{"id":10303,"date":"2017-05-18T09:23:39","date_gmt":"2017-05-18T13:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=10303"},"modified":"2017-05-18T09:35:49","modified_gmt":"2017-05-18T13:35:49","slug":"fff-food-stamps-subverted-democracy-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/18\/fff-food-stamps-subverted-democracy-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"FFF: How Food Stamps Subverted Democracy, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Future of Freedom Foundation <\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/h2>\n

How Food Stamps Subverted Democracy, Part 2<\/a><\/h2>\n

by James Bovard<\/p>\n

Last month we saw how political demagoguery helped make hunger a major issue in American politics beginning in the late 1960s. After Jimmy Carter was elected president in 1976, liberals and their media allies largely declared victory over hunger. Carter was a humane progressive and there was no reason to beat that drum \u2014 especially since food-aid programs continued gradually expanding.<\/p>\n

But in November 1980, Ronald Reagan defeated Carter, and the nation had the most conservative-sounding president since the New Deal. The liberal media vilified Reagan\u2019s efforts to curb social spending; he was sometimes tagged as a fascist for his budget-cutting efforts. Thanks in part to a severe recession, food-stamp spending soared 44 percent between 1980 and 1983 and the number of recipients increased by several million. But the media fanned a hunger crisis by using the same shaky claims that they had trumpeted in the prior decade.<\/p>\n

The fact that Reagan proposed budget cuts was sufficient proof of mass hunger, notwithstanding that federal food-program spending actually increased. Facts rarely interrupted the morality play. As long as handout advocates flourished a handful of punchy phrases and horror stories, nothing else mattered. And every anecdote had to be accepted as a Revealed Truth, or else the doubter was automatically damned.<\/p>\n

Liberal \u201cactivists\u201d also claimed that Reagan\u2019s policies amounted to a tragic roll-back of a great success. A former top Carter administration official declared that, during Carter\u2019s presidency, food stamps \u201chad virtually ended hunger and malnutrition in the U.S.\u201d Dr. Jean Mayer, president of Tufts University and a long-time hunger \u201cactivist,\u201d claimed that hunger was \u201cthe one social problem that we had eliminated.\u201d<\/p>\n

By early 1983, opponents were using allegations of mass hunger to seek to de-legitimize the Reagan administration. But the number of food-stamp recipients had increased sevenfold since the 1960s. By the early 1980s, low-income people could get eight federally paid meals a day. I was mystified by the hubbub and proposed an article on \u201cthe Great Hunger Hoax\u201d to Policy Review,<\/i> and editor John O\u2019Sullivan leaped at the idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cFeeding Everybody\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

I wanted to learn whether the expansion of food programs had fundamentally improved low-income diets. I had learned how to analyze and interpret the raw data from national nutrient-intake surveys while running a typing business near Virginia Tech in the late 1970s. Some of my favorite customers were graduate students in human nutrition and, while typing their term papers and theses, I became familiar with the methodologies and controversies in evaluating food-aid programs. I visited\u00a0USDA headquarters\u00a0to garner the latest unpublished nutritional data. I went to the Library of Congress and carted armloads of dusty old studies from the stacks to peruse in the main reading room. I found that government feeding programs had an abysmal nutritional record. Nor was there any evidence of a dietary golden era during the Carter administration thanks to government handouts. The reports on the programs\u2019 failures had vanished in the Memory Hole. Instead, the government relied on \u201cbody counts\u201d \u2014 looking solely at the number of people fed or meals shoveled out. As long as politicians appeared benevolent, food programs were a roaring success.<\/p>\n

