Happy 4th: On Class, Ethnicity & Immigration

by Leigh Graham

categories: Activism, Cities, Corporations, Immigration, Incarceration & Crime, Jobs & Unemployment, News, Policy, Race Ethnicity Class & Gender, Unions

Published July 04, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT

My fiance and I are dog-sitting for my mom this weekend.  Hopefully we're walking them along the beach in her CT town, enjoying the sun, whose warmth I've forgotten in the cloudiest June in Massachusetts in over 100 years.

Here's some interesting links for that downtime between the BBQs and naps I hope you're enjoying today:

MySpace is the ghetto, trailer park, or barrio of the internet.  Discuss.

The Obama Administration is halting Bush's Nothin' But Raids approach to immigration and going after employers who hire undocumented workers.  It's most high-profile case is against American Apparel, which raises questions about the effectiveness of this approach.  It's definitely more humane.  But will a fine of $150,000 make a remote bit of difference?

Police Chiefs from Miami, Austin, and Sacramento come together to call for immigrant legalization and a separation of duties between local police forces and immigration enforcement.  Money quote: “When you remove the emotion from the debate,” [Austin] Chief Acevedo said, "no one can argue that it is in the best interest of public safety to keep these people living in the shadows.”

Finally, Richard Trumka is on track to move from Secretary-Treasurer to President of the AFL-CIO.  Perhaps most famous for his moving speech on racism in the labor movement during Obama's candidacy last year (video above), Trumka "a former coal miner and fierce critic of corporate America...would bring a more combative style to running the federation at a time when organized labor seems to be growing weaker in the nation’s workplaces but stronger in Washington."

This fighting style is right up my alley, of course.  Others worry he'll be too polarizing.  There's a hilarious-in-its-irony quote from an exec at the US Chamber of Commerce, fretting about Trumka's aggressiveness and potential bad publicity for the "employer community."  As we document here at Poverty in America, I think Corporate America's already doing a bang-up job there!  Good luck to Trumka and the labor movement.  Don't forget: Support EFCA!

Goldman Sachs Owns You

by Leigh Graham

categories: Bailout, Corporations, Jobs & Unemployment, News, stimulus, The Economy

Published July 03, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT

Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone has a frightening takedown of the investment bank:

Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They've been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s — and now they're preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet.

Consider it your weekend reading as we celebrate Independence Day - freedom from Britain, not our corporate overlords, apparently.

In this patriotic spirit, Zero Hedge is looking for whistleblowers "to provide information they believe captures wrongdoing in the financial system - in the absence of objective, unbiased and fair external regulators, it is the responsibility of everyone, but most notably insiders, to cleanse the system."  They will collect and sort the info and forward it on to the FBI and Attorneys General.

A way to channel our rage and anxiety over the latest, absolutely horrendous jobs report, no doubt.  Did you know we're on track to erase ALL job gains since 1999? When Bush spoke of our "ownership society," we mistakenly thought we owned the place.  The joke, painfully, is on us.

In light of our jobless recovery, Krugman wastes no time in asking for another stimulus.

Earlier this week: Bank of America accused of exploiting Latin@ customers.

(Photo of Goldman Sachs in Lower Manhattan by Spoon Monkey)

Horsing Around for the 4th

by Diane Nilan

Published July 03, 2009 @ 05:08AM PT

Why not let some fireworks fly as we head into the July 4th weekend?!

Our nation's founders, over 200 years ago, probably had somewhat higher ideals in mind when they sat down to form this country.

This week has shown the good, bad and ugly side of politics, and I'm not just referring to the Prince of Hilton Head peccadilloes, Governor Sanford.

As people in dire straits and those who help them--domestic violence shelters, mental health institutions, homeless shelters, etc.--shut their doors due to budget cuts, life goes on for those in less-dire straits....

For example, in idyllic-wanna-be Kendall County, on the fringe of the collar counties surrounding Chicago, you have the County, thanks to approval by taxpayers, plopping down $2.4 mill for a state-of-the-art horse farm, er, equestrian complex.

Bear with me a moment...they're proud of their commitment to holistic pasture management which means

Rather than spraying the fields with pesticides or insecticides...flora that is unhealthy for the horses will be removed manually.

This complex was paid for by a $45 million county tax referendum. Now this is where it gets weird for me...on one hand we say government doesn't have money. In the case of Kendall County, where about 104k people call home, double the number from 2000, poverty isn't much of an issue--not a visible one anyhow--they come up with $45million. Life is good there, if you are a horse or horse-lover.

They send their homeless people up river to Hesed House in Aurora, where I ran the emergency homeless shelter for over a dozen years. Hesed's shelter staff and residents are in a panic about what the potential budget meltdown might mean. No domestic violence shelter, scant mental health services, and little in the way of crisis intervention/assistance, but a great place for horses to hang out.

