Republicans Vote To Cut Food Stamps by $844 Million. Agriculture Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte defended the decision saying that the cuts represent only a "sliver" of the Food Stamp Program.
...Here's a guy who won't be dismayed by the cuts in food stamps! In a file photo Exxon Mobil Corp. Chairman and CEO Lee Raymond laughs during a news conference in Dallas, Wednesday, May 25, 2005. Exxon Mobil Corp., the largest publicly traded oil company in the world, on Thursday, Oct. 27, 2005, said third-quarter profit surged, buoyed by higher crude-oil and natural-gas prices, even as the period's hurricanes hampered production. Revenue grew to $100.72 billion from $76.38 billion in the prior-year period. (AP Photo/Donna McWilliam)
....and Speaking of food, "Villages are on the brink of widespread starvation," World Food Program Country Director David Stevenson said in a statement issued in neighboring South Africa. "There is no maize, wild foods are exhausted, and there's very little food aid on the way for the next six months unless the international community steps in now with cash to stave off a humanitarian catastrophe." An estimated 12 million people in six southern African countries are expected to need food aid before the next harvest in February and March due to crop failure and the rising cost of grain. In Malawi alone, up to 5 million people — 40 percent of the population — are facing shortages. Meanwhile The New York Times reports that a spat between Congressional Republicans and the White House over how to provide food aid is preventing U.S. food aid from reaching the starving Africans. Read "African Food For Africa's Starving Is Roadblocked By Congress". Celia Dugger points out that Congress, at the behest of Archer-Daniels Midland, is opposing a State Department initiative to purchase food product in the hemisphere where the food is produced to save money and speed deliver. Unfortunately this runs against the interests of some powerful contributors to the Republican Party:
Just four companies and their subsidiaries, led by Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill, sold more than half the $700 million in food commodities provided through the United States Agency for International Development's food aid program in 2004, government records show. Just five shipping companies received over half the more than $300 million spent to ship that food, records show.
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Congressional Republicans remind me of St. Paul's meditation upon the irony of our relationship with the Super-ego and the Id (which he called God and the Devil): "The good that I would I do not; the Evil that I would not, that I do..."
The Republicans, largely composed of Bible-believing Christians, just cannot seem to do Good. Instead of clothing the naked, healing the sick, and feeding the hungry, they do the bidding of the Rich and the Powerful. The Republicans cut the taxes of the rich, subsidize their companies and use our military to confiscate the resources of other lands for the benefit of the multinational corporations owned and run by them.
When fiscal conservative Republicans and Democrats in Congress tried to address the deficit by cutting farm subsidies, the response was immediate and intense from agribusinesses and from the heartland of America and the core of Red State America: DON'T CUT OUR FARM SUBSIDIES! The Republican leadership in congress responded by proposing a cut in the foodstamp program as an alternative to cutting farm subsidies.
My Bible must be a different version than the Republican Bible. Perhaps it is a Democrat Bible. But in my Bible, Jesus Christ washes the feet of the poor, he doesn't kiss the butts of the rich!
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