Poverty

The Week of Walking Backwards

Leo Gerard — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 10:01:36 -0400

As the Occupy Wall Street movement spread across the nation last week, politicians in D.C. flipped the bird at protesters – including those camping in Washington’s McPherson Square.

Here’s how: While occupiers sought political focus on the unemployment, impoverishment and foreclosures suffered by the nation’s non-rich 99 percent, politicians considered three major pieces of legislation and passed only the one that will help the wealthiest 1 percent and hurt the remaining 99 percent.

Senate Republicans murdered-by-filibuster the American Jobs Act, which would surtax the 1 percent to provide jobs for the 99 percent. The Senate did pass the currency manipulation bill, but House GOP leaders refused to schedule a vote on the measure that would protect jobs for the 99 percent by punishing countries that undervalue their currencies to artificially lower prices on their exports.

By contrast, both houses of Congress adopted the so-called Free Trade Agreements with Panama, Colombia and Korea, which will, just like their predecessor NAFTA, destroy jobs held by the 99 percent.

It’s incredible. Inexplicable. Inexcusable. In a country where joblessness is a painful 9.1 percent. Where one in five children lives in poverty. Where foreclosures rose again last month. Where a whole movement is growing to protest the appeasement of the rich at the cost of the middle class. In that place, Congress chose to walk backwards. It didn’t take two steps forward – which it could have by passing the currency bill and jobs act. No. It just took a giant step backward by embracing job-killing trade agreements.

It all forces the 99 percent to demand even more loudly: Where’s the jobs?

WHERE’S THE JOBS?

Either the Occupy Wall Street protesters aren’t loud enough or the politicians in Washington refuse to listen. It’s not just street demonstrators who politicians can’t seem to hear. Poll after poll has shown Americans’ first priority, their major concern is jobs.

Yet when President Obama proposes the American Jobs Act, a measure that would create 1.9 million jobs and ease taxes on the middle class and small businesses, Republicans in the Senate rebuff it. If the majority ruled, the jobs act would have passed the Senate with 51 Democrats in favor. But in the Senate, the GOP stops all action by requiring 60 votes to end their filibusters. They talk and talk and talk. And Americans who need jobs get nothing.

Where’s the jobs?

Amazingly, in a city frozen by political gridlock, the Senate passed with bipartisan support the currency manipulation bill. The legislation would make it easier for the United States to punish market-distorting currency undervaluing by imposing tariffs. The measure is crucial to stop what now seems an inexorable rise in the U.S. trade deficit with China, which continuously kills American manufacturing and jobs.

Last month that deficit rose to a record $28.96 billion, an increase of $2 billion over one month’s time. Over the past decade, 57,000 U.S. factories have closed and 6 million jobs have disappeared, with deliberate currency undervaluing by China a major factor. Though employment rose overall last month, the nation lost 13,000 good-paying manufacturing jobs.

The currency manipulation bill has 225 co-signers in the House, more than the majority it needs to pass. But Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner has said he will not permit the chamber to vote on it. He will thwart an attempt to end the practice that is destroying American jobs – even though Republicans in both the House and Senate support it.

Where’s the jobs, Boehner?

Then Congress passed the Free Trade Agreements. Despite the incessant claims that the three will create “tens of thousands of jobs,” it’s clear that they won’t because simultaneously Congress finally renewed the lapsed Trade Adjustment Assistance for workers who lose their jobs as a result of free trade.

Here’s what the New York Times said about the agreements and jobs:

“Economists generally predict that free trade agreements, which eliminate tariffs and other policies aimed at protecting domestic manufacturers, benefit all participating nations by creating a larger common market, increasing sales and reducing prices. But such deals also create clear losers, as workers lose well-paid jobs to foreign competition.”

The United States can’t afford to lose any more manufacturing jobs. Yet it is projected that these agreements will particularly damage the U.S. textile, electronics and auto supply industries.

Again and again, politicians told Americans that NAFTA would create hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs. It did the opposite. Why would something different occur with these three copycat deals?

Where’s the jobs?

This is what the Times editorial board said about Republicans:

“The Republicans offer no actual economic plans, only tired slogans about cutting regulations and spending, and ending health care reform. The party seems content to run out the clock on Mr. Obama’s term while doing very little. On Tuesday, Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, accused Republicans of trying to “suffocate the economy” in hopes that the pain would work to their political advantage. They are doing little to refute that charge.”

As the Occupy Wall Street movement has shown, America can’t wait. The middle class needs help now.

Where’s the jobs?

Social Security COLA Cut Will Drive Single, African American Women Seniors Into Poverty

Daniel Marans — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 14:56:21 -0400

Views expressed are those of the author, and do not reflect the views of Social Security Works or the Strengthen Social Security Campaign.

The chained CPI, a Social Security COLA cut on the table in deficit talks between the President and Republicans, could dramatically worsen poverty among unmarried senior African American women. As such, it violates the request of major progressive organizations in a letter to the White House and Congressional leaders to “make sure that deficit reduction is achieved in a way that does not increase poverty.”

According to the National Women’s Law Center’s analysis of Current Population Survey data, in their report on how the chained CPI would affect women, the median annual Social Security benefit for a 65-year-old single African American woman is $10,680. (By contrast, the median benefit for all single senior women is $13,200.)

That puts the median benefit for African American woman seniors just above the 2010 poverty line for individual seniors, which is an obscenely low $10,458.

Which brings us to the chained CPI (consumer price index), an obscure change to the COLA formula that would cut benefits more with each passing year. If the chained CPI were adopted, by age 70—after just five years of collecting Social Security benefits—the median benefit for African American single women seniors would dip below the poverty line, and continue on a downward spiral as those women age, cutting nearly $1,000 by the time they reach age 95.

Click here for a jpg of the graph above.

This in itself does not mean that the chained CPI would push many senior African American women into poverty. But according to SSA (Social Security Administration) data nearly half—45.6 percent—of non-married African Americans aged 65 older rely on Social Security for all of their income; 54.1 percent rely on it for 90 percent of their income or more.

Taken together, however, these two pieces of information—that the median benefit would go below the poverty level for non-married African American women, and that a near-majority of non-married elderly African Americans rely on Social Security for all of their income—lead to the conclusion that the chained CPI would lead to an increase in poverty among elderly African Americans.

