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Poor
Americans continue to multiply under Bush as Republicans continue to stick
their heads in the sand
By Jackson
Thoreau
OpEdNews.com
I
admit I used to watch Frazier and sometimes even enjoy it, although
I found most characters, except Frazier’s dad, a bit pompous for my
tastes. But after Kelsey Grammer’s recent comments on Fox's Hannity
& Colmes, those days are over.
Grammer, a Republican who has contributed to
the likes of Arnold “The Groper” Schwarzenegger, said he would like to
run for political office some day, such as the U.S. Senate. It always
amazes me that these Hollywood actors think that a career of reading
lines, kissing butts, and pretending they’re someone they’re not
qualifies them for public office. Come to think of it, maybe it does these
days.
Anyways, it wasn’t so much Grammer’s
desire to join a growing group of Republican actor-politicians that got
me. It was this comment: "I would like to rid the country of the idea
that it's the rich against the poor. It never has been."
What country – or planet – has Grammer
been living on? With that comment, he shows himself to be another
ill-informed, stick-your-head-in-the-sand Republican who doesn’t know
much about the history of the United States, how it is set up, and how it
operates.
For
a primer, read Howard Zinn’s excellent A People’s History of the
United States. Or if you don’t like progressive writers, read The
Politics of Rich and Poor, a great book by conservative Kevin Phillips
[see, I do read and recommend works by a few conservatives].
If
you just want to read a shorter report, try the Washington, D.C.-based
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ recent news release showing how
the gap between the rich and poor in this country is now wider than it was
in 1929 - right before the Great Depression – at http://www.cbpp.org/9-23-03tax-pr.htm.
Then,
see if you think Grammer is still right.
For further proof that wealthy Americans are
getting richer while the poor multiply, watch for a report by the Census
Bureau on Sept. 26 that will show the poverty rate and income gap rising.
A preliminary survey by the Republican-led federal bureau reported earlier
this month that some 1.4 million more Americans fell into poverty last
year. About 12.4 percent of all Americans – almost 35 million people –
live under the federal poverty rate, which was up from 11.7 percent in
2001.
Under President Clinton,
the U.S. poverty rate dropped from 15.1 percent in
1993 to 11.3 percent in 2000, close to the record low of 11.1 set in 1973.
In the initial year of the Bush regime, the poverty rate climbed for the
first time in eight years. With tax cuts for the wealthy and cruel budget
cuts for social safety net programs, some believe the poverty rate for
2002 is really closer to the Bush I regime figure, that the Republicans
are playing with figures and that the bureau’s estimates fall far short
of reality.
Some 12.2 million children – or 17
percent – lived in poverty last year. Many people in the U.S. love to
beat their chests and call their country the best in the world, but the
fact is that the child poverty rate in their nation is among the highest
of major industrialized countries. I don’t know about you, but that’s
not a fact of which this American is proud.
Jay
Shaft, editor of the Coalition For Free Thought In Media, wrote in an
excellent article earlier this year [see http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4305.htm]
that homelessness and poverty in the U.S. has grown by more than 35
percent since the end of 2000. Cities like Phoenix, Miami, Los Angeles and
Chicago reported increases of around 50 percent between January 2001 and
July 2003. Homeless shelters are overcrowded; in 2002, the U.S. Conference
of Mayors reported that 30 percent of all requests for shelter went unmet.
Those
trends particularly increased in the first six months of 2003, as Bush’s
cruel budget cuts and tax increases for the poor took greater effect,
Shaft wrote. Some 60 percent of new homeless cases targeted single mothers
with children in 2003.
The
lack of affordable housing leads the list of causes, according to the
National Coalition for the Homeless. The Ford administration requested
more than 400,000 Section 8 vouchers to help poor families obtain housing
in 1976. The Bush regime’s 2003 budget request was for 34,000, despite a
growth in poverty and homelessness since the 1970s.
Other
causes are the continued onslaught of corporate layoffs, which have slowed
only slightly this year over the torrid pace of 2001 and 2002, and the
decline in value of the minimum wage, which has fallen by 25 percent since
1975. Workers with families who make the minimum wage just cannot afford
the rising costs of housing, food, medical care and other necessities.
More families seek governmental assistance that is dwindling.
At the same time, good-paying jobs are
declining in favor of service jobs that often pay no health insurance and
other benefits. Some 46 percent of the jobs with the most growth since
1994 paid less than $16,000 a year, hardly a livable wage, according to
the homeless coalition.
For
another look at our economic trends, see Forbes magazine’s annual
list of the fastest-growing companies released this month. The top spot is
by a firm that produces airport security devices. The list is dominated by
oil and gas companies, pharmaceutical firms, and other businesses friendly
to Bush. More companies are outsourcing jobs to contractors who get no
benefits. The number of Americans without health insurance continues to
grow, and what is Bush and other Republican leaders doing about that?
Nothing. Not a damn thing.
Another
indication of Bush’s inability to help the poor is that the number of
Americans suffering from hunger rose from 8.5 million in 2000 to 9 million
in 2001, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Soup kitchens
and similar places report huge increases in needs.
