First Rangel is endorsed by Larry Seabrook, and now John Liu.  

At first glance, food doesn’t even need to be in this series of posts. For most of human history, getting enough food was the primary preoccupation of human beings. In 1909, food accounted for 27.3% of the spending of the average U.S. household, according to Consumer Expenditure Survey data cited here. The figure was 43.0% for “normal families” in 1901. Today, food only accounts for 12.7% of the spending of the average American household. That share has been going down, and the share of total spending on housing, transportation, and health care has been going up, as food has become cheaper and cheaper. And 5.2% of total spending is for food away from home, which is money spent not so much on food as on people who cook it, serve it, clean up and provide a place to eat it. Even the 7.5% of spending on food at home has a substantial non-food component, in partial or full meal preparation and packaging. Increasingly, American’s rely on ready to eat, or heat and serve, food even at home. But for those who make cheaper and healthier choices, the variety of foods in a typical supermarket – compared with 40 years ago – is tremendous. Everything from a variety of whole grain breads to yogurt to 1% and 2% milk, none of which were widely available in the 1960s.

Despite the abundance, if not overabundance, of low cost food, however, “food issues” continue to be raised in the national dialogue. The food aid industry continues to assert that many Americans are going hungry, despite a “food stamp” program that is an absolute entitlement and would seem to make this unlikely. In 2009, according to a survey cited by the now-cancelled Statistical Abstract of the United States, 14.7% of U.S. households were “food insecure,” up from 11.0% in 2005. At the same time, the U.S. is suffering from a soaring rate of obesity, a malady that is spreading throughout the world as the U.S. way of life is copied. Total calories in the U.S. food marketplace went from 3,200 calories per day in the 1970s to 3,900 in 2005, although much of this is wasted. Blame has been cast on “industrial food” and on “food deserts,” places where full service grocery stores are in short supply. But is there really a problem? And if so what is it?

Ed Towns endorses Charles Barron.

One might understand this as spite, but Charles Barron hates hates hates Ed Towns so much that last year Barron’s wife voted for Vito Lopez's candidate for an open District Leadership just to slap ET one upside the face.

DAVID STOROBIN (5/31/12): "For me, this was never personal."

DAVID STOROBIN