The DISH
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Vol. 14 No. 34…Dedicated to the Dialogue on
Race…August 22, 2011
Intuit's Vibe
Blaming Poverty on the Poor
By Josephine Dixon-Banks
Give us your deprived,
your malleable muddled masses
hoping for a gentler taskmaster
Welcome to the multi-trillion dollar industry,
Poverty --A.K.A,
cheapest labor force
Poverty works, never ever unemployed
A much needed commodity to justify
White-collar crime classes
Teaching dastardly deeds--to procure monetary needs-
fostering avarice
greed
Give us your deprived,
your malleable muddled masses
hoping for a gentler taskmaster
Welcome to the multi-trillion dollar industry,
Poverty --A.K.A.,
cheapest labor force
Poverty creates jobs for those financing the societal
Institution of ya godda pay more taxes
Blaming Poverty on the poor
Look! what Enron did to those less fortunate
Blaming Poverty on
the poor
Did not corporations want
a billion dollar welfare check
Blaming Poverty on the poor
Blaming Poverty on
the poor
Give us your deprived,
your malleable muddled masses
hoping for a gentler taskmaster
Welcome to the multi-trillion dollar industry,
Poverty--A.K.A.,
cheapest labor force
No penance just punishment
augmenting the pillar of economic pillaging
Poor people put in
the pillory from the political pulpit
Poverty is prime property
Poverty pimps portrayed as political preachers
purely punitive but polite
The pluralization of Poverty
provides prestige of
the patricians
Poverty, the promissory note
from the bureaucratic infidel
The Truth will tell--the truth will tell
Poverty the patriotic
prisoner on trial for treason
The Face of Poverty in
By John Burl Smith
Poverty
in 
picture
of higher rates of various health problems, inferior housing, inferior schools,
less access to computers and educational materials at home as well as school,
inferior child care, higher rates of child abuse, higher rates of parental
substance abuse, more frequent moves, more exposure to toxic chemicals and
pollution, higher rates of lead poisoning, and other disadvantages for poor
children.
These
statistics fall heaviest on the non-working poor, who spend a greater share of
their income on commodities such as food, shelter, and utilities. About 40% of
spending is for shelter and utilities and 30% for food. All of this comes at a
time when Tea Party conservatives are demanding even more draconian cuts in
social services, most of which affect children directly.
Figures provided by the US Census Bureau in 2010 for 2008 and before the
current recession began show 39.8 million people lived in poverty, up from 37.3
million in 2007, which was the second consecutive annual increase in the number
of people in poverty. The poverty rate that year was 13.2%, the highest since
1997. The family poverty rate and the number of families in poverty were 10.3%
and 8.1 million, respectively, up from 9.8% and 7.6 million in 2007.
This data compound the fact that 15.4 million Americans live in extreme
poverty, which means their family's cash income is less than half of the
poverty line, or less than about $10,000 a year for a family of four (CBPP
2007). Coupled with the fact that 16 million low-income households either paid
more for rent and utilities than the federal government says is affordable or
lived in overcrowded or substandard housing, millions of children endure a
precarious existence, teetering on the brink of homelessness.
Across
the nation, child poverty grew by 18% over the last decade and the rate now
stands at 20%. This means that one of every five children in the
When
looking at the poorest compared to the richest places (cities and counties) in 
contain
large populations of minorities. Cities such as
First,
the so-called free enterprise system creates unfair competition for jobs, as
employers establish qualifications and determine who is most qualified. Slavery
in
Secondly, the top echelon of business has the power to allocate the profits of
the enterprise, and has allocated more and more of these profits to themselves
in recent years. Next, military and security expenditures represent half of
Finally, this system segregates people by income and discriminates against
people based on race. Consequently, the ugly face of poverty on Wall Street
smiles when jobs are low paying and scarce. The lack of income, as described in
the poverty section above is the basis of childhood poverty in
The War on Poverty
(1964-1981)
In
his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964, United States President
Lyndon B. Johnson proposed expanding the role of 
government
in an effort to eradicate national poverty, which affected approximately
nineteen percent of the American population. The War on Poverty, part of
Johnson's Great Society, funded social welfare programs from education to
health care; it was considered a continuation of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's
New Deal, which ran from 1933 to 1935, and the Four Freedoms of 1941, i.e.,
Freedom of speech and expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want and
freedom from fear.
