Why do the red states that are run by conservative governments fail their citizens?
These 10 conservative states have the hungriest in their population:
1. Mississippi
2. Arkansas
3. Texas
4. Alabama
5. North Carolina
6. Georgia
7. Missouri
8. Nevada
9. Tennessee
10. Ohio
The recent vote by Republicans in the House to slash funds to SNAP will affect the poorest in the poorest states--those states run by Republican governors and/or legislatures. Why would the GOP do that to their own constituents?
The states with the lowest food security, not surprisingly, are among the poorest in the country. In all 10 states, the median household income was less than the national median of $50,502. In Mississippi and Arkansas, the two worst states for food security, median income was less than $40,000. Of the 10 states with the lowest food security, eight had the highest poverty rates in the country.
Ross Fraser, spokesperson for hunger-relief charity Feeding America, explained that having low food security does not necessarily mean families are starving. While people may feel full after eating, nutritious food is expensive. “Often, people have to make unfortunate choices about what they put in their stomachs.” Fraser added.
Indeed, according to a 2012 Gallup-Healthways survey, people in nine of the 10 states were less likely to eat healthily on a daily basis than the nation as a whole. Missouri and Tennessee were third and second worst in the country by this measure.
It may surprise some that, in fact, the majority of the 10 states with food access problems have higher-than-average obesity rates. Mississippi and Arkansas had the second and third highest obesity rates in the country in 2012.
“The lack of healthy food among families in these states,” explained Fraser, “is one of the reasons you have very poor people who are obese. It is because they’re not able to afford nutritious and high protein food.”
More here.
If conservatives believe conservatism is the better of the two political ideologies, why do the conservative red states come in as the poorest, the hungriest, and the least educated in studies?
Also, while we're looking at stats, the states that promote abstinence only programs to prevent out-of-wedlock pregnancies are failing as well:
Abstinence-only education does not lead to abstinent behavior, UGA researchers find
"...prescribed abstinence-only education in public schools does not lead to abstinent behavior," said David Hall, second author and assistant professor of genetics in the Franklin College. "It may even contribute to the high teen pregnancy rates in the U.S. compared to other industrialized countries."
Along with teen pregnancy rates and sex education methods, Hall and Stanger-Hall looked at the influence of socioeconomic status, education level, access to Medicaid waivers and ethnicity of each state's teen population.
Even when accounting for these factors, which could potentially impact teen pregnancy rates, the significant relationship between sex education methods and teen pregnancy remained: the more strongly abstinence education is emphasized in state laws and policies, the higher the average teenage pregnancy and birth rates.
"Because correlation does not imply causation, our analysis cannot demonstrate that emphasizing abstinence causes increased teen pregnancy. However, if abstinence education reduced teen pregnancy as proponents claim, the correlation would be in the opposite direction," said Stanger-Hall.
The paper indicates that states with the lowest teen pregnancy rates were those that prescribed comprehensive sex and/or HIV education, covering abstinence alongside proper contraception and condom use.
States whose laws stressed the teaching of abstinence until marriage were significantly less successful in preventing teen pregnancies."
States with ‘abstinence-only’ sex ed programs rank highest in teen pregnancies
The two states with the highest rates of teen pregnancies are Mississippi and New Mexico.
Neither state requires that sex ed be taught in schools.
Mississippi law stipulates that when sexual education is taught, that abstinence be the main method of contraception proscribed by educators, whereas New Mexico has no rules about reproductive health criteria at all.
The state with the lowest rate of teen pregnancies is New Hampshire, which requires comprehensive sex ed in schools that includes information about condoms and other forms of birth control in addition to abstinence."
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Willful ignorance is not a remedy for out-of-wedlock pregnancies; and cutting back on needed funds for feeding needy Americans is not a way to get people out of what the GOOPers call a comfortable hammock to find work. It's difficult to do anything when you and your family are hungry.
One wonders what sort of values the so-called "American Values Party" really promotes when it turns a blind eye to our most vulnerable citizens and when it pretends that abstinence only programs will prevent more hungry babies from being born into more poor families.
"If conservatives believe conservatism is the better of the two political ideologies, why do the conservative red states come in as the poorest, the hungriest, and the least educated in studies?"
