Let Them Eat Nothing… Red States Rejecting Federal Food Aid for the Poor

 

It would be one thing if Christian charity were to fill the void, but that would encourage sloth rejected by right-wing menu evangelicals led by their pastor hypocrites who foster intolerance, are quick to cast the first stone and chastise the kindness and charity of the New Testament as being unacceptably “woke.” That a deeply religious text is interpreted by false prelates as a menu from which the faithful can pick and choose should be disturbing to faithful Christians. False idols, false witness and not killing are the most “opt-out” commandments. Wonder if anyone ever put an AR-15 in the collection plate?

Scott McFetridge, writing for the April 17th (Easter Sunday, ironically) Associated Press, points out the irony in red states turning on their food impaired citizens: “Month by month, more of the roughly 40 million Americans who get help buying groceries through the federal food stamp program are seeing their benefits plunge, even as the nation struggles with the biggest increase in food costs in decades.

“The payments to low- income individuals and families are dropping as governors end COVID-19 disaster declarations and opt out of an ongoing federal program that made their states eligible for dramatic increases in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits, also known as food stamps.

“The U.S. Department of Agriculture began offering the increased benefit in April 2020 in response to surging unemployment after the COVID-19 pandemic swept over the country.

“The result is that, depending on the politics of a state, people in need find themselves eligible for significantly different levels of help buying food.

“Nebraska took the most aggressive action, ending the emergency benefits four months into the pandemic, in July 2020 — a move Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts said would ‘show the rest of the country how to get back to normal.’

“Since then, nearly a dozen GOP-led states have taken similar action. This month, Iowa become the most recent place to slash the benefits; they will be cut in Wyoming and Kentucky in the next month. Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, South Dakota and Tennessee have also scaled them back.

“Republican leaders say the extra benefits were intended to temporarily help people who were forced out of work by the pandemic. Now that the health crisis has eased, they say, there is no need to offer the higher payments when businesses in most states are struggling to find enough workers.

“But the extra benefits also help families in need at a time of skyrocketing food prices… Recipients receive at least $95 per month under the program, but some individuals and families typically eligible only for small benefits can get hundreds of dollars in extra payments each month… The entire program will come to a halt if the federal government decides to end its public health emergency, though the Biden administration has yet to signal that it intends to do so.” Of course, Republicans in Congress and in state capitals are pushing hard for an end to the public health emergency. Should Biden eliminate Title 42 (used to close our borders during the pandemic) to enable asylum seekers to cross the border to press their cases, as currently planned, those benefits would cease anyway.

Kindness, tolerance, support for those who need our help has become both un-American and violative of the teachings of a majority of white evangelical preachers and the sheep who blindly follow them. If you believe in the true teachings of the Bible, New and Old Testaments, you are unacceptably “woke.” What would Jesus do? Probably something exceptionally “woke.”

I’m Peter Dekom, and I believe that “wokeness” is the best any human being can be… like the Jesus Christ whose teachings so many evangelicals reject.