Newsweek's Cover: The Other America (An Enduring Shame) by Jonathan Alter

[Pirate Smile]

The Other America

An Enduring Shame: Katrina reminded us, but the problem is not new. Why a rising tide of people live in poverty, who they are—and what we can do about it.



By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek

Sept. 19, 2005 issue - It takes a hurricane. It takes a catastrophe like Katrina to strip away the old evasions, hypocrisies and not-so-benign neglect. It takes the sight of the United States with a big black eye—visible around the world—to help the rest of us begin to see again. For the moment, at least, Americans are ready to fix their restless gaze on enduring problems of poverty, race and class that have escaped their attention. Does this mean a new war on poverty? No, especially with Katrina's gargantuan price tag. But this disaster may offer a chance to start a skirmish, or at least make Washington think harder about why part of the richest country on earth looks like the Third World.

"I hope we realize that the people of New Orleans weren't just abandoned during the hurricane," Sen. Barack Obama said last week on the floor of the Senate. "They were abandoned long ago—to murder and mayhem in the streets, to substandard schools, to dilapidated housing, to inadequate health care, to a pervasive sense of hopelessness."

-snip-
In the last four decades, part of that obligation has been met. Social Security and Medicare have all but eliminated poverty among the elderly. Food stamps have made severe hunger in the United States mostly a thing of the past. A little-known program with bipartisan support and a boring name—the Earned Income Tax Credit—supplements the puny wages of the working poor, helping to lift millions into the lower middle class.

But after a decade of improvement in the 1990s, poverty in America is actually getting worse. A rising tide of economic growth is no longer lifting all boats. For the first time in half a century, the third year of a recovery (2004) also saw an increase in poverty. In a nation of nearly 300 million people, the number living below the poverty line ($14,680 for a family of three) recently hit 37 million, up more than a million in a year.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9287641/

[Pirate Smile]

1. More - it is a 5 page article:

"Until Katrina, the pressure was off. After President Clinton signed welfare reform in 1996, the chattering classes stopped arguing about it. With welfare caseloads cut in half—more than 9 million women and children have left the rolls—even many liberals figured the trend lines were headed in the right direction. The real-world challenges of welfare reform explained in Jason DeParle's landmark 2004 book, "American Dream," went unheeded, as Clinton initiatives and the boom of the 1990s pulled 4.1 million of the working poor out of poverty. (Good times don't always have that effect. The Reagan boom of the 1980s did the same for only 50,000.) Meanwhile crime plummeted in cities across the country, down to levels not seen since the 1950s. Few noticed that progress in fighting poverty stalled with the economy in 2001.

President Bush, preoccupied with terrorism and tax cuts, made no mention of it. His main involvement with poverty issues has been on education, where he sharply increased aid to poor schools as part of his No Child Left Behind initiative. Democrats have offered little on education beyond opposition to NCLB. They've shown more allegiance to the teachers unions (whose contracts are models of unaccountability) than to poor kids. Bush's other antipoverty idea was to bolster so-called faith-based initiatives by shifting a little federal funding of social programs to religious groups. Post-Katrina, this will likely be extended. But it's a Band-Aid, not an antipoverty strategy. The last notable poverty expert working in the White House, John Dilulio, departed in 2001 after explaining that the administration had no interest in real policy analysis.

The president has made a point of hiring more high-ranking African-Americans than any of his predecessors. But his identification with blacks is a long way from, say, LBJ's intoning, as he did in 1965, "Their cause must be our cause, too ... And we shall overcome." Bush rarely meets with the poor or their representatives. His mother made headlines when she visited the Houston Astrodome and said: "So many of the people in the arenas here, you know, were underprivileged anyway. So this is working very well for them"—as if sharing space with 10,000 strangers was a step up.

Who are the poor? With whites making up 72 percent of the population, the United States contains more poor whites than poor blacks or Hispanics. In fact, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that the increase in white poverty in nonurban areas accounts for most of the recent uptick in the poverty rate. But only a little more than 8 percent of American whites are poor, compared with 22 percent of Hispanics and nearly a quarter of all African-Americans (in a country that is 12 percent black). This represents a significant advance for blacks in recent decades, thanks to the growth of the black middle class, but it's still a shamefully high number. By contrast, immigration has sent poverty among Hispanics up, though it has not been as intractable for them across generations."

[Davis_X_Machina]

2. I hope there's a sidebar at least...

...on the first The Other America, Michael Harrington's watershed book from 1961, which lit the fuse on the War on Poverty.

Harrington (1928-1989) went on to become a founder of Democratic Socialists of America, critic of American society generally, and a truly great American: "One cannot raise the bottom of society without benefitting everyone above."

[Pirate Smile]

3. Clinton programs were working so, of course, Bush and the GOP Congress

killed them.