Following years of decline,
participation in the federal food stamp program substantially rose in 2001
and 2002. In December 2002, some 20.5 million people received food stamps,
an increase of 3.6 million people from July 2000.
To
make things worse for the homeless, a growing number of cities are
criminalizing their very existence. Almost 70 percent of cities surveyed
by the National Coalition for the Homeless passed at least one new law
targeting homeless people since January 2002, according to an August 2003
coalition report [see http://www.nationalhomeless.org/hatecrimes03.html].
“Instead
of the compassionate responses that communities have used to save lives in
the past two decades, the common response to homelessness [these days] is
to criminalize the victims through laws and ordinances that make illegal
life-sustaining activities that people experiencing homelessness are
forced to do in public,” said Donald Whitehead, executive director of
the National Coalition for the Homeless and a former homeless victim
himself.
The
coalition found the top five meanest cities to the homeless were Las
Vegas, San Francisco, New York City, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. California
and Florida were the meanest states. The top 20 list of cities included
some surprises, such as those with progressive images like Austin, Tx.,
Boulder, Colo., and Santa Cruz, Calif. Dallas was not on that list,
although I think it should have been since the city has implemented
draconian measures against the homeless like bulldozing their makeshift
homes.
In
its 2003 report on cities’ cruel crackdowns on the homeless, the
National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty cited these five cities
or counties as being particularly harsh:
*
Albuquerque, N.M., where police arrested and beat homeless teens standing
in a parking lot in the morning waiting for a program for homeless teens
to open. In addition, police regularly confiscated homeless persons’
property.
*
New Orleans, La., where homeless persons were arrested for standing on
public sidewalks and waiting for paychecks.
*
New York City, where homeless people were forced by police to move from
church steps even though a court order in the case, 5th Avenue
Presbyterian Church v. City of New York, gave them that right.
*
Orlando, Fla., where new laws prohibited sitting or lying on sidewalks
downtown, but police reportedly allowed almost everyone else but the
homeless to do so.
*
Palm Beach County, Fla., ground zero for Republicans stealing the 2000
presidential election, where a church housing the homeless was fined more
than $27,000 for alleged zoning violations even after the church agreed to
stop housing people in exchange for elimination of the fine.
“Punishing
poverty is no way to end homelessness,” said Maria Foscarinis, executive
director of the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. “The
real solution is to ensure decent, affordable housing with good-paying
jobs for all.” That is a pipe dream while Bush is in office.
The
center also commended Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Miami, Philadelphia and
Washington, D.C., for implementing more positive solutions, such as
opening centers that provide comprehensive services to the homeless.
While some cities are taking positive
steps, the Bush administration sure is not. Bush’s fiscal year 2004
budget proposed ZERO new resources to meet the needs of the growing
homeless population.
If the U.S. spent just $18 billion –
which is what America spends in three months to occupy Iraq and
Afghanistan – the country could wipe out hunger and homelessness
completely for ten years, Shaft wrote. If the US took just 25 percent of
its annual military budget, which is expected to top $450 billion for
fiscal year 2004, the largest by far [Russia is a distant second at $60
billion, according to the non-partisan Center for Defense Information],
that would go a long way towards wiping out hunger and homelessness around
the world. “Just 10 percent of our military budget spent yearly on
America could give every high school graduate a college education for four
years,” Shaft wrote.
“It seems like it is not a priority
to protect our children from starvation and living on the streets,”
Shaft wrote. “Our education system is crumbling and the school breakfast
and lunch programs are being slashed mercilessly….If this crisis
continues, we are in danger of actually having worse hunger and
homelessness than some third world countries. The military expansion and
occupation must stop so that we can salvage our future before it is too
late to stop the landslide of poor and starving.”
These harsh trends of the poor
multiplying and getting poorer, while the rich get richer, are exactly
what many of us knew would happen under Bush-Cheney. It’s happening
faster than many predicted.
Did you see Fox’s “conversation”
between Republican butt-kisser Brit Hume and Bush on Sept. 22? That was
about as much a “conversation” as any of Bush’s staged press
conferences, as Bush continually looked off-camera for the cue cards. I
thought I was watching actors playing Bush and Hume in a Saturday Night
Live skit.
Anyways, Bush again blamed a “recession
I inherited” from Clinton and the terrorist acts of Sept. 11, 2001, for
trends like the number of Americans living in poverty rising to about 35
million in 2002, some 3.5 million more than the level in 2000. Under
Clinton, the poor dropped by about 7 million people, a better record than
any other president since LBJ saw the ranks of the impoverished decline by
some 12 million people.
Under Bush I, the poor increased
by 6 million, the most of any modern-day president, but Bush II should
overtake his father in 2004. Under Carter, the impoverished also
increased, while the ranks went down under Nixon and Ford and stayed about
the same under Reagan.
During the 2004 presidential campaign,
you will hear a lot of Republicans blame Clinton and Democrats for the
poor economy and try to divert your attention with phony economic growth
numbers. But ask people around you: Are you better off now than you were
in 2000? Do you feel more like making major purchases, even if interest
rates are kept artificially low to mask economic problems and help
Republicans stay in office?
