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."

You Might Be A Republican If... You Think First Graders Should Scrub Toilets If They Wants To Eat Lunch

My friend-- and favorite chef-- Michael Voltaggio, got his start cooking at the elegant, world-famous Greenbrier Hotel in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Though both Huntington, which sits in the middle of Appalachia, where Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia meet on the other side of the state, and White Sulphur Springs in Greenbrier County are in Nick Rahall's 3rd congressional district, the area is by no means progressive or Democratic, although it certainly used to be. Greenbrier County is now represented in the West Virginia House of Delegates by a reactionary Republican, Ray Canterbury, who astounded even other Republicans this week. And all he did was make a speech completely consistent with the most basic and fundamental Republican/conservative philosophy, namely that the rich earned their money and they shouldn't have to pay for the well-being of poor people and their children.

Like the U.S., India has passed laws to prevent children working in coal mines. But in India tens of thousands of children, in the 12-15 age group, still do, often in atrociously unsafe conditions. Delegate Canterbury wasn't advocating-- at least not in that speech-- to repeal child labor laws... but then again, he was advocating making first graders clean toilets if they don't want to starve. It all started with a bill to combat childhood hunger in West Virginia.

Some Republican lawmakers said the free-meals-in-schools program would send a bad message to kids about personal responsibility, while Democrats argued there's a moral imperative to feed hungry students.

Delegate Canterbury hasn't missed many meals

Delegate Ray Canterbury, R-Greenbrier, predicted the program could set up children for failure, "destroying their work ethic" and "showing them there's an easy way." Canterbury suggested that students "work for their lunches" by mowing lawns and taking out trash at schools.

Delegate Meshea Poore, D-Kanawha, said Republicans were trying to mislead people about the bill.

"I'm offended anybody in this body would dare say a child has to work for their meals," Poore said. "I can't believe someone would say a first-grader, a second-grader... a fifth-grader has to labor before they eat. This isn't an entitlement bill."

...The bill would make free breakfasts and lunches available to every student in public schools, pre-kindergarten through the 12th-grade. West Virginia would become the first state in the nation to enact such a program... The bill would establish nonprofit foundations that would raise money to help pay for the free meals. Now, only low-income children get free and discounted lunches and breakfasts at school.

"Kids can't learn if they're hungry," said House Majority Leader Brent Boggs, D-Braxton.

...Delegate Michael Folk, R-Berkeley, said churches and food pantries already have programs that feed poor people, and schools already provide free meals to students.

"There's already a safety net on the government level: It's called free and reduced lunch," Folk said. "It's not whether we think we should feed children; it's about whether we think the government should be the sole provider of food."

The bill passed 89-9. So only 9 Republicans had the courage of their reactionary, Darwinish/Dickensian convictions. I wonder why Republicans didn't ask that the first graders from poor families work for their textbooks too. Canterbury: "I think it would be a good idea if perhaps we had the kids work for their lunches: trash to be taken out, hallways to be swept, lawns to be mowed, make them earn it. If they miss a lunch or they miss a meal they might not, in that class that afternoon, learn to add, they may not learn to diagram a sentence, but they'll learn a more important lesson." I guess he had been inspired by Newt Gingrich's remarks about how poor children should clean school toilets and work as janitors if they want to be educated. I wonder how all this fits in with that Republican rebranding thing RNC Chairman Reince Priebus is supposed to be working on.

Is The U.S. #1 In Insider Trading? Egypt Makes A Move

Romania beats us out for the worst hunger among children, but just barely

We all want this country to be great-- although over on the plutocratic right, they define "this country" in more exclusionary terms than normal people do. I don't think rightists, for example-- and particularly not the Paul Ryan/Ayn Rand variety-- give two hoots that the U.S. now ranks second worst in childhood poverty of any countries in the developed world. And they count Romania-- the one we beat-- as part of the "developed world," which is kind of spurious to begin with. Even economic "basketcases" like Greece, Spain, Portugal, Poland and Ireland are doing better, in fact much better, than we are. (At least "we" in the inclusive meaning. I'm sure they're not doing as well as the Romney family and the families of Romney donors.)

