Food stamps

The New York Times has a wonderful interactive map up that breaks down usage by race. It sure is remarkable how the states with the most white people on welfare voted for McCain: Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Missouri. The only blue states in the running are Oregon, Michigan and Maine.

Appalachia really does seem to be in the midst of a horrendous crisis. It is a shame that most of the region's senators and congressmen are working so diligently against their constituents' interests.

The percentage of children on food stamps, however, is beyond shocking, and it's a nationwide phenomenon, though, of course, worse in the red states, continually depend on the blue ones for handouts. If a quarter of white seniors were on food stamps, we'd never hear the end of it. Politicians would create program after program to ameliorate their poverty and throw in free HDTV's for good measure. Since children will never get the right to vote, this intergenerational disparity will continue for a long time to come. Our inattention to our young is one of many reasons China (though not India, our Asian child hunger counterpart) will be drinking our milkshake in the 21st century.