What is more, the fact that the chained CPI’s cuts increase as beneficiaries age will be especially harmful to African American women, who live longer than African American men. Life expectancy for African American women at age 65 is 83, compared with 79 for African American men.

Worst of all, non-married African American women seniors already suffer from high rates of poverty and near-poverty. According to the Census’s Current Population Survey, nearly half—47.8 percent—of African American women living alone have an income under 125 percent of poverty, and one-third—33 percent—have income below 100 percent of the poverty line.

At least two of the progressive organizations that signed the letter to the White House and Congressional leaders asking that deficit reduction not harm the poor—the Center for American Progress (CAP) and the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities (CBPP)—are on the record supporting a switch to the chained CPI COLA cut. (See here and here for evidence of CAP’s and CBPP’s support for the measure, respectively.) Given those groups’ specific commitment to deficit reduction that does not “increase poverty,” perhaps they should reconsider their support for the chained CPI—at least as it is applied to Social Security.

Of course, any changes to Social Security will have no effect of deficit reduction, because Social Security cannot contribute a penny to the deficit. But if implemented as part of a “deficit reduction” deal, the chained CPI is, at the very least, purported "deficit reduction," that has the effect of increasing poverty.

White House Budget Extends Lifeline to the Disabled

Daniel Marans — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 13:36:12 -0500

In yet another sign that the White House has taken to championing Social Security, the new budget would add $1 billion in funding for the Social Security Administration to help reduce Social Security’s disability claims backlog.

Here is the relevant excerpt from the President’s budget (p. 163):

The President believes that all Americans should have the opportunity to retire with dignity. To fund this commitment, the President’s Budget includes $12.5 billion for SSA operations; an increase of $1 billion above 2010 to keep the President’s commitment to reduce the backlog of disability claims. The Budget also reflects the need to find areas for cost savings wherever possible. Accordingly, the Budget includes funding to more effectively and efficiently process thousands of continuing disability reviews to enhance program integrity for long-term savings, and supports disability pilot programs to help ensure that only successful and cost-effective programs are implemented.

Currently, there is a 514-day waiting period just to get a hearing for Disability Insurance benefits. The result is that millions of disabled Americans who need Social Security to survive are denied its benefits. The President’s funding increase will no doubt ease their pain, and bring us closer to making the disability claims process efficient and fair.

The House Republicans’ Continuing Resolution proposal, by contrast, would reduce the Social Security Administration's funding from 2010 levels by $625 million.

Deficit Hawk Hypocrisy: Proposed Social Security "Reform" Would Devastate the Poorest

Daniel Marans — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 17:47:38 -0500

If you thought you were done hearing about Washington’s favorite budget hawk duo, think again. The Bowles-Simpson saga continues. A few months ago, when Fiscal Commission Co-Chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson released their Social Security proposal, even their worst critics conceded that the plan would improve benefits for the very poorest. At the time, however, many of us were skeptical that benefits could be significantly improved at such a low cost. Sadly, our worst fears have been confirmed: the Bowles-Simpson proposal’s so-called benefit increases for the poorest are merely window dressing for massive benefit cuts. According to a new analysis by the Chief Actuary of the Social Security Administration, the Bowles-Simpson proposal would reduce benefits by as much as $1,107 (16%) for 60% of “Very Low” earners, those workers with average annual earnings of around $10,800. Click here to see a graph of the benefit cuts prepared by Social Security Works, or check it out below.

The findings contradict the claims of Fiscal Commission Co-Chairs, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson that their plan would do more to “reduce poverty among the very poorest.” (The Moment of Truth, p. 43) In fact, it was a central component of their public-relations campaign. They were using our own principles against us by goading us to oppose changes in Social Security that would help the poor. They tried to “out-progressive” progressives, claiming we cared less about the poor than they did.

And for a while their strategy seemed to be working. Never mind that making the program more redistributive would radically transform Social Security from a wage-insurance program to a welfare plan, ultimately hurting the poor the most by pitting the middle class against them. Making the minimum benefit more adequate has been a longtime goal of advocates with the low-income community. Some liberals were privately asking, If the Bowles-Simpson proposal, or something like it, were to be shoved down our throats come hell-or-high water, would “sweeteners” like the enhanced special minimum benefit make it more palatable?

Now we can safely put those doubts to rest. The facts have come to the rescue. There is nothing redeeming left in the Bowles-Simpson plan. It is all pain and no gain.

Contrary to previous estimates, the Bowles-Simpson proposal would reduce benefits by as much as $1,107 (16%) for 60% of “Very Low” earners, those workers with average annual earnings of around $10,800, the SSA analysis reveals. The benefit cuts result from the strict work history requirements of two key provisions in the Bowles-Simpson proposal: the Hardship Exemption and the enhanced special minimum benefit. Because 60% of $10,800 earners have fewer than 25 years of “covered” earnings, they would be ineligible for both.

The Hardship Exemption would exempt low-wage workers earning up to 250% of the poverty level from the proposed increase in the retirement ages. But workers would need at least 25 years of earnings covered under Social Security to qualify for it. And it is precisely the poorest workers who are least likely to have those kinds of long work histories in the formal economy. Many of these workers have childcare responsibilities, suffer from poor health and long-term unemployment, or work in off-the-books jobs, so it is much harder for them to accumulate 25 years in “covered earnings.” The condition would fall particularly hard on single mothers and disabled workers. Those 60% of $10,800 earners who fail to make the cut would have to work longer for less in return. What is especially egregious in forcing them to retire later is that the poorest workers often work in physically demanding jobs, and live significantly shorter than the rest of the population.

The enhanced special minimum benefit would provide workers’ whose benefits leave them below the poverty line with benefits that amount to 125% of the federal poverty level. But workers would need 30 years of “covered” earnings to qualify for the full special minimum benefit. For every year less than 30 that a worker has in “covered” earnings, the benefit would be reduced by 5%. If the regular benefit is higher than the special minimum, the worker would get whichever is higher. The special minimum stops being more generous at about 25 years of earnings, leaving 60% of $10,800 earners back at a poverty-level benefit. Worse still, the old benefit would be reduced by the Bowles-Simpson proposal’s cuts to the COLA, and increases in the retirement age.