Out of the 35 wealthiest countries analyzed by UNICEF, only one, Romania, had a child poverty rate above the 23 percent rate recorded in the U.S. The rate is based on the definition of relative poverty used by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which states a child is living in poverty if he or she is growing up in a household where disposable income, when adjusted for family size and compensation, is less than 50 percent of the median disposable income for the country in question.

Over in the U.K., which is also doing quite a bit better than the U.S. in this area, The Independent pointed out that "The Government's spending cuts will have a 'catastrophic' effect on British children... endangering their future health, education and employment."

I could be wrong about this-- I could be looking at it through the lens of youthful idealism-- but when I was a kid, one place where the U.S. seemed to have excelled beyond most other countries was in its abhorrence of corruption. And when I was a kid, I started tramping around the world. I remember marveling at how incredibly corrupt day to day life was in Asia. You even had to bargain with the stamp seller at post offices in India! Later I realized the corruption in the Third World was more up front and out in the open. Here it is more hidden and quasi-subtle, or, at least, less in your face. I've always said the richer someone is the more likely they are to be a grasping, avaricious crook. So why not rich countries too? Is that what we're #1 in? Corruption?


Let's take a very easy-to-understand aspect of corruption: insider trading. Here's how the SEC defines it (officially):

Illegal insider trading refers generally to buying or selling a security, in breach of a fiduciary duty or other relationship of trust and confidence, while in possession of material, nonpublic information about the security. Insider trading violations may also include "tipping" such information, securities trading by the person "tipped," and securities trading by those who misappropriate such information.
Examples of insider trading cases that have been brought by the SEC are cases against:

• Corporate officers, directors, and employees who traded the corporation's securities after learning of significant, confidential corporate developments;

• Friends, business associates, family members, and other "tippees" of such officers, directors, and employees, who traded the securities after receiving such information;

• Employees of law, banking, brokerage and printing firms who were given such information to provide services to the corporation whose securities they traded;

• Government employees who learned of such information because of their employment by the government; and

• Other persons who misappropriated, and took advantage of, confidential information from their employers.

Because insider trading undermines investor confidence in the fairness and integrity of the securities markets, the SEC has treated the detection and prosecution of insider trading violations as one of its enforcement priorities.

Members of Congress, for example, shouldn't be doing it, especially not Members who are on Committees dealing with non-public information. But that's exactly what House Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus was routinely doing until he was called out on it-- he won reelection is a backward. low-info Alabama district anyway-- and that's exactly what House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon has been doing. McKeon isn't representing a backward Alabama district, however, and he's likely to be defeated in his reelection bid in November. The news on Insider Trading this week didn't come from corrupt congressmen like Bachus and McKeon. Bachus's case is still pending before the House Ethics Committee-- and McKeon is also up on charges in front of that committee, although most likely on other unrelated corruption charges involved with bribe-taking from Countrywide. The big news on insider trading came from Egypt, where it's become convenient for the ruling elite to crack down on two of Hosni Mubarek's sons.

Prosecutors charged Gamal and Alaa Mubarak, the imprisoned sons of former President Hosni Mubarak, with insider stock trading on Wednesday, just two days before both men are expected to hear the verdict in a criminal trial charging them with corruption during their father’s three decades of rule.

State television reported that the Mubarak brothers and seven other men, including the co-chief executives of Egypt’s most prominent investment bank, were charged with obtaining over $400 million through corrupt practices in relation to the 2007 sale of Al Watany Bank. Gamal and Alaa have been in prison since last spring.

The new charges against Mr. Mubarak’s children, once untouchable jet-setters, are another episode in the former ruling family’s fall from grace. Gamal Mubarak, 48, was once widely expected to inherit the presidency after his father’s death. Alaa, 49, is a once-prominent businessman who kept a low public profile.

And when will it become convenient from the ruling elite here to prosecute such crimes? Never... well, never unless the current ruling elite is replaced and it can happen before a new ruling elite is corrupted and gets ossified.

Republicans And Blue Dogs Try To Kill The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act

Yesterday the House voted to take a vote on S.3307, Blanche Lincoln's (really Tom Harkin's) Agriculture Committee bill-- that passed by voice vote in the Senate last summer-- to revamp federal child nutrition programs. It would boost subsidies to schools that offer healthier menus and give the Agriculture Department some new power to regulate what’s offered in campus vending machines as well as cafeterias. Conservative Democrats have gone along with GOP demands to offset part of the cost by ending, five months ahead of schedule in 2013, the better food-stamp benefits created in last year’s economic stimulus law.

