Food insecurity in America continued to rise last year, and participation in the food stamp program is approaching record highs, according to data released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Monday (Nov. 17).

In 2007, 11.1 percent of U.S. households reported food insecurity — what used to be labeled as “hunger” — up from 10.9 percent in 2006. About 4 percent of households were severely food insecure, meaning one or more adults had to adjust their eating habits because the household lacked resources for food.

The food stamp program now has more than 30 million people enrolled, an increase of 9.5 percent from 2006, and half of all babies receive supplemental nutrition from the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, according to the report.

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But even as markets tumbled, analysts saw few signs of capitulation, that final burst of panicked selling that typically marks a market bottom. If anything, Wednesday’s new lows are a sign that Wall Street has farther to fall.

“The market is still anticipating that we have not seen the worst,” said Ryan Larson, head equity trader at Voyageur Asset Management.

After precipitous declines this autumn, Wall Street had spent the past weeks testing its yearly lows by dipping sharply, only to rebound late in the day. The testing and retesting prompted some optimists to hope that the markets had finally found a foothold.

But Wednesday’s drop proved them wrong.

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It is not wrong to ask for government help, but the automakers should come up with a win-win proposition. I believe the federal government should invest substantially more in basic research ”” on new energy sources, fuel-economy technology, materials science and the like ”” that will ultimately benefit the automotive industry, along with many others. I believe Washington should raise energy research spending to $20 billion a year, from the $4 billion that is spent today. The research could be done at universities, at research labs and even through public-private collaboration. The federal government should also rectify the imbedded tax penalties that favor foreign carmakers.

But don’t ask Washington to give shareholders and bondholders a free pass ”” they bet on management and they lost.

The American auto industry is vital to our national interest as an employer and as a hub for manufacturing. A managed bankruptcy may be the only path to the fundamental restructuring the industry needs. It would permit the companies to shed excess labor, pension and real estate costs. The federal government should provide guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing and assure car buyers that their warranties are not at risk.

In a managed bankruptcy, the federal government would propel newly competitive and viable automakers, rather than seal their fate with a bailout check.

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This recession will probably have its own social profile. In particular, it’s likely to produce a new social group: the formerly middle class. These are people who achieved middle-class status at the tail end of the long boom, and then lost it. To them, the gap between where they are and where they used to be will seem wide and daunting.

The phenomenon is noticeable in developing nations. Over the past decade, millions of people in these societies have climbed out of poverty. But the global recession is pushing them back down. Many seem furious with democracy and capitalism, which they believe led to their shattered dreams. It’s possible that the downturn will produce a profusion of Hugo Chávezes. It’s possible that the Obama administration will spend much of its time battling a global protest movement that doesn’t even exist yet.

In this country, there are also millions of people facing the psychological and social pressures of downward mobility.

In the months ahead, the members of the formerly middle class will suffer career reversals. Paco Underhill, the retailing expert, tells me that 20 percent of the mall storefronts could soon be empty. That fact alone means that thousands of service-economy workers will experience the self-doubt that goes with unemployment.

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While Wagoner testified, his G4 private jet was parked at Dulles airport. It is just one of a fleet of luxury jets owned by GM that continues to ferry executives around the world despite the company’s dire financial straits.

“This is a slap in the face of taxpayers,” said Tom Schatz, President of Citizens Against Government Waste. “To come to Washington on a corporate jet, and asking for a hand out is outrageous.”

Wagoner’s private jet trip to Washington cost his ailing company an estimated $20,000 roundtrip. In comparison, seats on Northwest Airlines flight 2364 from Detroit to Washington were going online for $288 coach and $837 first class.

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Gleaming new Mercedes cars roll one by one out of a huge container ship here and onto a pier. Ordinarily the cars would be loaded on trucks within hours, destined for dealerships around the country. But these are not ordinary times.

For now, the port itself is the destination. Unwelcome by dealers and buyers, thousands of cars worth tens of millions of dollars are being warehoused on increasingly crowded port property.

