Shutdowns and Food Banks

The Schumer Shutdown may have been paused but the Obamacare funding problem won't go away, and neither will hunger if political interests decide to use the misery of our people to wield power. Democrats openly admitted it--they needed the shutdown to punish Trump and his supporters for a bad medical insurance plan they created!  "Leverage" some called it. Some agitators are furious today,

"Feeding America" is an organization almost 60 years old with noble goals--feed the hungry. It began with one man (some sources say one woman) as Second Harvest, a charity to collect and distribute food that might have gone to waste and redistribute it through food banks to local food pantries. I remember in the late 1960s attending a meeting in Clintonville about establishing a central location for food to be stored for local pantries. Recently, Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther called the local resources a "short-term approach to a crisis" [the shutdown] and said it was up to the federal government to fully fund food assistance. I don't call 60 years a short-term approach. Food banks have become a hallowed institution. Our food bank system here in central Ohio is massive. Our Commitment | MOFC

But low income people who are "food insecure," the current term for hungry, aren't stupid. They too are resourceful and want what's best for their households. As food programs expand, those households factor that into their budgets, leaving more cash for non-food items such as rent, utilities, clothing, alcohol, cigarettes, gasoline, cell phone contracts, etc. Studies show that even with the lowest unemployment rate since the early 1970s, food pantries are still an important resource for many households, some increasing their visits from occasional to regular. That in turn allowed for many small businesses to make a profit from the various food programs.

Right now, with the longest government shut down, we're in a situation that we've taught people to use food sources outside their income which includes government assistance. Was it a mistake for us to be charitable? No. Charity is required from good people, but we need to remember that good intentions don't always bring good results.

Food insecure?

I saw an article about "food insecurity" yesterday That means that in the last 4 weeks the cook/mother/grandmother/oldest daughter once or twice or 10 times went to the cupboard and couldn't find enough to make a meal for the family/residents/siblings. Really? A gallon of milk is $2.65 and 10 pounds of potatoes are $4 in Columbus, Ohio.

 
A pack of cigarettes is $9 in Columbus--and a big chunk of that is federal and state taxes. The food in Ohio has no tax. You can fix a very nutritious meal for less than a pack of cigarettes, but you'll believe the stories on TV about hungry people in America. Potato combined with dairy is almost a perfect food. That's why smart mothers make potato soup and scalloped potatoes.

What's insecure is the cook. S/he has a 12 can pack of Coke for $4.00 and 13 oz. bag of Lays potato chips for $5 in the cupboard. And she may be smoking a cigarette. If she admires her $40 manicure when opening the cupboard, well, it's not the food costs but the values.

The survey (of a child or youth) to determine "food insecurity" is really vague and uses words like a lot, sometimes, enough, cheap food, run out, and asks the person to recall the past month (Self-Administered Food Security Survey Module for Children Ages 12 Years and Older, September 2006)

The definition of food insecurity. It isn't hunger.

USAFacts is doing a feature on "food insecurity." That term was invented because there is not enough actual hunger in the U.S. to measure by population and put in a graph. However, I read far enough to get to the "food desert" definition. Notice: "easy and ample access." 

"What is a food desert? The Department of Agriculture defines them as an area where low-income people do not have easy and ample access to food retailers. This limits people’s access to affordable, nutritious food."

Here's what happens. When a chain store with jobs and fresh fruits and vegetables plans to expand in a poor neighborhood, they are run out of town by organized protests from the Left and tied up for years in the courts battling city codes. It's like when AOC got an Amazon distribution center run out of her district. And what company would ever invest in Portland or Minneapolis after the anti-police, pro-crime riots of the last year?

https://usafacts.org/articles/which-cities-have-the-most-people-living-in-food-deserts/?

https://www.salon.com/2020/06/03/kroger-grocery-closed-protests-food-inequality-desert/?