In the spirit of the GOP's renewed anti-government jihad and obstructionism, every single one of them-- plus 11 of the most reactionary Democrats in the House-- voted against allowing the bill to be considered. For those keeping score, the aisle crossers were recently defeated conservatives John Adler (NJ), Allen Boyd (Blue Dog-FL), Bobby Bright (Blue Dog-AL), Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS), Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ), Glenn Nye (Blue Dog-VA) and Gene Taylor (Blue Dog-MS) plus retiring alcoholic Marion Berry (Blue Dog-AR), and three that got away, Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC), and Mike Ross (Blue Dog-AR).

A few minutes later the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act came up again and this time one Republican, outgoing Hawaiian Charles Djou, voted to... allow a vote, while outgoing right-wing shitheads John Tanner (Blue Dog-TN), Travis Childers (MS), Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (Blue Dog-SD), Scott Murphy (NY), John Adler (NJ), Allen Boyd (Blue Dog-FL), and Jim Marshall (Blue Dog-GA) voted NO, as did conservative hangers-on Joe Donnelly (Blue Dog-IN), Ben Chandler (Blue Dog-KY), Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC), and Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK), and, for some reason only he will ever know, Mike Quigley (D-IL).

So I can understand the Republicans' motivation for opposing everything. They just want to create chaos and misery and do whatever they can to upset people and blame it on Obama. And since Obama never seems to have learned to go on the offense, it's working. But what about these Blue Dogs, especially the ones who were already defeated? What makes them veer away from conservatism and into an embrace of hateful reactionary politics? Are they just all steaming mad that they were rejected by the voters? Or do they just want revenge against humanity?

Before a final vote could be taken yesterday, the Republicans added a poison pill amendment to scuttle the whole process but all it will do is hold up passage until today's session. What assholes!

And this afternoon, despite all the Republican bluster, all their tricks and threats, the actual bill passed 264-157. In the end 17 Republicans didn't have the stomach to stick with their hateful, vicious anti-family, anti-child leadership and they abandoned Boehner and Cantor and Pence and the rest of the corporate pawns-- while Allen Boyd (Blue Dog-FL), John Tanner (Blue Dog-TN), Bart Stupak (MI) and Peter Welch (VT) voted NO, the former two because they are angry conservatives and the latter two because they don't want to see this being paid for by decreasing food stamps. The Republicans who had the cajones and the decency to thwart Boehner were Spencer Bachus (AL), Anh Cao (LA), Shelley Moore Capito (WV), Mike Castle (DE), Charlie Dent (PA), Charles Djou (HI), Vern Ehlers (MI), Jo Ann Emerson (MO), Jeff Fortenberry (NE), Jim Gerlach (PA), Walter Jones (NC), Tom Latham (IA), Steve LaTourette (OH), Tim Murphy (PA), Todd Platts (PA), Dave Reichert (WA), and Don Young (AK). The rest will, no doubt, rot in hell.

Is conservatism a mental illness? We catch up with Missouri ConservaLoon Cynthia Davis

Doesn't anyone worry about the well-being

of this woman's seven children?

by Ken

Last June Howie introduced us to State Rep. Cynthia Davis, describing her as "the Michele Bachmann of Missouri." It was sort of like the old joke format where A says, "Senator So-and-So took a strong stand on hunger," and B says, "For or against?" Count our Cynthia squarely in the "for" column on hunger, as she declared that it "can be a positive motivator."

"For" hunger, and definitely "against" the government spending anything to deal with hunger, which in her view isn't really a problem anyway. She allowed as how, even though there's no hunger in her district, maybe there were a few folks someplace else who were hungry, and she offered them tips, like educating parents to provide nutritious meals rather than "waste hard earned dollars on potato chips, ice cream or Twinkies"; encouraging laid-off parents to "adapt by preparing more home cooked meals rather than going out to eat"; and making sure people know that "if you work for McDonald's, they will feed you for free during your break." And voilà, no more hunger!

This might be pretty funny, except that the woman chairs the Missouri House Special Standing Committee on Children and Families. Hunger, it appears, isn't on her radar as an issue for Missouri children or families. And apparently not much else is. In fact, the only issue she seems to have any interest in, children- and family-wise, is abortion.

