The crap the Republican-Teahadists are pushing would have been considered insanity just a few years ago.
As I am one sunk deep into that poverty myself, I can’t help but think: When is this shit going to end? When I am dead? Yet, I hear all these Republican-Teahadists gloating and expressing what a few years ago would have been considered outrageous. These are people who actually get off from seeing misery and suffering from those less fortunate than themselves…it is the way they obtain validation…so that if you were able to make a fortune, or as is with most of those rich folks …inherited one…then you think that everyone is underneath your lofty place in society and the only way that you can keep that imagined superiority is by inflicting more poverty and misery on those who are poor…it is as simple as that in my mind and not only is it reprehensible…it is downright immoral.
Who are these Republican-Teahadists who come wrapped in the American flag carrying a Bible in their hand? They are not just hypocrites, because the Bible they carry means nothing to them when it comes to following the true teachings of Jesus…and patriotic? Not even close…if you insist in decimating the middle class, which is the backbone of American society then you are actually destroying the very country you claim you so patriotically love…Republican-Teahadists are nothing but low life, ignorant traitors.
This is what Sen. Bernie Sanders Independent U.S. Senator from Vermont had to say on the matter of poverty in America:
“Is Poverty a Death Sentence?
The crisis of poverty in America is one of the great moral and economic issues facing our country. It is very rarely talked about in the mainstream media. It gets even less attention in Congress. Why should people care? Many poor people don't vote. They certainly don't make large campaign contributions, and they don't have powerful lobbyists representing their interests.
Here's why we all should care. There are 46 million Americans -- about one in six -- living below the poverty line. That's the largest number on record, according to a new report released Tuesday by the Census Bureau. About 49.9 million Americans lacked health insurance, the report also said. That number has soared by 13.3 million since 2000.
Moreover, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States has both the highest overall poverty rate and the highest childhood poverty rate of any major industrialized country on earth. This comes at a time when the U.S. also has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on earth with the top 1 percent earning more than the bottom 50 percent.
According to the latest figures from the OECD, 21.6 percent of American children live in poverty. This compares to 3.7 percent in Denmark, 5 percent in Finland, 5.5 percent in Norway 6.9 percent in Slovenia, 7 percent in Sweden, 7.2 percent Hungary, 8.3 percent in Germany, 8.8 percent in the Czech Republic, 9.3 percent in France, 9.4 percent in Switzerland. I suppose we can take some comfort in that our numbers are not quite as bad as Turkey (23.5 percent), Chile (24 percent) and Mexico (25.8 percent).
When we talk about poverty in America, we think about people who may be living in substandard and overcrowded homes or may be homeless. We think about people who live with food insecurity, who may not know how they are going to feed themselves or their kids tomorrow. We think about people who, in cold states like Vermont, may not have enough money to purchase the fuel they need to keep warm in the winter. We think about people who cannot afford health insurance or access to medical care. We think about people who cannot afford an automobile or transportation, and can't get to their job or the grocery store. We think about senior citizens who may have to make a choice between buying the prescription drugs he or she needs, or purchasing an adequate supply of food.
I want to focus on an enormously important point. And that is that poverty in America today leads not only to anxiety, unhappiness, discomfort and a lack of material goods. It leads to death. Poverty in America today is a death sentence for tens and tens of thousands of our people which is why the high childhood poverty rate in our country is such an outrage.
Some facts
• At a time when we are seeing major medical breakthroughs in cancer and other terrible diseases for the people who can afford those treatments, the reality is that life expectancy for low-income women has declined over the past 20 years in 313 counties in our country. In other words, in some areas of America, women are now dying at a younger age than they used to.
• In America today, people in the highest income group level, the top 20 percent, live, on average, at least 6.5 years longer than those in the lowest income group. Let me repeat that. If you are poor in America you will live 6.5 years less than if you are wealthy or upper-middle class.
• In America today, adult men and women who have graduated from college can expect to live at least 5 years longer than people who have not finished high school.
• In America today tens of thousands of our fellow citizens die unnecessarily because they cannot get the medical care they need. According to Reuters (September 17, 2009), nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year -- one every 12 minutes -- in large part because they lack health insurance and cannot get good care. Harvard Medical School researchers found in an analysis released on Thursday."
• In 2009, the infant mortality rate for African American infants was twice that of white infants.
I recite these facts because I believe that as bad as the current situation is with regard to poverty, it will likely get worse in the immediate future. As a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior of Wall Street we are now in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the 1930s. Millions of workers have lost their jobs and have slipped out of the middle class and into poverty. Poverty is increasing.
Further, despite the reality that our deficit problem has been caused by the recession and declining revenue, two unpaid for wars and tax breaks for the wealthy, there are some in Congress who wish to decimate the existing safety net which provides a modicum of security for the elderly, the sick, the children and lower income people. Despite an increase in poverty, some of these people would like to cut or end Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, home heating assistance, nutrition programs and help for the disabled and the homeless.
To the degree that they are successful, there is no question in my mind that many more thousands of men, women and children will die.
From a moral perspective, it is not acceptable that we allow so much unnecessary suffering and preventable death to continue. From an economic perspective and as we try to fight our way out of this terrible recession, it makes no sense that we push to the fringe so many people who could be of such great help to us.”
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One of the comments was very appropriate:
“And in the face of this rampant inequality and unprecedented wealth grab by the powerful and rich in their attempt to squeeze the money out of the rest of us, what is the Republican "answer"?!?
To complain that our poor really just aren't that poor, anyway!! To complain that our poor aren't really that poor - because they have refrigerators, DVD players and X-boxes. As if that makes up for no jobs, no health care and no education!!
