Kenya Still Burning Despite Political Agreement

By Cernig

Kenya's troubles continue, despite an agreement between feuding politicians to end weeks of bloodshed.

Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan brokered a deal between Kenya's rival parties on Friday to take immediate steps to end post-election violence which has killed nearly 900 people and displaced more than a quarter of a million.

But the ethnic tensions in Kenya have taken on a momentum of their own, going beyond a standoff over President Mwai Kibaki's disputed December 27 re-election, and despite the politicians' pledges, the violence continued.

Flames soared over slum dwellings belonging to members of Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe in the Rift Valley town of Kericho -- around 250 km (155 miles) northwest of the capital Nairobi -- where at least four people have died in fighting in recent days.

Residents dragged out mattresses, cupboards, suitcases and pots and pans, piling them onto carts.

"Let Annan do his bit but there's going to be no resolution. The clashes will continue," said one youth who gave his name as Lefty, manning a roadblock near Kericho where police opened fire to disperse protesters on Friday.

...Pressure on the two sides to reach a deal is intense, both from within Kenya and from the international community.

"Both parties now face a historic responsibility: choose dialogue or bear responsibility for a political and human catastrophe," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said.

Hmmm, national politicians from different sides willing to talk, even deal, but grassroots faction fighting having taken on a life of its own to the point where nothing the politicians say makes a difference. Now where have I heard that before?

If Kenya is really unlucky, by the time the violent militias start to run out of steam, divisions created by bloodshed will be so entrenched that the politicians will refuse to reconcile after all. I hope some breakthrough can be made before that occurs, for their sakes.

Fungibility, food stamps and second best choices

While discussing the counter-cyclical empircal nature of the disability and early retirement systems with Gary Farber a couple of months ago, he discussed the road blocaks that are in the way of successfully navigating SSI disability. One of those road blocks is a very high initial claim rejection rate followed by a lengthy and potentially expensive appeals process that overwhelmingly produces approval for claims. He posited that this is a feature, and not a bug of the system:

"It seems to me a system set up for failure."

It's the basic model for most American welfare/aid systems: the goal is to be dysfunctional and inadequate enough to keep out/drive out most of the people who need it, so as to bring/keep down costs and juke the stats,

Poorly designed, difficult to navigate and unpredictable are a common complaint of the American social safety net. Private charity providers have the right to turn anyone away, providers funded by local governments are pro-cyclical in that they have money when the need is below trend and are making cuts when needs are above trend, and the federal system has been under a sustained thirty year ideological and management assault.

Programs very seldom are designed in first best manners. They are political compromises and reflections of values and beliefs that do not hold operational effectiveness or efficiency as an ultimate objective. American social welfare policy has long been colored by the dichotomy of the 'deserving or undeserving poor'. The deserving poor within this framework are those who are poor due to non-moral failure of their own; the crippled, the elderly, the young, the infirm, the cyclically or short term structurally unemployed. The undeserving poor are those who 'choose' to be poor through a moral or practical personal failing and thus do not deserve aid.

I agree in a Policy 101 manner with Megan McCardle that the most economically efficient anti-poverty program is cash straight up. Cash is fungible, it is widely accepted at a predictable par value, and it can be spent on almost anything. As Mona at Unqualified Offerings noted, non-cash offerings that are restricted stores of value and exchange such as food stamps can not be universally used; " I was forbidden by law from trading any of that value for things I required much more, like blood pressure meds, or gas money." Yes, there is definately a black market that is accessible to those who have good social connections within this mileau that can transform a given value of food stamps into a lesser value of cash, but food stamps are restricted money substitutes.

But let's go back to the American obsession with the deserving and undeserving poor for a moment and see if there is any plausible political demogaugic point that could be used against a pure cash outlay to the poor. Why we only have to go back to 1996 and see the effective railings against AFDC and its cash payment system to what a majority of the American political universe saw as too many 'undeserving poor.' Ronald Reagan ran successfuly on 'welfare queens in Cadillacs' who supposedly took cash payments through fraud and misused them. Cash payments of any sort to the poor are very prone to political risk.

So we enter the universe of second best choices if the intent of a program is to alleviate some of the effects of poverty and deal with a constrained choice that has a chance to gather significant political support. There are two basic options; the first is similiar to the stimulas option that is going through the House right now, make any program that aids the poor overwhelmingly aid the middle class and median voter. The cash rebates that are being debated will not be targeted to cash, credit and liquidity constrained individuals where there would be actual stimulas, but towards the middle class, and they are coming out of income tax base amounts and not the FICA tax base amounts. This is popular, but extremely expensive with minimal effectiveness in achieving the desired policy end on the basis of dollars spent or foregone. The other option is to restrict the fungibility of a near cash grant and target those benefits to the people who need them. And thus we have the idea behind food stamps and Section 8 vouchers.

We live in a constrained world where Pareto efficiencies, Pareto improvements, explict program outcomes, effectiveness and efficiencies are not the ultimate values that guide our decision making. Yes, Policy 101 is a useful tool set of basic bullshit detection, but we live in a complicated world where first best alternatives seldom present itself as the restricting assumptions that we make in Policy 101 do not hold in reality. Second best choices are often the best choices that we can make.

Liquidity constraints, cash and stimulas

Tas at Sugarland is Dreaming raises a good question about the impact of the rebate checks on the general US economy, and this is a combination political and economic question that I want work with for a bit.

there's also the matter of how the government giving us some table scraps of money is going to jump start our economy. While I love money as much as the next person, especially since I'm having trouble paying rent right now, when I get this stimulus check I'm not exactly going to spend it on needless widgets in fancy colors. It's going into my savings account, where it won't have an immediate effect on our economy -- therefore I'm not helping the country out of a recession. I imagine a lot more people will be stashing away their stimulus check, too. So Bush, Reid, and Pelosi: How is this package supposed to help the country avoid a recession?

Tas seems to be operating under normal economic circumstances. He smoothes out his consumption and expenditure pattern over the long term by putting money away in good times, and drawing down his savings or accessing credit in tough times. He'll change his short term patterns only if there is a permanent change in the trend of his income. A $300 or $600 check won't change his spending patterns in a significant way as it is a one-off deal.

However not everyone is able to live on a permanent income hypothesis of consumption. Some people are credit and savings constrained and are currently spending less than they would prefer to, and could support given their expected lifetime earnings due to an inability to access sufficient credit at a reasonable price. In these cases a $300 or $600 or $1,200 check will change their short term spending patterns and increase aggregate economic activity. So this is the economic answer for checks to be issued to individuals who earned less than $75,000 or couples who earned less than $150,000, to get some people to spend more money instead of banking it.

