"America's Dark Underbelly"

From Der Spiegel

"In all, there are over 4,000 people in the hall. All are now destitute. Most of them are poor, have a lot of children, are uneducated and are African-American.

America, it seems, looked into the floodwaters left behind by Katrina and saw suffering and poverty of inconceivable magnitude. Hundreds of thousands of society's poorest have been left behind by the ebbing floodwaters. Along with the corpses and toxic mud, Americans are looking squarely at the underbelly of their own society.

On the same day the levees broke, Charles Nelson of the US Census Bureau in Washington presented the most recent report on income and poverty in the United States. The numbers and graphs he unveiled offered an appalling insight into the USA." more

In combination with this by Mike Whitney: "Money for Napalm but Not for Food Stamps"

"The Republican dominated House passed a five-year budget plan in the early hours of Friday morning which savages programs for the poor, college students and disease control.

The bill tosses 220,000 people off food stamps, allow states to jack up the cost of co-payments for poor Medicaid beneficiaries, squeeze students with loans, and cut aid to child-support programs.

Republican’s felt they were being magnanimous when they dumped a provision that would have “denied free school lunches to about 40,000 children whose parents would lose their food stamps.”

The milk of human kindness flows from the Republican Congress like blood from a turnip.

Let’s be clear, the Food stamps program only provides for an estimated 300,000 people. The new bill knocks 220,000 people off the program, leaving a paltry 80,000 still qualifying for assistance.

Is 80,000 the maximum number of people we can feed in the richest country on earth?! Meanwhile, we are spending $6 billion a month to kill Iraqis in their homes and cities.

Go figure. more