[PAA-Discuss] U.S. POVERTY FIGURES - Jesse Jackson & Washington Post

[Ron and Kris Graham]

I vehemently disagree with part of the first line of Jackson's letter:
Today's US Census report on poverty in the United States is a clarion call
to our nation and our elected leaders. The U.S. Census Report's figures on
poverty are a clarion call to every single American in this country who is
hurting and struggling daily. Our elected leaders couldn't care less about
impoverished Americans. They are so far removed from the struggles of every
day people that they cannot possibly understand or care about anyone other
than themselves, their own families and the next greenback that ends up in
their pocket or campaign coffer.

 

People are either already mired in poverty or sliding headlong into it at
break neck speed because a few people among us are taking way more than
their share and rigging the system so that the poor and middle class are in
serfdom for perpetuity. Ron and I are struggling every month on a retired
educator's income because we help my kids out quite a bit when they're
struggling, and we have our own bills to pay, as well. There is only so much
money to go around. It does not surprise me that an asshole like Mitch
McConnell would say that the rich are being hit hardest by the recession and
that they MUST have a tax cut or they won't create jobs anymore. This
rhetoric is all that B-movie bad actor, brain dead Ronald Reagan trickle
down, voodoo economics bullshit that so many ignorant Americans have
swallowed. The ONLY thing that has trickled down, and it hasn't trickled
down, it has barrel assed down the side of Shit Mountain, is just so much
shit in the form of lost jobs, abysmally low incomes, sickness,
hopelessness, lost dreams, no dreams and the sad reality for the poor and
middle class that this is as good as it gets. What makes me angry is that as
good as it gets will be reality unless the poor and middle class decide they
are not going to take this lying down. We have GOT to get off our knees and
up on our feet ready to do whatever it takes to change our situations. I
don't know about you guys, but I am sick of smelling shit, wallowing in
shit, eating shit and being covered in shit day in and day out. I'm ready
for a big breath of fresh air and a nice long bath. I want to be up on a
mountain and not at the bottom of Shit Mountain. I don't mean I want to have
more than anybody else, either. I just want to see that there is a sky above
me and a bright sun and fresh air and that we don't have to be sinking into
unhappiness and desperation for the rest of our lives.

 

Now, as I see it, we can do one of two things. We can either turn our backs
on this system and start doing things locally among ourselves and creating
our own economic and social systems, or we can violently rise up and wreak
all kinds of havoc and rid the world of the wealthy scum.

 

Those are the only options I see. Voting is not going to change a goddamned
thing, and I know it. That being said, I'll probably go to the polls and
vote only for the Greens, but ONLY because I respect what they're trying to
do and want to support their efforts. I like those Greens I know personally,
but I haven't decided fully whether or not I'm even going to vote. Frankly,
I'm extraordinarily torn because I have a visceral objection to
participating in a sham system that only serves to perpetuate inequity and
criminality and lend legitimacy to said system. I think even the Greens know
that what they are doing in the way of running for office and participating
in this electoral system is a waste of time. I think we'd all be better off
meeting together and coming up with a game plan for how to utterly reject
this inequitable system and create our own economic, social, medical and
spiritual community. Bunches of heads with bunches of good ideas and bunches
of hands ready to get to work will help get us out of the mess we have
helped create. We cannot dismiss anyone who is willing to listen and learn
and help create something sustainable, equitable and sane. We will either
swim together or we will sink together. None of us is an island. None of us
wants to take this on alone. I think together, though, we can do this.

 

I would appreciate feedback. Thanks.

 

Kris

 

  _____  

From: Judith Emerson [mailto:jemer3405 at hotmail.com] 
Sent: Saturday, September 18, 2010 10:24 PM
To: kashimaecho at yahoo.com
Subject: U.S. POVERTY FIGURES - Jesse Jackson & Washington Post

 

CENSUS REPORT ON POVERTY
Rev. Jesse Jackson:  An Open Letter to Our Nation's Leaders
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-jesse-jackson/an-open-letter-to-our-nat_b_
720445.html?utm_source=DailyBrief
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-jesse-jackson/an-open-letter-to-our-nat_b
_720445.html?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=091710&utm_medium=email&utm_
content=BlogEntry>
&utm_campaign=091710&utm_medium=email&utm_content=BlogEntry
 
Today's US Census report on poverty in the United States is a clarion call
to our nation and our elected leaders. 

