Culture of Poverty
CA's Budget Shuts Down over Fingerprinting the Poor
Published July 07, 2009 @ 05:46AM PT
Courtesy of Felix Salmon at Reuters, I see California's plan to issue IOUs goes a little something like this:
People who will receive IOUs:
- The aged, blind or disabled who get grants
- Those receiving temporary assistance for basic family needs
- Those in drug prevention, treatment and recovery
- The developmentally disabled
- Those being treated for mental health
- Small business vendors
Folks who will continue to be paid:
- Univ. of Cal. employees
- Public Employees Retirement System
- Legislators and their staff and appointees
- Judges
- Department of Corrections employees
- Institutional Health Care Service providers
Apparently there are laws against not paying schools or state employees. (That's slick!) And no doubt some of the admin and support staff at any of these bottom entities need to feed families or themselves. True perhaps even for some legislators...maybe (financial hardship would not be the case for the vast majority of US Congress, for ex). But really?? The government brings CA to its knees then doesn't have the courtesy to forgo their own paychecks while stiffing the poor and disabled? Damn.
Anyway, I don't know if it gets more explicitly callous than this:
In California’s misery, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has found some opportunity in standing his ground. Mr. Schwarzenegger has not only refused to sign off on stopgap measures like those proposed this week by Democratic lawmakers, but has also demanded that lawmakers adopt substantive changes in policy as part of any budget deal.
Democrats indicated Thursday that they were beginning to submit to Mr. Schwarzenegger’s demands, taking proposed tax increases that he opposes off the table as they worked to close a budget gap estimated to have grown to $27 billion. [...]
Mr. Schwarzenegger, weighing the discomfort and embarrassment of the i.o.u.’s against a short-term budget deal, apparently reached the conclusion that the i.o.u.’s were a price worth paying to force policy changes he pushed as early as 2005, even if it meant the budget crisis dragged on.
Among the changes Mr. Schwarzenegger insists be included in a budget agreement are the fingerprinting of recipients of certain state services for the poor and infirm, tighter checks on the job status of those who receive welfare benefits and changes to the state pension program.
I wonder if this helps the White House finally get the depth of our economic black hole. (Are black holes deep?)
(Photo by schumachergirl1956 of Schwarzenegger at his 2003 recall victory; what The Daily Show might call our "moment of zen")
Income Gap Highest in 30 Years
Published July 06, 2009 @ 06:34AM PT
The poorest among us have increased their incomes by only $1,600 in 27 years - that's 16 cents per day.
Buried on page 15 of the National section in the NYT yesterday is coverage of a new report from the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities, demonstrating that the poorest among us - mostly jobless households with children - were not benefiting from our safety net programs (e.g., food stamps, etc.).
This is no newsflash; our safety net is designed specifically around temporary hardship. Lost your job and need food stamps or cash subsidies for a bit? No problem! But if you've got any condition that makes holding a job difficult (disability, young children, lack of a good education and a diploma), then you're screwed. Time limits, and emphasis on low-wage work at any cost over educational gains and child care assistance guarantees that we will consistently leave (mostly) single mothers with young children behind. That's how we've chosen to structure the system and it delivers long-term consequences for these households.
When I went looking for the report on the Center's website, though, I found this (I can't discover the NYT-referenced report, I'll keep looking):
On Economic Mobility & Poverty Thresholds
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.
We Decide Who Recovers in New Orleans
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.
A Deadly Lack of Access to Healthcare
Published June 30, 2009 @ 06:42AM PT
A small but important success story is emerging from tales of stimulus spending: $500,000 of $2.5B allocated is already in use expanding health clinic access for poor and/or rural communities. The article contrasts homeless teens receiving dental care post-stimulus with the tragedy of a young man who died from an infected tooth that required only an $80 extraction, which he could not afford.
Unfortunately, these kids need to pack in as much care as they can as this $2.5b comes down, because it's a one-time infusion for our health clinic "system". By 2025, rural and poor areas should suffer from a shortage of doctors exceeding 150,000. Combined with "the drag of poverty" on these communities, it's perhaps not as much of a surprise, though shocking and horrifying still, that there is such disparate healthcare outcomes across the country:
Seeing The Other America
Published June 28, 2009 @ 01:08PM PT
I confess, I've never read Michael Harrington's seminal work, The Other America. Rather, I've read of its influence among conservative and liberal policy circles - how it shaped our varying recognition of and approach to poverty in this country.
There's a shortish, interesting reflection on the book in a recent NYT, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Harrington's initial publication "Our Fifty Million Poor"
"in which he sought to overturn the conventional wisdom that the United States had become an overwhelmingly middle-class society...he demonstrated that nearly a third of the population lived “below those standards which we have been taught to regard as the decent minimums for food, housing, clothing and health.”
I don't have much to add to this thorough review, so I'm just going to leave you with this:
...what remains fresh and vital in “The Other America” is its moral clarity. Harrington argued that Americans should be angry and ashamed to live in a rich society in which so many remained poor. “The fate of the poor,” he concluded, “hangs upon the decision of the better-off. If this anger and shame are not forthcoming, someone can write a book about the other America a generation from now and it will be the same or worse.”
What can I say? It's Sunday - once again I'm preaching to the choir this afternoon!
If you've read Harrington's work, leave your thoughts in comments.
The Gary Work Ethic
Published June 27, 2009 @ 10:15AM PT
As the coverage of Michael Jackson's death subsides, and it will eventually, the brief spotlight shone on Gary, Indiana will disappear as well. The NYT gives the declining, forgotten? city some due as the birthplace of the King of Pop:
But was there something particular about Gary that the Jacksons took with them? Something particular to the place that made them great? Thomas Neal Jr., a lifelong Gary resident, thinks so.
“Joe Jackson believed you had to go get what you want to succeed,” Mr. Neal, 41, said. “That determination, that striving, was part of the Gary work ethic. Nobody came here unless they wanted to work.”
This is captured towards the end of the article that details Gary's creation as a company town for US Steel in 1906, and its declining fortunes and intense poverty since the 1960s and de-industrialization. The reason I'm featuring this excerpt is because it captures an overlooked sentiment I so often describe here, a sentiment I think is part of what makes our country great and defies explicitly the notion of dependency. That sentiment is striving, as I call it, and though Joe Jackson's abusive strategies to make his sons famous are not what I'd reify here, I like the focus on Gary's better past. If only we could regularly embrace the positive aspects of our troubled cities and communities, we might wring a lot more success out of our varied social policies.
(Interior of the abandoned City Methodist Church in Gary, Indiana by Craig Finlay)
