Posted on 12/01/2008 7:56:07 AM PST by Turret Gunner A20
But you forget about all the people who think drugs should be leagalized and the war on drugs is just a money grab.
I’m hungry right now. Do I qualify for extra money to buy food even though I’m just hungry because it’s lunch time?
Again, all conjecture. Show me statistics from a source to back up this insane assumtion.
No need for scorn. I don't doubt it for one minute.
We lived almost 20 years in a welfare town and I haven't seen a welfare family yet where the parents didn't drink, smoke, do drugs, buy take out, own pets, computers, and tons of videos and their children didn't run around hungry and in clothes that I wouldn't even give away, except to the trash collectors. I saw one little girl picking up and eating the bread crusts I had just thrown out for the birds.
For some kids, the only meals they got were either school lunches or what someone else gave them. There was one church that had free lunches for the welfare kids in its neighborhood during the summer, because the kids wouldn't eat otherwise.
If you want to fund welfare, fine; contribute my share will ‘ya.
Welfare needs to go. Nothing like a little hunger on the part of the adults to motivate them to get off their lazy butts and get out and work for a living.
I have no statistics to back up my opinion here, but I find it very hard to believe that ‘lots’ of children are going hungry in the US. I’m sure there are there are some, for a variety of reasons, but not ‘lots’.
My hunch tells me that there are darned few children in America that go hungry because there is simply no food and their parents are doing everything they can to put food on the table. Generally, I tend to agree with your assertion that hungry children are the immediate and direct result of parents who squander their limited resources on crap.
But, I would like to see verifiable data that support this contention.
Heck!!
Mine howled this refrain DAILY!!!
My response was solely to the numeric portion of the comment.
99.9% means only one out of one thousand could be for another reason.
Given the not inconsiderable numbers of child abusing, religious fanatic and mentally ill parents out there, I would assume that more than one out of one thousand cases of child hunger are due to some cause other than drug dependency.
I would agree that they are almost certainly the vast majority. Just not 99.9%.
We had a case here in Florida recently where the family had five kids. Three were neat, clean, well-fed and attending school. Two were kept chained in a dark room for years and starved nearly to death. I don’t think drugs were specifically involved, although human evil and possibly mental illness certainly were.
There may not be any. But what with all the food giveaway programs out there, I find it inconceivable.
The other thing to consider is that any parent worth their salt will make sure their child is fed before ANYTHING else. I’d go hungry before making my kids go hungry. They can wear old clothes, live in less than spectacular housing, but it is simply NOT that expensive to put some kind of food on the table. It takes effort to do it economically and you don’t always have much choice about what you’re getting, but it can be done.
There are lots of children “going hungry” in this country, but for 99.9% of them, the cause is parents who are addicted to alcohol/drugs or gambling.
The point being, it's parental irresponsibility, NOT an inability to really provide food.
Seeing what I've seen for so many years, I agree with him.
In what state are food "stamps" still used? I thought most states now use some kind of debit card account, so the benefits aren't transferable and there's an electronic record of purchase they can check.
Cannot argue with you at all. The fundamental duty of any parent is always the health and safety of the offspring.
Finding such stats is likely impossible - I suspect you know that already.
Research documenting GovernmentShrinker's assertion would be too politically incorrect to get public funding (or it would land its researchers in a political firestorm if it were privately funded).
GS's claim is hardly an "insane assum[p]tion," btw. Given the plethora of "feeding" programs for "the poor" (note the infantilization implied by the word "feeding") -- and the aggressiveness of our social services bureaucrats to foist food stamps, WIC etc on as many as possible -- there is simply no good excuse for any parent in America to let a child go hungry.
Ergo it's logical to assume criminal behavior on the part of most parents who fail to feed their children. And I've seen plenty of anecdotal evidence to back that up.
Harder to do nowadays as most states use a debit card-like system that puts all benefits on a card. You can't just rip off $20 in stamps from the paper book and hand them over to the drug dealer anymore.
They find ways around it. Sometimes the drug dealer is a live-in boyfriend who’s getting well-fed via the food stamps (and often also housed at taxpayer expense, in “single” mom’s public or Section 8 housing), in exchange for drugs. Anything of value can be exchanged for cash, drugs, or alcohol.
See my post #35.
Those unusual cases certainly exist, but they are very rare compared to the drugs/alcohol/gambling cases, and also not really relevant to the political issues behind these reports of child hunger prevalence. No amount of government hand-outs of money, food, or cash is going to get kids in that sort of situation fed.
I remember a couple of summers ago, my wife came home in tears. She had been out with MUST ministries-feed hungry kids during summer in Georgia. One little boy was saving half of his sandwich for dinner...they got a sandwich, chips drink and a little toy like at McDonald. Sure there are addicted parents, but there are also parents out of work. I have seen this since moving to the Mid West. As for taking them away from parents...foster care is a national disgrace in this country so unless you and a whole lot of others are willing to take in foster children, this is not an option. It is no wonder people get the idea conservatives are heartless after reading some of these posts.
Working in the school food services industry - we see many hungry children. Most are the result of poor choices by the parents of how to appropriate funds available to the household.
They cannot afford food but can afford cable, the latest cell phone, etc. These children come to school hungry and, many times, the only hot meal they receive is at school. Pitiful, but we have segments of society that HAVE CHOSEN to live like this.
More government funds will not eliminate or reduce the problem, most likely it will allow more people to be attracted to dependency.
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