But the political question is why are these refunds being so broadly distributed when most people will be seeing this as a nice one time bump and do next to nothing with it, as TAS believes he will instead of targeting these benefits and refunds to people who have a high probability of being credit and savings constrained? The existing programs that serve this population include long term unemployment benefits such as extending the maximum benefit period from 26 weeks to 39 weeks, food stamps, and Medicaid payments. However the last two programs are perceived as 'welfare' and handouts to potentially undeserving poor and are not politically popular.

The Democratic leadership believes that if they insisted on a stimulas package targeted solely programs that overwhelmingly serve credit constrained individuals, the political costs would be too high as the Republicans might call them names. Furthermore the axiom that programs for the poor are poor programs influences the stakeholder creation process, as the vast majority of the electorate would not mind a check for $300, $600 or $1,200 and therefore they will provide political cover and favor towards the party but enough people would be disgruntled if only the 'underserving' received government assistance.

This is not a good stimulas plan as the bang for a buck is not that high, but it is vastly superior to the initial Republican position of full extention of the Bush tax cuts. The economics could be greatly improved, but as long as there is a Republican veto and a timid Democratic leadership, the political option space is greatly constrained.

Christmas shopping and the state of the economy

By Libby
Updated below and again

Fester posted last week about his Christmas shopping experience. He found the parking lots and stores 75% empty. Yesterday, I finally screwed up my courage to make a trek out for the last few items on my list. My main goal was to find an angel ornament. I've bought my daughter one every single Christmas since the year she was born. I hadn't found anything suitable in the limited stores nearby my home and encouraged by Fester's experience, I expected to sail through in a couple of hours. It took six.

The traffic was horrendous and I found the parking lots 75% full, but nonetheless it wasn't difficult to find a convenient spot. The stores were also relatively crowded but people were looking, not buying. I've never overheard so many people debating on whether they wanted to spend quite so much on some item, even when it was on sale. And the sales were astounding. I've never seen such price slashing before Christmas Day. But the selections were spare. Stores definitely tightened up their inventories this year. It took me four stores to find a suitable ornament.

Most telling on the state of Christmas sales this year, was the speed at which I sailed through the checkouts. Despite the crowds, people weren't buying much. There were a dozen people ahead of me at the most crowded store and I got to the cashier in less than a couple of minutes. Last year at the same store it took close to a half an hour in a similiarly long line. But what really struck me was the dispirited mood of the people. The atmosphere was grimly determined rather than carelessly festive.

I'd note that I spent my time at the higher end speciality stores. The clerk at the convenience store I stopped at on the way home told me that the WalMart in town was so crowded, you couldn't get into the parking lot. No doubt they were there to snap up the deeply discounted items the big retailer was holding out as bait to get the last minute shoppers in. I doubt they bought many additional impulse items.

But while my sojourn into the consumer end of Christmas wasn't all that pleasant, I'm not complaining. Reading the news this morning makes me realize how fortunate I am to be able to shop at all. The thousands of homeless in New Orleans won't be having a Merry Christmas and neither will the children living in this growing tent city in Southern California. A scene I'm certain is repeated in many more places that we don't hear about. Even in my tiny town the homeless population is growing.

The White House and the materialistic conservatives who have benefited from its policies can tout the 'growing economy' all they like, but the reality on the streets presents a far more bleak picture. What does BushAmerica really look like? I think Jill has the perfect illustration for this Dickensesque Christmas and beyond to the New Year.

Update by Cernig For those who might accuse Libby of arguing from anecdote rather than facts, there's this:

NEW YORK (AP) -- With just a few days left before Christmas, the nation's retailers are in a lather to attract last-minute shoppers to salvage what has been a mediocre December.

Department-store operator Macy's Inc. has slashed prices on everything from clothing to jewelry, while Toys "R" Us is offering price cuts of up to 75 percent this weekend. At stake are retailers' profits for the year and perhaps even the strength of the economy.


..."There's been a malaise" among women's clothing sales and "it has spread to other areas," said Dan Hess, chief executive of Merchant Forecast, a New York-based research firm. "The panic button has been pushed, particularly in department stores."

And even with an expected sales surge this weekend, which traditionally accounts for about 10 percent of holiday sales, Lazard Capital Markets analyst Todd Slater expects that the last-minute spending will be "too little, too late" to save Christmas.

"When people think they are in a recession, they spend like they are in a recession," Slater said.

...Slater said that he estimates that large department stores are missing their sales plan by as much as 10 percent so far in December.

When people's pockets are as empty as this, then it's a recession - no matter how the Bush administration and its glad-handers massage the figures.

Update by Libby: McQ weighs in. He's mightily irked that the article dared mention the mortage meltdown, even though it notes it wasn't a factor in the tent city in SoCal and then takes a crack at my post.

UPDATE: Of course, dependable as dawn, the usual suspects swallow the nonsense hook-line-and-sinker and predictably blame it on Bush.

Well, how silly of me to think that Bush's economic policies have anthing to do with, you know, the current state of the economy. Kathy at Liberty Street kindly comes to my defense.

Whether the 200 or so people living in that tent city in California are there because the bank foreclosed on their houses, or whether they are there because they can't find a job or a place to live and they have nowhere else to go, the problem is an economy that forces people into such desperate situations, and a presidential administration that simply does not care.

That's the point. The Bushenomic boom is a numbers game. Sure it grew the economy but the benefits accrued to those who needed them the least, at the expense of the millions of working class Americans who find themselves one paycheck from the street. Yet the materialistic conservatives still can't understand why were not excited by the pretty charts that tell us how much more well off, the have mores have become.

Taking food out of the mouths of hungry children

By Libby

Under the heading, robbing the poor to pay the rich, this heartless policy has to be one of most counterproductive scams in the history of legalized, governmental highway robbery.

The collection of child support from absent fathers is failing to help many of the poorest families, in part because the government uses fathers’ payments largely to recoup welfare costs rather than passing on the money to mothers and children.

Close to half the states pass along none of collected child support to families on welfare, while most others pay only $50 a month to a custodial parent, usually the mother, even though the father may be paying hundreds of dollars each month.

The whole notion of enhancing child support collections was sold on the premise that it would help keep mothers off welfare. Instead it's just one more underhanded trick to punish women for procreating while poor, while enriching the government's payola funds. It seems to me that every time the government has 'reformed' the welfare system, they have only made it more impossible for single mothers to escape poverty.

The false 'humanity' of the anti-choicers

By Libby

I decided this post was too cranky and don't want it to reflect on my partners here, so I moved it to my own blog.

