Tag: Poverty

Jun 09 2008

Gasoline: Widening The Gap Between Rich And Poor

cross posted at The Dream Antilles

Is lack of any US energy policy designed to drive the poorest Americans even deeper into poverty?  To drive them to the cities?  To drive them off their land?  To drive their wages lower? It sure looks like it, and that rising gas prices are the means to those ends.  

This morning’s NY Times, focusing on the Mississippi Delta, finally reveals the problem all of us suspected as soon as gas prices started to spike.  The bleak news:

Here in the Mississippi Delta, some farm workers are borrowing money from their bosses so they can fill their tanks and get to work. Some are switching jobs for shorter commutes.

People are giving up meat so they can buy fuel. Gasoline theft is rising. And drivers are running out of gas more often, leaving their cars by the side of the road until they can scrape together gas money.

The disparity between rural America and the rest of the country is a matter of simple home economics. Nationwide, Americans are now spending about 4 percent of their take-home income on gasoline. By contrast, in some counties in the Mississippi Delta, that figure has surpassed 13 percent.

As a result, gasoline expenses are rivaling what families spend on food and housing.

“This crisis really impacts those who are at the economic margins of society, mostly in the rural areas and particularly parts of the Southeast,” said Fred Rozell, retail pricing director at the Oil Price Information Service, a fuel analysis firm. “These are people who have to decide between food and transportation.”

Put simply, gas at $4 a gallon and more means that the poor, who go without on a good day, are forced to go without even more.  It’s not a pretty picture.  It means that paying for gas competes with the utilities, food, health care, clothing, school supplies, and every other household item.  

May 22 2008

UN Chief Tours Burma, Regime Pressured To Allow In More Aid

“I’m quite confident we will be able to overcome this tragedy. I’ve tried to bring a message of hope to your people,” Ban said earlier as he made an offering at the country’s holiest Buddhist shrine, the Shwedagon Pagoda.

“At the same time, I hope your people and government can coordinate the flow of aid, so the aid work can be done in a more systematic and organised way,” said Ban.

“The United Nations and the whole international community stand ready to help you overcome this tragedy.”

link: http://afp.google.com/article/…

Meanwhile pressure is building on the military regime to do far more to help the victims of the cyclone, and not all of the pressure is coming from outside the country:

May 09 2008

John Edwards leads Half in Ten Effort on Poverty

John Edwards has joined with several organizations to try to cut poverty in America in half in the next 10 years.

Watch the video with John Edwards and join the movement here: http://www.halfinten.org/

One in eight Americans now lives in poverty.  A family of four is considered poor if the family’s income is below $19,971-a bar far below what most people believe a family needs to get by. Still, using this measure, 12.6 percent of all Americans were poor in 2005, and more than 90 million people (31 percent of all Americans) had incomes below 200 percent of federal poverty thresholds.

Millions of Americans will spend at least one year in poverty at some point in their lives.  One third of all Americans will experience poverty within a 13-year period. In that period, one in 10 Americans are poor for most of the time, and one in 20 are poor for 10 or more years.  

Poverty in the United States is far higher than in many other developed nations. At the turn of the 21st century, the United States ranked 24th among 25 countries when measuring the share of the population below 50 percent of median income.

Inequality has reached record highs. The richest 1 percent of Americans in 2005 held the largest share of the nation’s income (19 percent) since 1929. At the same time, the poorest 20 percent of Americans held only 3.4 percent of the nation’s income.

It does not have to be this way.  Our nation need not tolerate persistent poverty alongside great wealth.

http://www.americanprogress.or…

Do you care?  Do something and join this effort.

Half in Ten: From Poverty to Prosperity

The Center for American Progress Action Fund is committed to cutting poverty in half in 10 years. Under the leadership of Senator John Edwards, CAPAF has joined with ACORN, the Coalition on Human Needs, and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights to create the Half in Ten campaign.

