Most Religions And Many Governments Feed The Poor-- But Not All... And Millions Of Elderly Americans Are Literally Starving

In my long life, I've seen starving people in India and in Afghanistan... but not too many other places come to mind. Except America. In the richest country in the history of earth there are people-- primarily very old people-- who go without food. It's not just Trump's fault. It's part of standard conservative dogma. It's not that Jesus taught but it's the the way it's supposed to be according to conservatives, including conservative religionists. Have you been watching The Family on Netflix. Totally excellent, especially if you read Jeff Shalet's books, The Family (2008) and C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat To American Democracy (2010), in the last decade.

The Netflix series drives home the fetishization of the Family's "church" religionist doctrine (they applied for and got tax exemptions as a church) started as an anti-union and anti-LGBTQ movement and wound up as an ultra-fetishization of politicians as God's chosen ones. Sounds weird but... watch the series or read the books. In raking the leaves and scrubbing the toilets of powerful politicians, the Family's recruits learned about the power dynamics of their sick "religion"-- but, while professing devotion to Jesus (not the Bible, just Jesus-- they cast his teachings about the poor completely aside.





Our whole political class has been sucked into this ugly vortex, celebrated annually since the early '50s by The Family-sponsored National Prayer Breakfast, a bipartisan cesspool of fascism, corruption, homophobia and oligarchy. The religion can be summed up in less than 10 words: "Ignore the poor and super-serve the rich and powerful." And every U.S. president since Eisenhower has attended the hideous so-called National Prayer Breakfast, some specifically paying public homage to the Nazi-worshipping huckster-in-charge, Doug Coe.

While our corrupted political class is breakfasting with fascists, over 5 million American senior citizens were starving or, more politely, "food insecure," according to a new report from Kaiser Health News, How America Fails To Feed Its Aging. Laura Ungar and Trudy Lieberman wrote that "millions of seniors across the country quietly go hungry as the safety net designed to catch them frays. Nearly 8% of Americans 60 and older were 'food insecure' in 2017, according to a recent study released by the anti-hunger group Feeding America. That’s 5.5 million seniors who don’t have consistent access to enough food for a healthy life, a number that has more than doubled since 2001 and is only expected to grow as America grays. While the plight of hungry children elicits support and can be tackled in schools, the plight of hungry older Americans is shrouded by isolation and a generation’s pride. The problem is most acute in parts of the South and Southwest. Louisiana has the highest rate among states, with 12% of seniors facing food insecurity. Memphis fares worst among major metropolitan areas, with 17% of seniors like Milligan unsure of their next meal."

And government relief falls short. One of the main federal programs helping seniors is starved for money. The Older Americans Act-- passed more than half a century ago as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society reforms-- was amended in 1972 to provide for home-delivered and group meals, along with other services, for anyone 60 and older. But its funding has lagged far behind senior population growth, as well as economic inflation.

The biggest chunk of the act’s budget, nutrition services, dropped by 8% over the past 18 years when adjusted for inflation, an AARP report found in February. Home-delivered and group meals have decreased by nearly 21 million since 2005. Only a fraction of those facing food insecurity get any meal services under the act; a U.S. Government Accountability Office report examining 2013 data found 83% got none.

With the act set to expire Sept. 30, Congress is now considering its reauthorization and how much to spend going forward.

Meanwhile, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, only 45% of eligible adults 60 and older have signed up for another source of federal aid: SNAP, the food stamp program for America’s poorest. Those who don’t are typically either unaware they could qualify, believe their benefits would be tiny or can no longer get to a grocery store to use them.

Even fewer seniors may have SNAP in the future. More than 13% of SNAP households with elderly members would lose benefits under a recent Trump administration proposal.

For now, millions of seniors-- especially low-income ones-- go without. Across the nation, waits are common to receive home-delivered meals from a crucial provider, Meals on Wheels, a network of 5,000 community-based programs. In Memphis, for example, the wait to get on the Meals on Wheels schedule is more than a year long.

