I came across this article today in the Truthout news-site. Hunger is on the rise in the U.S. Because of the rising jobless rate in our low-grade, but persistent depression, brought on by the unregulated greed of the financial industry, and out-sourcing of jobs by large corporations, from this country over the past 20 years.
NEARLY ONE IN SIX CITIZENS WENT HUNGRY IN 2008
http://www.truthout.org/1117093
Washington - As the World Food Security Summit got under way in Rome Monday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) disclosed that nearly one in six U.S. households went hungry at some time during 2008, the highest level since it began monitoring food security levels in 1995.
Washington - As the World Food Security Summit got under way in Rome Monday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) disclosed that nearly one in six U.S. households went hungry at some time during 2008, the highest level since it began monitoring food security levels in 1995.
Altogether, 14.6 percent of households, or some 49 million people, "had difficulty putting enough food on the table at times during the year", according to the report, "Household Food Security in the United States, 2008".
That marked a sharp increase from the 11.1 percent of households, or 36.2 million people, who found themselves in similar straits during 2007, according to the report whose lead author predicted that the percentage was likely to be higher in 2009 due to the ripple effects of the financial crisis that erupted 14 months ago.
Among the 17 million households that experienced hunger – or "food insecurity", as the report referred to it - during 2008, about one-third suffered "very low food security", meaning that the amount of food of at least some household members was reduced and their normal eating patterns were substantially disrupted. Such households experienced such disruptions for at least a few days during seven or eight months of the year.
The other two-thirds were able to obtain enough food to avoid substantial disruptions by using a number of coping strategies, such as eating less varied diets, participating in government food and nutrition assistance programmes, or obtaining food from community food pantries or emergency kitchens.
And the number of households in which children, as well as adults, were subject to "very low food security" rose steeply – from 323,000 in 2007 to 506,000 last year, according to the report.
President Barack Obama released a statement from China, his latest stop on a week-long swing through Asia, which called the latest findings "unsettling".
"This trend was already painfully clear in many communities across our nation, where food stamp applications are surging and food pantry shelves are emptying," he said.
"It is particularly troubling that there were more than 500,000 families in which a child experienced hunger multiple times over the course of the year. Our children's ability to grow, learn, and meet their full potential – and therefore our future competitiveness as a nation – depends on regular access to healthy meals," he said, noting a number of steps taken by his administration to "revers(e) the trend of rising hunger."
Of the 49 million people who faced hunger on at least one occasion last year, 16.7 million were children, according to the report. That was 4.2 million more than in 2007 and the highest on record since 1995.
"The data released today is not surprising," said David Beckmann, the president of Bread for the World, a national anti-hunger group that also carries out programmes in poor countries. "What should really shock us is that almost one in four children in our country lives on the brink of hunger."
Feeding America, the largest U.S. food-relief organisation, said the USDA's latest statistics squared with its own experience in local communities where it runs some 200 food banks that feed more than 25 million people each year.
"It is tragic that so many people in this nation of plenty don't have access to adequate amounts of nutritious food," said Vicki Escarra, the group's president and CEO.
"Although these new numbers are staggering, it should be noted that they reflect the state of the nation one year ago, in 2008," she said. "Since then, the economy has significantly weakened, and there are likely many more people struggling with hunger than this report states."
She noted that some of the group's food banks, which supply food pantries, soup kitchens and emergency feeding centres, have reported increases of more than 50 percent in requests for emergency food aid over the past year.
"National socio-economic indicators, including the escalating unemployment rate and the number of working poor, lead us to believe that the number of people facing hunger will continue to rise significantly over the coming year," Escarra said.
The official unemployment rate exceeded 10 percent last month for the first time since the early 1980s, while former Labour Secretary Robert Reich estimated the "unofficial" unemployment rate – which includes people who have given up looking for work or who are under-employed – to be as high as 20 percent.
"Research on previous recessions indicates that people who fall into the grips of poverty in a time of recession do not recover financially," Escarra said. "Many of those people are likely to be in need of our services now or in the future."
Food insecurity, according to the new report, correlated closely to households with incomes near or below the federal poverty line of some 22,050 dollars for a family of four, single-parent households, and African-American and Hispanic households.
It found that food insecurity was more common in large cities and rural areas then in suburbs and was most prevalent in the southeastern part of the country.
Under Obama, the government has significantly increased funding for food stamps, emergency food aid, and school lunch programmes. In his statement, Obama said he hoped to provide more support next year.
"The survey suggested that things could be much worse but for the fact that we have extensive food assistance programmes," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Monday. "This is a great opportunity to put a spotlight on this problem."
Beckmann agreed. "The recession has made the problem of hunger worse, and it has also made it more visible," he said. "Increased public awareness and the administration's commitment give me hope. To end hunger, our leaders need to strengthen nutrition programmes and provide steady jobs that allow parents to escape the cycle of poverty and feed their families for years to come."
We here at A.P.R. see nothing on the horizon that would improve the jobless situation in this country. No real effort has been made by the Obama administration to restore important regulatory powers by the federal government of the financial industry first started by the F.D.R. administration in the late 1930s (to prevent another financial melt-down), but gutted ten years ago (during the Clinton administration!). The incredibly blatant taxpayer robbery of 700 billion dollars, with even more proposed, to prop up the same greedy, short-sighted financial institutions that have caused a global recession, continues apace. No significant federal efforts for job growth have been undertaken.
