Disinformation » Poverty

If You Are Poor, It’s Because God Hates Your Guts

Daniele Bolelli — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 23:41:30 +0000

[Site editor's note: The following is an excerpt from the new Disinformation title 50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know: Religion, authored by Daniele Bolelli.]

The history of Christianity is like a treasure chest for anyone who is fond of contradictions. The Gospels bicker with each other by relating similar tales in very different ways. But even more obviously, Christianity has often so dramatically departed from the words attributed to Jesus as to make you wonder how these glaring contradictions can be justified. Jesus tells you to “Love your enemies” and “Turn the other cheek”? So let’s show how much we love Jesus by waging crusades, inquisitions, witch-hunts, and brutal campaigns of repression against anyone who doesn’t love Him as much as we do. Jesus’s pacifism has drowned in the hyper-violence that has characterized much of Christian history.

But—we may object—most Christians alive today seem to have lost the bloodthirsty enthusiasm of their ancestors, and are no longer inclined to exterminate non-Christians. Even though it is true enough that chopping the unbelievers’ heads off may no longer be a popular pastime, the vast majority of Christians still conveniently forget about another theme that was central to Jesus’s ideology, and structure their lives in direct opposition to it. Jesus, in fact, was one of the most anti-capitalist thinkers this side of Karl Marx. Yet, most Christians are capitalists. What gives?

The concept of capitalism may have not existed in its modern forms during Jesus’s times, but Jesus’s words about accumulation of wealth leave little to the imagination. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke all report Jesus saying: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.”

Damn … does it get any blunter than this?

Just to make sure we are paying attention, Jesus hammers the same point over and over, repeating multiple times his condemnation of accumulation of wealth. We find him telling wannabe followers to sell all their possessions and give the money to the poor (in case you are wondering, this made some decide that following Jesus was not such a hot idea anymore). In another passage, he categorically states that you can’t serve God and wealth at the same time. Elsewhere he warns us to focus on spiritual wealth rather than material wealth, and not to “store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy …” In yet a different occasion, he tells “Woe to the rich for you have received your consolation.” And in a series of sentences that are as antithetical to spirit of capitalism as they come, he advises his followers not to make any plans about the future in regards to food and shelter, since God will take care of everyone’s basic needs.

Considering how insistent Jesus is on this topic, it is with little surprise that we find out in other parts of the New Testament how his early followers shared everything among each other, and nearly eliminated private property.

In the face of this ultra-radical stance about wealth by their founder, it would be easy to conclude that most Christians live by making vows of poverty and shunning wealth like the plague. But that’s not quite the way things play out. God may be cool—most modern Christians think—but so is gold. Why should we have to choose one over the other? Ever since the Protestant Reformation, any qualms any Christian may have had about chasing good, old-fashioned cash began to fade. Many Catholics had maintained a theology frowning on accumulation of wealth, but simply had chosen to ignore it in practice. Plenty of Protestants, instead, decided to feel better about the whole thing and banish hypocrisy by reinventing the economic ideology of Christianity. Step one was to conveniently skip the many, many passages mentioned above. Step two was to focus instead on the biblical passages (mostly in the Old Testament) approving of wealth. Step three was to argue that since nothing in the world happens without God willing it, economic success (or the lack of thereof) is a quantifiable way to judge how much God does or does not favor you.

Voilà! The tables are turned and suddenly the obsession for money making has been recycled as a perfectly acceptable Christian endeavor. In the theology endorsed by some Christians (particularly those espousing the quintessential American “gospel of prosperity”) accumulating wealth is not only justifiable but almost a Christian duty since material prosperity is God’s reward for His faithful followers. The obvious corollary is that if you are poor, instead, it is probably because God hates your guts.

What makes this hijacking of Jesus’s message even funnier are the ways in which the God & Gold enthusiasts have tried to claim that Jesus was himself wealthy. Only the rich—they reason—could afford to travel around like he did and not work. But my all time favorite is the argument that Roman soldiers gambled for the right to take Jesus’s underwear after he died suggesting he was so rich that even his underwear was made of very expensive materials.

Really? Is that what this theology hangs by? Jesus underwear? Memo to self: if I ever try to justify my beliefs by appealing to a divine pair of underwear, it’s time to admit defeat.

One Half Of Americans Are Poor Or Low Income

majestic — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:19:27 +0000

Photo: C. G. P. Grey (CC)

Shocking statistics courtesy of AP via CBS News:

Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income.

The latest census data depict a middle class that’s shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government’s safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.

“Safety net programs such as food stamps and tax credits kept poverty from rising even higher in 2010, but for many low-income families with work-related and medical expenses, they are considered too `rich’ to qualify,” said Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan public policy professor who specializes in poverty.

“The reality is that prospects for the poor and the near poor are dismal,” he said. “If Congress and the states make further cuts, we can expect the number of poor and low-income families to rise for the next several years.”…

[continues at AP via CBS News]

Third World Canada

Jin_TheNinja — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 02:54:06 +0000

The Canadian media’s furor and spin on the following story is demonstrable proof that any and all attempts to de-legitimise Indigenous self-government and exploit Aboriginal territories for resources is not only allowed, it is welcomed. These policies are based on historical paternalistic colonialism, which is explicitly intended to systematically disenfranchise Native peoples.

