67% report that more of their students are in free or reduced lunch programs today than in years past.

63% buy food for their students out of their own money.

62% report that each week, they see children come to school hungry because there is not enough food at home.

57% believe that in-class breakfast programs should be established.

89% believe that addressing child hunger should be a national priority.

What’s on your mind tonight?

• Jessica Glasscoe will give us a little bit for breakfast with a recipe for cinnamon pecan buns
• Toby Wollin will bring us something you might not quite be able to imagine – a winter picnic
• alanaclaire is going to warm you up with a recipe for celeriac soup
• Jill Richardson will give us a look at the food safety bill winding its way through Congress

We hope to see you here tomorrow as you wind down your weekend with us. Bring your thoughts, comments, recipes, and appetites!

New Orleans Food stamps are a part of growing up, and in fact may be more common in the American experience than apple pie. Being hungry in childhood also seems to be something commonly shared according to surveys of the nation’s teachers.

Living in the world’s richest country, it is now normal for children to need assistance at some point during their childhood. This is a right of passage in America.

The numbers were published by sociologists from Cornell and Washington University using 30 years of data by the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. Simply put, they say at some point in their childhood, about half of the nation’s children will experience poverty.

There is a brouhaha because many ideologues, as I have found in my discussions with many recently while on the Citizen Wealth trail, still want to believe in the “culture of poverty” and “welfare dependency” myths, even though real life and hard numbers indicate that reality is different. In real life most people’s experience is transitional. They are on, often because of unemployment or unexpected divorce or health setbacks for a period of time, and then off again. Statisticians lined up to support the conclusions of the sociologists about the high level of sometime participation in food stamps.

Others note that even as the evidence is clearer and clearer, we are still not getting food stamps to many people who are eligible and need them. The urgency of a campaign to achieve maximum eligible participation is critical.

This is another one of those situations where the question of whether or not people are willing to really look at the facts, rather than their ideologies, is critical. In talking to people about Citizen Wealth over and over they cited times when they had been unemployed, or on welfare, or poor, but they wanted their personal narrative to read that they had “pulled themselves” up by their bootstraps and others were lazy and less deserving.

In fact, the evidence is that their story is not exceptional, but commonplace for most people who find themselves using the rights and benefits provided by our society and the government we instruct. They are simply normal. We in fact need a way to look at the experience of poverty now as normal and therefore something that we are prepared to fix immediately and fully, rather than allowing the psychic damage and continual threats to well-being.

Don’t get me wrong. It shouldn’t be normal for children to be hungry. It’s an outrage and a scandal, and we need to be angry and get aggressive in solving this problem. But we need to tear down the political and partisan walls around this issue and realize that we are hurting people permanently, even when their experience in poverty may be temporary, by refusing to understand that this is a failure of government, politics, and institutions and not necessarily a failure of the poor and people themselves.

Then there will really be Thanksgiving!

So I took the boys and we spent the day visiting relatives and making a tour of the city’s parks. As I sat on a playground bench on a beautiful late-autumn afternoon, I felt pretty darn good about myself. Not only had I not participated in the shopping madness, I had also helped teach two children not to overconsume – or so I thought.

Just then, the youngest came up and told me he was hungry. So without thinking, we piled into the van and headed where we usually head after a day in the park – Chik-Fil-A. We placed our usual orders and then sat down at our usual table to enjoy our food.

Like I said, the hypocrisy of the moment didn’t hit me until I was halfway through my chicken sandwich. Suddenly, I became acutely aware of how much trash our meal was generating. For the pleasure of consuming a couple of 4-piece nuggets kids’ meals and one chicken sandwich combo, we also consumed this list of non-food items:

1 Paper sandwich wrapper

2 Paperboard nuggets boxes

1 Paperboard large fries container

2 Paper small fries containers

2 Plastic chocolate milk bottles

1 Large styrofoam cup

1 Plastic cup lid

3 Plastic straws

3 Straw papers

8 Ketchup packets

1 Mayonnaise packet

6 Paper napkins

2 Paper bags for kids’ meals

2 Plastic wrappers for kids’ meal toys

2 Plastic placemats for kids

1 Paper placemat on tray

1 Paper advertisement for special Chik-Fil-A events

In fact, the only thing we used that was not thrown away was the plastic tray that we carried everything on. If you’re keeping score, that’s 3 people eating one fast food meal and generating 39 separate pieces of trash - almost as much meal-time trash as we generate in a week at home.

