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

Sun Sep 19 19:07:15 EDT 2010

Thus far, Robert, only you, Deb and Bart have replied to the article and my
reaction to it. Does anybody else have any ideas or anything to add?

Kris

  _____  

From: robert [mailto:gram.graham at sbcglobal.net] 
Sent: Sunday, September 19, 2010 11:32 AM
To: graham2639 at mindspring.com; 'PAA discussion'; 'Deb Shafto '
Subject: Re: [PAA-Discuss] U.S. POVERTY FIGURES - Jesse Jackson &
WashingtonPost

I am reading this kind of stuff every day
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va
<http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21009> &aid=21009 and
what I am witnessing by trying my hand at trading in currencies etc is that
they (banksters) have figured out how to make money with money
so...........they just don't need to lend money to keep the economy
going.......therefore they just don't need us at all.........our job is to
consume and pay taxes.........and they have calculated how to diminish
services by privatizing everything........including the election
process.........now since
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission
we as citizens can no longer compete.  I agree with Kris that "voting" is
not going to change a gd thing.........but go a little further suggesting
that this is how they manufacture consent/permission.........if you do vote
you are endorsing/giving permission ........your only problem is that you
didn't get the candidate you wanted to win.  If they control the candidates
via the money trail......they control the process.  

I am tired of eating shit sandwiches too, when all it would take is raising
up as slaves and revolting.....or at least co operating with each
other.........but I would go so far to say that even on this list there are
many that do not see ourselves as slaves.  

from smoking mirrors guy:

Some of us are big picture people and some of us are into the details. I'm a
big picture person myself. What I tend to notice are the major forces that
account for the present state of being. The foremost condition I am noticing
is the revealing and unveiling powers that are at work in the world of the
moment. The mass media is a lying disinfo machine that props up, apologizes
for and promotes the agenda of corporate fascism. This is countered by an
amazing amount of internet and street level chatter that is in direct
contradiction to carefully woven and globally repeated lies. 9/11, like
June, is "bursting out all over".

You have to be capable of a wide and objective perspective in order to see
with clarity, the operations of the predatory liars and banking interests,
which run counter to the greater good of the people. You have to be honest
with yourself. You have to be in a position to say. "I don't want any
position, power or influence in this shitstorm of murder, oppression and
lies." When you can do that it comes clearly into view. It's very tough for
those with families and occupations that are required to support them. You
can't be a fearless crusader for truth if you have too much to lose. You
also can't be a fearless crusader, unless you know what the truth is,
because the truth won't support you otherwise and so the first thing you
have to say is, "I don't know" and then there is a possibility that you will
be informed by the truth, which takes the statement of personal limitation
of knowledge to be the right starting point for a relationship with it.

This strikes the ordinary mind as extremely contradictory. How can you not
know and then know? It seems that you have to have certitude that the truth
exists and that it has certain characteristics of a living thing which acts
upon falsity with a corrosive effect. You have to be able to see that we are
in a period of tremendous change, which demarcates the passing of the old
world and the emergence of the new. This can also be extremely difficult
because the old world is enraged. It put so much time and trouble into
thieving, lying, mass murder and global crowd control, making it near
frantic, that all of its activities are now being exposed to an ever greater
degree, as time speeds up and exposure becomes exponential.

You can't turn over a rock anywhere it the world today without seeing a
Zionist plot underneath it. It doesn't matter to me whether there are
Masons, illuminati's or whatever else engaged in the global oppression and
deceptions. Get rid of Zionism and their agents and tools and you will have
gotten rid of the underpinnings of all of the rest. The central banks have
to be destroyed. The media has to be wrenched from the hands of the
corporate vampires, the corporations have to be dissolved; principally
concerns like Monsanto, BP and Rothschild, among others. Every Zionist
organization needs to be criminalized and disenfranchised and named as
enemies of greater humanity. The world has to rise up and name them as
agents of a world wide, murder incorporated. This can only come about when
they are more and more exposed and more and more caught out in the operation
of their business as usual. They have to go, period. Israel has to go; its
residents scattered to the winds and the land returned to the Palestinians.
Jerusalem has to be declared an international city state, like The Vatican
and The Vatican needs to be cleaned from the top down.

