North Carolina
NC military families struggle to qualify for food assistance SNAP program
It seems like each month the greenback is stretched a bit of farther for Jessica Alexander’s household.
“We rarely have something left over. It is the naked minimal to get gasoline. For meals, with meals costs, we’re spending not less than $400 each two weeks and that is barely getting something and go into the commissary the place you will get it the most affordable attainable and it is nonetheless onerous.”
Her household of 4 lives on Fort Bragg the place her husband serves as a parachute rigger. Rising childcare value and lengthy waitlists on the bottom means the household resides off only one earnings. For some time, Alexander and her husband repeatedly donated Plasma to attempt to get a number of hundred additional {dollars}.
Based mostly on their month-to-month earnings, Alexander stated they need to qualify for meals stamps. Nevertheless, as a result of they stay on base and obtain Primary Housing Allowance (BHA), they’re priced out of eligibility.
“When you stay on put up, they take the BHA as a part of your earnings. So even when we’re not seeing it, they nonetheless rely it,” Alexander defined. “So to them, we’re making $3,500 a month, however in actuality, we’re not seeing that so it disqualifies us. I have never seen anyone within the navy get authorized except you might have six youngsters.”
Whereas the BHA pays for the Alexanders’ month-to-month hire, it is not cash they see of their checking account so Alexander and others imagine it should not rely in direction of federal meals help.
“Even just like the naked minimal of SNAP of like $300-$400 would even assist… to place in direction of gasoline to go to remedy or gasoline to go to the physician or prescription prices or an additional invoice. It might assist a lot,” Alexander stated.
A bipartisan invoice was reintroduced within the U.S. Senate in February to eradicate BHA when figuring out eligibility. An analogous invoice was launched final 12 months however died.
Near 1 / 4 of active-duty service members reported experiencing meals insecurity in 2020, in accordance with a Division of Protection report.
For years prior, the DoD was calculating meals insecurity by the variety of service members receiving SNAP advantages, which was solely 0.1%
The USDA estimated in 2019, 22,000 energetic obligation service members acquired meals stamps, simply
To scale back meals insecurity, the DoD really helpful growing job alternatives for navy spouses and elevating monetary sources.
As federal leaders contemplate widening who’s eligible for meals help, native sources can be found to assist Ft. Bragg households fill within the gaps.
The Armed Providers YMCA (ASYMCA) goals to assist junior-enlisted service members. At Ft. Bragg, the YMCA has a meals pantry and likewise repeatedly distributes meals. To this point this 12 months, the ASYMCA served 300 households.
“There was a necessity, however then the pandemic definitely exacerbated that. After which it sort of grew from there from popping out of the pandemic into some inflation and different components,” stated Jeremy Hester, the exec. director of ASYMCA at Ft. Bragg.
He stated inflation is driving many households to make the most of their providers.
“We hear loads of completely different tales and you recognize, our foremost our foremost objective is to not flip anyone away,” Hester stated.
ASYMCA is continuous to fill the necessity and develop by starting to make use of a cellular unit to ship meals and develop consciousness.
Brian Koyn, Ft. Bragg’s Garrison Chaplain, helps runs one other help program on base known as ‘Operation Serving to Palms.’ He and different chapel communities give out reward playing cards for the commissary to assist get individuals by within the brief time period.
“We hear usually that there are selections about diapers or meals or these onerous selections,” Koyn stated.
This system additionally assists households in higher monetary planning to forestall month-to-month monetary struggles.
“We’re not simply throwing out reward playing cards and probably feeding an issue and making it worse in the long run.” He stated. “Somebody can stroll our troopers or relations by way of the method to get to a spot of long-term stability.”
Each Operation Serving to Palms and ASYMCA stated they’re at all times in want of donations.