And for the first time, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, and Nissan have each asked to lease space from the port for these orphan vehicles. They are turning dozens of acres of the nation’s second-largest container port into a parking lot, creating a vivid picture of a paralyzed auto business and an economy in peril.

“This is one way to look at the economy,” Art Wong, a spokesman for the port, said of the cars. “And it scares you to death.”

The picture at the top of the article says it all; see what you think.

The woman in black wanted an Islamic divorce. She told the religious judge that her husband hit her, cursed her and wanted her dead.

But her husband was opposed, and the Islamic scholar adjudicating the case seemed determined to keep the couple together. So, sensing defeat, she brought our her secret weapon: her father.

In walked a bearded man in long robes who described his son-in-law as a hot-tempered man who had duped his daughter, evaded the police and humiliated his family.

The judge promptly reversed himself and recommended divorce.

This is Islamic justice, British style. Despite a raucous national debate over the limits of religious tolerance and the pre-eminence of British law, the tenets of Shariah, or Islamic law, are increasingly being applied to everyday life in cities across the country.

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The mind boggling wealth destruction continues.

In one classroom, a group of preschool teachers squatted on the floor, pretending to be cave-dwelling hunter-gatherers. Next door, another group ended a raucous musical game by placing their tambourines and drums atop their heads.

Silly business, to be sure, but part of an agenda of utmost seriousness: To spread the word that America’s children need more time for freewheeling play at home and in their schools.

“We’re all sad, and we’re a little worried. … We’re sad about something missing in childhood,” psychologist and author Michael Thompson told 900 early childhood educators from 22 states packed into an auditorium last week.

“We have to fight back,” he declared. “We’re going to fight for play.”

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Compared with the Baby Boomers who were seniors in 1975, 12th-graders surveyed in 2006 were much more confident they’d be “very good” employees, mates and parents, and they were more self-satisfied overall, say Twenge and co-author W. Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia. Between half and two-thirds of the Gen Y teens gave themselves top ratings, compared with less than half in their parents’ generation. The report is in Psychological Science.

Boomer parents “are more likely than their parents were to praise children ”” and maybe overpraise them,” Twenge says. This can foster great expectations or perhaps even smugness about one’s chances of reaching “the stars” at work and in family life, she adds. “Their narcissism could be a recipe for depression later when things don’t work out as well as they expected.”

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Hey I admit it, since we have three dogs I am biased. But this is a wonderfully uplifting piece–watch it all.

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I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

The global financial crash is an opportunity for Christian witness in a fallen world, the Primate of the West Indies has said. Speaking to the 108th synod of the Diocese of the Bahamas on Oct 26 at Christ Church Cathedral in Nassau, Archbishop Drexel Gomez said “the short-term difficulties that now confront us may be God’s means of illuminating the silver lining which is now ours to grasp.”

The senior primate of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Gomez steps down from office on Dec 31. In his final diocesan synod address he called upon lawmakers to forge a common front against the economic slump.

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Clergy and congregants from more than 40 states gathered in front of the Department of Treasury on Tuesday to pray for Secretary Henry Paulson and members of Congress to put an end to the home foreclosure crisis.

PICO, a network of faith-based community organizations that helps provide affordable housing, is demanding that the Treasury require all banks receiving a chunk of the federal bailout package to adopt systematic loan modifications that could keep 2 million people from losing their homes, they said.

“We want them to look at the bigger picture. Don’t just look at Wall Street, look at Main Street. Look at the man next door who is working hard and really paying taxes,” said Marvin Webb, the assistant pastor of Peniel Full Gospel Baptist Church in El Sobrante, Calif. “We are asking the secretary and Congress to keep people in their homes.”

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For millions of years, invisible streams of water have run deep in the earth below Manhattan at a constant temperature of 65 degrees, a source of energy that seems beyond exhaustion ”” and beyond reach. But eight months ago, a seminary in Chelsea began to pump water from those streams to heat its buildings in the winter and cool them in the summer.

