Mall Santas: "Kids are asking for socks this year." (Wall Street Journnal)

[kpete]

For America's Santas, It's Hard to Be Jolly With the Tales They're Hearing
In Hard Times, Kids Ask for Bare Essentials: Shoes, Eyeglasses and a Job for Dad

As a longtime Santa Claus at a suburban Chicago mall, Rod Riemersma used to jokingly tell children they would get socks for Christmas if they were naughty.

This year, he stopped telling the joke. Too many children were asking for socks. "They've probably heard their parents say, 'Geez, I wish I had some money to get them clothes,' " says Mr. Riemersma, 56 years old.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126074986920489905.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/12/23/817869/-Mall-Santas:-Kids-are-asking-for-socks-this-year.

[gratuitous]

1. SANTA: STOP HERE

With all the sock puppets running around DU right now, you should find plenty of gifts for the kiddies.

[Major Hogwash]

2. Tells ya just how bad things are for average Americans, but the insurance corps don't care

They'll reap millions of dollars from the insurance giveaway and live like kings.

[Lint Head]

3. They own us. Corporate fascism controls everything we do.

We are slaves to greed until person hood for corporations is totally eradicated.

Oil companies give us a ride. Mega agri-businesses feed us. Insurance companies rape our savings.
Blackwater/Xe and other contractors currently spy on us, run our prisons, train our military, have their own a secret/spy agency and are chomping at the bit to have torture privatized.

Until we as the people do something about this madness nothing will be done.

Washington D.C. full of nothing but cowards.

[Salmonslayer]

4. Fascism?

Fascism

1. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.



Fascism by most definitions includes government control. By the definition above, the health care bill is a step toward Fascism. corporations acting together or separately, by definition, is not Fascism.

Yep,

DC is full of cowards

[knitter4democracy]

5. I heard that too, this year, while subbing.

One school I sub a lot in had a "warm things" drive for anything warm (from underwear and socks on up to coats). One boy got a new coat when he badly needed one and admitted to the teacher that his mom had said she couldn't get him one this year at all. Others got turtlenecks and socks and hats and all sorts of things. Whatever the students didn't need or want got donated to the homeless shelter. Many kids said that they really need warm socks.

I was there earlier this fall when my ex didn't pay his support. When he forgot to bring back my son's winter coat and was going to be gone on his honeymoon for a week and a half, I cried. I couldn't buy another coat. Thank God for a knitfriend of mine who overnighted me her son's old coat that fit my son perfectly. I don't know what I would've done.

I worry it's going to be cold this year, too. If anyone can, please buy hats and mittens and drop them off at your local elementary schools at least. The kids need them.