tagged w/ slashing the safety net
-
I have been pushing about this for a long time.
As you seen on my stories.
( http://home.dbdbdugbug.operaunite.com/W/content/NEWS-CURRENT.html )
Nbcnews "in plain sight ~ poverty in america"
is pushing out about poverty, when many news agencies are keeping
hush. More likely being the investors or others behind the news agencies
don't want to put the light on poverty.
But as I say the light needs to be put on. The poor needs to get out more & be seen!
The rich wants you all to just die in your apartment & never to be seen!
Do not do that! Everyone poor needs to be seen to bring the light on poverty.
This is nothing new! There was something called the "The Poor People's Campaign."
Dr. King wanted to bring poor people to Washington D.C., forcing politicians to see them and think about their needs: "We ought to come in mule carts, in old trucks, any kind of transportation people can get their hands on. People ought to come to Washington, sit down if necessary in the middle of the street and say, 'We are here; we are poor; we don't have any money; you have made us this way...and we've come to stay until you do something about it.
( http://current.com/entertainment/comedy/94028851_the-poor-peoples-campaign-now-show-your-poverty.htm )
So with that is the Nbcnews news story "in plain sight ~ poverty in america."
Welcome to the home of “In Plain Sight,” a special initiative by NBC News to report on poverty in America, especially as it appears in forms and in places that many people overlook or choose to ignore.
With more than 46 million Americans living below the poverty line, including 16 million children, our goal is to put a human face on a problem that often can seem overwhelming.
We also plan to cover efforts to ease or even eradicate poverty. This includes heroic individuals who have devoted their lives to working among the poor and the debate over the proper role of government in fighting the problem.
What, exactly, is "poverty"? According to the U.S. Census Bureau, it's less than $11,945 per year for a single person, and $23,283 for a family of four.
Nearly a quarter of people in poverty have jobs, but their pay is so low that they still don't have enough money to meet basic needs like food, shelter, clothing and health care. It's also worth noting that women are more likely to be poor than men, and African-Americans, Latinos and Native-Americans are more likely to be poor than whites.
An evolving conversation
This nation has been talking about poverty and how to solve it for a long time now.
President Johnson declared a “war on poverty” in his 1964 State of the Union speech. At that time, the poverty rate was 19 percent and the poverty threshold was $1,558 for individuals.
From LBJ's declaration came the American safety net -- programs like Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and cash assistance. Over the next decade, poverty rates in the U.S. dropped to their lowest level -- 11.1 percent -- since the government began keeping a comprehensive count.
In 1996, President Bill Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich made a deal on what is often called “welfare reform,” with a new emphasis on work and self-sufficiency.
Some hail the overhaul of the welfare system and the subsequent drop in the number of people receiving cash assistance as a huge success. Critics say the safety net has become frayed, with too few getting too little help.
In the lead-up to President Obama’s State of the Union address last month, some of those who believe there’s a lot more work to be done to eradicate poverty in America took to Twitter using the hashtag #TalkPoverty, imploring the president to address the issue and propose solutions. He did not disappoint.
So while the conversation about poverty in America has been going on for decades, it seems to be taking on a new urgency, for women and children struggling to survive (more than half of poor families are headed by single moms), for formerly middle-class families and individuals who have slipped down the ladder, for young people starting out under the weight of crushing student debt.
Share your thoughts
We will explore those and other themes here and on NBC News broadcasts. And we’d like to know your thoughts: What should we be covering, what examples of poverty are you seeing in plain sight? Email us at InPlainSight@nbcuni.com and tweet using the hashtag #inplainsight.
A quick word about me: I am a longtime NBC Nightly News writer and producer, with a background in American history and law, on leave from my position at Nightly to lead this project. I am @bbabbo1 on Twitter.
And a final word about support for this project: The Ford Foundation has made a grant to NBC News to facilitate our reporting on poverty in America, and we welcome their support.
About this project:
"In Plain Sight" is a special initiative by NBC News to report on poverty in America.
Our work is supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation.
( http://inplainsight.nbcnews.com )I have been pushing about this for a long time.
As you seen on my stories.
(... more
-
-
48 million Americans who rely on Medicare, more than 50 million on Medicaid, and 54 million who receive Social Security benefits. The living standards of these millions of people will be severely affected by the structural changes and cuts that are being prepared by both big business parties. http://wsws.org/en/articles/2012/12/18/fisc-d18.html48 million Americans who rely on Medicare, more than 50 million on Medicaid, and 54... more
-
-
November 27, 2012: Activists, citizens, community groups, and healthcare workers gathered outside Aurora Sinai Medical Center in Milwaukee to demand our elected officials take a hard stand when it comes to cutting essential healthcare services when negotiating the terms of the "fiscal cliff" bargain.
In Wisconsin alone, a 5% reduction in Medicaid spending would cost the state 5,000 jobs. The level of services provided to the sick, elderly, and low-income populations of the state would be put in jeopardy should Congress agree to limit spending on social programs. The "fiscal cliff" is an artifact from an earlier deficit compromise exacerbated by continuing to give away billions of dollars in tax breaks to the richest 2% of Americans.
The time has come for Senators Kohl, Johnson, Senator-Elect Baldwin, and Congresswoman Gwen Moore to stand as champions for the neediest Americans and to pledge their constituents that they will NEVER vote for a bargain that cuts anything from Social Security, Medicaid, or Medicare.