We in the United States possess the greatest resources and wealth ever known
to humankind. So to have over 44 million people -- 14% of our population --
& 20% of our children living in poverty strains the soul of America. That
fully 1 in 4 Americans -- 72 million people -- are "near poor" (officially,
a family of 4 earning just $32,634 in 2009) should call us into action. It's
a moral disgrace. 

The American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 is credited w/saving or
creating 1.4 million to 3.3 million jobs, & kept more than 6 million
additional people from falling into poverty. Despite these efforts, it is
unfathomable to think that poverty continues to grow in America: three
million more in 2009, and more people liviing in poverty now than 50 yrs ago
when data was first published.

These realities are devastating. In 2009, poverty jumped to 14.3%, & the
number of people w/o health-care insrance broke 50 million for the very
first time.  The unemployment rate swelled from 7.7% at the beginning of the
year to 10%.  the unemployment rate of African-Americans & Latinos is nearly
double & sometimes even triple the national average.  

The middle class continues to sink. Major cities around the country are
losing public transportation jobs, public school teachers, public housing
and home foreclosures are on the rise. The effect of such devastating
poverty is undercutting excellence in public education & it is overwhelming
American families. 

I just spent a week on a bus tour meeting and with congregations, students,
and workers at plant gates in Michigan. Astonishingly, Detroit has 90,000
vacant homes &/or lots & not one nat'l chain grocery or retailer. While
Detroit faces mounting hardships, we bailed out General Motors, a company
whose #1 market for Buick is China, and new manufacturing plants are being
built there & in Mexico. 

The cries of babies in Appalachia, the tears of mothers in the rural South,
and the frustration of workers laid off in cities across America -- is this
the face of America in 2010?

As people of conscience, as elected leaders of the greatest democracy in the
world, we ask ourselves, is there not a need for a new War on Poverty or a
Great Society plan similar to that enacted by President Lyndon B. Johnson?
Dr. King's cry for a Poor People's Campaign has come full circle. 

There must be a sense of urgency to address this moral & economic crisis. In
Stimulus I, we have watered the leaves. We need Stimulus II to water the
roots. 

In Iraq and Afghanistan, we had a plan for security, stability, investment,
reconstruction, and rebuilding infrastructure. Our people, our cities, our
nation deserve nothing less.

The Poverty Report is a call to Congress to create a FY 2011 budget that
expands funding to "war on poverty" programs supporting employment,
education, & basic human needs. Focus on the least of these, and extend the
TANF Emergency Fund -- not the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans --
to expand subsidized jobs programs. Extend the reforms to the earned income
tax credit, or EITC, and the child tax credit, or CTC. Focus on extending
programs that support the least of these, not those with the most. 

Expand the weatherization program -- and enact a modern-day urban
homesteading program where the urban unemployed can reclaim lost homes,
learn carpentry, plumbing and green job skills to rebuild America. We can
begin to work our way out.

Congressional leaders, take the bold step of committing to reduce poverty by
50% over the next 10 yrs -- half in ten!

America, give us a listening ear. The people are restless and rising up.
America, please hear our plea. There is not time to waste. It's time for a
change. 
 
===================================================================
Capitol Hill Reaction to Poverty Figures Sidetracked by Political Concerns 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/17/AR2010091707
346.html
by Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer 
Friday, September 17, 2010; 10:59 PM
 
Deborah Weinstein, a longtime advocate for the poor, calls the news that one
in seven Americans is living in poverty "a national emergency." 
 
But for much of Washington's political class, the shocking new poverty
numbers provoked not alarm about the poor but further debate over tax cuts
for the middle class. 
 
"We know that a strong middle class leads a strong economy," President Obama
told reporters in the Rose Garden on Friday, as he used the new census
report, which also showed that middle-class income has dipped slightly over
the past decade, to continue making his case for limiting the cuts to family
incomes under $250,000.  
 
