Poverty in America (the saga continues)

[LC EFA]

JeffR  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Sun Feb-15-09 08:41 PM
Original message
Poverty in America: No Keener Revelation   Updated at 8:41 PM
   
"There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children." – Nelson Mandela

By Mandela's measure, America's soul is sick.

While the poverty rate among all Americans is currently estimated at about one in eight, among those 18 and younger it is about one in six.

To put the numbers in more concrete terms, consider this: the number of poor children in the United States is greater than the combined populations of New York and Los Angeles.

And every 33 seconds, a newborn American takes his or her first breath in poverty.

In Mandela's terms, the Children's Defense Fund 2008 annual report is indeed revelatory. Among its findings:

753 white babies per day begin their lives in poverty, along with 794 African-American babies and 956 Latino babies.

Nearly six million children in the United States experience extreme poverty, defined as being a member of a family whose income is below half of the official poverty line. That poverty line, of course, is widely considered outmoded and inadequate as a measure of real poverty.

Nine million American children have no health insurance. In Texas, which fares worst among all 50 states, 20 percent of children are uninsured. Nationwide, 20 percent of Native American children and 20 percent of Hispanic children likewise have no insurance coverage.

Among industrialized nations, the United States ranks 22nd in low birth weight rates and 25th in infant mortality.

In 2007, 12.7 percent of children in the United States received food stamp assistance. The number has risen each year since 2000 and the coming of "compassionate conservatism" to Washington.

[snip]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5061387

I thought under Obama all the poverty would magically disappear with a wave of the PonyWand.

We've been LIED !1!11! too again. 

southerncrone  Donating Member  (1000+ posts)    Sun Feb-15-09 11:31 PM
Response to Reply #47
54. I still can't believe we're talking about poverty in 2009.
   
The imbalance of wealth distribution over the last 30 years is more than a crime; it's a sin.

I hope the greedy assholes, who schemed & lobbied to make sure they controlled vast amounts of money specifically to keep others down, rot in hell for all eternity. :nuke:

They have siphoned off the wealth of this country & stashed it in overseas accounts, all while shipping our natural resources overseas to China, to manufacture goods using child labor & selling the goods back to us with huge markups, which they pocketed.

They have abused children world wide, not just here.

May the Universe exact absolute justice upon them. Karma is hell.

I assume you really intended to say "wealth redistribution" there.

JeffR  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Sun Feb-15-09 11:44 PM
Response to Reply #54
56. Seconded.   Updated at 8:41 PM
   
If anyone had told me in the late Sixties that we'd still be talking in 2009 about solving poverty (along with CAFE standards, health care for all, racial issues, food safety, bloated Pentagon budgets, the War on Drugs and all the rest) I'd have laughed.

Hopefully you'll come down one of these days.

mntleo2  Donating Member  (1000+ posts)  Mon Feb-16-09 09:10 AM
Response to Reply #66
87. The madness continues in classism ...
   
Edited on Mon Feb-16-09 09:34 AM by mntleo2
...and I am *not* saying that racism does not figure into this madness, but I am saying that racism has gone underground and has been "replaced" by classism as an excuse for racist and sexist policies. It is the way of keeping the "status quo" by pretending racism and sexism is gone and not the "issues", that racism and sexism is not the problem of our society, but that poverty is the individual problem of women who "choose" poverty.

Let me try to demonstrate how it worked:

Welfare came out of Social Security as a way to give benefits to (mostly) women who were under 65 and had lost their husband's incomes by abandonment and refusal to support the family (like pay child support). But until the 1960's most welfare benefits were given to white women citizens. When women citizens of color began to sign up for those benefits in the 1960's and 1970's, well that was when suddenly welfare became a "concern". You will notice that the subtle picture of welfare recipients was of women of color, even though to this day, welfare recipients are predominantly white women ~ but in reality they are all poor women. When Reagan spoke of the "Welfare Queen" (which he later admitted was not a true story), he never mentioned color, but it immediately brought up the image of a black woman and epitomized all women as "lazy" for raising a family on their own.

Even though it was less than 4% of the budget at the time, Welfare DEFormed was written with the demonization and image in mind of black women as the face of the "lazy" welfare recipient, and grouped into that all poor women were freely punished for being poor and having the audacity to want to raise their families with support when they had no other resources to turn to. Welfare DEFormed was written by Robert Rector, a rich white man of the predominantly rich white men's club, the Heritage Foundation. He wrote this bill after meeting some DC women who were going to school and raising their families on welfare. Worse, they had fled the Virginia small towns to come to DC to do that! Oh no! What Rector preferred to ignore was, these women had fled communities where they had little hope of EVER going any farther than working in "the big house" as domestics, a tradition that had been ensconced since Thomas Jefferson never freed his slaves ~ even his beloved slave Sally Hemmings who bore him 6 children and only two of his sons that he reluctantly freed. Oh he wrote of the wrongness of slavery! He wrote about the importance of "freedom" ~ until it applied to his own slaves and the women he supposedly loved but refused to acknowledge. These women were STILL living that nightmare 250 years later as so-called "freed" American citizens in the 350 year old communities they lived in. Lord help them that they fled that place to find an education and a step up so they could work for wages that would give their families comfort! That was reserved for a white MAN, certainly not some uppity WOMAN, especially a BLACK woman!

You will also notice that the so-called "solution" to women in poverty was for the conservatives to allot 1 billion dollars to marry off welfare women. This "solution" was with the attitude that, if women would just marry some "wallet with legs" why their problems would vanish! It is also based in this racist, sexist attitude that women somehow need a man to "succeed".

