Taking Food From The Poor While Giving Money To The Wealthy Is Shameful!

Tom Eblen: Taking food from the poor while giving money to the wealthy is shameful

• Story Photos:
• 

  

  

September is Hunger Action Month, and Republicans who control the U.S. House of Representatives are marking the occasion by trying to take food from the mouths of poor children, low-wage workers and elderly people.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia is leading an effort to cut $40 billion over the next decade from SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps.
Since the 2008 financial crisis led to a deep recession, the SNAP program has doubled in size, to $80 billion. That money has largely gone to help feed individuals and families who have been unemployed or under-employed.

While Wall Street and corporate America have recovered just fine, many poor and middle-income people continue to struggle. Still, Republican leaders think it's time to economize by going after the $4.50 average daily SNAP benefit that goes to millions of poor people, including 875,000 Kentuckians.

GOP leaders claim that the SNAP program is rife with abuse, yet they have produced little evidence of that beyond isolated media reports of someone buying steak or lobster with food stamps or continuing to claim benefits after cashing a big lottery ticket.

House Republicans seem less concerned about the tens of billions of dollars now wasted on agriculture subsidy programs that largely benefit agribusiness companies and wealthy farmers, including some members of Congress. The House farm bill this summer left out SNAP funding and cut land conservation efforts, but agriculture subsidies for the wealthy were increased.

One example of this hypocrisy is U.S. Rep. Stephen Fincher, a Tennessee Republican and Tea Party favorite who has been a vocal advocate for cutting SNAP. Since 1999, Fincher has collected nearly $3.5 million in government farm subsidies. Other members of his cotton-farming family have received millions more.

The food bank directors and social workers who deal with hunger face-to-face every day have been unanimous in their condemnation of Cantor's plan, according to news reports.
To get a feel for the local situation, I visited Lexington-based God's Pantry, a non-profit that supplies food to people in 50 Kentucky counties through a network of warehouses and 300 affiliate churches and charities.
God's Pantry CEO Marian Guinn said there is no way private charities can begin to make up for drastic cuts in government benefits in this still-recovering economy. Republican criticisms of SNAP are overblown, she said.
"You can always pull out examples of abuse in any situation or any program," Guinn said. "But we see (SNAP) as a really effective way to get needed resources, but not all the resources that a family needs for their food."

God's Pantry gathers food from government commodity programs, plus donations from groceries and the food industry, and buys fresh produce with donations from the public. (Charity Navigator, a charity watchdog group, has consistently given God's Pantry top ratings for money management and efficiency.)

God's Pantry provides food to more than 211,000 people — nearly one in seven — in its 50-county service area each year, Guinn said. Census data shows that about 310,000 people in the region live in poverty.

Statewide, the government estimates that about 715,000 people are "food insecure." If Congress makes substantial cuts in SNAP, that number will explode.

Guinn said a typical God's Pantry client is a white woman in her early 40s with one or two children who works part-time and earns $1,000 or less a month. Client households tend to have low levels of education and often are dealing with health problems. Forty-one percent of client households have children, and 18 percent have elderly people.
"Many of these are people who before the recession were living middle-class or lower middle-class lives," she said.

God's Pantry clients must be referred by social-service agencies to make sure they have a genuine need.
"The sentiment in Washington is really concerning to us," Guinn said.
"Because federal programs are very important for us, there certainly are lots of opportunities for advocacy," Guinn said.

"Advocacy" is a polite way of putting it. I will be more blunt: Call or write your congressman today. Tell him that if he votes to take food away from the poor while shoveling public money to the wealthy, he should be ashamed.

Like The Amish, Frugality Brings Me Happiness Too. My Mottos: "Waste NOT; Want NONE", And "A Rich Person Becomes That Way By NOT Throwing Money Away"!

Amish show frugality can bring happiness
Written byGregory Karp

You might assume that the Amish, with their horse-drawn buggies

, are poor or unsophisticated with money. Not true. In fact, many have weathered the recession far better than most other Americans, experts say.

“They seem to be aware there was a recession, but it wasn't really changing their lives,” said Lorilee Craker, author of the new book “Money Secrets of the Amish: Finding True Abundance in Simplicity, Sharing and Saving.”

“They have so much money in the bank, it's staggering,” Craker said.

During her research for the book, Craker found one Amish man who in 20 years had built a bank account of $400,000 from working on a rented farm. He has 14 children. He used the money as a down payment to buy a $1.3 million farm of his own.

“Culturally, they are so different from us,” she said. “They are always hunkered down. It's not, ‘Live it up,' and then, ‘Oh, my gosh, we have no money.' ”

Erik Wesner, founder of AmishAmerica.com and author of “Success Made Simple: An Inside Look at Why Amish Businesses Thrive,” agrees that the Amish weren't hurting financially as much as average Americans.

