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Concern over energy prices, and indirectly, food prices has reached critical levels across the world. Here in the United States, more and more of us are scraping by and doing without essentials. Food bank participants have reached record numbers and a recent story from ABC News shows that many former middle-class families are failing to keep up with the rising cost of energy. As economic defenders continually refute the facts, looking for loopholes and pontificating rebuttals, the cold facts are that America's formerly middle-class are suffering. And they have been watching the total unconcern of Congress as political infighting between and even within both parties relegates the seriousness of the situation to the back burner. A burner many lower and middle-class Americans can't afford to keep lit.

As partisan media attempts to place blame on one party or the other, it is obvious to the informed observer that today's energy crisis is the result of several factors, mostly inter-related. First is the loss of jobs creating sustained recession in the upper Midwest, primarily due to outsourcing due to NAFTA and GATT. This loss has resulted in wage reductions and a corresponding loss of buying power among the formerly middle-class. While the economy as based on marketplace factors shows gains, albeit miniscule, these are gains seen primarily by those with stock portfolios heavy in energy and banking investments. Those gains have come at the price of negative returns on the 401(k) balances of those who have saved diligently among the middle class. For those who live paycheck to paycheck, which is most Americans, the loss of purchasing power impacted retail long ago. Now the lack of cash reflects the rising numbers that cannot afford to drive to work or pay for heat and lights.

Second is the increased demand for oil from China, India, Indonesia and South American Countries. Ironically, the same outsourcing that relieved the middle class of so much of it's disposable income has driven the engines of manufacturing in the Third World. Now that increase in demand threatens to devour the very market it developed to feed-we can no longer afford to transport the goods or buy them.

Another party deserving of blame is the obvious bias exhibited by government for the profits of Big Business, not just the oil companies, but big box retailers, agri-biz and global financial concerns. Their machinations have kept these businesses profitable at the expense of small business

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