Most recently, Cynthia -- who's term-limited out of her House seat and is challenging fellow Republican Scott Rupp for his State Senate seat -- is in the news for turning a deaf ear to the family whose three-year-old, according to the St.Louis Post-Dispatch report, "died in February 2009 from a non-accidental head injury, while in the care of a babysitter," and is supporting legislation that "would block unlicensed childcare providers from continuing to care for children if criminal charges are pending against them" and "would also direct the Department of Health and Senior Services to investigate those childcare providers."

“There was a tragedy, but realistically, we can’t pass a law every time there’s a tragedy,” Davis said.

Davis said she opposes the bill because it could have negative consequences for the state’s childcare providers.

“I have a lot of sympathy for the family, but I don’t have the confidence that making government intervene more in people’s lives will bring back the child.”

Davis also said her committee’s main purpose is to deal with abortion issues and that Sam’s Law might have been better off if it had been referred to a judiciary committee.

The plight of victimized children doesn't interest Cynthia, so what does? I mean, besides abortion. Well, in the face of the menacing onslaught of energy-efficient light bulbs, she recently introduced a Missouri Freedom to Own Lightbulbs Act, and her heart is known to go out to pharmacists who are traumatized by having to fill prescriptions for emergency birth control:

Pharmacists whose consciences will not permit them to dispense emergency contraception need to be protected by our government. We all must answer to God, and it is not appropriate to ask people to perform acts that will traumatize them. Our government needs to secure the rights of people to stay true to a higher law.

Of course we not only ask but expect people sometimes to perform acts that may traumatize them. I'm not aware of any law that has been written with a "non-traumatizing exemption" -- something that really is beyond government purview. As a society, we really have no control over what may traumatize individuals. Hunger, for example, can be extremely traumatic. I would argue, indeed have argued, that becoming a pharmacist involves acting as an agent in the government's control of controlled drugs -- nobody forces you to become one, especially if aspects of the job may traumatize you.

We do know that our Cynthia has trouble with the ins and outs of the law, for example when it comes to using campaign funds for personal expenses, which is strictly forbidden by Missouri law. In 2005 the Missouri Democratic Party filed an ethics complaint against her alleging that on a series of occasions in 2002, 2003, and 2004 she did indeed pay property taxes and other personal expenses with campaign funds.

And then there's this: Here we have Cynthia Davis, grand vizir of all issues of faith, family, health, and conscience, mother of seven, Missouri's leading expert on the causes and cures for hunger as well as all matters relating to the family. Let's flash back to Easter Sunday 2006:

Easter Eggs in the Median? The Hard-Knock Life of Cynthia's Kids

Rep. Cynthia Davis (R-O'Fallon) claims to be devoutly religious, regularly invoking tortured theological reasons for introducing anti-science and regressive legislation. Yet even on the holiest day on the Christian calendar, she apparently doesn't value the safety of her own offspring enough to keep one from wandering around her town's busy streets.

Police in the town of O'Fallon reportedly responded Sunday to a call regarding a female child wandering aimlessly on and around Highway K. Motorist passersby, it seems, thought it unusual that a youngster would be wandering the busy roadway by foot, alone on Easter Sunday, and called the authorities to look into the matter.

When police arrived on the scene, they identified the child and determined where she lived and who she was. Reportedly, the state Department of Social Services also became engaged in the matter, since it involved the safety and welfare of a child. When the relevant agents looked into the situation, they also learned that the absentee parent responsible for the child's safety was none other than rabid "family values" proselytizer Cynthia Davis.

Wouldn't you say that whoever had the gall to install this woman as chair of a committee on children and the family has some explaining to do?

I should note, in case you haven't followed all the links, that most of them are to a blog called Fired Up! Missouri, which I'm pleased to say has taken a personal interest in our Cynthia as she has worked so hard to make herself a clear and present danger to Missouri children and families. I'm sure she regards the blog's chronicling of her crazinesses as left-wing persecution, but of course that's how right-wingers always react when anyone has the indecency to simply report what they've said or done. In the unreality-based community, this is considered unconscionable negativity. (Remember "Borking"?)

