Some Kentucky food banks notice surge in demand

[Thom Little]

Demand for emergency food has risen in much of Kentucky, and food banks are bracing for another surge as the poor struggle amid rising costs for utilities and other necessities.

"We keep hearing that the economy is improving," said Denton Randall with Dare to Care Food Bank in Louisville. "The business and investment economy may in fact be improving, but what I call the pants-pocket economy still has yet to improve for a lot of folks."

God's Pantry Food Bank in Lexington has noticed a double-digit increase in demand for food assistance, compared to a year ago, in the 49 counties in central and eastern Kentucky it serves, said Marian Blanchard, its executive director. God's Pantry distributes food to 350 nonprofit agencies - mostly food pantries, soup kitchens and shelters. She said those agencies report an upswing in first-time clients.

"I just truly believe that lots of Kentuckians will be making choices between heating or eating, and those aren't choices that people should be forced to make," Blanchard said.


http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/K/KY_FEEDING_THE_HUNGRY_KYOL-?SITE=VARIT&SECTION=US&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2005-12-22-00-09-18

[Skittles]

1. welcome to bush's America

churches should be outraged by this

[roguevalley]

2. very sad. very, very sad.

[flordehinojos]

3. the house of representatives passed a bill taking away 50 bill.$$ plus

from programs for the poor. That means programs for people who need food, people who need shelter, people who need medicines and medical attention ... and they gave the right to hospitals to ask people who show up at the emergency room whether they can pay or not. if the people say they cannot pay, the hospital has every right to turn them away and cannot be sued for turning the person away. the senate has <blocked?> the bill until the house revises it and takes away <or reforms> some of their most dastardly provisions and turns them into more human ones. Kentucky, like the rest of the nation, the world and the planet is suffering from republican greed. These 50 plus billion dollars that they have taken away from programs for the poor, they have done so, to give tax cuts to themselves. The churches and christian organizations which continue to support bush and the rest of the republicans are not really christian, and have forgotten the true message of Christ and the role of the good sheppard, which, according to Bishop Gumbleton, is: "reaching out to the poor, the hungry, the naked, visiting the sick, those in prison ..and discovering, as we do that, that... Jesus not only reaches out to the poor, not only tries to clothe the naked and so on, he becomes one with them."

Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and all the rest ought to be sent back to seminary or ministry school and ought to be instructed on the teachings of Jesus all over again. Perhaps this time around they might learn what the true meaning of being a christian is and will teach their fellow republicans what the true role of a public servant should be.

[izzie]

4. Is it true that Bush has passed out over a Billion to Churches?

I read that on this PC some place. What gets me living on a fixed income is the cost of housing and all the rest of it. Like a 99 cent item has gone to 1.29 in these last years. My COLA hardly coves things like that. I am glad I am old as I know I would not know what to do if I had children to bring up. I am pushing my children to go back to college and learn more as they will need it. I do think I lived in a very good time in the US and I think those great days are gone.

[flordehinojos]

5. i don't know how much money he has given to churches...

but i believe he (and his brother jeb in florida) have passed off some of the responsibilities of government off to the churches with their faith based initiatives and their refusal to honor separaton between church and state...all of which is their way of pushing off to the churches and to charities the responsibilities that ought to be the government's...that is why we pay taxes--which he has now taken, given to the richest and used to fund his atrociously criminal invasion and conquest of iraq.


i am not exactly sure how he and the republicans are messing with student loans, but they are. it is going to get harder and harder (i mean more expensive, and more expensive) for people to get a college degree ... i hope your children heed your call and get a degree of some sort which will give them a figting chance in a society where jobs and security get more difficult to attain, unless some humanely human democrat is voted back into the oval office along with a few other humanely human democrats into the house and senate...then, we might stand a chance of setting this country back on a straight course.