Why is anything anything?!
Meals on wheels isn’t strictly about income though. I knew an older woman who could barely walk from one side of the room to another without being exhausted. She owned her home, lived on her dead husband’s life insurance and was somewhat okay. She paid for that service though, don’t know how much, because she couldn’t get around to go grocery shopping. Without that service she would be forced out of her home into some sort of assisted living facility… instead combine with meals on wheels and a cleaning service and neighbors, she stayed in years long before she passed.
So you tell me, did she need the service; I think she did. And yes I know it’s more than just delivering meals to poor old people.
More.
[quote]
I was as surprised as anyone to discover that I was Real News. Here I thought that I was toiling away in the Dank Cesspool of the Mainstream Media, but all along I was a Trusted News Source, just like Breitbart.com! I just needed to BELIEVE in myself more.
The White House believes in me, and the White House is not full of careless people who skim headlines looking for the ones that sound sort of positive and then send them out in their daily briefing newsletter hoping for the best haaa ha ha nope ha ha these are the minds who control war and peace and the budget and things ha ha ha it’s fine ha ha oh god help.
I honestly thought that, no matter the headline, there was no way that anyone could think this piece was anything other than me yelling at the budget for a number of paragraphs — the last words were “RAW POWER! HARD RAW POWER GRRRRRR HISSS POW!” — but I have always overestimated people’s desire to read things I write. But the White House, as Noel Coward once said of himself, can take any amount of criticism so long as it is unadulterated praise.[/quote]
Meals on Wheels is also about visiting having a few minutes of friendly conversation. I remember my Grandmother used to get up and get dressed just because she knew the MoW person would be coming at a certain time.
Meals on Wheels is totally awesome and widely loved by many. It is an easy to love social service. I think it should be funded until the meteor/giant sunspot/AIs-run-amok kill us all.
I was only countering Nesrie’s argument that the way you measure their success is just “are the people they are serving starving?” There are obviously numerous other metrics you can use to study their effectiveness. And I hope they are thinking about these things. I imagine they are, even, but I don’t know. But if someone is studying them and says they aren’t working out, then your first response shouldn’t be a knee-jerk “but they sound good”. We can look at it scientifically, instead. We can ask, “Why aren’t they working out?”
Of course, there’s next to zero chance that the administration actually looked at anything like this or generally have any idea how well MoW is doing. They probably read a Breitbart article about the mean old people stealing coal workers’ babies and threw it on the “cuts” pile.
It’s so ridiculous. Meals on Wheels and school meal programs are backed by reams of data showing the comparatively minimal direct cost to taxpayers is far outweighed by what they save in the long run, not to mention the good they do for the recipients.
[quote]
CONCLUSIONS:
Home-delivered meal programs improve diet quality and increase nutrient intakes among participants. These programs are also aligned with the federal cost-containment policy to rebalance long-term care away from nursing homes to home- and community-based services by helping older adults maintain independence and remain in their homes and communities as their health and functioning decline.[/quote]
[quote]
Evidence on dietary behaviors and academic achievement
■■ Student participation in the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) School Breakfast
Program (SBP) is associated with increased academic grades and standardized test scores,
reduced absenteeism, and improved cognitive performance (e.g., memory).3, 5–11
■■ Skipping breakfast is associated with decreased cognitive performance (e.g., alertness, attention,
memory, processing of complex visual display, problem solving) among students.8, 9, 11–17
■■ Lack of adequate consumption of specific foods, such as fruits, vegetables, or dairy products, is
associated with lower grades among students.[/quote]
Awesome. I knew someone would be measuring their efficacy. I hate it when conservatives spout off shit about how such-and-such is a “bureaucratic nightmare” or full of waste when they legitimately know nothing about the service/agency/program except it is funded by tax dollars. Most government programs have oversight. We generally know what kind of waste is happening. The idea that government is running amok spending our tax dollars to line their own pockets usually exists at two levels, the military and the politicians themselves, not the agencies/social programs.
I don’t know which thread I said it in, but I literally have never seen a serious study say otherwise for either food program. I guess the NIH paper I linked for Meals on Wheels references two(!) that are contrary, but the overall conclusion is still that Meals on Wheels is worth it when measured against the cost savings of nursing the elderly that otherwise would not be able to live on their own. And I dare anyone to find a teacher that will say hungry students learn lessons better.
If you make a federal budget plan that cuts those two programs, be honest. Don’t try to say some stupid crap like “there’s no evidence” that either program works. Eat your shit and admit you don’t care about the elderly or the poor.
Why should they admit that when they can just say something that’s blatantly and provably false and have their supporters eat it up anyway?
That’s the beauty of the Republican party these days! There is literally zero incentive to tell the truth, be honest, or be decent. Their voters don’t want that shit!
Well, the good news here is that this budget proposal is not even flying with Trump supporters.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-budget-appalachia-idUSKBN16N2VF
Which is why NIH is also on the block. Don’t want uncomfortable truths accidentally leaking now.
Don’t remind me. My job is pretty much 100% NIH funded. If they get cuts, who knows what the NIH will do to make up the shortfall. :/
Not that anyone will ever actually learn not to vote against their own interests, when blatant racism and nationalism are the real reason for Trump being in office:
Did you see the metrics they were using to consider it a failed service? Or I guess to use their words, didn’t produce results. What results do you think the Trump admin is looking for?
No, as I said, I don’t think they actually looked at a single metric before they said that.
So if you know they didn’t look at real metrics. And I am not sure if they looked at any real metrics or not, why do you think they didn’t look for some indication that Meals on Wheels prevented starvation if they did look? When they say it doesn’t produce any results, all I can do is guess, and since the goals of Meal on Wheels is more than just keeping bellies full, and if you looked at rate of hunger between the elderly in an area with the program and an area without… I wouldn’t actually expect to see a change. Would you?
I really think you missed the point of my initial post.
You responded to me, so I think you misunderstood what I was saying. Especially the question mark where I am trying to guess as to what they used to consider it a failed program or one that produced no results.
Thanks Obama…
So, I lost track. Does Trump’s budget proposal actually include significant cuts to Meals On Wheels?
Kevin Drum says it’s a misunderstanding
[quote]The Department of Housing and Urban Development runs a program called Community Development Block Grants. It’s exactly what it sounds like. It provides funds to states that they can use for a variety of approved purposes.
Last year, the Obama administration recommended cutting its budget from $3 billion to $2.8 billion.
This year, Mulvaney proposed that the program be eliminated entirely[/quote]
[quote]
Some bright bulb noticed that a few states use a small portion of their HUD CDBG money to fund Meals on Wheels. Actually, small isn’t the right word. Microscopic is the the right word. Elderly nutrition programs like Meals on Wheels receive about $700 million from other government sources—most of which aren’t targeted one way or the other in the Trump budget—but hardly anything from CDBG grants.[/quote]
[quote]
The vast majority of federal funding for Meals on Wheels—which comes via HHS’s Administration on Aging, not HUD’s CDBGs—remains intact.[/quote]