Note as per this story , Canada spends MORE than two times per capita on non-natives for social infrastructure (housing, education, healthcare) than it does on aboriginal people. The amount reported in the Al Jazeera story below, is the entire budget, and does not include any additional civil infrastructure (roads, transport links) funds, which is normally separate from social spending:

No Matter The Numbers, Poverty Is Still The Real Threat

aaroncynic — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 06:43:22 +0000

Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:

Dennis Byrne of the Chicago Tribune attempts to dismiss poverty in America and criticize the Occupy movement by calling poverty an “overstated” problem. Using the typical conservative demon of welfare and government subsidies via research from the right wing Heritage Foundation, Byrne argues that the 46.2 million Americans the government defines as impoverished don’t have it rough enough, thanks to government aid. He asks “Do the numbers accurately reflect the perception most Americans have of an impoverished family living, if not on the streets, like starving squatters in rat-infested hovels?”

Well Dennis, sorry to burst your bubble, but poverty isn’t always rat infested hovels or bloated bellies that appear in commercials in late night television. Is that what the “great society” should truly use to measure how it cares for its vulnerable citizens? If two people in a household of four lose their jobs, go underwater on their mortgage after spending more than a year or two desperately trying to find a job that pays enough to keep their home and put food on the table, does that not count as poor? If a single mother with two children working two minimum wage jobs just to pay rent gets her power shut off because of constant cost increases, but no wage increase, is she just not poor enough? If an elderly man living in subsidized housing is spending the bulk of his income — even with medicaid — on prescription drugs to keep healthy, is his situation “overstated?”

Byrne gives credit that at least 4 percent of Americans that are from homeless or hungry households, saying “to them, destitution is real, not a statistic to be batted around or used for political purposes.” Unfortunately for the rest of struggling Americans, their situation just doesn’t measure up to what appears to be a longing for a new network of Hoovervilles. The idea that the majority of Americans classified as poor aren’t because they receive a form of government aid is one of the most overused conservative talking points during election season. The irony of Byrne’s statement seems to be lost on him.

Throw Them Out With the Trash: Why Homelessness Is Becoming an Occupy Wall Street Issue

Good German — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 05:40:17 +0000

Barbara Ehrenreich writes on TomDispatch:

What the Occupy Wall Streeters are beginning to discover, and homeless people have known all along, is that most ordinary, biologically necessary activities are illegal when performed in American streets — not just peeing, but sitting, lying down, and sleeping. While the laws vary from city to city, one of the harshest is in Sarasota, Florida, which passed an ordinance in 2005 that makes it illegal to “engage in digging or earth-breaking activities” — that is, to build a latrine — cook, make a fire, or be asleep and “when awakened state that he or she has no other place to live.”

It is illegal, in other words, to be homeless or live outdoors for any other reason. It should be noted, though, that there are no laws requiring cities to provide food, shelter, or restrooms for their indigent citizens.

The current prohibition on homelessness began to take shape in the 1980s, along with the ferocious growth of the financial industry (Wall Street and all its tributaries throughout the nation). That was also the era in which we stopped being a nation that manufactured much beyond weightless, invisible “financial products,” leaving the old industrial working class to carve out a livelihood at places like Wal-Mart …

Bill O’Reilly Vs. Tavis Smiley & Cornel West on Poverty in America (Video)

bluemana — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 23:30:41 +0000

Sesame Street Introduces Poor Muppet To Teach About Poverty (Sponsored by Wal-Mart)

bluemana — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 19:43:36 +0000

The special episode is sponsored by Wal-Mart. Ain’t that a kicker? Gabriela Resto-Montero writes in the NY Daily News:

There’s a new kid on the block on “Sesame Street.” The long-running children’s show will debut a new muppet, Lily, in a primetime special that highlights childhood poverty and hunger, Entertainment Weekly reported.

Lily’s family background reflects the bitter economic reality of the 17 million American children who live without regular access to affordable and nutritious food, the magazine reported. Country music singer Brad Paisley and his wife, actress Kimberly Williams Paisley, will host the hour-long show, titled “Growing Hope against Hunger.”

“We are honored that Sesame Street, with its long history of tackling difficult issues with sensitivity, caring and warmth, asked us to be a part of this important project,” the couple said in a statement. The show will air Sunday, Oct. 9. It is sponsored by Walmart.

Record Number Of Americans Below Poverty Line

majestic — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 12:10:35 +0000

Grim statistics reported by the New York Times:

Another 2.6 million people slipped into poverty in the United States last year, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, and the number of Americans living below the official poverty line, 46.2 million people, was the highest number in the 52 years the bureau has been publishing figures on it.

And in new signs of distress among the middle class, median household incomes fell last year to levels last seen in 1997.

Economists pointed to a telling statistic: It was the first time since the Great Depression that median household income, adjusted for inflation, had not risen over such a long period, said Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard.

“This is truly a lost decade,” Mr. Katz said. “We think of America as a place where every generation is doing better, but we’re looking at a period when the median family is in worse shape than it was in the late 1990s.”

