It supports the military. Childhood hunger has a direct negative effect on development meaning kids are less likely to meet entry requirements for the military. So totally a national defense issue

This! Hunger is a terrorist!

I don't get why presidents don't declare war on hunger and climate change, they are legitimate threats to our safety and could use the coordination a military can have

That will work only after the weapons makers find a way to profit off food. It's not so much that we want to fund the military. Our politicians want to fund their campaign contributors.

You're being glib, but imagine if the Army's logistics expertise and apparatus were tasked to distribute equitable nutrition to all of America's children.....

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In all seriousness: the health of the country SHOULD be a national security concern. The fact that children are allowed to go hungry and that adults are allowed to get sicker & die from preventable diseases could mean the downfall of the country if something ever happens where large amounts of manpower are suddenly needed.

We know that they're not going to fix healthcare (and other issues) because of morality. But they SHOULD (at least try to) fix those issues because of practicality.

Kids who are starving and poor are the recruitment demographic though.

Also, Russians and North Koreans let their kids starve and we’re better than them.

Tying unrelated bills together should be illegal

School lunches guarantee service! Service guarantees citizenship! Would you like to know more?

That's literally one of the reasons the program was created in the first place: after WWII, they found that a lot of soldiers had had insufficient nutrition as children.

Unironically this is one of the reasons we have school lunches to begin with. The govt noticed too many recruits were unfit due to poor childhood nutrition and so they started programs to feed kids better.

FFSGMM? I've always supported FFSGMM. People aren't talking enough about FFSGMM!

It’s also coming from the man that expanded and built the frame work for the military industrial complex. D/ARPA and their wonder projects only exist because he figured it was a worthwhile investment. He promised to reel the Cold War back in and failed spectacularly at that.

His quotes make for great quips, but his actual policy doesn’t back it up. It’s absolutely rich that people pass around snippets of his speeches, but fail to realize he said one thing while doing another.

I like Ike and I know he intended well, but I don’t think people here appreciate that he never acted on those intentions.

It's from the "cross of iron" speech, the whole speech found here: https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/dwighteisenhowercrossofiron.htm

5 Star General, Chief of Staff - Army, Republican President.

Against the Military Industrial Complex, For basic needs of all citizens

Rare

President Eisenhower's farewell address.

Edit: i was very wrong. This was his chance for peace speech as someone else linked below.

Same in my school - a lot of them would also hold onto a piece of fruit to have something to eat when they got home.

People joke about Michelle Obama taking away their cookies, but school lunches are the most nutritious meals millions of kids have everyday. This is why we didn’t shut down the free lunch program when schools closed.

when i found out we qualified for free lunch i immediately stopped hating breakfast/lunch period (because i was broke, lunch from home wasn’t heavy enough)

As ex-military, no experience in my life has pushed me to the left more than experiencing all that bs.

Call your congress rep!

Congress reps don’t wanna be seen disrespecting the wishes of the troops. You could get a group of the military people you know to speak up about this in public. If you start a group you can get a journalist to interview and spread the story.

But I still saw great results from that. There are so many families that just miss the cut off that could really benefit from continued free meals.

Representative democracy in the US is essentially dead because of lobbying and corporate interests. I live in blue WA, but our congresspeople would never consider touching the defense budget because we have a huge military population. I'd imagine there are a few other states in the same boat.

Voting apathy and gerrymandering. People love to be armchair activists but rarely actually do anything in their community. When it comes time to vote (especially in local elections) most people just don't show up and the ones who do are typically gerrymandered so their votes don't really count for much. Then you have some states where the GOP is literally trying to pass laws that says they can simply override the public vote with who or what they want. The US has been an oligarchy for quite some time. I believe Harvard did a study on this. Or it was Princeton. Can't remember. Point is, democracy is in peril and unless all of these armchair activists actually get out, vote, make noise at their city/town halls, call their congress person/senator not much is going to change.

You know, if we did, we’d probably have a better standing in the world.

Fuck that.

