Star Trek

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/8/8/nickel_dimed_on_not_getting_by

AMY GOODMAN: The 10th anniversary edition of Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America has just been published. In the book, she tells the story of life in low-wage America, and she herself tries to earn a living working as a waitress, a hotel maid, a nursing home aide and a Wal-Mart associate. The book, over the last 10 years, has sold more than two million copies.

She’s also the author of many other books, including Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America and Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream, a frequent contributor to Harper’s and The Nation and has also a columnist at the New York Times and Time Magazine.

Barbara Ehrenreich, welcome to Democracy Now!

BARBARA EHRENREICH: Good to be with you, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s great to have you with us. Before we get to Nickel and Dimed, let’s talk about Standard & Poor’s—and perhaps then we’ll go into poor is the standard in America today—but the significance of this for everyday people in the United States, the downgrading of America’s credit rating?

BARBARA EHRENREICH: I don’t know. I’m not sure. I mean, it’s part of a general sense of decline that I think we’ve gotten in many ways and that people like Tom Friedman have been writing about in the New York Times for some time. But, you know, in some ways, that is in another world from most Americans and their day-to-day struggles. What is it going to mean to you if you have no job now? Or if you have a job and you have no health insurance? Or if you are trying to get through college while working full time? It just seems very distant and abstract. When we’re talking about the economy in this country, we seldom talk about real people’s lives.

AMY GOODMAN: And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. I mean, your book took this country by storm. I am sure there was no one more surprised than you, Barbara. You have written a number of books. You did do something very interesting in Nickel and Dimed, but the fact that it caught on in a time when "prosperity" was the watchword, the buzzword, in the mainstream media—talk about—especially for young people who were 10 years old when the book came out, talk about exactly what you did, what you found then, and what it means today, 10 years later, when "prosperity" is certainly not the buzzword.

BARBARA EHRENREICH: Well, I took on a challenge that I set myself, which was to see whether I could support myself on the money I could earn in, well, obviously entry-level jobs, which are the, you know, kind of jobs where you go and apply, and they’re not going to ask—you know, they’re not going to ask for a résumé. They’re not going to—they don’t care about anything, except whether you’re a convicted felon or whether you have—you’re actually—you know, it’s legal for you to work in this country. So, I—you mentioned some of the jobs I worked at. I think you left out the maid with a house cleaning service, though. That was a very instructive one. And all these jobs averaged at the time, in around 2000, about $7 an hour, even including the tips with waitressing, which would be equivalent to about $9 an hour now.

And basically, what I found, that for me, just as one person—I wasn’t trying to support my family with my earnings or anything like that—it just wasn’t doable, because the rents were so out of line with my earnings. And I did try. I mean, I didn’t spend any money except on gas, food and, you know, the bare minimum, which was possible to do because I worked at each city for only a month. You know, so I wasn’t depending—you know, medical care or anything like that was not coming through my jobs.

But I found, you know, a very important thing—well, two very important things. First, at $7 an hour, or $9 an hour in today’s dollars, you’re not considered poor. You know, you don’t show up in the poverty statistics. You’re considered to be fine if you’re one individual earning that much. And the other big lesson here is—which is maybe a hard one to remember at a time of high unemployment—is that jobs are not necessarily a cure for poverty. Jobs that don’t pay enough to live on do not cure poverty. They condemn you, in fact, to a life of low-wage labor and extreme insecurity.

AMY GOODMAN: ... Barbara Ehrenreich. It’s hard to believe, but her book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America came out 10 years ago. And we’re going to talk about some of the people she met as she wrote this book and where they are today, and where America is. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Back in a second.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: ...This figure, Barbara, of the number of Americans on food stamps, almost one in six, almost 15 percent. The figures from May, people on food stamps were 12 percent higher than a year earlier, according to the Agriculture Department. One in almost six Americans. And this applies directly to the people that you met, to the jobs that you took—for example, being a Wal-Mart associate. Talk about that and the woman you wrote about and where she is today.

