***. “The children who go to bed hungry in a Harlem slum or a West Virginia mining town are not be deprived because no food can be found to give them; they are going to bed hungry because, despite all our miracles of invention and production, we have not yet fond a way to make the necessities of life available to all of our citizens. – including those whose failure is not lack of personal industry or initiative, but only an unwise choice of parents.”
[ Senator J. William Fulbright; 1964 ]

This post presents excerpts from “Life Was Impossible, and Then It Got Worse”. [ Nicholas Kristof; New York Times; 8/2/26 ]: “Millions of Americans struggle today in sometimes unimaginable ways.”

4] “..this pain across America is now magnified by President Trump’s cuts in food stamps, Medicaid, mental health funding for children, pregnancy prevention initiatives and other social programs, as well as by rising gas and food prices.”

6] “A recent Washington Post-Ipsos poll found that two-thirds of Americans consider groceries unaffordable.”

11]. “..the age group most likely to live in poverty. – by far — is children, particularly children 2 years old and under; and they can’t be accused of fraud, laziness or personal irresponsibility. Yes, many of them end up making bad choices, but we fail them before they fail us.”

*** “Jesus said to him, “If you will be perfect, go and sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven, and come and follow me.” [ Matthew 19: 21 ]

1] “..[Trinity]..Johnson, 44, survives by selling blood plasma twice a week. she had $3.78 in her checking account, one cent in her savings account to keep it open, and sic pennies in her piggy bank.”

2]. “She dwells in an America that many of us might have trouble imagining. For five years she staved off homelessness only by staying in the home of a man who was not a romantic partner but who took advantage of her vulnerability, she said, by regularly demanding sex.”

3]. “Food stamps, $298 a month, sustain her, but they can’t be used for toilet paper or feminine hygiene products. So she searches for them at church-run pantries – lifelines in much of America.”

5]. “Republicans are also imposing tougher work requirements for benefits; this is reasonable in theory, but in practice such requirements have proved costly and end up mostly just driving people into poverty.”

***. “Many people consider the things government does for them to be social progress, but they regard the things government does for others as socialism.” [ Chief Justice Earl Warren ]

7] “I asked Goodman what message she would have for Trump as the cuts and work requirements he ordered ripple across the land. “You do not know what you’re doing to people who are struggling to live,’ she said. “You got money in the bank. You don’t know how it feels to struggle. Live in my shoes for one day. You wouldn’t be able to handle it.”

8]. “Nationwide, some 1.5 million children have lost food stamps under Trump’s crackdown over the last year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.”

9]. “THe push to cut benefits for struggling Americans is partly rooted in a desire to trim federal spending, but that’s hard to square with the expense of the Iran war, as well as the subsidies for private planes and tax cuts for the wealthiest. It’s also based on a perception that the “undeserving poor” are exploiting the system.” [NOTE: SO…in Donald John Trump’s mythical America – there are NO, NONE, ZERO. – “undeserving rich”???????????]

10] “As of 2019, according to ProPublica, the place in America with the highest percentage of tax audits was not a haven of billionaires but rather Humphrys county, Miss., with a majority Black population and a median household income then of roughly $26,000.” [ NOTE: THIS is a major summary of Trump’s policies. ]

***. “Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness, it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable and others extremely difficult.” [ Samuel Johnson; 12/7/1782 ]

12] “Trump initially proposed eliminating Head Start, the federal program with bipartisan support that serves those vulnerable children in poverty. He later backed off that idea, but congressional investigators found that his administration illegally withheld $12 billion from the program for several months, causing great hardship.”

13] “It’s understandable that many working-class Americans feel betrayed….One reason for the complacency is that the problems…are often invisible. Americans may see a homeless person shooting drugs, but they won’t see the arc of hopelessness that began with, say, foster care. – which at it’s worse is a government system of child abuse.”

14] “Some of Williams’s earliest memories are of men sexually assaulting her, perhaps when she was 3 or 4. Her mother was a prostitute with addictions, she said, and at age 6 she saw her younger sister killed and was then put in foster care.”

15]. “..if we want to talk about lack of responsibility, we also have to have a conversation about our collective lack of responsibility, about the way we treat some kids as throwaways. – or the way we’re now taking food stamps from 1.5 million children.”

***. “Poverty is not merely the lack of adequate financial resources. It entails a more profound kind kind of deprivation, a denial of full participation in the economic, social, and political life of society and the inability to influence decisions that affect one’s life. It means being powerless in a way that assaults not only one’s pocketbook but also one’s fundamental human dignity.” [ National Conference of Catholic Bishops; 1986 ]