Those Rioting French

By Cernig

Dave Schuler at The Glittering Eye gets it almost exactly right:

Once again, I think it’s important to understand the actual nature of the problems. The two young men who were killed in the collision that touched off the rioting were said to have been of North African descent. We don’t know where they were born. In all likelihood their grandparents emigrated from Algeria or another French department. We don’t know if they or those who’ve been rioting are Muslims. Nominally, they probably are but we have no idea if they were particularly religious.

This is not about religion; it is not about culture. That’s not at the root of the problem here. There is a problem and it’s not unique to France but one that will be of increasing significance to all of the (traditionally) ethnic states of Europe. How are those who’ve lived in France all their lives but aren’t Français de souche to be considered? Right now they’re neither fish nor fowl.

That’s why I’ve emphasized the importance of our birthright citizenship over here. It at least has a chance of giving the descendants of immigrants a stake in the country that’s the only one they’ve ever known.

That's pretty much it - but it's the grinding poverty and bigoted discrimination attendant on their status (by deliberate if unstated policy) that creates a recipe for violence. Pretty much the same recipe that gave rise to the U.S. riots of the 60s or the UK riots of '81, 85, '95 and '01.

Some European wingnuts are calling for the French military to be used to put down these rioters, who it is reported have used shotguns against police in some instances. It's unclear, however, that the army could accomplish any more than the 25,000 paramilitary riot police of the well-trained and equipped CRS and the Mobile Gendarmerie are doing already. France has a long history both of protest riots and of putting down those riots, which is why it has these units already. It's ludicrous to suggest that current events are anything more than a law enforcement problem in that respect - it's certainly no war. Treating the underlying causes would be more of an option than sending in the tanks.

Update In an excellent post BJ at Northman's Fury worries, as do I, that tough-guy Sarkozy is the wrong person to deal with the underlying causes:

I don't envy the French police the job they have ahead of them to get order restored once again, but I'm fairly sure they'll be able to do that without putting tanks onto the streets. That's when the real work should begin.

They have to find a way to make the people there trust them; to make them feel like they're being treated in a fair manner and not like some second-class citizens. Find some way, some fashion, to properly integrate the immigrant-descended population into the rest of society. Given the current French leadership, I'm not so certain there will be any attempt to do so, which is unfortunate.

Because when your only response is to use force to keep a population under control, the amount of force you need to use keeps rising, as do the costs and retaliations.

However, I'm encouraged that, so far at least, Sarkozy is far more soft-touch in his handling of the situation now that he actually is the guy in charge than his rhetoric back when he simply wanted to be the guy in charge suggested. I'm sure the wingnuts are equally as disappoined as I am encouraged.

The conservative equation of poverty

by shamanic

So while I'm still experiencing zombie brain and a seriously aching back from too many hours alone in a car - and while I catch up on the last few days' news - I'm going to pass along some of the stray thoughts I've had recently regarding the controversies that have rocked the nation and blogosphere.

On the topic of S-CHIP, what ultimately frustrated me about the attacks on the "poster families" who shared their stories of being helped by the program is the constant game of Pong that gets played by conservatives with the poor. For instance, a poor family will say, "We couldn't afford to insure our children after X happened," and the conservative will say, "If you had made different choices, you would have been immune from X happening." The poor family might say, "My business failed," and the conservative will say, "You shouldn't have opened a business in a marginal market." The poor family might say, "The insurance would cost the same as our mortgage," and the conservative will say, "You should sell your house then."

And on and on it goes, in an equation very much like "Poor person's circumstance + Conservatives' bright idea = success in America". I don't think this math works, frankly. There have always been poor people, there always will be poor people, and more importantly, that demographic provides incredibly important services in our economy. The girl at the coffee shop, the gas station attendant, every single person who makes your grocery store run, those people are vital to the functioning of all our daily lives.

And it may be that these jobs are transitions for them. Perhaps they'll end up in middle management at a big corporation, but in the meantime, our attitude toward their kids continues to chill me deep down.

Let them eat ramen noodles

By Libby

Witness the legacy of the "fiscally responsible" GOP. You remember I'm sure how all those tax cuts for the wealthy were going to pay for themselves by generating more revenue. Our president and his former rubberstamp Congress promised it and all, so it must be true right? Well, not quite, as this single mother just found out.

The letter stated that under the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which President Bush signed into law early last year, federal spending on so-called entitlement programs, such as Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and other social programs, would be restrained, in order to pay down the national deficit.

To help do that, starting October 1, custodial parents in Colorado who receive at least $500 in a fiscal year in child support payments, will have $25 a year automatically deducted, helping fund child support enforcement programs the Federal Government has previously been paying for on its own.

Gee, I'm so glad the GOP spared those billionaires from the indiginity of having to contribute to the tax base. It's about time those impoverished children started paying their own way in this world.

The Real Gordon Brown Stands Up

By Cernig

After yesterday's careful diplomatic dance with Bush in front of the cameras, UK prime minister Gordon Brown continued his visit to the US with visits to Congress and then a private meeting with Bill Clinton.

Today he'll be meeting with the UN's secreatry general to push forward something that's always been a hallmark of Brown's democratic socilaist ideals - ending world poverty.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown will call for action on Tuesday to put the world back on track to meet U.N. goals to slash extreme poverty by 2015.

A day after his first talks with U.S. President George W. Bush, the new leader will give a speech at the United Nations to demonstrate his belief in international cooperation and his determination to improve the lot of the world's poor.

A report released this month on progress so far found most of the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals were far from being met.

"Gordon Brown is going to focus on what we need to do to achieve these goals, to get back on track," a British government source said about Brown's speech on Tuesday which he will deliver after meeting U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Brown will call for companies and charities to get involved in the drive to meet the Millennium Development Goals, adopted at a U.N. summit in 2000.

The goals include halving the number of people living on less than $1 a day by 2015, achieving universal primary education, reducing child and maternal mortality, stopping the spread of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and halving the number of people without access to clean water and sanitation.

Ban said this month the world would struggle to meet the U.N. goals, but said it could be done if rich countries boosted their international aid budgets.

As Britain's long-serving Chancellor before succeeding Tony Blair as prime minister in June, Brown has long been an advocate for reducing poor countries' debt burden and fighting poverty and disease in the developing world.

And will also push for UN peacekeepers in Darfur. Neither cause is exactly on Dubya's "must-do" list, which points up Brown's main message from this visit - that Britain will no longer be Bush's lapdog but won't throw away an old friendship just because Bush is still in charge. As the Labour party's parliamentary chairman put it, commenting on his leader's visit: "Our relationship with the United States is not about one person in 10 Downing Street and one person in the White House, whether it's Tony Blair and George Bush or now Gordon Brown and George Bush,"..."We have an enduring, important relationship with the United States and no British prime minister is going to throw that away."