The
idea of a War on Poverty stemmed from a decision made in November 1963 to
pursue a legislative agenda that economic advisers to President John F. Kennedy
had planned. The War on Poverty consisted of a series of programs administered
by the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO), which was established by the
Economic Opportunity Act (EOA) that Congress passed in August 1964.
The
OEO administered programs included Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA),
Job Corps, Head Start, Legal Services and the Community Action Program. The OEO
launched Project Head Start as an eight-week summer program in 1965 to help end
poverty by providing preschool children from low-income families with a program
that would meet emotional, social, health, nutritional, and psychological
needs. Head Start was transferred to the Office of Child Development in the
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (later the Department of Health
and Human Services) by the Nixon Administration in 1969.
Beyond the programs run by the OEO, the Department of Labor administered the
Neighborhood Youth Corps, which was designed to keep needy students in school
by offering them such incentives as a stipend, work experience, and
"attitudinal" training. The Department of Agriculture provided loans
to low-income farm families for business initiatives and attempted to improve
the living conditions of migrant farm workers. In addition, other components of
the EOA were designed to mesh with the rehabilitation services offered to
welfare beneficiaries.
The
most important measures of the War on Poverty, not included in the EOA,
provided federal funds for the education of children in low-income families
(Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965) and for the
medical care of elderly individuals and individuals on welfare (Medicare and
Medicaid, created by the Social Security Amendments of 1965).
The
popularity of a war on poverty waned after the 1960s. The OEO was dismantled by
President Nixon in 1973, though many of the programs were transferred to other
federal agencies. During the second Nixon administration, Congress replaced the
Office of Economic Opportunity with the Community Services Administration. In
1981 the Reagan administration abolished the Community Services Administration,
leaving only individual programs such as legal services and Head Start as the
bureaucratic survivors of the War on Poverty.
Deregulation,
growing criticism of the welfare state, and an ideological shift to reducing
federal aid to impoverished people in the 1980s and 1990s culminated in the
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, which, as claimed
President Bill Clinton, "end[ed] welfare as we know it." Remnants of
the War on Poverty can be found in federal programs such as Head Start,
Volunteers in Service to
According
to the "Readers' Companion to U.S. Women's History", "Many
observers point out that the War on Poverty's attention to Black America
created the grounds for the backlash that began in the 1970s. The perception by
the white middle class that it was footing the bill for ever-increasing
services to the poor led to diminished support for welfare state programs,
especially those that targeted specific groups and neighborhoods. Many whites
viewed Great Society programs as supporting the economic and social needs of
low-income urban minorities; they lost sympathy, especially as the economy
declined during the 1970s."
While the War on Poverty failed to end poverty, it spawned several programs,
notably Head Start, that have withstood the test of time. (Sources: www.answers.com/topic/war-on-poverty,
www.absoluteastronomy.com, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_poverty)
By President Lyndon B. Johnson
Mr.
Speaker, Mr. President, Members of the House and Senate, my fellow Americans: I
will be brief, for our time is necessarily short and our agenda is already
long.
Last
year's congressional session was the longest in peacetime history. With that
foundation, let us work together to make this year's session the best in the
Nation's history.
Let this session of Congress be known as the session which did more for civil
rights than the last hundred sessions combined; as the session which enacted
the most far-reaching tax cut of our time; as the session which declared
all-out war on human poverty and unemployment in these United States; as the
session which finally recognized the health needs of all our older citizens; as
the session which reformed our tangled transportation and transit policies; as
the session which achieved the most effective, efficient foreign aid program
ever; and as the session which helped to build more homes, more schools, more
libraries, and more hospitals than any single session of Congress in the
history of our Republic.
All this and more can and must be done. It can be done by this summer, and it
can be done without any increase in spending. In fact, under the budget that I
shall shortly submit, it can be done with an actual reduction in Federal
expenditures and Federal employment.
We
have in 1964 a unique opportunity and obligation--to prove the success of our
system; to disprove those cynics and critics at home and abroad who question
our purpose and our competence.
If we fail, if we fritter and fumble away our opportunity in needless,
senseless quarrels between Democrats and Republicans, or between the House and
the Senate, or between the South and North, or between the Congress and the
administration, then history will rightfully judge us harshly. But if we
succeed, if we can achieve these goals by forging in this country a greater
sense of union, then, and only then, can we take full satisfaction in the State
of the
Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts of hope--some because of
their poverty, and some because of their color, and all too many because of
both. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity.