BARBARA EHRENREICH: Yeah, I mean, one of the surprises to me—and it’s not a surprise anymore, because a lot more research has been done—is how many Wal-Mart employees depend on some kind of government program to supplement their low wages and pathetically inadequate health insurance, which most people can’t afford anyway. In fact, when you—I noticed that when I went through the orientation for my job at Wal-Mart, and there was a whole table full of new hires sitting around, you know, that they, the Wal-Mart people, asked to see whether anybody here might be eligible for TANF, for example, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, because they’re kind of depending on that government—those government supplements to keep people going. You’re not going to do too well on just your Wal-Mart pay. And then, at another time as a Wal-Mart associate, I went to seek food aid. I went to a sort of public/private charitable place that what you could get—you could come out with a sack of food. And when the interviewer—the social worker who interviewed me kept getting me mixed up with somebody. You know, I’d tell her that I had a car, and then she’d forget I had a car, and so on. And then she said, "You know, it’s just—we have other—you know, people are always coming from Wal-Mart. You work at Wal-Mart. I get you mixed up." And that, to me, was a big clue.

AMY GOODMAN: So, in other words, I mean, you have Wal-Mart, that is famous around the country for fighting unionization, part of the whole movement of corporations that fight tax cuts for the wealthy, for example, is subsidized by the government, is subsidized by the U.S. taxpayers.

BARBARA EHRENREICH: Oh, yes. I mean, in many more ways than that. I mean, there are so many subsidies often involved in luring a Wal-Mart to one’s area—you know, tax rebates or, you know, things like that. But I was very excited yesterday. I went to the Jobs with Justice conference in Washington, D.C. That’s an organization that’s devoted to getting workers rights and improving their standard of living. And there were a number of women Wal-Mart employees there—or "associates," as they are called—who are now organizing their own workers’ association, called "OUR Walmart." And this is a new thing. And they were dynamic. So things may be about to change a little.

Where Best To Be Poor

By Walter E. Williams (Archive) · Wednesday, June 30, 2010

"Imagine you are an unborn spirit whom God has condemned to a life of poverty but has permitted to choose the nation in which to live. I'm betting that most any such condemned unborn spirit would choose the United States. Why? What has historically been defined as poverty, nationally or internationally, no longer exists in the U.S. Let's look at it.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the 2009 poverty guideline was $22,000 for an urban four-person family. In 2009, having income less than that, 15 percent or 40 million Americans were classified as poor, but there's something unique about those "poor" people not seen anywhere else in the world. Robert Rector, researcher at the Heritage Foundation, presents data collected from several government sources in a report titled "How Poor Are America's Poor? Examining the 'Plague' of Poverty in America" (8/27/2007):

-- Forty-three percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage and a porch or patio.

-- Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.

-- Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded; two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.

-- The typical poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)

-- Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.

-- Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.

-- Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.

-- Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and a more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.

What's defined as poverty is misleading in another way. Official poverty measures count just family's cash income. It ignores additional sources of support such as the earned-income tax credit, which is a cash rebate to low-income workers; it ignores Medicaid, housing allowances, food stamps and other federal and local government subsidies to the poor. According to a report by American Enterprise Institute scholar Nicholas Eberstadt, titled "Poor Statistics," "In 2006, according to the annual Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey, reported purchases by the poorest fifth of American households were more than twice as high as reported incomes." That additional money might represent earnings from unreported employment, illegal activities and unreported financial assistance. A proper measure of well-being is what a person consumes rather than his income. A huge gap has emerged between income and consumption at lower income levels.

Material poverty can be measured relatively or absolutely. An absolute measure would consist of some minimum quantity of goods and services deemed adequate for a baseline level of survival. Achieving that level means that poverty has been eliminated. However, if poverty is defined as, say, the lowest one-fifth of the income distribution, it is impossible to eliminate poverty. Everyone's income could double, triple and quadruple, but there will always be the lowest one-fifth.

