Policy
Medicaid Expansion Talking Points
Published September 03, 2009 @ 01:28PM PT
Via Ezra, I see Families USA has listed 10 reasons why we need health care reform. The #1 Reason? "Fully federally funded" Medicaid expansion that will insure millions of low-income households nationwide.
They helpfully extrapolate on each point in the easily digestible document. Here are your talking points on Medicaid expansion, an issue we've been tackling here at Poverty in America.
The bill will increase Medicaid eligibility to 133% of the federal poverty level (~$24k for a family of 3 in '09). This expansion alone would cover more than one-third of the currently uninsured, or about 17M people.
We need this expansion because so far we're leaving millions of poor adults without access to health care. Medicaid now is fairly restrictive in who qualifies among the low-income. In only 7 states are low-income childless adults currently eligible, and in only DC and 16 states cover parents at 100% of the poverty level.
The remainder of the report is super handy in explaining market regulation, the public option, coverage for kids, cost control, and other reasons why we need health care reform. Read up and gear up for President Obama's speech next week!
Segregation, Self-Help & Gangs
Published September 02, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
What do Thrivent Financial, New Orleans's Mardi Gras Krewe Zulu, and Salvadorans With Pride all have in common? Their roots are in mutual aid societies providing insurance, benefits and assistance for racial/ethnic minority groups at a time when these groups could not access help in mainstream society.
How are these groups different? Today, Thrivent Financial is a Fortune 500 financial services company for Lutherans with $61B in assets. The African-American Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club is one of the premier Mardi Gras attractions in New Orleans. Salvadorans With Pride is a gang of Salvadoran immigrants in suburban Long Island. All three groups were born of economic hardship and ethnic/racial segregation in the United States. Now policymakers, criminologists and social workers trying to halt gang violence are going one step further and trying to harness the youth development and social support that gangs provide.
Obama Restores Civil Rights
Published September 01, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
Good news this morning: the Obama Administration is "restoring" the Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice - the agency for anti-discrimination enforcement in the areas of housing, voting rights, employment, and so forth. Under Bush, the division was notoriously politicized, with conservative and Christian loyalists with little civil rights experience recruited and charged with prioritizing religious cases at the expense of the division's core focus on racial/ethnic discrimination. Why am I writing about this at Poverty in America? Because discrimination has historically reinforced racial, gender and other forms of inequality in housing, jobs, etc. - leading to the disproportionately high rates of women and people of color living in poverty.
Poverty as a Political Issue
Published August 31, 2009 @ 09:20AM PT
The American Prospect featured a great piece last week about how politicians frame poverty - and how that impacts public sentiment towards the poor. After Reagan effectively boogey-womaned mothers on welfare, President Clinton reframed Democratic economic policy as one concerned with the middle-class. This was a political maneuver to fight poverty subtly using a more inclusive rhetoric; many political observers claim that President Obama is doing the same thing today. What's especially interesting here is how their policy actions within our economic circumstances influence our general attitudes toward the poor. Is the best time to fight poverty now - during an historic recession - or when the good times roll again?
Keep Poverty on the Agenda
Published August 30, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
With the death of Sen. Kennedy and the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina both happening this week, the topic of poverty was fresh in the public's mind. In eulogizing Kennedy, most of us could take pride in remembering his service to "working people" everywhere, his commitment to poverty reduction over the life of his career. With Katrina, it is also about a job unfinished, but with a much less nostalgic, sweet glow - the enduring problems of blight, housing insecurity, racial inequality and poverty are glaring, graphic, and depressing.
Whether you're motivated to action by the inspiring good works of folks like Senator Kennedy, or fueled by a sense of outrage over injustice, this past week offered plenty of reminders that poverty is a persistent, entrenched, political problem for which solutions exist. Investments in early childhood education pay lifetime dividends. Economic boycotts and union movements highlight workers' rights and benefits. Providing childcare, fair pay, and extensive family leave policies give mothers better opportunities to compete economically and earn enough to care for their families. And universal health care bankrupts neither households nor the entire medical system.
Change.org is just one platform where you can commit (and re-commit) to fighting poverty in the U.S. To start, let's begin by keeping poverty on the public agenda - as a problem we can and must solve. Let's not let it slip away as our weekend tributes wrap up. As Uncle Teddy and 15k volunteers in New Orleans remind us, the cause endures and the work goes on.
("Not Everyone in SF is Rich..." by Son of Groucho)
Poverty Movement Loses a Champion
Published August 28, 2009 @ 05:03AM PT
While the death of Senator Edward Kennedy will give media types something to do in the waning days of August, one topic will probably get little coverage--poverty.
Despite his silver spoon, Ted Kennedy championed poverty issues. Perhaps he took his older brother seriously when Jack challenged,
"For of those to whom much is given, much is required."
Despite his many foibles, Teddy seemed to reach for this scriptural mandate. And he astutely observed,
No one who works for a living should live in poverty.
Is the end of this Kennedy era the end of compassion? Will someone, perhaps another Kennedy, grab the end poverty flag and charge up the Hill?
25% NOLA Public Housing Residents Lost
Published August 25, 2009 @ 08:53AM PT
Saturday August 29 marks the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's destruction of the US Gulf Coast. The pre-storm problem of deep poverty and racial inequality has worsened, and gone largely unreported. Those of us at Change.org have an opportunity to reverse that trend. It begins by educating ourselves on the enduring struggles down there to provide a safe, affordable place to live for all those who lost their homes due to a lethal combination of a natural disaster and wrongheaded public policy. To start: HUD cannot locate over 25% of public housing residents who were living in the now-demolished "Big Four" projects prior to the storm.
More, including what you can do, after the jump.
