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Black Commentator
May 1 , 2008 - Issue 275
<http://www.blackcommentator.com/275/275_lm_hunger_housing_heating.html>

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.

Meanwhile, a recent Reuters report suggests that far
more people are going to be losing their homes than we
have been led to believe. Indeed, the projection, if
accurate, is terrifying. A group of analysts from the
Credit Suisse said last week that if U.S. home prices
continue to fall and credit remains tight, 6.5 million
homes could face foreclosure by 2013. That would amount
to 12.7 percent of all mortgages compared with a
foreclosure rate of 2.04 percent in the last quarter of
2007, they said. Falling home prices have made an
increasing number of U.S. homeowners more vulnerable to
default, the report said. Nearly a third of subprime
borrowers owed more than their home was worth at the
end of last year, and that figure will double to 63
percent in 2009. Home prices are expected to decline 10
percent this year and cease falling after another
decline of 5 percent next year. Last week, Rep. Barney
Frank, chair of the House Financial Services Committee,
warned that unless Congress comes up with new measures
to deal with the mortgage crisis, the looming US
recession could be 'longer and deeper' than expected.

The people who have a fuller picture of the economic
state of the union aren't about to tell us how bad
things really are. If they can help it, they are
certainly not going to offer a negative prognosis even
if they are convinced one is warranted. In fact, the
current crop of political candidates have been warned
not to paint too dismal a picture as it might prompt
panic selling or hoarding. There is even the problem of
panic saving. If most people use the few hundred
dollars in this summer's tax rebate allotments offered
by the Bush Administration and Congress to pay down
their credit card debt the chief beneficiaries will be
Visa and MasterCard and there will be little stimulus
to the economy.

However, there are increasing signs that working people
aren't buying the current economic reality show: the
prices of gas at the pump, salad oil in the
supermarket, and a rise in the number of people not
finding work have an effect. Consumer confidence is at
a 26 year low.

All this is directly connected with this year's
Presidential election contest. 'Perhaps the candidates
are afraid the American people can't handle the truth
about what it would take to meet the nation's economic
challenges,' the Times said editorially April 25. 'Or
perhaps they are underestimating those challenges. In
either case, it's hardly confidence-inspiring at a time
of war and economic crisis.'

Following the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania,
Boston Globe columnist Derrick Jackson pointed out that
contender Barack Obama got the most votes from people
who said the Iraq war was the most important issue.'
'But that only accounted for 27 percent of the voters,'
he wrote 'Double that said the economy was the most
important issue. Clinton won among those voters, 58
percent to 42 percent. Clinton had a double-digit
victory among voters who earned between $15,000 and
$75,000. Such voters made up 54 percent of the voters
in Pennsylvania.'

'The big issue in this campaign is the economy and
jobs. But if you were to ask most voters how Senator
Obama plans to fight for them on this crucial matter,
you're likely to get a blank stare,' wrote Times
columnist Bob Herbert last Saturday. 'He should be
pounding that message home with a jackhammer. Give the
voters an economic program to wrap their arms around.
Let them know: `I'm for you! And this is what we're
going to do!" Sounds like reasonable advice.

As I listen to and read the campaign speeches it's
clearly not what's happening and I think that's just
what those who don't want us to think about the
economic pain - and how the way the wars in the Middle
East hamper our ability to do anything meaningful about
it - would have it. That's the reason for the
deliberate effort to turn the contest into one about
race. While the media concentrates its attention on
Obama's pastor's clumsy - but not entirely inaccurate -
views, and the candidate's clumsy - but not entirely
inaccurate - sociological take, Sen. Hillary Clinton
gets attention for her views on the economy. It's not
much to hug; she's still in the trust-me-I-feel-your-
pain mode with nothing to offer that in a meaningful
way confronts the seriousness of the situation.

And John McCain? He seems to be trying to look like he
cares. But Times columnist Gail Collins got his number
right: McCain 'the guy, you may remember, who's going
to be the Republican presidential nominee - has been
visiting the poor lately. Appalachia, New Orleans, Rust
Belt factory towns. This is a good thing, and we
applaud his efforts to show compassion and interest in
people for whom his actual policies are of no use
whatsoever.'
_________________

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Carl Bloice
is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National
Coordinating Committee of the Committees of
Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly
worked for a healthcare union.