Yesterday's material poverty is all but gone. In all too many cases, it has been replaced by a more debilitating kind of poverty -- behavioral poverty or poverty of the spirit. This kind of poverty refers to conduct and values that prevent the development of healthy families, work ethic and self-sufficiency. The absence of these values virtually guarantees pathological lifestyles that include: drug and alcohol addiction, crime, violence, incarceration, illegitimacy, single-parent households, dependency and erosion of work ethic. Poverty of the spirit is a direct result of the perverse incentives created by some of our efforts to address material poverty."

Rich Man, Poor Man

From the link provided above:

AMY GOODMAN: Barbara Ehrenreich, the Heritage Foundation came out with a study called "Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What is Poverty in the United States Today?" by researchers Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield, who say the U.S. Census Bureau has reported for the past two decades that over 30 million Americans are living in poverty. But, you know, they ask, well, what does it really mean to be poor? And you get, from the headline—cable TV, air conditioning, etc.—what it means to the Heritage Foundation.

BARBARA EHRENREICH: Yes. Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation has had a campaign for many decades now to prove that the poor in America really live in some kind of luxury. I would like to say, yeah, in some places, boy, you better have air conditioning. You know, in the D.C. area where I live now, you could not have survived very easily the summer, even with occasional cooling centers to go to.

But the truth is, here’s what’s happening. More and more people are having to crowd into smaller spaces to live. This is since—this has been going on for a lot of people, you know, for many years. But since the recession, since the financial crisis in '07, you find more and more families—you can have one family per bedroom and somebody, a couch surfer, on the couch in the living room. There's nothing comfortable about that. You know, one of the things that really woke me up to how bad things were was in '09 when a family member of mine suddenly needed money to pay her mortgage or her home would be taken away. I was able to help, but when I found out the real facts, I was horrified. Her home was a ... dilpadated trailer home. She lives in it—a single-wide trailer home—along with her daughter and two grandchildren. Now that’s getting down to, you know, third-world levels of poverty, when you crowd that many people into such an inadequate dwelling.

Another thing people are doing: give up on medical care. You know, if we have a healthcare system in the United States, I think its real name is Tylenol. You can’t—you know, it’s something you have to drop. You can’t do it. Food prices are too high. Fuel prices are too high. So you have to give up on those things that it seems like you can get through another day without, even if that’s your blood pressure medicine.

...

AMY GOODMAN: There are some who are doing very well, of course. The luxury category has posted 10 consecutive months of sales increases compared to a year earlier, this a report in the New York Times. Luxury items are—

BARBARA EHRENREICH: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: —you know, are flying off the shelves, if yachts can fit on shelves.

BARBARA EHRENREICH: Yes, yes, the rich are back. The rich are back. And that’s one reason why, when you read some of our major national newspapers, there’s not much mention anymore of the recession or economic hard times, because the people at the top are doing great. There was an article recently in the New York Times about tree houses that the very wealthy will build for their children, you know, in their backyard, if they even call them "backyards," on their property—tree houses that can cost as much as $350,000 and include flat-screen TVs and air conditioning. That’s for the kid to go out in a backyard and play in. Three hundred fifty thousand dollars. You know, I think that’s flaunting it a little too much.

AMY GOODMAN: Last week, Congress agreed to raise the federal debt ceiling following protracted negotiations. The deal includes no new tax revenue from wealthy Americans, no additional stimulus for the economy. Speaking on the Senate floor, Majority Leader Harry Reid criticized Republicans for blocking the tax hike on the wealthy.

SEN. HARRY REID: The vast majority of Democrats, Independents and Republicans think this arrangement we’ve just done is unfair, because the richest of the rich have contributed nothing to this. The burden of what has taken place is on the middle class and the poor. My friend talks about no new taxes. Mr. President, if their theory was right, these huge taxes [cuts] that took place during the Bush eight years, the economy should be thriving. These tax cuts have not helped the economy.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Barbara Ehrenreich, as we begin to wrap up, your comment?