ReplyDeleteNot just because these far right-wingers want America poor, hungry, uneducated, and oppressed ... they troll our blogs, defame us, offend us, harass us, hijack our posts and comment threads with off-topic doggerel and non sequiturs, pee on the bushes and crap on the lawn like an old dog with nothing better to do than mark the territory; then - OMG! – they hold the Lady of the Manor in thrall while forcing depraved and unnatural acts upon her. The horror!
Kind of reminds me of battered victims who enable and continue to worship their abusers.
Everything seems to be cyclical. Eh (O)CT(O)PUS?
ReplyDelete"Kind of reminds me of battered victims who enable and continue to worship their abusers"
ReplyDeleteYou beat me to the punch on that one. Extensive study at the college of Jerry Springer confirms that men who beat and punch and otherwise abuse women have no problem finding women to abuse. Perhaps the poor, hungry and ignorant of those sates have such low self esteem they think they deserve Republican governors - I sure don't know.
Meanwhile Ted Cruze continues to rave against health care reform. I hope he dies soon.
Let me play devil's advocate here...
ReplyDeleteWe have had this "War On Poverty" since what? 1964? Oh, and now we have more poverty than we did now.
I found two sites that posted pictures from Appalachia, one from 1964 and another set from 2012 and I wrote a post about it this morning:
http://taospeaks.wordpress.com/2013/09/25/liberals-really-dont-get-it/
Go ahead and look at the pictures that I link to and then ask yourself, "Will more food stamps make a difference?" "Will Obamacare make a difference?"
Poverty has an insular aspect to it and as such, if that is all you know, then that is all there is.
As such, nothing is going to make a difference.
So, now Ted Cruz and the right has tapped into this gold mine of support and tribalism. Ted Cruz will be sitting pretty once this is all over.
For anyone that truly wants to understand poverty and or white poverty here is a good read:
http://old.post-gazette.com/headlines/20001126appalachiamainnat2.asp
Appalachia has "gotten by" for over a hundred years and they will continue to "get by"
If everyone in the "tribe" is obese, ignorant, poor, and having out of wedlock babies then what's the problem?
It might be appalling to you but if its all you know then its common place and thus becomes the norm.
If, as the comedian says, "..you can't fix stupid..." then maybe you can't fix poverty?
If its good enough for you then of course its good enough for everyone else.
The government lost the war on poverty obviously, and to the victor go the spoils of war.
Think about it.
Sources vary. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare%27s_effect_on_poverty seems to show otherwise here and abroad. No, you can't fix stupid, but you can fix ignorant, you can fix social mobility and offer more ways out of poverty. I'd suggest that worldwide a solid safety net is associated with less abject poverty, crime and disease - and the right wing politics it breeds.
ReplyDeleteIt's very complicated and I'm very wary of simple statements regarding complex problems. Certainly tax breaks don't lift the economy in a way that offers more social mobility and may actually reduce it and if we suggest that welfare be eliminated we should be prepared to offer something of value in it's place.
Certainly the poverty level does vary. It's been higher by far and perhaps somewhat lower at times, but there's poverty with hope and hopeless poverty which costs us in crime and dependency.
"you can't fix poverty" isn't by any means scientific or an absolute. I think you can do something about it. The poor will always be with us, but they don't have to die in the streets, clog the hospitals, hold up liquor stores and join marauding gangs and Appalachia notwithstanding, we have Detroit where making do means something else.
For all their prating about practicality, so-called conservative GOPpers in power don't live anywhere near the real world. Show them a starving child, and they'll blow empty, ideological rhetoric at you until it reaches hurricane force. Anything but helping people -- government must NEVER do that. That's their creed.
ReplyDelete"they'll blow empty, ideological rhetoric at you"
ReplyDeleteYou mean Eric Kantor? He somehow thinks I'll believe that food stamps are preventing people from working at those jobs he'd like to detach from the Minimum wage so they'll starve faster. I'm particularly fascinated to hear of all those freeloading military families, those "takers" who can't feed their kids even though they're working at Wal-Mart part time.
But of course he's just a douche bag, We're the ones who won't fire him.