The moral of the story is simple. Be wary of deficit hawks that try to hide behind progressive rhetoric. We can and should fight for improvements in the adequacy of Social Security benefits for the poorest and most vulnerable. But we should do it for its own sake, not in the context of looking for ways to cut the program. When squeezing Social Security for budget savings is your primary goal and improving its adequacy is secondary at best, there is a built-in incentive to use watered-down and ineffective policies to make across-the-board cuts seem smaller and less harmful than they really are.

Cold-Blooded: Grandma Souljah, Felon-Friendly Cuts, And Other Austerity Horrors

Richard Eskow — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 01:14:49 -0500

Slasher-Movie Economics

A vicious, savage, axe-wielding killer stalks the political landscape, yearning to draw blood, slash victims, and amputate limbs. That's not my description of austerity economics - that's how its fans talk about it.

"Austerity" is defined as "the trait of great self-denial (especially refraining from worldly pleasures)." Austerity economics, on the other hand, is the practice of denying others things that they need while at the same time ensuring your own continued privilege and comfort. This practice is usually accompanied by a round of self-congratulation for showing such courage and discipline. Its usually sinister spell has seduced Republicans into aiding and abetting felons with budget cuts that would make them de facto accomplices to a thousand crimes. And what the president's about to do will literally send chills down a million spines.

Anne Applebaum nearly worked herself into a case of the vapors when Austerians got elected in Great Britain, when she palpitatingly repeated the phrases used by journalists there to describe the new government's budget. The new British leaders, said journalists, were "axe-wielders" who were inflicting "vicious," "savage," and "swingeing (sic) cuts." (Is that what "bangers and mash" really means?)

"Articles about the nation's finances are filled with talk of blood, knives, and amputation," Applebaum gushed, before adding enviously: "And the British love it." What does she do for relaxation, watch autopsies? (We discussed Applebaum and other austerity-fetishist pundits in greater length here.) Vicious, savage, amputating, bloody cuts. Why do Brits get all the fun?

They don't - not anymore. While Ms. Applebaum takes a cold shower, let's take a walk through an austerity-haunted nation, where terror lurks behind every policy proposal and your best friend might turn out to be your worst enemy.

I wish I were joking.

Felony Friday: The New Republicans' Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card For Criminals

Tony Montana, this is your lucky day! The fictional drug czar Al Pacino played in Scarface would love the list of cuts that Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee just proposed. They range from the needlessly vengeful (why focus on eliminating a tiny amount like $2 million from the Minority Business Development Agency - just to keep 'em in their place?) to the potentially catastrophic.

Case in point: Why cut thirty million dollars, an insignificant amount in overall budget terms, from the fund for "Flood Control and Coastal Emergencies"? According to the National Oceanographic and Aeronautical Administration (NOAA), damage from coastal floods and storms costs an average $11.4 billion per year, which is nearly four hundred times as much as the cuts would save. NOAA also reports that there's a roughly 1-in-20 chance of a fifty billion dollar event occurring in any given year. In what alternate universe does it make sense to cut thirty million dollars from a fund that helps reduce costs of much greater magnitude, and which helps save lives in the bargain? Good thing NOAA is there to collect the data we need to plan for future disasters.

Oh, wait. They want to cut three hundred and thirty-six million dollars from NOAA, too.

This is exactly the kind of anti-government thinking that gave us Katrina and "heck of a job, Brownie." The other cuts on the list are pretty disastrous, too, but it's the "Tony Montoya cuts" that really caught my eye: $74 million from the FBI. $256 million from "State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance." $600 million from COPS, another program that gives grants for state and local policing. And more than half a billion from the IRS. That won't just help tax cheats and money launderers. It will also impede the government's ability to collect much larger amounts in revenue than these cuts will save, resulting in a bigger deficit than ever.

The Republicans even want to cut $330 million from the Treasury Forfeiture Fund, which isn't even an expense item. It's revenue. That's the fund that administers all the assets seized by U.S. Customs, the Secret Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), the IRS Criminal Investigation unit, and the Coast Guard. Watch some old Miami Vice episodes if you want to picture the sorts of things they collect during a smuggling bust or drug raid: cash, yachts, cars, planes - even the long, sleek "Cigarette" boats that Don Johnson somehow managed to drive at full speed without getting a single drop of water on the rolled-up sleeves of those pastel Armani jackets.

What are they going to do with all that stuff: Give it back?

Oh - they want to cut the budget for "food safety and inspection services," too. Want some fries with that e. coli?

Grandma Souljah

We are all Sistah Souljah now - especially you, Mom.

Sistah Souljah was the rapper and writer against whom Bill Clinton "triangulated" so successfully in 1992. Democratic Senators, including Dick Durbin and Kent Conrad, seemed to invoke the same spirit when they met with their Republican counterparts this week for a budget-cutting party. That led to some nostalgia for the welfare cuts that Clinton "successly" supported four years later.

These Democrats are pushing hard to revive the economically discredited and wildly unpopular Simpson/Bowles deficit reduction proposals - a set of suggestions which Politico, like so many others, mistakenly describes as "the recommendations of last year's presidential debt commission." (The Commission was deadlocked and failed to issue any recommendations.)

Digby highlighted an important passage in the Politico piece, about proposals that include Draconian cuts to Social Security: "For Obama it could be the equivalent of Bill Clinton's famous welfare reform deal -- only on steroids." Even worse, now there's a report that President Obama is doubling down on the "Grandma Souljah" strategy by slashing the energy assistance fund for low-income people (from $5.1 billion to its 2008 level of $2.57 billion.) The Administration's arguing that energy costs are down from their 2008 highs, but this isn't a bloated program and oil costs won't stay lowered. Poverty has reached record highs in this country - largely thanks to the executives that the President so assiduously courted at the Chamber of Commerce last week - so more people need fuel assistance.

Maybe this is another front in the "welfare reform on steroids" war, to use Politico's phrase. Cutting fuel subsidies to 2008 levels would accomplish several goals for the White House: It would further distance it from core Democratic values, allow it to triangulate against the nation's poor (many of whom are also elderly), and enable it to slavishly mimic Republican rhetoric yet another time. (That's an accomplishment that seems increasingly precious to the Administration.)

Incidentally, common side effects of steroids include increased and uncontrollable aggressiveness, acne, high blood pressure, hair loss, and shrinkage of the testicles.

