Poverty Series Conclusion: Lamps, Logic, & Golden Doors

Posted on 10/20/2008 by Jane Devin

There is so much more I could write about poverty and the underclass in America, but there comes a point of saturation. It’s not my point, necessarily, but much of the public’s. I have never run out of words or passion when it comes to social issues, education, women, children, crime, class, or any of the subjects that tend to get mangled in the machinery of politics or convenience.

As many of you tuned into this series as tuned out. Poverty is a depressing subject. There are no ready-made solutions, and the only thing new under the sun is that the everyday problems of the working poor are getting worse, and are more likely to trickle up to the middle classes. Those at society’s lower rungs, who have little insulation and no safety net, are particularly hard hit when the economy worsens, but as we learned from the last all-out American depression, few people are immune from the ravages of an economic free fall, no matter how hard they work, or how bright and hopeful they are.

We don’t know yet how America will recover from its present set of disasters. Will it get worse before it gets better? Will a new President be able to stop the bleeding, and restore public confidence? Will members of Congress set aside their personal agendas, special interests, and pork barrel trade-offs in order to heal the country of its financial and ethical wounds? We don’t know, but many of us hope for exactly that, and more.

Every election season and, in fact, every turning tide of social belief and philosophy, brings us face-to-face with those whose views differ from our own. Sometimes the arguments we have are so simplistic that they shouldn’t even be had — at least not in a nation that has progressed beyond darker ages. Racism, sexism, and all the other “isms” that would exclude people from opportunity on the basis of their biology are born of ignorance, and have no merit, socially or intellectually. It’s the job of an advanced society to make this clear to those who yearn for the days when they were specially privileged, and viewed as superior due to their race, sex, age, class, physical ability, religion, or sexual preference.

That job is getting done, sometimes in bits and pieces, sometimes in small leaps and bounds, but it’s precarious, and occasionally dangerous work, tinged in bitterness and frustration. Decades into the battle for social parity and inclusiveness, irrational hatred still exists. Injustices, large and small, are perpetrated daily against those who differ from some archaic and dogmatically rigid American ideal. There are still millions of Americans who do not find golden doors of opportunity awaiting them, but nearly insurmountable fences and locked gates.

Among these millions, many are poor and struggling working class citizens. In the political dialogue of soccer moms, “bubbas”, the “liberal elite”, family values, Joe Six-Packs, and the omnipresent nuclear family, the poor have all but become invisible. It’s not trendy to talk about the poor in an age dominated by bootstrap philosophies, plastic surgery, jogging suits, and positive thinking mantras. It’s not politically expedient for politicians to raise the specter of increasing poverty at a time when government has bloated itself on war, debt, corruption, and corporate pandering.

Then there’s us, the public, each of us with our own struggles, whether we’re tucked away in suburbia or living next to the train tracks. It is far too easy for us, the Haves and the Have-Nots, to negate each other, with one side screaming about injustice and inequality, and the other side screaming about handouts and self-determination. These are old arguments, circular and ineffective, yet we have a hard time escaping them long enough to work on practical solutions.

We must get past the knee-jerk blame and convenient ideologies that leave us trapped in an endless loop of accusations and recriminations. We can do this by conscientiously refusing to adopt dogmatic hostilities, and by demanding an end to the irrational attitudes and policies that contribute to oppression.

Class issues are emotionally loaded, and attacking the characters of people, rich or poor, is every bit as easy as romanticizing the lives of others. The wealthy often see poor people as having freer, simpler, less complex lives. The poor often see the wealthy as having no problems that can’t be solved or lessened with money. We create caricatures of each other because most of us don’t really know, and can’t really know, what life would be like for us on the opposite end of the spectrum. Even well-intentioned social experiments, undertaken by such authors as Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) or John Howard Griffin (Black Like Me), provide only a small glimpse into one side of the opposites. Ehrenreich may have learned more about the working class, and Griffin more about race, but since neither of them were reared in the roles they assumed, and could drop their experiments if they became dangerous or burdensome, they could not know the full, long-term effects of either poverty or racism.

The comedian Spike Milligan once said, “All I ask is to be given the chance to prove that money wouldn’t make me happy.” It would be interesting if a working class author could undertake an experiment in the tradition of Ehrenreich, and give us a poor person’s perspective on the rich, but nearly impossible. It is much easier to scurry down the social ladder than move up, even temporarily.