BARBARA EHRENREICH: Well, it’s a way—it’s not new. This has been going on for a while, certainly since the Reagan administration. And that is an upward redistribution of wealth by cutting taxes for the wealthiest, and in subtle ways, raising them for the poorest and for the middle class. That’s what we’ve got. It’s a grab. It’s—I’m waiting for people to get really, really angry about it. I think one thing that has held back Americans is the idea that you’re going to get rich, too, you know? That magically, "Hey, I might be one of those multimillionaires next," so that I don’t want to tax rich people. I think we’ve broken through that. I think, you know, that has begun to look like a more and more crazy expectation, that we have to fight for, you know, those people who represent the great majority, the 90 percent of Americans who are not rich.

AMY GOODMAN: Barbara Ehrenreich, I want to thank you very much for being with us, author of—

BARBARA EHRENREICH: Oh, thank you.

I'm not saying that the poor "live in luxury" (well... unless you want to compare us to the rest of the world), but we all know that the term of "poor" is being thrown around to bring about "economic justice" - take from the "rich" and give to the "poor".

And don't you just love the crap about "upward redistribution of wealth by cutting taxes for the wealthiest, and in subtle ways, raising them for the poorest and for the middle class."  Keeping one's own money is NOT redistributing wealth - it's stopping the redistributing.  And when the top 1% pay more in income taxes than the bottom 95% combined (and ~50% don't pay income tax at all) then the fallacy of the poorest and middle class being taxed too much is quite obvious.

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/8/9/a_declaration_of_war_on_the

TAVIS SMILEY: We’re at Kent State now as one of many stops on this tour, as you mentioned, Amy, because we’re trying to raise awareness about this issue, trying to raise the level of debate and conversation about the plight of the poor in this country. I believe, and Dr. West believes, that it is, in fact, the telling of truth that allows suffering to speak. And if we don’t speak truth to power—and put another way, truth to the powerless—then they end up being rendered invisible in this country.

You mentioned a moment ago, and you’re absolutely right about this, this deficit-reduction plan, this debt-ceiling plan, that Congress came together on and the President signed, unfortunately, I think is a declaration of war on the poor. Any legislation that doesn’t extend unemployment benefits, doesn’t close a single corporate loophole, doesn’t raise one cent of new revenue in terms of taxes on the rich or the lucky, allows corporate America to get away scot-free again—the banks, Wall Street getting away again—and all these cuts ostensibly on the backs of everyday people.

This conversation now about the poor in this country needs to happen, and so we’re out here trying to dramatize that and trying to ensure that this time around, in this presidential debate, Mr. Obama and whoever his Republican opponent will be are going to be forced to address the issue, the ever-expanding issue, of the poor in this country.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, before I turn to Cornel West, I was speaking yesterday to Harry Belafonte, the famous singer, actor, activist. I interviewed him earlier this year about his meeting with Cornel. It was before President Obama was president. And this is what he had to say about his conversation with, at the time, Senator Obama.

HARRY BELAFONTE: Every opportunity I’ve had to put that before him, he has heard. I have not had a chance to put it to him as forcefully as I would like to, because he has not yet given us the accessibility to those places where this could be said in a more articulate way and not always on the fly.

But he once said something to me during his campaign for the presidency, and he says—he said, you know—I said, "I’ve heard you" —he was talking before businessmen on Wall Street here in—there in New York. And he said to me—I said, "Well, you know, I hope you bring the challenge more forcefully to the table." And he said, "Well, when are you and Cornel West going to cut me some slack?" And I got caught with that remark. And I said to him, in rebuttal, I said, "What makes you think we haven’t?"

AMY GOODMAN: That was Harry Belafonte. Cornel West, your response, and why you’re on this tour, professor at Princeton University?