To donate to the ASYMCA: https://www.asymca.org/fort-bragg-home
To donate to Operation Serving to Palms https://pushpay.com/g/fortbragggive
Extra Tales
Meals pantries brace for ‘massive improve’ with SNAP advantages ending
College districts face rising scholar meal debt, as extra SNAP advantages expire
Recruitment stays a problem for the Military
North Carolina
How the reversal of Roe v. Wade reshaped American life
It’s been nearly two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated the federal right to abortion. Shefali Luthra, a health reporter at The 19th News, spoke to a variety of Americans about how their lives have been upended by the court’s decision for her book, “Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America.” She joined Laura Barrón-López to discuss.
North Carolina
NC’s public university system to vote this week to repeal diversity policies
The efforts to repeal diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at North Carolina’s public universities come amid a broader backlash in conservative circles against affirmative action and other more recent racial justice reforms that passed after the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
Web Editor : Heather Leah
Posted
North Carolina
Opinion: Politicians ignore truth: NC lags behind in health care, education, wages
Moe Davis quotes H.L. Mencken who said “the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and hence clamorous to be led to safety.”
“No one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”
This oft-repeated observation is by H.L. Mencken, a journalist, satirist and cultural commentator from Baltimore, who made it almost a century ago. Some say Mencken was racist, misogynistic and antisemitic, while others say he used provocative language to stimulate thought rather than to advance a position. Regardless, I’m struck by how prescient he seems today.
Early in my campaign for Congress in 2020, I talked about people voting against their own interests. Advisers warned me to stop saying it because it implied that people are stupid.
In hindsight, I wish I had ignored the advisers and been more like Mencken. It wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the election, but I should have had the gumption to tell people the truth, even if it hurt their feelings. So here it is now: Stupidity is no path forward for Western North Carolina.
More: Opinion: Republicans hope to demolish democracy that was cherished by Ronald Reagan
Mencken’s famous quote is from his book, “Notes on Democracy,” published in 1926. The passage reads:
“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
We’re witnessing the enormous power of galvanizing individual ignorance to achieve political aims. It’s how the wealth gap grew into a wealth chasm as ordinary folks swallowed the notion that “trickle-down economics” would lift their rafts along with the rich man’s yacht, and that the “right to work” was good for them and their families when it really meant “the right to live impoverished while the rich grow richer.”
It’s how pro-lifers can argue that every life is precious while cheering the execution of death row inmates and the drowning of migrants snared in razor wire strung across the Rio Grande. It is how lies can masquerade as truth, cruelty as compassion, immorality as virtue, criminality as law and order, sedition as patriotism, and an election that was lost as one that was stolen. Mencken warned that “truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.”
Many haven’t just gotten used to fiction, they gleefully wallow in it and turn hostile when confronted with facts.
More: Opinion: Considering Asheville, Buncombe candidates, nothing will change in 2024 elections
The truth is WNC lags behind and it has for years. Take your pick — health care, education, broadband, wages — so many areas where we could do better if we just tried. Instead, many of us fall for charlatans who ignore facts and pander to feelings, even when those feelings are untethered from reality.
To quote Mencken again, “the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” It reminds me of the anti-crime summit Congressman Chuck Edwards held last summer where he spoke in ominous terms about “lawlessness” and the need to act before Buncombe County and WNC “turn into another crime-ridden Chicago or San Francisco.”
Sheriff Quintin Miller responded that Edwards’s statement sounded like something “from Fox News” and was not supported by crime statistics kept by the State Bureau of Investigation. As the Sheriff said, “it’s irresponsible to have a conversation about public safety that is not rooted in data.” Unfortunately, truth becomes irrelevant when politicians ignore it to manipulate the feelings of the electorate to enhance their own political fortunes.
Perhaps it’s a pipedream, but I hope voters will ask politicians what they plan to do for “us” rather than what they plan to do to “them,” the imaginary hobgoblins they whip up to manipulate the malleable masses. And make them back it up with facts, not with just a play on feelings. Mencken said, “the most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.” WNC can move forward, but only if it is willing to think.
Moe Davis is a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel and the former head of the Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division at the Congressional Research Service. He is currently writing a historical fiction novel set in Western North Carolina.
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