The Mirror, the UK newspaper which has always been Brown's biggest supporter and which has been rewarded with increased access to his thinking, goes even further in it's editorial today:

Our "special relationship" with the US has thankfully entered a new phase.

Gordon Brown and George Bush looked business-like yesterday, the suits and ties after their Camp David summit signalling a proper working relationship rather than a cosy one.

The Prime Minister is determined to avoid the error of his predecessor Tony Blair who, after hailing Democrat President Bill Clinton as a friend, seamlessly transferred his loyalty to Republican President George Bush.

The determination of this Premier and the President to seek co-operation, basing the future on shared values and strategic goals, is to be applauded.

Yet the carefully chosen diplomatic words by both men failed to hide what we believe are disagreements, particularly on Iraq.

The withdrawal of British troops should be a Downing Street priority rather than tied to the departure timetable of an ailing President not destined to leave the White House until January 2009.

Mr Brown's admission of a "full and frank" conversation and his failure to reciprocate personal praise showered on him by Mr Bush opened a new international era.

And Britain will be stronger if our leader is not a Yankee poodle.

Brown is undoubtably looking towards the next US president, and will keep his alliance with the US businesslike while Bush is still in charge.

Eternal Memory and Social Immobility

Mark Thoma at the Economist Voice grew up in a small town with all of its vices and virtues --- most notably the massive shadow of the future it had on all interactions:

Things are different in a small town because you are rarely anonymous. Interactions on the roads, in grocery stores - anywhere at all really - are never a one-shot game, you always have to be aware that there will be a next time, aware that your reputation informs and is informed by every interaction. When you apply for a job, your whole history comes with you, there's no need for anyone to Google anything but their own brain to know your life story....

In this environment there is a higher cost and thus lower probability of a rapid second chance due to the strong social ties and high levels of social memory. A kid who screws up at sixteen is labeled, and treated as a screw up at twenty six if he stays in that same small town.

Dr. Thoma then links to an interesting (not mockingly said) piece by Tom Friedman on the nature of the electronic/digital memory:

The implications of all this are the subject of a new book by Dov Seidman, founder and C.E.O. of LRN... His book is simply called “How.” Because Seidman’s simple thesis is that in this transparent world “how” you live your life and “how” you conduct your business matters more than ever, because so many people can now see into what you do and tell so many other people about it...

For young people, ... this means understanding that your reputation in life is going to get set in stone so much earlier. More and more of what you say or do or write will end up as a digital fingerprint that never gets erased. ... For this generation, much of what they say, do or write will be preserved online forever. Before employers even read their résumés, they’ll Google them.

“The persistence of memory in electronic form makes second chances harder to come by,” writes Seidman. “...[L]ife has no chapters or closets; you can leave nothing behind, and you have nowhere to hide your skeletons. Your past is your present.” [emphasis mine]

A good deal of intergenerational poverty literature suggests that there are significant implicit and tacit social skills and coping mechanisms that can not be passed down to children because the parents/adults raising them have not learned those skills themselves. Aggressive and early interventions as well as changes in the social environment have proven to be at least partially successful by introducing these skills, but as in any adaptive learning process, mistakes will be made, and not everyone will learn everything perfectly on the first try.

If the cost of trying to learn, and making initial mistakes are high due to the expansion of the eternal social memory, will this deter people from taking risks, examining unpopular opinions, exploring new subjects, getting caught up in a short term fad or otherwise being anything other than bland? Most hiring managers are risk averse. They want sure-thing candidates who have the proper credentials, the right college degree even if that degree is at best tangentially related to the actual job, and minimal 'personality' risks. Googling applicants is already here, and it has knocked out potential candidates numerous times at a near infinite number of companies.

The eternal social memory expands from a small town perspective to a wider national/global perspective without the ability of youth to move to a big city to recreate themselves after living in the small town, does social and income mobility stagnate even more than it currently has?

Bono's Pissed

By Cernig

Only Britain and Japan are living up to their promises on global poverty made at the Gleneagles Summit two years ago.

It's not just the credibility of the G8 that's at stake," Bono said in an interview with the Guardian to coincide with the release of a report from his Data organisation detailing the slow progress since the Gleneagles summit of 2005. "It's the credibility of the largest non-violent protest in 30 years. Nobody wants to go back to what we saw in Genoa, but I do sense a real sense of jeopardy."

Attempts by Tony Blair to inject a fresh sense of urgency into the G8 have been frustrated by other rich nations. At a meeting in Berlin of senior G8 officials - known as sherpas - to prepare the ground for next month's G8 meeting, Britain's representatives received short shrift when they raised the issue of aid budgets. "We only made those promises because we felt sorry for Tony Blair after the terrorist attacks on 7/7," the Russian sherpa said, referring to the terrorist attack on the day before the Gleneagles agreement was signed.

...The ambitious target signed up to in 2005 was to double global aid by 2010, with half of that £25bn increase earmarked for sub-Saharan Africa...The figures released by Data yesterday showed that G8 assistance to sub-Saharan Africa has increased by $2.3bn since 2004, but to be on track for the 2010 target it should have increased by $5.4bn. To compound the problems, Data reported that only small increases in aid are in the pipeline for this year and next.

...Bono said yesterday that the G8 could not let the campaigners down. "Telling lies to Bob and me is one thing. Putting their signature on a G8 communique and lying to their citizenry is another matter. Breaking promises to the most vulnerable people on earth is real infamy."

What Bono said.

Let's see a Dem presidential candidate make this an issue, please?

Zambia Uses G8 Debt Money, Makes Healthcare Free

If you are one of those who back the "Make Poverty History" campaign and who called for the G8 leaders at Gleneagles last year to cancel Third World debt, then give yourself a well deserved pat on the back. Here is a tangible result of your raised voices.

This from Oxfam:

The government of Zambia today (1 April) introduced free health care for people living in rural areas, scrapping fees which for years had made health care inaccessible for millions.

The move was made possible using money from the debt cancellation and aid increases agreed at the G8 in Gleneagles last July, when Zambia received $4 billion of debt relief; money it is now investing in health and education.

65 per cent of Zambia's citizens live on less than a dollar a day. Until today the average trip to a clinic would have cost more than double that amount, the equivalent of a UK worker having to £120 (US$200) just to visit a clinic.

"This is one of the first concrete examples of how the G8 deal last year has made a real difference to peoples' lives," said Barbara Stocking, Director of Oxfam. "People often bemoan the lack of good news coming out of Africa – well here's an example of real progress. It shows what can happen when people both in the rich world and the developing world push their leaders to deliver. Those who backed the Make Poverty History campaign last year should be proud of this achievement."