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." ~Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, American Society of Newspaper Editors, 16 April 1953
You've seen this quote before here in a previous post. Why is our government spending two to three billion dollars a day on illegal, immoral, and destructive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Wars that were based on lies. Think what that money could be doing in this country, and others. For just 40 billion dollars, or 20 days of war, clean water could be provided GLOBALLY to the people who needed it. What do you think would do more to promote U.S. national security, 20 days of war on defenseless countries, or that?
Federal jobs programmes to develop and implement renewable energy sources on a large scale, shore up our crumbling infrastructure (roads, bridges, hospitals, schools, etc.), and develop high-speed rail links between all our major cities could employ millions gainfully, for many years. And help combat global warming.
"When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered......True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring......A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love.
Federal jobs programmes to develop and implement renewable energy sources on a large scale, shore up our crumbling infrastructure (roads, bridges, hospitals, schools, etc.), and develop high-speed rail links between all our major cities could employ millions gainfully, for many years. And help combat global warming.
"When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered......True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring......A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.
A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love.
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
Maybe MLK's words have come true. Is it too late?
SLIDING INTO WINTER
This past monday, while running errands around the UAF campus on a cold, dim early winter day,
I came across these inspiring, caring UAF students, camped out in the middle of campus. It was about -32C (-25F) overnight, warming to about -25C by day, and they had been there for four days. Trying to raise money for local shelters and awareness about homelessness, in our community, and all over. It's hard staying warm, just standing around like that! Our hat is off to them, and contributions too. Good on 'ya!
We had some time the following day for a short jaunt into the backcountry. The White Mountains, 70 Km or so northeast of Fairbanks beckoned. This is where the trail system that links a nice set of cabins is located, that many nordic skiers, dog-mushers, and snowmachiners go into throughout the winter.
We had had a nice 16 cm snow-dump at the Chena Ridge Research Centre last week, and we wanted to see how much occurred in the Whites, and how the tra
ils were. When we got to the trailhead at 1pm, things were looking up! I'd estimate a good 30-40 cm snow base here. It sure made for beautiful scenery on the usually ugly black spruce. Because these trails run through the higher terrain at 800 to 1200 metres, when we have a cold-weather pattern, they are often in the clouds. Rime ice builds up thickly on all the tree branches, this combined with the snow from last week, made for quite a nice scene.
We wasted no time getting up the trail to Lee's Cabin, 12 Km southeast from the trailhead on the Elliott Highway. Homer and Mattie sure had a great time running in the -28C cold on the snowmachine-packed trail. I couldn't go as fast as them in that cold, slow, snow, on my waxless classic skis. Still, there was some decent glide on the downhill sections, since the trail was packed down.
The view looking north, about halfway to Lee's Cabin, toward Wickersham Dome shows the nice, thick snow base. I'm guessing they must have picked up double the amount of snow last week, that Fairbanks received. These trails are in prime shape now for any winter adventuring, good to know!
It took me a slow 90 min. to go just the 12 Km in to Lee's cabin. Just near there, the trail forks, this branch, heading east into the heart of the Whites, takes you into the network of cabins in the higher mountains, to the east. We'll be getting in there later this season, for sure.
Sunset comes by 4pm now, and was quite nice, with all the new snow. After a quick food/energy break near the cabin, it was time to head back. Since it was clear, that meant it would be getting much colder than -28C soon, so we were not going to take our time. I had to stop several times to whirl my arms, to force blood into my fingers, since they were getting cold and numb at times.
It took us another 90 minutes to make the return trip back to the trailhead. Homer sure has our admiration. For his advanced canid age of 13, he hasn't slowed down at all. He ran the entire 24 km, more even, since he kept going back and forth, so he probably ran 35-40 km, with no sign of tiring. Keep it up! Mattie of course was just going wild, she must have run 50 Km or more. She never shows any sign of tiring until she runs at least 90-100 Km.
We got back to the trailhead just as darkness was setting in. I managed to snap this picture with my ice buildup just in time.
I tried something new this time. I've seen UAF ski racers use these respirator face masks before when training in the deep cold of -20C or colder. These pre-warm the air above freezing as you inhale.
Inside our lungs, the surface area of air-exchange is very large, and with bitter cold air, a great amount of heat can be lost when breathing hard. Years of this can sometimes make the lungs more sensitive as well, inducing asthma in some people. To prevent that, I thought I'd give the mask a try. It worked great. Normally when working hard in the deep cold, I cough a little, not at all this time. And, after our 3 1/2 hour trip, my lungs felt just as good as when we started. I think this will be mandatory for all my runs and skis when temperatures drop below -20C. It's always nice to find some new way of adapting to the cold, so that we can be as active as we like. Cheers.
Inside our lungs, the surface area of air-exchange is very large, and with bitter cold air, a great amount of heat can be lost when breathing hard. Years of this can sometimes make the lungs more sensitive as well, inducing asthma in some people. To prevent that, I thought I'd give the mask a try. It worked great. Normally when working hard in the deep cold, I cough a little, not at all this time. And, after our 3 1/2 hour trip, my lungs felt just as good as when we started. I think this will be mandatory for all my runs and skis when temperatures drop below -20C. It's always nice to find some new way of adapting to the cold, so that we can be as active as we like. Cheers.