Looters Leave More Food Deserts In Black Communities | BlackDoctor.org - Where Wellness & Culture Connect

Chicago's George Floyd reaction looting foists 'food deserts' on locals: 'What did we accomplish?' - Washington Times

What Really Happens When a Grocery Store Opens in a ‘Food Desert’? (nyu.edu)  a paragraph summary follows:

"Over the past decade, federal and local governments in the United States have spent hundreds of millions of dollars encouraging grocery stores to open in food deserts. The federal Healthy Food Financing Initiative has leveraged over $1 billion in financing for grocers in under-served areas. . . We studied the grocery purchases of about 10,000 households in those neighborhoods. While it’s true that these households buy less healthy groceries than people in wealthier neighborhoods, they do not start buying healthier groceries after a new supermarket opened. Instead, we find that people shop at the new supermarket, but they buy the same kinds of groceries they had been buying before."

Feeding America's hungry children

 This charity, Feeding America, suggests donating to them because hungry children can't learn, but 13 million U.S. children get free or reduced cost breakfasts at school, free or reduced cost lunches, and free after school snacks, and special plans for summer time and camps through USDA programs. If you read through Feeding America's programs, none seem to be about breakfast at school.

FA is now 35 years old, a charity (2nd Harvest) begun by one person to distribute food surpluses. However, the government's definition of hunger has expanded and is now "food insecurity," not hunger, and all the programs, both government and charities, have expanded. Low income households are not dumb about their resources. As food programs expand, those households factor that into their budgets, leaving more cash for non-food items such as rent, utilities, clothing, alcohol, cigarettes, gasoline, cell phone contracts, etc. Studies show that even with the lowest unemployment rate since the early 1970s, food pantries are still an important resource for many households, some increasing their visits from occasional to regular.

Although the recession ended in June 2009, participation in SNAP, the government's largest low income food program, has never returned to pre-2008 levels, in part because people were recruited to participate with expanded ARRA money. Yes, it sounds heartless to question why so many people remain on government and charity food programs when we have 123 transfer of wealth programs to assist, however, some questions need to be asked about why parents are not using their resources to feed their children.  A low income family with children can receive about $400/month in just SNAP benefits, plus access to USDA programs at school and church food pantries. And yes, a family can eat very well using just SNAP--there's a cook book on line.

 

The poverty meme

"The global incidence of extreme poverty has gone down from almost 100% in the 19th century, to 10.7% in 2013. While this is a great achievement, there is absolutely no reason to be complacent: a poverty rate of 10.7% means a total poverty headcount of 746 million people." https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty/

This progress wasn't made with Communism or dictatorships or street demonstrations, and it won't continue by taxing wealthy countries more to fight a mythical climate problem when that money could be going to address poverty problems today instead of sea level in 10 decades. We should have learned from the Rachel Carson debacle which killed millions of African and Asian children with still no solution for malaria while trying to protect birds and insects.

There are genuinely hungry people in the world and the USA, but what has lifted most people out of hunger and poverty isn't government programs, but innovation, technology, creative use of fossil fuels, the green revolution in agriculture and entrepreneurship. Someone living below the "poverty line" in the USA today has more material luxuries than the wealthy of the 19th century. Refrigeration, indoor plumping, flush toilets, healthy food, education, health care, sanitation, even smart phones automobiles and computers. Yet, the SJW only care about the gap.

People do make bad choices--we eat too much, exercise too little, smoke, drink, and are promiscuous. Government isn't going to change that. That's the job of the church to address moral and spiritual failings. Read the definition of "food insecure." Hunger in the USA isn't even relevant and is a meaningless word. The number of people living in extreme poverty fell by more than 1 billion since 1990, from 1.85 billion in 1990 to 0.76 billion in 2013. On average, the number of people living in extreme poverty declined by 47 million every year since 1990 (or 130,000 every single day). Violent crime is also down dramatically since the Omnibus Crime Bill. Who is driving the narrative that this is an awful, horrid place in need of more government control? I can think of at least two. 1) Democrat party, 2) the media.

Renters have more food insecurity

In the United States, “food insecurity” is a term designating households, and hunger designates an individual. The new term appeared about 2006 and is somewhat subjective meaning if at anytime during the last month one adult in a household reported in a USDA survey being unable to afford balanced meals or reducing the size of meals or being hungry because too little money for food, the household has “food insecurity.” From the USDA definition, it seems to be primarily based on money, and not behavior like not able to get to a store, or being incapable of preparing food for the household, or not knowing how to boil a potato when McDonald's is closed.