In any case, social experiments, academic analyses, cross-hostilities, and even compassion will not get us where we need to go if we are to end, or even significantly lessen, poverty in America. What we need to do is look at the issues of class, poverty, and long-standing policies with fresh eyes and rational minds.

Is it logical that school funding is largely based on neighborhood? Is it logical to have no time limit on subsidized housing? Is it logical for employers to be able to run credit reports on job applicants, including in occupations not dealing with finances? Is it logical that auto insurance rates be based on credit scores? Is it logical to have a minimum wage that is below any realistic poverty level?

Are the criteria of aid programs logical, beneficial, and in line with the actual costs of living? Is it more rational to practice prevention, and help people while they still have some resources, or to wait until they have virtually nothing left – often including even the roof over their head? If one has a proven disability, or long-term or terminal illness, how long should the wait for SSDI payments be? Should there be a different process and category for bankruptcies caused by major medical bills?

Should there be a sliding fee for necessary State services, like auto registration, drivers license renewals, and copies of birth certificates? Should it be mandatory for employers to provide insurance? Should there be stricter regulation of the insurance and medical industries to prevent price gouging? Is it feasible that a portion of the earned income credit or social security survivor’s benefits be held in trust for a child’s future education?

Should universities have a sliding fee? Should colleges re-examine the tradition of a broad-based core curriculum in favor of more targeted programs? Is an engineer who took two years of French, and promptly forgot most of it after college, a better engineer? How many more people would be able to access college and gain a professional degree if programs were streamlined?

Would a federal or state emergency loan program, available to every head of household to borrow up to a thousand dollars in times of an emergency, be less costly and more efficient than other, more rigid, assistance plans currently in place?

These are just a few of the questions that might be asked in a brainstorming session on lessening poverty and opening doors of opportunity in this country. Admittedly, they are not all perfect questions, and some may be controversial, but they all seek possibility instead of blame, and place solution over ideology.

We need to swing open existing doors of opportunity, and create new ones if we are to end the blight of poverty in America. Compassion is a fine fuel, but it burns quickly and is too often distributed on a whim. A demand for logical solutions, while not nearly as stirring or emotive, will keep the lamps of inclusion lit and shining brightly not just for this generation, but those that follow.

*Photo courtesy of TheBloggess.

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Poverty Series IV: In the Land of Plenty, A Sicker, Poorer Population

Posted on 10/18/2008 by Jane Devin

Few would argue that there is not a health care crisis in America. We now rank 29th in infant mortality, behind countries such as Cuba, Slovakia, and Hungary. Since 2000, according to a study by the non-partisan Kaiser Foundation, the average worker contribution for a family health insurance policy has increased 107%. Over 45 million people are uninsured, and eight out of ten of them are from working class families in the low-to-moderate income range who have no access to employer-sponsored health care plans. Between 2005 and 2007, the number of working-age Americans who had problems paying their medical bills rose from 34 to 41%.

Minnesotan Lisa C. is one of them. In 2005, after suffering a series of debilitating migraines that sent her to emergency rooms, and to specialists for tests and treatment several times, she racked up over $15,000 in medical bills. Uninsured and working for a temporary employment agency then, Lisa struggled to send in minimum payments to multiple providers, a process she says was confusing.

“I ended up receiving something like six bills from my first visit to the ER, and I couldn’t figure them all out. There was one from the hospital, another from the doctor who treated me, another from radiology — I don’t remember the rest. But then I had to go in again, and again, and there were more bills, and when I couldn’t pay them all the collection agencies started sending me their bills on top of that, and everything had different account numbers. . . .and I just got lost even trying to keep track.” Presently threatened with wage garnishments against her $9 per hour salary, Lisa is trying to save up the money to file bankruptcy.

“There are judgments against me now, and with legal fees and everything, I owe more like $21,000. It’s just impossible.” Bankruptcy may also be impossible for Lisa, whose salary leaves little disposable income to pay the costs of an attorney, or the credit counseling mandated by state law.

