Posted on 11/29/2010 7:55:59 AM PST by relictele
An average of 17.7 percent of all Americans were at times unable to feed themselves in the 12 months prior to September of this year. That's according to an analysis of data from the Gallup-Healthways Index, conducted and newly released by the Food Resource and Action Center (FRAC), an advocacy group.
You may be wondering: In what universe does a 17.7 percent hunger rate qualify as good news? In this one, actually. That figure, after all, represents a slight drop from the average 18.5 percent rate recorded at the end of 2009. But even the smaller figure is hardly reassuring, given that it means just under 55 million Americans had to do without food at least occasionally.
Hunger endures. It seems a timely point to make as we enter upon that season wherein we express profound thankfulness by gorging on turkeys and hams and yams and greens, potatoes by the mound, dressing by the mountain and groaning tables full of puddings, pies, cookies and cakes.
Hunger endures. The point also seems salient given an often niggardly political environment in which it is common to hear people speak of poverty as a defect of birth or character, and an André Bauer -- lieutenant governor of South Carolina -- can get away with likening children who receive free and reduced-price lunches to stray animals you feed at the back door.
(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
Ivins' favored tactic was to troll the fringes of far-left DC lobbying groups (I refuse to call them 'think' tanks since precious little thinking took place) and then cite statistics and facts offered up by ideologues. A first-year statistics student would blush with embarrassment at the a priori conclusions, researcher bias, faulty hypotheses, and sampling errors that accompanied every so-called study. Data was tortured until it fit the tiresome we-are-good-and-just-and-they-are-evil-and-mean agenda.
A fiction example might be Ivins declaring that the surface of the earth had four square corners based on information supplied by the Flat Earth Society. Without any skepticism about the source of the information or their motives, Ivins would then paste up 500 words of boilerplate about the sinister plans of the GOP and/or conservatives to prolong and worsen the problem by rounding off one or more corners.
Back to Pitts who, in his usual style, accepts FRAC statistics at face value and then proceeds to play the only song he knows: evil white and/or rich people hate anyone who may have missed a meal or two and would like nothing better than to starve them out of existence.
Like Ivins, Pitts uses the premise of the 'research' (quotes intentional) as an excuse for ignoring any information to the contrary such as, oh I don't know, trillions of dollars spent on poverty programs to say nothing of the obesity 'epidemic' (engineered by the GOP of course) he and like-minded individuals decry the other 51 weeks of the year. Apparently, during Thanksgiving week, Pitts can't see the multitudes of already XXXXL sized persons filling shopping carts with junk food (to be paid for with quick, convenient debit cards that ostensibly reduce the stigma attached to food stamps).
Pitts ignores the most obvious issue, namely the 17.7% hunger rate quoted by FARC. That's nearly 1 in 5. Does he, FARC (their donor list here: http://frac.org/about/supporters/) or other like-minded persons not believe that a 20% national hunger rate would involve riots, looting and front-page headlines across the nation?
Memo to Pitts: the hint is in the term 'advocacy group' i.e. they have an axe to grind. Do you really need their fantasy numbers in order to have another go at Republicans?
I, for one, wish Leonard Pitts would go hungry.
It's not my problem.
Maybe they should move to Haiti.
That's almost 1 out of every 5 people in the country.
I've hit the "x1000" button on my BS Meter and the reading is STILL off the scale.
Maybe if it was phrased "unable to pull themselves away from the big screen TV in order to nuke a Hot Pocket", I would believe it. As stated, I don't.
Did I miss the methodology used to decide this?
I call BS as loud as I can
and calling this the Molly Ivins method is spot on.
But of course he wrote this to whip up his Dem base and to try to make mean ol Republicans look bad
Probably correct, because that 17.7% figure probably includes infants and small children.
As usual the left wing solution to ending hunger is to donate from OTHER people’s pockets and then call themselves charitable.
They are worthless Marxist vermin. We need to do to them like we did to the other commies in North Korea and Vietnam. No less! As long as these vermin breath, this country will continue to deteriorate.
LOL!
My family lives in New Britain CT. Half the population is on welfare. They siesta 3-4 times a week and most of them drive a Lexus.
When asked about it the answer is always the same: we are taking from the white man/rich man what he took from us!
There was quite a dust up a few years ago in D.C. when a white guy used that word in a discussion of funding to D.C. schools. I believe the first reaction was to fire the poor guy.
I just did...scrambled eggs and sausage. Yum.
And it was so.
Several times a week I am unable to feed myself - because I’m too busy working to take a break.
Those numbers are so inflated that only the insane left could read this and believe it. Not the LOONEY left, but the INSANE left.
The question probably was -
“Have you ever been hungry in the past year?”
And yet we have an obesity problem that is esp. severe among the poor...
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