Article of the Week

Left Margin: The Real Issues: Hunger, Housing, Oil... and the War.

by Carl Bloice, The Black Commentator.

The news that Spam (the kind you eat) sales were on the rise should have been enough of a tip-off, but with sales at Starbucks slackening you knew things were getting bad. The number of people applying for food stamps - by people who would never have been expected to before recently - is soaring, as is the price of the most common things we eat. And now on top of everything else some of those items, like rice, are becoming scarce.

“Millions of poor Americans risk going hungry if food prices continue to rise and food agencies struggle to cope with rising costs, dwindling resources and a huge increase in demand,” Chris Bryant wrote in the Financial Times last week. “Already more and more poor people in the US are turning to charity and government assistance as they struggle with rising food costs and soaring fuel bills. Even some stores are restricting bulk rice purchases as the grain reached a fresh high yesterday.” “That's the canary in the coal mine,” Laurie True, executive director of the California Women Infants and Children Program Association, said about the rash of new people seeking assistance. “These are people that don't normally claim benefits.”

As if all that weren’t bad enough the New York Times reported April 25 that “After struggling with soaring heating costs through the winter, millions of Americans are behind on electric and gas bills, and a record number of families could face energy shut-offs over the next two months, according to state energy officials and utilities around the country.”

“The escalating costs of heating oil, propane and kerosene, most commonly used in the Northeast, have posed the greatest burdens, officials say, but natural gas and electricity prices have also climbed at a time when low-end incomes are stagnant and prices have also jumped for food and gasoline,” the paper said. (more...)