The bureau’s findings were worse than many economists expected, and brought into sharp relief the toll the past decade — including the painful declines of the financial crisis and recession —had taken on Americans at the middle and lower parts of the income ladder. It is also fresh evidence that the disappointing economic recovery has done nothing for the country’s poorest citizens.

The report said the percentage of Americans living below the poverty line last year, 15.1 percent, was the highest level since 1993. (The poverty line in 2010 for a family of four was $22,314.)…

[continues in the New York Times]

One In Seven Americans Lives On Food Stamps

majestic — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 12:02:11 +0000

Sad statistic of the day from IANS via Yahoo News:

Believe it or not, one in seven Americans – 15 percent of the country – now need government-provided food stamps simply to survive, according to latest government figures.

Nearly 46 million Americans receive food stamps out of a population of some 311 million people, the US Department of Agriculture, which administers what’s officially called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme reported Thursday.

The continued high unemployment and the weak US economy have contributed to the explosive growth of the food stamp programme with no end in sight to the monthly increases, CNN said noting that 27 million people were dependent on food stamps in October 2007…

[continues at IANS via Yahoo News]

How Would You Define “Poor” In America?

LordSatan — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 05:56:25 +0000

Greg Hengler writes on TownHall:

The federal government says that 14% of Americans live in poverty. So here’s a list of luxuries that these households retain:

99.6% own a refrigerator; 81.4% own a microwave; 78.3% own an air conditioner; 73% own a car or a truck; 63.7% own cable or satellite television; 54.5% own a cell phone; 53.9% own an Xbox or PlayStation; 48.6% own a coffee maker; 38.2% own a computer; 32.3% own two or more televisions; 31% own two or more cars; and 25% own a dishwasher.

Do any of you remember John Edwards saying that there are 37 million Americans living in poverty and that their kids are going to bed hungry every night—43.6 million Americans living in poverty according to the NAACP President, Ben Jealous? Well, Robert Rector debunks that political talking point of the Left. Rector says that that only 2% experience hunger and it is only temporary. The word temporary is a key word in the poverty/rich debate too because both categories are primarily not permanent for Americans–the Left would like you to think so though.

A Visionary Way To Bring Good Food To The Poor Is Taking Off

Pelliciari — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:45:34 +0000

Photo: Carrie Leber

Don’t have enough money to go out and eat? Panera Cares is an innovative café that allows you to pay what you can without leaving you feeling guilty or hungry. Via AlterNet:

If you were to only judge the world by watching the news, you’d think we had collectively lost all of our humanity, our intergrity. Neverending wars, devastating environmental disasters, punishing austerity measures… all of which impact the poorer among us more than the richer. Rare is the voice that speaks for the underprivileged. But, if you listen hard enough, you might just hear a little whisper out there in the distance.

Among those voices, Panera Bread founder Ron Shaich might well be the loudest. Last year, Shaich began an experiment in Clayton, Missouri. He opened a Panera Cares pay-what-you-can café and it has been an unqualified success, so much so that he has since opened two more locations – in Dearborn, Michigan, and Portland, Oregon. The goal, now, is to open one per quarter in diverse communities around the country – the geographical logic being that the folks with more means can help offset those with less.

[Continues at AlterNet]

Durban South Africa, Friday Night at The Movies: We Can’t Escape The Tensions Around Us

Pelliciari — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 14:17:14 +0000

Soweto. Photo: Michael Toft Schmidt (CC)

It’s Friday night, and the motorways are packed with cars heading for the mall. Here in Durban, the Gateway Mall is the destination of choice. It’s huge, the biggest of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s stuffed with stuff, much of it upscale, calling itself a “theater of shopping.” (It is actually built over what was once a dump.) The parking lots are packed with late model cars, many of them high end.

I have to confess, I was invited there to see America’s latest high culture import, the 3D version of the movie Transformers 3, based on a toy and cartoon, in a modern movie complex with 18 theaters and rows and rows of packed gates where you line up for endless popcorn and soft drinks.

Business was booming; the theater was full. Most of the crowd seemed to be whites and Indians but there were also many blacks now firmly anchored in the consumer life style. As I found out a few years back at this same mall, but in a smaller theater, when I showed my film In Debt We Trust, many South Africans are deeply in debt to their credit card companies with inordinate amounts of money also flowing to their cell phone suppliers.

On the way out, past the beaches, spanking new but underused stadiums built for the World Cup, past the Sun Coast Casino and past the ICC convention center where the International Olympic Committee was still meeting, we drove by what’s called a settlement, a collection of tin shacks where destitute migrants from the countryside and other African states live in squalor. It was a reminder of the deep poverty that co-exists with the affluence of the mall culture.

This is a historical irony because in the dark days of apartheid, whites ruled the cities, and used the pass system and police to make sure that “the blacks,” except, of course, for domestic servants would be out of the city by nightfall.

They destroyed or “removed” black stable black communities to new suburban townships like Soweto against their will. The policy was called ‘forced relocation.”