Kendall County probably doesn't care much about the budget battle, or much about homelessness. They don't have any...unless you count the people doubled-up with family/friends, staying in the fleabag motels on the outskirts of town, or "camping" in the woods of the forest preserves, um, maybe near the horse barn. Gee, maybe they will hire workers to hand-pick the toxic weeds.

Across the country, stories spew about state budget crises. Billions of dollars of gaps. No money for human services...It's a song as old as government, except maybe Day 1, but I wasn't around then.

I say, give me the ruler-for-a-day power and I'll have homeless people living in style at the horse barn where they actually seem to care about health issues.

Seems to me we should find a use for all the horse manure produced by facetious politicians. Hypocritical pols can shovel it. And maybe budget standoffs should be settled by a horse race, winners eating salads of hand-picked flora.

photos by the author

On Economic Mobility & Poverty Thresholds

by Leigh Graham

categories: Culture of Poverty, Federal, Government, Health & Healthcare, Housing, Hunger, Inequality, Jobs & Unemployment, Policy, Race Ethnicity Class & Gender, Research, Social Programs, The Economy, Women

Published July 02, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT

Following up on my earlier post on downward economic mobility and rising economic insecurity, new data, described below, shows just how economically vulnerable the majority of middle-class households are in the U.S.  Once again I wonder, will this trigger us to do something about how we measure poverty in the U.S., now that so many of us hover at its door?  Knowing our national myths of a bootstrapping, classless society, we'll probably just redefine it down even further to renew the distance between ourselves and our poorer neighbors!  After all we've vilified them so much, we certainly don't want to become one of them now!

But we really need to come to grips with how few of us can afford what should be basic rights for all of us: housing, education, and a livable wage and healthy work-life balance.  I add that "balance" because the right to work shouldn't be backbreaking, enslaving, or heart-attack inducing - especially since we're working harder and harder for less and less money.   As the middle-class disappears, we need to confront the poverty they - we - face in this country.

Read More »

The Economic Impact of Childhood Hunger

by Greg Plotkin

categories: Children, Guest Bloggers, Health & Healthcare, Hunger, News, Nonprofits, Research, The Economy

Published July 02, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT

For the last several years, many education experts have been calling for longer school days, weeks and years as a way to halt the competitive disadvantage being felt by American students in a global workplace where countries such as China and India keep their children in school for significantly more time.

The case has been made that the U.S. economy is suffering, in part, because our students simply cannot complete professionally with more highly educated foreigners.

A new Feeding America report supports this claim and states that--in addition to scaled back schooling--childhood hunger in the U.S. is a "contributing factor to the nation’s economic woes and puts America at a competitive disadvantage."

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Bank of America Accused of Latin@ Exploitation

by Leigh Graham

categories: Corporations, Immigration, News, Race Ethnicity Class & Gender, The Economy, Unions

Published July 01, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT

A group of whistle-blowers has come forward, with the backing of SEIU, claiming that as employees of BOA they were taught to prey on low-income, Latin@ customers to sign up for a plethora of services - of redundant ones - in order to extract as many fees from them as possible.  It's a pretty interesting read for the multiple competing interests in the article, and notable for its absence of any input from current or former customers.

The whistle-blowers, current and former employees, are mostly Spanish-speaking women on the front lines of customer sales.  Some have been fired for expressing interest in unionizing, and SEIU is supporting them in what's becoming a campaign against BOA because it's trying to organize the nation's largest bank.  BOA, of course, insists that it's practices are legal and customary in the industry, which is probably at least technically true, and that customers and employees alike are satisfied.  What a mess.

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We Decide Who Recovers in New Orleans

by Leigh Graham

categories: Cities, Culture of Poverty, Government, Gulf Coast, Housing, Incarceration & Crime, Inequality, Policy, Race Ethnicity Class & Gender

Published July 01, 2009 @ 08:23AM PT

The invaluable Greater New Orleans Community Data Center released some excellent information this week, demonstrating recovery by neighborhood in the almost four years since the storm hit.  Nine neighborhoods continue to house 50% or fewer of their pre-storm residents: the 2 neighborhoods that make up the Lower 9th Ward; Lakeview; the neighborhoods surrounding and encompassing the old Florida projects; the neighborhood surrounding the redeveloped Desire project; Pontchartrain Park in Gentilly; the demolished communities of the St. Bernard and B.W. Cooper projects; and West Lake Forest in New Orleans East.  Like most of the city, most of these neighborhoods were majority black before the storm (Lakeview being the major exception).  But more telling, all but P. Park and Lakeview had at least 4 in 10 residents earning less than a living wage before the storm hit (i.e., living at 200% below the poverty threshhold).

Certainly, patterns of physical devastation are related to topography and where neighborhoods grew up in proximity to the Mississippi River, Lake Pontchartrain and the city's system of canals.  But, the on-going social devastation is almost entirely man-made.

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