The 2015 information was included in the 2016 Census Bureau’s American Housing Survey for the first time noting differences between households that rent and those who own.  Renters have more food insecurity than owners.  Don’t start a Renters Lives Matter protest.  College students are generally renters, as are young professionals who don’t want to mow lawns.
 https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2016/cb16-193.html

The Christmas appeals for more safety net programs

 

 

As we transition to a Trump presidency, we'll see the anti-Trump rhetoric increase. Watch particularly for louder cries for anything with a safety net mission for the poor and low income. Despite their expansion over 60 years and 123 wealth transfer programs all of which have been bi-partisan (except Obamacare), you'll be told it is President Trump and the GOP who are the haters and stingy. So find a report published in 2015 or 2016, the height of the Obama reign with the recession over for 7 years, and keep it handy--just so you know that we are always told the programs are a failing, therefore they need to expand. 

 

"There are 42 million people in this country — 13 million of them children and over 5 million of them seniors — living in households struggling with hunger. This problem would be far, far worse if not for the nation’s very effective anti-hunger programs." (WhyHunger.org "School Breakfast at Half a Century," 2016) Every report says something similar. This time of year I am inundated with appeals from non-profits and parachurch groups to "end hunger," and "end homelessness." Often the organizations compete and work against each other.

 

The school breakfast program (about which the report discusses) has grown from about 80,000 in the first year of operation in 1966 to 14,900,000 last year. The total number of meals served annually in the program has climbed from just under 40 million in 1969 to more than 2.3 billion in 2015. If for some reason all the jobs programs of the coming administration were successful and every single mom or out of work dad had an above poverty level job, and every elderly person were reunited with family, there would be millions of government workers (housing, food, transportation, education, social work, academic researchers, etc.) out of a job, and it would start all over.

Feeding America and its hunger statistics

Just saw an ad on TV by Feeding America about hungry children. Feeding America is a United States-based non-profit organization that is a nationwide network of more than 200 food banks that feed more than 46 million people through food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, and other community-based agencies. Most of these are run by churches and their volunteers and donors. (According to FA website its $2 billion budget is through donations--CEO earns over $600,000/yr.) They do good work, but its ads about 16 million hungry children is most likely an exaggeration.  The federal government doesn't even use the term "hunger;"  it is called "food insecurity," and if mom was in a drug induced stupor or mentally ill and didn't pull a can of pop or chips out of the cupboard twice in 6 weeks, that's called "food insecurity." 

In the USA we don't have hunger, we have bad parenting and dysfunctional families that begin with babies before marriage. Marriage drops the probability of child poverty by 82%. We have foundations and state grant programs tripping over each other to help. We have 123 wealth transfer programs in the federal government to address the problems of low income and poor, everything from housing support to earned income tax credits, to special pre-schools, to special feeding programs for infants, to Medicaid, to clinics for women, to home heating plans, to job training. If there is a hungry child, statistically he sits in front of a flat screen HDTV with video games in an air conditioned home, Mom has a frig, microwave and dishwasher in the kitchen, a cell phone, and probably car in the drive way. But his "poverty" is supporting an enormous number of social workers, academics and non-profit employees through grants that come to his state, then his city, then the non-profit or church, and finally it trickles down to him.

Why we don’t make a dent in the hunger problem

We never see improvement and the rolls of both poverty workers and the needy continue to grow. Hunger became "food insecurity" and poverty is an arbitrary number set by the Government that is raised every year, but “percent of poverty level” is the standard for benefits. 200% of poverty is the standard for food assistance in Ohio. To be "food insecure" means at some time during the year you changed your eating pattern to accommodate your resources.

