Eat Up!

The always delightful House of Representatives has once again demonstrated an absolute ability to turn a blind eye to the suffering of those folks who just so happen cannot afford to make campaign contributions. The current dysfunction of the United States Congress is truly pitiful, a gang of full-grown and well-paid men and some few women who spend an inordinate amount of time behaving like spoiled children on a school playground.

The Farm Bill passed by the House of Representatives did not have any funding for the Food Stamp Program. This breaks a precedent of forty years or more, and suggests something  both banal and loathsome about the characters of those who somehow imagine that folks who need some help getting a meal day in and day out are those who require censure.

Lots of commentators point out with some indulgent sense of outrage that the number of folks on assistance has increased over the last several years. Duh! That's what happens in an economic downtown folks, that's what happens when elected leaders fail to reach out and help the situation but instead stand squarely in the path of assisting those who have been hurt, that is unless you ply your trade on Wall Street.

Times have been remarkably tough in the last several years because of the reckless and criminal behavior of financiers who have in the meantime been made whole and more. But others impacted by those crimes remain in tough straits, but receive no succor, they only get recrimination.

And equally pitifully the news media fails to cover this event, choosing to spend gallons of time on the show trial of the moment.

Here's a quote I chanced across yesterday while reading Gullivar of Mars by Edwin L. Arnold:

"What else is the good of a coherent society and a Government if it cannot provide you with so rudimentary thing as a meal?"

Now Arnold is critical of the languid Hither People, but in this instance his barb seems to speak directly to the reader, and it sure suggests that the modern American experiment in democracy is falling short of meeting the most fundamental needs of its population.

Where I grew up, we would say about someone who was particularly repulsive in their character that they were "Eat up with themselves". Well House of Representatives, I say you are all well and truly "Eat up"!

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