages together for the kids to get them through to Monday. Unfortunately a lot of it looked like your usual unhealthy processed food.

The clip below is not long, just a few kids describing about sometimes there is nothing to eat for dinner and they go hungry till school the next day.

I had thought that everybody would have some crackers, rice with onions, or beans stashed away for ‘really’ tough times, but it seems not.

My mother grew up on a farm where they thought they were poor because they made their own clothes and went barefoot to save their shoes for school and church.

She would walk there barefoot and then wash her feet and put her shoes on before going in. But on a 120 acre farm there was always food, and a smoke house to die for.

As a little boy I got a taste of the old farm, being bathed in front of everybody on the back porch in washtub with the other little kids, the introduction to the outhouse, and getting water from the well.

But hunger never crossed my path despite never being able to catch a chicken. Egg gathering I just loved, but ran in terror when I crossed the pig pasture to go fishing with a 250 pound sow barreling after me, usually just making it to the fence in a nick of time.

The little girl at the end of the Panorama clip, the shy one, drops the bomb about the rats. Only ate them once though. A little six year old girl is not expensive to feed.

I can’t imagine a parent or parents not being able to find someone to ask for a meal for a hungry kid. Like who would say no, really? But as a bachelor I do not walk in their shoes.

Gordon and I have had many long discussions about some of our well respected political and business leaders having had not problem scamming us with things like ethanol production from corn for fuel use.
This not only pushed up food cost for the poor overseas with the spike in corn prices, but hurt our poor here. But hey, it was a good vote buyer for all those corn growing farmers in the Mid-West.

And then stage two was upon us when despite the recession and reduced demand for gas, and storage facilities all over the world filled to the brim, oil prices continued to stay way higher than any market demand could account for.

All the new big oil reserve finds may not be common knowledge to the regular folks, but all the oil biz people, economists and politicians know.

I wonder why they don’t tell us? Gosh, what could they possibly be hiding.

These rigged oil prices have now worked their way all through the food production chain which is again, giving us a hike in food prices when they should be going in the other direction.
My point today is that these food costs have hit the poor families’ kids more than anyone else. And it was all been done out of multinational greed and political corruption.

A huge gas tax increase, part of the Italian austerity adjustment was pushing the price of their already high fuel 40% higher. To my surprise it got 10,000 hits here at VT and tens of thousands more on other blogs and websites who borrowed it.

Trickle down economics…was a con job. It was a mirage. The numbers are in and we know now that we had a ‘flow upwards’, despite the real estate and stock losses.

The growth of the service industry, the shifting of our industrial base offshore…has left us with too many people trying to pick the others pocket for a living. The Greece austerity measures are going to have an average worker making about $600 to $750 a month.

What kind of economic turnaround can be built on that? And how many Greek kids are going to experience the taste of rat meat in the next year.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/02/14/kids-eating-rats-for-dinner/
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44 comments // Piss On The Poor... Kids Eating Rats for Dinner Yes, Right Here in The U. S. of A.....

  • youngdebater
  • Vierotchka
  • silverweed
    • +2
      silverweed  

    • There is no profit in feeding people. All the profit lies in wasting food and letting it rot. Capitalism is the single most destructive force on the planet and yet we are brainwashed into thinking otherwise. Maybe a little European style Socialism is just what this country needs?

    • 3 months ago
  • NEVERSCARED
    • +1
      NEVERSCARED  

    • Sad but not surprising, people need to turn their backs on this society, me 1st standard of living. Nobody gives a damn until it affects them directly, then people get too see how selfish this world truly has become. Can’t understand why it takes events like 9/11, Katrina or Pearl Harbor before people ban together and help each other. A staving child, woman or man, should be reason enough, if I see a homeless person I’m the 1st one to give them money, not that I have a lot but because this person needs it a little more than I do. The only reward required is that warm feeling in your heart when you help someone in need that should be enough. I feel better helping someone in need then I do if my team wins the super bowl, should we all not do what we can to help? If we had a million people willing to help then we would have over a million people receiving help, sounds good to me.

    • 3 months ago
  • remanns
  • remanns
  • trut
  • Truthitswhatsfordinner
  • pjacobs51
  • circlesquared
  • ilikeike
  • Progresshiv
  • circlesquared
    • +2
      circlesquared  

    • read this post hours ago...had a friend stop by that kept me from getting back. I want to thank you for this post as it is pertinent in every regard to what is happening globally as well as here. A hand out is the point as it turns us into the mice running the maze for a treat at the end...when an organization like CARE can decide to turn away from developing sustainability and just hand out goods their donors offer humanity loses every time and nothing is gained by any except the few. All about control and nothing to do with a better tomorrow.