The actual number of Americans who are “food insecure” for more than a few days is tiny, under 1% and most of those are children in unmarried households and elderly without family, but even a day counts toward the annual figure--the figure we see in the news is 14.3%.  This guarantees political fights in Congress when USDA funding comes up, government grants to academics, fodder for campaigning, and good jobs for people and agencies in the benefits distribution field. Churches, charities, non-profits and foundations also receive a portion of their annual budget from government grants. Food pantries, mostly run by churches, are involved in a complex mix of federal, state, local and non-profit resources.

62% of "food insecure" families participate in SNAP, WIC or free and reduced school meals (we used to call this school lunch, but now it is breakfast, lunch, and after school, plus summer meals).

Poverty rolls took a big jump in 2008, but haven't really come down.  A chunk of ARRA money in 2009 went to find and enroll people in the programs. It was very successful. Because of the weak economy, they remain on the rolls.

If poverty were solved tomorrow, we’d have a whole new crew of poor people—those who formerly worked in the business.

http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/1565415/err173.pdf

The Ohio Association of Foodbanks was awarded $2.18 Million Federal Navigator Grant for a 2nd year not to feed the hungry, but to enroll people in Obamacare.

The Ohio Association of Foodbanks is Ohio’s largest charitable response to hunger, representing Ohio’s 12 Feeding America foodbanks and 3,300 member charities including food pantries, soup kitchens and shelters. In SFY 2014, the association and its member foodbanks were able to acquire and distribute over 186 million pounds of food and grocery items. The association also serves as the home of The Ohio Benefit Bank and operates the state’s largest navigator program for the Affordable Care Act.

http://admin.ohiofoodbanks.org/uploads/news/Press_Statement-_Federal_Navigator_Grant_Awarded5.pdf

Brit claims she’s obese because the government doesn’t give her enough money

If you read any article by the poverty pimps or academics in the USA, the same case is made. We don't give enough money to the poor to buy healthy food so therefore they buy high calorie, high fat, highly processed food with SNAP. That's just silly. Ounce for ounce, healthy food is much cheaper than processed. You can buy 10 lbs of potatoes for the cost of 16 oz. of potato chips. Oranges, apples, bananas, etc. are far cheaper than bags of fruit flavored snacks. She’s also never heard of walking—the greatest exercise ever.

I googled a comparison cost of living site, and although UK is socialist, almost everything is higher than in the U.S. (food is about 11% higher), except renting a tennis court for an hour and disposable income--those are lower. But even so, she could do better by contributing some of her own labor and preparing real food.

“It would be good if the government offered a cash incentive for me to lose weight. I’d like to get £1  for every pound I lose,” 25-year-old Christina Briggs said.

Briggs said losing weight is currently impossible because she doesn’t have enough money to buy healthy food or join a gym.

http://www.nationalreview.com//article/388887/350-pound-woman-im-obese-because-i-dont-get-enough-taxpayer-money-katherine-timpf

 

And tattoos are expensive, too.  What’s a poor girl to do?

Not Obama’s standard

This should be Obama's standard for SNAP--not how many people he has added, but how many don't need it anymore.

During the last five years, the SNAP program grew by 36.8%, from $58,223,790,000 in 2009 to $79,641,880,000 in 2013. http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/record-20-households-food-stamps-2013#sthash.rIiq4riE.dpuf

However, the number on food stamps decreased in 2012 and 2013 as the economy improved, despite the recruitment for more participants.

In the U.S., hunger is on the list of missing, politically incorrect words; it is “food insecurity,” a much more plastic, pliable term, and it only has to occur very briefly to be included in the stats.

According to USDA Economic Research Service 11.1 percent of all US households were food insecure during some period during 2006. That percentage of food insecure households increased to 14.5 in 2010.

 

Notice the huge jump in costs in 2009—ARRA money was used to recruit more users. By government think, this “infused” money quickly into the economy, but I suspect most went to hire additional workers rather than provide improved nutrition.

