One marker of how desperately we need MAJOR change

[Mairead]

Also in the line is Robert Lent, a veteran, too, of World War II and the Great Depression. He waited in food lines as a boy.

“We’re doing things that we did before food stamps. Before we had various programs and quite frankly it’s a little bit hard to watch sometimes,” says Bob Garbo, head of the local affiliate of the non-profit group America’s Second Harvest. The food being distributed in his line comes mostly from government programs and from private donations.

On that day, the line grew so long that they brought in an extra truck — they hadn’t done that before. But since 1999, the number of people getting emergency food aid in Ohio alone has grown from 2 million to 4.5 million. There are a lot of reasons: housing and medical costs are up. Unemployment is up, and many jobs that are available are minimum wage.

...

The key issue is the working poor. Forty percent of the families in these lines have one parent working. Rick Payne is working full time at a big home improvement store. But he’s supporting a wife and four kids on $7.50 an hour. When we sat down with Payne, his wife, Alexis, and 12-year-old, Brandon, they had $17 to their name.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/08/60II/main535732.shtml

[Brucey]

1. Even worse news:

Most of our government leaders don't care. Almost all of our corporate leaders don't care. Many of our educational leaders don't care. Those in power simply grin.

[Padraig18]

2. It's SAD!

Our ministerial Alliance runs a soup kitchen out of our parish hall that provides breakfast to school kids, a hot lunch, an after-school snack & place to 'hang out', a 'sack supper' AND a food bank. We live in a reasonably 'prosperous' agricultural community in a part of IL that has luckily escaped the worst effects of the recession. Nonetheless, the number of meals served has risen from 9900/month last September to 11,200 this September, and the number of families with at least one full-time working parent served by the food bank has risen from 410/month last September to almost 600/month this September.

Good GOD, don't those monsters in the WH SEE what's happening?