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J 2-THE CAROLINA TIMES - SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 2012 Ih hi 'MEW 1 arm wi'w twins PAirlAtth ever to Vo nwortwh, almon Coat nt Srnm Joe L. Alston: Son of the late Roland Alston Sr. and Stella A. Alston of Srrfptantf J Jw^ I, Alston ol the 4" 1 SKton generation; Do solemn!; swear , (on tins A* 1 "" a "«“«2011; no serein Ilir position of litteiiuiig tin 1“ Siston flatrartli G o Ilir brot of m; abililr, S Will Irv to lierp Ilir Slaton (families close!; bonbeb for our future generations. An Alston disccniJanf/Historkal Event AhmmaI FAmity Reunion Celebration f^atjvey^mc^ /\nuc Saturday, August 20, 2011 L^eunJtin^ !llw^^ Serita ALdex Media Ignores Success Of Food Stamps By George E. Curry NNPA Columnist VOTE MAY Sth early voting April 18 - May 5 Wendy JACOBS COUNTY COMMISSIONER New Leadership to Target Unemployment & Underemployment New Leadership for Education New Leadership for Our Future www.WendyJacobsForDurharn.com Donations: Wendy Jacobs for Durham, P.O. Box 52023, Durham 27717 Paid for by Wendy Jacobs for County Commissioner. Ga.’s high court won’t hear challenge in SCLC case ATLANTA (AP) - The state’s highest court will not to hear a challenge over the leader ship of a historic civil rights group. The Georgia Supreme Court denied a re quest to hear the challenge brought by ousted board members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. A superior court judge ruled last fall against the breakaway faction. In 2010, federal and local authorities launched an investigation into allegations that SCLC’s chairman and treasurer mismanaged at least $569,000 of the group’s money. The dispute split longtime colleagues - some with friendships dating back to the civil rights era - and exposed severe gaps in SCLC’s gover nance. Authorities later found the accusations were unsubstantiated. The SCLC was co-founded by the Revs. Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph David Aberna thy, Joseph Lowery and others in 1957. FOR LEGAL NOTICES: ESTATES DIVORCES AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENTS CALL 919- 682-2913 The Department of Agriculture recently issued a report showing that fo 1 stamps, one of the nation’s largest safety net programs, is also one of the most effective. Food stamps were responsible for reducing the preva lence of poverty by an annual average of 4.4 percent from 2000 to 2009 according to the report, /Alleviating Poverty in the United States: The Critical Role of SNAP Benefits. / SNAP, an acronym for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, was formerly called the Food Stamps Program. According to the study, SNAP’s antipoverty effect was strongest in 2009 when benefits were increased under President Obama’s stimulus package also known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. That year SNAP befits reduced the poverty rate by nearly 8 percent and the depth If child poverty by 20.9 percent. That’s startling news. It’s also news you may have easily missed. Media Matters, the watchdog group, reported that a week after the re lease of the study on April 9, no broadcast TV outlet had mentioned the study. And only one cable news network - Al Sharpton’s “Politics Nation” on MSNBC - mentioned the report. “New evidence that food stamps help to drastically reduce poverty h 1 been largely ignored by the media, even as the right pursues a campai; 1 to bully those who face food insecurity into silence and help conservativ 1 slash funding for successful antipoverty measures,” Media Matters state Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has tried to demean Preside t Obama by repeatedly labeling him “the most successful food stamp pre:. dent in American history.” Gingrich continued to make that charge ev 1 after a couple of fact-checking sites pointed out that more people receiv J food stamps under President George W. Bush than President Obama. As Media Matters noted, “In fact, the U.S. Department of Agricultt s began taking steps to “ensure that all eligible people, particularly senio legal immigrants and the working poor, are aware and have access tot e benefits they need and deserve - long before Obama took office.” The attacks on food stamps recipients extend beyond politics. Some f it has been nasty and deeply personal. Charles Payne, appearing in a Fox News business segment, acknov - edged that anti-poverty programs, food stamps and unemployment insi - ance were “good programs” and then promptly proceeded to viciously at tack recipients of those programs. “I think the real narrative here, though, is that people aren’t embarrassed by it,” Payne said. “People aren’t ashamed by it. In other words, there was a time when people were embarrassed to be on food stamps; there was a time when people were embarrassed to be on unemployment for six months, let alone demanding to be on for more than two years”. That’s an insult to more than 46 million people who are on food stamps because they desperately need them. Approximately 85 percent of SNAP households have /gross/ incomes below the poverty line, defined as $22,000 for a family of four. And the benefits average only $1.50 per meal, a figure scheduled to drop to $1.30 per meal in November of next year. Media Matters says conservatives are trying to bully society’s most vul nerable members. “By bullying into silence those who would talk openly about their expe riences with successful anti-poverty programs - and whitewashing studies proving these programs to be effective - the media create an environment conducive to eviscerating the safety net,” the media monitoring group stat ed. And that’s exactly what the Republican majority in the House of Repre sentatives is already doing. “The House Agriculture Committee, which the House-approved budget requires to quickly produce $33 billion in savings over the next decade, approved a proposal that would obtain the entire amount from cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps,” said the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “The cuts,- which would come on top of another proposal in the House budget to cut SNAP by $133 billion over the next decade and convert it to a block grant - would reduce or eliminate benefits for all SNAP households, including the poorest.” The Center observed, “No other program under the Committee’s juris diction would face /any/ cut under the proposal, despite frequent calls for reform of the nation’s farm subsidies - 74 percent of which go to the larg est, most profitable farms...[that] received an average annual government payment of more than $30,000 a year in 2009, while having an average annual household income of over $160,000.” Those corporate welfare recipients are the ones who should be ashamed, not people who are down on their luck through no fault of their own. /George E. Curry, former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine, is editor- in-chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service (NNPA) and editorial director of Heart & Soul magazine. He is a keynote speaker, moderator, and media coach. Curry can be reached through his Web site, www.georgecurry.com. You can also follow him at www.twitter. com/currygeorge./ Vote New Leadership for Durham Today! “We should never seek to codify discrimination into the very heart and framework of our Constitution.” —Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II ★ Vote AGAINST the ★ Constitutional Amendment Paid for by People’s Alliance Political Action Committee www.durhampa.org/action-center
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