Whatever you thought of Clinton-era "welfare reform" - I didn't think much of it - its perceived popularity came from the fact that many white Americans continue to think that welfare recipients are different, frightening, undeserving - the Other. It's madness to think that Social Security cuts will be equally popular with those voters, since most of the folks on the receiving end of those cuts are people who seem just like themselves - and who, in fact, will be themselves someday. What's more, voters will remember that they've paid for those benefits all their lives, so it's absurd to expect that they'll think of themselves as "undeserving." Poll after poll has confirmed that the public opposes Social Security cuts by enormous majorities.

And in a nation where nearly two-thirds of the public thinks that the Federal government doesn't do enough to fight poverty, Obama's move to cut oil assistance for poor people isn't just cynical. It's also politically foolish. Cutting fuel subsidies? Even Mubarak backed down from that idea.

Confidence Man

This has been coming for a long time. According to a Reuters report, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said that "a deal between Republicans and Democrats at the end of last year to extend tax cuts helped spark more confidence among (business) firms." That deal will add $700 billion to the Federal deficit (and more than half of its benefits will accrue to the richest 5% of Americans.) But wait ... Secretary Geithner said last August that the private sector needs to be given "confidence" that "the United States (will) cut its deficits over time." So which is it? Does confidence go up when the deficit is reduced, or when it's increased?

Back in 2009 Geithner joked about being a "fiscal hawk" while adding that "the President explicitly rejects (emphasis mine) the notion that Social Security is an untouchable politically ..." And while the Administration has insisted that its Social Security "reforms" would only be used to stabilize the program itself, the Administration's decision to suspend Social Security payroll taxes blurred the line between Social Security and general taxation for the first time in history. The Simpson/Bowles plan actually cuts taxes for the wealthy and for corporations, supposedly in the name of "deficit reduction," while at the same time slashing Social Security benefits.

This is Bizarro-World economics, the exact opposite of what's needed. Studies show that the wealthy will save most of their newfound riches, while Social Security beneficiaries will spend most of their benefits. It would have made much more economic sense to end tax breaks for the rich and use the money to give Social Security recipients a multi-hundred-billion dollar benefit increase instead.

It's not too late to do something sensible. Any government program that provides income to lower- and middle-income people will lead to increased consumer spending. That, in turn, is the only thing that will persuade US businesses to release the two trillion dollars of cash they're holding, which they'll need to hire new employees and purchase raw materials to meet the increased demand.

More consumer spending = more jobs = more growth = real confidence. We should jump-start job growth now and deal with the deficit later. (The taxes paid by all those newly-employed workers will help with that.)

Cold-Blooded

To be fair, Geithner went to the World Economic Forum at Davos and tried to hold back the pack of well-heeled wolves that's always baying for deficit reduction - except, of course, when deficit reduction is against the pack's self-interest. So let's give him points for nerve, and for fighting the good fight on behalf of short-term stimulus spending while he was there. But Geithner's "confidence" logic is pretzel-shaped. And neither President Obama nor Senators Durbin and Conrad will thrive, either politically or morally, by deploying a "welfare reform on steroids" plan against their own people.

Perhaps Geithner, the President, and these Senate Dems see themselves as the last line of defense against the real fiscal zealots, making deals with devils to ease the suffering of the angels. But there's a time for peace, as Ecclesiastes says - and, as he does not say, a time to open up a can of common-sense economic whup-ass on your political opponents. Instead these Democrats are repeating right-wing talking points with so much fervor that it's increasingly hard to tell if they're defending us from the killer, or if we're in that scene from Scream where we find out the killer is more than one person.

Feinting to the right doesn't seem like a smart strategy for Democrats, since it means alienating their core voters while abandoning popular programs. But if they insist on making "bipartisan" gestures or want to act like they're having a Sistah Souljah moment, then hey: knock yourselves out. Problem is, they don't seem to be acting. They're reading their lines with a little too much conviction. Maybe they should remember Tony Montoya's famous rule: Don't get high from your own supply.

People could freeze to death next winter. There's a killer afoot, all right - a misguided economic fad that's could have deadly consequences. Republicans no longer feel they need to hide their lust for killing government with the death of a thousand cuts. And something has gone seriously wrong inside the Beltway when so many Democrats can convince themselves that their path back to popularity lies in cutting Social Security and leaving poor people freezing in the dark.

That's not just horsesh*t. It's horsesh*t on steroids.

This post was produced as part of the Curbing Wall Street project and the Strengthen Social Security campaign.

Homelessness & Lack of Love in the U.S.A.

Meri C — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 02:06:08 -0500

Got inspired after leaving a comment on Sara Robinson's blog (OurFuture.org), so I thought I'd submit my own story, as embarrassed (and vulnerable) it may leave me. My story is so long, though, that I’ve divided it into two blogs. (I also have another blog at www.theMadBagLady.wordpress.com).

First, I've made a documentary film, "Rocky Mountain Homelessness" and written a book, "Diary of a Mad Bag Lady" in an effort to turn my own financial struggles into art—tragedy into triumph, if you will. But my documentary is controversial. I didn’t realize how dangerous it is to suggest that we help the poor. Those who hold power right now do not want us to help each other, but they do want those of us who are poor to complacently stay that way—and to just shut up already. Or else.

Poverty, I’ve discovered, is largely orchestrated. Yes, I’m telling you that it is, in fact, a conspiracy. Poverty does not result from a lack of natural resources or lack of knowledge or lack of a work ethic on the part of its victims. Poverty results from the greed of a wealthy few who’ve decided they must monopolize and hoard the wealth while they prevent the rest of us from attaining it. Why? Because they believe they are inherently superior and deserve more than the rest of us. In order to maintain that belief they must keep the rest of us in poverty.

Think I’m just a wacky conspiracy theorist? Then explain to me how it is that the richest country in the world, i.e., the U.S.A., a land that holds plenty of resources, is experiencing poverty and homelessness that is rising at an alarming rate? And this while the richest Americans continue to get richer?

When I say that homelessness is only a Hobsons' choice at best, that no one truly chooses to be homeless, I hear remarks such as these: "Some homeless people won't stay in the shelter. Those who are mentally ill refuse to take their medication. Alcoholics refuse to stop drinking. The homeless guy I met yesterday said he liked being homeless,” etc. But my favorite line is the story of the rich lady who chose not to live in her beautiful house but to live in a homeless shelter instead because all of her friends live there... It’s the old, “They were rich but unhappy,” lie that is retold every now and then. As though living in abject poverty would make them happier. (If that’s the case, then why do the rich keep complaining about paying taxes? They could just give up all of their money to the IRS then live in poverty and experience true “happiness.”)