Now, it’s the whites and affluent blacks who are leaving town for spiffy “planned communities.” When a low-income housing scheme was proposed for the area near the mall, it was actively opposed by affluent residents.

Like in Johannesburg, this city has migrated to the Northern suburbs where the new factories and gated communities are being built. The old neighborhoods like Musgrave are trying to give themselves a face-lift but many flats, houses, and businesses are empty, for rent or for sale.

The redeveloped scenic hills of Durban North and beyond in KwaZulu Natal seem to offer the escape path for the good life. A new billion dollar airport named after Zulu King Shaka was recently opened miles north of the city.

An Afrikaner lawyer tells me that years ago, there was a Jewish dentist in Durban who was so busy you could never get an appointment. His schedule was packed, mostly with fellow Jews. Now, he’s easy to book because large parts of the Jewish community has migrated or fled to New Zealand and Australia, with a few trickling to Israel.

This “transition” happened in central Joburg a decade ago. When I first came here, the City of Gold as it was known, was the center of commerce. Today, the 120 year old Central Business District is, in part, a ghost town, a place for the poor and immigrants.

The action was moved 20 miles north to Sandton, an area now of fantastic shopping centers complete with a Mandela Square, luxury hotels, and thriving busineses. The new multi-billion dollar Gau-Train that runs from the airport doesn’t even have a Johannesburg stop yet. It goes directly to Sandton. Stops at another mall in Rosebank and in Pretoria, and at Park Station in Central Joburg where there will be no connection to working class trains serving Soweto and other black “suburbs.”

The late Gill Scott Heron sang, “what’s the word, Johannesburg!” Today, it’s a word that has become a synonym more for an airport hub (Africa’s largest) than a city. The city is still there but it seems to have disappeared in the consciousness of many who bypass it whenever they can, although it still is home to the Market Theater and many attractions. Locals prefer to call it Jozi.

The social divisions in South African cities were structured and imposed. They didn’t happen naturally, although it was hard to understand that as you whiz by on first world freeways.

In some ways, geography is destiny. The English who eased out the Dutch in the first colonial collision had a keen sense of where they wanted people to live. The whites got the coastline; the blacks were driven into the interior.

Later, when the Afrikaners took over, their system of racial division and profiling pushed Africans further back into reserves set up to better control labor and then into ethnic homelands as part of what they called “separate development.”

The architects of apartheid created a system where whites ended up with 87% of the best land, blacks only 13%, and there’s been little land reform since the outbreak of democracy.

Today something else is going on, landlords and real estate interests encourage blight as a way to drive people to leave for more expensive residences. The blight then lowers real estate values which allows a few to pick up large tracts for a song, and redevelop then.

First the artists and yuppies move in, followed by the middle and upper class. The city planners know this phenomenon well and manipulate it for commercial reasons.

Scholars Bill Freund and Vishni Padayachee recognize the way that planning from on high determines how South African cities have been organized, “These cities have strong traditions of forceful planning from above with considerable capacity to finance change. They witness industrialization, but they are also the site of massive squatter settlements and populations that fall outside the functioning of the “formal” economy.”

Chris Brenner of the University California-Davis explains this is a global phenomenon:

“Cities are fundamentally shaped by inequality and conflict, as different social groups mobilize political and economic resources in an effort to improve their socio-economic circumstances. Rapid globalization and the rise of an information economy, however, are resulting in rapidly changing patterns of employment, economic opportunity and political power.”

These divisions are intensified by policy decisions, and a lack of them, which. in turn, lead to conflict and even violence. A study by the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Center for Civil Society in Durban blamed the rise of xenophobic violence on structural problems many years in the making as property rights were allowed to trump human rights.

These analysts showed that such conflict can be expected in response to blatantly unequal and structural social arrangements that are allowed, if not encouraged, to fester in a stressful environment compounded by poverty and other crises.

As urban analyst David Harvey puts it:

“The response is for each and every stratum in society to use whatever powers of domination it can command (money, political influence, even violence) to try to seal itself off (or seal off others judged undesirable) in fragments of space within which processes of reproduction of social distinctions can be jealously protected.”

The result in Durban was an upsurge of violence.

“May-June 2008 South Africa witnessed the country’s worst-ever outbreak of xenophobic violence: 62 people including 21 South Africans were killed, 670 wounded, dozens of women raped, at least 100,000 people displaced, and property worth of millions of rand looted, destroyed or seized by South Africans and their leaders in the affected communities.”

So here I am in one of the most beautiful corners of the world and yet under the surface, it is seething with conflicts far worse and much scarier than the ones I saw play out in Hollywood’s apocalyptic Transformers 3.

It’s not obvious. To “get it,” you have to scratch deep to see its roots. Politicians will have to do much more to head off the social explosion and ugly violence the experts anticipate and expect sooner rather than later.

News Dissector Danny Schechter has been involved with South Africa since the 1960’s and has made many films here. Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

North Carolina To Compensate Thousands Of Forced-Sterilization Victims

JacobSloan — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 22:30:34 +0000

The North Carolina Eugenics Board was created in 1933 and operated for decades with little public scrutiny. It used rudimentary IQ tests and gossip from neighbors to justify sterilization of young girls from poor families.

