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FROM AP: Gang-tackling immigration
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FROM AP: Quotations of the day
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
At a time when family economic challenges remain significant and the threat of the fiscal cliff looms large, critics contend that SNAP is an unsustainable entitlement. Cutting SNAP is precisely the wrong prescription for our children and the nation's economic recovery.
I could never have imagined that something that initially seemed so humiliating would turn out to be one of the greatest teaching events of my life. Although my food stamp benefit itself will be ending soon because I no longer require assistance, the benefits to my lifestyle are not.
If more people would realize how challenging it is to live healthfully off of food stamps that would be the beginning of a real dialogue in America about food costs, hunger and how to eat healthfully on a limited budget.
I've been fortunate enough to never have to worry about being provided enough food, but what about the people who are struggling to feed their families on a miniscule budget?
In a low-income area of roughly four streets, a city worker can find up to 40 or 50 abandoned shopping carts every two weeks.
Throughout the recent presidential election cycle, we only heard about the fiscal cliff in relationship to defense spending. In an economy recovering, but slower than any of us want, we might have expected a discussion about feeding families, not just buying bombs.
To move forward, America's security and prosperity depend on our children's ability to drive the economy of the future. Leaders must craft budget solutions that will protect the already porous safety nets on which so many children and families rely.
When the Daily News sent truckloads of goods to Staten Island, it wasn't the food and bottled water that got the most enthusiastic reception from residents battered by Hurricane Sandy.
Running throughout the Romney-Ryan budget is a suspicion that by helping people you make them weaker, that the poor are easily swayed into behaving irresponsibly. The sad thing is, Romney and Ryan are the irresponsible ones
Consistent with human nature, our interest soon faded. As we resumed our regular activities, the media began another news cycle -- focusing on the election results, the next nor'easter, a celebrity marriage or the latest grisly murder. It is unfortunate but inevitable.
Republicans may hail Ryan as an intellectual, but he has not read his history, where the food lesson is clear: Rising food prices in the absence of social support equals social unrest on a massive scale.
One of the most telling questions in the second debate focused on the gender pay gap: asking in what ways the candidates would "rectify the inequalities in the workplace. The Romney answer was an embarrassment and the president could have said more.
Sanitizing poverty will prevent us from seeing its horrific effects. We must call it what it is, see the faces of those who are living through its agony, and commit ourselves publicly to taking the steps necessary to end it.
The 2012 U.S. presidential campaign was turned upside down by Mitt Romney's victory in last night's debate in Denver. Here's where the old debate coach thinks the election strands now.
Last night brought us Big Bird, Donald Trump, smirks, and a bizarre, almost out of control format that accomplished nothing. No, I'm not talking about some nightmare from poor Oscar the Grouch, but the first of three presidential debates.
Sorry, Obama-heads, Mitt Romney isn't easy softball prey like John McCain or Alan Keyes. Moreover, in a TV debate, Romney does not fit the uncaring, detached rich guy stereotype that Team Obama has been shoveling out there to cover up the President's palpable economic and budgetary failures.
