The Blame Game
As has been noted by many others, it didn’t take long to move the national conversation from Katrina and poverty to energy costs and scandals. Apparently poverty was sufficiently ameliorated by allowing employers to pay less than the prevailing wage and by giving huge windfalls to oil companies and casinos. We can put aside the pictures of grief and hunger, and debate whether the right or the left is more troubled by Harriet Miers.
Unfortunately, I’m having a little trouble moving off the dime. For one thing, the prevailing wage of $9 an hour is nowhere close to being enough to ease the financial strains of our underclass. The Northwest Florida Gulf Coast Workforce Development Board produced a self-sufficiency report in May, 2005. According to their calculations, $14.36 per hour is the minimum wage necessary for a single adult to maintain a no-frills existence, a figure produced before the recent surge in housing and energy prices. Lowering the wages of persons engaged in construction trades to little more than half that is hardly a blow for the common man (30% of whom make less than $12 an hour in our little slice of paradise).
As to the no-bid contract giveaways and tax breaks for the casinos: how much evidence do we need before the right wing corporate cheerleaders finally understand that major stockholders and top executives do not share? The recent economic “boom” has resulted in an increase in worker productivity, and a decrease in worker income. Oil companies are already swimming in unseemly oceans of cash. If curtailed supplies and increased demands are making it necessary to build more refineries, the resources to do so can be found right there in the profit column. After all, we do believe in self-sufficiency, don’t we?
So, what can we do to address the issues of poverty and despair? If I am grasping conservative logic correctly, the answer to problems of race, poverty, and education must be found in the home, not in government “hand-outs.” If people don’t want to be poor, they should work harder and spend less. If they want better lives for their children, they should start insisting on better school performance.
In other words, the poor have no one but themselves to blame. The highly-educated upper class has earned its right to privilege and an 85% share of the nation's wealth, and bears no obligation to use its talent and gifts to make the world a better place. No, the rich did their bit by making their own nest better (using a whole lot of governmental and societal help), and no more can be asked. Instead, the solution for a better society is to thrust all responsibility onto single teenage mothers with marginal language and academic skills, who were raised by women who were teenagers themselves when they gave birth. And because all poor people need additional challenges, we will ensure that they get no “unearned” resources to help them do it.
Using the Gulf Coast catastrophes to plead governmental poverty, and cut back Medicaid, Section 8 housing, and other programs providing a thin edge between mere poverty and actual death, is brazen beyond belief. There is a war in Iraq, which has been a black hole for billions of unaccounted-for dollars. There are transportation and energy bills that are filled with corporate welfare, concentrating wealth into the hands of the few. Let’s raid those programs, not subsidized child care.
Now is the time to cut out government hand-outs to those few whose greed can never be satisfied anyway, and support the programs that make life bearable for the many. Instead of cutting back health care, make it universal. Instead of building ever more prisons to incarcerate ever growing numbers of young men, funnel the energy and funds to creating schools that address the serious academic deficiencies causing despair and teenage pregnancies among our youth. Instead of slashing Section 8 housing, make affordable housing a national priority.
It’s time to see if “trickle up” economics can be successful.
M(e)TV
Last night I was part of a panel on a PBS talk show. This was my second appearance, and much more comfortable than my first. The first time, I was prepared for one topic, which was never discussed. The topic actually on the table was not one in which I have any special expertise, although of course I babbled on anyway. This time, the topics were racism (another surprise) and poverty. Poverty, at least, is a topic I know something about.
Since I am firmly rooted in the red zone, I was the only liberal on the panel, and a muted one at that (at least, I thought I was muted. I never once criticized the current government, which for me was a heroic exercise in restraint). Muted or not, the differences between me and the other three panelists were clear from the outset. It made it a lot of fun.
We disposed of racism fairly quickly, with the other three panelists (including the head of the African-American Chamber of Commerce) dismissing it as a non-issue. The party line was that it is counter-productive to focus on racism as an excuse for poverty, since it only hampers efforts to move forward. This is a seductive point of view, but it only works if racism is truly a thing of the past, which it isn’t. Granted, the KKK doesn’t ride at night that I know of, and the membership is much less than it was. Racist remarks are given short shrift by the vast majority of the population. Friendships among members of the same socio-economic groups cross racial lines all the time, and intermarriages are commonplace. Still, I think racism in subtler form is one of the reasons we lack commitment to fighting poverty. It is easier to maintain screens that shield us from seeing poverty, when we think poverty belongs to minority groups and not to “people like us.”