CORNEL WEST: Well, yeah, we know Harry Belafonte’s idea of brotherhood. No, Brother Tavis came up with the idea of this Poverty Tour. We’re on the tour because there has been a top-down, one-sided class war against poor and working people, that’s led by greedy Wall Street oligarchs and avaricious corporate plutocrats in the name of deregulated markets, which is a morally bankrupt policy, especially when it comes to keeping track of the humanity and dignity of poor and working people. We started with our indigenous brothers and sisters in—

TAVIS SMILEY: Hayward, Wisconsin.

CORNEL WEST: Hayward, Wisconsin.

TAVIS SMILEY: Lac Courte Oreilles.

CORNEL WEST: Lac Courte Oreilles, that’s it. I wanted to get that right. We spent time with the Hmong workers there in Eau Claire. We were with warehouse workers there in Joliet. We were in Chicago, Detroit. We met with homeless veterans yesterday in—

TAVIS SMILEY: Akron, Ohio.

CORNEL WEST: —in Akron, Ohio. I mean, we went everywhere. We’re going to spend time with poor whites, poor blacks, poor brown, poor yellow. We’re trying to reconstitute what Brother Martin Luther King, Jr., died for, which is bringing poor and working people together in the face of these class attacks.

AMY GOODMAN: What is your analysis, Tavis Smiley, of the debt deal?

TAVIS SMILEY: As I tried to emanate a moment ago, I think it’s a declaration of war. We all know—and this is why The War and Peace Report, Amy, is so important, and we celebrate you and revel in your humanity and the work that you do every day to raise these issues. Dr. King once said, as you well know, Amy, that "war is the enemy of the poor." "War is the enemy of the poor." Congress has the power obviously to declare war. They’ve done that far too many times. We’re engaged in some excursions right now that we need to find a way to get out of immediately, if not sooner. As my granddad might say, "sooner than at once and quicker than right now," we need to get out of these wars that we’re engaged in, because war is the enemy of the poor. So Congress has the power to declare war, and I think they’ve done that once again. This time, though, they’ve declared war on the poor. That’s what this legislation, for me, is all about. I think Congressman Cleaver is right: it’s a Satan sandwich. And I don’t want to take—I don’t want to partake and bite into that.

The bottom line is that our body politic—I want to be clear about this—both Republicans and Democrats, both Congress and the White House, and for that matter, all of the American people, have got to take the issue of the poor more seriously. Why? Because the new poor, the new poor, are the former middle class. Obviously, the polls tell these elected officials, these politicians, that you ought to talk about the middle class, that resonates. Well, if the new poor are the former middle class, then this conversation has got to be expanded. We’ve got to have a broader conversation about what’s happening to the poor. And the bottom line for me is this, Amy, with regard to this legislation and all others that are now demonizing, casting aspersion on the poor. There’s always been a connection between the poor and crime, but now—between poverty and crime, but now it’s become a crime, it would seem, to be poor in this country. And I believe this country, one day, is going to get crushed under the weight of its own poverty, if we think we can continue to live in a country where one percent of the people own and control more wealth than 90 percent. That math, long term, Amy, is unsustainable. We’ve got to talk about poverty.

AMY GOODMAN: A new report from the Washington, D.C.-based conservative think tank Heritage Foundation finds Americans living in poverty are doing better than they have ever been and the definition of poverty needs to be redefined. So Stephen Colbert featured the report last month, right, on Comedy Central on The Colbert Report. I just wanted to play an excerpt from his show.

STEPHEN COLBERT: Jesus said the poor would always be with us. Well, it turns out Jesus does not know everything. For more, Fox News’ Stu Varney makes words come out of his mouth.

STUART VARNEY: When you think of poverty, you picture this. But what if I told you it really looks like this? A new report showing poor families in the United States are not what they used to be. I’m just going to give our viewers a quick run-through of what items poor families in America have. Ninety-nine percent of them have a refrigerator. Eighty-one percent have a microwave.

