The New York Times recently published two troubling articles about hunger and poverty in America.  Both exposés place in sharp relief the problems many Americans are experiencing in these days of skyrocketing food, fuel, and health care inflation.

The first article concerns the plight of senior citizens from Maine who live below the poverty line.  Having spent their lives at hard and low-paying jobs - working in fish and blueberry processing plants, or as lumberjacks and fishermen - these folks should be enjoying their twilight years in comfort and security.  Instead, they are struggling to balance medical bills, home heating payments, and grocery bills.  One such woman is Viola Brooks, an 81-year-old Maine resident who gets by, just barely, on $700 in Social Security payments and food stamps each month.  Her one-shot fuel subsidy from the state amounts to $500, but with oil running upwards of $98 per barrel, the average cost of heating a home will rise from $1800 last winter to $3000 this winter. 

From the NYT:

Viola Brooks, 81, worked in fish and blueberry factories while her husband worked in textile and logging jobs. Now widowed, she gets $588 a month from Social Security, supplemented by $112 in food stamps and one-time fuel aid of more than $500 for the winter.

But this year, that fuel aid will not fill a single tank. The average house cost $1,800 to heat last year, and minimal comfort this winter may require closer to $3,000; trailers will require somewhat less. Electricity and rent already take up most of Ms. Brooks’s income.

“I’m broke every month, and the trailer needs storm windows,” she said. “I cook a lot of pea soup and baked beans and buy flour to make biscuits.”

“Some day I’d like to go to a hairdresser,” Ms. Brooks said of a dream deferred. Still she says she enjoys her lovebirds and cats, and points out that “some people have it worse.”

Another NYT article explains that “food banks around the country are reporting critical shortages that have forced them to ration supplies, distribute staples usually reserved for disaster relief and in some instances close.”

“It’s one of the most demanding years I’ve seen in my 30 years” in the field, said Catherine D’Amato, president and chief executive of the Greater Boston Food Bank, comparing the situation to the recession of the late 1970s…

…Lane Kenworthy, a professor of sociology and political science at the University of Arizona, agreed, saying: “The overall picture is that household incomes are kind of stuck. There’s very little way to increase income, and most people have a very heavy debt load. Any event that increases your costs is really, really troublesome, because you’re already stretched thin.”

I’m struck by something that Rudy Giuliani recently said. Referring to Hillary Clinton, the former New York mayor warned, “She wants to go back to the 1990s. … It would hurt our economy.”  If Giuliani weren’t a frontrunner for his party’s presidential nomination, his comment might be amusing.  To put a new twist on an old question: Are you better off today than you were eight years ago?  For many Americans, the answer is a resounding “no.”

Returning to the NYT article on the elderly poor in Maine:

Dolly Jordan of Milbridge has a history of two bad marriages, a bone-crushing auto accident and poor health, and looks and feels older than 61. With osteoporosis, arthritis, diabetes and obesity, she spends most of the day in a wheelchair and uses a combination of a gripper, a broom and a cane to make her bed or hang her laundry.

Come winter, she hangs a blanket over the front door of her little red wooden house, where she has lived alone the last 10 years and which sits on concrete blocks with no foundation. She turns the heat off at night to save fuel.

Her disability payment is $623 a month, plus she gets just $10 from the state and $74 in food stamps. After paying the housing tax and her utility bills, she said, she must watch every remaining penny. A daughter drives her to the distant town of Ellsworth for cheaper shopping.

Like many, she keeps a police scanner on as a diversion and, unable to afford cable, she watches the same videos over and over - her favorite is “On Golden Pond.”

“I wish for bedtime to come,” she said. “The days are so long.”

With the holiday season upon us, Americans will certainly show their generous spirit by making charitable contributions that help alleviate the suffering of those who are not currently strong enough to fend for themselves.  But as the article on food banks makes painfully clear, private charity has its limits, particularly in a weak economy.  There are some problems that government has a moral obligation to address. 

When our grandparents are shivering in the cold, something has gone terribly wrong. 

There’s very little that Americans can’t do if they put their minds to it.  Securing justice for our seniors has to be at the top of our priority list.