Joe Squillace, an adjunct professor of health care policy at the St. Louis University School of Social Work and a doctoral candidate in Public Policy, has studied the issue of health care extensively. He points out that the dim statistics on the uninsured don’t tell the whole story. “Because there is such variation in health insurance policies, including benefits covered, it is difficult to determine the actual numbers of the under-insured. According to Kaiser’s studies, 10% of insured non-elderly adults reported that they lacked drug coverage in 2001. 29% had no dental coverage, and 37% had no vision coverage.” Rising premiums, deductibles, and co-payments among the insured may mean that even those who have health coverage forego necessary treatment or medication.

Squillace says it is not clear whether either of the health plans proposed by Obama or McCain will contain outrageously high health care costs, but “Obama’s plan will help those working families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, and provide an affordable option if the employer does not. McCain’s plan does not really provide an option for many reasons. “There are many problems with McCain’s proposal for the working poor and lower income households.” Squillace compares the “play or pay” element of Obama’s plan to the recent Massachusetts plan to cover all of its citizens.

The Massachusetts plan places a $295 per year/per employee assessment on employers who do not provide health insurance. Since its inception, 439,000 of the 650,000 uninsured in Massachusetts have gained coverage. Still in its experimental stage the plan is not without its flaws, including a shortage of doctors to handle the influx of the newly insured, and increased waiting times — sometimes up to 100 days. Massachusetts is seeking to attract new doctors with school loan payoffs, investing more in its medical schools, and waiving tuition and fees for medical students who agree to work as primary care doctors in the state for four years after their training. The results of these efforts won’t be seen immediately, but the plan is being carefully watched by other states and policy makers, both for short and long-term effect.

Jeff Crim, a chaplain at a public hospital in Tennessee that treats many of its area’s poorer residents, sees the need for universal health coverage as urgent. “Oftentimes, when poor people are discharged, their primary care is carried out in undermanned, overburdened public clinics or not at all. In fact, for some of them, the ER is their primary care doctor. They can get the best care possible in the hospital, but it can be undone by poor follow-up or by late diagnosis.”

“People claim that universal health care is somehow un-American. Yet, I grew up as a military brat. I had all the free health care I wanted from the medical facilities on the base. If I didn’t like that care, I had an insurance policy I could use to get health care from private physicians. If that mixed system is good enough for the military how is it too un-American for civilians?” Crim, who meets face to face with the sick and dying everyday, argues against the bootstrap philosophies that inform those who are against universal coverage.

“Bootstrap and meritocracy philosophies are pure garbage that only serve to anaesthesize people not in poverty from the reality of poverty. Poverty is cyclical, there is no doubt about that. Economic resources are finite, there is no doubt about that. As long as the majority of those resources are hoarded by a small number of people at the top of the economic ladder, the number of people at the bottom will be huge” states Crim.

Although insured now, Lisa C. rarely goes to a doctor. “I owe everybody money, and I feel so stupid about why. $21,000 for headaches? I’m glad I didn’t have anything more serious, but I didn’t know that at the time — I just knew I was in a lot of pain. Now, if something like that happens again, I probably won’t go in (for treatment). My plan has a $1000 deductible anyway. Who can afford that?” Not Lisa, or millions of other Americans who are uninsured or under-insured.

One of the greatest nations on Earth, heralded for its progressiveness and ingenuity, has so far failed to find a solution to its health care crisis. Without one, America can only grow sicker, poorer, and more divided.

Next: Pt V, Conclusion

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Poverty Series III: The Numbers Lie & Myths Abound

Posted on 10/12/2008 by Jane Devin

Eileen F. had an idyllic middle-class upbringing. Reared by two loving parents, both professionals in their fields, she attended Ivy League schools and went on to become a teacher. Now 58 years old and partially disabled, Eileen struggles to pay the $700 per month rent on her small cabin in upstate New York. She supplements her $463 disability check with odd jobs she can do at home, like transcribing the minutes from town meetings and editing newsletters for a non-profit group. She earns, on average, a little over $600 a month from these jobs, bringing her income up to about $1100 a month.

It’s a life Eileen never expected, and one she says smashed her expectations, leaving her feeling oddly embarrassed and filled with anxiety. On occasion, she has to borrow $10 or $20 from better-off friends to pay for basic necessities. Even though she is insured, she is afraid to get the hip replacement she needs for fear of losing income during the recovery period.

