Are We Fat Or Are We Starving?

By Alicia Colon

Are you as confused as I am? I've been watching public service ads (PSA) with actor Ben Affleck, Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon all informing us that more than 50 million Americans live in hunger according to U.S. Department of Agriculture reports.

At the same time our First Lady Michele Obama has chosen our national obesity problem as one of her signature issues, so which is it? Is it possible that those Americans are living in hunger because they are on a diet? That may sound flippant but this whole government involvement in providing us with adequate sustenance has been so horribly mismanaged that it has become a joke.

Mrs. Obama is right to be concerned about childhood obesity and healthy issues but even though a healthy nation is a worthy goal, we should ensure that our resources are spent wisely without removing personal responsibility from the process.

Those Hollywood celebrities are woefully ignorant of what constitutes real poverty and hunger. Either they have never been poor and are heeding the demagoguery from political activists with ulterior motives or they are just plain ignorant. I believe that most of them are sincere but operating under the liberal sense of guilt for their own obscene wealth.

For example, television reports of the widespread looting in New Orleans after Katrina showed people wading in the water carrying plasma televisions. Singer Celine Dion excused their behavior on Larry King saying, "Oh, they're stealing 20 pair of jeans or they're stealing television sets. Who cares? They're not going to go too far with it. Maybe those people are so poor, some of the people who do that they're so poor they've never touched anything in their lives. Let them touch those things for once."

Well Ms. Dion, the store owners getting robbed care and if you want the looters to touch things why not invite them to your home so they can rub their poor hands over your things for once?

Actually we could claim that the war on poverty has been won because there is very little real poverty left in this country if we judge it by a standard applied globally. That of course means no TV, no car, no air conditioning, no food source, no running water or proper sewage facilities. So why are children still hungry? Most major cities provide meals in schools, and soup kitchens are run by charities so if children are still hungry we need to look at where their parents are spending their money. If their welfare checks are going up their noses or injected into their arms, their children will pay the price for their profligacy.

The very poor get food stamps, free health care, section 8 housing and now they can even get cell phones. I could understand those Hollywood PSA ads if we were living in Somalia but in America there are way too many government programs providing safety nets for the poor.

Near my home there is a church that doles out free food every week and I have never seen a malnourished individual standing in line to receive the handouts. I am quite sure that there are readers out there who are deeming me cold-hearted and cruel for speaking the truth but if this country was run by practical individuals instead of foolish bleeding hearts we wouldn't be in this economic mess. We would still be the strongest nation on earth with the healthiest populace and the highest standard of living possible. Instead our government policies have created a nation of couch potatoes and deadbeats who see no reason to work when they can get a check for doing nothing.

I grew up in a slum in New York City yet in my elementary parochial school we would put our meager pennies into a Maryknoll box for the missions in Africa. We'd read the mission magazines which showed us the mud huts and awful living conditions and we would go home to our vermin infested apartments and feel lucky to live in America.

We knew that if we worked hard and educated ourselves we'd be able to improve our lives. That ambition is woefully absent from a government sponsored cradle-to-grave dependent populace.

Whose idea was it to give out food stamps instead of food? Whose idea was it to then give recipients ATM cards to alleviate embarrassment at the supermarkets? If we are so concerned with obesity why should food stamps purchase junk food? How is it possible for local groceries and bodegas to accept food stamps for beer and cigarettes? This is a fact because I know those who've done it.

As poor as we were, we were not on welfare because my mother took in laundry and babysat for neighbors. My neighbors however, hid their family income and enjoyed new furniture, a television set and gave us the food commodities that they received with welfare. Until the sixties when LBJ's war on poverty kicked in, the government distributed basic food that was healthy and could sustain life. It was also billions of dollars less expensive.

Our current food stamp program costs over 50 billion dollars and is fraught with fraud and abuse. It is however an entitlement program that is draining our treasury but Congress refuses to cut it or even look into reforming it. It's much easier to claim that the military costs are to blame. The only programs that the government is competent in are the military and space-two things that this administration has chosen to cut funding.

There are no brave souls in Congress or this administration to gut the food stamp program and replace it with commodities that are currently only distributed through state supplementary food programs. Here is a list of foods available: canned beef; chicken; salmon; tuna; vegetables; apple juice; cranberry apple juice; tomato juice; orange juice; white potato; sweet potatoes; spaghetti sauce; packages of various beans and more. Plenty of life sustaining meals can be prepared for families in need.

I recall that back in the 1950's flour, peanut butter, cheese; rice and margarine were also available. We loved getting the food that my neighbors refused to enjoy because they didn't like the government packaging it came in. That canned beef over rice was a gourmet treat for us and I'd love to know where I could buy those cans.

The fact is that we can no longer afford these entitlement programs but the liberals keep them in place because they need the votes of the recipients of government largesse. Sadly they'd prefer to cut the benefits of the military that very often have their votes go uncounted.

If the celebrities really gave a darn for the poor they'd quit asking us taxpayers to shell out more of our hard-earned money and demand more accountability for the funds our government has already wasted destroying the lives of the poor. C

Alicia Colon resides in New York City and can be reached at aliciav.colon@gmail.com and at www.aliciacolon.com