They will not be satisfied until they have dragged us back into the 19th century when the poor had the decency to die in the streets from hunger or disease without bothering the rest of us!! Until the poor are reduced to the level of the poor in third world nations, living in cardboard and tin shacks and receiving nothing from the government for any assistance. Until the rest of the middle class is reduced to poverty levels through reduced pay and benefits to make us "competitive" with 3rd world sweat shops and "Human Rights" and "Environmental Regulations" are removed as stumbling blocks in the way of their greed and corporate profits...
WHAT KIND OF NATION ARE WE, ANYWAY?!?
Oh, wait, I guess the Republican candidate debates have answered that: We have become the Romans in decline - cheering for executions and insisting the uninsured should just die!!
SAD, VERY SAD!!!”
PHOTO SOURCE: http://markmaynard.com/?p=14428
SOURCE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/is-poverty-a-death-senten_b_960598.html
The Census Bureau’s Shocking Poverty Stats
A record number of Americans are living below the poverty line. Ready for the worst news?
It's no secret that the economy is in rough shape—but the latest poverty figures released by the Census Bureau on Tuesday are nonetheless shocking. The overall poverty rate has reached a record high and the number of people living in deep poverty—that is, below 50 percent of the poverty level, or $11,000 for a family of four—is the highest its been since 1975. Experts are predicting that things are only going to get worse in the years to come. (Scroll down to see the data.)Some more lowlights: Median income has sunk lower than it was almost 15 years ago. The number of people living without health insurance is up slightly. The number of kids under the age of six living in extreme poverty is up to nearly 12 percent. The recession has been especially hard on women and people of color. The extreme poverty rate for women is more than 6 percent, the highest recorded in 22 years, and the poverty rate for black women is up a percentage point from 2009, to more than 25 percent.
Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, had this grim assessment of the new data: "The main message of today's…income and poverty numbers from the Census Bureau is that, if we don't like the way things are now, we better get used to it."
Brookings scholar Isabell Sawhill, who crunched the numbers, estimates that by 2014, the "Great Recession" will have added an additional 10 million people to the ranks of the poor, six million of them children.
The takeaway for liberals, of course, is that the country is in dire need of more economic stimulus, regardless of the debt situation.
"These numbers confirm what millions of Americans have long felt," said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights in a statement. He added, "We cannot expect these trends to reverse themselves; concerted action is needed to create jobs and invest in vulnerable families if we are to ensure shared prosperity and opportunity for all."
Sawhill estimates that President Obama's jobs plan, if passed by Congress, could prevent about 3 million people from falling into poverty next year, largely by keeping people working, but also by extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits.
The census provides a good case for the passage of Obama's plan. The agency's data indicated that without unemployment benefits, another 2.3 million people would have been living in poverty in 2010. Without that so-called Ponzi scheme, Social Security, a whopping 14 million more elderly people would have been in dire straits.
Just as the numbers support more stimulus, they also offer a rebuke to congressional Republicans and former president Bill Clinton, who killed off one of the nation's oldest anti-poverty programs by passing welfare reform during the early 1990s.
Until 1997, welfare was an entitlement program that provided cash benefits to the most desperately poor people, primarily single mothers. Welfare spending expanded automatically when the economy got bad and more people needed help, without congressional intervention. The "reform" law turned welfare into a block grant, where states receive a fixed amount of money each year to provide benefits, regardless of the need. The idea was that the government should get women into the workforce rather than keeping them dependent on government handouts.
In the late 1990s, when unemployment was at a record low, conservatives declared the new law a huge success because millions of single mothers did indeed leave the welfare rolls. But the real test came when the economy went sour. Instead of serving as a critical part of the social safety net and a built-in stimulus program, the welfare, or TANF program (as it's now called), is doing virtually nothing to keep children out of poverty, as the new census data illustrates.
At $16 billion annually, the TANF block grant has remained unchanged since 1997, losing 30 percent of its value thanks to inflation. The disappearance of cash benefits may be one factor in why the poverty rate for single moms—the people welfare reform was supposed to help—is up to 40 percent, from 38.5 percent in 2009.
Given that Republicans in Congress even oppose continuing a payroll tax cut that might help some of the nation's neediest, it seems unlikely that they'll support giving poor single moms a cost of living increase. In 2009, Congress did use TANF to create an emergency fund that, among other things, subsidized jobs for about a quarter-million low-income parents and young people. But Congress killed it last September over the pleas of anti-poverty advocates who could see the looming crisis. As Haskins said, things are bad. We should just get used to it.
Data on median household incomes from the US Census Bureau:
| Region | 2009 (in 2010 dollars) | 2010 | Percent change in real median income |
| US | $50,599 | $49,445 | -2.3 |
| Northeast | $53,949 | $53,283 | -1.2 |
| Midwest | $49,684 | $48,445 | -2.5 |
| South | $46,368 | $45,492 | -1.9 |
| West | $54,722 | $53,142 | -2.9 |
| Race/Ethnicity | 2009 (in 2010 dollars) | 2010 | Percent change in real median income |
| White | $52717 | $51846 | -1.7 |
| White, not Hispanic | $55360 | $54620 | -1.3 |
| Black | $33122 | $32068 | -3.2 |
| Asian | $66550 | $64308 | -3.4 |
| Hispanic origin | $38667 | $37759 | -2.3 |
| Nativity | 2009 (in 2010 dollars) | 2010 | Percent change in real median income |
| Native-born | $51337 | $50288 | -2 |
| Foreign-born | $44648 | $43750 | -2 |
| Naturalized citizen | $52833 | $52642 | -0.4 |
| Not a citizen | $36685 | $36401 | -0.8 |
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