They think they've had a rough morning. But it's Annie and I who've been dealing with their pee and taking them out — six times since about 7:30 (it's 10:30 now). Such is the dogs' life.
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The Suburban Newspaper Association just released this year’s contest winners. I took first in opinion column again for Dispatches. I’m allowed to crow about it, right? Other Packet Publications winners are:
Congrats, colleagues.
The first thing I have to say is that I can’t wait for the weather to break so I can get outside. I realized that today, pushing five miles on the treadmill. There is only so much political news one can watch with the sound off (I was listening to Glenn Greenwald’s podcast on the iPod and then some music), though the chattering classes may be best watched in silence.
My fiver today left me in a pretty good mood about my running, providing me with some much-needed insentive to keep pushing forward. It was the first five in a while and proved to me I could do it at a time when my runs have rarely been longer than four miles, rarely more than three when you get right down to it.
The Democrats — led by Assemblyman Wayne DeAngelo, of Hamilton (pictured) — are pushing a modest measure that could help provide a few extra dollars to the state’s food banks and maybe help keep them in food.
The bill, which would establish a “Community Food Pantry Fund” in the state Department of the Treasury, is a stop-gap measure that should help, but fails to address the larger problems of economic inequality and food insecurity in New Jersey.
That said, giving taxpayers the opportunity to “voluntarily donate a portion of their income tax refund” to the new fund seems sensible. Money donated to the fund, according to a press release from the Assembly Majority office, “would be distributed to community food pantries through the state’s food purchase program. All the money is to be used exclusively to buy food.”
The bill passed the Assembly and awaits review by the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee.
“The global economic crisis is hitting our state hard and may get worse,” DeAngelo (D-Mercer) said. “People who never thought they would ever visit a food pantry are now relying on them to put food on the table for their families. These are tough times, and anything we can do to make it easier for people to help those less fortunate is a good thing.”
Expecially when there are an “estimated 250,000 new clients … seeking help this year from New Jersey’s food banks.”
That represents a 25 percent increase, and that increase comes with a 20 percent decrease in food supplies and donations.
We are hearing a lot about the impact that the recession is having and will have on middle-class homeowners and workers, but there is an entire class of people who we’re not hearing about — the homeless.
I mentioned them in a post the other day, focusing on some anecdotal evidence that we are seeing an increase in the number of people on the streets (which does not include a whole subset of people who may live on relatives’ couches or move from place to place to keep themselves sheltered).
Here is more evidence: A story from MSNBC on the closing of a Seattle homeless shelter run by CityTeam Ministries, based in San Jose, Calif., described the confluence of factors that is contributing to an awful trend.
The CityTeam closure is a piece in the expanding problem of homelessness across the nation: Shelters and related services for the homeless are facing funding shortfalls as the downturn takes its toll on state budgets and corporate donations. And while individual donors in many cases are keeping up gifts — or even digging a little deeper for charities that help with urgent needs like food and shelter — the service providers say they are faced with a rapidly growing demand from people losing jobs and homes in the economic crisis.
It makes serving a particularly vulnerable population difficult.
“A downturn in (overall) funding in this case is accompanied by a surge in demand, so a homeless shelter, food pantry, or job-training program is going to feel it first,” says Chuck Bean, executive director of Nonprofit Roundtable of Greater Washington, in the District of Columbia. “Even if they have 100 percent of their budget compared to last year, they now see a 50 percent surge in demand. Then (they) get into the tough decisions: Do you thin the soup, or shorten the line?”
Consider the facts:
Shelters across the country report that more people are seeking emergency shelter and more are being turned away. In a report published in December, 330 school districts identified the same number or more homeless students in the first few months of the school year than they identified in the entire previous year. Meantime, demand is sharply up at soup kitchens, an indication of deepening hardship and potential homelessness.
“Everything we are seeing is indicating an increase,” says Laurel Weir,
policy director at the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. “And
homelessness tends to lag the economy. So we’re probably seeing the tip of the
iceberg here.”
And it is likely to get worse, because the recession is tied to the collapse of the housing market and the foreclosure crisis.
In the foreclosure crisis, the people being displaced from homes won’t likely be on the street immediately, explains Michael Stoops, director of National Coalition for the Homeless.
“The people who have lost homes or tenants in homes that were foreclosed … have downsized, and if that doesn’t work they will move in with family and friends,” says Stoops. “After a while, they will move into their RV in a state campground. The next step is a car. And the worst nightmare for a working, middle-class person or even a wealthy person who has never experienced homelessness is knocking on a shelter door.”
That’s why the most important aspect of any stimulus is not tax cuts or even infrastructure work (as important as that is), but spending money on things like food stamps, unemployment benefits, health care and other elements of the social safety net. We need to keep people from drowning in the bad economy by tossing them life-preservers — and then we can get on with the difficult work of repairing the leaks.