Here’s one trend that brings our
economic malaise under Bush home to me: 67 percent of the men in my 1995
wedding party have been laid off in the last two years and are earning
substantially less than they made in 2000.
There are a lot of reasons, but I blame
Bush-Cheney for much of that trend. The buck stops there. Bush and
Republicans always talk the talk about taking responsibility. Well, walk
the walk, Repugs. Take some responsibility for this, suckers. Stop
blaming Clinton, who has been out of office for almost three years.
Remember Bush’s tax cuts for the
super wealthy and funding cuts for programs that help poor and
middle-income people? Citizens for Tax Justice says the plan worked out in
2003 will give more than half of the cuts to the wealthiest 5 percent,
while the poorest 60 percent will only get 8 percent.
The wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers
in the U.S., who make at least $373,000, already own about 34 percent of
the wealth - more than the bottom 90 percent! - according to the
non-partisan U.S. Federal Reserve Board. Organizations like the Cato
Institute and Citizens for Tax Justice put the top 1 percent’s wealth
percentage higher, at closer to 40 percent. No other industrial country
comes close to matching this imbalance between the very rich and the rest
of us. Even in class-conscious England, with its imperial Queen and all,
the wealthiest 1 percent own closer to 20 percent.
Furthermore, these very wealthy
American families only pay about 20 percent of the taxes, not 34 to 40
percent. Their actual rate is 39 percent, but they get that drastically
reduced through tax credits and creative, Enron-like, accounting schemes.
In 2001, this 1 percent received an
average tax cut from the Bush administration of $53,123; meanwhile, 60
percent of American families only got a cut of $347, on average, according
to Citizens for Tax Justice. The poorest 20 percent of American families
received virtually nothing. This is not proportionate, and it’s not “liberty
and justice for all,” in my book.
You still think that it “never has
been” about the rich against the poor in this country, Kelsey? How do
you think some people get so rich and many more stay poor?
I challenge anyone to name one thing
Bush has done to help a person climb out of poverty. All he has done is
help his rich-buddy campaign contributors get filthy, bloody richer.
Bush doesn’t really care about poor
people, or even middle-income people, except to gain their votes. When are
more people going to learn that? And he’s worse than most Republicans
who suck up to the wealthy because Bush tries to play up his Christian
image more than most. Again, unlike Christ, who Bush is supposed to try to
follow, Bush does nothing to help the poor.
He’s just a big, stinking hypocrite,
and I really get mad every time I see him posing with some poor kid in a
Big Brothers center - whose funding he cuts - as a cynical attempt to gain
some more votes. Bush just makes fools of people. And it’s maddening as
hell that more people don’t see it, or if they do, don’t speak out
against it.
As the 2004 elections approach, we have
to hammer people with these wealth trends. Under Bush, the rich are
getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, the poverty rate is rising,
and household income is falling for all but the wealthiest Americans. Keep
repeating that to whomever you come across.
***
Some
people have asked me who I think has the best chance to topple Bush in
2004 among the crop of Democratic presidential candidates. My choice is
the latecomer, Wesley Clark. Sure, he is a retired Army general, but that
will play to his favor, especially when you compare Clark’s war record
to Bush’s draft-dodging, AWOL record during the Vietnam War.
Some
polls already show that Clark and John Kerry actually top Bush. Howard
Dean, who lags behind those two in recent polls, has done some good work
in raising important issues. But the fact is that Bush and Rove WANT Dean
to win the Democratic nomination because they know they can paint him as
being too liberal, even when he is moderate on numerous issues, and steal
another election.
Bush
and Rove are most afraid of Clark, who is articulate, about as charismatic
as a general can be [more so than Kerry at least], a Rhodes scholar, and
open to suggestions. Sure, he supported the Iraq war last spring, but as
filmmaker Michael Moore pointed out, Clark was the only talking military
head on the television news programs during the start of the Iraqi war to
say that Moore had a right to criticize the war and Bush during the Oscar
ceremonies.
The
fact of the matter is that we are not going to elect someone like Dean to
the White House in 2004. I may not like everything about Clark, but I like
him a lot more than I do Bush. And I’d love to see Bush and Rove squirm
for the next year, even if they end up stealing another election through
fixing electronic balloting machines and other methods.
Clark
is our best shot, even more so than Kerry.
***
Finally,
bear with me in the next few months, as I complete a 1,400-mile move from
Texas to Washington, D.C., start a new job, finish some interesting
writing projects, including a book compilation of essays against the Bush
administration, and generally make my life even more complex than it
already is.
You
may not see my columns as frequently as before. But I’m working harder
than ever against this regime.
Jackson Thoreau is an
American writer and co-author of We Will Not Get Over It: Restoring a
Legitimate White House. The updated, 120,000-word electronic
book can be downloaded on his Internet site at http://www.geocities.com/jacksonthor/ebook.html.
Citizens for Legitimate Government has the earlier version at http://www.legitgov.org/we_will_not_get_over_it.html.
He can be contacted at jacksonthor@yahoo.com
or jacksonthor@justice.com.
his
article is copyright by Jackson Thoreau
and originally
published by opednews.com
but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media
so long as this entire
credit
paragraph is attached.
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