Thus, we launched the discussion of poverty. This is another issue about which everyone has opinions, but about which I also have facts and figures. One guy launched into a tirade about how the social services (in this case, meaning me) had failed miserably. I was right there with my statistics (courtesy the Washington Post) saying that the programs launched by the Great Society have cut the poverty levels nearly in half (from 20% to 12%). Social Security has cut the number of elderly living in poverty from 35% to 9.8%. Funding cutbacks and the failure of wages to keep up with the cost of living, however, have all those numbers inching up. So social service programs have had a tremendously positive effect, and their removal has had a negative effect.
After that, it was "game on." It was incredibly satisfying to be able to tackle myths and stereotypes directly. When one person launched onto a soap box deriding the lazy, worthless poor people who know nothing beyond a government hand-out, I was there with specifics on the percentage of the poor who work, incomes necessary for self-sufficiency, and current wage scales in the area. When other panelists were saying "parents have to do a better job raising their children," I replied that most parents do want the best for their children, but impoverished parents often don’t have the skills to do so. The average Head Start mother has a more limited vocabulary than a 4-year-old child of the middle class. Her conversation is instructional, rather than wide-ranging - the children don't learn to think because their mother didn't learn to think, and their dad (whose skills are probably no better) is nowhere to be found. That led to an indictment of single mothers, who apparently pick up their children from the cabbage patch.
The experience was quite an adrenalin rush, but pales a bit in the cold light of day. Although my fellow panelists were back-tracking like crazy, the truth is, most people in this area (and probably beyond) share their attitudes and their scorn for the poor. The complex causes of poverty, which can range from mental and physical disabilities; family abandonment; domestic violence; low wages paid even to skilled laborers; lack of adequate child care; inadequate educational opportunities – are all reduced to “the poor aren’t motivated to change.”
Unfortunately, it tends to be the rich who are not motivated to change, and they are the ones with the power to buy government and shape it to their liking. The result is an array of incredibly benevolent government policies that transfer billions of wealth into the hands of the top one-half of one percent of the population. They have no problem giving the Waltons $35 million to pave the road into their corporate headquarters in Arkansas, but they refuse to subsidize child care for poor mothers who wish to get an education. After all, that mother should have thought twice before she had that child. The Waltons (who receive a lot more than just paved roads and parking lots), on the other hand, were very far-sighted, and were responsible for millions of dollars being funneled into the hands of the Republican Party. To the victors, go the spoils.
Let’s be the victors in 2006, and start sharing the spoils with those who need it most. Until we can start bringing the power and resources of government to bear on issues such as racism, poverty, education and the environment, we are all going to be the losers.
And Justice for All?
No matter how many debates range about the Pledge of Allegiance, or the Bill of Rights, or what the founders meant in the Declaration of Independence, there is one thing we can all agree on: the United States was founded on the nation of “liberty and justice for all.”
Unfortunately, these are the precise concepts we can’t seem to get right. We start trading liberty for security every time the road looks a little rough, despite the fact that “less freedom equals greater safety” is a false equation. The “Patriot” Act is our latest egregious foray into curbing civil liberties in the hope of avoiding harm. Just yesterday we had the spectacle of the FBI telling us that yes, they had wiretapped the wrong people indiscriminately, and they were keeping the tapes, but heck, they won’t really listen to them for long. At the same time, we had the generals telling us that the incidence of world-wide terrorism is certainly on the increase, a regrettably lagging “indicator of success” in our war on terror. The evidence of encroachment upon our civil liberties is everywhere. The evidence that we are safer as a result is not quite so easy to pinpoint.
However, tonight I’m more concerned with the “and justice for all” portion of the pledge. Because I don’t think we understand the concept of justice any better than we understand the concept of civil liberty.
