You could hurt some you love by not knowing better...

I saw a posting the other day that inflamed me to no end.  I made me very angry and upset. I saw this I had to speak up. Furthermore the information equated people who needed assistance as being equal to wild animals.  What was worse is it hurtful. Ignorance is not so bliss. So let us become educated on a few fine points. For example we will use one program with the Department of Agriculture.  

The USDA has food distribution programs beside just TANF—“Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.”  Do not be a wise person and state “Food Stamps.” Food Stamps, what is that? Food stamps started to be done away with nationally in the very early 1990s.  As an example because Mississippi was one of the last states to change and that was 20 years ago. If the term is used by any person, then they are more than 20 years behind the time or just plain ignorant.

Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP) – Works to improve the health of low-income pregnant and breastfeeding women, other new mothers up to one year postpartum, infants, children p to age six, and elderly people at least 60 years of age by supplementing their diets with nutritious USDA commodity foods. It provides food and administrative fund to States to supplement the diets of these groups. This actual program began in 1969. It replaced another program that was implemented during the Depression Era.

This program was very much alive in 1996 in Senior Centers in the city of Mobile, Al. It did cease in many of them because of abuses. My own grandmother, while she was living, was a recipient of this commodity program. The abuse was by the administrators of this program and not the recipients. Who got hurt? The recipient paid the price for the administrative abuses of taking home and selling the commodities. She went to a senior center in Crichton—which the subdivision was her home since about 1955.  This problem happened a lot across the country; however, there are still many states that use this program today effectively.

Pregnant women; well maybe they shouldn’t have gotten pregnant to begin with because they didn’t have money to feed their children. That statement is plumb stupid. How any people, in the act of passions stop to discuss the affordability of children?

An article was published about women eating clay during pregnancy due to a dietary deficiency in North Carolina at one point in history. Many of these women were low income. Many of the families that were low income in the Carolinas or Appalachian area were industrial, mercantile, manufacturing, or mining. They didn’t always have the union to help with wages. Many of them in 1969 just made minimum wage. They barely had enough to get by especially if they lived in impoverished rural areas. In most cases it was very difficult to get most people to just accept the commodity programs because “they didn’t want charitable handouts.” Many pregnant mothers went without proper pre-natal diets so others could eat. This is very risky and was a contributing factor to infant mortality. The CSFP helped end all of this. There are many parents who will not eat a meal so their children could eat.

However two things happened. The additional commodity program in most states was stopped (due to abuses like the senior programs) or went the way of WIC which is a voucher system of enough to feed one pregnant woman about a week if that much.

If a living parent is not available, in most cases a child goes to foster care, group home, orphanage, they too are entitled to these programs.  Some of these children may never have another home except temporary shelters that faze them out when they are 18 years old. During 2013, there were approximately 640,000 in and out of foster care for various reasons. But due to administrative abuses, many states have cut these programs; badly needed programs that many complain about because “the animals grow dependent on the handouts.” Do we equate children without families as being “animals?”

One a more personal note: We do not want abortion but we want to cut out the programs that assist the elderly, children or pregnant women putting them all at risk of malnutrition which promotes health issues. We love life and feel abortion is murder but we want to make people suffer?  Does this complaint make any sense? Or is it just plumb ignorant and people will complain about anything? Mentioning earlier, 640,000 children were in and out of foster care in 2013. Well here is a chilling thought, why are we not acting to protect their lives? They live outside the womb. If not mistaken, the amount of living children needing help is double the amount of abortions performed in one year. If our society cannot help and protect 640,000 children what makes it think it can save and protect 320,000 unborn children? We want to save children but we just don’t want to feed them. The religious argument will not work with me. I am religious. I see the facts of life, the outcome, the hatefulness, and the abuses. Majority of all abuses with government programs are at the hands received by some of the financial affluent people who are nothing more than “liars” or the administrators of such programs.

Think of March 2014, “Minnesota couple wanted for TANF fraud while living lavishly in Florida.” They have fled the country on their private yacht. This is an extreme case but one of too many to count across the country.  Another example is in the form of a question. How many people received food vouchers from FEMA for food lost during a hurricane? How many of those claims were “padded” by the recipient who was affluent and actually could have afforded the replacement of food and then some?  Those food vouchers were from USDA for the families in a real need of emergency services. All of this was done on an honor system. 

Don’t insult anyone by telling them “You didn’t have to read it” or “You could have just ignored it.”  To ignore an injustice is showing a lack of compassion toward humanity. To be ignorant is not bliss. To not speak up is to not get involved in my society. What would you do if God or Jesus never spoke? What would you do if you were spiritually over looked? If your garden was overlooked what happens? It dies, it withers, and it becomes dust. If we do not tend to our families, friends, community, or society-- it will die, it will wither, and it will become dust.

Life changes every second.

But, show me unfailing kindness like that of the Lord as long as I live, so that I may not be killed…1 Samuel 20:14.

Keep each other in payer. Do not be a lip service.

God bless you all and keep you safely in his arms. 

This is hurtful and it could pertain to a member of your family....and you didn't even know it.