But back to the homeless who refuse to stay in shelters: It doesn't occur to some people that staying in a shelter is not something anyone in their right mind would want to do. A shelter is not an ideal place to stay. Institutionalized settings, in general, are not ideal, even under the best of circumstances. We all like to be able to choose our own lifestyle, without having to cow to an authority figure at a shelter--or any other institution. And few of us would like to share a room with 50 or more strangers, some of whom might be drunk, mentally ill or potentially violent. Shelters, by definition, are temporary places to stay during a storm. While shelters may be necessary to help those who are stranded out in the cold, they are, by no means solutions to homelessness. Shelters are temporary band-aids provided until we come to a real, permanent solution to the problem. (Like affordable housing and living-wage jobs, for example. Duh!)

Similarly, medication is not always the solution to mental illness. If a mentally ill client refuses to take the medication then perhaps we should ask ourselves whether that medication is truly helping the person rather than insist our treatment has to be right and the patient must be wrong. Perhaps it is time we seek alternative treatments for mental illness rather than continue to force medication on someone who clearly does not feel it is helping him or her. (I don’t think the pharmaceutical industry would be very supportive of this idea, but those of us who’d like to help the homeless find it intriguing.)

But we cannot come up with innovative ideas, we cannot see the flaws in our system, if we continue to blame the homeless by claiming they "choose" to be homeless. The pharmaceutical industry has hijacked our health care system to the extent that even doctors, as educated as they are, cannot see alternative solutions for mental (and other forms of) illness. The drug reigns supreme!

So my documentary (and my book) is controversial because it challenges Americans to recognize major flaws in our system and, therefore, in ourselves! Turns out, the U.S.A. is not the greatest country in the world, and we Americans are not such nice people after all. Let's face it. We have become a nation of self-centered, materialistic, imperialistic, rugged individualists who seek out money and material things that we value more than we value the future of our own children, our society, and the world around us.

I wish I had a dime (Brother, can you spare one? I won't spend it on drugs, I promise.) for every time I've heard a fellow American say, "I don't want to pay for someone else's healthcare by seeing my taxes increase."
(Really, America? So you’ll allow millions of people to get sick and spread disease because they can’t afford medical treatment? You’ll allow thousands of maladies to turn into permanent disabilities for those who don’t get proper treatment on time so that people become no longer able to work and forced to collect disability from the government instead? Won’t that ultimately raise your precious taxes? Won’t that hurt our society as fewer people are able to contribute? Ah, but I’m asking you to think here. I’m sorry…)

(By the way, if I sound like I’m angry at my fellow American, it’s probably just because I am. I think, therefore, I am.)

And while many Americans fear "socialism" they should really be afraid of its demise. When we find our once public roads, sidewalks, parks, schools, fire and police departments, social security and Medicare benefits, and tap water privatized we'll be paying a lot more than high taxes. Imagine paying a toll just to be able to walk down the street or to take a bath. And we can just say ‘goodbye’ to freedom of speech when the sidewalks are all privately owned.

Americans are worried that they're being "taken advantage of" if they give a dollar to a homeless person or if their tax dollars pay for some poor slob's welfare, Medicaid or food stamp benefits. But these same Americans are happy to pay $100 for a pair of sneakers manufactured for pennies by a ten-year-old child being exploited in some third world country factory. Americans are happy to pay for every song they want to hear on mp3 and every movie they watch on DVD when there was a time, not so long ago, when we could listen to songs on the radio and watch movies on TV for free and record music and TV shows and watch or listen to them over and over again at our leisure for free. Ah, but the entertainment industry is struggling, we’re told. Right. I just read that Tom Cruise averages only about $60 million per film. Poor guy! How dare we “steal” his films by videotaping them and watching them for free. Meanwhile, Steven Speilberg earns a mere $100 million per year. (Really, I had to count the zeroes twice to make sure.)

But we’re not being taken advantage of when we’re threatened with an FBI warning at the beginning of our DVD that if we copy it or share it on the Internet or otherwise, we’re “stealing” and we could go to jail. We’re not being taken advantage of when we’re asked to spend $10 just for a small bag of popcorn and sodapop at a movie theater.

Oh no.

We’re being taken advantage of by the “welfare queen” who collects a few hundred dollars a month and lives in substandard housing in a high-crime, heavily polluted area and is criticized for staying at home with her children and actually trying to raise them rather than just neglecting them by going out and “getting a job.”

Or a homeless person shivering in the cold begging us for a dollar.

If we reject the idea that homeless people choose to be homeless (or that poor people have made the wrong choices) then we open the door to all sorts of solutions. Why does that guy refuse to stay in the shelter? Is there a way we can provide better housing or services for him? Why does this able-bodied citizen stay on welfare? Why won't she get a job? Is there a way we can find her a job that she'd actually love, a job that makes good use of her natural talents and skills, a job that pays a decent, living wage replete with health care benefits, a job that will lead her to a better life and not just temporarily sustain her?

Or how about this: Can this person who refuses to take the medication or to stop drinking or abusing drugs be helped in some new way we haven't thought of yet? Can we investigate other solutions for those who obviously aren't being helped by the solutions we've proposed so far?

Of course the answer is yes, but we won't ask the above questions until we recognize that what we are doing is just not working. Republicans like to talk about individual responsibility. But there is also such a thing as social responsibility, the responsibility we have to each other as humans sharing the same planet.

Again, much of this comes down to money. The government has been budget cutting programs and services for the poor since Ronald Reagan. People who work with the poor are increasingly finding themselves overwhelmed and unable to truly help in any real and lasting way. It must be painful to watch people suffer and to feel powerless to help them. So I suppose it’s easier to just give up and say, “Ah, those homeless people just want to live that way.”

But part of our disdain for the poor, and particularly the homeless, is a result of something more sinister. As a nation we’ve lost our ability to feel empathy and compassion for those who are less fortunate. We’ve become a nation of sociopaths.

And, in the end, that is our biggest problem.

