February 24, 2003
Hunger Summit
The hungriest state in the nation -- that would be Oregon -- will convene a summit on the issue:
The summit will bring together private business and foundation leaders, ordinary people, legislators and anti-hunger advocates to see what it will take to help struggling families make ends meet.
"I think you have to actually use the pulpit of the governor's office to put this issue in the laps of the citizens," Kulongoski said. "It's not just a governmental issue. It's a partnership that we've got to do together."
Almost 14 percent of Oregonians are ranked as food insecure, having insufficient money to meet basic nutritional needs, with almost 6 percent of Oregonians reporting hunger.
That's worse than any other state, including those with worse poverty, such as Mississippi and North Dakota.
Of course, for the reality disconnected, this information either doesn't exist, or is simply untrue:
"There may be hunger here and there, but in general most people are better off now than they were 20 to 30 years ago," [John Charles of the Cascade Policy Institute] said.
Curiously, the Stateman Journal version of this Associaed Press story leaves something out of the above paragraph. But this version (which is actually a much fuller version of the article as a whole) presents it in full:
"There may be hunger here and there, but in general most people are better off now than they were 20 to 30 years ago," Charles said. "To the degree that there is (hunger), it's because of people making bad decisions in their lives."
Yes, that's right. In the grand and glorious spirit of right-wing conservativism and/or libertarianism, the Cascade Policy Institute blames the hungry themselves for their hunger. These are -- in general -- the same sorts of pundits and politicians who claimed that the failure of Measure No. 28 would not be a problem because the warnings were all merely scare tactics. For these people, there either are no real social problems -- at least not those requiring the attention of government -- or those that exist are the fault of those suffering them.
So what's on the table (so to speak) so far?
Bills being introduced this week in the Legislature will use about $90,000 in state dollars to bring in more than $1 million in federal money for programs that feed children and senior citizens.
But Kulongoski said economic development, better education and job opportunities must be part of the solution.
But, of course, the bright lads of the Cascade Policy Institute probably don't think those are real issues either.