The great lies upon which Israel are based must be exposed to the eyes of
the world. Their role in the Bolshevik Revolution and
<http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=13445> their murder of the
German people must be set before the world as well as their role in 9/11 and
the murder and displacement of millions in the Middle East. This is all
going to happen and is happening. If the winds of positive change are at our
backs, tomorrow is going to be a bad day for Israel. If not, another bad day
will appear. This loathsome murder factory of a country has to be expunged
from the world stage because it is carrying out false flags all around the
world and then blaming it on the people they wish to attack and destroy. The
press spins the lies and public opinion follows. 9/11, The London Tube, The
Madrid Train Station and Mumbai are all Zionist false flag operations.
Somehow they have seduced the world's leaders into going along with the
program and I can only assume this has to do with a control of the world's
currencies and global blackmailing operations, along with threats of murder
and mayhem in boardrooms, homes and small airplanes.

They have gotten control of phone systems all around the world and are the
owners of security companies that are in charge of a great many of the
sensitive and dangerous sites around the world. The beginning of restoring
order to the emerging new age is in having Zionism declared an international
criminal organization. The agendas and actions of Zionism must be declared
criminal so that it is seen as the Nazis were portrayed at the end of World
War 2. Zionists and Zionism must be expelled from every country in the world
and put somewhere that they can't harm the rest of us. They founded and own
Monsanto. They own a controlling interest in BP. They are the Rothschilds.

They own 96% of the world's media. They own the entertainment companies,
publishing and music industries and a whole lot more. They own the American
congress. .2% of the population on Planet Earth did not come by these
possessions and level of control through honest industry. They got this by
gaining control of the money supply, which they manipulate to their own
ends. The founding Rothschild announced this practice and policy a long time
ago. They have manufactured lies to make themselves out to be victims when
they are the chief victimizers on the planet. What they have stolen must be
taken from them and it will, whether humanity can come into accord about it
or not. Powerful, unseen forces are at work toward their destruction. It is
a fait accompli. It doesn't matter what anyone does, their time has come and
they must go. The universe is outraged at their behavior and you will see it
happen while you are still here. It's over and it's marching to completion
now.

I am not afraid of these people. My fate is not in their hands and they can
do nothing without permission. You should not be afraid of them either. You
will never get free of them as long as you fear them. Their power is over
and being withdrawn by the moment. Goldman Sachs needs to be torn apart by
massive hands and scattered like polluted confetti over the brokerage houses
of Wall Street. It's in advance of a parade of free and marching people,
taking back their own rightful possessions from the demons who defrauded
them of what was theirs. The sick and sycophantic cowards in governments,
religions and businesses need to be called what they are, 'enablers in
global suffering and misery'. Their doom is upon them.

They cannot harm you. Align yourself with the changing course of the tides
of transformation. Walk away from their world. Do not buy their crap. Do not
pay attention to them. Do not pay taxes. Work as a subversive and
revolutionary in your jobs against the intentions of your employers. Drag
your feet. Don't vote in their elections. Drop out of helping to prop up the
engines of your persecution and watch the whole thing come down around their
ears. Plaster the bus kiosks and lampposts; telephone poles and every
available surface with the truth about these bloated swine.

They are making it illegal to grow your own food, while even animals won't
eat what they are forcing upon you. Are you okay with this? Are they
suddenly going to change when they have never ever changed before except
when they were forced to? This is not like all the other times. This time
they can't just migrate into control of what replaces them. This time they
pay.

If you don't step away from the whirlpool of the old world being sucked away
into the invisible recycling machines, then you are going to go with it. For
many there is no escape as they would choose no other exit even if one were
offered. Like someone said recently, "Even if they proved that 9/11 was an
inside job, I still wouldn't believe it". Some of you can see and some of
you know there's more to what is going on than you can see. We need to act
upon our faith in greater possibility and let our ideals become something
more than words we trot out to make ourselves look good around hypocrites
who do the same. We are not the same. We have the ability to find the way
out because we have not lied to ourselves to protect our places among the
contemptible of our times.

  _____  

From: Ron and Kris Graham [mailto:graham2639 at mindspring.com] 
Sent: Sunday, September 19, 2010 10:16 AM
To: 'PAA discussion'; Deb Shafto 
Subject: U.S. POVERTY FIGURES - Jesse Jackson & Washington Post

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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