People in the richest nation in the world should not be hungry

My Sunday movie was Circus of Books, a 2019 Netflix documentary about a gay porn bookstore in West Hollywood, California, run by Karen and Barry Mason. Karen had started as a journalist but got tired of covering death, though she had done a decent interview with Larry Flynt of Hustler and related magazines. Barry was mechanically minded and for a while worked in the movie industry on special effects, including on the original Star Trek series. One of his inventions helped dialysis machines and making that became his job – until medical insurance rules changed. Running short of money they answered one of Larry Flynt’s ads looking for distributors. Then one of their customers wasn’t paying bills, so they bought him out and had themselves a store. And that became a neighborhood gathering place for the gays of West Hollywood as a time when being gay was still criminal. Karen and Barry watched the AIDS epidemic unfold around them while not directly affected by it. Also in the Reagan era were people trying to protect others from obscenity – they were always (then and now) looking for someone to demonize – so they had to be careful who they sold to. The danger lessened only when Bill Clinton became president. Their lawyer said that if obscenity was no longer an issue those who were obscenity watchdogs would lose their jobs. This documentary was made by their daughter Rachel. As part of the story was how she and her brothers were affected by mom and dad running a porn store. At times the complications got personal. The farm bill, a huge thing, is renewed every five years. It contains support for agriculture – now mostly big corporations – and for nutrition programs, those who need support to get enough to eat. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported that, as happens during every renewal, Republicans are looking for ways to cut the federal budget. Of course, they’re not considering cutting corporate support. They are looking for ways to block poor people from getting the food they need. McCarter concluded:

[Rep. Glenn] Thompson is not talking so much about making people go hungry because usually the people who are responsible for getting this humongous legislative package out the door aren’t. They don’t want that fight messing up their ability to help out corporate agriculture. But an inordinate amount of time and energy and angst is going to have to be spent again by all of the groups united behind the principle that people in the richest nation in the world should not be hungry.

Since the MSU mass shooting last Monday there seems to be another mass shooting every day. There was a shooting in El Paso on Wednesday in the mall that’s adjacent to the Walmart where 23 people were killed in 2019. And the news on Saturday morning was of a shooting in Mississippi with six dead. As that is going on several House Republicans are wearing AR-15 lapel pins. They are being handed out by Rep. Andrew Clyde, who owns a gun shop and who panicked during the attack on the Capitol by “ordinary tourists” a couple years ago. Hunter of Kos says he knows Republicans won’t back bills to reduce gun violence. But we can fight for other kinds of bills that would help victims, even if it is to force Republicans to vote against them.

Can we not promote bills ordering that all funeral costs for gun violence victims be covered by the federal government? When children are gunned down in a Texas school, it is repulsive to ask grieving parents to beg for money to cover the financial costs of their child's death. Can we not promote bills expanding Medicaid so that medical costs for gun violence victims are covered by the government that refused to prevent their injuries? Why should victims be held responsible for participating, unwillingly, in the freedom that gun seller Andrew Clyde believes to be necessary to protect our "liberties"? Why are we naming government buildings after politicians, rather than shooting victims? What have politicians sacrificed that should count for more? ... Why are victims of gun violence paying for their own medical care, after they get shot for the sake of Andrew Clyde's liberties? Why isn't Andrew Clyde paying those bills himself?

My friend and debate partner responded to my previous post. I didn’t have time to write a full response. If I don’t within the next day or so it might be a while. I usually do most of my writing Wednesday through Saturday and that’s when Brother will be visiting.