Sunday, July 16, 2017

Empty Hearts, Empty Plates

In my previous post I mentioned, in a footnote, Mick Mulvaney, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. As it was irrelevant to the subject of that post, I didn’t mention how captivated I was by the picture of Mulvaney that accompanied the Atlantic article I was quoting from.* In the picture, Mulvaney is wearing a black suit (quite different from the inordinate number of bar mitzvah suits in Trump’s wardrobe) with a white shamrock in the lapel, a white, french-cuffed shirt with a sharply-raked collar, and a gold-ish tie decorated with a foreign text. The only thing spoiling Mulvaney’s immaculate appearance is what looks to be a misplaced stash of celery leaves in his breast pocket. 

This was obviously not a man who himself need scrabble for a meal or ever fear going hungry. What he was doing here, though, was spouting forth the notion that, in the paraphrase by Emma Green, the author of the Atlantic article, “even small amounts of federal funding for programs like Meals on Wheels, which delivers food to house-bound seniors, may not be justified.” Or as this tweet directly quoted:
Domenico Montanaro@DomenicoNPRMulvaney just said that Meals on Wheels is one of those programs "not showing any results"3:30 PM - 16 Mar 2017
In response to Mulvaney, Sarah Jones in The New Republic exclaimed: “The sole objective of Meals on Wheels is to feed elderly people and keep them alive.”** 

Now of course we know that Mulvaney and the other dudes who fashioned Trump’s budget proposals have no skin in the game; they’re gonna eat their steak and lobster tails whatever happens. But what about those beneficiaries of the Meals programs, were they (the ones who would know best) consulted about the efficacy of the programs and whether there were any “results”—such as keeping them alive? 

How silly of me to ask. 

I can’t say that I have any skin in the game either, in that I can make it to the supermarket and continue to load up on eats that would drive a nutritionist around the bend. But my mother did avail herself of the Meals program of a local charity when she was too frail to shop. And when solicited by a charitable organization in my county, I usually earmark my contribution for the Kosher Meals on Wheels program. 

I’m just one guy, making a little donation now and again. However, I’m doing more good than Mulvaney and his gang are doing. I know that, at the very least, I’m not taking food off anybody’s plate.

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