Low-income S.F. seniors to lose food boxes to federal cutbacks

[caligirl]

Ola Mae White, who retired 30 years ago, is proud of her knack for stretching a nickel.

The 93-year-old San Francisco resident lives on $819 in monthly Social Security benefits and a tiny pension from her days as a cafeteria worker. Once a month, like thousands of seniors in the city and around the country, she picks up a supplemental food box packed with canned juices, milk, meat, vegetables, fruit.

"I worked hard all my life to keep off public assistance,'' says White. "I never wanted any help from the government. But I need the extra food. What is President Bush trying to do to us? It would really hurt me not to get the extra food.''

But starting next month, about 1,000 low-income seniors in San Francisco will lose their monthly food boxes as cutbacks in a U.S. Department of Agriculture program trickle down to beneficiaries. Tens of thousands of other seniors across the country are also losing their boxes. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/03/28/MNGIRHUTNA1.DTL


Its now occurring to people that Bush will let the old and the poor not only die in Katrina, but starve to death as well. ( unless there is something in it for Bush,like Schiavo)
And this on the day John Bolton replaces Card.

[MadMaddie]

1. This is a travesty....this is the time to hold the Pat Robertson....

and other so called neocons feet to the fire....

Let's shame them and force them to help feed the needy...they are getting our tax dollars aren't they...

The money that * and his religious inititiive have wasted should have been spent on issues like this.

[Malva Zebrina]

3. Democracy and it's myths are for the young--the old are a burden

In this illustration, the Nazis demonstrated that the daily cost to the state of maintaining one chronically ill person (5.5 marks) could be better spent supporting an entire healthy German family.

[TexasLawyer]

9. good point

[Viva_La_Revolution]

15. fuckin scary

If we hadn't become such a "politically correct" society, would we be looking at that in our local newspaper?

fuckin scary

[saigon68]

26. I think of the MotherFucking $2000.00 a day Mercenaries

Protecting our Quislings like Allawi, Chalabi and that worthless piece of Shit Kharzai (the mayor of kabul) and I want to vomit.

Not just that Scum,-- but we had a Dipshit like Bremer running around throwing millions in cash at a group of Smugglers and Thieves

God Bless amerika

YA Right

[Raster]

2. * doesn't care. We can expect much more of this type of behavior as

bushco* sells or hocks everything they can get their criminal hands on to finance their "new reality" activities. His family has always stolen or been bribed for what they need, so they don't comprehend the plight of the most vulnerable. In their eyes the poorest and the weakest among us take valuable resources away from their concerns. These people are monsters and should be treated as such.

[KamaAina]

4. I thought Bush** wanted us to put food on our families?

Compassionate conservatism strikes again! :puke:

[eppur_se_muova]

13. It's "compassionLESS conservatism". ** misspoke. nt

[eppur_se_muova]

14. West Virginia has the oldest or 2nd oldest population of any US state...

but definitely the most elder Americans on assistance. Wonder how Sen. Byrd would react to letters/phone calls on this issue... hmmm...

Oops, meant to reply to OP

[RedEarth]

5. The republicans take it literally "starve the beast".....

[mzmolly]

6. Unfortunately it's not just SanFranciscos elderly - which would be bad

enough, it's the poor in all states - of all ages.

http://www.google.com.ar/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=RNWE,RNWE:2004-45,RNWE:en&q=Commodity+Supplemental+Food+Program+cut

[dethl]

7. Republican "trickle down economics"

Cut taxes for the rich (or give tons of money to corporations) and let the costs trickle down to the poor.

[pinniped]

8. I heard about this the other day.

The funds are going to be put towards defense purposes.

[TexasLawyer]

10. Morally repugnant AND

penny-wise, pound foolish.

How much will it cost to keep Ola Mae in a nursing home after she becomes malnourished, or after she goes without her medicine so that she can afford to eat?

[Beaverhausen]

11. I have no words

:cry:

[RamboLiberal]

12. Local Story but title should be U.S. Seniors Losing Food Boxes

This same story just different locality is being told all over this country. A couple of weeks ago I posted a number of them in a thread.

Thanks to Chimpy and the Repukes there will be a lot of our seniors struggling with the costs of food and medicine.

For a party who went all gaga over Teri Shiavo they sure don't mind euthanasia for our seniors by lack of food and medicine.

I hope there is a God cause I'd love to see these Repukes and their minions at the judgement day. Hell's going to have to expand!

[IndianaGreen]

16. Take your pick: feed the seniors or feed the Pentagon

I choose to feed the seniors!

End the war!

[Lisa]

17. well, she isn't paying taxes towards their war anymore ...

.... so she isn't useful to them in any way (unless she has pledged to vote for you-know-who). So giving her food would be "a waste", and not the economically-sensible thing to do! Of course, it's illegal to go about killing elderly people (though it would prevent them from lingering and possibly running up Medicare costs) -- so not giving them enough food and hoping they "go away" would be the next best thing!

The ungrateful wretches (I mean the Bush Administration).


p.s. apparently the Iraq War is costing $100 million PER MINUTE -- even including a lavish amount for administrative costs, and assuming that the $111 million figure quoted for the Commodity Supplemental Food Program is per month, it would be LESS THAN 15 MINUTES of the war, to feed almost half a million Americans who really need it. (If that $111 million is per year, it would be less than TWO MINUTES.)


http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2002780385_spending03.html

[Robeson]

18. You don't really want our military machine to have to face budget....

...cuts do you? I mean, that would be un-American!...:sarcasm:

[UrbScotty]

19. "Christian" values, huh? (nt)

[The_Casual_Observer]

20. Better to spend that money in Iraq, right?

[alfredo]

21. Heating assistance has been cut here. It is out of money

Got to use that money for the tax cuts for the rich.

[alfredo]

22. Write letters to the editor. This is compassionate conservatism

at its finest.

[cleofus1]

23. well the dog food diet rears it's ugly head

99 cents a can for alpo....

[truthisfreedom]

24. but without these cuts, needy people like cheney won't get an extra $0.10

they deserve per month!

[SoCalDem]

25. The churches will pick up the slack..

That's the republican way, dont-cha-know.. Their wet-dream would be for everything that was not military-related to be "outsourced" to churches, so they could keep all the money we taxpayers send them.. They need it so they can give it to their corporate pals, so they can get campaign funds from them, so they can give it to TV stations to run ads so we'll re-elect them....rinse & repeat.


Anything the people need, should be provided as charity from "certain" churches. If you don't belong to that church, you better think about joining up..

Instead of singing for your supper, you will be praying for your supper.

[Lisa]

29. plus, it's a wonderful way to "offload" responsibility ...

The Unitarians, Methodists, Mennonites, etc. will be knocking themselves out trying to rescue people from Dubya's shambles, while Dubya's "base" will be putting their money into political lobbying (e.g. long-distance phone calls to chastize Canadian politicians for not banning gay marriage) -- or more like it, not bothering to drop anything into the collection plate. Why "waste" money on people who are, in their eyes, not worth "saving"?

Tommy Douglas, "the father of Canadian Medicare", before running for public office, was a Baptist minister on the Prairies during the Depression. He saw exactly what the limits of faith-based charities were -- the fact it gives them power over people, as you point out, SoCalDem -- plus the fact that the people who could most afford it weren't lifting a finger.

[Jamison]

27. Wish we could help her.

It would be cool if DU had her mailing address or something. I'd be willing to ship her some canned tuna or Mac & Cheese, or whatever.

It's just sad!:(

[earth mom]

28. This ticks me off-I could spit nails right now!

:grr:

:cry: