Over 35 Million Go Hungry in the U.S. in 2006…

Here’s something to ponder while you’re gnawing on that turkey leg next week.

More than 35.5 million people in the U.S. went hungry in 2006 as the seldom discussed poverty problem in this country has reared it’s ugly head again. This figure is up from the previous year, the Agriculture Department said on Wednesday.

Single mothers and their children, as you might have guessed, were among the most likely to suffer according to the study.

The 35.5 million people, as previously talked about on the Shadow Democracy Radio Show, and written about on this blog, represent a whopping 12.1 percent of the total population. These people said they did not have enough money or food for at least some period during the year.  That is compared with 35.1 million people who made similar claims in 2005.

Of the 35.5 million people, 11.1 million reported they had “very low food security,” meaning they had a substantial disruption in the amount of food they typically eat. For example, among families, a third of those facing disruption in the food they typically eat said an adult in their family did not eat for a whole day because they could not afford it.

The survey was based on Census Bureau data and does not include the homeless, who collectively represent about 750,000 people in 2005, according to federal estimates.

Some quick facts:

Among all families, about 12.6 million, or 10.9 percent, reported going hungry for at least some period last year.

Single mothers going hungry (30.4 percent)

Black households going hungry (21.8 percent)

Hispanic households going hungry (19.5 percent)

Households below the official poverty line going hungry (36.3 percent)

States with highest prevalence of hunger from 2004-2006 included:

Mississippi (18.1 percent)

New Mexico (16.1 percent)

Texas (15.9 percent)

South Carolina (14.7 percent)

The most alarming statistic deals with children. Of the 35.5 million people reporting periods of hunger last year, 12.6 million were children.

“This report comes at a critical time for hungry Americans and those of us who help serve them,” said Vicki Escarra, president of the nation’s largest hunger relief group — America’s Second Harvest-The Nation’s Food Bank Network. “There simply may be no food for many families when the rest of the nation gathers to celebrate Thanksgiving and religious holidays.”

Jim Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger group, said he is troubled by the report. He said figures for 2007 could prove to be worse, given rising food prices and an uneven economy this year.

And don’t forget about the price of fuel. That will surely drive prices up as well.

I urge anyone reading this to go through your cupboards if you can and donate anything possible to the food pantry. If you have nothing to give, then please go to your local store, if you have the means, and buy up some of that mac ‘n cheese at four for a dollar, and donate it. Anything helps…even small things. Remember, we are all Americans, we are in this together. This is a national problem that requires national action.

Don’t neglect your hungry neighbors. It’s the rules.

More information here: http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err49/err49.pdf

The New Poverty…

 

Poverty isn’t what it used to be. If one takes the time to characterize the modern poor vs. the historical poor, they would find that the avenues out of poverty are quickly being closed by the new world economy and the dynamic that is ‘globalism.’

The postmodern American economy is in utter disarray and social safety net policies used throughout the 20th century, have de-evolved, resulting in a new demographic of poor people. The most visible result of this disarray is that poor children are relatively worse off now than at the beginning of the 20th century despite all of the political rhetoric through the years. More alarmingly, their opportunities out of poverty are slim and none. Maanufactuing jobs that could be had on a high school diploma have evaporated to a large extent, and many are simply priced out of trade school or college.

What is so dangerous about the new poverty is the sense of surprise it brings. Poverty can hit so suddenly, that people can fall so far behind so fast, and lose everything they’ve worked for in a matter of a few months, because they are literally living paycheck by paycheck. The new poverty is about our loss of faith in relationships we once had with companies and the government. It seems nothing is guaranteed anymore. Many people work for several companies in their lifetime because they are simply burned out or pushed out or outsourced out of their old one. Workers cannot depend on a pension, savings, or even Social Security. The new poverty is a complex sociological issue that has many causes and seemingly fewer and fewer solutions. 

Globalism has clearly not helped the situation. For years talk of free trade and the benefits of that trade, was standard political speak. Bob Zoellick, a U.S. trade representative at a recent press conference said, “If one is concerned about developing countries, both history and recent studies would suggest an open system is going to be the formula for them. Others like Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School, claim that globalization “has improved the lot of hundreds of millions of poor people around the world.” I do not agree.

I would argue that globalization has been a losing proposition for most of the countries, including the U.S. When you talk to people like Robert Reich or anyone else that supports free trade, and express concerns, you’re labeled as an isolationist. However, I’m not arguing for an isolationist position – merely to construct free trade in a common sense fashion that softens the broad sword that usually comes down on the world’s poor with brutal consequences. Reich and others suggest that these people must simply get themselves re-educated and lift themselves up. The problem is they often do not have the resources to do so, so they are simply cast aside as a necessary evil of global economic expansion. 

The visible results of globalism do not appear to be as positive as supporters would have us believe. The vast majority of countries, over the last two decades, have experienced slower growth than was seen in the previous two. Moreover, poorer countries have generally suffered the worst declines in the growth of income per person. 

Then there is China. Supporters of free trade point to China as a beacon of progress – but at what cost? China has highly protected domestic markets that close off foreign import across broad sectors of their economy, illegal currency manipulation, and a state owned banking system…remember…they are a Communist nation. As a result, China has been able to resist import pressure from the West especially in the areas of durable goods and technology, as they jail anyone who dissents and poison they’re rural inhabitants with a level of pollution the world has never seen. It begs the question – is this free trade or trade for free?

There is clearly something wrong with the prevailing orthodoxy. Strategies for common sense economic development have been abandoned in the name of profit, and it is generally assumed that open markets, privatization, and attracting foreign investors will do the job in a humane fashion. So far this is not the case. 

The last two decades of globalization have also shown substantially diminished progress in health outcomes for infants and older children, as well as life expectancy, which has also dropped in the U.S. recently. The same is true for other social indicators, including education and literacy, with the slowdown in progress far worse among lower-income countries.

A world in which many third world countries enslave poor children for the purpose of making consumer goods, and where half of all people survive on less than $2 a day, speaks volumes to the failure of globalization, especially whens world trends are moving in the wrong direction from a human rights perspective. The U.S., nor can the rest of the world, afford not to re-think economic policy simply because free trade is fashionable, or to bow to the whims of special interests and their paymaster multinational corporations. No one is arguing to quell the expansion of trade to international markets, however it must be done with humanity as a primary concern, not a socio-economic afterthought.

In short, the globalists have it wrong, and people are beginning to wise up…finally.

Everyone Involved in Jena Case Needs to Wise Up…

 

 

Another perfect situation for racial tension. Blacks and whites are at it again –  fighting over skin color, lifestyle, culture, and ultimately…a way of life – this time in Jena, Louisiana. 

 

Jena is a mostly white town in central Louisiana with a population of about 3,000 people. This whole flap surrounds a tree on the local high school campus – the shade of which supposedly belongs to whites only? I was unaware one can claim shade?

Last fall during an assembly, a black student asked an administrator whether he could sit under the tree. The very fact that the question needed to be asked at all, embodies the crux of racial tensions in this country. To people in the assembly, the question may very well have represented the same retreaded innuendo that suggests a white vs. black power struggle that persists. Students were reassured…they could sit where ever they like.Several black students soon joined white students under the tree – and the next day, three nooses hung from it. The administration of the schools as well as the entire population of the town was oblivious to the hidden meaning of the question in the assembly, and now all wondered why the nooses? It was not a harmless prank – at least blacks didn’t see it that way. It was a sign of hidden racial hatred buried and bubbling just below the surface in the misled and ignorant minds of white students. Tensions immediately rose. The school administration blundered again by inviting Reed Walters, the district attorney, and several police officers, to threaten students at will, which they were all too happy to do. “I can be your best friend or your worst enemy,” Walters told the assembly. “With a stroke of my pen, I can make your lives disappear.” It sounds like a scene ripped straight from Mississippi Burning. Welcome Jim Crow esq.

 

What people in Jena don’t realize is that none of these things matter in the long run. Race, color, lifestyle and culture are not going to be the end of Western culture as we know it, nor will whites or blacks triumph over one another as the ‘ruling’ race. White people need not fear that their wholesome white-flight suburban existence is evaporating and black people need not fear that what they have fought for over the past 150 years will be undone. The real threat to this nation and culture as a whole is destructive economic policy, perpetuated at the hands of the power elite – and their worker bees like Reed Walters who are sent to keep the ‘black folk’ in line – and in some cases, the white folk too.

 

The rich love when we fight among ourselves. Racial tension and fighting in the streets, protests, and arrests, are wonderful distractions for the American middle class. They keeps our troubled minds off of some pretty disturbing facts – like the fact that Jena, is poor on the whole…really poor, and that most of their high school students probably won’t graduate – while the ones that do will have trouble ever finding meaningful work. It also distracts us from destructive war profiteering, the fact that our healthcare system is crumbling, that American wages are being depressed like never before, and that our elected leaders are nothing more than corporate puppets.

 

These issues are not white issues or black issues, they are everyone issues. More and more whites and blacks are falling into poverty as we speak. Some estimates have numbers set as high as 12% of all people in the U.S. living at or under the official poverty line. Of course the poverty line is a distraction in itself. When you really think about it, who can live on $12,000 per year? The poverty line should be at $17,000 to $20,000 per year. If that was the case, I believe the numbers of those in poverty would be much higher, and include many more people in places like Jena.

 

The point is, average people in this country cannot relate to the rich power elite and we never will. They loathe all of us. They will not help us, they do not care, and they want nothing more than to preserve the status quo. As a racially diverse populus, we help do their morally bankrupt bidding by scrapping among ourselves. If we are fighting each other, we can never unite to fight them. I say to the Jena six and everyone else involved in that case, don’t turn your anger on your black or white neighbors, level that anger toward the true culprits…the rich and powerful who manipulate and take advantage of situations like Jena to manufacture profit and rob you of your civil rights – while we bleed and our children are jailed in the name of false justice.