From 2007 to 2010, the number of families below 125% of the federal poverty level increased by 16% (because of the recession). That's a lot of people--mostly children without fathers in the home. However, the number of households receiving SNAP benefits increased by 58%. This means that the SNAP recipiency ratio, or the ratio of households receiving SNAP to that below 125% of the poverty line rose by 37%. "The Redistribution Recession," by Casey Mulligan

Urban Institute, a progressive think tank, believes SNAP helps the poor and the economy, as does all the government reports. After all, it is a USDA program. Here’s their take. http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412613-SNAPs-Role-in-the-Great-Recession-and-Beyond.pdf

Food buzz words

Food security (a buzz-word) and/or good nutrition is not food self-sufficiency (another buzz word). I've noticed that many political celebrities have photo ops at trendy, high priced Chicago or Washington restaurants or campaign events that serve waygu-steak or fancy ethnic foods, while the rest of us are encouraged to get dirty and harvest our back yard gardens or raise a few chickens in order to save the planet.

The biggest offender? Michelle Obama.

Addressing the authors of Addressing food insecurity

This is the letter I wrote to the authors of "Addressing Food Insecurity; Freedom from Want, Freedom From Fear," JAMA, Dec. 1, 2010, Vol 304, No. 21, pp. 2405-06. They press all the hot buttons--a reference to FDR, the vision of hungry children, statistics pulled from the air, and citing the American Dietetic Association, and the United Nations declaration of human rights, but not the real causes of hunger.

Dr. Samuel Bitton, MD
Cohen Children's Medical Center of NY

Dr. Jesse Roth, MD
Feinstein Institute for Medical Research

of The North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System in New Hyde Park and Manhasset, New York

Dear Doctors Bitton and Roth:

"Food insecurity" is a buzz word I wish the government hadn't developed (2006) to expand the definition of hunger to include reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet or a disrupted eating pattern. Also, your launch paragraph's reference to FDR who lengthened the Great Depression with numerous social programs (now being imitated by President Obama in a variety of take-overs, stimulus packages and bail-outs), is telling. His "freedom from fear" has expanded to Americans fearing the expansion of our government with little hope of being freed from that fear.

But let's address hunger. The number one cause for poverty and hunger among children is their unmarried mother who hasn't completed her education before having babies. Or you could put the responsibility on men instead of women--lack of the biological father in the home--serial boyfriends and sugar daddies don't count, nor does Uncle Sam as a step-father. Keep in mind, this term was developed during the boom economy when the USDA was running out of truly hungry people! Now with government extended unemployment, there are people in food lines who never expected to be there. Then if we look at other causes of low income which could result in "reduced quality, variety and desirability" of the diet, you'll see that the graph for income pretty closely overlays the graph for IQ. Unless you plan to physically remove all children from households where the parents range below a certain IQ level, I think you'll need to rethink your plan to have doctors screen for the "negative health consequences" of nutritionally poor choices.

We could save billions of USDA dollars a year with a simple accessible van service (staffed by the people we remove from USDA SNAP positions) to drive people without transportation to a super market. We don't need elaborate systems of farmers' markets brought into the inner city, or even more school feeding programs. Many people of limited means simply can't get to a well stocked grocery to buy basic goods--10 lbs of potatoes, peppers, green beans, a gallon or two of milk, bread, flour, sugar, fruit juice, eggs, etc. Have you ever tried lugging home a gallon of milk on a bus? I know my plan would cause a lot of unemployment in the USDA funded programs both government and non-profit who live on ever-expanding government grants, but maybe they could go back to college and become doctors.

The Power of Choice

Really? Would you feel good about your own freedom as a parent to make choices if you got this letter from the government, sent home with your kids from school? Would you even read it?

And dig that song! What if the kids decide to use their "power of choice" in an unapproved way? I can really see teens getting into this pyramid stuff.

Something's not right in Fairfax County Virginia--is it the government bubble

According to 2009 county data, the median family income in Fairfax County is $122,651. Unemployment is way below the national level--Gosh--Franklin County would kill for their rate (5.4%). Nearly 60% of Fairfax Country residents over 25 have better than a bachelor's degree. A single family home median value is about $550,000. So with all this affluence and education--42% of the students in Fairfax County schools are eligible for free and reduced price meals. What's going on? If this rich county with its abundance of college degrees and government workers can't spring for their kids' lunches, who can? Something is really screwed up in the D.C. suburbs.

If there are hungry Americans. . .

