Policy
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Swine Flu Driving Paid Sick Leave Laws
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Real Unemployment 17.5%
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House Healthcare Bill Effectively Prohibits Abortion
House Bill Expands Medicaid to 15M more Americans
Published November 08, 2009 @ 11:34AM PT
Update, 11/10/09: I made an error in the # of Americans newly eligible for Medicaid via this bill. It is 15M Americans; through Medicaid expansion, subsidies, and insurance exchange options, 36M Americans overall will be newly covered through this legislation.
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Congrats to House Speaker Pelosi, President Obama, the American people, and other elected leaders for their efforts to pass this historic healthcare bill. I'm always up for celebrating any social policy that is the next big victory since LBJ's achievements forty years ago.
Gay Rights blogger Mike Jones has some terrific info on one key Medicaid expansion in the bill that permits states "to cover early HIV treatment...a departure from a current policy that only allows states to use Medicaid funds once a patient develops full-blown AIDS." Let's take a look at the other wins for low-income Americans in the bill:
Stimulus Bypasses Minority Businesses
Published November 03, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT
Criticism abounds of the unequal distribution of stimulus funds: high per capita allocations to low population, low unemployment states like Wyoming versus low per capita amounts to struggling states like CA; and the limited allocations reaching women- and minority-owned businesses compared to their proportion of the population.
The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race & Ethnicity at The Ohio State University finds that "While approximately 14 percent of businesses are minority owned, the study shows that minority owned businesses received only 9.6 percent of federal contracts." Almost 3 in 10 businesses are owned by women, yet these firms received only 3% of stimulus funds. This disturbing inequity raises questions about the goals of the stimulus and the (surprising?) lack of focus on reducing economic inequality.
Your Recession in Charts
Published November 02, 2009 @ 01:52PM PT
Last week President Obama touted 640,000 jobs were created or saved via the stimulus. No doubt the stim, as we're apparently calling it now, has had some positive impact. (Though if it's behind the endless road improvements going on in the Greater Boston area that's driving me insane, pun intended, then I might have to rethink this whole public works investment concept!)
But eminent economist Joseph Stiglitz pronounces the recovery "nowhere near" over and the myriad charts our friends at Calculated Risk and the Wall Street Journal certainly suggest as much. WSJ has an interactive map of stimulus spending by state, including jobs saved and current unemployment rates. 15% unemployment in Michigan! It's almost 30% in Detroit.
Calculated Risk has the gruesome images, including the above graph demonstrating a national unemployment rate of 9.8% (as of September 30), the highest in 26 years.
ABC's of an Effective Jobs Initiative
Published October 30, 2009 @ 05:04AM PT
Driving the Learning Curve Express around backroads of the lower 48, my observation is America's human infrastructure is on life support. The latest unemployment indicators aren't real encouraging. CNN reports...
...the slide may signal that more filers are dropping off those rolls into extended benefits....The figures do not include those who have moved to state or federal extensions, or people whose benefits have expired.
In an op-ed column in The Baltimore Sun, Julianne Malveaux validates my ideas.
To commemorate this anniversary of the Great Depression, the Obama administration ought to engage in Depression-era tactics to jump-start the economy. We have spent $700 billion bailing out banks and $787 billion in economic stimulus. But we have not focused on directly creating employment, on lifting people at the bottom.
Come on! Let's kick something in gear that works.
The Flawed U.S. Poverty Measure
Published October 24, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT
New data released recently by the Census Bureau highlights a gigantic problem many Americans are already painfully aware of: the way the U.S. government measures poverty is extremely flawed.
Because official poverty estimates do not take into account factors like rising medical care, transportation, child care or geographical variations in living costs, the Census Bureau publishes alternative data using a poverty measure developed by the National Academy of Sciences.
This new data shows that there are 7 million more Americans living in poverty than initially reported by the agency last month, and brings the total poverty rate in the U.S. to nearly 16 percent. What I found most shocking is that the original Census Bureau figures failed to capture half of all elderly living in poverty (official estimate was 9.7 percent, but the new figures show 18.7 percent of persons 65+ currently live in poverty).
Flint: Back to the Land
Published October 19, 2009 @ 06:20AM PT
I thought about calling this post "Flint: Uplifting and Depressing" to quote the competing descriptors given to the city working to stabilize itself sustainably in the face of population decline and a lost economic base. This is one of those articles that often tires me, as its efforts to report on any source of progress during long-term shifts like rebuilding an eviscerated city can leave readers buoyed with false hopes or impatient for more positive outcomes ASAP. But it's a telling story of the highs and lows of fighting poverty - the reality that Flint is still deteriorating in places, even as potential new jobs and land uses come to the fore as officials and residents seek to turn around their hometown.
The main focus of the article is creative uses of land - an abundant resource in Flint - such as turning vacant properties into local gardens. For some Americans, a return to the land, rustic, pioneering movement is an economic necessity or the most viable economic solution. So it goes on one street in Flint.
As we know here at Poverty in America, both small scale and large scale efforts like this are happening all over the country. I praise local governments for allowing residents to exercise some creative control over their neighborhoods alongside government efforts to preserve housing, retain or bring in good jobs, and provide for citizens' economic well-being, safety and health.
(Photo of the Beresford Community Garden in San Mateo, CA by Vicky Moore)
How Environmental Justice Works
Published October 15, 2009 @ 09:03AM PT
Through MIT, I've had the opportunity to provide research and writing for a range of social justice clients, including grassroots groups fighting for environmental justice and green economic development. I've written occasionally about EJ here, but I've never really taken the time to define it. Embracing this frame is imperative as stimulus funds flow and talk of "green jobs" and "green development" abound.
Today, in honor of Blog Action Day 2009, in which Change.org hosts over 8k blogs from 135 countries worldwide to blog about Climate Change to raise awareness of this pressing global problem, I want to provide some important information on environmental justice, racism and equity to inform your climate change activism. To be effective climate change activists, we cannot forget the unequal and unfair impacts borne by low-income communities, often communities of color, often in the US South, on reservations and borderlands, from environmental degradation. Read on to learn more about these critical frames and see how one group in San Diego, the Environmental Health Coalition, is succeeding in pursuing environmental equity for low-income Latin@ communities there.
