Let Them Eat Pencil Shavings

Aldona Wos with The Guv

We have abundant evidence of how Pat McCrory and his top people feel about the poor in North Carolina. Deny them Medicaid assistance, cut off their unemployment, call them "morons" if they show up in Raleigh to protest, discourage their participation at the polls. It gets worse...

Also starve them.

The Department of Health and Human Services, ruled over by Duchess Aldona Wos, is supposed to help families in great need obtain food stamps. Instead, the department has dragged its feet, fumbled the ball, shown a callousness that passeth understanding, and now, as of Dec. 31, some 30,000 NC families had waited more than a month for food stamps. That figure represented a 10,000 jump in supplicant hunger, from numbers released in mid-November. Over 9,000 families have waited three months or more for relief.

The situation is so bad that the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which supplies most of the funding for the food stamp program, is threatening to end North Carolina's share of the money because of Aldona Wos's failure to deliver.

Wos and McCrory blame computer programs. They blame former Governor Bev Perdue. They blame every Democrat who every walked the earth. We blame their failure to give a good goddamn what happens to the poor and hungry.

Their attitude toward people stupid enough not to be as rich as they are is as plain as the maid in Aldona Wos's kitchen.

Hunger in North Carolina

"Food insecurity" is the new euphemism in the United States for going hungry. It's one of our dirtiest little secrets ... that in this society so many go without sufficient food.

North Carolina ranks only behind Louisiana in the number of children who suffer from "food insecurity." Slightly over 24% of all NC children have real trouble getting fed ... more than one in five.

An article in this a.m.'s Greensboro News & Record highlights the hunger in Guildford County and environs where some 71,000 individuals get emergency food annually from food banks (or 8,700 every week!). Some 31% of those are under the age of 18.

Gosh, with a new crowd of politicians taking control soon in Raleigh, what could possibly happen to this picture? When their Greatest Good is protecting the rich, how will they react to growing hunger in their own state? Like Eberneezer Scrooge?

"Are there no poor houses in operation? I have been forced to support the establishments I have mentioned through taxation and God knows they cost more than they're worth. Those who are badly off must go to the poor houses ... if they'd rather die, then they had better do it and decrease the surplus population. Good night, gentlemen . . . Humbug!"

The Hunger & Health Coalition of Watauga County is always in need of non-perishable food donations. They are particularly grateful for dry boxed cereals and canned goods.