User fees were introduced in Zambia under IMF and World Bank pressure in the early 1990s. Young girls in rural areas were the main victims of the policy as their families were rarely willing or able to pay for their treatment.

The press release goes on to point out that, of 30 African nations surveyed, only three had scrapped healthcare user fees - we still have a lot to do.

And to those, mainly on the Right, who said scrapping Third World debt was a useless move because ALL the money would end up in the pockets of corrupt leaders - shame on you. As I wrote at the time of the G8 Summit:

Yet a large segment of the American Right say they stand for a pro-life philosophy - these are the very people who have a chance to pressure Bush into doing what is moral and just...they claim to stand firm against the deaths of 4000 unborn children each day in the USA yet say nothing about the deaths of 50,000 people a day, two thirds of them children, from preventable poverty in the Third World - or worse, parrot the Bush line which actively encourages those deaths to occur. Thus they become, by their silence or complicity, pro-life in the US but pro-death elsewhere. Perhaps they can justify this stance to themselves - maybe by saying the US Constitution provides the right to life only for US citizens. I don't know. May the divine have mercy on their souls.

Any relief at all for the millions in abject poverty is a worthwhile humanitarian venture of huge proportions. We can work on cutting corruption at the same time as, not as a prerequisite for, saving lives.

Healthcare's Daily Katrinas

Coming hard on the heels of news that Republicans intend financing the next round of rich people's tax cuts by ending healthcare for 6 million children comes a report that over 4,000 families, victims of Hurricane Katrina, are still slipping through the cracks in the existing system.

Michelle Chen at The New Standard reports that Bush's plan to afford healthcare to Katrina survivors is...well...crap.

Through a special waiver program, the Department of Health and Human Services has authorized states to provide Medicaid to Katrina survivors, based on existing eligibility guidelines that cover families, the elderly and the disabled. But these provisions leave out many poor adults, including those who have lost jobs and employer-sponsored healthcare plans due to the hurricane.

Medicaid enrollment patterns in Louisiana’s hurricane-shelter population indicate that even in their native state, a large portion of people seeking assistance will be shut out of the system. A state-led outreach effort in shelters, which ended last month, found that nearly one in every five survivors who requested Medicaid was rejected during initial eligibility screenings because they did not fit Medicaid requirements.

Tara Lachney, a spokesperson for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, reported that of about 6,900 remaining households that progressed to the application process, nearly 60 percent were denied coverage, or had their applications shelved "in hopes that we would be able to cover them under a future program."

But the plight of these survivors is not unique - it's just the tip of the iceberg. Even though every healthcare professional involved says the current system is "running on fumes", Republicans have used Katrina as an excuse to justify budget cuts for Medicaid and food stamps rather than a spur to highlight poverty and bolster safety-net programs which are currently failing from lack of funding. Anthony Iton, public-health officer for Alameda County, California – which has absorbed about 1,200 Katrina evacuees, most from New Orleans – sees the daily struggle to care for survivors as part of a more troubling syndrome. "It’s not the lack of a healthcare system," he said. "It’s the lack of core investments in critical social resources for everybody."

Democrats on the Hill need to make this a daily issue. They need to be telling the American people in no uncertain terms that their healthcare system is broken and that the Republicans don't care as long as they themselves are alright. Democrats need to be banging the drum, telling everyone that "the bottom line is, you know, we’re dealing with daily Katrinas."

Cost Of Next Tax Cut - Healthcare For 6 Million Kids

The Senate has passed, by 52-47, plans to "reduce the deficit" by $35 billion over the next three years. Cuts in federal spending on prescription drugs, agriculture supports and student loans are approved as is trimming spending on Medicaid and the related Children's Health Insurance Program by $4.3 billion through 2010, and $14 billion through 2015. Political news has the roll call, showing that two Democrats - Landrieu, La. and Nelson, Neb - actually voted for the bill.

Attention will now shift to the House version of the bill, which is far more violent in its attempts to cut funding to Medicaid. According to the Washington Post:

The House's Medicaid cuts present a far more immediate political obstacle. By allowing states to impose new co-payments and premiums while scaling back some benefits, the legislation is expected to save more than $30 billion over 10 years, the CBO said, not because cost-sharing would bring in revenue but because new costs would keep the poor out of the health care system.

...Under the House plan, states could raise co-payments for Medicaid recipients below the poverty line from $3 to $5 per doctor's visit or prescription, then keep raising them with the medical inflation rate. For the working poor just above the poverty line, there would be no limit to higher co-payments, although out-of-pocket health costs are not supposed to exceed 5 percent of a family's income. Health policy analysts say that protection may not amount to much as poor families will have difficulty tracking health care expenses that closely.

For the first time, poor children and pregnant women -- currently shielded from any out-of-pocket payments -- could be billed for some medications or hospital visits for non-emergency care.

The Post also quotes Jocelyn Guyer, senior program director at Georgetown University's Center for Children and Families, who estimated that 6 million children will be affected by the changes.

Soon after the House votes on this bill, they will also vote on a new proposal for a $70 billion tax cut, which will more than wipe out any savings.

"Deficit reduction" my ass - the cost of the next tax cut for the rich will be the healthcare of 6 million American kids.

An Argument For A Coalition Of The Left

I have been mulling over three recent posts by Rana at Shakespeare's Sister, by Dave Lindorff at Counterpunch and by C.N. Todd at Freiheit and Wissen. All took as their theme the (by now old) claim that the Democratic Party has ceased to be representative of a significantly large portion of the American Left and moreover, no longer have a "vision worth voting for". That the Democrats have become, by their own intent, Republican-Lite.

This is a familiar story, and one that has been replayed several times - most notably in 2000 and again in 2004. Recently, though, the argument has received new impetus from events. Lindorff puts it best:

Iraq War going to hell, with U.S casualties approaching 2000 dead and 25,000 wounded, at a cost of $200 billion and rising. Poverty in America on the rise in a period of supposed economic growth. Republican Party a cesspool of corruption. White House being investigated for outing undercover CIA agent. Abortion rights under serious threat, with the Supreme Court being packed with right-wing judges. New Orleans, just drying out from disastrous flood, being raped by White House-linked corporate pirates and scam artists. Budget deficit topping half trillion dollars. Gas and heating oil crisis looming, while oil companies reap record profits. Bush poll numbers hit historic low as even some Republicans abandon him as an incompetent. Oh yeah-all this and global warming and the end of human life as we know it.

Man, if you were an opposition politician looking to make a run for Congress next years, or for president in 2008, this would be a magical time. But where's the opposition?