“It’s forever noiseless, forever pollution-less, forever carbon-free,” said Maureen Burnley, the executive vice president of the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church.

For the seminary, and now about 60 other places in Manhattan, the unseen bounty of the earth is being harvested by geothermal pumps. Manhattan is geologically suited for these deep wells. From a depth of 1,500 to 1,800 feet, the pumps deliver the consistently moderate temperatures of underground water to the surface, where it works like a refrigerant. It carries energy.

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Almighty God, by whose grace thy servant Elizabeth of Hungary recognized and honored Jesus in the poor of this world: Grant that we, following her example, may with love and gladness serve those in any need or trouble, in the name and for the sake of Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Paralysed after being attacked by neo-Nazis, Noel Martin is planning a trip to Switzerland to commit suicide. Here, disabled broadcaster Liz Carr, who met Noel for a BBC Radio 5 Live report, writes an open letter urging him to think again.

Dear Noel,

Having met you last week, I felt the need to write and continue our discussion about your decision to end your life soon. I don’t write this as someone with strong religious or pro-life views but as another disabled person, who like you uses a wheelchair, who became disabled and who needs round-the-clock assistance in their life.

Noel, is your life really not worth living?

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Florida’s public employee pension plan has lost more than a quarter of its peak value, but Gov. Charlie Crist and other officials Monday said the fund is built for the long haul and there’s no need to panic.

They said Florida has fared no worse than most big investors — a bit better than some major Wall Street indicators — due to slumps in the stock market, real estate and other segments of the national and world economies.

The fund, which covers state and local government employees including teachers, lost $37.9 billion — 27 percent — over 13 months through Oct. 31, said Dennis MacKee, spokesman for the State Board of Administration. That dropped its value to $100.5 billion.

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Two great English Cardinals, the Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890) and Cardinal Reginald Pole (1500-1558), the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury appointed by the Holy See, were commemorated in Oxford during the evening of Monday November 17 2008.

A memorable and ecumenical reception and dinner was hosted by Oriel College to mark the completion of the publication of The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, described by scholars as the greatest collection of letters of its kind in the English language.

The series was begun by Fr Stephen Dessain, the distinguished Newman scholar and a member of Cardinal Newman’s Birmingham Oratory, during the late 1950s. Volume Xl, the first in the series to be published, and covering the start of Newman’s Catholic years, was published during 1961. Volume XXXII, the last to be published, appeared on October 9 this year, the anniversary of Newman’s reception into the Catholic Church in 1845.

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Watch it all–makes the heart glad.

When a 15-year-old comes into Wile-e’s bar looking for a cold beer, the bartender, Mike Whaley, is happy to serve it up ”” as long as a parent is there to give permission.

“If they’re 15, 16, 17, it’s fine if they want to sit down and have a few beers,” said Mr. Whaley, who owns the tavern in this small town in southern Wisconsin.

While it might raise some eyebrows in most of America, it is perfectly legal in Wisconsin. Minors can drink alcohol in a bar or restaurant in Wisconsin if they are accompanied by a parent or legal guardian who gives consent. While there is no state law setting a minimum age, bartenders can use their discretion in deciding whom to serve.

When it comes to drinking, it seems, no state keeps pace with Wisconsin. This state, long famous for its breweries, has led the nation in binge drinking in every year since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began its surveys on the problem more than a decade ago. Binge drinking is defined as five drinks in a sitting for a man, four for a woman.

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The formation of this new “province” appears to be a fait accompli. It will presumably provide formal stability for the congregations and their plants who have left TEC and the Anglican Church of Canada, as well as some kind of more easily grasped relationship with some other parts of the Anglican Communion. It is important to note, however, that such a new grouping will also not solve the problems of traditional Anglicans in North America , and that it will pose new problems to the Communion as a whole. As a member of the Covenant Design Group, committed to a particular work of providing a new framework for faithful communion life in Christ among Anglicans, I want to be clear about how the pressing forward of this new grouping within its stated terms poses some serious problems….