Many people don’t realize that portions of the U.S. South had eugenics programs that operated through the 1970s. NPR reports on some horrifying fairly-recent history:

Barely 40 years ago, it wasn’t uncommon for a single mother on welfare, or a patient in a mental hospital in North Carolina, to be sterilized against her will.

But North Carolina wasn’t alone: More than half of states in the U.S. had eugenics laws, some of which persisted into the 1970s.

North Carolina is now considering compensating its sterilization victims. A state panel heard from some of them Wednesday. They were mostly poor and uneducated — both black and white — and often just girls when it happened.

Elaine Riddick says she was sterilized at the age of 14. The state of North Carolina said Riddick was promiscuous and didn’t get along well with others. “I couldn’t get along well with others because I was hungry. I was cold. I was a victim of rape,” Riddick says.

Nearly 7,600 men, women and children as young as 10 were sterilized under North Carolina’s eugenics laws. While other state sterilization laws focused mainly on criminals and people in mental institutions, North Carolina was one of the few to expand its reach to women who were poor. Sterilization was seen as a way to limit the public cost of welfare.

The North Carolina Eugenics Board was created in 1933 and operated for decades with little public scrutiny. It used rudimentary IQ tests and gossip from neighbors to justify sterilization of young girls from poor families who hung around the wrong crowd or didn’t do well in school.

If North Carolina lawmakers decide to pay victims, it could be costly. While the number of sterilizations in other states slowed down after the Nazi atrocities of World War II came to light, North Carolina’s eugenics program ramped up. An estimated 3,000 victims are still living and could qualify for compensation.

Man Robs Bank Of $1 To Get Health Care In Jail

JacobSloan — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 15:43:02 +0000

This is so sad. Amazingly, many people’s reaction to the story is outrage…that our prisoners receive medical treatment. ABC News reports:

A 59-year-old man has been jailed in Gastonia, N.C., on charges of larceny after allegedly robbing an RBC Bank for $1 so he could get health care in prison. Richard James Verone handed a female teller a note demanding the money and claiming that he had a gun, according to the police report.

He then sat down and waited for police to arrive. “… I say, ‘I’ll be sitting right over here, on the chair, waiting for the police,’” Verone told reporters, recalling the June 9 robbery in an interview from Gaston County Jail.

Verone said he asked for $1 to show that his motives were medical, not monetary, according to news reports. With a growth in his chest, two ruptured disks and no job, Verone hoped a three-year stint in prison would afford him the health care he needed.

Homelessness: The Game

Haystack — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 05:50:31 +0000

Zachary Sniderman writes on Mashabe.com:

It’s one thing to feel bad for homeless people; it’s another to be forced into their shoes. Advertising agency McKinney has teamed up with Urban Ministries of Durham (UMD), a non-profit based in North Carolina, to create SPENT, an online game that guides users through what it feels like to be homeless.

Here’s how it works: If you accept the challenge to play, you enter a simple point-and-click game, navigating multiple choice questions about your livelihood. The site says you have been stripped of your savings and are currently unemployed, asking, “Can you make it through the month?”

You’re given simple choices with varying consequences. Do you want to try working in a restaurant? A factory? If you live far from the city your rent will be cheap, but, as you’re informed through pop-ups, you’ll have to pay more for gas or transportation.

The game’s integration with Facebook is its best feature. When faced with some choices, (like your landlord raising your rent) the game will ask you to decide whether to ignore the claim, pay it or ask a friend. The last option opens up a pre-written statement in Facebook where you can email one of your actual friends for “help,” bridging the gap between virtual reality and the real uneasiness of having to ask a friend for assistance. This simple act also helps spread awareness for the game by attaching a logo and small description to your request.

[More at Mashable.com, or play it at playspent.com]

82% Of Public Schools Expected To ‘Fail’ This Year

Pelliciari — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 18:21:55 +0000

US Education Secretary Arne Duncan

Is it that the schools will ‘fail’ the “No Child Left Behind” program or the program itself is a ‘fail’ for schools? The Raw Story reports:

In testimony to Congress Wednesday, US Education Secretary Arne Duncan made a startling claim: This year, up to 82 percent of public schools could “fail” the government’s “No Child Left Behind” standards.

“No Child Left Behind is broken and we need to fix it now,” he said, according to a transcript provided by the Department of Education.

“This law has created dozens of ways for schools to fail and very few ways to help them succeed,” Duncan added. “We should get out of the business of labeling schools as failures and create a new law that is fair and flexible, and focused on the schools and students most at risk.”

Last year, just 32 percent of schools were failing the government’s rigorous testing standards. Duncan was speaking to the House Education and Work Force Committee.

[Continues at The Raw Story]

Haitians Mark One Year Anniversary Of Earthquake

Pelliciari — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 22:08:47 +0000

The Haitian National Palace after the earthquake on January 12, 2010

A year after tragedy hit Haiti, survivors are marking the anniversary of the devastating earthquake. A year later and hundreds of thousands of people are living in shelters, communities are slowly being rebuilt and there is a constant battle against cholera. BBC News reports:

Haitians are preparing to mark the anniversary of the earthquake that devastated their country and left some 250,000 of their fellow citizens dead.

