Yesterday Tony Pugh of McClatchy Newspapers wrote an article called “U.S. economy leaving record numbers in severe poverty”. The article is based on a McClatchy Newspapers analysis of 2005 census figures regarding poverty in America. The results are shocking, yet at the same time not surprising. If you have been following the news for the last six years, you would be very aware of the “unofficial” war that the Bush administration has been waging on the American public.
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. McClatchy’s review also found statistically significant increases in the percentage of the population in severe poverty in 65 of 215 large U.S. counties, and similar increases in 28 states. The review also suggested that the rise in severely poor residents isn’t confined to large urban counties but extends to suburban and rural areas.
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 of working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.
The share of poor Americans in deep poverty has climbed slowly but steadily over the last three decades. But since 2000, the number of severely poor has grown “more than any other segment of the population,” according to a recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
“That was the exact opposite of what we anticipated when we began,” said Dr. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University, who co-authored the study. “We’re not seeing as much moderate poverty as a proportion of the population. What we’re seeing is a dramatic growth of severe poverty.”
…Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital, has a higher concentration of severely poor people - 10.8 percent in 2005 - than any of the 50 states, topping even hurricane-ravaged Mississippi and Louisiana, with 9.3 percent and 8.3 percent, respectively. Nearly six of 10 poor District residents are in extreme poverty.
…Severe poverty is worst near the Mexican border and in some areas of the South, where 6.5 million severely poor residents are struggling to find work as manufacturing jobs in the textile, apparel and furniture-making industries disappear. The Midwestern Rust Belt and areas of the Northeast also have been hard hit as economic restructuring and foreign competitions have forced numerous plant closings. At the same time, low-skilled immigrants with impoverished family members are increasingly drawn to the South and Midwest to work in the meatpacking, food processing and agricultural industries.
These and other factors such as increased fluctuations in family incomes and illegal immigration have helped push 43 percent of the nation’s 37 million poor people into deep poverty - the highest rate in at least 32 years.
By Tony Pugh, McClatchy Newspapers
Mr. C. apologizes for the extended quote of this article, but he feels that it is important that his reader(s) should have this information. It is not surprising to Mr. C. that America has had the highest rise in poverty since George W. Bushtard has taken office. The Bushtard cabal’s domestic policies of class warfare have been systematic and methodically executed since the conservatards stole the 2000 election.
When you have government that gives massive tax breaks to the ultra wealthy, like gutting the estate tax, hand over 6 billion dollars in tax breaks to the oil industries. When these same “compassionate” conservatards spend nearly a trillion dollars of American tax payer money for on an illegal war then send most of the money strait to the pockets connected military contractors like Halliburton and KBR. When these same conservatards keep saying “support our troops” and then treat returning injured soldiers like crap by reducing the funds necessary to support them and return them to society. It isn’t surprising that these same people would wage an all out war on the most vulnerable people in our society.
So the next time that you hear our criminal in chief bash his opponents by challenging their patriotism and saying that they are “soft” on terrorists, you may just want start questioning who the real coward is. Who are the real terrorists that threaten the people of America?
Who has systematically fought tooth and nail to provide unnecessary tax breaks to the ultra rich and who has driven our nation into debt and poverty? Who has pushed hard to open our workforce up to low paid illegal immigrants? Which administration has used the department of labor to prevent senior nurses from receiving overtime? Which political appointees shamefully ignored the hurricane Katrina victims and pumped most of the reconstruction money into the coffers of Blackwater and Halliburton?
Mr. C. thinks it’s safe to say that the great “decider’s” war in Iraq is faltering and his “war on terror” is stuck in the mud. It is probably even safer to assume that Bush’s six year “war on the American public” can be categorized as “Mission Accomplished”.