Send a message today. We must decide what our priorities are as a nation - is it protected our most at-risk citizens, or is it to continue to pamper the rich?November 27, 2012: Activists, citizens, community groups, and healthcare workers... more
-
-
Mitt Romney's running mate told people gathered at a Colorado high school that the Republican ticket is going 'to give America the kind of leadership they deserve to get this economy growing.' (Aug. 14)Mitt Romney's running mate told people gathered at a Colorado high school that... more
-
-
Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney's newly picked running mate, Paul Ryan, is on the forefront of efforts to dismantle Social Security by putting seniors' savings into risky Wall Street investments. Over the years, Ryan has not only pushed for privatizing Social Security, but also dismantling Medicare and slashing funding for Medicaid. In the Republican response to President Obama's 2011 State of the Union address, Ryan defended cutbacks on social spending. "We're in a moment where if government's growth is left unchecked and unchallenged, America's best century will be considered our past century," Ryan said. "This is a future in which we will transform our social safety net into a hammock, which lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency." For more we speak with two experts on Social Security: Independent journalist Eric Laursen, author of the book, "The People's Pension: The Struggle to Defend Social Security Since Reagan"; and Heather McGhee, Vice President of Policy and Outreach at the progressive policy group Demos, and co-author of a chapter on retirement insecurity in the book, "Inequality Matters: The Growing Economic Divide in America and its Poisonous Consequences."Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney's newly picked running mate, Paul... more
-
-
At a town hall meeting, before he was picked to be Mitt Romney's VP, Paul Ryan had an elderly attendee escorted out of the building and cracked a joke about his medicine...At a town hall meeting, before he was picked to be Mitt Romney's VP, Paul Ryan... more
-
-
Really? Who'd have thunk, right?
WASHINGTON — The ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net.
Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the critical weeks ahead of the November elections.
The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965.
Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including in such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where voters are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth.
"I grew up going to Hawaii every summer. Now I'm here, applying for assistance because it's hard to make ends meet. It's very hard to adjust," said Laura Fritz, 27, of Wheat Ridge, Colo., describing her slide from rich to poor as she filled out aid forms at a county center. Since 2000, large swaths of Jefferson County just outside Denver have seen poverty nearly double.
Fritz says she grew up wealthy in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch, but fortunes turned after her parents lost a significant amount of money in the housing bust. Stuck in a half-million dollar house, her parents began living off food stamps and Fritz's college money evaporated. She tried joining the Army but was injured during basic training.
Now she's living on disability, with an infant daughter and a boyfriend, Garrett Goudeseune, 25, who can't find work as a landscaper. They are struggling to pay their $650 rent on his unemployment checks and don't know how they would get by without the extra help as they hope for the job market to improve.
In an election year dominated by discussion of the middle class, Fritz's case highlights a dim reality for the growing group in poverty. Millions could fall through the cracks as government aid from unemployment insurance, Medicaid, welfare and food stamps diminishes.
"The issues aren't just with public benefits. We have some deep problems in the economy," said Peter Edelman, director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy.
He pointed to the recent recession but also longer-term changes in the economy such as globalization, automation, outsourcing, immigration, and less unionization that have pushed median household income lower. Even after strong economic growth in the 1990s, poverty never fell below a 1973 low of 11.1 percent. That low point came after President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty, launched in 1964, that created Medicaid, Medicare and other social welfare programs.
"I'm reluctant to say that we've gone back to where we were in the 1960s. The programs we enacted make a big difference. The problem is that the tidal wave of low-wage jobs is dragging us down and the wage problem is not going to go away anytime soon," Edelman said.
Stacey Mazer of the National Association of State Budget Officers said states will be watching for poverty increases when figures are released in September as they make decisions about the Medicaid expansion. Most states generally assume poverty levels will hold mostly steady and they will hesitate if the findings show otherwise. "It's a constant tension in the budget," she said.
For the rest of the article go to the link provided:Really? Who'd have thunk, right?
WASHINGTON — The ranks of... more
-
-
I wonder if they had charts right before the French Revolution?
Just a reminder of what the two candidates are, in fact, advocating. From Ezra Klein:
Now, this is only for the specifics Romney has announced; he claims that he will make up for the large revenue losses under his plan (Obama gains revenue) by closing loopholes. But he refuses to say which, and the clear reality is that he’s talking through his hat. Meanwhile, Romney also proposes severe cuts in Medicaid, and his party wants big cuts in other safety-net programs.
So like it or not, we have an election in which one candidate is proposing a redistribution from the top — which is currently paying lower taxes than it has in 80 years — downward, mainly to lower-income workers, while the other is proposing a large redistribution from the poor and the middle class to the top.
So the next time someone tut-tuts about “class warfare”, remember that the class war is already happening, in real policy — with the top .01 percent on offense.I wonder if they had charts right before the French Revolution?
Just a reminder of... more
-
-
These crisis centers "were asking for it" Screw you, rape victims! Love, Gov. Haley
Much of the uproar over Gov. Nikki Haley’s budget vetoes centers over her elimination of the South Carolina Arts Commission. While the calls for lawmakers to override the arts veto are certainly justified, the governor also cut another program which deserves just as much outrage – nearly half a million dollars designated for rape crisis centers and sexual assault prevention programs.
According to the governor, state funding for rape victims “attempts to serve a portion of our population for which we extend our sympathy and encouragement, but nevertheless, it is only a small portion of South Carolina’s chronically ill or abused.” Haley said the $453,000 designated for the South Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault’s rape crisis centers “distract[s] from the agency’s broader mission of protecting South Carolina’s public health.”
Full article at link.These crisis centers "were asking for it" Screw you, rape victims! Love,... more
-
