Uplifting joy, however brief the feeling, just knowing that there are still some good-hearted, selfless, and compassionate people in this country:
After he heard about the children in Utah whose school lunches were thrown out because their parents were behind on payments, Kenny Thompson was worried about the elementary school kids he tutored and mentored in Houston, Texas. So he went in to check whether they were getting the proper nutrition.
“I’m like, ‘Wow. I know that’s probably a situation at my school, and the school my son goes to, and the other schools I mentor at.’ So I came in and inquired about it,” Thompson told local station KSDK.
What he found disappointed him: Dozens of students were on “reduced” lunches, receiving cold peanut butter and jelly or cheese sandwiches instead of the full hot meals they used to receive, all because their parents had fallen behind on lunch payments that amounted to mere 40 cents a day.
So Thompson took action. He forked over $465 of his own money and zeroed out the balances on over 60 students’ accounts.
“These are elementary school kids. They don’t need to be worried about finances. They need to be worried about what grade they got in spelling,” Thompson told station KPRC.
At just 40 cents a day, it may be surprising that so many kids across the country don’t have stable access to a full school lunch. But one in five American children lacks steady access to food, and three quarters of teachers report having students who regularly show up to school hungry. That hunger translates to emotional and psychological problems, as well as poor school performance.
http://thinkprogress.org/education/2014/02/07/3263261/texas-man-school-lunches/
First off, The Gadfly should not have to make the observation that in the wealthiest nation on the planet, it should be a goddamn national shame that we have a major child poverty problem. And to those chest-thumping conservatives who would say that Mr. Thompson's actions are immoral because he is not allowing the children and their parents to learn life lessons from their pecuniary shortcomings -- the only response that The Gadfly can give in return is -- go fuck yourselves you hateful, know-nothing, vindictive bastards.
The second point The Gadfly would like to make here is that if this country's overlords weren't so fucking greedy and such poor stewards of our democracy, situations as described in this story would never have to occur to begin with.
America has more than enough wealth to provide it's elementary school kids with a couple of nutritious meals every day -- if it wanted to. But it doesn't want to. America would much rather flush it's national wealth down the proverbial toilet in this manner:
The C-27J Spartan is a hell of a plane. Famous for its ability to take off from unfinished runways, it’s a staple used by militaries around the world, including the United States. At least it was until recently. The US Air Force is sending its latest batch of beautiful, brand new C-27Js straight to the boneyard in Arizona’s desert.
The notion of stashing brand new cargo planes in storage alongside thousands of dead aircraft is sad, but it’s sort of everybody’s fault. Since 2007, the Air Force has spent some $US567 million acquiring the new aircraft — only to realise, in the wake of sequestration cuts, that it actually didn’t have enough missions for the planes to fly.
In other words, a half a billion $$ of American's tax money was, for all intents and purposes, doused with gasoline and lit on fire just because some greedy, dumb ass and corrupt congress critters and defense contractors gathered together at a 5-star resort one day, and over dinner of filet mignon and caviar, followed by limitless snifters of cognac and Cuban cigars, decided that they had a great plan for ordering a bunch of military hardware that nobody asked for, and which the military really did not need, and will be sitting collecting dust until the next ingenious swindle comes along.
When it was noted by one of the meeting participants that it was a magnificent fleecing of John and Mary Taxpayer, a good, hearty laugh was had by all -- for all present knew that their bank accounts and the value of their political campaign coffers had just been enhanced exponentially by a magnitude of obscenely calculable measure.
And it all truly is a classic example of what former President Dwight D. Eisenhower was referring to when he uttered these infamous and damning words:
" Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953
34th president of US 1953-1961 (1890 - 1969)
Maybe someday the people of this country will wake from it's consumerist stupor and realize just how badly they and their children and their fellow Americans and their children are being fucked over in the name of the almighty, unregulated free-market gods of their beloved capitalist plutocracy. Doubtful, but without hope, what is left?
----TFG
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