043 The Erickson Report for December 2 to 15, Page Five: Two Weeks of Stupid [the Outrages]

Finally, we have two Outrages.

The DOD's so-called 1033 program was established in 2013 to transfer supposedly "excess" military equipment to local police forces. In the years since, according to Stephen Semler of the Security Policy Reform Institute, local cops have received "nearly 70,000 firearms, over 5,000 military vehicles, and 358 aircraft" valued at over $1.5 billion, including nearly $34 million in the first quarter of 2021mili.

The program has been a significant factor in the dramatically increasing militarization of local police, where cops more and more act like an occupying force than community protectors, leading to more police violence. Studies have shown a positive and statistically significant relationship between 1033 transfers and fatalities from officer-involved shootings.

This year in the debate over the NDAA, Rep. Hank Johnson of GA proposed an amendment to exclude combat gear and weapons from the program.

The outrage is that the amendment failed. It failed because 22 House Democrats - including liberal hero eric swalwell - voted against it.

It would take an act of Congress to dismantle the program entirely, but there is nothing to prevent Joe Blahden from issuing an Executive Order suspending the transfers or even demanding the return of equipment, because technically the stuff is on loan from the DOD. In fact, Obama did exactly that.

We'll see if Blahden acts. If he doesn't, it will only double what is already an outrage.

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Finally: Last year, 13-year-old Adeola “Abraham” Olagbegi was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder, aplastic anemia, that required him to undergo surgery for a bone marrow transplant. The good news is that Olagbegi’s transplant was a success.

And, another bit of good news come his way: The Make-A-Wish foundation granted him a wish. And he chose to provide food for the homeless citizens of his hometown in Jackson, Mississippi, for one year.

Once a month for the next year, at least 80 homeless folks will be provided food donated by local churches and businesses.

So why is the here under outrages?

Because why should he have to? Why should this child have to give up this special gift to do something that our society should do as a normal part of its normal functioning, making sure people have enough food?

The USDA, the Department of Agriculture defines food insecurity as a lack of consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life.

And food insecurity is a very real daily issue in the US. According to the USDA, in 2020, nearly 14 million households in the US, encompassing 38 million people, were food insecure; 10 million of them had "very low food security," meaning there were times during the year when they weren't wondering where their next meal was going to come from because they already didn't have a current meal.

And the numbers might be worse. The group Feeding America estimated that 54 million were food insecure, noting that 60 million resorted to food banks to supplement their food supply during the pandemic.

The difference between the two estimates represents the product of the large-scale increase in aid driven by the COVID pandemic, an effort which kept the numbers as - pardon the expression - low as the USDA estimate. Which happily goes to indicate that 16 million people in the US may have been spared food insecurity last year by those efforts - but unhappily shows how much more could be done.

Consider that a new poll from Impact Genome and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research used a somewhat broader notion of food insecurity to include people who would say they have enough food but despair at the idea of being able to afford fresh fruits or vegetables - because the fact is, eating healthy is expensive. The survey found that 23% of people in the US fit that broader description.

Despite the increase in programs, nearly three-fifths of those people struggled to access the government or nonprofit assistance that should have been available to them, and more than one-fifth, more than 4% of our population, about 13 million people, said that they had not been able to get assistance of any kind.

131 years after Jacob Riis's How the Other Half Lives;

59 years after Michael Harrington's The Other America;
57 years after the start of the modern Food Stamp - now SNAP - program;
53 years after CBS News' "Hunger in America;"

and all the times since, after all this time, all these times, after all the times we were told, after all the times we insisted that now we know, now we see it, after it all, we as a nation are still depending on private charity and 13-year-old children to, in the words of the prophet Isaiah (58:10) "Spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed."

And That. Is. An. Outrage.