Church services are due to be held around the nation, including at the ruined cathedral in Port-au-Prince.

There will also be a minute’s silence at 4.53pm (2153 GMT) – the exact moment when the 7.0 magnitude quake hit.

Traffic stopped as the streets of Port-au-Prince turned quiet and businesses were closed.

People walked in solemn processions to prayer services marking the anniversary of the worst natural disaster in the nation’s history. Many people wore white, a colour associated with mourning in Haiti, and sang hymns as they made their way to the services.

One year on, some 800,000 people are still living in temporary shelters.

[Continues at BBC News]

Two-Thirds of the West African Nation of Benin is Underwater

ralph — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 20:34:03 +0000

Via BBC News:

The UN refugee agency is to start an emergency airlift of tents to the West African nation of Benin this week, amid the worst flooding there in decades.

Some 3,000 tents will be flown in from Denmark to provide shelter for some of the estimated 680,000 people affected.

Two-thirds of Benin has suffered from months of heavy rain, and about 800 cases of cholera have been reported.

It is the worst flooding to hit the country — one of the poorest in the world — since 1963.

Areas previously thought not to be vulnerable to flooding have been devastated and villages wiped out.

“There are huge areas that are covered in water so people are living on the tops of their houses, because people try to stay near their homes,” Helen Kawkins of the Care aid agency told the BBC.

Poverty Affects the Mental Health of Children

Good German — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 16:13:00 +0000

A 2006 report from ScienceDaily, still relevant today:

Children in low-income families start off with higher levels of antisocial behaviour than children from more advantaged households. And if the home remains poor as the children grow up, antisocial behaviour becomes much worse over time compared to children living in households that are never poor or later move out of poverty, says new University of Alberta research.

“In other words, the lowest levels of antisocial behaviour are found in kids whose parents start and stay in the highest income bracket while their kids grow up,” says Dr. Lisa Strohschein, author of the study and sociologist at the U of A.

While the findings show that the effects of low income at an early age on antisocial behaviour–conduct such as bullying, being cruel, breaking things, cheating or telling lies–persist as kids get older, depression seems to have the opposite effect. The effects of starting off in a low-income household on child depression lessen as time goes on, regardless of later income levels. The research is published in the current issue of the “Journal of Health and Social Behavior.”

“These findings might mean that antisocial behaviour is an example of biological embedding–it is possible that poverty early in life helps to set into motion a consistent pattern of antisocial behaviours that are difficult to change once learned,” says Strohschein. This finding supports at least one developmental theory that posits that early childhood constitutes a sensitive period of development in which insults suffered during this time are likely to have long lasting effects on child development.

Looks to me like these finding disprove the rather simplistic theory that anybody who grows up poor can compete with those who grow up rich or middle class and succeed, and if they don’t it’s because they’re just lazy. Read more here.

20% Of Children In United States Living In Poverty

majestic — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 22:00:52 +0000

Shocking, ain’t it? And it’s the official number from the U.S. Census Bureau, so probably the real number is higher. From the New York Times:

Forty-four million people in the United States, or one in seven residents, lived in poverty in 2009, an increase of 4 million from the year before, the Census Bureau reported on Thursday.

The poverty rate climbed to 14.3 percent — the highest level since 1994 — from 13.2 percent in 2008. The rise was steepest for children, with one in five residents under 18 living below the official poverty line, the bureau said.

The report provides the most detailed picture yet of the impact of the recession and unemployment on incomes, especially at the bottom of the scale. It also suggested that the temporary increases in benefits in aid provided in last year’s stimulus bill eased the burdens on millions of families.

For a single adult in 2009, the poverty line was $10,830 in pretax cash income; for a family of four, $22,050.

Given the depth of the recession, some economists had expected an even larger jump in the poor. Expanded unemployment insurance and a rise in the number of families doubling up helped temper the trend, said Timothy M. Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin.

“A lot of people would have been worse off if they didn’t have someone to move in with,” said Mr. Smeeding, noting that in a typical case, a struggling family, like a mother with a child, stays with more prosperous parents or other relatives.

The Census study found an 11.6 percent increase in the number of such multifamily households over the last two years…

[continues in the New York Times]

Poverty Rate In U.S. Saw Record Increase In 2009: 1 In 7 Americans Are Poor

ralph — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 19:29:31 +0000

These figures are estimates, but when the actual data is released this week, hopefully it’s not worse. Hope Yen and Liz Sidoti write on the Huffington Post:

WASHINGTON — The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama’s watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty.

Census figures for 2009 – the recession-ravaged first year of the Democrat’s presidency – are to be released in the coming week, and demographers expect grim findings.

It’s unfortunate timing for Obama and his party just seven weeks before important elections when control of Congress is at stake. The anticipated poverty rate increase – from 13.2 percent to about 15 percent – would be another blow to Democrats struggling to persuade voters to keep them in power.

“The most important anti-poverty effort is growing the economy and making sure there are enough jobs out there,” Obama said Friday at a White House news conference. He stressed his commitment to helping the poor achieve middle-class status and said, “If we can grow the economy faster and create more jobs, then everybody is swept up into that virtuous cycle.”