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The MTA’s doomsday budget will wipe out the W line, zap the Z line and ax more than 1,500 NYC Transit jobs, the Daily News has learned.

The list of bus and subway cuts the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will unveil at its monthly board meeting Thursday is extensive and potentially bruising, sources said.

Riders can expect longer waits, more-crowded rides and having to make additional transfers to get to their destinations if the draconian moves are put into effect.

“Oh, this is not good,” said Gladeys Loaiza, a housekeeper from Queens who rides the W train. “When I get on in the morning, I can’t sit now. What’s it going to be like when the W train is gone?”

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From 2005:

Ken Pool is making good money. On weekdays, he shows up at 7 a.m. at Ford Motor Co.’s Michigan Truck Plant in Wayne, signs in, and then starts working — on a crossword puzzle. Pool hates the monotony, but the pay is good: more than $31 an hour, plus benefits.

“We just go in and play crossword puzzles, watch videos that someone brings in or read the newspaper,” he says. “Otherwise, I’ve just sat.”

Pool is one of more than 12,000 American autoworkers who, instead of installing windshields or bending sheet metal, spend their days counting the hours in a jobs bank set up by Detroit automakers and Delphi Corp. as part of an extraordinary job security agreement with the United Auto Workers union.

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By making it so expensive to keep paying idled workers, the UAW thought Detroit automakers would avoid layoffs. By discouraging layoffs, the union thought it could prevent outsourcing.

That strategy has worked but at the expense of the domestic auto industry’s long-term viability

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ANiC Bishop Donald Harvey said he hopes that the draft of the new province’s constitution, which is scheduled to be made public in Chicago on Dec. 3, could be discussed at the primates’ meeting in Alexandria, Egypt in February.

Although the Common Cause Partnership only represents about 100,000 Anglicans (3,000 in Canada) ”“ those who have left the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church in the U.S. largely over blessing same-sex unions and the ordination of an openly gay bishop ”“ ANiC leaders are confident that the support of conservative primates who represent about 40 million Anglicans in the Global South means that their proposal will have to be taken seriously. “I think the GAFCON [Global Anglican Future Conference] primates are the ones that would push for it for us. They have already indicated they would,” said Bishop Harvey. “It may take longer than we’re hoping simply because of procedural things, but if it goes before the primates and we get even a qualified sense [of acceptance], it would be progress,” he said.

Bishop Harvey warned of dire consequences for the global communion if the primates reject the idea of the new province in Egypt. “Then it goes to the GAFCON primates, and it could be anything after that point ¬”“ it really could,” he said. “I think it would be painful and cause decisions to be made that would be unfortunate for the communion as a whole. It would cause more fragmentation.”

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So it’s official; we are past the worst of the crisis in The Episcopal Church. The presiding Bishop has told us so. The remarkable thing was surely not that she predicted the imminent end of the crisis, but that she admitted that there was a crisis at all.

The eerie thing about TEC has been the ‘business as usual’ attitude of its proprietors as parishes and dioceses have abandoned ship, clergy have been jettisoned and litigation has grown. In the Church of England we have been nervously asking: what in the world is going on, and could it happen here?

An answer to those questions is pressing. And so I will try to give it.

What has been happening? The answer is simple but unpalatable. There has been a logical and inevitable outworking of the Doctrine of Provincial Autonomy.
The idea that provinces of the Communion are sovereign in matters of doctrine and order was invented in the late Sixties/ early Seventies to facilitate the ordination of women to the priesthood.

At the time it must have seemed convenient and unexceptionable. The Communion had always been made up of national churches with their own discrete codes of canon law; provincial autonomy (though it had never actually been exercised in the areas in which it now came into play) was merely a function of that reality.