According to national government standards, Eileen F. does not statistically count as one of the millions of Americans living in poverty. Her yearly income of $13,200 is $2413 above the 2008 poverty threshold for single adults, ages 65 and under, as determined by the U.S. Census Bureau. The threshold caps at $9,944 for singles over the age of 65, and at $13,540 for a family of two. It is this threshold that determines national statistics on the number of people living in poverty in the United States. Last August, the U.S. Census Bureau issued a report stating that 37.3 million Americans, approximately 12.5% of the population, were living in poverty in 2007, a slight increase from the 2006 figure of 36.5 million.

The model used to determine poverty thresholds was born from studies done by Mollie Orshansky for the Social Security Administration in the 1960s. The Orshansky method has often been criticized, but has not substantially changed since its adoption as a federal standard. One of the major flaws in Orshansky’s method, which is based on minimum-level food consumption, is that it assumes that others costs, such as housing, transportation, and daycare, can be cut back in hard times at the same proportion as food.

In effect, Orshansky started her food-costs-to-total-expenditures procedure by considering a hypothetical average (middle-income) family, spending one third of its income on food, which was faced with a need to cut back on its expenditures. She made the assumption that the family would be able to cut back its food expenditures and its nonfood expenditures by the same proportion. This assumption was, of course, a simplifying assumption or first approximation, as she herself recognized. However, she had no data to support a specific different relationship between food and nonfood expenditure cutbacks. Under this assumption, one third of the family’s expenditures would be for food no matter how far it had cut back on its total expenditures. – Social Security Bulletin, Vol. 55, No. 4, Winter 1992, pp. 3-14.

There are many arguments that can be made against the Orshansky method, but the end result is that millions of America’s poor are not counted in the official statistics. Variables, such as geography, non-cash benefits, and actual cost-of-living expenses make it difficult to gauge the number of people who subsist in our society with inadequate resources to meet essential daily needs. However, it takes no great leap of logic to understand that the figures used by the government grossly underestimate the number of those living in poverty.

Outside of the Census Bureau’s national statistics, which are most often quoted by politicians and the media, there is the matter of who is financially eligible for federal aid programs. Every year, the Department of Health and Human Services publishes their own poverty guidelines in the Federal Register, employing an adaptation of Orshansky’s threshold. In 2008, those guidelines were $10,400 for a single adult, $14,000 for a family of two, and $21,200 for a family of four.

Peggy Wireman, Ph.D. has extensive experience with government, economic, and social policy, and recently authored the book, Connecting the Dots, which “addresses the complex relationships between family and community, and between community and other players affecting family and community life.” Dr. Wireman, who has a keen understanding of governmental statistics, says that the definition of poverty has been out-of-date for decades.

“It was based on the assumption that people spent one-third of their income on food. Thus, food expenditure was then multiplied to account for everything. The problem is that relatively speaking, the cost of food has gone down while the cost of housing and health care has gone up. A more realistic approach was developed by Wider Oppurtunties for Women. They calculated what it would cost a family to live without government subsidy and without charity on a modest budget. Modest meant housing, food, child care, health care, and a car which used to go to work and for one shopping trip a week. The budget does not include funds for savings, education, entertainment, or any meals outside the home. It is about twice the (official) poverty level.”

There is a persistent myth that assistance for poor families is easy to get and readily available. While States and Counties employ their own guidelines, as well as the federal government’s, in determining who qualifies for various programs, they are all based on models that cut countless poor people off from the possibility of assistance.

In Minnesota, for example, applicants for emergency assistance in the most populous county, Hennepin, must prove that the assistance given will be cost-effective and offer long-term (12 month) resolution to the immediate problem. What this means is that those who find themselves in an emergency situation –- such as unexpectedly losing their job –- must show the County reason this won’t happen again next month, or the month after that. Those who haven’t secured new employment have no way to guarantee this, so the County denies emergency assistance to them on the grounds that it would not be cost-effective.

Also disqualified are applicants who pay more than 40% of their gross wages for rent. Under the county’s guidelines, a single head of household earning $8/hr. could pay no more than $554 per month for shelter. Outside of subsidized housing, a decades-old mortgage, or a dwelling in which the costs are shared by others, a $554 per month family apartment in the Metro area simply does not exist.