So my anti-consumerist pride came crashing down. I had carefully avoided the consumerist shopping rush, but then got suckered in by the routine of my family’s fast food habits. Which has gotten me to thinking:  Short of boycotting fast food and only eating at places that don’t use so much disposable stuff, what can be done to remedy this problem? The industry and it’s hyper-consumptive habits will march on whether or not my family continues eating there.

My first thought was to start bringing my own non-disposable dishes, and to ask the employees not to use disposable materials to deliver my food. Then, I could just take them home and wash them with my other dishes. But that would put undue stress on people who have no control over how those decisions are made and would accomplish nothing.

So my second thought was to make an appointment with the manager, and to see if we could work out some sort of system where I could get my food without so much trash being involved. But there again, a manager probably doesn’t have the authority to do something like that, and there are health department regulations that would be violated, too.

So the conclusion I have drawn from my failure at anti-consumerism is that the resistance must go to the top, and it has to be multi-faceted. We need legislation that encourages creative ways to practice less consumptive fast food dining, such as a tax on how much trash a restaurant produces.

But more importantly, we need to encourage corporations to embrace the idea. Perhaps a discount for people who bring their own dishes? Or maybe just a little sanity – such as no longer wrapping individual straws and no longer making ketchup packets so small that you need five or six just to eat your fries. Either way, as Wal-Mart is showing, corporations respond substantially to protests and pressure from consumers.

So I’m going to start drafting letters to all the fast food corporations I patronize, explaining my concern about trash and encouraging them to develop less consumptive policies. I’ll also write my local and federal representatives.  I’ll share any responses I get back. Until then, let’s all keep our eyes open for "moments of hypocrisy" when we realize how our own habits can be part of the problems we are working to fix.

Insurance companies are entwined with Wall Street in a myriad of ways, but one of the most obvious is personnel. The people that run insurance companies often run other Wall Street companies as well. Eric Wiseman, CEO of the clothing and apparel conglomerate VF Corp., is a perfect example: he’s on the board of directors of Cigna health care.

VF Corp. makes all kinds of clothes you might be familiar with. They own the brands Nautica, North Face, Lee, Wrangler, Vans, and Lucy, among many others:

Those brands are marketed by the VF Corporation. And VF’s chief executive is Eric Wiseman, who also sits on the board of Cigna, the giant health insurance company. According to the leaflets [that Health Care for America Now is handing out to shoppers in front of malls around the country], “Greedy health insurance companies like Cigna are spending millions on scare tactics to block reform,” through lobbying and advertising.

Eric Wiseman makes $6.2 million running the publicly traded VF Corp., and he makes another $430,000 for sitting on Cigna’s board.

Cigna is one of the three largest health insurance companies in the country, and it has the track record to prove it. Cigna is the company that insurance industry whistle-blower Wendell Potter used to work for, so all the things he says about how the industry cheats, lies, and tries to kill reform come from personal experience with this company. Cigna is right now under investigation from Senator Rockafeller and the Commerce Committee for allegedly failing to disclose whether their money went to people’s health care or executive salaries and bonuses. And Cigna is the company that denied Stacy Ritter’s sick daughters their care, forcing her into bankruptcy.

Eric Wiseman makes money off of all of that. He makes money when Cigna denies care. He makes money when they use premiums to pay his salary instead our doctors. And he stands to make a ton of money if Cigna, along with the rest of the industry, kills health care reform and the public health insurance option.

