Sunday, February 26, 2017

Secretary Betsy DeVos, "There's no free lunch!"

Secretary Betsy DeVos
of the United States Department of Education

About the state of the public schools system in the USA, Secretary of the United States Department of Education Betsy DeVos said the other day, "There's no free lunch!"  DeVos decreed that her Department of Education will erase free school lunches for poor kids.  Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Paul Ryan of Wisconsin cuts funds for food stamps.  The State of Arizona also cuts aid for kids.  Meanwhile, the State of California votes funds to help end poverty.  Thank you, California.  As for those sadistic republicans in California who just say no to this:  So you want more stupid people in your state?  Then move to Mississippi or Texas or Kentucky or Wisconsin or Kansas.  Protein deficiency in ages birth to three years old stunts mental development.  Permanently!  In the USA in the 1960s, Dr. Donald Gatch researched and proved this in South Carolina.  

Hey Secretary DeVos!  Say what you must for the White House media playbook, but remember that damaging our children is treason.  How about the real damage caused by lack of food for millions of poor American children?  

Do you understand this, Secretary DeVos and all the republican media muppets in our congress?  If you cut funding for food stamps, you will starve those kids into stupidity for life.  Their brains are damaged permanently by lack of food.  

Read this Secretary DeVos.  After all these years not much has changed for kids without a hedge fund in the USA.  Look up the title “Still Hungry in America" and read it.  The photographs were by USMC Veteran Al Clayton.  


The brutal racist politics of the times led to Dr. Gatch being seen as a pariah in his little community in South Carolina of the late 1960s.  And he was getting noticed by the press in New York because of his work against hunger in early childhood.  Fearing the media, the plebeian Congress of the United States of America investigated Dr. Gatch and his photographer, Al Clayton in a cliched and vain attempt to discredit the findings.  

Not one to ignore a problem Dr. Gatch, "... complained of discriminatory medical practices against poor and black people:  'Well, just a typical example, a mother brought a nine-year-old girl to my office Monday. She apparently had had a ruptured appendix since Friday. We took her into the operating room. Again, I kinda snuck her in because it’s against the rules to admit a patient without money. And when we got her on the surgical table one of the surgeons said, without any comment especially,  'This child has rickets.'  And when we got in the abdomen and were doing the appendectomy we found some roundworms. And he said, 'Of course, in these colored children the closer we get up the ilium in the stomach the more worms we will find because these kids don’t have much to eat.'  And this is where they head, they get the food before the kids do, and whether the kid will live or not, I don’t know.  The mother didn’t want to bring the kid to the doctor because she didn’t have any money."

Secretary DeVos has a yacht at her winter home in Florida.  DeVos has a portfolio worth north of a billion dollars.  Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin has a Leadership Super PAC and he can use that money any way he wants.  Ryan could buy a condo in the Caymans or an apartment in Paris.  Or just fly to Tahiti for a month vacation.  Never over their entire sheltered lives have DeVos and Ryan needed food because they didn't have any money.  

 
Secretary DeVos the Seal for your Department depicts a rising sun with a giant healthy oak tree that grew from a tiny acorn.  Growth for kids can be stunted or it can be nurtured.  This is not science.  It only takes some caring by people in power and some food for kids to grow.