Bootstrap theories abound and are widely accepted, but Dr. Wireman has a different take after dedicating years of her life to studying the economic issues of American families.

“Most Americans,” Wireman says, “feel that people are poor because they don’t work hard enough. Unfortunately, this is a myth. If all workers who are making poverty-level wages quit tomorrow the country would shut down. We would have no child care centers, no hospitals, no restaurants, no stores. Unfortunately, too, the myths that prevailed about welfare have been extended to cover all single parents. Working harder at lowly paid jobs does not lift people out of poverty. The reason so many people are struggling today is that the productivity of workers is no longer being shared equitably with the workers. The minimum wage corrected for inflation was $10 a hour in 1968. Eighty percent of American workers work in manufacturing of non-supervisory service jobs. Their wage increase per hour since 1973 has been 35 cents. Productivity has been rising. Between 1995 and 2005 it increased by one-third, but two-thirds of this went to top management and the stock market. Only one-third of the increase was shared with the workers.”

In Connecting the Dots, Dr. Wireman exposes the changes in business practices and public commitments that have made the American Dream unrealistic for millions of workers, both blue and white collar, and lays out a framework that she believes may help undo the damage.

In the interim, the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer, and women like Eileen, and other people I’ve spoken with in the course of writing this series, including single parents and the elderly, often feel invisible in the colorful, abundant landscape that is the American Dream. They nurture their hopes, and tend to their crises paycheck by paycheck, looking less for temporary handouts than for a long-term way up, and out of the vicious cycle of poverty.

Note: A condensed version of this article was published by the Huffington Post.

Next: Part IV, The Health Care Crisis

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Poverty Series I: Beyond Joe & Jane Six-Pack and other Human Parodies

Posted on 10/07/2008 by Jane Devin

INTRODUCTION

We live in a world of instant everything. Every human situation, it seems, comes attached with cliches, platitudes, bromides, stereotypes and parodies. There is, conceivably, a box to place every person in, and a label to slap them with. There are also socially created barriers that inform perception, determine response, and decide opportunity. As society evolves, so do these barriers.

In the 1970′s, for instance, it was not unusual for job applicants to lack college degrees. Today, four year degrees are required for almost every corporate position, including those that are considered entry-level.

Throughout history, but even more apparent in today’s political climate, the have-nots have born the brunt of social stereotypes, bootstrap philosophies, and feel-good bromides. They’ve been romanticized in songs and novels, damned by social critics, and sacrificed at the altars of law and politics.

The pride and strength of the working poor is legendary — their clothes are old, but never dirty*, their love for each other overcomes all, and they’re only poor if they choose to be* — because it’s love, and not money after all, that makes a person truly rich. They bear drudgery and ridicule with hearty stamina, and sing and dance their way through meager lives filled with hardship, always hoping, always praying, and never losing sight of what’s really important.

At the same time, there’s something wrong with those people — something inherently flawed about them, like their character, their ambition, or their intelligence. It can’t be about any of the “isms” because, as we’ve all come to learn through the example of the rare exception, the -ism’s don’t really exist. After all, if Loretta Lynn can work her way out of a coal mining town in Kentucky, and Oprah Winfrey can become a billionaire, then anyone can. It’s just a matter of really wanting to achieve, and working hard enough to find success. And since there’s no such thing as luck, unless you’re talking about the kind people make for themselves, there are no logical reasons for failure, only excuses.

Last night, engaged in a conversation with a new friend, I had cause to revisit some of my darkest days as a young single parent. My husband had managed to get a divorce from another state, with the Navy’s help no less, stating that he had no children. He left while I was pregnant and had a one year old daughter. His legal maneuver left him off the hook for child support but still gave him the legal rights of a father. There was no legal recourse for me since at the time my state, Nevada, did not cross jurisdictions. It took twelve years to find even the minor relief of terminating his rights. He never paid child support, and never saw or expressed interest in seeing the children.

I worked two jobs, while struggling to pay daycare and rent. One job wouldn’t cover both, much less buy groceries, and I was evicted twice, and had my power shut off several times. One of the lowest points I remember was a cold day in October, when I washed my cocktail waitress uniform out in a dark bathroom, with cold water, because I had no electricity. No heat, either, so the babies were bundled in snowsuits and covered with blankets. We had no food in the house to speak of, and when I woke up to go to work, my uniform was still wet. I had to hop a bus to daycare, then to a casino where a poker player fried my leg and my last pair of nylons with the tip of his cigar. I broke down crying, and was promptly fired.