The Policy Review<\/i> piece caused a firestorm when it came out in September 1983. On a local television talk show, I sparred with future CIA chief Leon Panetta, who was then chairman of the House subcommittee with jurisdiction over food stamps. I relished the two-hour slug fest with one of the Carter administration\u2019s top food-stamp officials on a Washington public-radio station. NPR fans flooded the station\u2019s call-in lines and repeatedly implied that my parents had never been married. On another Washington radio show, Pat Buchanan\u2019s liberal co-host, Tom Braden, was so dumbfounded by me that he kept repeating that a Texas Democratic congressman I quoted had used bigoted rhetoric in the 1960s. Braden later condemned me for \u201cdisturbing the public debate by raising questions that were settled long ago.\u201d Pat Buchanan wrote a column about the piece that helped put it on the conservative \u2014 and White House \u2014 radar screen.<\/p>\n

\u201cFeeding Everybody\u201d also spurred a Washington Post<\/i> editorial that denounced me for asserting that \u201chungry people in America have only themselves to blame.\u201d My article said no such thing, but that technicality did not impede the Post\u2019<\/i>s wrath. The Post\u2019<\/i>s biggest revelation was that I favored turning back the clock to the Middle Ages: \u201cMr. Bovard blames agricultural mechanization \u2026 for much of the poverty problem.\u201d But, the Post<\/i> tut-tutted, \u201ca return to subsistence farming\u201d will not \u201ccommend itself to many as a desirable course for this country\u2019s economic and social development.\u201d My article had noted that the 1967 Mississippi Delta unemployment surge (which helped spark the national hunger alarm at that time) was caused in part by the extension of minimum-wage laws to agriculture work, which swayed farmers to rely on machinery to harvest cotton. To accuse someone who abhorred unnecessary hard labor of favoring \u201csubsistence farming\u201d was the ultimate cheap shot. (A dozen years later, the Washington Post<\/i> magazine cited my work in an article refuting wildly exaggerated claims of a national hunger epidemic.)<\/p>\n

Reagan responded to the hunger hubbub by appointing a Task Force on Food Assistance in late 1983. They paid coach fare for me to fly to Los Angeles to offer my two cents at their first public hearing. I didn\u2019t see much point in testifying, since I had nothing to offer except what I had just written. (Task Force members could read, right?) But since the other witnesses were from groups such as L.I.F.E. (Love Is Feeding Everyone), maybe the task force simply wanted to hear a different tune. I rattled on and answered questions for perhaps 20 minutes, but don\u2019t recall the exchanges with panel members. A few months later, I testified at a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing chaired by Jesse Helms. Helms was one of the few members of Congress willing to stoutly oppose the expansion of food stamps. (His zeal against wasteful government spending did not extend to the tobacco program beloved by his North Carolina constituents.)<\/p>\n

As the 1980s progressed, the hunger issue became increasingly sensationalized. The high point came in 1986 when millions of people bonded for the Hands Across America (HAAC) extravaganza to publicize the plight of the hungry. HAAC presumed that if five million people could link up and simultaneously sing \u201cAmerica the Beautiful,\u201d the nation\u2019s social problems would practically be solved. An HAAC flyer promised that it would be \u201cthe largest interactive event in the history of mankind\u201d and the \u201cgreatest moment of shared concern and hope ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

HAAC\u2019s goal was to raise $50 million \u2014 the equivalent of three days\u2019 worth of the national food-stamp budget. HAAC focused its effort on whipping up public guilt and anxiety over hunger. Much of the $10 each person was asked to pay to stand in line would be used to bankroll the hunger lobby for a massive campaign to persuade Congress to spend more for food stamps and other federal food programs.<\/p>\n

HAAC\u2019s core message was that \u201cthe problems of hunger and homelessness in the U.S. are growing at a frightening pace.\u201d One of the organizers even claimed on television that \u201cthere is widespread hunger and famine in America.\u201d And the only way to absolve the mass guilt was through increased federal spending. Coca Cola was the largest donor, providing $10 million to get the HAAC show on the road. (Food-stamp recipients are heavy purchasers of soft drinks.)<\/p>\n