    • 3 months ago
  • Andover
  • Anonmaly
  • Andover
  • Anonmaly
    • +1
      Anonmaly  

    • Somebody call Oprah...... Bill Gates.... Any number of ultra-rich people....

      We can solve allot of this with serious Urban Gardening programs.....

    • 3 months ago
  • circlesquared
  • Milieu
    • +3
      Milieu  

    • The Republican Malthusian Philosophy

      August 31, 2011, 8:12 am

      By Laurie Fendrich

      While we East Coasters were anxiously awaiting Hurricane Irene’s landfall, Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul chirpily opined (yet again) that FEMA should be abolished.

      xx ...snip... xx

      "The philosophy of Malthusianism is a political/economic theory first proposed by that very good Christian, the Reverend Thomas Malthus, who argued, in scientific terms, the Biblical truth that the poor will always be with us. Malthus added that the best approach toward the poor is to follow the Biblical imperative (be charitable), but let nature take its course. (Translation: While individuals ought to be charitable toward the poor, they shouldn’t be too charitable, and governments should keep their hands out of the whole affair. War, pestilence, and famine will take care of any increase in the population of the poor.) Malthus was passionate about the virtues of individual responsibility and liberty; his biggest bugaboo was softness toward the poor, since he feared interference, no matter how well meaning, would make them grow dependent on others.

      Malthus’ first essay on the topic (“An Essay on the Principle of Population”) was published in 1798. It was followed by subsequent revisions, all of which stuck to his initial premise that while poverty was a social affliction that could not be blamed on any one individual, individuals were in the end responsible for their own poverty. Like many English, he had an intense loathing for one particular group among the poor—the Irish.

      Malthus offered a scientifically couched political philosophy that articulated the anger toward the poor felt by many of the well off in the 19th century. Good Christians of the middle class couldn’t understand why there were so many poor, hardscrabble people—filthy, uneducated, ragged, stupid people roaming the streets of London and, egad, breeding like rabbits...

      Continues at:

      http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/the-republican-malthusian-philosophy/38780

    • 3 months ago
  • The_Wanderer_Kansas
  • Anonmaly
    • +3
      Anonmaly  
    • Milieu:

      Ron Paul has his faults...

      "Christianity", as warped by many, certainly has it's faults...

      Actual Christianity embodies a philosophy of pacifism, and charity. There are no two ways about it. Jesus walked through a corn field hungry one day (in the Bible) he took what he needed for sustenance, when questioned.... Well here are the verses;

      Matthew 12:1-7
      At that time Jesus went on the sabbath day through the corn; and his disciples were an hungered, and began to pluck the ears of corn and to eat. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, Behold, your disciples do that which is not lawful to do on the sabbath day. But he said to them, "Have you not read what David did, when he was an hungered, and they that were with him; how he entered into the house of God, and ate the showbread, which it was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them that were with him, but only for the priests? Or have ye not read in the law, that on the sabbath day the priests in the temple profane the sabbath, and are guiltless? But I say to you, That in this place is one greater than the temple. But if you had known what this means, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless."....

      I'll spare you more of it, but essentially Jesus walked through a field that wasn't his on the "Sabbath" taking corn (that wasn't corn he planted), and fed himself and disciples....

      2 so called "sins" he committed, and told the Pharisees (Priests) when they saw it they tried to condemn him for it, and he said essentially "No what I did was righteous, get over yourselves...."

      I don't post this to indoctrinate, but to dispel yet another misconception about Jesus, and charity, don't let a so called "Christian" lie to you..... Christianity is all about helping people out...

      And yes it is better to "Teach a man to fish" but under certain circumstances.....

      It's not stealing according to Jesus, to take food that one needs in order to survive... Now to take a quantity, to make profit from, a little different...

      And that article got read, I feel it was applied a little to broadly, and Dr. Paul is either to misunderstood, or propagandized against...

    • 3 months ago
  • coolplanet
    • +3
      coolplanet  
    • Anonmaly:

      Good sermon Anonmaly!
      Original Christianity (before it was called 'Christianity') is all about helping, forgiving and loving all people as well as Nature. "A tree is known by its fruit."
      I just can't see Dr. Paul multiplying the loaves and fishes.

    • 3 months ago
  • Truthitswhatsfordinner
  • Milieu
    • 0
      Milieu  
    • Anonmaly:

      Of course the words and teachings of Jesus were about helping people, anybody who actually reads the New Testament knows that. ( see Jefferson's version)

      Even the self-described "Heathens" known collectively as Monty Python knew that.