“Unemployment is not 9 percent in the Amish community, I can tell you that,” he said. “Typically, it's close to zero.”

Many Amish enjoy their frugality, and many seem to benefit from an inner peace that other Americans will never find as they attempt to keep up with the Joneses, Craker said.

“They're not stressed out like we are. They're not wondering, ‘How am I going to make my car payment?' ” she said. “They're secure. They sleep peacefully because they know there's money in the bank.”

Straw hats, quilting bees and life without electricity might not fit your style, but you might find some Amish habits and philosophies instructive and useful:

“Use it up, wear it out, make do or do without.” Craker heard this rhyming adage repeated among the Amish. It describes their reluctance to replace anything before it's fully used. And when it seems kaput, they look for ways to fix it or repurpose it. That's very different than the way many Americans live.

“We live in a throw-away culture,” Craker said. “We don't make do with what we have.”

Ways to translate that into practical advice are to take time to “shop” in your own closet and pantry to use clothes and food you already have before buying more, she said. Look for ways to fix rather than replace.

“They keep their money as long as possible, and they almost do it with glee,” Craker said. “It's definitely a different mind-set.”

The Amish mind-set also happens to be friendly to the environment. “The Amish are incredibly green, but they are inadvertently green,” Craker said.

“Don't work for a dead horse.” The idea is you don't want to buy a horse on long-term credit because you could be working to pay it off long after the horse is dead. The Amish are fond of this philosophy, attributed to P.T. Barnum of circus fame.

“They're terrified of debt,” Craker said. “They would never go to the store and say, ‘I really want this new thing, and it's end of month, and I don't have money, so I'll just put it on a credit card.' It would make them sick.”

Some Amish do have credit cards, but they're mostly used for business expenses, and the vast majority are paid in full every month, Wesner said.

“The idea that you pay on time and pay your debts is viewed as the morally right thing to do,” he said.

The only household debt common among the Amish is a mortgage, taken to buy a home or farm, often with a very large down payment, he said.

“It's a live-within-your-means mind-set,” he said.

“More is caught than taught.” That's what one Amish father of nine told Craker when she asked about how the Amish teach their children about frugality.

“The Amish don't have a session where they say, ‘We have to teach little Jakob about being frugal,'” Wesner said. “It's absorbed by being in the culture. Kids know that they have to share. They have to make do with what they have.”

Parents start savings accounts for children from an early age. Entertainment is usually simple, perhaps a board game or cards with the family in the evening.

“Simpler often translates to cheaper,” Wesner said.

Craker asked several Amish people what they indulge in. Many said ice cream, another said salad dressing, and one confided she covets but seldom eats Ritz crackers. Those are quite different pleasures than taking joy in a sports car, 50-inch television or granite countertops. Of course, finding contentment in simpler things is easier in a simple society. Amish aren't bombarded with marketing messages from TV, glossy publications and website ads.

That lesson might be to create an atmosphere in your home where simplicity and frugality are the norm.

“You don't have to buy something new to buy something good.” This was another refrain Craker heard from the Amish. They make secondhand their first choice.

“They would never dream of paying full retail price,” she said.

They like garage sales, thrift stores and estate sales.

“They're definitely looking for deals,” Wesner said. “They have no problem buying used as long as it gets the job done.”

Find your inner “feinschmecker.” Loosely translated, “feinschmecker” refers to an Amish foodie, someone who knows what good food is.

“They love good, natural, wholesome food, and they eat a lot of it,” Craker said. “They eat like royalty.”

They're not eating the types of processed foods found in the supermarket but fresh-from-the-farm food. For the non-Amish, shopping for in-season produce at a farmers market would be one way to eat better food and potentially save money. Craker took it a step further by cow-pooling. She bought part of a grass-fed cow from a local farmer, gaining rights to 72 pounds of meat made into ground beef, roasts and steaks — at $2.10 per pound.

“I can't put a cow in my garage, but I did the next best thing,” she said. “Everything is cheaper when you cut out the middleman.” Failing that, cooking more at home instead of dining out can be a step in the direction of becoming a feinschmecker.

Getting value. “I've seen Amish pay over $100 for a hammer,” Wesner said, “but that's a hammer that over the long run will help him get the job done better. And it will probably be cheaper in the long run. It's not that they're totally cheap on everything. They appreciate value.”

Get a goal. The Amish don't save money just for savings' sake. They're focused on the long haul.

“It's a goal-oriented mind-set,” Wesner said. “They use money for a down payment on a home when they get married. That's pretty important to them.”

Saving is easier when you have a clear reason for doing it.

“There are ways to get what you want for way less,” Craker said. “And that's the Amish way.”

The Sour Economy Threatens To Put A COLD Damper On POTUS Barack Obama's Future White House Re-Election Bid. Check Out Latest Poll Numbers.

Check out the poll here.