The Des Moines Register from Des Moines, Iowa • Page 7

Iowa View Our shame: Too many lowans go hungry 111' A li aJJLj The root of hunger is poverty, and too many people in Iowa are one paycheck or medical emergency away from it. Elderly, small-town widows on Social Security face choosing between prescriptions, energy bills and food. And 144,000 Iowa workers earn less than $7.15 an hour an income of less than $14,872 before )2(V A --w-mi 'an- Jglf fS5 nm' 1 Our poor, our elderly, our kids Consider some facts about hunger in Iowa by looking at whom it affects: the poor, elderly and children. More than 128,000 people in 55,000 families receive food stamps, meaning an average monthly benefit of $67. In 2001, Iowa families received $8.9 million a month in food stamps, more than $106 million for the year.

Ten percent of Iowa's children 72,000 of the "futures" we profess to cherish live in families with incomes below the poverty line ($17,050 for a family of four), and more than 60,000 kids are in families on food stamps. Neil Hamilton By NEIL HAMILTON The U.S. Senate, led by Iowa's Tom Harkin, is readying another attempt to pass the 2002 farm bill. The debate includes so many important issues conservation, rural development, limiting meatpackers, commodity pro grams, research it is hard to appreciate all the valuable programs in the bill. But a topic that doesn't get the attention it deserves, from the public or farm community, is America's effort to address hunger.

Our lack of attention to hunger isn't new. Last November, America's Second Harvest, a network of food banks and organizations that supplement public efforts, issued the report "Hunger in America 2001." The findings were disturb ing. We appear to have given up on our war on hunger and settled for a permanent siege. Second Harvest estimates 23.3 million people used food banks in 2001, an THE FOOD CHAIN increase of 9 percent from 1997. Those receiving emergency food include 9 million children and 4.5 million elderly.

Iowans need to be confronted with the sad truth that hunger is a serious problem in Iowa and in the United States. That is what makes the farm bill's Nutrition Title provision so important. Harkin has proposed $6.2 billion to increase funding for food stamps and to improve delivery of food GARY FANDELREGISTER FILE PHOTO Mary family food pantry in Des Do you wonder what the hungry kids we feed during the school year eat for lunch in the summer if they eat at all? Those are some of the facts about hunger in Iowa. But what are we to make of the figures and the stories they present? The public is devoting millions to food aid, meaning accusations of neglect aren't fair. But the number of recipients and those who are still food insecure show there are gaps and inadequacies in our efforts and the numbers only mask the human impacts of hunger and food insecurity.

Further, the numbers don't consider the critical role played by Iowa's food banks, churches and other private hunger-relief efforts. We are sacrificing, even if Bush won't mention it -1 "basic ING THEMES. withholding. Try feeding a family on that hourly wage with few benefits. These are the faces of food insecurity in Iowa.

The moralists never in short supply, warm and well-fed point to poor life choices and lack of initiative as causes of hunger. Clearly, many factors contribute to a family's circumstances, but moralizing ignores the fact that more than 50 percent of food-aid recipients in Iowa are children innocent, if not unaffected, by whatever perceived errors of their parents. The Nutrition Title proposed by Harkin includes several valuable changes to make public food programs more accessible and to increase benefits to families. It deserves our support. But Iowa must make better, more creative use of federal programs to increase food-aid participation.

That is one goal of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Food Security formed by the governor on the recommendation from the Iowa Food Policy Council. For the first time, state and local officials who administer various public food efforts are cooperating to identify opportunities to improve delivery of food aid. NEIL HAMILTON is the Ellis and Nelle Levitt Distinguished Professor ol Law and the director ol the Agricultural Law Center at Drake University, Des Moines. analysts say the deficits Bush now describes as "small and short-term" would be large and long-term. In other words, a quick dip into the Social Security and Medicare surpluses would become a long one.

The people who think they are paying for their retirement would instead be paying for the war and the tax cuts. This is an awkward fact, far too embarrassing to point out in a nationally televised speech. It is easier to let it slide. And far easier than suggesting that, if we are on a permanent wartime footing, perhaps the tax cut tilted toward the affluent should best be postponed in the interest of this effort. The president dwelt instead on what he sees as a national psyche changed for the better.