STEPHEN COLBERT: A refrigerator and a microwave? They can preserve and heat food? Ooh la la. I guess the poor are too good for mold and trichinosis. It’s all here, folks, in the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation’s new report, "Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What is Poverty in the United States Today?" And if you watched closely in Stu Varney’s report just then, you saw that evidently poverty is the plasma flat-screen aisle at Best Buy. And you will not believe some of the stuff poor people have in their homes: luxuries like ceiling fans, DVD players.

AMY GOODMAN: There you have Stephen Colbert, an excerpt of his response to the Heritage Foundation report, "Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What is Poverty in the United States Today?" That’s the title of the Heritage Foundation report. Cornel West, your response?

CORNEL WEST: No, thank God for Brother Colbert. The Heritage Foundation has been spreading lies to justify indifference toward poor people for three decades as part of the right-wing intellectual assault on working and poor people. Tavis and I were at Camp Forest tent city outside of Ann Arbor. They’ve been there a number of years. And in fact, they just got heat, what was it, two years ago. They’ve been there for many years. They just got heat. So, the Heritage Foundation, they ought to be ashamed of themselves, but this is part of the fightback. The Heritage Foundation supports the counter-revolution in the name of oligarchs and plutocrats. We want to be part of the fightback, and there’s millions out there who want to be part of the fightback, as the oligarchs and plutocrats attempt to squeeze all of the democratic juices out of the American social experiment.

AMY GOODMAN: This is a listening tour, Tavis Smiley, as you’ve described it. Talk about what you’ve heard, as you go from Chicago to Akron, Ohio. Talk about what people are telling you. Thousands of people are turning out. You were on the South Side of Chicago; this is where President Obama spent so many years.

TAVIS SMILEY: We’re hearing a number of things. Let me try to give you three right quick, in no particular order. Number one, these unemployment numbers are real. And it’s very clear to me and other economists who are willing to be honest about this that whatever numbers the government is giving us about unemployment, the numbers are far worse, because so many Americans have stopped looking for work. We talked to a group last night of unemployed, homeless, military veterans—Army, Navy, Marines—a room full of them, just outside of Kent State last night in Akron, Ohio, and to hear these persons, who have put their lives on the line for this country, who cannot find work. A woman named Hillary last night has been out of work for three years, and she broke down last night crying, weeping uncontrollably about the fact that she keeps applying and reapplying. She cannot find work. Unemployment here in Akron, Ohio, a bellwether state in these presidential elections every four years—unemployment is off the charts here. And these, last night, just happen to be primarily, overwhelmingly white Americans. So, when we talk about unemployment, we’re not just talking about black folk and brown folk. Across the board, too many Americans are unemployed, and the numbers that we are given every month are not really as accurate as they ought to be, number one.

CORNEL WEST: That’s right.

TAVIS SMILEY: Number two, we’re hearing from people that the process is broken, our political process is broken, and there’s a hopelessness in this country right now. I just returned from China, Amy, some weeks ago, and in China—and I could debate all day long, and I’ve got issues with the way they do a lot of stuff in China, but there is a sense of hopefulness about their future. And you hear, across this country, so many Americans who sense a hopelessness about the future of this country. So many Americans now think that our best days as a nation are behind us, and we’re hearing that too often on this tour.

But we’re also hearing—we’re also hearing that there’s got to be a commitment to everyday people, a commitment to the poor. If we can find a way to get the debt ceiling raised, if we can find a trillion dollars for these military excursions, etc., etc., etc., why can’t we get serious and come together in Washington, perhaps at a White House conference on poverty—hint, hint—to talk about a way to eradicate poverty in 10, 15, 20 years. It can be done if we commit ourselves to it. And the poor are feeling more and more invisible. The worst thing you can do to a human being is to make him or her feel invisible, as if they don’t matter, as if they’re throwaway, as if they’re disposable. And too many Americans are feeling that right about now.