      It's the filth that perverted the teachings that give Xianity it's bad name.

    • 3 months ago
  • coolplanet
  • ZiggyStrange
  • Andover
  • JohnA
  • The_Wanderer_Kansas
  • JohnA
  • artemis6
  • corderodedios
    • -1
      corderodedios  
    • JohnA:

      Perhaps you believe that the $15 trillion was just burned in a burn barrel in someone's driveway? That money went into someone's pockets. Who is that "someone?" Follow the money. All of it that was not necessary to keep the slaves alive went into the pockets of the 1%, or more accurately the 0.1%. We've got plenty of food, clothing, and shelter for everyone. Some people are just pigs. These pigs have a message, and your sentiments suggest you have been susceptible to that message. People who are infected with that message might well be thought of as mentally compromised. Open your eyes. Think it over.

    • 3 months ago
  • Milieu
  • Anonmaly
    • +2
      Anonmaly  

    • Another litmus test....

      I see it gained "popularity" but obviously this, and many other stories that paint an accurate picture of how bad things really are for allot of people, don't incite more discussion....

      Non-issues, or at least way less serious issues take the forefront...

    • 3 months ago
  • coolplanet
    • +5
      coolplanet  
    • Anonmaly:

      Perhaps it needs a more eye-catching title than Piss On The Poor.
      Jan once commented that ice cream flavors and sex scandals seemed to be what we cared about.
      So I titled a story about global warming which usually only gets a few comments:
      Rocky Road Ahead For Big Oil Whores
      and it shot to number one.
      I learned a lot from that. ;}

    • 3 months ago
  • Anonmaly
  • corderodedios
    • +1
      corderodedios  

    • Are there still textile mills in Dalton, Georgia?

      This is what Mother Teresa was talking about when she said "It's a shame that children must die for you to live the way you live." Elsewhere, we're not just creating the conditions that lead to the deaths of children overseas as in those days, not just creating the conditions that lead to the deaths of children at home, these days, but we're actively killing children so that the 1% can live the way they live.

      Commiserating is fine, but what is to be done?

    • 3 months ago
  • Anonmaly
    • +1
      Anonmaly  
    • corderodedios:

      Actually... I'm not a fan of commiserating, and I'm all for starting a non-profit, but I'm in no position to do so...

      I would suggest urban farming, similar to that of the most noted urban farmer Will Allen, and making more parks with fruit and nut trees, instead of more pointless ornamental things....

      That's what I don't get, they'll design parks for kids, all kinds of ornamental stuff, why no fruit/nut bearing trees?

      Why corderodedios, would you trust a non college graduate impoverished person to oversee some sustainable urban development, I'd be happy to, need funding....

    • 3 months ago
  • corderodedios
    • 0
      corderodedios  
    • Anonmaly:

      Good point. Urban farming is a great idea. There's an interesting documentary about how Cuba, most notably Havana, engaged in urban farming after the destruction of the USSR and Cuba's loss of their support. If I recall correctly, the City of Havana became virtually self-sufficient food-wise.

      Havana did it because they were faced with starvation on a greater scale than here in the U.S. I suspect most desperate American urbanites are too befuddled and demotivated by propaganda and circumstances to connect to this. Worse, they face resistance by forces being enriched by maximizing consumption of energy, which forces have evolved to derail steps which might have the effect of reversing America's steady increase in percapita energy consumption. Nevertheless, it's one way of helping sever the umbilical, as it were.
      Urban officials, largely zombies, would also likely mitigate such efforts by invoking zoning regulations, etc.

      Impoverishment? College? Irrelevant. It's a step away from the monetarized "economy." Folks themselves have to do the job, and have to be made to believe in themselves and an alernative to either being a slave to the entrenched system or despairing of not being part of humanity as defined by our evil Corporate masters.

    • 3 months ago
  • JanforGore
    • +5
      JanforGore  

    • But remember, everything is fine here now. You aren't allowed to discuss poverty and hunger in the U.S., especially during an election year. It might make the incumbant look bad along with those in Congress who don't really care. How many times has this been discussed by Republicans or Obama? This is a national disgrace.

    • 3 months ago
  • Progresshiv
  • ampersand
  • Anonmaly
  • coolplanet
    • +2
      coolplanet  
    • Anonmaly:

      Maybe if they made a Reality Show called 'Starving To Death As Wall Street Gorges' then Americans would pay attention.
      The cost of one fucking Superbowl could feed all the world's poor for a year!

    • 3 months ago
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