In those dark days, hope was tinged with desperation and need, and I drove myself past exhaustion, while at the same time trying to be the kind of mother I always wanted. One who was essentially happy, loving, and present. It took years, an incredible amount of energy, and living through multiple traumas to make a life that wasn’t desperate, or teetering on the brink of disaster. It wasn’t even a middle class life — there was no home in the suburbs, 401K, or college fund — but it was a life that covered the essentials.

I know poverty because I’ve lived through its varied realities, from the grumbling hunger to the bone-chilling coldness; from the pain of infections I couldn’t afford antibiotics for, to being robbed because I lived in a bad neighborhood and was an easy target. I’ve suffered from the policies and punitive measures that steal hope, time, and money from those who can least afford to lose anything.

I know bootstraps and bromides. The romanticizing of poverty, and the damnation of the poor. In this series, we’ll discuss economic realities and policies, as well as the emotional cost of being poor in America, the richest country in the world.

Excerpted from songs:
*Stevie Wonder, Livin’ for the City
*Dolly Parton, Coat of Many Colors

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After the Debate? Angry & Frustrated.

Posted on 10/03/2008 by Jane Devin

I’ve studiously avoided the topic of politics since my feckless peers threw Hillary Clinton out with the bath water. I’ve bitten my tongue against denigrating phrases like “the bubba factor” to describe the working class. I’ve sat on my hands to prevent myself from writing diatribes against poisonous but persistent Republicans, and vaporous, elitist liberals.

I’ve tried to get behind the Democratic nominee, even though he was not my first choice. Maybe, I think, Obama’s two year campaign for the nomination while in the Senate wasn’t as calculated as it seems. Perhaps he was right when he said he couldn’t accomplish what he wanted politically while in Congress. Maybe his lack of national and international experience isn’t such a bad thing. In any case, as a lower class, gay, liberty-loving, pro-choice, pro-peace, uninsured Democrat who is swimming upstream in this corrupt, leaden economy – and who doesn’t want her government, courts, and schools ruled by religious dogma – Barack Obama became the only choice I could make, regardless of my reservations.

I knew that, so I un-bookmarked my favorite news sites, determining that outside of casting my vote there was not much else for me to do. The professional pundits would have their say a million times over, darts would be thrown and re-thrown, minds would be made-up fairly early, but barring another voting disaster like the one that was created in 2000, we would know who our future President was in November. I had, and still have, confidence that it will be Barack Obama.

Then again, I remember the polls which had Gore leading significantly, and I will never forget that we ended up with a President who did not win the popular vote. There was corruption at some polling places, problems with machines, and disputes over absentee ballots. The hanging chad debacle in Florida brought us televised images of Republican thugs, looming over vote counters like second-rate Mario Puzo characters. In the end, it was an “activist court” – the same kind of court Republicans say they despise – that handed George his imperialist crown, and allowed him to bring this country to where it is now – on the brink of a major meltdown across every board. Still, the vote was close enough to be in dispute. It was close enough to leave delegates and the courts breathing room.

As I drive around the wealthy suburbs in the heartland of Minnesota, I see the McCain-Palin signs that those living closer to the city don’t see in any appreciable number. It worries me, but more than that, it leaves me feeling angry in a way that maybe only someone else who has really struggled in the past eight years can understand.

I watched Sarah Palin and Joe Biden politely dance with each other last night. Her folksy charm, his bleached smile. Her giddy smile, his gentlemanly charm. Her soccer moms and “Joe Six Packs” to his Scranton coffee shops and gas stations. It was an easy debate, mellow and slowly paced, and from where I sit – in the living room of my rented apartment (where I’m a month behind on rent since my hours got cut) – passionless. Neither candidate exhibited a sense of urgency over any of the issues facing us today, and both seemed out of touch with a large portion of middle America – who aren’t just worried about sending Billy and Suzy to college, but about being able to provide them with essential basics, like food and shelter.