AMY GOODMAN: A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll found 86 percent of African Americans expressed approval of the job President Obama is doing, even as support for him has slipped among other groups. This is from the Washington Post. The view is nuanced, though: "Among blacks, approval of the president’s economic policies has weakened, with only 54 percent saying the policies have made the economy better compared with 77 percent in October." Cornel West, you have been both a supporter of Senator Obama in becoming president and a fierce critic. These polls are shifting, even among his hugest support group. What about what has happened, and where you think President Obama is trying to take the country, and where you think it needs to go?

CORNEL WEST: Well, I think, on the one hand, large numbers of black people rightly want to protect President Obama against the vicious right-wing attacks, the Fox News-like attacks, the lies about him being socialist, Muslim and so forth. On the other hand, the suffering intensifies. It’s very clear that President Obama caves in over and over and over again. He punts on first down. If you’re in a foxhole with him, you’re in trouble, because he wants to compromise, you want to fight. He doesn’t have the kind of backbone he ought to have. So black folk find themselves in a dilemma: how do we protect him against the right-wing attacks and at the same time keep him accountable, especially when it comes to poor and working people?

Unfortunately, Tim Geithner and his economic team have nothing to do with the legacy of Martin King, have indifference toward poor and working people. He listens to them, hence he’s rightly associated much more with the oligarchs than with poor people. We hope he changes his mind. We hope he gets a progressive economic team, even though, as you know, many of us are exploring other kinds of possibilities in the coming election, given his lukewarmness.

AMY GOODMAN: What are you exploring exactly? Are you talking about another candidate running for president?

CORNEL WEST: It would be a Bernie Sanders-like figure who is fundamentally committed to the legacy of Martin King and Fannie Lou Hamer and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Dorothy Day, putting poor and working people at the center.

AMY GOODMAN: When you say Bernie Sanders-type, is Bernie Sanders considering running for president?

CORNEL WEST: Unfortunately, I don’t think so.

TAVIS SMILEY: He said he’s not.

CORNEL WEST: I wish he was, because he’s my kind of brother. But someone like that who’s got backbone and courage.

AMY GOODMAN: Tavis Smiley, would you like to see someone else run, and are you considering it yourself?

TAVIS SMILEY: That right there is the joke of the day. Actually, Dr. West has a great line about that, Amy. You should have asked him that question; he has a great line. He says, you would much sooner find him in a crack house than in the White House. That’s his response to that.

As you well know, my role on public television and public radio doesn’t put me in the realm of endorsing candidates. I have not done that. My role is to talk about accountability, to challenge folk to reexamine the assumptions they hold about the poor, to help them expand their inventory of ideas, to introduce Americans to the poor with these platforms that I have. So I’m not in the endorsing business, I’m in the accountability business. And that’s why we’re on this Poverty Tour.

But to your question, I don’t think the President would be hurt, necessarily—the country certainly would not be hurt—by a primary challenge that would refocus him on what really matters. It would refocus him on what’s happening to too many people in this country. It would refocus him on a more progressive agenda. But having said that, I think if the race were held today, the President still wins. You can’t beat somebody with nobody, and I don’t see who the somebody is that can beat the President. So, Doc and I have had many debates, and I’m sure we’re going to get right back at this debate once we get on the bus again and take off to the next city in just a few minutes on the Poverty Tour.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there.

TAVIS SMILEY: But I think that a challenge would refocus him—

AMY GOODMAN: Tavis, we’re going to have to leave it there. Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, thanks so much for joining us.

How about Cornel West debate with Walter Willaims?  That would be fun - Williams scores 100%.  West ... we'll be generous with only a -100%.

http://money.cnn.com/2004/12/22/news/economy/poverty_overview/index.htm

The changing face of poverty

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Poverty and hunger are problems that many Americans relegate to the Third World. But the steady growth of poverty has left millions of American families afraid they won't have enough money to put food on the table.

According to the most recent Census Bureau statistics, nearly 36 million Americans lived in poverty in 2003, an increase of 1.3 million from 2002. And since 2000, 4.4 million more people in this country are living in poverty. The Census Bureau defines poverty as an individual earning $9,393 or less and $14,680 or less for a family of three.