A 25-year retrospective on HAAC published by Mental Floss <\/i>observed, \u201cThe participants couldn\u2019t fully stretch from sea to shining sea given Hands\u2019 circuitous route, so long ribbons or lengths of rope had to stand in for actual people for up to a hundred miles in areas like deserts. The Los Angeles Times<\/i> reported that there were huge gaps in the line in some of the dodgier sections of East LA, and volunteers\u2019 efforts to recruit people from their front porches to join the chain didn\u2019t generate any interest.\u201d A National Coalition for the Homeless spokesman complained to the New York Times<\/i> that HAAC organizers \u201cspent too much to raise too little and promoted a national extravaganza empty of content.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

The following month, a House Select Committee on Hunger held a hearing to follow up on the ruckus HAAC raised. Aging folk singer Judy Collins was HAAC\u2019s official rep, and she lamented, \u201cIn this nation, where the lives of so many are blessed with abundance, I feel shame when I see the hungry and homeless.\u201d But the issue failed to catch fire \u2014 in part because the nation was in the middle of the Reagan economic boom.<\/p>\n

Food-stamp enrollment surged during the recession of the early 1990s and then trended downward for the rest of the decade. The Clinton administration launched some food-stamp recruiting efforts, especially by using AmeriCorps. When I was investigating that program in the late 1990s, I traveled to Mississippi to see first-hand an AmeriCorps program that claimed to be conducting \u201cdoor-to-door canvassing to identify potential food-stamp recipients\u201d and also providing \u201cassistance \u2026 in completing necessary applications for food stamps.\u201d The stated goal of the program was to enroll \u201c75% of surveyed rural Mississippi residents who are eligible for food stamps, but are not receiving them.\u201d When I interviewed the program director in Greenville, Mississippi, she initially denied that the program had much to do with food stamps. I was surprised that she was so evasive after the program\u2019s annual reports to AmeriCorps had offered ample details of its recruiting campaign. When I returned to Washington, I spoke to the AmeriCorps inspector general about the peculiar reaction. The IG did a little digging, the FBI joined in, and the chief of that program was convicted and sent to prison. It turned out that the organization had a bunch of ghost employees on the payroll.<\/p>\n

The Mississippi program was part of four AmeriCorps \u201cBeyond Food\u201d programs devoted to boosting food assistance. The Congressional Hunger Center (CHC), the lead grantee for the \u201cBeyond Food\u201d programs, exemplified AmeriCorps\u2019s humility. In its 1999 grant application, it stated, \u201cBeyond Food\/DC exists to fight hunger by developing leaders\u2026. Our members \u2026 learn in a \u2018Capital\u2019 environment where some of our nation\u2019s greatest humanitarian experts work.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I interviewed AmeriCorps chief Harris Wofford, I asked how food-stamp recruiting meshed with his statements that AmeriCorps promoted self-reliance. Wofford replied, \u201cA self-reliant citizen knows what their [sic] opportunities are and figures out how to make use of those opportunities.\u201d Apparently, the new, improved key to self-reliance is knowing the address of the welfare office.<\/p>\n

A strong economy and congressional welfare-reform legislation combined to trim food-stamp rolls. By 2000, there were 17 million food-stamp recipients \u2014 lower than at most times during the 1980s. But with the victory of George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential election, food stamps would soon be expanded to burnish his \u201ccompassionate conservative\u201d bona fides.<\/p>\n

In part 3, we shall see how \u201chunger\u201d was used to purchase votes and affect election outcomes.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published in the January 2017 edition of<\/em> Future of Freedom<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Future of Freedom Foundation How Food Stamps Subverted Democracy, Part 2 by James Bovard Last month we saw how political demagoguery helped make hunger a major issue in American politics beginning in the late 1960s. After Jimmy Carter was elected president in 1976, liberals and their media allies largely declared victory over hunger. Carter was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10304,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[40,72,322,1068,423,88,833],"class_list":["post-10303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-americorps","tag-demagoguery","tag-food-stamps","tag-hands-across-america","tag-hunger","tag-reagan","tag-washington-post"],"yoast_head":"\nFFF: How Food Stamps Subverted Democracy, Part 2 - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Hunger hysteria led to a vast expansion of government dependency from 1968 onwards but nutrition failed to improve. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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