But ‘untune that string and Hark! what discord follows’. Provincial autonomy, as understood in the United States, had at one leap rendered doctrine and orders subject to geography and democracy. The POLITY of The Episcopal Church (O fatal and oft-repeated word!) had come to mean that the General Convention, by majority voting, could with impunity reverse the Vincentian Canon. It could do what previously had been unknown to any, anywhere and at any time.

It is strange that Americans, with the glaring example of the Civil War in their own history, were not more circumspect about the consequences of democratic self-determination. Its ultimate result is secession. For who is to determine (except arbitrarily) at what level or in what forum finality resides? Is it the Union, or the States? Is it the National Church or the dioceses or the parishes? And since a democratic vote is merely the aggregation of individual consciences, what place does the individual have in this economy?

In recent times The Episcopal Church has placed a high value on individual autonomy, allowing, for example, the continuance in office of plainly heretical bishops from Pike to Spong. More recently the case of Dr Ann Redding has highlighted this issue. Redding claimed to be ‘following Jesus’ into Islam. Now her bishop, Geralyn Wolf, is disciplining her for ‘abandonment of communion’ (the very accusation against those who have left TEC for the Southern Cone).

I have to say that I have a great deal of sympathy for Redding. Her only offence is to fail to take the creeds literally. ‘We Christians, in struggling to express the beauty and dignity of Jesus and the pattern of life he offers, describe him as the ‘only begotten son of God’. That’s how wonderful he is to us. But that is not literal.’ If this is an offence, then it is a very Episcopalian offence. And Bishop Wolf is being inexcusably picky.

In short, it is a strange Church which can tolerate Jack Spong, eject Ann Redding and depose Bob Duncan – in the same breath and for the same reasons. It is a very strange and wholly inconsistent Church which will not extend its tolerance of individuals to dioceses or parishes; and which acknowledges the plenary self-determination of its General Convention, but will not allow the secession of its constituent diocesan Conventions.

What is happening in The Episcopal Church is the gradual unfolding of the implications of Provincial Autonomy. What is remarkable is that no one seems to have noticed the fact.

And can it happen here?

Naturally, what is happening in the United States is taking a very American form. An ecclesial re-run of the War between the States is hardly likely in the United Kingdom – where ecclesial devolution preceded political devolution by decades or even centuries, and where the latter is unlikely to lead to bloodshed. But if the question is: ‘will the liberal tendency in the Church of England prove as rapacious as its North American counterparts?’ the answer is, most probably, yes.

The aim of Liberal Entryism is to steal the assets (and especially the intellectual property) of the previous occupants. It is important to them to present themselves as the legitimate heirs of the Christian centuries. And in order to do so they have both to re-invent Anglicanism as traditionally tolerant of almost any doctrinal deviation (which, needless to say, it has never been), and to persecute to extinction those who have the temerity to point out the deception.

People talk about ‘illiberal liberals’ as though it were a paradox and as though there were in fact another kind. But I beg to differ. If, as the proponents of women’s ordination and homosexual equality have done, you advance your case by fabricating evidence and rewriting history, you have no course, in the end, but to treat as enemies those who seek to nail the lie.

And if you base yourself on an ethical a priori proposition, you have nothing to stand on except assertion, which will consequently degenerate into violence, physical or intellectual. We can agree with Lady Bracknell that it ‘reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution. And I presume you know what that unfortunate movement led to?’

What is already evident in some quarters – where revisionists are crying ‘We are the real Catholics’ whilst shying bricks at the Holy See – cannot, as I see it, fail to become the stance of the whole church, which, to justify its self-will, will wilfully sever itself from the root of which it is a branch.

Mrs Schori may well think (but she would think that, wouldn’t she?) that the crisis in The Episcopal Church is nearing its conclusion. But there can be no doubt that the manner in which she is seeking to end it is likely to store up further problems in the Communion as a whole. Bishop Bob Duncan, who is not famous for his jokes, has a good one up his sleeve: that more bishops of the Anglican Communion recognize him than recognize his former Primate.

He is probably right.

–This article appears in the November 2008 edition of New Directions