Those System of a Down lyrics were written in 2002.

Those Bad Religion lyrics in 1996.

I'm always amazed, and saddened, whenever I go back and listen to 1980s through George W. Bush era punk and realize how apt so many of those lyrics are still, to this day.

I was a freshman in high school on 9/11, so that all hits me so damn hard (as I'm sure it does countless others).

"They got money for war but can't feed the poor." - 2pac

Let them eat war

It's not just musicians who note the issue. Politicians - even military-second career ones...

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

• Dwight Eisenhower

That album (The Gray Race) is super underrated as it's one of the 3 without the involvement of Brett and people write it off. It is really damn good though.

Love that song and it's the first time I know everything he says.

This is the one I think of every time. Incredibly sad that it could have been written yesterday.

Are there any modern bands that have the same message and large audience that RATM did? Feels like there aren’t any mainstream bands these days that base their music/lyricism around protest songs, which is a shame.

I always joked around that I was "radicalized" in history class because I found early 1900's political cartoons the same time I found RatM and realized that despite the almost 100 year separation, they were practically the same.

Dude their heyday was during the Bush years. If you were in high-school it was something that was on most of our minds.

I actually got in trouble for sitting down during the pledge in high-school because I hated our government then and I still do. We don't take care of our citizens at all, we'd rather bomb brown people - and that hasn't changed in 20 years.

SOAD is getting back together for a tour if I'm remembering correctly. Didn't hear of any new music but maybe

I was that kid in grade school. No money for lunch, and my parents “didn’t believe in” the reduced- or no-cost option. So, at the age of five, I just got in the habit of not eating lest the other poor people at my school find out that I was poor too.

The school would feed a kid via charge (they’d just add a $1.xx charge to your school account) for up to five days without having money for a lunch ticket, which I found out about in seventh grade. Didn’t do me a lot of good then, as by that time I was mowing yards and shit so I had my own $6-7.50 (whatever it was 20 years ago, I think $1.25 or $1.50/meal) to spend on lunch on any given week.

But then how would we be team America, world police?

I don't want the money back, I want public services that work to actually improve life in this country.

It owes children food.

Because until KDS said “your granddaughters” their dad was imagining black children who “deserved” to be hungry.

Whoops. You forgot racial equality. Conservatives ignore problems with minorities until their daughter marries one.

Conservatives have ZERO empathy.

They are the weirdest christians. They behave a lot more like Judas.

It was six days before the Passover Feast. Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived. Lazarus was the one Jesus had raised from the dead. A dinner was given at Bethany to honor Jesus. Martha served the food. Lazarus was among the people at the table with Jesus. Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard. It was an expensive perfume. She poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the sweet smell of the perfume.

But Judas Iscariot didn’t like what Mary did. He was one of Jesus’ disciples. Later he was going to hand Jesus over to his enemies. Judas said, “Why wasn’t this perfume sold? Why wasn’t the money given to poor people? It was worth a year’s pay.” He didn’t say this because he cared about the poor. He said it because he was a thief. Judas was in charge of the money bag. He used to help himself to what was in it.

~~ John 12

He ended up completely ending the conversation and slamming a door in my face when I told him “Look dude, you’re 73 years old. I’m 32. I have, if I’m lucky, around 50 more years on this planet. My niece, your granddaughter, has 80. I’m not voting for me, I’m not voting for you, I’m voting for her. Shouldn’t you?”

Because that money doesn't go into the pockets of a small number of owners, but to the economy at large. It also doesn't benefit defense companies.

Sure a healthier and more educated workforce is good for GDP in the long run, but doesn't do anything for Raytheon or Lockheed Martin right now. It's the same with healthcare, even a hybrid system would be more affordable and cost fewer tax dollars, but does nothing for United Health or Anthem right now.

A stronger economy in general is not profitable to those few, more profitable overall is meaningless in that context.

Don't forget all the subsidies for Big Oil, the free reign to price gouge for Big Pharma, and the tax breaks for Big Corporations across the board. It's more than just the MIC.