bush is the gift that keeps on taking

Some 691,000 children went hungry in America sometime in 2007, while close to one in eight Americans struggled to feed themselves adequately even before this year’s sharp economic downturn, the Agriculture Department reported Monday.

The department’s annual report on food security showed that during 2007 the number of children who suffered a substantial disruption in the amount of food they typically eat was more than double the 430,000 in 2006 and the largest figure since 716,000 in 1998.

Overall, the 36.2 million adults and children who struggled with hunger during the year was up slightly from 35.5 million in 2006. That was 12.2 percent of Americans who didn’t have the money or assistance to get enough food to maintain active, healthy lives.
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“There’s every reason to think the increases in the number of hungry people will be very, very large based on the increased demand we’re seeing this year at food stamp agencies, emergency kitchens, Women, Infants and Children clinics, really across the entire social service support structure,” said James Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger group.

Weill said the figures show that economic growth during the first seven years of the Bush administration didn’t reach the poorest and hungriest people. “The people in the deepest poverty are suffering the most,” Weill said.

This is disgraceful, to say the least. We're spending trillions between Iraq and Afghanistan and the bank robbery-cum-bailout, but we can't manage to keep our populace from hunger - one of the hallmarks of a "first-world" country.

As Rachel Maddow has so often said, we are Birkina Fasso with cable.

For readers in Clark County, Washington:

When the Walk & Knock bag comes in your Columbian in the next few weeks, please fill it up with canned & boxed goods (if you can - these are tough times, I know), and remember to leave it outside by 8am on December 6th. If you don't subscribe to the Columbian, please mark the date on your calendar and use any old bag. (Almost all neighborhoods in Clark County will be covered by Walk & Knock teams.)

You can find more information and volunteer for the Walk & Knock and prep activities before December 6th here.