So if you’re planning on buying some Wranglers for your husband, Vans for your son, or North Face for your wife, maybe you should think twice about where that money is going. And while you’re at it, why don’t you give Eric Wiseman a call, along with thousands of other shoppers who are getting this message at malls around the country?

Let him know that you understand the connection between his coveted clothing brands and reform, and tell him to stop being grinchy with our health care. Trust me, nothing scares the head of a publicly traded company more than going after their highly protected brands.

Here’s the number to call: (336) 424-6192

(also posted at the NOW! blog)

I’m proud to work for Health Care for America Now

One of the countries Perkins identified as working under those concessions was Saudi Arabia. Of course, the catastrophic results of Saudi Arabia’s sacrifice of its own citizens’ interests to those of the financial enslavers of its royal house, we are all too aware, was the alienation of Saudi citizens, who militarized and moved towards 9/11. I have no doubt that the Dubai financial houses involved are as well aware as the rest of us that a massive sellout of its own citizens has historic precedent in that contretemps.

While we are watching stocks tumble around the world, how many of us here are wondering what alternatives are being offered, and have been offered, to the Dubai financial houses that are so deeply in over their heads?

I can’t help thinking that some of the same offers had come up when our own new administration came into power, saddled with debts that were obviously unmanageable. Now, as we watch a right wing second act unveil itself as totally opposed to the national interests it is sworn to serve, as long as that wing can’t hold onto the reins of power, the sell-out has clearly been to corporate interests that are counter to the interests of this country. The results of the falsification of their own role are daily proof that as long as they serve the corporate overlords, the right wing in this country can count on its backing.

Conspiracy theories are all too common, and show all too much sensationalism, for me to want to get hooked on them. It’s really impossible for me to ignore, though, that as the right wing increasingly isolates itself from the public its office holders should be serving, it holds ever more tenaciously to the corporate mantra.

I daily hear on my local stations Kay Bailey Hutchison, now running for governor of Texas while holding onto her Senate seat, declares in her ads that she is only staying in her office ‘to fight the government takeover of health care’. Frankly, any voter who doesn’t realize that Hutchison enjoys to the fullest the benefits of government health care as a Senator really isn’t capable of enough discernment to find a way to the polls and vote.

I can only assume that she, like the rest of the right wing representatives on the air waves and in office, are sure of one of two things.

Either, (1) they believe there are enough voters that fall far below average intelligence to keep them in office, or (2) they know enough to be aware there will be little by way of bad consequences. Instead, there will be contributions from corporate overlords for their blatant lies.

I hate conspiracy theories. I will not be surprised, though, when some years from now we have another book about how health insurance companies sent paid operatives around making offers they couldn’t refuse to those they had compromised and bought. We are seeing any number of writers spilling their formerly unconfessed inside information – that given in timely fashion could have headed off the war in Iraq and the torture that blackens our national reputation. Our Douglas Feiths of the 2010’s will provide fodder for retrospection. Of course, if they were to come forth now, they could head off national disaster. What’s holding them back?

First, there was Rush Limabugh’s "I hope Obama fails" comment back in January. Then came Glenn Beck’s "Obama hates white people" rant from July. This Wednesday, Limbaugh might have crossed the line from commentary to incendiary exhortation with this quip on his radio show:

Many have said that this remark is much more than a joke. It’s calling for a military coup, and it’s sedition. Perhaps it’s time for the FBI to step in and flex its muscle, if for no other purpose than to keep these guys honest. Do we want to wait until something horrible is done by one of their followers before we take action?

What’s on your mind?

Oneida Whiteside, a grandmother from Little Rock, articulated perfectly our uniquely American healthcare tragedy: "One day you have it [insurance] and the next day you don’t"

I met many Americans. Each one of them had a story. I videotaped quite a few. Historians may see these and judge what life was like in America circa 2009.