I got a chuckle when I first heard about Cynthia Davis and her belief in the inspirational value of hunger. I'm not laughing anymore.

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Missouri Republican Loon Honors Reagan With An Update of "Ketchup Is A Vegetable"

Meet Rep. Cynthia Davis, the Michele Bachmann of Missouri

Lou Reed turned me on to a homeopathic supplement that has helped both of our memories, Juvenon. One of the doctors on the company's Scientific Advisory Board, Ben Treadwell, writes a kind of a newsletter that comes with my monthly supply. The last one was all about how healthy caloric restriction is.

The most documented method for increasing lifespan in animals is through caloric restriction (CR). Scientists have known for decades that if they cut out a third of the normal diet (caloric content) fed to rats, worms, yeast and other organisms, the animals live longer. More recent studies with primates are demonstrating effects similar to those found with rodents... [C]aloric restriction increases the efficiency of energy production and reduces blood pressure, triglycerides levels, blood glucose levels, and body temperature. The animals on restricted diet also appear to have fewer chronic diseases, and their cellular proteins and DNA show less damage caused by free radicals. Caloric restriction also decreases insulin levels and increases insulin sensitivity, two important indicators of a healthy, non-diabetic physical state.

In an environment of food scarcity, cells appear to go into a self-preservation state involving the production of substances to protect structures vital for cell survival. The net effect is an efficient machine that produces a minimum of toxic substances (free radicals) and is protected from attack by toxic metabolites. The overall effect of caloric restriction is to redirect the cell from non-essential activities and focus it on those most important for maximum health and longevity.

Someone needs to rush this research to right wing sociopath (and Missouri state Rep) Cynthia Davis of O'Fallon. Davis is best known as a religious nut, the crackpot who first started demanding that people who work in pharmacies shouldn't have to sell anyone birth control. Here she was in 2006: "Legal is not necessarily the same as right. Pharmacists whose consciences will not permit them to dispense emergency contraception need to be protected by our government. We all must answer to God, and it is not appropriate to ask people to perform acts that will traumatize them! Our government needs to secure the rights of people to stay true to a higher law." Wow! Would she ever be comfortable living under the Taliban where they think exactly the same way!

A couple of weeks ago Davis, the GOP Majority Floor Whip, made an even bigger jackass of herself declaring, in relation to childhood hunger, that "Hunger can be a positive motivator." The editorial board of the St Louis Post Dispatch seems embarrassed to point out that this kook is in favor of childhood hunger in a recent editorial.

More precisely, Ms. Davis is against summer feeding programs for poor kids. They are an excuse “to create an expansion of a government program,” she says.

Ms. Davis chairs the House Special Standing Committee on Children and Families. In that position, she might be expected to have insight into child hunger in our state.

She might know, for instance, that about one in five Missouri children lives with hunger. That ties us with Louisiana for the nation’s seventh-highest rate, according to a report released last month by the hunger-relief charity Feeding America.

Or that the recession has pushed the number of poor Missouri kids who qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches by 8.3 percent this year, well above the national average.

Apparently not.

”While I have not seen this as a problem in my district, it is entirely possible that the (summer feeding) program is designed to address problems that exist in other parts of Missouri,” Ms. Davis says in her newsletter.

“The right way to solve this is with more education. If parents … don’t know how to serve nutritious meals, let’s help them learn to do that.”

In that spirit, she offers some helpful hints:

• “Families may economize by choosing not to waste hard earned dollars on potato chips, ice cream or Twinkies.”

• “Laid-off parents could adapt by preparing more home cooked meals rather than going out to eat.”

• “Tip: If you work for McDonald’s, they will feed you for free during your break.”

About 100,000 more people are unemployed in Missouri today than were jobless in 2007. Food pantries across the state are struggling to meet increased demand. The United Way of St. Louis and more than 100 area companies are participating in a food drive this week.

And the plain, tragic fact is some children have parents who aren’t particularly interested in caring for them. Ward Cleaver and Cliff Huxtable are off the television airways.

But Ms. Davis is skeptical about the need to feed poor children during the summer when schools are closed.

If-- if-- there really is one, she says, “churches and non-profits can do this at no cost to the taxpayer.” ...

• Tip: When you chair a state special committee on children and families, you probably ought to learn something about the needs of children and families.