“It’s really sad because a meal is not an expensive thing,” said Sally Jones Heinz, president and CEO of the Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association, which provides home-delivered meals in Memphis. ”This shouldn’t be the way things are in 2019.”

Since malnutrition exacerbates diseases and prevents healing, seniors without steady, nutritious food can wind up in hospitals, which drives up Medicare and Medicaid costs, hitting taxpayers with an even bigger bill. Sometimes seniors relapse quickly after discharge-- or worse.

Widower Robert Mukes, 71, starved to death on a cold December day in 2016, alone in his Cincinnati apartment.

The Hamilton County Coroner listed the primary cause of death as “starvation of unknown etiology” and noted “possible hypothermia,” pointing out that his apartment had no electricity or running water. Death records show the 5-foot-7-inch man weighed just 100.5 pounds.

Most of the states with the highest percentage of starving seniors are red states (2 exceptions-- New Mexico, where elderly Native Americans are poorly served and Rhode Island, which has a fake Dem neoliberal governor), states where voters still believe in Trump, states with voters who profess Christianity but loath Jesus' message to mankind, The first % represents the number of seniors starving and the second percentage was Trump's score in 2016:

• Louisiana- 12.3% -- 58.09%
• Mississippi- 11.8% -- 57.94%
• New Mexico- 11.5% -- 40.04%
• Texas- 10.5% -- 52.23%
• North Carolina- 10.5% -- 49.83%
• Alabama- 10.4% -- 62.08%
• Rhode Island- 9.6% -- 38.90%
• Kansas- 9.4% -- 56.65%
• South Carolina- 9.3% -- 54.94%
• West Virginia- 9.2% -- 68.50%
• Oklahoma- 9.1% -- 65.32%
• Arkansas- 9.0% -- 60.57%
• Arizona- 9.0% -- 48.67%

Ungar and Lieberman continued, explaining the findings of James Ziliak, a poverty researcher at the University of Kentucky who worked on the Feeding America study. Ziliak explained that "food insecurity shot up with the Great Recession, starting in the late 2000s, and peaked in 2014. He said it shows no signs of dropping to pre-recession levels."

While older adults of all income levels can face difficulty accessing and preparing healthy food, rates are highest among seniors in poverty. They are also high among minorities. More than 17% of black seniors and 16% of Hispanic seniors are food insecure, compared with fewer than 7% of white seniors.

A host of issues combine to set those seniors on a downward spiral, said registered dietitian Lauri Wright, who chairs the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of North Florida. Going to the grocery store gets a lot harder if they can’t drive. Expensive medications leave less money for food. Chronic physical and mental health problems sap stamina and make it tough to cook. Inch by inch, hungry seniors decline.

And, even if it rarely kills directly, hunger can complicate illness and kill slowly.

Malnutrition blunts immunity, which already tends to weaken as people age. Once they start losing weight, they’re more likely to grow frail and are more likely to die within a year, said Dr. John Morley, director of the division of geriatric medicine at Saint Louis University.

Seniors just out of the hospital are particularly vulnerable. Many wind up getting readmitted, pushing up taxpayers’ costs for Medicare and Medicaid. A recent analysis by the Bipartisan Policy Center found that Medicare could save $1.57 for every dollar spent on home-delivered meals for chronically ill seniors after a hospitalization.

Most hospitals don’t refer senior outpatients to Meals on Wheels, and advocates say too few insurance companies get involved in making sure seniors have enough to eat to keep them healthy.

...As the Older Americans Act awaits reauthorization this fall, many senior advocates worry about its funding.

In June, the U.S. House passed a $93 million increase to the Older Americans Act‘s nutrition programs, raising total funding by about 10% to $1 billion in the next fiscal year. In inflation-adjusted dollars, that’s still less than in 2009. And it still has to pass in the Republican-controlled Senate, where the proposed increase faces long odds.

U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, an Oregon Democrat who chairs the Civil Rights and Human Services Subcommittee, expects the panel to tackle legislation for reauthorization of the act soon after members return from the August recess. She’s now working with colleagues “to craft a strong, bipartisan update,” she said, that increases investments in nutrition programs as well as other services.