In 2006, the Center for American Progress-our partner organization-convened a diverse group of national experts and leaders to examine the causes and consequences of poverty in America and make recommendations for national action. The resulting report from the Task Force on Poverty calls for a national goal of cutting poverty in half in the next 10 years and proposes a strategy to reach that goal, guided by the following four principles:

Promote Decent Work. People should work and work should pay enough to ensure that workers and their families can avoid poverty, meet basic needs, and save for the future.

Provide Opportunity for All. Children should grow up in conditions that maximize their opportunities for success; adults should have opportunities throughout their lives to connect to work, get more education, live in a good neighborhood, and move up in the workforce.

Ensure Economic Security. Americans should not fall into poverty when they cannot work or work is unavailable, unstable, or pays so little that they cannot make ends meet.

Help People Build Wealth. All Americans should have the opportunity to build assets that allow them to weather periods of flux and volatility, and to have the resources that may be essential to advancement and upwardmobility.

http://www.americanprogressact…

The Report (Poverty to Prosperity: A National Strategy to Cut Poverty in Half by the Center for American Progress Task Force on Poverty) is here:  http://www.americanprogress.or…

Join here:  http://www.halfinten.org/

More after the fold.  

May 09 2008

Video: John Edwards (nearly) Calls for Hillary to Drop Out of the Race

Just short of calling for Hillary to drop out of the race, Edwards stated that he just doesn’t see how Hillary can win the nomination, based on the numbers.

Appearing on the Today Show, John Edwards also essentially stated that he believes Obama has a better chance of winning the general election:

“I think Barack Obama has a better chance. It looks like he’s going to be the nominee.”

“He brings the capacity to unite the Democratic party, to bring in new voters and to get people excited about change.

…People are looking for a leader and someone they can trust and someone who will fight for them, every day. I think Obama will do that.”

Watch it here:

Apr 20 2008

The Vermont solution: Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy

(crossposted on Big Orange)

This is a new review of Bill McKibben’s book of last year, Deep Economy, from a critical-theory perspective; it’s informed by a fair reading of McKibben’s opus, observance of a recent speaking appearance by the author, and a reading of his DKos diaries.

There are a lot of citations of Bill McKibben on DKos; kudos to hof1991 for an oh-so-brief review, and to Gmoke for his 350 ppm or bust diary.  And of course to Bill McKibben himself.

posted on Flickr by lollyknit

Apr 19 2008

“35-million people in America went hungry last year.”

A sad truth and a harsh reality in the richest nation in the world. And the global situation regarding food, hunger, and nutrition is much worse, as even the Bush administration has reluctantly admitted:

President George W. Bush on Monday ordered the release of $200 million in U.S. emergency food aid to help alleviate food shortages in developing countries in Africa and elsewhere, the White House said.

Bush took action a day after top finance and development officials from around the world called for urgent steps to stem rising food prices, warning that social unrest would spread unless the cost of basic staples was contained.

A drop in a very big bucket, but every drop helps and is needed.

Since bowing out of the presidential race, John Edwards has continued to speak out on a number of important issues affecting the US and the world. And one issue Edwards has always been impassioned about – is poverty and the importance of a progressive sustained comprehensive set of solutions to alleviate poverty at home and abroad.

Yesterday, Edwards continued this focus and spoke at the opening ceremony for the Millennium Campus Conference, a three-day event sponsored by MIT’s Global Poverty Initiative. Read on for more.

EENR Blog

Apr 18 2008

Bush says WE need Pope talk re “right & wrong”!! xk*%#

He says we need to be told by the Pope that people are precious, that right and wrong matter!

And, it’s just a “tough” patch we’re going through. Bush just said so. here. But worse:

Listen up, you utterly deprived (not-fit-to-be) lying president, because you caused a great deal of the pain and suffering Americans are right now encountering. You have caused a war that was unnecessary that killed hundreds of thousands of people and wounded many more. Millions are refugees because of your war. Talk about precious life? “Sacred” life? You don’t know the meaning of the word.

Famines may occur because you were unwilling to act on climate change because you wanted to help the rich get richer. Don’t tell me the Pope needs to talk to me about right and wrong!!!!!

Don’t you hate being lectured by an idiot?

~~cross-posted at orange~~

Apr 16 2008

soldiers. and. a right-to-life.

