The giving season.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Editor's Note

It's the giving season, and our government is in the mood to give: to the Pentagon, that is.

Military spending is going up 10 percent in 2005, to a dizzying $500 billion, while spending on domestic discretionary programs is creeping up only about 1 percent.

Congress decided not to provide an extra $1 billion for the State Children's Health Insurance Program, even though this amount had been unused by the program last year.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of low-income children won't get covered by the program.

And while Congress raised by 5 percent the amount the government can spend on Section 8 housing for the poor, Congress cut some additional funds for housing the elderly, the homeless, and the disabled.

Now that's the holiday spirit.

Similarly, Congress boosted its home-heating assistance program to the poor by 15 percent, but the price to heat homes this winter has gone up, on average, by 24 percent, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

"Many poor households assisted by the program--the majority of which include a person who is elderly, or disabled--may face considerable additional hardship during the coming winter," the center says.

It will be a cold, cold winter for millions of Americans, thanks to Bush and the Republican Congress.

African Americans will be among the coldest. This month, Barbara Miner explores an undercovered story for us: the stealth depression in the black community. Working-age black males face staggering levels of unemployment: as high as 50 percent in several big cities, and an astonishing 59 percent in Milwaukee, where Miner reports from.

In the departures and arrivals categories, I have news to report. Joy Wallin, our publisher, who has been with us for sixteen years, is moving on. More than any other person (with the possible exception of George Bush), she was responsible for boosting our circulation to now-record...