"We began to think less of the goods we can accumulate, and Abusers," I said the paper that a protective order is written on is easily pierced by a bullet. To that Rater said: "Surprise, surprise! Court orders are not worth the paper they are written oa Well, that is why in Iowa there is a child-support debt of more than $1 billion, even though non-support of children is a Class felony. If Rater is an irritant, it's because she wants "support or justice. Nothing else will do." Her former husband was on trial three times before he was found guilty of criminal non-support, she said. He rials and works for changes in the state child-support law.

People say they'll get back to her, but dont. The governor does not answer her letters. It doesnt faze her. "I will keep fighting until I win this for my kids, for all kids By MARIE C0CC0 He calls, now, for war on a global scale. The president has shown off rhetorical muscle not flexed with such flamboyance since Ronald Reagan.

George W. Bush did not, precisely, use his State of the Union speech to declare the imminent i stan or wona war Kt III. Nonetheless, he said that he would wage it, if he be lieves it necessary. "I will not wait on events while dangers gather. I will not stand by as peril draws closer and closer," Bush warned the world.

Iraq, Iran and North Korea, long a troublesome trio, have been assigned a more ominous place in the political lexicon. They are, Bush said, an "axis of evil." The foreign-policy wags and foreign diplomats will, no doubt, shudder at this latest recitation of the American claim of unfettered authority to strike anywhere it wants, anytime. This Bush doctrine is, though, well-received at home. 'AW. He Zl A.

Rowher packed boxes at the St. Bush administration supports increased funding for WIC. But in a recent study of WIC participants, the Iowa Department of Health determined the incidence of food insecurity people who have difficulty getting sufficient food for their family each month has increased by 25 percent since 1997. In Iowa, more than 1,650 schools offer free and reduced-price lunches, serving 121,000 students. Of these schools, only 1,430 participate in the breakfast program serving 42,900 kids even though USDA finances the program.

In the summer, only 98 locations offer food services for children, and the number served drops by 95 percent to 5,400 kids. called it that. He dares not say it, not directly. But the president called for making his big tax cut of last year permanent something, through an obscure fixture of congressional budget rules, it is not now. Technically, even if there is no Democratic effort to roll the tax Rater wrote: "I would be glad to spend money if I had any.

Perhaps you could encourage the Iowa bureaucracy to do its job of defending the rule of law against the lawless within our own borders and begin to collect the back child support owed to more than 300,000 children and their families in Iowa. All the other parents who call me would do the same." Her response to a column I wrote about breast cancer was: "I am 60 years old and have never had a mammogram. I don't have the luxury of worrying about breast cancer. There is too much to worry about, like hanging onto my house and putting food on the table. My former husband stopped paying even a token child-support payment.

I guess he feels secure that the state of Iowa wont do a thing regardless of all the laws. And he is right." To one of my columns that was headlined "Iowa Domestic-Violence Law Stalled Last Year, so Pass it Now," she wrote: "You mean to say that laws actually mean something in Iowa? They are enforced and protect people? So where do I take my stack of orders to have them enforced? Funny how the laws that are not passed hfZ Shelly Barnes, left, and Chris Moines last October. assistance, but it will be a real battle because the House bill and the Bush administration's new budget offer substantially less. Many who need food assistance are getting it. But of all Iowans believed eligible, fewer than 57 percent apply.

There are many reasons why one might not apply, but one factor is how little we spend on food-stamp outreach efforts to educate and encourage eligible recipients to apply. We do a better job with the Women, Infants and Children supplemental feeding program, designed for the nutritional needs of low-income mothers and their children. More than 64,000 Iowans receive WIC benefits. Even the So well it is easy to look past the odd hollowness where the rest of a war doctrine should be. The president called for people to do volunteer service.

But not to sacrifice. He said that Sept. 11 reminded us we have "obligations to each other." But he was not obliged to tell us the hard reality of what those are. If we are to fight the North Koreans, the Iranians, the Iraqis and whoever else there is to fight, will we do it only with the blood of military volunteers? Or is there a moral imperative in this long-term, worldwide war to require military service of every young person? We do not know. The president has not told us.