This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty
in
It will not be a short or easy struggle, no single weapon or strategy will
suffice, but we shall not rest until that war is won. The richest Nation on
earth can afford to win it. We cannot afford to lose it. One thousand dollars
invested in salvaging an unemployable youth today can return $40,000 or more in
his lifetime.
Poverty is a national problem, requiring improved national organization and
support. But this attack, to be effective, must also be organized at the State
and the local level and must be supported and directed by State and local
efforts.
For
the war against poverty will not be won here in
The program I shall propose will emphasize this cooperative approach to help
that one-fifth of all American families with incomes too small to even meet
their basic needs.
Our chief weapons in a more pinpointed attack will be better schools, and
better health, and better homes, and better training, and better job
opportunities to help more Americans, especially young Americans, escape from
squalor and misery and unemployment rolls where other citizens help to carry
them.
Very
often a lack of jobs and money is not the cause of poverty, but the symptom.
The cause may lie deeper in our failure to give our fellow citizens a fair
chance to develop their own capacities, in a lack of education and training, in
a lack of medical care and housing, in a lack of decent communities in which to
live and bring up their children.
But
whatever the cause, our joint Federal-local effort must pursue poverty, pursue
it wherever it exists--in city slums and small towns, in sharecropper shacks or
in migrant worker camps, on Indian Reservations, among whites as well as
Negroes, among the young as well as the aged, in the boom towns and in the
depressed areas.
Our
aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above
all, to prevent it. No single piece of legislation, however, is going to
suffice.
We will launch a special effort in the chronically distressed areas of
We must expand our small but our successful area redevelopment program.
We
must enact youth employment legislation to put jobless, aimless, hopeless
youngsters to work on useful projects.
We
must distribute more food to the needy through a broader food stamp program.
We must create a National Service Corps to help the economically handicapped of
our own country as the Peace Corps now helps those abroad.
We must modernize our unemployment insurance and establish a high-level
commission on automation. If we have the brain power to invent these machines,
we have the brain power to make certain that they are a boon and not a bane to
humanity.
We
must extend the coverage of our minimum wage laws to more than 2 million
workers now lacking this basic protection of purchasing power.
We
must, by including special school aid funds as part of our education program,
improve the quality of teaching, training, and counseling in our hardest hit
areas.
We
must build more libraries in every area and more hospitals and nursing homes
under the Hill-Burton Act, and train more nurses to staff them.
We must provide hospital insurance for our older citizens financed by every
worker and his employer under Social Security, contributing no more than $1 a
month during the employee's working career to protect him in his old age in a
dignified manner without cost to the Treasury, against the devastating hardship
of prolonged or repeated illness.
We must, as a part of a revised housing and urban renewal program, give more
help to those displaced by slum clearance, provide more housing for our poor
and our elderly, and seek as our ultimate goal in our free enterprise system a
decent home for every American family.
We must help obtain more modern mass transit within our communities as well as
low-cost transportation between them.
Above all, we must release $11 billion of tax reduction into the private
spending stream to create new jobs and new markets in every area of this land.
About Me: Excerpts from President Lyndon B.
Johnson's Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the
Ryan's Office Calls Cops On Jobless Protesters
By Arthur Delaney
Staffers
for Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) called police on Thursday to disperse unemployed
protesters staging a sit-in at his
Protesters told HuffPost they're unhappy with Ryan's proposals to gut social
programs and his new policy of not holding free public meetings with
constituents during the congressional recess.
During
the summer of 2009, Ryan hosted some 17 town halls. Admission to Ryan's one
town-hall style event in his district this summer will cost $15, according to
the Whitnall Park Rotary Club, which is hosting the Milwaukee-area event on
Sept. 6.
Shanon Molina, 31, who lives in
Molina
said she and other members of Wisconsin Jobs Now, a coalition of community
groups, neighborhood associations and labor unions, organized the
Shortly after the protesters arrived, Ryan's staffers handed them a written
statement from the congressman. She described the staffers as cordial and
polite.