• unSupporting Our Troops

Rep. John F. Tierney (D-MA): So it is a little astonishing to me, and I think to others, the planning for what is going to happen to our troops, their meals, their water, their housing, the essentials of life, their protection, all of that doesn’t even begin to happen until May 2003, after Baghdad falls, but in the meantime the administration had your company planning for Iraq’s oil infrastructure months before it had a plan how to support our troops.

Mar 27 2008

Been on the bread line yet? Food crisis sneaks up on world.

    Cross-posted on Orange

Today I learned the news. The world already has a food crisis, an enormous problem, possible social upheavals, perhaps even  a “perfect storm.” Add that to your gas tank!

I’d heard bits about grain prices for a while, been shocked at prices of bread, eggs, flour and cheese–even soup! Silly me, I thought I could stock upon a few items and make do. Just about everything is going up and not just a little. I try not to panic but it’s not easy living on a small fixed income since I rather like to eat.

Frightening implications abound for the poorest of the poor the world over as a new UN Report makes clear. There’s a lot happening that we do not hear about from our pathetic media. Just as one woman says she knew she was poor, but “this is worse than poverty,” a UN official says watch for the “new face of hunger.”

Follow below for a little tour, a tiny glimpse of what’s going on, if you dare, if you care.

Mar 12 2008

Congressional Poverty Scorecard – Anti-Poverty Legislation Blocked

On Monday, the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law released its 2007 Congressional Poverty Scorecard. The President of the Center, John Bouman, noted that in states with the highest poverty rates, their congressional delegations tended to score the worst.

“Poverty is everywhere in America, but it is interesting that in states with the highest concentrations of poverty, the Congressional delegations seem least interested in supporting initiatives that fight poverty,” said John Bouman, president of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, which released the study. “This appears deeper than simply opposing spending. A member could have opposed any of the measures we analyzed that called for new spending and still could have voted to support half of the poverty-fighting measures on our list.”

Former presidential candidate John Edwards was also on the center’s conference call with reporters.

“We can get the national leadership and we can get the congressional leadership we need,” Edwards said. “But first voters need to be educated as to who is doing the work and who is not.”

Mar 11 2008

The DOW’s best day in 5 1/2 years. Your money working for investor class.

The Dow Jones average was up 417 points today.  You know, because the US economy is doing so well, jobs are popping up everywhere and everything financial is coming up Roses!  

OOP’s.  My bad.  Here is the real reason.  

Here is the Headline and some input from CNNMoney:

Stocks surge with the Dow soaring 417 points as investors cheer reports that the central bank is pumping an additional $200 billion into the banking system.

Stocks rallied Tuesday as investors welcomed news that the Federal Reserve will lend up to $200 billion to banks and lenders as a means of loosening up tight credit markets.

According to early tallies, the Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) jumped almost 417 points, its fourth-biggest one-day point gain ever and the biggest one-day point gain since July 2002. In percentage terms, the gain of 3.55% was the best since March 2003.

The blue-chip index had ended the previous session at a 17-month low.

The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 (SPX) index climbed 3.7% after ending the previous session at a 19-month low. It was the biggest one-day percentage gain since May 2002.

What does this mean to you, American citizen?  Well, it means that the Federal Reserve is going to have to print more money in order to bail out the companies that, not unlike a Las Vegas gambler, placed all their money on number 18 on the Roulette wheel and the wheel stopped on 24.  Close, but a loser.

The Fed will make up to $200 billion available to a group of 20 big investment firms for a term of 28 days, rather than overnight. The program is being coordinated with central banks worldwide.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/1…

Feb 10 2008

OAC Archive: The Job Guarantee and Poverty

From the One American Committee supporters blog, “Argument and Analysis” OpenMic post,

2/16.2006, posted here for archival purposes

When I was studying Economics in grad school, I had a crusty old professor who would say, “War on Poverty? If they really wanted to fight a war on poverty, they’d give the poor money, declare victory, and move on.”

Now, solving the problems of poverty is more complicated than that, but according to the Centre of Full Employment and Equity, here in Newcastle, Australia, solving the problem of unemployment is just about that simple.

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