Then we have totally incompetent federal, state and local governments, because we tax payers have certainly done our part. We've given them enough money to cover the problem. $60.7 billion was the USDA's food assistance budget in 2008. Here's a tiny fraction of what went to the low income and poor, not for hunger, but for "food insecurity." Primarily, it pays the salaries of the people in the USDA "food chain," which include "public partnerships" like non-profits and churches.

Legislation
School Meals Programs
Child and Adult Care Food Program
Summer Food Service Program
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
Food Distribution Program
Women, Infants and Children

Regulations
School Meals Programs
Child and Adult Care Food Program
Summer Food Service Program
Supplemental Nutrition Asssitance Program
Food Distribution Program
Women, Infants and Children
Farmers Market Nutrition Program

Policy
School Meals
Child and Adult Care Food Program
Summer Food Service Program
Food Distribution Policy Database
Charitable Institutions & Summer Camps
Commodity Supplemental Food Program
Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations
Nutrition Services Incentive Program
Processing Policies
Schools/Child Nutrition Institutions
The Emergency Food Assistance Program

Food insecurity is not hunger

"According to the USDA's annual poll, 17 million U.S. households reported some degree of food insecurity in 2008, up from 13 million households in 2007," writes Scott Kilman in yesterday's WSJ. I'm not sure when "food insecurity" became the term du jour, but it means at some point during 2008 someone in the family worried about not having enough food or their "normal eating patterns were disrupted." So that's what hunger has become to the USDA--worrying about food while HHS is wringing is bureaucratic hands over obesity. Even when unemployment was at 4.5%, journalists were writing food pantry and food insecurity stories, especially during the holiday season when many charities are making appeals. Now because of unemployment at 10.2%, people who used to contribute or volunteer at food pantries now are recipients, so the stories have expanded. In 2009 they are not directed at the president's policies, as they were four or five years ago. Even in food insecurity, Obama is untouchable.

And really, no modern day president can be blamed for hunger in the U.S., because it has been the policy of the government for the last 60 years to expand its largest welfare program to . . . farmers. And what used to be using up post-war surplus by giving it to the poor (blocks of cheese, butter, and boxes of dry milk back in the 60s and 70s) is now growing subsidized food to be given to the poor through schools (breakfast, lunch, afterschool and summertime snacks), churches (they usually run the summer programs), non-profits (they provide grants from donors and the government to buy the food), and federal and state "partnerships (redistribution of USDA money to many programs, rural and metropolitan)."

This at a time when there are entire households of adults and children where no one knows how to purchase or prepare food. I needed to buy 2 large containers of applesauce to donate to Faith Mission this week, so while I was going through the store, I jotted down some basic, non-prepared food items with prices.

Fresh items: 3 lb bananas, 8 lb. potatoes, 1 lb. carrots, 3 lb. apples, 8 lb oranges, 2 lb cabbage (total $11.18); main meal items: l lb pinto beans, l lb. black beans, 2 lb rice, 2 lb macaroni, 15 oz spaghetti, 26 oz spaghetti sauce (total $8.56); refrigerator case: 1 doz eggs, 1 gal milk, 1 lb butter, 2 lb cheddar cheese (total $7.45); beverage: 11.5 oz coffee to brew ($2.50). That came to $29.69, and for another $5.00 I could have had 2 loaves of bread and 16 oz. of natural peanut butter. For another $5.00 I could buy a 16 lb. turkey because they are on special right now. So for $40, that's a lot of food on the shelves, but someone has to buy it and someone has to prepare it who knows that beans with rice and potatoes combined with milk are almost nutritionally perfect.

But you can blow your way through $40 pretty fast buying soft drinks, potato chips, prepared individual meals at $3.00 each, crackers, cookies, etc. And it's not just poor people. On my afternoon walk yesterday I walked in a neighborhood that has a Tuesday trash pick up and at one home which I would estimate at $800,000, there were 6 plastic containers at the curb, all filled with flattened boxes and containers for processed food, many for the single server type. Her children probably don't qualify for school lunches, but they might be better off if they did.

See also my blog from April 2009 on What ever happened to food stamps.