The media tell us that the leading candidates for the Democratic nomination for president in 2008 are Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Bill Richardson and maybe John Kerry. What all these people have in common is their deafening silence on all the issues of importance facing Americans and America.

So why are these "opposition" politicians silent, and why are they not so much an opposition as a shadow - administration, not able to stand against the tide of administration policies even with such momentous events as a spur? Well, E.J.Dionne had a pretty good take recently in the Washington Post:

the party's problems are structural and can be explained by three numbers: 21, 34 and 45. According to the network exit polls, 21 percent of the voters who cast ballots in 2004 called themselves liberal, 34 percent said they were conservative and 45 percent called themselves moderate.

You get the idea? If the Democrats want to be elected by the current electorate, then they must move towards a centrist-right politics. They also have placed themselves in the enviable position of needing corporate funds to swell campaign coffers, through inadequately tending the hard left of their funds base. Where the Left sees their traditional party moving to the right for reasons of electability, they are becoming more and more intransigent about funding that party. This is one of the major complaints behind the recent split in the labor movement. The new Change to Win Coalition, made up of seven of the largest unions, recently split from the AFL-CIO partly because of disagreements over being cannon-fodder for the Democratic Party without any concommitant policy support from that party.

However, and its a big however, the current electorate is not the same as the potential electorate. By American standards the turnout for the 2004 Presidential election was high - yet by the standards of other Western democracies it was woefully low. Chris Bowers at MyDD recently researched who didn't turn out to vote and came up with some interesting findings. In 2004, for example, the national median income was $35,100 p.a. yet the median income of the electorate was $55,300 - a difference of 57.5%.

In other words, it is mostly the poorest segment of society who don't vote. Consider that although Bush gained 52% of the electorate, he only got 34% of all the possible votes. That means there is a huge potential constituency out there, between 25% and 30% of the potential electorate, who simply don't vote - and they don't vote simply because neither Republicans nor Republican-Lites have policies that address their concerns!

Lets start by getting rid of the notion that social policies are what sway the poorest voters. Let me assure you, because I am poor working class and live alongside poor working class people (in Texas yet!), we don't care about keeping down gays or blacks or about christian fundementalist power because the gays and blacks and christians are all poor together and we see the common theme first. We don't care about the right to bear arms because although we can't afford guns the gangbangers keep shooting us with them when we get accidentally caught in the crossfire. We aren't anti-abortion because we know stuff happens, especially when you can't afford prescriptions. That few bucks for condoms might be the entire family food budget for today...or even this week! We don't care about immigration because the illegal immigrants are just doing what we would do to find a better life for our kids.

What we want is education as a right for our kids for as far as the kid is capable of going (not just till High School), some help to find work that isnt minimum wage (travel, education, childcare) or some help with the bills if our work isminimum wage (or below - which is still legal if you are waitstaff for instance), a livable income if we really truly cannot work, medical care where the first question is "what's wrong?" not "how will you pay?", a break on crippling interest and bankruptcy cycles because you worry about how to pay after the kid is cured, that kind of thing.

On a wider canvas, when we get a breath from worrying about bills, we are concerned about the alarmingly rising rate of poverty which is consigning more and more Americans to the life we live - and we don't wish it on them any more than we would wish it on us. We care that workers in other countries can take our jobs primarily because both Democrats and Republicans have pushed globalized free-trade without pushing its balance - globalized worker's rights and benefits. We care intensely that our hard earned pay is funding graft for corporations who buy and sell whole administrations and their oppositions via the lobbyist system.

Sounds pretty progressive, eh? Those are the goals of the real workers, the manual workers and of the poverty stricken. And as long as neither Dems nor Repubs have that agenda then that 30% will not vote.

But I have an answer.

Its a safe bet that neither Greens, nor any kind of American Labor Party nor any socialist group nor Naderites will mount enough of a challenge in the near future to break the dual-party system, even with the massive potential electorate they have. Partly this is because of demonization as "tree-huggers" or "commies" that both major parties gleefully indulge in.

Democrats, the ones with the most vested interest, are the most aggressive about this. Arguments include "Americans would never vote for a socialist" and "splitting the left's vote would hand perpetual power to the Republicans". Both are utter nonsense. In the first place, Bernie Sanders never seems to have any problem getting elected and is a shoo-in for Senator in 2006. Many Green and Labor candidates would have excellent chances of election in areas where the Democrats have no chance and Republicans rule - mostly because of the successful demonization of the Democrats as "latte-sipping elitists". As Chris Bowers figures above show - far from splitting the left vote a strong party advocating for the working class would actually increase the size of the electorate by engaging all those voters who currently have no-one to vote for. They could pick up that unsung 25% and leave room for the Democrats to move to the moderate-right to their hearts content!

Moreover, why would the Dems have to run against any further Left party? They don't put up a candidate against Sanders because they know he is very popular and he will be part of their caucus in the House. Its called coalition government. If the Dems stood back and let real Lefties run in certain areas where they could really capture the vote then together the Dems and the Left could beat the Republicans...and for sure the Dems ain't going to do it on their own. So, to turn the argument around - do the Dems want to be a The Only Alternative so much that they are willing to sacrifice power to the Repubs for it? It seems some are.

A strong third party would also mean that both established parties would have to be on their merits not on their laurels - constantly looking over their shoulders to see what the new kid is saying. That could hardly be bad for the nation.

But if no leftwing party at present is strong enough, then what? Remember the old Polish "Solidarity" movement? A coalition of the progressive left that effected real change against an entrenched system. that should be the model. Sure, there would be fueds and differences over concepts - but the small groupings on the real Left are far more used to using a system of consensus and laisse-faire historically in any case. They are used to a system where prominent leaders are delegates as well as representatives. Any union body, any Green party local branch, is used to the give-and-take an American Solidarity would require. It could be done.

Moreover, it makes good political sense - the Republicans know this because they modelled their current heirachy on those very leftwing organistations that would make up such a coalition. As Bill Bradley wrote back in March for the New York Times:

To further the party's ideological and political goals, Republicans in the 1970's and 1980's built a comprehensive structure based on Powell's blueprint. Visualize that structure as a pyramid.

You've probably heard some of this before, but let me run through it again. Big individual donors and large foundations - the Scaife family and Olin foundations, for instance - form the base of the pyramid. They finance conservative research centers like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, entities that make up the second level of the pyramid. The ideas these organizations develop are then pushed up to the third level of the pyramid - the political level. There, strategists like Karl Rove or Ralph Reed or Ken Mehlman take these new ideas and, through polling, focus groups and careful attention to Democratic attacks, convert them into language that will appeal to the broadest electorate. That language is sometimes in the form of an assault on Democrats and at other times in the form of advocacy for a new policy position. The development process can take years. And then there's the fourth level of the pyramid: the partisan news media. Conservative commentators and networks spread these finely honed ideas.

