Poor People Shouldn’t Starve

You’d figure it would be axiomatic by now. The richest country in the history of the world should not allow its citizens to starve. The oligarchs clustered around our billionaire president have all the Ozempic and Mounjaro they need. Shouldn’t a poor kid in the hinterlands get three meals a day and never worry about going hungry during winter vacation? There is something terribly wrong with this picture.

The situation, of course, is multifactorial. I’m a big fan of capitalism and individual initiative, but they inevitably create a privileged elite that neglects the suffering of the poor and the marginalized. In our country that means millions of people who lack generational wealth and access to health care, not to mention anything beyond a rudimentary education.

The rest of the world talks about American teeth, the glossy Chiclets of the ruling class, perfectly arrayed in their Invisaligned rows. But there are plenty of people whose teeth are a mess, who cannot handle an ear of corn. Shareholders don’t give a sh-t about those people. They are simply the collateral damage of a good year in the markets.

Enter the government, or in our case, exit. An administration committed to We-the-People is supposed to take the edge off predatory capitalism and round the excesses of our ruthless economy. It’s supposed to see the reality of structural racism and intervene when things get too rough for the vulnerable.

Instead, Sauron has done exactly the opposite: preserving the advantages of his capitalist cronies and using the poor as political game pieces. It was not the least bit necessary to close down SNAP benefits last month. There was nothing automatic about the freezing of that program that could not have been circumvented by fiat or compromise. Instead, Sauron squeezed the testicles of the congressional Democrats, knowing just how much pressure to apply.

The same thing is about to happen again. Ravenous for more information on persons without documents, the Administration has threatened to withhold administrative SNAP funds from states that refuse to comply with its demands. We have now moved from Drumpf’s notion of Sanctuary Cities to non-compliant Blue Sanctuary States. You could argue that he has not threatened to withhold the benefits themselves, but gutting the administrative side has the same hostile effect. A program without a structure to administer its benefits is the same as a program which has ceased to exist.

My hope is that you will stand up to resist. Wherever you’re reading this, the job before us is to demand that SNAP be exempted from government shutdown orders and removed from the realm of political chicanery. We need to do the same with the threat about administrative funding. All you have to do is muscle up.

Is resistance futile? There’s a chance that it is. But it is also a shrieking moral necessity.