Yet the increasingly poor working and middle classes weren’t really addressed in the debate – except that Palin wants to make sure that they can’t declare bankruptcy. Here in Minnesota, bankruptcy reform included a provision stating that attorneys must be paid their fees up-front before the paperwork is filed, at an average cost of $1600. It’s a law that allows wealthier filers immediate relief, and that prevents those who are living in poverty from filing at all. That was the Republican solution to what they perceived as massive bankruptcy fraud – to give richer Americans an out while further crippling the poor, whose jobs are the first to go, who are the least likely to have medical or disability insurance, and who cannot afford to stop judgments and wage and tax garnishments against them.

Palin said there were some “good lessons” to be found in these corrupt, predatory, pro-wealthy, anti-poor times. People, she said, shouldn’t live above their means. They shouldn’t buy a $300,000 house when they can only afford a $100,000 house. Which might be good advice, if a $100,000 house truly existed as anywhere near the average anymore. Instead, a vastly inflated real estate market has left Minnesotans with $230,000 “starter homes”, and in some new developments, the tiny tract of land those homes are on aren’t even included, but are to be bought after the home mortgage is paid off. This was one of tactics used in order to create the appearance of “affordable” housing, which, in actuality, has ceased to exist. A two-bedroom rental apartment in the Twin Cities metro runs about $1200 without utilities. My daughter’s first mortgage, on a three bedroom town home, is $1600 and that doesn’t include the association fees.

In the meantime, the minimum wage is still less than $7 in most states, Target employees are still starting off at $8.00-$10.00 per hour, and bus drivers make $10-$12. The starting pay for a public school teacher in Minnesota averages $29,907. Factoring in 30% for taxes, and the cost of health insurance (if available) it is easy to see how and why so many Americans are living “above their means”. It’s the economy, stupid, and buying a cheaper brand of toilet paper and clipping coupons isn’t going to get the average working class American out of the downward spiral of debt.

The myopic Palin, though, doesn’t wish to “point the finger of blame” or “look back”. Which is odd, considering the blunders and transgressions of the Bush/Cheney administration, and the level of corporate corruption and political underhandedness during their reign. An unwillingness to admit these issues even exist doesn’t exactly bode well for a future of tackling them head-on. (Where are those missing Halliburton millions by the way?)

Someone will, I’m sure, take the time to count the number of times Palin said the word “maverick”. I lost count. McCain may have once had some maverick ideas, but his ideas today, on everything from health insurance to troop withdrawal, are ineffectual and stale, promising nothing more to the working and middle classes of this country than more of the same, for longer.

Then again, what we have from Barack Obama and Joe Biden is hope, and I feel scant little of that, particularly after Obama (and McCain and Clinton) voted yes on a (now) $800B bailout, filled with pork barrel spending, that EXCLUDED consumer protections that were part of original bill. Taxpayers will now not only be helping some of the most corrupt and predatory lenders on Wall Street, but they’ll also be shelling out $478M to the film industry for making movies in America, and $192M in rebates to rum producers in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

“It is completely unacceptable for any kind of earmarks to be included in this bill,” said McCain the week before he voted on the bill. Later, he said he “had to” support the plan because the country is “on the brink of economic disaster.” Eschewing Palin’s advice, McCain looked back and pointed a congratulatory finger at himself. “There were plenty of other bills that I fought against, voted against” because of pork, he said. This one, though, which takes corporate welfare to a whole new level, and which is the most massive gamble in U.S. economic history, McCain helped pass.

And Barack Obama voted right along with him, as did the majority of Congress, even while the public’s phone calls to Senate offices were running about 100-1 against. What can be said about politicians who ignore the will of their constituents, and who refuse to rise above the din of political panic to fight for what’s right, just, and proper? Even if one was to believe a bailout was the solution, there was no logical reason for the pork barrel earmarks, or the exclusion of consumer protections. I find it ironic that the two men who are promising to bring change to Washington – to end “business as usual”– have failed to do this as Senators. Instead, lesser known mavericks from both parties, willing to risk Wall Street’s disfavor and unpopularity among their peers, were the ones who stood up against the tide and said no.

There were no mavericks in last night’s debate and sadly it appears there are none on the horizon. There’s Obama-Biden and McCain-Palin – some hope for change, or more of the same. There are all the usual cliches from both sides, a disconcerting lack of substance, an unwillingness to fight the good fight, and there’s been no sense of urgency about anything other than Wall Street’s financial institutions.

