I bought my mother a couple of those perky cartons of soy milk this month since she’s now on a low-salt, low-fat, low-cholesterol, non-dairy, non-beef and non-saturated fat diet.

She frowned. She’s from the South.

Fats are an entire food group in the South; it’s hard to change a lifetime habit of meals based on cream sauce recipes.
Taste aside, cost-wise, soymilk now makes sense.

Milk prices, along with eggs, bread, electricity, and gas, of course, have skyrocketed since 2002 and the economy continues to limp along.

I hate to spread doom and gloom, but these days, times are tough.

The unemployment rate is 5.1 percent, up 0.3 percentage point.

As one regional economist has said, after three consecutive months of job losses, it’s hard to argue we are not in a recession.

“The economy has shed 232,000 positions since December and the monthly losses have been about equal over that time frame,” according Commerce Bank’s chief economist, Joel Naroff last week.

It seems only President Bush and our Federal Reserve Chairman are in denial.

I’m no financial wizard, but if experts are willing to say the dreaded “R” word, and it looks like an elephant, has a long trunk and likes peanuts, then it’s an elephant, it’s in the room, and we should acknowledge it because it’s making a huge mess.
The majority of Americans agree.

A CBS News/New York Times Poll from March 28 to April 2, of 1,368 adults with a margin of error of ± 3 nationwide said 37 percent believe the most important problem facing the country is the economy/jobs, with 15 percent answering the War in Iraq, 7 percent the gas/heating oil crisis, 6 percent healthcare, 3 percent immigration, 30 percent “other” and 2 percent “unsure.”
You gotta love those “unsure” folks. With so many choices, it is tough to pick just one.

The same pollsters found the economy was now the most important issue to Americans when deciding on a president.
I’m right there with them, which is why I’m terribly interested in hearing specifics about the economic stimulus plans of this year’s candidates — and not only from our presidential candidates, from our local candidates.

People in Cape May County are hurting.

At a recent freeholder meeting, one man’s story told a thousand others.

Freeholder Ralph Sheets asked whether there was comment from the public, and that’s when I first noticed him. Slowly, he walked right up to the dais. It was quiet while everyone waited: county counsel, freeholder clerks, administrator, freeholders, engineer and treasurer. We watched and wondered. He used a walker, a bag with handles hanging from it that swung when he moved. It took him several minutes to dig out papers from the bag with shaking hands, and to begin to tell his story, which he did from about two feet away from the dais.

He said he had $15 to last him until the end of the month. It was March 25.

It was the cost of prescriptions, he explained. Even with a $5 co-pay, making ends meet and keeping to doctor’s orders appeared to be at odds.

“They used to be free,” he said.

When I think about this man, a war veteran from Wildwood, who said he’d earned nine Purple Hearts, I worry for him.
I worry about where this country, and this county, has been heading these last seven years, and where we’re headed in the next seven.

I worry about gas prices, and milk prices and prescription prices and global warming and why the heck NASA wants a space program costing billions to send people to the moon again and then to Mars, when a war veteran on Earth can’t afford a $5 co-pay.

And I worry whether our elected officials worry.

Unaccountably, according to Naroff, restaurants — along with health care — actually did quite well these last few months, as job losses in other sectors fell way off.

“This includes drinking places, where I suspect most of the hiring occurred,” he said.

While that bodes well for a county whose economy is based in part on people eating out at restaurants and drinking in bars, on the other hand, if that’s not an indicator of a recession, I don’t know what is. When times are tough, there’s nothing like a double shot to forget your troubles.

As for the business of health care going strong, my expert economic analysis indicates it may be due to all the drinking, and the liver problems associated with that.

Or to $5 co-pays that used to be free.

Or maybe it’s that the drinking isn’t helping any, and people are just getting plain sick with worry.