Meanwhile, Republican leaders in the House and Senate had no reaction to the
poverty report. But earlier in the week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch
McConnell (R-Ky.) took the Senate floor to argue for extending the tax
breaks to everyone, saying, "We can't let the people who have been hit
hardest by this recession and who we need to create jobs to get us out of
it" be subject to a tax increase. 
 
McConnell's spokesman later clarified the statement, saying that McConnell
indeed believes the economic downturn has hit the poor harder than it has
high-income business owners, who also have suffered. 
 
The reluctance of political leaders on both sides of the aisle to directly
confront the fact that growing numbers of Americans are slipping into
poverty reflects a stubborn reality about the poor: They are not much of a
political constituency. 
 
"We talk to many people on Capitol Hill who do believe poverty is important
and is a blight on our nation," said Weinstein, executive director of the
Coalition on Human Needs,
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/125/t/3748/signUp.jsp?key=4631  an
alliance of national organizations that advocates for the poor. "But we are
also up against a general recognition that poor people don't vote in great
numbers.  And they certainly aren't going to be making campaign
contributions.  That definitely puts them behind many other people &
interests when decisions are being made around here."   
 
Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), who counts among his legislative
accomplishments bills to extend unemployment insurance and to provide
housing for people suffering from AIDS, said that the current downturn has
expanded the definition of the poor. No longer are the poor the chronically
impoverished who scrape along at the bottom of the economic pecking order in
good times and bad. They now include many working people who have been
thrown out of their jobs by a brutal recession. 
 
"The fact is, increasingly, we are talking about people we know," McDermott
said. Still, he said, "For most elected officials, there is nothing
politically in talking about the poor. In fact, they don't vote very well
and they are not very participatory in political life. Politicians tend to
talk to people who get involved."
 
McDermott said he has been urging his colleagues to take a fresh look at
poverty. The new report showed that the ranks of the American poor soared to
their highest level in half a century in 2009. Meanwhile, millions more are
existing just beyond the poverty line, which is about $22,000 a yr for a
family of 4.  
 
The official poverty rate is just one aspect of the economic upheaval
unleashed by the recession. Since 2007, the country has lost almost 4
million wage earners. And for the first time since the government began
tracking health insurance in 1987, the number of people who have health
coverage declined, a circumstance destined to change when the Obama-led
health-care overhaul fully kicks in by 2014. 
 
With foreclosures continuing to rise and long-term unemployment at record
levels, McDermott said, the legacy of the economic crisis will affect
society in a way the country has not experienced since the aftermath of the
Great Depression. 
 
Even amid the devastating downturn, Americans seem ambivalent toward the
needy. The instinct to help those in tough straits is often constrained by a
lurking feeling that the poor are to blame for their own problems. Or, that
what helps the needy might take something away from everyone else. 

The debate over extending unemployment benefits, which now last as long as
99 weeks, generated increasing commentary that the benefit was sapping
people of the desire to work. 
 
Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, said that more than two
decades of polling shows that a solid, if fluctuating, majority of Americans
believe government has a responsibility to care for the poor. 
 
"But as you begin to ask more specific questions, you get lower levels of
support for specific programs as people worry about costs, taxes and the
rise of government," Kohut added. "Plus, there is a great deal of political
polarization of this." 
 
A 2009 Pew survey found that 63% of Americans believed government should
take care of those who cannot take care of themselves.  But that number fell
to 48% when people were asked whether government should help the needy even
if it increases the debt.  Nearly 2 in 3 Democrats, 43% of independents &
29% of Republicans agreed with that statement. 
 
All of which explains why even many staunch Democrats have not talked much
about poverty. 
 
On Thursday, hours after the Census Bureau released the poverty numbers,
Obama issued a written statement that quickly broadened the discussion
beyond the poor. 
 
"Today, the Census Bureau released data that illustrates just how tough 2009
was," the statement said. "Even before the recession hit, middle class
incomes had been stagnant & the number of psople living in poverty in
America was unacceptably high, & today's numbers make it clear that our work
is just beginning."   

 
 

 

 

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