"Although
I was unable to personally meet with those who stopped by my
Lt. Eric Larsen of the Kenosha Police Department told HuffPost that Ryan's office
called the department and the officers who responded found seven protesters
inside the building and about 50 protesters outside. "They left
peaceably," Larsen said.
Some
protesters returned on Friday.
"My
rent's due, and I honestly don't know where I'm going to come up with that
money," Page said. "We're just gonna sit here until we get to talk to
Ryan face to face. Every day we're going to sit here."
Ryan
has boasted that he hosted lots of town hall meetings during the summer recess
of 2009. "I had 17 and shattered attendance records at my town
halls," Ryan said during an appearance on MSNBC. "You know, at the
end of them, I was asking for a show of hands of the people who had never been
to a town hall before, and it was about 95 percent. They were very civil."
During
town halls in April of this year, Ryan heard from hecklers opposed to his plan
to turn Medicare into a voucher system.
Disgruntled feels: Typical!
Members of the Super Congress Deficit Committee have been selected. As you will
recall, the twelve 
Senators
and Representatives are charged with pinpointing the $1.5 trillion that will be
cut from the deficit. According to a Paul Blumenthal and Sam Stein article on
the Huffington Post website, watchdog groups are scrutinizing the committee
members and staffers to discern any possible conflicts of interests, whether
prior campaign contributions, businesses in their districts or even spousal
connections. At least half a dozen staffers are former lobbyists, part of the
unending flow of personnel between government and business. This is so typical
of
Disgruntled wants to know: All the relevant
statistics indicate the economy is tanking. Even Wall Street financials, the
chief 
beneficiaries
of quantitative easing, recipients of the government bailout (TARP) and
principal culprits in the mortgage meltdown, are losing value as stocks turn
increasing volatile. If ever there was a time for bold and decisive action,
this is it! President Obama joined members of Congress in taking a time out
after the debt ceiling debacle that ended in the loss of the nation's AAA
credit rating. Everyone deserves a vacation, especially the president, who
deals with weighty issues on a constant basis. However, since he is forever on
duty, he should be using his bully pulpit to jawbone the economy and give the
American people the audacity to hope that better days are just over the
horizon. Besides, why wait until September when we need some reason for
optimism now?
Disgruntled says: Increasingly, it seems poor
people are coming under 
attack.
In
Mailbox: E-Mails,
Faxes and Telephone Calls
Email
www.nytimes.com...Companies Point Fingers as Students Protest Conditions at
Chocolate Plant...By Julia Preston...HERSHEY, Pa. -- A day after hundreds of
foreign exchange students walked off their jobs at a plant packing Hershey's
chocolates to protest low 
pay
and physically draining work, executives at the Hershey Company and three other
companies involved in the plant scrambled to sort out which one was responsible
for the conditions that prompted the students' complaints. About 400 students,
mainly from universities in
Email
www.rawstory.com...Florida's welfare drug testing costs more than it saves...By
David 
Edwards...Republican
Florida Gov. Rick Scott's plan to test welfare recipients for drugs is costing
the state money, despite his claims that the program would actually save tax
dollars. A WFTV investigation found that out of the 40 recipients tested by
Department of Central Florida's (DCF) region, only two resulted in positive
results. And one of those tests is being appealed. Under the rules of the
program, the state must reimburse recipients who receive negative test results.
The state paid about $1,140 for the 38 negative tests, while saving less than
$240 a month by denying benefits over the two positive tests. "We have a
diminishing amount of returns for our tax dollars," the ACLU's Derek Brett
told WFTV. "Do we want our governor throwing our precious tax dollars into
a program that has already been proven not to work?" The cost to taxpayers
could end up being significantly higher because the state expects to have to
defend the law in court.
Email
www.cnbc.com...Bank of America Cutting 3,500 Jobs, And More May Follow...Bank
of America 
is
cutting 3,500 jobs this quarter and working on a restructuring that could
eliminate thousands of additional positions, adding to a slew of layoffs by
major banks. Thousands of additional reductions are expected as part of an
overhaul known as "Project New BAC. Executives at the bank still are
discussing the possible range of cuts, but one person familiar with the
situation said at least 10,000 jobs are likely to be eliminated. Investors have
hammered the bank's stock amid fears it may need to raise money by offering new
shares to help absorb billions in legal and credit costs stemming from its 2008
purchase of Countrywide Financial.