"Whatever it costs to defend our country, we will pay," Bush declared. There is something missing here, too: how? Now the bill is being paid directly from the payroll taxes working Americans have withheld every week to fund, they think, their eventual benefits under Social Security and Medicare. The president has effectively decided this is how he is going to pay for this war. This is the real sacrifice, although Bush has not Shirley Ragsdale In response to the Register's coverage of Kari Engholm, a Perry hospital executive who last summer forgot her infant daugter, Clare, in the back seat of a hot minivan and discovered the girl dead nine hours later, Rater wrote: "Most of us cannot understand how a mother can forget a child for the whole day. Nevertheless, we know it didn't happen on purpose.

However, across the state we have parents who willfully put their children at risk by not paying the court-ordered child support. Why are the county prosecutors willing to go after parents who accidentally neglect their children but not parents who willfully neglect their children?" When I wrote a column that was headlined "Head Back to the Store and Give Democracy a Boost," JACK OHMANTHE OREGONIAN cut back, it will expire at the end of 2010. And, according to the rules, revenue previously lost gone mostly into the pockets of the best-off would miraculously be "found." Without the phony expiration date, congressional budget more of the good we can do," he said. But much earlier, Bush had urged us to get out to the mall or take a cruise. The president applauded America for refusing to "splinter in fear and selfishness." But he counts as one of his proudest achievements the elimination of the estate tax on heirs of the wealthiest.

Bush embraced a new national culture that eschews materialism. Yet the story of the 1990s was not self-absorbed profligacy on the part of average people. Those at the top built oversized homes outfitted with gilded faucets and sunken tubs, but those further down sunk into debt. There is a discomfiting disconnect between the country Bush sees and the policy he promotes. He now sees materialism and self-interest as a civic rot that ate at the body politic before the terrorists struck.

In fact, these attributes found their perfect expression in his own tax cut, which mostly benefits those already blessed. The rest of us would, willingly and as always, sacrifice if asked. But only if sacrifice is shared. MARIE COCCO writes for Newsday. abandoned in this culture, for parents who value kids above material things.

"I want my girls to stand up for themselves. They do that by fighting the wrong they are confronted with. One can develop skills and character by standing against what is wrong in society rather than turning the other cheek and ignoring the injustice. "I want my boys to know that there are consequences to what their dad is doing to them. I want them to know that we are a country of laws.

I dont think character is something they learn in school. Character is developed by standing up to evil." Whatever people in the state child-support enforcement office may think of in-your-face people like Maja Rater, they should step back to consider that if the system doesn't work for women like her, how well is it working for those who dont have her determination? And how many comfortable dead-beats are represented in that heart-stopping total of $1 billion in uncollected child support? SHIRLEY RAGSDALE is a Register columnist. She can tie reached it ngsdalesnews.dmreg.com Of (515) 284-8208. For Maja Rater, the fight for justice in child support never ends aja Rater is an indefatigable child-support advocate. She hammers away at county officials, state lawmakers and bureaucrats, trying to ensure that custodial parents and their children are given their due.

Rater's crusade is fueled by frustratioa Her former husband Otho, with whom she has seven children, owes more than $89,000 in unpaid, court-ordered child support. There are four volumes of documents at the Polk County Courthouse covering her attempts to get the system to work for her children. She knows what a difference that money would make in their lives. And it makes her furious that the government officials who have the power to collect the money or enforce criminal non-support laws wont do so with the same vengeance she feels. "Am I angry?" asked Rater, who lives in Casey.

"Of course I am. My kids are being cheated out of their childhood, and life is hell because the state wont do its job while it shouts to the high heavens how much it values children." Since I began writing an opinion column for the Register last April, Rater has been a frequent correspondent. She has a certain way of spinning things toward her cause. FROM THE REGISTER LIBRARY nQW jj believed tO be A 1996 family photo Of four of the seven living out of state. Rater children with their mother, Maja, at She attends meetings, far rieht.

The children are from left: Bet- buttonholes elected offi- tina, David, Diedre and Robert. will always do the job, be enforced and protect people, but the ones that are on the books wont. It's called politics, I believe." In a recent column, "Make it Law: No Guns for Domestic.