Earlier this week, I received yet another horrific forwarded e-mail, which inadvertently pointed out how easy it is to assume “justice” is only for people like us, and “for all” was a slip of the pen. The e-mail was in regard to the Arizona sheriff who uses barbed wire to enclose tent cities housing 2000 inmates, in heat reaching 138 degrees (heat that shattered windshields and prevented aircraft from landing). The e-mail, which was reported as factual on
www.snopes.com, gleefully recounts a long list of sadistic, inhumane practices carried out on a captive audience. These include the use of chain gangs for men and women at no pay; the reduction of meals to twice a day (with moldy bologna sandwiches frequently on the menu); and constant humiliation (such as clothing male prisoners in nothing but pink boxer shorts and pink socks). Sheriff Arpaio makes money on the meals by charging inmates $1 a day for food that costs only 40 cents, and brags: “It costs more to feed our police dogs than our inmates. The dogs never committed a crime, and they’re working for a living.”
The e-mail, and the fact-checking, go on and on, but it’s all just more of the same. And it is all absolutely sickening.
Let’s start with the fact that this is a county facility, which means that everyone confined in it is either awaiting trial, or has been convicted of a misdemeanor. Our brave sheriff and his followers may revel in treating criminals in conditions that would earn closure from agencies regulating cruelty to animals, but the “criminals” they are treating so abominably are not your stereotypical rapists and thugs, but are individuals who have not been proven guilty, or who have been convicted of minor offenses, such as possession of small quantities of marijuana, or bouncing a check, or writing graffiti on a fence.
Let’s continue with the fact that the police are not 100% accurate in their arrests, nor are they able to arrest everyone who commits a crime. It’s a pretty safe bet that the brothers in the elite fraternity houses who smoke pot and drink beer in the basement are less likely to be arrested than their impoverished neighbors two blocks over who are sitting in a parked car. And, should by some mischance the well-connected frat boys get arrested, their chances of receiving a jail term are markedly less than those whose recreation takes place in broken-down vehicles. They have all committed the same crime, but the standards of “justice” are markedly different. Also, let us not forget the poor, 73-year-old woman in New Orleans, who was arrested for looting while retrieving a sausage she had stored in a cooler in the trunk of her car. The owner of the store she had supposedly looted kept stressing that the store didn’t carry the sausage the woman was holding, and that even if they did, the woman was more than welcome to whatever kept her from starvation. But it didn’t matter. The woman was held in jail without power, in the heat, for days on end, and the police have yet to drop charges.
Next, let’s address effectiveness. Of course, one e-mail stated, no one incarcerated by Sheriff Arpaio is going to commit another crime. But where is the evidence to back this up? In my experience, treating people like the dregs of humanity rarely produces positive results. Instead, it increases alienation, the knowledge that no one gives a damn, and a further push toward the outskirts of society. The greatest gains in preventing recidivism (and there is plenty of evidence to back this up – check the Florida Department of Corrections website, for one) are achieved when inmates receive substance abuse and mental health treatment, vocational skill training, educational opportunities, and discharge planning that assists inmates in finding jobs, housing and meals. The costs of rehabilitation are significantly less than those of repeated incarceration, and yet we continue to invest heavily in prisons, and cut back on even the most modest of rehabilitation programs.
I could go on, but to be honest, it’s all beside the point. The reason this e-mail appalled me so greatly was the fact that there are huge numbers of people eager to see others degraded and abused. They assume their own superiority, and without knowing a single man or woman incarcerated in this hell hole in Arizona, they have concluded that every one of them deserves to be treated as animals. When I mentioned the Arizona jail to others, most recoiled in horror, but there was a lot of “it’s jail, not Club Med,” as well. Others thought it was funny. When I said, “these people are in for misdemeanors,” they said, “oh, that’s wrong.” But their first reaction was to enjoy the misery of others. And as long as there are enough of us ready to judge without thought, then the entire system of judgment will be forever flawed.
On the other hand...
To my mind, one of the most distressing trends in how we currently frame political debate is the way we have allowed the right wing to define the word liberal. It has become a term of vilification, somewhat the way “pinko Communist” was in the 50s and 60s. My fellow travelers (this is a joke, for those of you who don’t know me) have conceded the point. Liberals call themselves progressives now, and allow the word "liberal" to be used as a pejorative, thus driving the national conversation further to the right.
I like the term liberal. According to American Heritage Children’s dictionary (which is all I can ever find around my house, since I have high school students who are constantly appropriating my real dictionary), it has a lot of positive definitions. Synonyms include generosity, open-mindedness, and tolerance as demonstrated by respect toward different people and ideas.
