Chi Trib: Bush official's food bank comment prompts resignation call

From the Chicago Trib:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-official-food-banks,1,5112247.story?coll=chi-news-hed

Food Bank Comment Prompts Resignation Call

By MALIA RULON
Associated Press Writer

June 23, 2004, 12:21 PM CDT

WASHINGTON -- A senior Agriculture Department official's comment that people who eat at food banks are "taking the easy way out" was taken out of context, an agency spokeswoman said Wednesday, after several members of Congress called for his resignation.

Eric Bost, the department's undersecretary for food and nutrition programs, was quoted in a June 6 story in The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch about the growing use of food banks as saying he was skeptical of claims that food needs among the poor were increasing.

"There's a bump, but how much of that is due to people taking the easy way out? I don't know," he said.

'nuff said...

You can nix this thread if you like.

Damn, DUers are fast!

As someone who has made use of food banks and WORKED in one, it's not an easy way out. Starving to death is the easy way out--of life.

in California. The people who ate there were *poor*, dammit!

"taking the easy way out" my ASS! What a nasty vile stinking thing to say!

I'm utterly disgusted.

309

I really hate the Bush family and their supporters. I don't know what it looks like where you are, but I'm seeing more and more homeless guys begging on the side of the road not two miles from where Jeb! rules Florida.

of their students are homeless (they teach on the south and west sides of Chicago).

I'd guess at least half of our homeless are "cured" (read "are perfectly fine while taking their meds under supervision") mental patients who are released due to lack of funding. Every time we have Republicans in office cutting social programs, we get more people ranting to themselves up and down the streets. I guess I still don't understand what they mean by compassionate.

a public "Christ's Kitchen" for the midday meal. He said they are poor, and have some food at home, but no money for utilities. Eating at the CK will help him save money so he can have lights on at night.

Yeah, I guess he was taking the easy way out.

Bost should resign and go straight to hell.

crap don't they.

It's made the legitimate use of the phrase a thing of the past.

It just means: "We got caught saying something that we actually meant to say, but now realize that our true thoughts are not meant for public consumption because they are so unpopular and show what we are really like, so we aren't going to respond to the criticism of our policies reflected in that statement."

What's the difference between an Imperial Amerikan Bushevik and a 1780s French Aristocrat?

The powdered wig.

seem to view the middle class with the same disdain.

Having been hungry-poor (as a opposed to not having a swimming pool poor) as a kid, before food banks, I would have loved an "easy way out". I'll bet this "compassionate" conservative never had the joy of eating "gravy" (flour, water, lard) once a day for sustenance.

That wasn't meant as an incitement to violence. It was taken out of context.

I volunteer at a food bank and this guy is talking out of his ass.