Tuesday, December 13, 2011

There are new hungry and new poor people in America who used to have lots of food for holidays and give generous checks to the poor in the past. Not anymore. Their big suburban homes are in foreclosure, every time you go to the supermarket the prices go up and the size of the box goes down. They have lost their jobs.
The fact is that one in six Americans do not know where their next meal will come from.
In Forsyth Counties many subdivisions near Atlanta look great with large homes where the average homeowner earns $88, 000 per year. The highest in Georgia and the 13th highest in America. Now for more families there, the prosperity has ended. They lost their jobs, their savings are gone when they tried to make the ever inflating mortgage payments, so foreclosure is on its way.
Keeping food on the table is a struggle. At food pantries they are noticing that those who used to donate are now on the receiving line. Two or three years ago their hunger would not exist. Nearly 15% of Americans are now receiving food stamps. It is a record level high. 49 Million say they are having trouble putting food on the table.
At the high school 8% of the students get free lunch . That is double the amount of students in need from three years ago. Although It is discrete, the high schoolers know they are getting the free food and they are embarrassed and unwilling to reveal their plight to friends.
There is also a new group of needy people. The War Veterans. In the past If you were a veteran you would get discounts, a break on your mortgage and even entire communities built modest homes for them to start a new life at home. Not anymore. Most of the new veterans come home missing limbs and or full of nightmares. All sorts of psychological problems. They come home in far worse shape than when they left. They come home to no home and no job poor and hungry too.
Then there is the elderly who thought they did everything right in their lives only within the last three years to find their so called safely put away monies for their retirement gone because of fraudulent money funds, They are hungry and poor and too feeble to even look for a handout.
Today more and more people are silently seeking a charity who will help put oil in their tanks to heat their homes this winter. You can see people driving in expensive cars up to a food pantry seeking a box of donated food. The car loan companies just haven’t repossessed it yet. These are the faces of the new poor and hungry.
When President Obama was elected a few years back, millions of people cheered and he represented the new hope in America. He even looked new. Young and black. His eloquent and moving speeches that got him elected always had the word “change” in it. He even had that word staring at us while he got the crowd up and cheering.
Yes, Change. Who knew it meant Change for the worst!

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