"Following the Gatreaux model in Chicago, the Clinton administration launched a "scatter-site" housing program in four cities that found homes for the poor in mixed-income neighborhoods. While the move doesn't much benefit adults, their children—confronted with higher expectations and a less harmful peer group—do much better. "It really helped in Atlanta," says Rep. John Lewis, a hero of the civil-rights movement. Bush and the GOP Congress killed the idea, as well as the Youth Opportunity Grant program, which had shown success in partnering with the private sector to help prepare disadvantaged teens for work and life. They tried to cut after-school programs—proven winners—by 40 percent, then settled for a freeze."

-snip-
Beyond the thousands of individual efforts necessary to save New Orleans and ease poverty lie some big political choices. Until Katrina intervened, the top priority for the GOP when Congress reconvened was permanent repeal of the estate tax, which applies to far less than 1 percent of taxpayers. (IRS figures show that only 1,607 wealthy people in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi even pay the tax, out of more than 4 million taxpayers—one twenty-fifth of 1 percent.) Repeal would cost the government $24 billion a year. Meanwhile, House GOP leaders are set to slash food stamps by billions in order to protect subsidies to wealthy farmers. But Katrina could change the climate. The aftermath was not a good omen for the Grover Norquists of the world, who want to slash taxes more and shrink government to the size where it can be "strangled in the bathtub."

:grr:

[cliss]

4. Unbelievable. What an ugly moment of shame

for the mega-wealthy Bush administration. I hope the world rubs their noses in it for a long time. I'm hoping there will be big sections in every magazine, even Vogue does a "poverty op-ed", and all the others get involved. They should NOT let them get off the hook on this.

Last summer, we spent a month in Europe. We had such a wonderful time. Met so many nice people. They all seemed fairly well-off. In Sweden, everybody has government-paid medical and dental. They looked really good; they were out hiking and they ate well. You would NEVER find anyone like the poor woman in the photo above. NEVER.

In Europe, you'd have to look hard to find anyone in such dire straits. And here's the shocker: Europe has more people than the U.S., and they use less than 1/2 as much oil as the U.S. They make do with less, because they're more efficient.

Stupid ass Bush.

[Pirate Smile]

5. It needs more votes to get on the Greatest Page. It is a good, sober

article.

[sunnystarr]

11. They use half as much oil because

all of Europe has excellent transit systems. Cars aren't used to go to work. You can take trains or busses that have realistic schedules. This country was developed for the auto and oil industries. Now that the price is too high it's the consumer that's being blamed. I almost threw up watching that 62 Irish guy on CNN today (I think his name is Frank). He was interviewing this guy who insists that the solution to high gas prices is to raise the price of gas higher so people would use less. Then they could use the gas price increase to rebuild NO. Like yeah right ... I just won't go to work. The CNN guy agrees with him. Is this not insane??

It's the same as Americans being blamed for not saving enough after years of credit card marketing and conditioning and advertising designed to increase consumerism. We used to have usury laws that outlawed interest rate price gouging and limited the amount of interest. Once everyone got hooked on "buy now pay later" they did away with the protections making Americans "slave to the lender." Interest rates now are higher than the loan sharks ever thought of charging years ago and this during a time when the prime rate has been so low.

[lateo]

6. "what we can do about it"

Ummm...how about stop giving the richest people in America tax cuts and letting all of our manufacturing jobs go overseas?

[madaboutharry]

7. An "Only Nixon can go to China" moment

This will be an oppurtunity that Bush will fail to take. He will fail to take it simply because he can not. In order to change direction, Bush's world view would need to make a cosmic shift. This is a man, who while in graduate school, stated that people were poor because they were lazy. There is no evidence that he thinking has grown or evolved in any way whatsoever. In order for Bush to seize this moment, it would require him to re-evalute everything he has believed in in the past. He is not capable of such a task.

[RagingInMiami]

8. Recommended

[Nothing Without Hope]

9. Recommended and bookmarked. Thanks! n/t

[cliss]

10. OK, Pirate, nominated.

My first one ever.

[Pirate Smile]

12. First one ever? Wow, Jonathan Alter should be honored.

Thanks, cliss.:)

[cmdrxog]

13. Labor must be paid wages that allow people to live

and the cost of basic goods and services must be controlled. The situation is reinforced with lies and programming blaming the poor for their poverty; when in fact they are being cheated out of fair pay and stolen from when they purchase food, shelter & clothing.
Poverty is also necessary for the wealthy to enjoy their power and toys; if everyone has a froople how can owning one enhance their self importance. This is also reinforced w/ programming and lies so even those who can least afford it find a video cell phone defining their status.
A solution is going to require new goals and measures of worth that don't place value on baubles and power.

[REACTIVATED IN CT]

14. Welcome to DU cmdrxog !

[MichiganVote]

15. Public education has been telling Americans about poor kids for years

Nobody wanted to listen. Blame the messenger. Its not schools that need to change, its schools, societies, policies, politicians, republicans and democrats and on and on....

For anyone who has worked with poor families the last ten years, none of what is seen in NO and elsewhere is any surprise at all.

[DemReadingDU]

16. Thanks for sharing