Highway Robbery and the Progressive Future

Zach Carter — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 09:27:33 -0500

Kevin Drum gives a pretty thorough analysis of President Obama’s open assault on the mainstream Democratic Party at yesterday’s press conference, and declares that “programmatic liberalism is dead.” I think that’s more than a little exaggerated, but regardless, it’s not a fair description of the policies at stake in Obama’s lousy tax deal. The tax deal is fundamentally about whether the United States still believes it has a basic commitment to protect its most vulnerable citizens from harm. For so basic an intuition to be the subject of political negotiation should be abhorrent to anybody of any ideological stripe in today’s United States. The deal is not a signal of strength or weakness on the left or the right, it is a symbol of rank political cynicism.

Protecting the most vulnerable members of society is not a liberal idea. It is the basic moral intuition of every philosophical and religious tradition but two: cruel interpretations of Friederich Nietzsche, and a brand of libertarianism far more radical than anything in contemporary American politics. Republicans were threatening to cut off unemployment benefits and a poverty tax credit for families with children. Let me emphasize: poverty relief for children.

These policies should never, ever be the subject of political negotiation. Obama could have raised a fuss, he could have publicly shamed his adversaries for threatening a basic moral building block of a decent society. Instead, he offered absurd giveaways to the rich that have not only been the ire of “the professional left,” but of the mainstream Democratic Party for almost a decade. Nearly every Democrat in Congress is now wondering if a primary challenge will be the result of support for this deal. And Obama now has the gall to chastise “the left” for being outraged.

A decent society takes care of its poor. Committing to conservative political thinking does not require one to believe that the poor should suffer for no reason. The number of poor families in the United States has gone up dramatically during the worst recession since the Great Depression, just as the number of unemployed parents has skyrocketed. These problems are caused by major structural economic problems, not by laziness or recklessness on the part of families (and even if it were only the result of laziness or recklessness, a decent society would not take that out on the children of the lazy and reckless). Amid mass poverty, any policymaker should support poverty relief.

This is a moral intuition even more fundamental than the commitment to equality of opportunity—the root belief that a decent society does not let its members endure extreme suffering needlessly. It is not egalitarian, it is not Marxist, it is not socialist, it is not liberal. It is just something a decent society does. It can be described with economic language, but it is not fundamentally an economic problem, unless short-term poverty relief somehow results in total economic calamity. Needless to say, the United States faces no such crisis from aiding its poor.

But Obama did not make this case. He didn’t even try. He entered a room with Republican leaders, and returned to declare they had been given everything they wanted.

Shortly before the deal was announced, Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story of The New York Times ran a numbers on how the Bush tax cuts affect Wall Street bonuses. For every $1 million in bonus payouts, they calculated, the Bush tax cuts allow Wall Streeters keep an additional $40,000 to $50,000 in income.

The price Republicans demanded for allowing the United States to participate in the basic moral foundation of every decent society the world over was $40,000 for every $1 million in Wall Street bonuses. That should be appalling to liberals and conservatives alike, and a President who does not go to the mat to shame his opponents under such circumstances is bound to lose respect among his followers.

Via a link to a prior post, Kevin defines “programmatic liberalism” as the Progressive Era of 1911 – 1919, the New Deal of the 1930s, and the 1960s. All of these involved significant restructurings of the United States government and its institutions. This is not the sort of thing under discussion in the tax debate. Not even close.

“Should the poor be sustained?” Is a much different question than, “Is it the proper jurisdiction of government to regulate X given recent events?” All kinds of ideological issues can play into regulatory questions. But for quite literally centuries, there has been a broad moral consensus about the right of the poor to live (this glosses over racism and sexism, of course). The “professional left” is not demanding new institutions or government functions. It’s demanding that our society actually be a society.

And so Obama’s assault on what he called “purist” and “sanctimonious” left cannot be viewed as anything but outrageous. MoveOn and DailyKos and FireDogLake are not actually demanding leftist positions on tax policy—their opponents are threatening outright brutality, and the President of the United States is not seriously challenging those threats. Obama’s willingness to capitulate does reveal the man’s fundamental human compassion—but it also portends serious dangers. The next major negotiation, as Matt Yglesias and Mike Konczal have emphasized, will be over raising the federal debt ceiling. If it is not raised, the United States will have no choice but to default on its debt, and the global economy will collapse. If Obama is willing to throw up the Bush tax cuts to preserve the basic moral foundation of society, then he will certainly offer anything to prevent mere economic Armageddon. With this deal, the President has signaled that whenever a difficult choice arrives, he will roll over.

Here’s a leftist tax position: restore tax rates on millionaires to Johnson-era levels of 90 percent, and use that money to guarantee free college education for the children of families earning less than $50,000 a year. Nobody on the “professional left” is demanding that right now. We’re demanding that the basic functioning of society not be ransomed away in the name of bigger bonuses, and that negotiations over economic and tax policy not allow the most vulnerable members of society to be used as bargaining chips.

So perhaps this is what Kevin means. Now that a Democratic president is willing to cave on negotiations about the moral foundation of society, liberals cannot hope for serious economic progress for several decades. I see things otherwise. Two years ago, pundits were forecasting the end of conservatism as it has been practiced for 30 years. “Liberal” thought is not dead. Our president is simply ineffective.

The Lame Direction of the Lame Duck

Deepak Bhargava — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 11:50:09 -0500

Nearly 2 million U.S. workers are facing premature elimination of federally-funded unemployment benefits if Congress doesn't act by November 30. Yet the talk dominating Washington, D.C. these days is about extending George Bush's tax giveaway to the rich. Really?

It's not difficult to figure out why Washington pays attention to the needs of special interests and the wealthy while ignoring the needs of ordinary Americans. Washington is not a mere reflection of the larger inequalities in our society; it's an amplification of that inequality.

Start with the recently released study about who is in Congress: rich people. Of the 535 members of Congress, nearly half of them - 261 - are millionaires. And of these congressional millionaires, 55 had an average calculated wealth of $10 million or more in 2009, with eight in the $100 million-plus range.

And who influences D.C.? Consider that since 2008, the insurance lobby has spent $1 billion dollars trying to make sure profits keep getting priority over people in our health care system (Health Care Profiteers: A Billion-Dollar Lobby.) And that's just health care. If we add in the hundreds of millions spent by Wall Street trying to avoid regulation, keep their tax loppholes and get big bailouts, and the big oil interests who succeeded in blocking green energy jobs the numbers are staggering.