“I’m confident the House will soon pass a robust bill,” she said, “and I am hopeful that the Senate will also move quickly so we can better meet the needs of our seniors.”

In the meantime, “the need for home-delivered meals keeps increasing every year,” said Lorena Fernandez, who runs a meal delivery program in Yakima, Wash. Activists are pressing state and local governments to ensure seniors don’t starve, with mixed results. In Louisiana, for example, anti-hunger advocates stood on the state Capitol steps in May and unsuccessfully called on the state to invest $1 million to buy food from Louisiana farmers to distribute to hungry residents. Elsewhere, senior activists across the nation have participated each March in “March for Meals” events such as walks, fundraisers and rallies designed to focus attention on the problem.

Audrey Denney is the progressive Democrat taking on Trump enabler Doug LaMalfa in the vast rural northeast corner of California. This morning she sent me a note after I had sent her an early version of this post and asked her for a comment. Please take a look and consider contributing to her campaign-- and to Mark Gamba, whose comments are below Audrey's-- if you like how they look at this problem:

I am a person of faith-- raised Episcopalian, I went to an Episcopal elementary school and Catholic middle school where we went to chapel every day. I've been active at my church in Chico for over 15 years; my mother, my two sisters, and my stepfather are all Episcopal priests. (Weird, I know). My faith informs everything I do, from my call to public service at this moment in time, to my deep, underlying belief that all human beings are inherently equal in rights and dignity-- we are all children of God, created in God's image, every one of us-- each one equally precious, beloved, and worthy. For a long time the dominant religious voice in the public sphere has been primarily concerned with issues of what I would call private morality. Some of the most intimate, private moments of a person's life-- who they fall in love with, what they can do with their body, when and how to have children-- these have been the subject of intense public debate, scrutiny, and legislation. But what's largely been forgotten is a much longer, broader, and deeper strain common to many religious traditions, and that is one of what I would call public morality. The Judeo-Christian scriptures talk time and time again about the fact that the measure of the holiness of a society is how we care for the most vulnerable among us-- the widow, the orphan, the foreigner (stranger). That's what Jesus did on this earth-- loved and lifted up the outcast. How are we doing, as a society, as a nation, on upholding the absolute worth and dignity of every human being? How are we doing on loving our neighbor--whether that neighbor is the same as us or different from us-- as ourselves?

We all have a duty to take care of our most vulnerable populations, including our seniors. In CA-01, a quarter of the population receives SS benefits (183,548 in 2017). Social Security benefits are less than $1,200 per month for millions of retired low wage workers with no other source of income. Anyone who is familiar with rent prices in CA will understand that it is virtually impossible for a senior living on $1,200 a month to pay rent, eat, and get the care they need. Caring for the most vulnerable means not only funding the programs that allow them to have their basic necessities met-- it also means funding and staffing the agencies that help connect them with those benefits. Social Security offices have lost about 4,000 staff in the last 5 years-- our office in Redding has 14 open desks. When the people of CA-01 send me to represent them in DC I will defend Social Security and Medicare against partisan attacks and work to ensure that it is a rock-solid benefit seniors can count on-- not subject to the budget whims of Congress or the fluctuations of the stock market. I’ll fight to increase funding to the Social Security Administration to ensure there are enough qualified staff members to meet the needs of our seniors. Staff members are crucial in making sure every senior, especially the most vulnerable-- get the benefits they’ve earned.

Mark Gamba, mayor of Milwaukie, Oregon is running for a congressional seat held by a reactionary Blue Dog, Kurt Schrader. Today Mark toldmethat "In a country where we are giving billionaires tax breaks-- when they barely pay anything already-- it is appalling that we continue to reduce our expenditures to feed our most vulnerable citizens. Causing your own people to starve to death is not the sign of a first world country. It should be particularly concerning as the population ages, given that for the last 40 years the middle class has gotten poorer and has been less able to save for retirement. Add the effect of climate chaos into the food insecurity mix and we have a recipe for mass starvation of the elderly if things continue as they are."