IF the 1980s television show “Dukes Hazards” resident bad guy, Jefferson Davis “J.D.” Hogg also known as Boss Hogg, was a real person —he would be George Ervin “Sonny” Perdue III also known as Sonny, the current Secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
The USDA doesn’t just deal with farms and agriculture. It also administers the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as Food Stamps and Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).
Like Boss Hogg, Boss Sonny is one of the most wealthy and questionably ethical men in his little Georgian town. They both share the same penchant for Southern revisionism and the Confederacy.
According to a 2017 Think Progress article by Josh Israel, when Perdue was the governor of Georgia, he permanently made April “Confederate History and Heritage Month” and issued proclamations that honored “the more than 90,000 brave men and women who served the Confederate States of America.”
Then finished that proclamations off with “[M]any African-Americans both free and slave” voluntarily served in the Confederate armed forces.”
That’s not what happened, according to EVERYWHERE.
For years, Perdue was a Southern Democrat, also know as a Dixiecrat, because of his resentment of Lincoln issuing the Emancipation Proclamation as a Republican, even though he supported all the most racist heinous Republican Party policies.
Dixiecrats resent Lincoln taking away their enslaved Black people property also known in your US high school history books as their slaves. Yes, that is a REAL sick and petty thought process in the Deep South.
While Boss Hogg wore a Klu Klux Klanish white suit, white boots, and white cowboy hat, Boss Sonny used policy to convey the same Klu Kluxy vibe.
The USDA has 65 percent of its funding explicitly earmarked for its hunger-fighting programs SNAP and WIC. From day one of Perdue’s appointment, he tried to implement cuts.
Last year, Perdue proposed three rules— remove Able Body Working Adults, limit the types of non-cash benefits for TANF (welfare) recipients, change the methodology for how SNAP amount amounts are calculated —these rules would block access to SNAP and make it more difficult to obtain and administer these crucial benefits. Owing to COVID, he was not able to implement those rules. If not for COVID and judges who disallowed the implementation of those rules, 3.7 million people would have been removed from Food Stamps.
Almost 4 million people would have gone hungry.
The funding was there. SNAP is an entitlement program, so he had no reason to implement those rules.
He did it to be cruel and racist, because those are benefits that Black and Brown people can access, unlike the farm subsidies that overwhelmingly benefit white farmers in the Midwest and the South.
Subsidies like the $14 billion he gave to big agriculture via the CARES Act some of which helped to fund the failed “Farms to Families Box Program” instead of radically expanding Food Stamps as he should have.
President-elect Joe Biden has nominated former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack to succeed Perdue as new Secretary of the USDA. While farmers, ranchers, and grain elevators matter, it is essential to note that the USDA’s entitlement funding is to help families in need by alleviating hunger NOT to accommodate agribusiness lobbyists and corporate interests.
I hope this time around, Vilsack remembers that Midwesterners are supposed to be the nice Americans.
Teex Lo