It always amazes me when the right goes on about how charities should take care of social needs. The problem is when people start losing money the first thing that gets cut is their charitable donations, which then results in things like this:

The holiday project is a group of nine nonprofit agencies that rely on sponsors to help provide food and toys to struggling families.

But because of the recession, a record number of families are expected to register for help at a time when many would-be sponsors are struggling. So far, the number of needy families seeking sponsors for food baskets and Christmas gifts is up 74 percent compared to the same time last year.

Tina Osso, director of Shared Harvest Foodbank in Fairfield and coordinator of the holiday project, fears the number of needy families may again outpace sponsors of the project .

“For the first time last year, we were not able to serve everybody that applied and that was just as the recession was beginning to hit hard for everybody,” Osso said.

Forget giving your children presents this year – you are concerned about giving them food to eat on Christmas Day. Take this part talking about Middletown, one of the nation’s 10 fastest dying cities:

Maurice Maxwell, executive director of Family Service of Middletown, said his agency has registered 300 families since Oct. 14.

You are talking about a town with a population of 51,000 and 21,000 households. That makes 300 families  a lot, especially in a town that has seen its poverty levels jump from 12% in 2000 to 22% in 2007.

With this grim economy ringing in the holiday season, we need to be braced for more bad news. I can only imagine how suicide rates are going to jump in the next couple of months, along with other crimes.

We do need another stimulus, but we need one that will take care of the middle and lower classes, the later which is increasing in size at record rates. Health care reform could have been a great part of that stimulus, but the greedy politicians we have been stuck with decided that the highly profitable insurance agencies needed the money more than the struggling and starving families. We are seeing class warfare continue in this country as it did under Bush. The sad part is that the people who need help the most don’t have that many people in power on their side.