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August IO, 2011
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Page 9
Widespread Poverty that’s Hard to See
Shredding the
safety net
by
W illiam A. C ollins
T here’s w idespread
poverty in America today,
though it's sometimes hard
to see how bad it is.
Real estate develop­
ment techniques and zon­
ing rules, plus a healthy dollop of
discrimination, force most poor
people to live and work in neighbor­
hoods many of us don't often visit.
"As a rich guy, let me tell you I
h av en ’t seen any poor people
around my gated com m unity,"
quipped Comedy Central's Stephen
Colbert in a recent segment. He also
skewered a report from the right-
wing Heritage Foundation that por­
trays U.S. poverty as a misnomer
since so many poor Americans own
both microwaves and refrigerators.
B ut poverty is a major problem in
the United States. About 15 percent
of the population lives below the
official poverty line, which
at $22,350 for a family of
four is pretty destitute to
start with, and median fam­
ily income is declining.
In some ways it's actu­
ally better to live in a poor
region of the country be­
cause prices there are
lower. In other ways, rich regions
are preferable because there are more
jobs. But because of income segre­
gation, poor kids are pretty likely to
attend crummy schools no matter
where they live.
Luckily for the poor, some presi­
dents try to make a difference. Thus,
over the decades we have built the
programs that constitute the U.S.
safety net. Examples include wel­
fare (currently known as "Tempo­
rary Assistance for Needy Fami­
lies"), public housing, unemploy­
ment compensation, food stamps,
M edicaid, heatin g a ssistan ce,
earned income tax credits, and sub­
sidized school lunches.
But now, the safety net is tat­
tered. States and the federal gov­
ernment, for want of adequately tax­
ing the rich, are broke. Services for
the poor are getting decimated.
Safety net expenditures help us
maintain our shaky claim to being a
civilized nation. That claim was once
important to Americans. Now, how­
ever, our president and Congress
not only support waging wars of
conquest abroad but also shred­
ding our safety net at home. As a
result, homelessness is on the march,
unemployment is epidemic, and
obesity rages in low-income quar­
ters where cheap, unwholesome
food is all that many citizens can
afford.
This helps explain why Jam es
Verone recently got into the news.
He's the guy from North Carolina
who passed a bank teller a note
What about the America’s Poor?
Food stamps in
the crosshairs
by
J udge G reg M athis
In recent weeks, the
nation has been bom ­
barded with nonstop me­
dia coverage of the debt
ceiling debate.
C o n g re ss and the
P re sid e n t c o u ld not
seem to com e to an agreem ent
over how to best p ro tect the
nation’s credit rating and control
the national deficit. We were told,
repeatedly, that if the debt ceiling
w asn’t increased, A m erica’s glo­
bal borrowing pow er would be
negatively affected and that the
econom y would suffer.
At the 11th hour, C ongress
voted on and the President signed
a cobbled together plan that en­
sured Am erica could continue to
borrow money to pay its debts.
P e o p le a c ro s s th e c o u n try
breathed a collective sigh of re­
lief. Or did they?
In the midst of all this talk about
A m erica’s borrowing power and
A m erica’s place in the global
econom y, very little, if anything,
was said about the needs of the
c o u n try ’s poor. P erhaps our
elected officials are unaware that
nearly 46 m illion people
are receiving food stamp
benefits. In Alabama, 36
percent o f that s ta te ’s
population receives food
stam ps; that’s a 120 per­
cent increase over last
year.
What we did hear during these
debt debates was R epublicans
saying that Am erica must slash
its budget, cutting program s that
support the poor in the process,
in an effort to get the growing
deficit under control. Dem ocrats
and the President say they sup­
port the poor, but in the interest of
getting the debt ceiling increased,
were willing to put the very pro­
gram s they swore to protect on
the table.
If these program s are cut in any
way, how will fam ilies feed their
children?
With more people out of work
and m illions of A m ericans set to
lose their unem ploym ent benefits
this fall, it’s safe to assum e that
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food stamp usage will only rise in
the coming months. What is be­
ing done to help these people?
W hile we all understand that a
shrinking middle class is not good
for our econom y, and feel for the
millions who lost their hom es and
su ffered huge losses to th eir
401 ks and investm ents, we can no
longer allow our governm ent to
act as if that is the only class that
matters.
W ith more and more middle
class fam ilies slipping into pov­
erty - many of them m inorities - it
is more critical than ever that we
truly support our nation’s poor
and fund program s that will uplift
them.
America is spending a lot of
time trying to figure out how to
‘save’ itself from econom ic tur­
moil and has, as a result, invested
billions to stabilize business sec­
tors that were operating on shaky
ground. More attention must now
be spent on providing a safety net
for its people.
Greg Mathis is a former Michi­
gan District Court judge and cur­
rently is a syndicated television
show judge.
demanding one dollar. Upon re­
ceipt thereof he sat down to await
the police. Duly carted away he
explained that he badly needed
health care and had to go to jail to
get it. Being a nonviolent o f­
fender, he will likely be released
soon as his state closes its pris­
ons to free up cash, and thus will
once again be allow ed to die at his
own convenience.
With so many people impover­
ished, you might think that this
would be a self-correcting political
problem. The rascals responsible
for this problem are easy enough to
spot. We can just vote them out,
right?
But that's not so easy. Voting is
constantly being made harder for
the poor. Many states have tight­
ened voter identification require­
ments, effectively levying poll
taxes, while others have increased
the inconvenience o f registration.
In many places, a crim inal record
O arric’s
may disqualify you for good. Be­
sides, if you're poor or struggling
to feed a fam ily, you often have
higher priorities on Election Day.
Like working.
And so, while our major corpora­
tions are squirreling away hordes of
cash, much of it overseas, the ranks
of poor Americans are growing.
Republicans prefer to protect the
rich. President Barack Obama hasn't
gotten around to ending the wars he
inherited, and has started new ones.
Serious cuts therefore have to come
from "services," and that means from
you-know-whom.
As long as the poor remain invis­
ible and voiceless (a likely prospect
to say the least), homelessness and
hunger will continue to grow. Aid
agencies might as well distribute
beds that fit into old cars.
OlherWords columnist William
A. Collins is a former state repre­
sentative and a former mayor of
Norwalk, Conn.
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