One heartbreaking unintended consequence of a good-intentioned policy. Yes, cash for clunkers is helping some who otherwise might not be able to afford a new car. But by demolishing their old cars, the government is leaving the most needy wanting.
The California faith-based homeless shelter, Mission Solano, is calling on the Obama Administration and both houses of Congress [...]

Catholic News Service reports that during his annual message marking Lent, Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony “told Catholics that the country’s economic downturn has caused many people to already experience the season of Lent,” having begun in 2007 when people began losing their jobs.
In previous years, “when life and our financial security were far more predictable,” [...]

Here’s a story that will blanch our own real and perceived suffering.
Despite his own organization’s difficulties, Franklin Graham joined Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and faith-based Samaritan’s Purse last week to bring food to hundreds of families along the frozen Yukon River. The harsher-than-normal winter has led to extreme cutbacks:
According to Graham’s organization, many along the Yukon [...]

The Washington Post reports faith-based charities are seeing unprecedented cutbacks in government funding. This funding provides “an enormous array of private social services to the nation’s sick, elderly and poor.”
The nation’s economic woes have led local and state government agencies across the country to reduce contracts and grants or delay payments to the groups, which [...]

“The Poverty Forum,” a group of liberal and conservative Christians working together on policy ideas to combat domestic poverty held a press conference this week in Washington. The Washington Times and Christian Science Monitor report the group is headed by Rev. Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners, and Michael Gerson, President Bush’s former speechwriter and policy adviser. [...]