The resulting disregard for the well being of working Americans, reflected in the imminent lapse of unemployment benefits, is at the root of America's economic predicament. For the past 30 years, most of the benefits of economic growth have been held by a small group at the top of the ladder.

The solutions of the past can't be our roadmap out of this economic crisis. Our economy will not grow strong with millions of people economically insecure and living on the edge. Continuing unemployment benefits isn't luxury spending, this is necessary spending we must make not only keeps millions of Americans from despair, but place priority on the values of mutual security, equity and interdependence and injects crucial money into a sputtering economy.

On the other hand, extending tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans would do little to benefit most workers and would do a lot to increase the deficit. An extension of the Bush era tax cuts for the top 2 percent of income earners would cost $700 billion over the next 10 years, or 1 trillion when you add interest. That fact alone should be enough to end the squabbling. But this fight really isn't about working Americans versus millionaires. It's about a clash in ideology as to who is most deserving of receiving support in order to rescue our economy. The numbers undoubtedly favor workers.

Never in the history of the UI program has Congress cut back on federally-funded benefits when unemployment was over 7.2 percent. Unemployment now stands at 9.6 percent and at a staggering 16.1 percent in African American communities. In a new national survey on unemployment benefits by the National Employment Law Project and Half in Ten, 67 percent of all voters believe Congress should continue to provide unemployment benefits until unemployment comes down substantially.

The fight over tax cuts and UI benefits waging in Congress is just the tip of the iceberg. It's a harbinger of a much larger crisis of inequality.

The latest hunger report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows hunger remains at its highest levels in 15 years with 17.4 million households reporting having difficulty feeding their family due to lack of resources. Perhaps the most staggering indictment of the old economic paradigm: From 1980 to 2005, more than 80 percent of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.

Political leaders that justify tax breaks for millionaires and cuts to programs benefiting middle America are rooted in an old way of thinking. It's this way of thinking that got us where we are now. It's time we turn the old ways on their head and invest wisely in the real needs of people - education, health, a secure income and the benefits they need just to keep their heads above water in this Great Recession.

We have a chance to create a new equitable economy that will foster a more prosperous renewal of America. But that will only happen if we stand up for the values of mutual security, equity, and interdependence.

Work with us to create this new economy by texting CHANGE to 69866.

This article originally appeared in The Huffington Post.

Third World America: Reagan Revolution Drags Us Down

Dave Johnson — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 11:51:56 -0400

The recession ended in June, 2009? What? Seriously? No one told the millions of unemployed. And last week we got more bad news: 44 million of us living in poverty, and that was last year, before unemployment and COBRA subsidies started running out for the unemployed,

... four million additional Americans found themselves in poverty in 2009, with the total reaching 44 million, or one in seven residents. Millions more were surviving only because of expanded unemployment insurance and other assistance.

We are living in the Reagan Revolution every day. Conservative policies are making us poor and poorer,

Who counts and who doesn't count? We hear so much about the "middle class" but rarely about the plight of the poor. And of course we hear again and again that the wealthy are "successful" and the "job-creators" who shouldn't be "punished" by being asked to give something back to the country that enabled their wealth. Conservative "market" thinking and Ayn Randian "the poor are losers" dehumanizing ideology has become pervasive and dominant as we transition from one-person-one-vote democracy to one-dollar-one-vote plutocracy. In this plutocratic environment the national discussion of tax cuts for the wealthy saturates the corporate media, while the 44 million of us in poverty now are barely mentioned and count for little.

Arianna Huffington's new book, Third World America, documents what is happening to us. RJ Eskow explains,

Third World America is direct and clear in its message: Decades of aggressive corporate lobbying, driven by bankers and other large corporations, have led to a series of policy decisions that are eroding the American standard of living. The details are all there: The financial industry's gone from 2.5% of our GDP in 1947 to 8.3% right before the meltdown. Financial profits went from a maximum of 16% between 1973 and 1985 to 41% right before the crisis hit. And rather than being chastened by their failure, or disciplined by taxpayers in return for being bailed out, bankers have embraced their old ways with enthusiasm. Meanwhile the American households that rescued them lost $13 trillion in wealth between mid-2007 and March 2009.

Last week more than 300 economists issued a dire warning that the current conservative "austerity" approach to the economy is dangerous. Focus on jobs now they say,

More than 300 economists, policy experts and civic leaders have signed a statement warning political leaders of “a grave danger” that the still-fragile economic recovery will be undercut by austerity economics of the kind being pushed by conservative politicians and by the White House deficit commission. Read the statement and more at dontkilljobs.org.

Meanwhile, all over the blogs this weekend was the story of the whiny rich, complaining that they "only" make a few hundred thousand a year. Why are they whining?

The reason is that the income inequality has become so extreme that even the really rich see people above them who make VASTLY more than they do, so they feel like they aren't making hardly anything at all. They don't look down, they look up, and they see people making millions, hundreds of millions, even billions in a single year.

One more nasty outcome of the Reagan Revolution: even the really rich feel poor compared to the really, really rich who are the primary beneficiaries from conservative policies.

What can you do? There is a One Nation Working Together rally in DC on October 2. PLEASE click this link and find out what you can do to help, even if yo can't make it to DC. There are local events across the country.

And remember, the election is coming up. We need to remind people that it was conservative policies that got us into this mess. It was conservatives who bailed out the banks. It was conservatives who ran up the massive debt. It was conservatives who killed the jobs.

Other posts in the Reagan Revolution Home To Roost series:

To Lift The Economy, Lift Wages
Tax Cuts Are Theft
Reagan Revolution Home To Roost -- In Charts
Reagan Revolution Home To Roost: America Drowning In Debt
Reagan Revolution Home To Roost: America Is Crumbling
Finance, Mine, Oil & Debt Disasters: THIS Is Deregulation

See the Reagan Revolution Home To Roost series.

Listening To Conservatives Is Making Us Poor And Poorer

Dave Johnson — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 15:17:59 -0400

Who counts and who doesn't count? We hear so much about the "middle class" but rarely about the plight of the poor. And of course we hear again and again that the wealthy are "successful" and the "job-creators" who shouldn't be "punished" by being asked to give something back to the country that enabled their wealth. Conservative "market" thinking and Ayn Randian "the poor are losers" dehumanizing ideology* has become pervasive and dominant as we transition from one-person-one-vote democracy to one-dollar-one-vote plutocracy. In this plutocratic environment the national discussion of tax cuts for the wealthy saturates the corporate media, while the 44 million of us in poverty now are barely mentioned and count for little.

