Americans Go Hungry While Once Poor Now Rich Ex Presidents Spend Lavishly

Editor's Note:
Paul Craig Roberts raises some very good questions and points out some very good and shocking statistics about this once great land of ours.

What is frightening are the stats on how many Americans go to bed hungry each day.  What is more frightening is the story of just one food pantry in Ohio that does not have enough food to give out to over 3,000 recipients each day.  One story of just one food pantry but I am sure that this same story is repeated in many cities and food pantries around the country.

While there has always been an "upper" class there has also been a very stable middle class.  It has always been the middle class that has supported such things as food pantries and other charitable programs.  The middle class has been annihilated here in this country, their wealth transferred to a new and much larger cadre of upper class citizens.  These upper classes do contribute some but not as much as the once great middle class did.  Yes, the upper class all have their favorite charities but when it comes time to pass the hat at the office, the hat receives little in the way of donations because the office is bare, the middle class workers are not there and the upper class managers who have raked in all that dough all claim they gave elsewhere.

This country's success was its middle class and its' failure now is due to the elimination of the middle class.  I hope all those attending Princess Chelsea's wedding gave some thought to all the starving people and especially KIDS in this country while they feased on their lavish meals sitting in an air conditioned tent which alone was estimated to have cost $600,000.

I wish Chelsea all the best as well as her new husband, "what's his name".  I hope their marriage is long and fruitfull but I also hope that they do not forget what the rest of the country is suffering.

Let Them Eat Wedding Cake

By Paul Craig Roberts

August 03, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- It is not unusual for members of the diminishing upper middle class to drop $20,000 or $30,000 on a big wedding. But for celebrities this large sum wouldn’t cover the wedding dress or the flowers.

When country music star Keith Urban married actress Nicole Kidman in 2006, their wedding cost $250,000. This large sum hardly counts as a celebrity wedding. When mega-millionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump married model Melania Knauss, the wedding bill was $1,000,000.

The marriages of Madonna and film director Guy Ritchie, Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren, and Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones pushed up the cost of celebrity marriages to $1.5 million.

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes upped the ante to $2,000,000.

Now comes the politicians’s daughter as celebrity. According to news reports, Chelsea Clinton’s wedding to investment banker Mark Mezvinsky on July 31 is costing papa Bill $3,000,000. According to the London Daily Mail, the total price tag will be about $5,000,000. The additional $2,000,000 apparently is being laid off on US Taxpayers as Secret Service costs for protecting former president Clinton and foreign heads of state, such as the presidents of France and Italy and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who are among the 500 invited guests along with Barbara Streisand, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Ted Turner, and Clinton friend and donor Denise Rich, wife of the Clinton-pardoned felon.

Before we attend to the poor political judgment of such an extravagant affair during times of economic distress, let us wonder aloud where a poor boy who became governor of Arkansas and president of the United States got such a fortune that he can blow $3,000,000 on a wedding.

The American people did not take up a collection to reward him for his service to them.
Where did the money come from? Who was he really serving during his eight years in office?

How did Tony Blair and his wife, Cherrie, end up with an annual income of ten million pounds (approximately $15 million dollars) as soon as he left office? Who was Blair really serving?

These are not polite questions, and they are infrequently asked.

While Chelsea’s wedding guests eat a $11,000 wedding cake and admire $250,000 floral displays, Lisa Roberts in Ohio is struggling to raise contributions for her food pantry in order to feed 3,000 local people, whose financial independence was destroyed by investment bankers, job offshoring, and unaffordable wars. The Americans dependent on Lisa Roberts’ food pantry are living out of vans and cars. Those with a house roof still over their heads are packed in as many as 14 per household according to the Chillicothe Gazette in Ohio.

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26063.htm