Donating leftover food to the poor was 'not allowed' at the Democratic National Convention

Monday, August 01, 2016 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: Democrats, Hypocrisy, food donations

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(NaturalNews) Finding hypocrisy in a politician is nothing new, but finding it in an entire political platform and ideology can be breathtaking.

As you are likely aware, the Democratic National Convention took place last week, in which Hillary Clinton became her party's opponent against Republican nominee Donald J. Trump. You may also know that Democrats pride themselves on being the most charitable, the most sympathetic and the most generous when it comes to "the poor."

On the opening day of the DNC, the party tossed out leftover food from a welcome party for delegates at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which angered at least one delegate.

"I was a hungry child. Went to bed hungry many a night," Timothy Baumgardner, a Washington state delegate, told the New York Post. "I fed people from the garbage."

Baumgardner says he asked the caterer of the event if the leftovers could be donated to poor and hungry Philadelphians, but was told that such a donation was not permitted.

"Sad," the delegate replied.

Not living up to the platform

That refusal to allow excess food to go to poor, hungry residents would likely upset officials at the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger, which claims on its website that "more than a quarter of Philadelphia residents live in poverty, one of the highest rates in the nation." The organization further stated that, according to 2008 figures, 30 percent of those hungry were children, while 6 percent were older adults. In addition, the group said that hunger was not limited by race: 14 percent are white, 18 percent are black and 25 percent are Latino.

Things had not improved by this year, either. In fact, as reported by Philadelphia Public Schools, rates of poverty and hunger rose in Philly, and in fact in Pennsylvania in general; 40 percent of those in the city who receive food assistance are children.

"Poverty and its byproduct, food insecurity, are getting worse in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, according to federal and state data. The region's children are heavily affected," says the school district's publication, The Notebook.

"The state has more than 1.8 million recipients of food stamps, or SNAP. More than a quarter of them, or 500,000, are in Philadelphia. That is a third of the city's population," the publication said.

In fact, on the surface, the national Democratic Party and many of its members appear to "care more" than Republicans about a whole host of things: poverty, the environment, children, etc. But the reality is just the opposite, if actions speak louder than words.

NOT the party of minorities, women, the poor or tolerance

As evidenced by a batch of emails stolen by hackers and leaked to the whistleblower website Wikileaks, DNC officials under former head Debbie Wasserman Schulz, a U.S. congresswoman from Florida, made disparaging remarks about gay people, African Americans and women.

As reported by the UK's Daily Mail, some of the most damaging of the 20,000 emails, included staffers making fun of a black woman's name, the creation of a phony Craigslist page for women who wanted to work for Trump and trading favors with party superdelegates – most of whom pledged early on to support Clinton over her chief rival, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

The emails also clearly expressed favoritism for Clinton over Sanders, a charge he leveled early on in the fight for his party's nomination. Since the revelations, Wasserman Schulz has resigned as head of the DNC, and thousands of pro-Sanders supporters have flocked to the convention to protest.

In one email exchange, DNC staffer Scott Comer and an employee at a consulting group make fun of an administrative assistant at Haddad Brands named LaQueenia Gibson.

"I'm going to have LaQueenia send out some options for next week," an executive from Haddad wrote to DNC staff members. "Hopefully we can all get on the phone and reenergize this event."

Comer then forwarded the email to an employee at Tipah Consulting, adding: "Just kill me now."

The consulting group employee responded: "LaQueenia is a NAME! I'm sorry, boo. I hope you got a raise with this title."

The full Daily Mail piece is here.

Democrats are also known as the party of the environment, but as The Hill notes, most Democrats are just as on board with fracking as are Republicans.

"If fracking has come to the forefront of the 2016 campaign it's because both Democrats and Republicans strongly support it – and activists trying to ban fracking are finding themselves very much on the fringe," the paper reported on its website.

Sources:

NYPost.com

ReadyNetGo.net

TheNotebook.org

DailyMail.co.uk

TheHill.com