Below:

• The Real Hunger Games - Tell Congress Don't Cut SNAP Benefits

• Syria Discussion at UC Thursday Night

• Estimated Billing Practices by Mon Power or Potomac Edison Under Investigation  

Your help is needed:  Stop the House bill to deny SNAP/Food Stamps to 4-6 million people.
Call your Rep, toll-free:  866-456-8824 today.

The U.S. House is expected to take up a bill this week that would cut SNAP by $40 billion over ten years.  Every Member of Congress needs to hear that such an extreme proposal is simply beyond the pale.  Food stamps have had bipartisan support for decades.  (See Stop Playing Politics with Hunger by former Senators Bob Dole and Tom Daschle in the Los Angeles Times as an expression of that bipartisan support.)  But now extremist members want to slash SNAP and hurt millions of children and their families, seniors, and poor adults without children.

Call 866-456-8824, listen to the recorded message and enter your zip code.  You'll be connected right to your Representative's office.  Let them know you're a constituent; tell them your name and the town you are calling from.  Tell them:

As your constituent, I urge you to vote against the extreme nutrition-only farm bill which would cut $40 billion from SNAP and deny assistance to 4-6 million poor people.  This bill would be devastating to struggling Americans; by making more people hungry, it goes against many years of bipartisan support.

What's bad about this bill?  A  few points:  the bill would deny SNAP to millions of poor, jobless adults without children whose income averages only about one-fifth of the poverty line - about $2,500 a year.  It would also end benefits for a whole family if a parent is not working at least 20 hours per week, even if her/his child is only one year old, and even if unemployment remains high. And the bill gives states a REWARD for cutting off families - the state gets 50 percent of the reduced costs. Hundreds of thousands of children will lose free school meals. For decades, there has been bipartisan support for making sure that poor people can get the modest but vital SNAP benefits.  You can help preserve a bipartisan majority that says that making millions hungrier is just too extreme.  And let House leaders know that they can't be so reckless with people's lives just to satisfy their most extreme members. Check out this op-ed from Ruth Marcus in The Washington Post for more information.

Click here for talking points on the how proposals in the nutrition-only bill would impact SNAP participants.

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Panelists at UC to discuss the world's response to Syria

Please Attend:

Five panelists will speak about the world's response to the crisis in Syria during a discussion at the University of Charleston Thursday night at 7:00 p.m. The panel discussion will be moderated by UC President Ed Welch and is being held in the Appalachian Room on the second floor of the Geary Student Union.  The panelists include Haris Tarin, director of the Washington, D.C. office of the Muslim Public Affairs Council; Rev. Jim Lewis, a retired Episcopal minister and one of the original founders of West Virginia Patriots for Peace; and Brad Deel, director of the political science program at the University of Charleston and a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve... Dr. Abdul Zanabli of Charleston helped to organize the event.   

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 Estimated billing practices by Mon Power and Potomac Edison Utilities under investigation

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