These are the words of Oneida Whiteside and her grandson, Jordan.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, I kept waiting for President Bush to call on Americans to serve.  The only thing I heard him ask is that we go shopping.  I was more than willing to help, as were millions of Americans.  On September 11, I wandered over to a building near my apartment, I think it was a high school auditorium.  I was a in a daze, but I’d heard that people were gathering to help.  I found hundreds of fellow New Yorkers there.  We all wanted to donate blood, but, horribly, not much blood was needed as the expected injured survivors were not there.  We signed up to provide services, to do whatever we could.  I went from one blood donation site to another, turned away each time (there were more than enough people there before me).  I brought supplies to my local fire station and I stood as near to the attack site as I could get, along with others who held signs and cheered on the vehicles heading to the site.  Though I am one of the least likely candidates for military service that you could imagine, I contacted the Defense Intelligence Agency to see if I could help gather information that might prevent future attacks.

I wanted to do more, but it was not easy to find out how.  I grew up reading about World War Two, and I imagined a national effort in which the population would be enlisted to respond to a threat to the nation.  The call to service never came.

President Bush never asked millions of Americans to sacrifice.  Instead, he sent a small percentage of the population to fight and die in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he asked these troops, and their families and loved ones, to bear the burden.  If we really have a compelling reason to be in Afghanistan, then President Obama ought to present that case and ask all Americans to participate in some way.  A military draft might be part of that solution.  If staying in Afghanistan is indeed a compelling mission, then I believe Americans will respond to the call.  If it is not, then I think Americans will let President Obama know that it is past time to end the war in Afghanistan and focus on priorities, domestic and foreign, that really do implicate our core national interests.

I loathe the use of my tax dollars for any violence, but you know what I loathe even more? The use of debt taken out in my name to fund violence.

The latter includes the anti-Christian choice of using violence in conflict and it adds extreme, immoral irresponsibility to the original sin. Not only did the deficit-fueled war spending of the Bush years lead to massive human suffering, but it also contributed mightily to the economic crisis. Here’s Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes writing in The Three Trillion Dollar War just before the economic crisis fully materialized (p. 115, 125-126):

The question is not whether the economy has been weakened by the [Iraq] war. The question is only by how much. Where you can put a figure on them, the costs are immense. In our realistic-moderate scenario…they total moe than a trillion dollars.

…

The Federal Reserve sought…to offset the adverse effects of the war, including those discussed earlier in this chapter. It kept interest rates lower than they otherwise might have been and looked the other way as lending standards were lowered–thereby encouraging households to borrow more–and spend more. Even as interest rates were reaching record lows, Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, in effect invited households to pile on the risk as he encouraged them to take on variable rate mortgages. The low initial interest rates allowed households to borrow more against their houses, enabling America to consume well beyond its means.

Household savings rates soon went negative for the first time since the Great Depression. But it was only a matter of time before interest rates rose. When they did so, hundreds of thousands of Americans who had taken on variable interest mortgages saw their mortgage payments rise–beyond their ability to pay–and they lost their homes. This was all predictable–and predicted: after all, interest rates could not stay at these historically unprecidented low rates forever. As this book goes to press, the full ramifications of the "subprime" mortgage crisis are still unfolding. Growth is slowing, and the economy is again performing markedly below its potential.

As an aside: Once I was derided for attacking the president’s willful disregard of the Sermon on the Mount’s unequivocal call for nonviolence because I was not also jumping up and down about deficits (you know who you are). Not only was that not true, but that jab assumed that the war in Afghanistan was not, in fact, a budget-busting mortgaging of the common good. Oops.

Some Democrats in Congress seem to understand this, at least:

Top Democrats have made it clear to Obama that he will not receive a friendly reception should he announce what is considered the leading option: sending 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. The legislators have indicated that a request for more money to finance a beefed-up war effort will be met with frustration and, perhaps, a demand to raise taxes.

If the president wants to spend $1 million per troop, per year, he should have to justify it to the people who will bear the brunt of the ensuing economic damage.

Good for you, Pelosi, Obey, Rangel, et. al. Keep it up.

Watch Rethink Afghanistan to learn more about the costs of war.