Hedge Funds Accused of Gambling with Lives of the Poorest as Food Prices Soar

imkaan — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 17:55:33 +0000

Image: World Development Movement (WDM)

Katie Allen writes in the Guardian:

Financial speculators have come under renewed fire from anti-poverty campaigners for their bets on food prices, blamed for raising the costs of goods such as coffee and chocolate and threatening the livelihoods of farmers in developing countries.

The World Development Movement (WDM) will issue a damning report on the growing role of hedge funds and banks in the commodities markets in recent years, during which time cocoa prices have more than doubled, energy prices have soared and coffee has fluctuated dramatically.

The charity’s demands for the British financial watchdog to follow the US in cracking down on such speculation comes against a backdrop of cocoa prices jumping to a 33-year high as it emerged that a London hedge fund had snapped up a large part of the world’s stock of beans. On Friday, traders say, Armajaro took delivery of 240,100 tonnes of cocoa — the biggest from London’s Liffe exchange in 14 years and equal to about 7% of annual global production, according to the Financial Times.

Niger’s Silent Crisis

Aaron Dames — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 15:02:21 +0000

Source: Vardion (CC)

From the BBC:

Britain’s aid agencies are launching an appeal to help the people of Niger where half the country’s population is going hungry following droughts which have led to crop failures and food shortages.

A listless little boy with stick thin arms and legs is weighed at an emergency treatment clinic for under fives near Maradi in Southern Niger.

Abiou, who is just 13 months old, weighs less than four-and-a-half kilos. His half-closed eyes stare out from sunken sockets set in a head that now looks too big for him.

Doctor Mourou Arouna Djimba says he is now being overwhelmed by youngsters like Abiou. “There’s a massive need here,” he told me.

“We’ve so little room that sometimes we need to put two or even three children in one bed. We’ve got 30 in this intensive ward, and this morning another five more severely malnourished children arrived.”

Save the Children says 400,000 children are at risk of dying from starvation

In the face of the crisis, the charities Save the Children (STC) and Oxfam are each launching multi-million pound appeals for drought-ravaged Niger.

STC says 400,000 of the country’s children are at risk of dying of starvation. This follows the failure of rains last year which led to widespread crop failure, a situation greatly aggravated by soaring food prices which have left many people unable to afford to buy even staple grains like millet.

With the next harvests not due until September many people will have little or nothing to eat until then. In all, half of this landlocked country’s 15 million people are now in need of food aid.

A couple of hours drive east of Maradi, Niger’s third-largest city, around a thousand people, many looking desperate, form long lines outside an emergency feeding centre.

The noise is almost deafening. While they wait under the sweltering sun tempers begin to flare. Some begin pushing at the door and shouting to be let in.

It’s all too much for a middle-aged woman in the crowd who, at one point, struggles to remain on her feet.

When the pushing subsides she tells me how difficult it now is to feed herself and her family. “Last year my crops failed five times,” she explains. “Each time they grew a little… but there was no rain… so they died. I have no food whatsoever. All I can do is look for leaves and herbs to eat.”

When I point out that the leaves she is holding in her hand are unlikely to have much food value in them, she shrugs and replies “That’s right. They have no goodness in them but at least they fill our stomachs.”

Droughts are nothing new in Niger but this one is exceptionally bad. Most insist it is worse than the one five years ago that caused widespread suffering.

In the isolated village of Makanga, around two hours walk from the town of Tanout, the noise of donkeys, goats and chickens fill the air. But with many here now being forced to sell their animals to get money to buy food, such sounds might soon disappear along with the villagers themselves.

A village elder, Musa Haj Haroon, stares at the ground as he tells me: “The only asset I’ve got is my livestock. Every now and then I take two or three goats and go and sell them in the market. This is the only way I can get money to buy food.

“If my livestock runs out we will have to leave this village, there is no other solution. And if the rains are bad again this year everyone will go… and this will become a deserted village.”

Many have left their homes already in search of food. Hani is a fifty year-old mother of eight who has seen five of her children die in recent years. Last month, after her crops failed, she and her family left their village and made their way by foot to the capital, Niamey.

Although it is not the first time that they have been forced to do this following earlier droughts, it was a journey they are unlikely to forget. “We walked for a long way, a very long way. I’m not sure quite how far it was. I have no way of knowing,” she told me.

“At one point I thought we were all going to die on the road. But my children were so hungry. I had no alternative. If we had stayed there I am sure we would all have died.”

And you can also see a gallery of Mike’s photos from Niger.

Rep. Alan Grayson Introduces the War Is Making You Poor Act (Video)

Aaron Dames — Sun, 23 May 2010 20:49:07 +0000

Rep. Grayson introduces a bill to cut separate funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and uses the money to eliminate federal income taxes on every American’s first $35,000 of income. Cosponsors of this bill include Ron Paul, Walter Jones, John Conyers, Lynn Woolsey, and Dennis Kucinich.

