Going Hungry In America: ‘Distressing,’ ‘Humbling’ And ‘Scary’ (Obama's America)

Dave Krepcho, director of the Second Harvest Food Bank, checks inventory at the food bank warehouse in Orlando, Fla. In the past four years, food distribution to 500 pantries, shelters, and other relief agencies in the six-county area has jumped about 60 percent. In the last year alone, that amounted to 36 million pounds of food. Krepcho estimates about 30 percent of those seeking help are first-timers. They're blue-collar and white-collar, many middle class, even some upper middle class. They include college-educated couples and professionals. (John Raoux/AP)

As grocery prices creep higher and her income sags, rationing her family's food is a daily task. The 54-year-old mother of three and grandmother of three in Roanoke, Va., says there are days she skips meals so her husband and son can eat. If they notice, she says, she'll let them think she's fasting. She waters down the milk and juice to make it last longer. She visits food pantries, but it's not enough.

"Who would think that in the land of plenty, hard-working families would go hungry? But I am living proof it is true," Preston writes in a first-person account for Yahoo!.

In the last three years, she hasn't been able to replace a $500 loss in monthly income. Her husband's job can't always guarantee 40 hours a week; his second job lasted only through Christmas. So mealtime suffers: Her family eats in one day what they used to eat at one meal. Often, they manage on a nearly barren cupboard for five or six days until the next pay day. They sometimes skip family gatherings at restaurants because

Something I found out recently which is the most disturbing of all about government hand outs.

When things get tough and people have trouble feeding themselves, the group that suffers most are the children.

Why?

Because there are parents out there who when benefits get reduced will take care of themselves first and let their kids go hungry!!

Nine years ago when my best best friend finally got married (we were in our 40’s at the time). Since I was her attendant, we decided to go out to a bar for a few drinks, a girls’ night out, shortly before her wedding. It had been about 20 years since we’d done anything like this and after the first drink we realized why we don’t do things like that anymore(;-)).

I met a woman in the Ladies Room who started talking to me about her 20 year old daughter. She’s saying how much her daughter hates her. I said something like that too bad (and realized alcohol makes you real stupid to confess such things to a total stranger). The woman replies that she doesn’t blame her daughter because when this woman was a young, single mom, she’s buy herself shoes so she could go out to the bars instead of buying food for her daughter. And this bar was a nice bar, in a nice restaurant, in a nice shoreline town, not a dive in the ghetto.

Anyway, FWIW, there are really scummy people out there who shouldn’t have kids, but what should we do about the kids who suffer if we cut off mommy’s benefits.

Come closing time every day, Panera Bread gives away all remaining stock (bread, bagels, pastries) to whatever charity will come get it. I take about 4 large boxes to a local church’s food pantry every week (and they still don’t have enough charities to take all daily leftovers). Don’t need a government program and confiscatory taxes, just need people willing to get it to the needy.

"So much for “spreading the wealth around”. Well, only if it is somebody else’s wealth..."

This should shock no one, ever. Marxists, especially those at the top of the "party," are among the greediest, most selfish people in all of human existence. They demand that they be given everything you have worked for and produced with no questions asked, so that they can live high on the hog. Look at any communist regime in history and tell me who has suffered the most? That's right, those who had the least to begin with, the ones who are supposed to be liberated and cared for in their glorious "Workers' Paradise." The ones who are supposedly suffering at the hands of the evil, producer capitalist bosses. My ass.

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