28952e13   
   XPost: alt.alien.visitors, alt.alien.research, sci.skeptic   
   From: garymatalucci@gmail.com   
      
   Washington's Austerity Plan Threatens the 50 Million Americans Already   
   in Poverty - Our nurses see dire need every day in the ER, but the   
   growing gulf of inequality in the US has made such deprivation   
   ubiquitous   
      
   With a compromise on social security now unmasked – costing the   
   elderly an estimated 6.2-7.7%, according to business writer Doug   
   Henwood – America becomes more and more a place of poverty. Warnings   
   that austerity begets poverty will go ignored, but the nation's   
   deteriorating condition cannot so easily be overlooked.  No surprise,   
   in this milieu of victimizing the most marginal, that one anniversary   
   has received far too little attention. This year, 2012, marked the   
   50th anniversary of a ground breaking book, The Other America, by   
   Michael Harrington, a searing examination of rampant poverty in the   
   richest nation on earth. A prominent review of Harrington's work in   
   the New Yorker magazine, reportedly brought to the attention of then   
   President John F Kennedy, ultimately helped influence the Great   
   Society reforms later launched by his successor Lyndon B Johnson.   
      
   But half a century later, we seem to be back to square one in this   
   country. For the past two years, the nation's largest nurses'   
   organization, National Nurses United, has promoted a program to spur   
   revitalization of our economy to assist families in financial peril.   
   Our campaign was largely spurred by an alarming spike in patients   
   presenting in hospital emergency rooms and clinics across the country   
   who are forced to choose between paying medical bills, their rent or   
   mortgage or feeding their families.   
      
   The crisis nurses saw was not an aberration. By 2011, with the recent   
   recession showing scant signs of abating, official US poverty figures   
   had soared to nearly 50 million Americans. Some in the political arena   
   tend to pigeonhole poverty by race, but this calamity crosses all   
   lines of gender, geography, age, and ethnicity.   
   Last year, almost one in four children lived in a family that   
   regularly had difficulty affording sufficient food, according to the   
   US department of agriculture. On the other end of life, 8.3 million   
   people over 60 in 2010 faced the threat of hunger, up 78% from a   
   decade earlier – yet another reason to oppose the proposed fiscal   
   cliff cuts in social security or Medicare. Hunger and malnutrition, as   
   nurses will attest, lead to a broad array of health problems, ranging   
   from reduced immunity to disease or even organ failure. For children,   
   poor nutrition can severely stunt cognitive development and growth.   
   For adults and seniors, the consequences can include more chronic   
   illnesses and shorter life spans.   
      
   Over 20 million Americans live in extreme poverty – with cash incomes   
   as low as $10,000 a year for a family of four. Is it any wonder that   
   the US has the third highest poverty rate out of 30 leading industrial   
   nations? The problem is exacerbated by decades of economic and   
   political policies that have resulted in a massive shift of national   
   wealth from working people to the corporate boardrooms and the yacht   
   owners. One result: real wage growth for workers has stagnated for 30   
   years; median household income has steadily fallen since the Wall   
   Street produced economic crash of 2008. Much of the limited job growth   
   since then has been in the lowest wage sectors, primarily food service   
   and retail.   
      
   Sadly, the issue remained almost as invisible on the 2012 campaign   
   trail as it was when Harrington shocked the nation in 1962. But it is   
   not a surprise to nurses who, every day, see the faces of poverty and   
   the suffering of families left behind – even as corporate profits once   
   again soar and the parties and good times are back on Wall Street.   
   With all the enormous wealth in our nation, we really can do something   
   about poverty – as well as the overall economic morass that continues   
   to plague not just the unemployed, or those working two or three jobs,   
   and flipping hamburgers in Main Street towns and cities from coast to   
   coast.   
      
   Nurses have a solution. Everyone deserves a good job at living wages,   
   guaranteed healthcare for all based on patient need, not on ability to   
   pay, and equal access to quality education. And now, with cuts to   
   social security on the table, and despite the push by some politicians   
   in Washington and many state capitals to enact more austerity programs   
   on already hard-hit communities, there is a simple way to keep anti-   
   poverty programs in place and pay for them.   
      
   A modest tax Wall Street on speculation, embodied in HR 6411, authored   
   by Representative Keith Ellison, could generate up to $350bn every   
   year, an amount that could save over 1.7m homes from foreclosure, or   
   finance 9m new jobs at current average wage levels. Or it could fund   
   the food plans of 24m families of four for a year, or lift all 3.8m   
   female-headed households out of poverty for nearly a decade.   
   Increasingly, the "Other America" is becoming all of us. It is up to   
   all of us to end this disgrace.   
      
   COMMENTS: The problem lies not just with the 1%, but with the top 20%   
   who do not care about the poor. I know a lot of these people and they   
   "care" about social issues in an abstract way and all buy into the   
   lesser of two evils position. Few of them do any actual work to help   
   the poor. These people occupy our state assemblies, district   
   attorney's offices, city councils, and mayor's offices. They do the   
   work of the very rich at the local level. These people also occupy the   
   management positions everywhere - including academia, the non-profits,   
   and the liberal and progressive organizations. They are the "winners."   
   They are "realistic" and are simply "playing the game." They are all   
   doing the work of the very rich - regardless of what they profess as   
   their "beliefs" or "philosophies" - by preserving, promoting and   
   defending the system that creates and supports the very rich.   
      
   The attacks on SSI, Medicare and all the rest of what is perceived as   
   the so called Social Safety net have nothing to do with the deficit,   
   never has. That's not the pt. by focusing on them the focus is taken   
   away from those elements of the system that are causing the deficits,   
   like the bloated Defense and Intell. sectors of the Gov't and the   
   endless Corp. subsidies and tax breaks that have gutted the Gov'ts tax   
   base. What the 1% want is for the rest of us to fund their game and   
   they wants left of the Safety net to be part of this funding. That's   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)