At the very top of the pyramid you'll find the president. Because the pyramid is stable, all you have to do is put a different top on it and it works fine.

Whereas

To understand how the Democratic Party works, invert the pyramid. Imagine a pyramid balancing precariously on its point, which is the presidential candidate.
Democrats who run for president have to build their own pyramids all by themselves. There is no coherent, larger structure that they can rely on. Unlike Republicans, they don't simply have to assemble a campaign apparatus - they have to formulate ideas and a vision, too. Many Democratic fundraisers join a campaign only after assessing how well it has done in assembling its pyramid of political, media and idea people.

There is no clearly identifiable funding base for Democratic policy organizations, and in the frantic campaign rush there is no time for patient, long-term development of new ideas or of new ways to sell old ideas. Campaigns don't start thinking about a Democratic brand until halfway through the election year, by which time winning the daily news cycle takes precedence over building a consistent message. The closest that Democrats get to a brand is a catchy slogan.

Democrats choose this approach, I believe, because we are still hypnotized by Jack Kennedy, and the promise of a charismatic leader who can change America by the strength and style of his personality. The trouble is that every four years the party splits and rallies around several different individuals at once. Opponents in the primaries then exaggerate their differences and leave the public confused about what Democrats believe.

In such a system tactics trump strategy. Candidates don't risk talking about big ideas because the ideas have never been sufficiently tested. Instead they usually wind up arguing about minor issues and express few deep convictions. In the worst case, they embrace "Republican lite" platforms - never realizing that in doing so they're allowing the Republicans to define the terms of the debate.

A party based on charisma has no long-term impact. Think of our last charismatic leader, Bill Clinton. He was president for eight years. He was the first Democrat to be re-elected since Franklin Roosevelt. He was smart, skilled and possessed great energy. But what happened? At the end of his tenure in the most powerful office in the world, there were fewer Democratic governors, fewer Democratic senators, members of Congress and state legislators and a national party that was deep in debt. The president did well. The party did not. Charisma didn't translate into structure.

So where to start? Well, what the Greens and the Unions and the Laborites should do is get together for talks about establishing exactly that kind of grassroots up structure for a coalition movement on the Left - a true American Solidarity. I will even suggest a slogan; "we won't be Left unheard". There are even some bigger names who are currently in the Democratic camp who could be enticed, perhaps, into becoming the faces of the American Solidarity movement. I am thinking of people like bernie Sanders, John Conyers and even Chuck Pennaccio of PA. They should be approached with offers of support and funding. The Democratic Party should be approached as a possible ally, with a level of co-operation in caucus negotiated and a deal to not run against each other where demographics say it would be counter-productive.

And Lefty bloggers should be doing their bit too - we could even be pathfinders in the grassroots movement. Bloggers on the non-latte-sipping Left are pretty good at getting along even where we differ on details. We can form one or more of the think-tanks that are so needed by this new movement. We can also act as fundraisers and talent-spotters, targeting independent (i.e. non Dem or Republican) candidates for everything from local dog-catcher on up. Remember, that massive constituency is out there and I know from experience they would love to have someone to vote for.

What do you think? Is it an idea worth talking about? Is it an idea worth actually doing something about instead of just endlessly talking? Let me know.

Update
This Gallup poll couldn't be more timely or more pertinent.

Dean's World reads it thusly:

Gallup reports that nobody likes either major political party.

Okay, actually, they report that both parties have their highest unfavorability numbers in history. Does that mean a breakout of a third party as a major force in the next election? For 2006, not a chance. For 2008: only if things remain this way, and if both parties nominate someone seen as an "establishment" candidate.

Time to start organising.

Up-update

Shamanic, guest-blogging at Shakespeare's Sister, is tracking where this conversation is going from here with input from various bloggers. Its worth keeping track of where this goes.

It's About The Poverty, Stupid!

Regular Newshog commenter Kirkrrt sent me an email with a link to an article today and the message This is appalling to me and yet not surprising. Nothing I didn't know before. I just hope this study stirs politicians into action. I hope, but I doubt it.

As the article reports, a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association this week finds that it's all about the money when it comes to getting effective healthcare in the U.S.A.

eight research assistants called 499 ambulatory clinics and identified themselves as in need of follow-up care for pneumonia, high blood pressure or possible ectopic pregnancy -- early pregnancy implanted outside the uterus, such as in the Fallopian tube.

The same research assistant called each clinic twice using the same scenario but reporting different insurance status - no insurance, private insurance, or Medicaid -- the federal/state program for the poor.

"In our study, the callers who were trying to get appointments had potentially very serious conditions," Asplin emphasized. "These were not people trying to get an appointment for a sore throat or a cold. But despite the severity of there conditions, callers still had problems getting appointments when they didn't have the right insurance card."

"This study, I think, speaks to a really important myth that is out there," Asplin said. "That is that a lot of Americans think that, sure we have 45.8 million uninsured people, but when they really need care they get it -- and in our study the uninsured callers really needed care and they weren't able to get it."

63% of callers claiming to have private insurance secured timely follow-up appointments compared with just 34% of those who said they had Medicaid.

There was no difference in rates of secured appointments between callers claiming private insurance and those who were uninsured but willing to pay the entire $100 fee for the visit.

98% of clinics screened callers for a source of payment but only 28% attempted to determine the severity of the callers medical condition.

The bottom line is that if you're not a card carrying member of our healthcare system you're going to have a very difficult time getting access to care, " Dr. Brent R. Asplin from Regions Hospital and HealthPartners Research Foundation in St. Paul, Minnesota, told Reuters Health.

In other words, the unofficial and cold-hearted triage of the US healthcare system is that the ability to pay trumps the severity of illness every time.

Yet the truth is, universal healthcare would be more efficient than the current system. The only people who would lose out are those who currently traffic in profits for illness. I've written about this before. Refer to Public vs. Private Healthcare. Part One - Getting to the Facts. and to Public vs. Private Healthcare.Part Two - Counting the Costs (and Savings) for more details. Progressives are being told that, although they are making a huge outcry about the level of poverty in this country, which has been massively ignored, they have no policies to change things. This should be one of those policies. Universal healthcare regardless of income should be a right of every person in a modern, rich, technological democracy.

"This study, I think, speaks to a really important myth that is out there," Asplin said. "That is that a lot of Americans think that, sure we have 45.8 million uninsured people, but when they really need care they get it -- and in our study the uninsured callers really needed care and they weren't able to get it."

Needing care and unable to get it without money. Sounds just like the "left behind" of New Orleans. Disgusting. America should be ashamed of itself.