Playground Politics: Geopolitics Made Simple By Children, On a Playground (Video)

ralph — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 05:56:35 +0000

From HBO’s Funny Or Die Presents, the lesson learned from this episode featuring the USA and Africa is: “If you have natural resources, then you’ll receive food.”

Is This the State of Religion in America?

ralph — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 07:03:38 +0000

Via the very interesting Tumblr blog All That’s Interesting:

Much more to discover on All That’s Interesting

Greg Palast: The Right Testicle of Hell — History of a Haitian Holocaust

Join Or DIE — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 21:55:26 +0000

Greg Palast writes on GregPalast.com:

1. Bless the President for having rescue teams in the air almost immediately. That was President Olafur Grimsson of Iceland. On Wednesday, the AP reported that the President of the United States promised, “The initial contingent of 2,000 Marines could be deployed to the quake-ravaged country within the next few days.” “In a few days,” Mr. Obama?

2. There’s no such thing as a ‘natural’ disaster. 200,000 Haitians have been slaughtered by slum housing and IMF “austerity” plans.

3. A friend of mine called. Do I know a journalist who could get medicine to her father? And she added, trying to hold her voice together, “My sister, she’s under the rubble. Is anyone going who can help, anyone?” Should I tell her, “Obama will have Marines there in ‘a few days’”?

4. China deployed rescuers with sniffer dogs within 48 hours. China, Mr. President. China: 8,000 miles distant. Miami: 700 miles close. US bases in Puerto Rico: right there.

5. Obama’s Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, “I don’t know how this government could have responded faster or more comprehensively than it has.” We know Gates doesn’t know.

Haiti: Where Will All the Money Go?

ralph — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 22:22:58 +0000

SHARON THEIMER writes on the AP via Yahoo News:

How difficult will it be for the United States and other donors to track the millions of dollars in earthquake aid headed to Haiti? U.S. government auditors pulled out of the country years ago after concerns over kidnappings and other crimes scuttled their efforts to monitor Haiti’s spending of $45 million in U.S. aid after storms there killed thousands.

Corruption, theft, violence and other security problems and Haiti’s sheer shortage of fundamentals — reliable roads, telephone and power lines and a sound financial system — will add to the challenges of making sure aid is spent properly as foreign governments and charities try not only to help Haiti recover from this week’s devastating earthquake but to pull itself out of abject poverty.

Past efforts haven’t been easy. The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, faced problems on a smaller scale in 2005 and 2006 as auditors tried to review the use of roughly $45 million in aid the U.S. provided after Tropical Storm Jeanne struck Haiti in September 2004, killing more than 2,000 people, injuring more than 2,600 and affecting an estimated 300,000 others.

The inspectors wanted to visit projects funded with the money to measure progress. But after an initial fact-finding trip to Haiti, it was considered too dangerous for them to go back. They could visit only projects deemed safe as destinations. In summer 2005, many employees of the Agency for International Development — which is coordinating the current U.S. response to the earthquake — were temporarily pulled out of Haiti, according to government reports.

Haiti is one of the poorest places on Earth. Most basic public services are lacking, people typically live on less than $2 a day, nearly half the population is illiterate and the government has a history of instability. The public has little opportunity to be sure that aid to the government is used honestly and well. Nor is following the money easy for donors, including the United States, 700 miles away and one of the country’s biggest helpers.

The World’s Tallest Building: A Symbol of Global Excess in Dubai

phunkychic666 — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 05:38:40 +0000

Juan Cole writes on Informed Comment:

The world’s tallest building, Burj Khalifah or Khalifah Tower, was unveiled in Dubai on Monday:

Dubai is a finance hub, the bubble of which has burst, so the building’s opening now seems a critique of past excesses more than the triumph originally dreamed of. Now that Dubai is having to be bailed out by its oil-rich sister emirate, Abu Dhabi, the tower had to be named for its ruler Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, rather than retaining its original name, Burj Dubai. Many critics have seen it as a monument to hubris likely to remain mostly empty, as the 21st century Tower of Babel.

As you can see, Dubai nevertheless went all out to celebrate the opening.

The Burj Khalifah is a symbol of everything wrong with our present moment. Rooted in a finance and real estate bubble, planned as big for the sake of bigness, opulent, now saved from disaster by Abu Dhabi’s unsustainable oil revenues, it casts its shadow on a nation of guest workers, many impoverished and exploited. If global warming proceeds at the pace some climate scientists fear, and the seas rise substantially, it may, ironically enough, be all that is visible of the low-lying United Arab Emirates a century from now.

Living on Nothing but Food Stamps

DrLechter — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 04:48:58 +0000

JASON DEPARLE and ROBERT M. GEBELOFF write in the NY Times:

About six million Americans receiving food stamps report they have no other income, according to an analysis of state data collected by the New York Times. In declarations that states verify and the federal government audits, they described themselves as unemployed and receiving no cash aid — no welfare, no unemployment insurance, and no pensions, child support or disability pay.

Their numbers were rising before the recession as tougher welfare laws made it harder for poor people to get cash aid, but they have soared by about 50 percent over the past two years. About one in 50 Americans now lives in a household with a reported income that consists of nothing but a food-stamp card.