February 28, 2007 6:31 AM

If you're not ashamed, you're not paying attention

Severe poverty rate at highest in three decades: Plight of poorest of poor extends to suburban areas

WASHINGTON ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high as the gulf between the nation’s “haves” and “have-nots” continues to widen. A McClatchy Newspapers analysis of the 2005 census figures, the latest available, found that nearly 16 million Americans are living in deep or severe poverty. A family of four with two children and an annual income of less than $9,903 ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ half the federal poverty line ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ was considered severely poor in 2005. So were individuals who made less than $5,080 a year. The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That’s 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period.

There’s something terribly, horribly wrong with a country that can awkwardly and ineptly try to engage in nation-building in Iraq, yet cannot be bothered to do the same thing here at home. We have the money and the resolve to funnel untold (and unknown) billions into Iraq, yet we cannot take care of the needy here in our own home country. We can drop a smart bomb down someone’s chimney in Baghdad, yet we cannot feed and clothe our own needy. We can rebuild hospitals and schools in Iraq, and yet hospitals and schools in economically depressed areas here at home are allowed to languish.

Over the past six years, our priorities have taken a beating. We see nothing wrong with spending billions to level villages in Iraq, but we balk at spending even a fraction of that money to provide food, shelter, education, and adequate health care to those among us not fortunate enough to be able to provide those things for themselves. If we can provide for an Iraqi child (and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that), why can we not do the same for an American child?

In the aftermath of 9.11, we’ve become a much harder and meaner nation. We have no problem with projecting our awesome military power and ability to destroy anywhere Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader © deems necessary. We can do that, but we can’t seem to find the resources or the wherewithal to rebuild New Orleans and the areas of the Gulf Coast devastated by Hurricanes Rita and Katrina.

The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries.

That helps explain why the median household income for working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.

These and other factors have helped push 43 percent of the nation’s 37 million poor people into deep poverty ‚Äö√Ñ√Æ the highest rate since at least 1975.

This used to be a country which would leap to the aid of peoples and nations impacted by natural disasters. Now, though, we’re so focused on killing and destroying that we cannot see the humanitarian crisis within our own borders. Our current Administration is cognizant of the reality that the poor and downtrodden generally don’t vote Republican, and they certainly don’t fill GOP coffers. War, however, particularly if it can be framed as a valiant crusade against terrorism, invigorates the GOP faithful…and they’re the ones with the money.

Sometimes, I feel as if my country has been hijacked by corrupt, self-interested trolls interested in little more than their own enrichment and self-aggrandizement. I barely recognize my country anymore…and that’s not something I say lightly. Since January, 2001, my homeland has become a country in which it’s acceptable to ignore those less fortunate. Ayn Rand would be so proud….

WE DESERVE BETTER.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on February 28, 2007 6:31 AM.

No, it's not news, but it sures beats having to hear about Iraq, eh? was the previous entry in this blog.

This would explain why Cheney suddenly left the country is the next entry in this blog.

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