Gift Hub

Hungry Families On the Rise in Dallas

Here in Dallas, Dr. Larry James reports:

Community Resource Center has witnessed a 37% increase in the number of unduplicated families and a 44% spike in the number of unduplicated individuals who are coming to us for assistance compared to this same time last year.

We are now seeing more families -- and larger families -- than ever before in the history of our work as the largest food pantry in Dallas... and we are seeing them more often.

After the End of The Limitless

Wendell Berry on Faustian Economics, via:

That human limitlessness is a fantasy means, obviously, that its life expectancy is limited. There is now a growing perception, and not just among a few experts, that we are entering a time of inescapable limits. We are not likely to be granted another world to plunder in compensation for our pillage of this one. Nor are we likely to believe much longer in our ability to outsmart, by means of science and technology, our economic stupidity. The hope that we can cure the ills of industrialism by the homeopathy of more technology seems at last to be losing status. We are, in short, coming under pressure to understand ourselves as limited creatures in a limited world.

When we find the limits, who will we blame? Who must pay for the dashing of our delusions? That is fine work for the Think Tanks. Could be Mexicans, Blacks, or Terriorists. Could the Liberals, the Seculars, or the Nay-Sayers. Who will we blame when the food runs short?

Malthus Arrives in Iowa

As Iowa floods, James Kuntsler predicts rising shortages of food, not just gasoline.  Malthus is back. Fortunately, we have the alibis in place: People get what they deserve for being  lazy enough to be poor or mediocre enough to be middle class. We would only mess them up further if we gave them a handout. Social safety nets are for sissies. Wealth Bondage is no place for the soft hearted. I identify with the Winner's ideology, I just wish I had a place at the table, rather than under it with the dogs.

Piratization of the Ship of State

First step to change is knowing what is going on. That in itself is not so easy since so many vested interests work so hard to disguise it. Sometimes on the ship of state it is hard to know the crew from the pirates, since the leadership of both belong to Wealth Bondage, and fly the jolly roger in our secret club house.  What looks like ordinary unloading of the merchandise in a port of call may actually be piracy, if you follow where the public goods end up in private hands, even though the unloading is personally supervised by the Captain and Vice Captain wearing enameled flag lapels and calling anyone who questions them a traitor.  When we ask how the Captain and his fellow officers did during their tenure, you might say badly since the ship lost so much money, and so many ordinary seamen were killed, but you could also say, "They made out like bandits," if you follow where the money went. "Mission accomplished," indeed. Same ship, same drill, new crew soon, as the legitimacy has pretty well worn off the current crew of thieves. Now the leaders retire to retrieve their share of the booty, as the new crew comes in to takes its turn.  High fives all around.