Over the past two weeks repugicans have lined up behind Paul
Ryan to support his attack on anti-poverty programs that takes aim at
food assistance for the poor…
When most Americans hear the word inhumane they likely think of human
beings so cruel, heartless, and without compassion for misery or
suffering of animals that they mistreat them for sheer pleasure. It is
highly probable that some Americans who decry cruelty and inhumane
treatment of animals are avid supporters of repugicans whose inhumanity
towards other Americans, especially hungry children, far exceeds cruel
mistreatment of animals. Over the past two weeks repugicans have lined
up behind Paul Ryan to support his attack on anti-poverty programs that
takes aim at food assistance for the poor with special emphasis on
children benefitting from food stamps, school lunches, and Head Start.
There is little argument that repugicans preventing Americans,
especially working-poor Americans, from having access to healthcare
exposes their lack compassion and is a hallmark of conservative cruelty.
But their new effort to take food out of the mouths of Americans and
openly targeting hungry children to the delight of their equally
inhumane supporters is beyond the pale. Apparently repugicans believe
denying children food is a winning campaign strategy going into the 2014
midterm elections and it is likely their inhumane supporters will
reward them handsomely.
It is not that repugicans are hungry and need the food that
anti-poverty programs provide to hungry children; they simply do not
want poor Americans to have basic sustenance because they are cruel
savages. Even wild predators do not take food out of the mouths of other
animals once their hunger has been satisfied and it is what elevates
wild beasts above the heartless beasts in the conservative movement.
Perpetuating food insecurity in the poor is an idea repugicans and
teabaggers embrace because taking food out of the mouths of the poor,
whether working Americans, Veterans, senior citizens or children
obviously gives them a high degree of satisfaction.
Wingnuts believe the government wastes too much money helping
the poor because they believe it is better to spend on subsidies for big
oil, churches, corporations, and tax cuts for the richest Americans.
According to repugicans, government assistance to feed children with
free or reduced-price school lunches, food stamps, and programs such as
Head Start is proof of liberals’ unfair wealth redistribution that
teaches poor families earning poverty wages to hate their children.
Portraying government assistance recipients as less than human is a
hold-over from repugicans’ man-god Reagan that has re-emerged as a
dependable dog-whistle that is very popular with wingnuts;
especially since Americans elected an African American man as President.
The popularity of taking food from children among wingnuts
explains repugican protests that
they are tired of giving “
those blah people”
free stuff using other people’s (read white people) money.
Interestingly, it is red states with predominately white repugican voters who take more taxpayer money for food stamps,
healthcare, and other “free stuff” who will support repugicans in spite
of their promise to take the food out of their own children’s mouths.
Americans may remember that in inhumane mormon country school officials
ripped
lunch trays away from dozens of elementary school children before they
could eat anything, so any American that thinks repugicans will not
take food away from poor children has not been paying attention.
The latest repugican to join Paul Ryan’s attack on school lunches is Jack Kingston (r-GA) who is a primary candidate in the
Georgia Senate race. Kinston
argued that poor students must start earning that “
free lunch”
by forcing them to do janitorial work in school before they get their
food. The barbaric Kinston hates the federal school lunch program, but
is open to supporting the National School Lunch Program if poor students
are forced to work for them to teach small children that nothing is
free. Kingston
said he talked to the Secretary of Agriculture about forcing the kids to sweep the floor of the cafeteria because “
think
what we would gain as a society in getting people — getting the myth
out of their head that there is such a thing as a free lunch.” What
Kingston and all repugicans fully understand is that over 60% of school
teachers report that students regularly come to school hungry and, as
this author can attest, the problem is getting much worse according to a
survey
by No Kid Hungry. The repugicans are anxious to make the problem
incredibly worse and there is no doubt if they are able the school lunch
program will be abolished if men like Paul Ryan and Kingston have their
way.
The National School Lunch Program provides federal assistance for
public (and private) schools to offer lunch to children every school day
if their household earns below 130 percent of the federal poverty line.
The school lunch program provides
17.5 million
kids with free or reduced-cost lunches and repugicans lust to take the
food away from 17.5 million children. Earning below the poverty line
informs that most poor children participating in the program live in
households where their parents work earning poverty wages that belies
the repugican assertion that able-bodied people are just lazy and exist
to mooch off the federal government. Their claim that working poor
Americans
are lazy
fits perfectly with their other claim that liberals decry the dignity
of work and are teaching the poor that working at low-wage jobs means
they are lazy if their children receive free school lunches. Kingston’s
use of “
no free school lunches” looks like a rallying cry to
marshal support from inhumane wingnuts who want the school lunch
programs abolished and Ayn Rand acolyte Paul Ryan is leading the charge
to take food from children.
It was
reported the other day that Ryan
cited a white nationalist’s (Nazi) “
racist pseudoscience and misleading statistics to argue that social inequality is caused by genetic inferiority.”
Ryan said poverty is the result of lazy inner city (read Black) men who
refuse to work and expect taxpayers to support them via government
assistance. Ryan claimed his focus to combat the ‘
lazy Black man problem‘ is “
creating work requirements for men in our inner cities” to deal with what he called “
the real culture problem in these communities.”
However, Ryan can hardly create work requirements when he and repugicans have opposed, obstructed, and outright blocked every attempt
to create living-wage jobs and spent the past four years killing
millions jobs for sheer sport and to add more Americans to the ranks of
poverty.
Ryan has been at the forefront of every repugican plot to increase income inequality by perpetuating the “
real wingnut culture problem”
of keeping Americans in poverty by opposing anti-poverty measures such
as raising the minimum wage, opposing unemployment insurance extensions,
and voting to abolish overtime pay. It is worth reiterating that Ryan
attacked every anti-poverty program in existence in a
blatantly false examination of anti-poverty programs over the past 50 years. Ryan, like Kingston, said “
We
want people to reach their potential and so the dignity of work is very
valuable and important and we have to re-emphasize work and reform our
welfare programs.” Reforming welfare programs is conservative-speak
for abolishing school lunches, food stamps, Head Start, and every
program that helps millions of Americans working at poverty-wage jobs
that forces them to depend on school lunches and food stamps to feed
their hungry families.
It is irrelevant why poor students need programs like Head Start,
food stamps, or free school lunches. The repugican concept of
abolishing the programs, or eliminating child labor laws to force
children to work at school to eat, exposes repugicans and teabaggers as
heartless, inhumane, and cruel. It takes an innately cruel human being
to deliberately withhold food from hungry children, and repugicans are
growing more aggressive in their drive to starve already hungry
children. It is a common practice to euthanize aggressive animals that
injure or harm people, and yet repugicans are allowed to live when
their aggression towards children is no less injurious or cruel than a
rabid dog mauling a small child to death; only slower. Human beings
readily put-down aggressive animals without giving it a second thought,
and there is no justification for not putting down aggressive repugicans for their inhumane treatment of America’s children.
Underground the city of London are eight massive bomb shelters like the
one pictured above that have been empty or used as document storage for
more than 50 years. Now, one of them is being transformed into a
subterranean farm. The farming group, called Zero Carbon Food, based
their system on hydroponics and LED light powered by wind-generated
electricity.