This is a long way to go about introducing concepts submitted by a conservative who would like to respond to some of my ideas, but who is currently on the other side of the world and can’t enter them directly into the comments portion. I was going to tease him a bit, and call his remarks as being contributions from the dark side, but I find I can’t. For one thing, he is too civil when talking about me. For instance, he characterizes my commentary as “sensitive and caring.” I’ll be darned if I’ll let him be more liberal (i.e., respectful toward different people and ideas) than I am.
So, although it never occurred to me that I would be serving as a forum for opposing views as well as my own, here is a sampling of his version of what I can only term compassionate conservatism, from someone who actually understands both compassion and conservatism (in the interests of space, I have edited out a great deal that speaks to compassion – you’ll just have to trust me on this). In the interest of fair play, I’ll publish my rebuttals separately. In the interest of my health, I’ll add that one of the first topics will be taxation, Social Security and Medicare (otherwise known as FICA).
On welfare:
Lenore, you are right [about the causes of poverty]. I know how impossible housing and transportation are for our poor, and those are the two arguments I can't defeat with any of my arguments It was easier to be poor when I was a kid. I did not have to pay first and last month rent on the $60.00 shack I rented as a GI in Sacramento in 1960. $60.00 got me in. No deposits on utilities. But for those who can overcome the hurdles of housing and transportation, the permanent solutions lie in the accumulation of private wealth, not government checks. Learning to live within our means, no matter how meager they are, is what brings real social security.
The Fair Tax [sales tax as opposed to income tax] will be a big help. The rich will pay their fair share, as they have the most to spend. The Fair Tax (H.R. 25) will eliminate all Federal Tax but the special excise taxes. No more FICA, no more income tax. And all will receive a rebate credit for National Sales Tax that would be paid by individuals and families at the poverty level. A person making e.g. $12,000 annually (if that were the poverty level for a single person) would take home $12,000!
FICA is a crime, both in the amount taken, and the amount wasted. It is forbidden for me to accept a non-Medicare procedure or treatment since I turned 65! How about that for government interference in my health care? I have read the Constitution a number of times, and too much has been inferred from the preamble (which stated the purpose of the document, not any specific application.) We are better served when we control our own resources, and make our own decisions.
And, no more tax breaks bought with bribes (campaign contributions)--the perfidious and insidious destroyer of our republican form of government!
On faith:
Again, I find a lot of agreement here. My Jewish forebears and relatives perished in the camps (save three who survived and have since died.) There is not a Piowaty left in Europe. As a Catholic in a small Ohio town, I was told my faith was wrong. I went with another child to his church instead of my catechism class one afternoon. I was told in no uncertain terms that I was going to hell. Heavy stuff for a first-grader!!
On praying for or against temporal and physical occurrences, I'm reminded of Patton's prayer for good weather so he could make it into Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge. Were the Germans praying at the same time for the weather to remain overcast as protection from American air power?
Finally, something I wrote in 1962 when I was in pilot training and had a premonition that I would become witness to more and continuing horror in our world.
LOOK AT US
Sing us our praises, mighty man.
Look what we've done--
How well we make things dead!
Who is to look on us?
The animals know naught
And God must shake His head.
On education:
On your first paragraph--I put together this sentence probably 3 or 4 decades ago: "I never learned anything from people I agreed with." I may have gained some pleasant reinforcement, but no real learning, no new ideas, and no practice in articulating my position that I might gain in a discussion with a person of different opinion.
On money for education: We DO need to pay our GOOD teachers more. But our egalitarian, pc society won't allow us to scale, let alone pay, excellence.
Our students know full well who the good and effective teachers are. They surely know better than do the principals and administrators and superintendents. I have probably 3 academic years as a sub in Okaloosa County schools and at St. Mary. No principal ever observed my work! At least at Brent School in Baguio, Philippines I did have two visits from one Headmaster and one from the other.
It is frightening to realize how much does (or does not) go on in our public (and private) schools. Who knows, and how can they know, whether we're getting our money's worth. Of course, my position is that we are not getting anywhere near our money's worth.
Paying our good teachers what they are worth is not the entire solution. We need to raise the bar on our average teachers. The average teacher who scores 15 points below the average of ALL who take the SAT? The average teacher (actually "better" than average--as these are those going for a master's) who, along with those with degrees in social science, scores the lowest on the GRE!!
And, we put our children's minds in the care of these?