And American families are faring worse than they have in years. Last year 7.6 million American families -- or 10 percent of all families -- lived in poverty, a big jump from 2000 

But these figures don't complete the story.

Jared Bernstein, a labor economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, said the growth in the number of poor should give us pause, but even more troubling is the growing disparity in America between who is rich and who is poor.

In the last few decades, pay for wealthier Americans has risen dramatically -- fueled by growth in salaries, bonuses, stock options and other compensation, Bernstein said. But wages for millions of lower-wage workers have dwindled. Many have lost their jobs altogether.

This "wedge" has prevented the benefits of economic growth from being spread equally. In addition, the current economic recovery is the weakest since World War II in terms of job growth.

Traditionally, the United States has used economic growth and job creation to reduce poverty, but in today's world that's only meaningful to the extent that wage inequality is reduced, Bernstein said.

"The U.S. economy has experienced three years of recovery, yet poverty has continued to go up," he said.

In fact, the latest numbers show that nearly 6 percent of all working Americans lived in poverty last year -- a level that's remained stubbornly high.

Also surprising: the rise in the number of married couples in poverty, since they are traditionally the most resilient demographic. In 2003, 3.1 million married couples lived in poverty, with 53 percent of poor families headed by a married couple, a dramatic increase from 2001 when 2.8 million married couples were poor.

William Dickens, an economist with the Brookings Institution, agrees that the gap between rich and poor is widening, but he says, "in the last 30 years, it has taken robust economic growth for wage gains at the bottom of the income bracket. In general, this has not been a roaring recovery."

But Dickens says even in this period of weak economic recovery, workers can get by, if they are educated and flexible enough. More education translates to better pay, according to Dickens.

But as skilled American workers compete with a growing number of well educated and cheaper overseas workers, the wage gap in the U.S. will most likely continue to grow, says Kent Hughes, an economist with the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington DC. Hughes believes that the already limber American worker is going to have to become even more flexible as jobs traditionally reserved for white-collar American workers, such as computer programming, are being done more cheaply abroad.

Fear and hunger walk hand in hand with poverty, and last year 12.6 million American households -- 11.2 percent of all American homes -- were afraid they might not be able to put enough food on the table, according to the Census Bureau. That's up more than 1.6 million households from the year 2000.

How are these families coping? They eat less varied meals, visit shelters and get food assistance from food banks and emergency kitchens. Of these families, 3.9 million said that one or more members of the family actually went hungry last year -- an 18.2 percent increase from 2000.

A recent report by the outplacement firm Challenger Gray and Christmas found that many food banks are in "crisis mode." In Ohio, for example, the Ohio Food Bank has seen the number of people requiring assistance jump 17 to 20 percent this year, "with a significant increase in the number of working poor."

Millions of working Americans are struggling to find adequate food, health care and housing for their families. Unable to earn a living wage, many have resorted to food banks and community centers for help. But according to the Challenger report, many of those institutions say that making the increased demand even worse is the fact that "donations and government funding are at all-time lows."  

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/stephen-colbert-mocks-heritage-foundation-report-critical-of-americas-poor/

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-july-28-2004/bootstrap-story

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Stephen+Colbert+on+Poor&view=detail&mid=CE3995477CC4B723C52ACE3995477CC4B723C52A&first=0&FORM=LKVR38

when was the last time you saw a black and white tv    I don't think they exist anymore.  

btw, we have a tv we spent $20 for.  And you have been able to buy a new dvd player for $20 for a few years now.

1) The government class
2) The slave class

Wow!

Some poor people actually managed to scrape together $40 to spend on a *gasps* luxury item.

Gee, I didn't realize it was so bad. No wonder all those defenders of multi-billionaires are up in arms. Whats the point of being rich if poor people can afford  recycled luxury goods of the middle class? 

Wait, now I am getting confused. I thought conservatives supported trickle down economics. Silly me.