As for the war, and spending for the war, I am amazed by the misleading rhetoric. Funding for the military has not just gone towards armor and equipment for the troops, it has gone to enormously expensive contracts for giant private entities like Halliburton. Voting against “funding the troops” isn’t always about the troops, but about who we’re choosing to rebuild parts of countries we have demolished, how much we’re willing to pay, and how accountable we wish to hold them.

Patriotically baiting one-liners such as “brave men and women who have died for our freedom” continue to be used to chill dissent. The awful truth is that many of our dead soldiers did not to save our freedom. Our freedom was not in danger of being taken away. While 9-11 was an unparalleled disaster on American soil, it was not an attack from another country, but from a group of Muslim extremists, most of whom hailed from our government’s ally, Saudi Arabia. Our freedom from terrorist attacks since that event can be attributed more to tightened security at our own borders than waging war abroad. Very few of the major extremists, including Bin-Laden, have been caught and even if they were, the destructive bane of radical Islam would not stop with their capture. Further, even if America and her allies could force democracy on Islamic states, there is no guarantee – and more than a strong likelihood – that it would be temporary. Islam does not separate the political from the religious, and Sharia law, which Muslims subscribe to as part of their faith, is at odds with American-style democracy.

Our want (and greed) of oil from these regions has, in so many ways, hampered the evolution of the Middle East. We have propped up dictators and made multi-billionaires out of royal families. We have funded madrassas, educated their scientists, and given technology and weaponry to oppressive armies. Our worries that the religious extremists in the Middle East will go nuclear are not without basis – yet we continue to pour money and other resources into the region for the sake of oil. At the same time, we have failed miserably in developing, producing, and promoting other forms of energy.

I am angry. Disgusted. Disappointed.

But I’ll vote for hope, even if scant and waning, because the alternative is just too frightening to consider.

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No Bailout – Corporate America Needs to Find its Bootstraps

Posted on 09/26/2008 by Jane Devin

In the headlines yesterday, George W. Bush expressed panic about the economy. The same man who has repeatedly denied that America is in an economic meltdown is now calling the $700B bailout of financial institutions “urgent” and warning Americans of the doom and gloom that is sure to follow if Congress fails to hand Wall Street some taxpayer-made bootstraps.

There are a few things the average worker knows that have escaped the narrow minds of politicians. Despite the lies and empty assurances coming from Washington, we’ve known about the meltdown for a few years. We have felt the indifferent shoulder of Congress as Exxon reported astronomical, record breaking profits two quarters in a row last year. We felt the pain at the gas pump and the grocery store, even as our smirking President was telling us all would be fine. We’ve seen our jobs get cut, our wages stagnate, and our cost of living rise. Many of us sent our “economic stimulus” checks right back to one of the financial institutions in question. So this sense of impending doom is not exactly new to us.

We also know that this bailout has disaster written all over it. Financial institutions are suffering, in large part, due to the failures of its clients to pay their debts. Those clients are us – the average citizen and small businesses – and until our prospects improve, we will continue to struggle, which means that this massive bailout will be no more than a ridiculously expensive and temporary Band-Aid. There is no bailout or relief for the working and middle classes planned in the near future, and until our prospects improve, we’re going to continue to be financial risks.

We can also tell Congress and the financial institutions a few things about bootstraps and sacrifice. Namely, that when you’re down, the answer is not to rob and pillage those who support you, but to work with them towards a win-win solution. Yet, the same financial institutions who are begging for corporate welfare are those who have adopted some of the most unethical, vicious, and predatory policies towards its own customers.

Capital One, for instance, has policies that substantially raise the interest rates of customers who are one day late with their payments. Chase Manhattan and Household Bank have similar policies. I know a woman whose interest rate on her credit card was raised from 15% to 29.95% for being (less than a week) late with a payment twice in one year. When financial institutions add exorbitant late fees to substantially increased interest rates for imperfect but paying customers, they profit in the short term, but in the long term, they hamper the ability of consumers to pay down their debts. A debt-ridden public is one that is at risk for more financial disasters, including foreclosures and bankruptcies.

The American public should say no to corporate welfare, and let the financial institutions find the incentive — and the bootstraps — to correct a problem they are at least partially responsible for creating.

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