Yesterday the Census Bureau reported (NYT) that another four million people fell below the poverty line just last year, with trends showing it will probably grow. 44 million Americans -- one in seven of us -- are now trying to make it on $10,830; $22,050 for a family of four.

“We’re seeing more younger people coming in that not only don’t have any food, but nowhere to stay,” said Marla Goodwin, director of Jeremiah’s Food Pantry in East St. Louis, Ill. The pantry was open one day a month when it opened in 2008 but expanded this year to five days a month.

This chart (from the Census report) shows the trends.

On top of this, the level of "severe poverty" has hit an all-time record level. At Angry Bear, All Time Record Level of Severe Poverty,

Coverage focused on the headline poverty rate which is horrible enough. Much worse, 6.3% of people in the USA suffered severe poverty, that is lived in households with income less than half the poverty line. This is the highest severe poverty rate on record. That means that over 19 million people in the USA live in households with income less than half the poverty line (severe poverty implies income significantly less than $ 11,000 yr for a family of four) [emphasis added]

The Lifesaver Net Is Under Attack: Unemployment Benefits, Food Stamps, Welfare, Social Security

Even as poverty rises (because of conservative policies) the conservatives are attacking and weakening the safety net that keeps this disaster from getting even worse. They denigrate the idea of our government assisting citizens -- taking care of and watching out for each other -- as "spending" and "handouts." They say that unemployment and poverty assistance "undermine the work ethic." They say that helping the poor is "reaching into other people's pockets." Click through to read an example of what the Koch/Scaife/Walton (WalMart)/Tobacco/Oil/Corpation-funded Heartland Institute on "handouts". Or click through to read a sample of what the Koch/ Scaife/Tobacco/Corpation-funded Freedomworks (one of the astroturf organizations behind the Tea Party) on "handouts." Here is the Koch-founded/tobacco/oil/corporate-funded Cato Institute saying, about helping the people of New Orleans after Katrina, that government helping people is"coercion" (taxes are theft) and "it is important to remember that you can't be compassionate with other people's money."

This is dehumanizing and degrading and listening to it at all dehumanizes and degrades all of us. And the result is right in front of our faces: poverty grows, poverty becomes more extreme, wealth concentrates at the top, society becomes more cruel, the country falls further and further backwards. We have lived through a decade of conservative policies, and from the NYTimes story on the increasing poverty rate,

“This is the first time in memory that an entire decade has produced essentially no economic growth for the typical American household,” Mr. Katz said.

The Money Is Going To The Top

The Census report notes that the highest "quintile" or fifth of income-earners received 50.3 percent of all income last year, the bottom fifth receive only 3.4%..

In 2009, the share of aggregate income received by the bottom quintile was 3.4 percent; the second quintile, 8.6 percent; the third, 14.6 percent; the fourth, 23.2 percent; and the highest quintile, 50.3 percent.

Unemployment Benefits Running Out

Conservatives in the Congress are blocking emergency extensions of unemployment benefits, jobs programs and other critical parts of the safety net that helps people in emergencies such as the conservative-caused financial collapse. So another indicator of human suffering is about to get even worse. Unemployment for the "99ers" is running out, many of them older, with no jobs in sight.

Only unemployment benefits are keeping another 3.3 million from the same fate. (Chart from Center for Budget and Policy Priorities)

Health Insurance, Too

According to the Census Bureau report, the number of United States residents without health insurance climbed to 51 million in 2009, from 46 million in 2008. Additionally in 2010 millions of unemployed workers who were covered by the stimulus' COBRA subsidies are losing their coverage. There is no relief in site for years.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Expiring

The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Emergency Fund from the "stimulus" expires at the end of this month. Steve Benen at Washington Monthly writes that the TANF program, "subsidizes jobs with private companies, nonprofits, and government agencies and has single handedly put more than 240,000 unemployed people back to work."

So of course it needs to be renewed. But conservatives are blocking this. Benen writes,

The irony is, when those Americans lose their jobs, Republicans will say it was the failure of the stimulus. Their pathetic rhetoric will have it backwards -- the stimulus created those jobs, and the GOP's filibuster of an effective jobs program will throw these men and women out of work. In a sane political world, this would be a pretty big scandal...

Food Stamps Cut

Last month we saw this tragedy happen, Food Stamps Slashed to Pay for Teacher Jobs Bill. Conservatives forced cuts to food stamps before they would allow a bill providing $26 billion to help states cover Medicaid expenses and teacher salaries to pass.

Social Security

It has been covered here extensively that the President's "Deficit Commission" is talking about cuts to Social Security, which by law cannot borrow so it cannot contribute to the deficit, instead of looking at the tax cuts for the rich and military spending increases which caused the deficits. At the very time older Americans have had their retirement savings wiped out and many cannot find jobs and are taking early retirement, the commission is talking about reducing instead of increasing this vital program!

JOBS JOBS JOBS JOBS

This is really all about jobs and wages. The best antidote to poverty is more employment and better wages. Just yesterday 300 economists issued a statement saying so. But conservatives continue to block all efforts to provide jobs and lift wages. Isaiah Pool wrote here yesterday, in Latest Senate Jobs Bill Tests The Limits Of Right-Wing Obstruction,

Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus has introduced a bill today that is a frankly unadventurous mix of jobs initiatives and tax incentives, with a healthy dose of loophole-closings to make sure that it can be presented as revenue-neutral.

. . . Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell issued his "hell no, you can't" edict ... telling reporters that he'd lead a filibuster to make sure billionaires and millionaires paid not one dime more in earned income tax.

Such is the political environment in which Baucus drops his latest effort to move the jobs debate forward.

So every indicator of a society in terrible trouble -- unemployment, poverty, severe poverty, balance of trade, concentration of wealth, foreclosures, health insurance coverage, you name it -- is going in the wrong direction. And conservatives are proudly doing what they can to make it even worse! Why do we even listen to them at all?

* (For more on the roots of Ayn Rand and dehumanizing ideology click and scroll to the asterisk.)