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No amount of spinning can hide these sad numbers

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By STEVE OTTO Steve Otto

sotto@tampatrib.com sotto@tampatrib.com

Published: November 8, 2009

We are a nation of numbers. We love surveys and polls. Every week, we check the numbers to see what movies everyone is going to see or how our favorite football teams are ranked compared to the week before.

Numbers don't always add up. You would think they would but it's remarkable what spinmeisters can do to them. After last week's elections, I heard politicians from both sides claiming victory.

Then there are those numbers that no amount of spinning can hide.

Last week, we reported: "Nearly half of all U.S, children and 90 percent of black youngsters will be on food stamps at some point during childhood, and fallout from the current recession could push those numbers ever higher."

Did you read that story? It was buried in the paper and quickly disappeared in the 24-hour nonstop news cycle world we live in. I thought it was a staggering statistic. Half of all American children on food stamps and 90 percent of black children.

A silent minority
You don't hear much from children about recessions. In the daily grind of life, children pretty much take what they can get and food stamps are just more and more a part of their lives.

It's not that there is any kind of stigma to food stamps. It is more the situation we find ourselves in as a country with a disappearing middle class.

My wife, the school teacher, comes home late in the afternoons and after she has finished banging her head against the wall complaining about the system, sits down at the computer to see how the stock market did.

She doesn't really know much about the market other than our ever-shrinking retirement funds are tied up in them and she wants to know how much money we've lost.

She teaches at a Title One school, where they don't talk much about the daily whims of the market or the millions of dollars in bonus payments the financial wizards are paying themselves.

Her school is one of those where the income level of the parents is such that more than 90 percent of all the students are entitled to free lunches. There are a lot of schools like hers in Hillsborough County.

The other day, I spoke with Luanne Panacek, who runs the Children's Board of Hillsborough County, to see what's going on out there.

A culture shift

"What we're seeing," she says, "is a lot of middle-class families who suddenly don't have paychecks. They are different because they have never been in this situation and they cannot cope. Children in these families are being told they might lose their homes or move somewhere else. I believe we are seeing a genuine culture shift I never would have anticipated."

The board runs something called the Administrative Services Organization, which is responsible for more than 100 programs handled by more than 350 case managers. Basically, they help families in distress keep the lights on, pay utility bills and generally try to hold things together for children and families caught up in crises.

In 2006, they spent roughly $273,000. This year, about $1.3 million in spending is being drawn from a pool that includes agencies such as the Children's Board, the state Department of Children and Families and the United Way.

Again these are just numbers. But these are numbers at the wrong end of the way things should be. In our times of bailouts and skewed bonus checks, I hate these numbers.

Keyword: Otto Graphs, for more of Steve Otto's musings.

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