Yesterday, I was drafting my “About the Belly” page as part of the ongoing re-design of the blog. Here’s an excerpt:
Since I spend a gross amount of time these days contemplating my navel, it makes sense that my blog would address a few of the things I find hard to stomach (you’ll generally find these postings under “What’s Eating Me”). But constant belly-aching about other people’s half-baked ideas isn’t really my cup of tea either…
No sooner had I started to shift away from that with a “but…”—to assure you, gentle reader, that there would be fluff pieces (literally and figuratively)—I read this AP story:
“Nearly half of all U.S. children and 90 percent of black youngsters will be on food stamps at some point during childhood [compared to 37 percent of white children], and fallout from the current recession could push those numbers even higher, researchers say.”
Most news outlets are reprinting the AP article, but the only person connecting the dots is Stanford University pediatrician Dr. Paul Wise who wrote an editorial that appears in the same issue of the journal (and was kind enough to send me a copy); in it he writes,
Clinicians always inherit the results of bad social policy. History has shown that this cascade is never more intense than for children, a group exquisitely dependent on the adequacy of societal nurturance and protection. There is no question, therefore, that the current recession, the deepest since the Great Depression, will touch virtually all pediatric practices.
I was especially pleased to read this (and sorry that more journalists didn’t seek out Dr. Wise’s piece; perhaps one of the major Beltway papers will consider running it as an op-ed):
One should not mistake the high participation rate documented by Rank and Hirschl as reflecting a generous eligibility standard; to be eligible for food stamps, a family of 4 must currently have a gross income of less than $27,564—less than half of the median family income in the United States. It should [also] be remembered that the findings of Rank and Hirschl were estimated for the period before the current recession.
…Economic conditions generating the growing need for services are also undermining our collective ability to provide them. During the past year, state tax collections have fallen. In response, more than three-quarters of all states are implementing spending cuts that will hurt families with children. Almost half the states are implementing reductions in health insurance coverage for low-income children and families. Many are reducing expenditures on child nutrition, social services and education programs.
Wise isn’t just this pediatrician’s name.
So long as we continue to bend to the interests that impede and sabotage legitimate social safety nets, indulge and enable the wealthy who pay themselves and each other billions of dollars in bonuses (and if you’re still reading this, you must check out McClatchy’s expose, “How Goldman Secretly Bet on the U.S. Housing Crash“), let money corrupt Congress so obviously, we will have blood on our hands. Be it the invisible poor who die of malnutrition or for lack of medical care or the impending revolution that is inevitable if we continue to marginalize so many of our neighbors.
The concept of this blog was finding comfort food to balance the bellyaching, but not today. I think today we need to be political proxies for children in need; we must reach out to our representatives and let them know that we’re no longer watching them—we’re holding them accountable.