In Vermont, they decided to give women who had court ordered child support the amount that had been ordered even if the father did not pay. It significantly lowered the poverty rate among women who had it ~ but the caveat there is that, only 40% of women who had to turn to welfare had court ordered child support, and the ones who had to turn to welfare were women whose fathers refused to pay it. It did give the state an iron glove to collect those funds more diligently.

In Venezuela, the stay-at-home parent is actually paid a wage for the work they do. This is because the work is valued and seen as a contribution to society.

Welfare DEFormed was a classist, sexist way by using subtle racism to denigrate women's work and codify into law that women's work does not nor should not count, that this work is not doing anything toward the betterment of our country, which is an outright lie. It encompasses ALL women's work with that codification into law that the work of raising a family and working without pay is "doing nothing". It is saying that "womens work" that we have done in almost all cultures worldwide is not worthy of our society's support and using classist racist images to do so. It is an outright war on women.

If we truly want change and to end the madness, we need to call out the sexism and racism with the demonizing of the poor of ALL races. I think it has to begin in people of poverty finding their commonalities and then uniting with so-called "credible" advocates (because nobody will actually listen to the poor, but they will sometimes listen to a well educated person if they don't make them into a kook), to call out our government and society as to what they are doing. By the rich especially keeping their feet heavily forced upon the neck of the poor and convincing the middle class that the issue is "not racist", they encourage open hatred and fear of the poor with the middle class ~ and their own wealth continues with the poor paying their way.

While I will say my view of the history I have just described might be "opinion" as to the light it is viewed, it is still true history. I am not sure what other conclusions can be made from what has happened ...

Does this make sense to you?

My 2 cents

Cat In Seattle

Sorry. That does not make sense to me. In fact it makes about as much sense as a bicycle for a fish.

[jukin]

All liberal policies all failures.

[Carl]

In Vermont, they decided to give women who had court ordered child support the amount that had been ordered even if the father did not pay. It significantly lowered the poverty rate among women who had it ~ but the caveat there is that, only 40% of women who had to turn to welfare had court ordered child support, and the ones who had to turn to welfare were women whose fathers refused to pay it. It did give the state an iron glove to collect those funds more diligently.

Okay,this little incoherent snippet is why we laugh when you all call yourselves the smartest among us.

This is the ramblings of a lunatic who can`t hold a thought long enough in their head for the next sentence to be logically related to the one proceeding it.

[DumbAss Tanker]

Now, why would it be such a scandal to find that on the whole, the families with the most non-earning mouths to feed are the most likely to be in financial straits?  Seems like a "Well, DUH!" to me.  The DUmmie ability to take find a social injustice spin in even the most obvious statistical relationship says it all about why these stupid emos should never be in charge of anything.

[Defiant1]

I don't think it really matters to a newborn whether the t.v. is a flat screen or picture tube or if they have premium channels or just basic.

[MrsSmith]

Poverty in America:

Hungry in America

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030818/lieberman

Food is the expendable item in a poor person's budget. With the need to pay for gasoline, car insurance, trailer rent, clothes, medicine and utilities, and to make payments on a car loan and $10,000 in medical bills, Spearman says three meals a day "take a back seat." She says she and her family eat a lot of rice with biscuits and gravy. Their diet is more interesting only when a local supermarket sells eight pieces of chicken for $3.99 or chuck roast for $1.49 a pound. "This country doesn't want to admit there's poverty," she says. "We can feed the world but not our own."

True poverty is nearly non-existant in the US.  How many children starved to death last year because there was no food?  And how many of them were in the US?  It's so rare, I can't even find a statistic for it.  Sometimes, I get so sick of these do-nothings whining about not having enough.  Send them all to Africa for a month.  Or even Mexico!  They have no clue what real poverty is.   

[Chris_]

By Mandela's measure, America's soul is sick.

Big ****ing deal.  By my measure, all you DUmmies should commit mass suicide.

You think I care what a Communist has to say about the USA? if I did, I would give more than 2 cents to your silly and uninformed opinions.

[Chris_]

Poverty in America:

True poverty is nearly non-existant in the US.  How many children starved to death last year because there was no food?  And how many of them were in the US?  It's so rare, I can't even find a statistic for it.  Sometimes, I get so sick of these do-nothings whining about not having enough.  Send them all to Africa for a month.  Or even Mexico!  They have no clue what real poverty is.   :censored:

Only if they promise not to come back.  Then, I will go broke writing checks for the travel (by bus, of course).

[Mike220]

Is this the same Nelson Mandela whose wife encouraged the "necklacing" of opponents.

[Vagabond]

The stat that pops out to me the most is the 22nd in low birth weight.

What the DUmmies fail to realize is that there is no international standard for determining what is or is not a viable live birth.  In the United States we will go to the wall and do everything within our power to preserve the life of a prematurely born infant.  We use every tool and bit of science at our disposure in this effort, if it is born alive.  That we manage such wonders as keeping a premie born at 22 weeks alive is a testament to our science and our will.

In Cuba and Europe, if the baby is below a certain weight, they will not try to save it.  That baby, though born alive, is written off and soon dies due to complications. 

DUmmies never have been able to look at all facts related to a case.

[Rebel]

Who the **** cares what Nelson Mandela thinks? He needs to worry about his own sorryass country.

[jukin]

Ah yes South Africa another former jewel of Africa now turned shit hole.