Class and Katrina

Have you noticed yet how every op-ed that sets out to show that the "left behind" of New Orleans were not deserted because they were poor and black stops after showing it wasn't because they were black except by an accident of demographics?

Yes, those who could not get out of the city under their own steam were predominantly black but then again so was the city. More black people managed to evacuate from New Orleans than white people - purely because the city is two thirds african-american. The really crucial figure is that of car ownership: 35% of black residents of New Orleans do not own automobiles, while 15% of white residents do not. It would be ridiculous to suggest that people in New Orleans were unable to buy a car because they were black. It is not at all ridiculous to suggest that poverty (and New Orleans had twice the national average of its citizens living in poverty) prevented people, predominantly black but also white, from buying a car.

Crucially, and no matter who was supposed to be in charge, if you didn't have access to transport you were left behind. It didn't matter whether you were black, white or purple with pink polkadots but if you were too poor to have your own car then you were sunk. Literally.

There were, without a doubt, detailed plans made by Louisiana and the city of New Orleans to evacuate the poor without cars using city buses and other public vehicles. That plan was not enacted and for that failing the people in charge at State and City must be held accountable..

Yet last summer FEMA ran a hurricane planning scenario for the New Orleans area called "Hurricane Pam". Would FEMA have been able to save those poverty-stricken victims? No. They planned to leave them behind too:

Though officials involved in the scenario acknowledged that tens of thousands of residents would be without the means to evacuate New Orleans in the absence of government help, the Hurricane Pam scenario teams did not determine strategies for evacuating people ahead of time. Instead, officials predicted that only one-third of the city’s residents would make it out in time and designed their response plan around that assumption.
At the end of the assessment, FEMA Regional Director Ron Castleman announced, "We made great progress this week in our preparedness efforts."
...
It is apparent from the general action plan released after the Hurricane Pam exercise and interviews with the press at the time that over a year before Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, local, state and federal agencies were aware of the challenges they would face if a storm flooded the city.
For instance, they anticipated that failure to completely evacuate the entire city ahead of the storm would pose deadly consequences for those left behind. They also predicted that tens of thousands of residents would not leave the city, even under a mandatory evacuation order, because they would lack transportation. And they foresaw that those who stayed and managed to survive the winds and the flooding would be without emergency relief for several days.
Brown said that even if the action plan played out perfectly, the government would not be able to respond to all of people’s needs in the event of a storm like the hypothetical Pam.
"Residents need to know they'll be on their own for several days in a situation like this," Brown said in a July 2004 interview with the New Orleans based Times-Picayune.

No-one, at any level of authority or from either political party, thought the poor of New Orleans were worth the effort and cost of evacuation using non-private resources. That is if they thought about it at all. Too often, the myth of the American Dream means that those not in abject poverty do their best to ignore those who are. The majority of Americans cannot or will not conceive of the conditions of those who either had no car, had nowhere to go, or no money to spend, or who were waiting for an end-of-month check.

Or if they think of the poor at all, they think of them as somehow an enemy - "if only the poorest people were to somehow disappear then they would no longer be a drain on my resources and I would be better off". Then, they delude themselves, it would be easier by far for me to climb the ladder and achieve the American Dream of wealth. It is a delusion because in America less than one percent of the population owns over 40 percent of the wealth. Excluding housing, this privileged elite owns close to 90 percent of the wealth—stocks, bonds and other financial assets, as well as commercial businesses. It is this class which controls both the Democratic and Republican parties and the government at every level—local, state and federal - and they consistently act only in their own self-interests. Minimal government, tax cuts, social security reform, private healthcare, restrictions on civil rights, the bankruptcy bill - the list goes on and on.

In the weeks and months to come, Americans should enter into at least one debate. They must ask themselves what the priorities of society are to be: the social interests of the many or the accumulation of personal wealth by the privileged few?

Solidarnosc.

Update Sept. 11th My words above about the "majority of Americans" were too strong and I apologise. As this poll by NPR shows, only 44% of Americans think a tax raise to aid the poverty stricken is a bad idea and only 48% of those polled thought poverty was because "people are not doing enough to help themselves out of poverty". Please substitute those figures mentally as you read the original text. Thank you.

Being Poor Is...

Happy Labor Day to my American friends. On this singular Labor Day when the consequences of poverty have been brought home to America as never before by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina I would ask you all to read a post by John Scalzi on what its like to be poor (big ups to PSoTD for bringing this one to my attention).

Here's the link. Go now. Its worth it. Today I realized that nodding to 32 out of 62 of the points on the list isn't too bad.

Support your Labor Movement and support your Unions, because the Democrats and Republicans aren't interested in supporting the poor. Just ask the citizens of New Orleans.

Solidarinosc.

Latte Drinkers Shaft The Poor Again

Yet another rant coming, it must be the week for it.

The LA Times:

COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Democratic Leadership Council, an organization of influential party moderates, on Monday named Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) to direct a new initiative to define a party agenda for the 2006 and 2008 elections.

The appointment solidified the identification of Clinton — once considered a champion of the party's left — with the centrist movement that helped propel her husband to the White House in 1992. It also continued her effort, which has accelerated in recent months, to present herself as a moderate on issues such as national security, immigration and abortion.

Now here's the thing that's pissing me off - every major-name pundit who is talking about this story is talking about how the Democrats must reclaim it's status as the party of the middle-class - and then the debate rages about whether a move to the Democratic Underground's moonbat version of left or a move to Biden and H. Clinton's corporate-owned version of center would do that best.

You know what? Fuck all you latte-sippers!

What about the poor, the poverty-stricken, the working class s.o.b.s who pay 50% of their income on rent for an apartment (they can't afford to buy in the current market, not on minimum wage)? By their standards, the middle class do alright, Jack.

20% of children in the US live at or below the poverty level. Don't they and their parents deserve some voice? Don't the powers that be realise that the vast majority of those who don't vote in elections come from that poorest 20% of the population?

Why? Because they've got no-one to fucking vote for!

The Democrats rely on their votes from the middle class while pandering to the corporations for campaign finance. The Republicans rely on big business for their finance (and we all know that, increasingly, it's the big bucks that win elections) and aim that money at the middle class to get votes.

Both pretend to look after the working class by empty rhetoric of "looking after the poor" or "being tough on terror" without actually carrying thru on the big talk.

Bernie...Bernie Sanders! Change to Win Coalition! If you hear this, please consider backing some more independent, grassroots candidates to represent the workers, with a view towards eventually creating a third party to challenge the milionaires of the Democrats and the Republicans. Oh and Bernie, maybe after you win that Senate seat the next target should be the White House?

A quarter of the country need you. Don't let them down