Katrina and Poverty

I have two clips to share from CBS News and the Seattle Times, which focus on the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and Sen. Edwards' work on poverty. Please take a moment to review these stories, and then discuss them and your other toughts on the One America Blog. (http://blog.oneameric... )

---

... Catastrophe at the bottom
Monday, September 5, 2005
From The Seattle Times
http://seattletimes.n...

TENS of thousands will emerge from Hurricane Katrina in the direst of economic circumstances, evidence of the many Americans hovering on the economic edge, vulnerable to catastrophe.

The Census Bureau counts nearly 36 million Americans living below the poverty line. Despite our relative prosperity, the numbers of the poor are going up. More than four decades after President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty, an uphill battle continues.

Congress is poised to make deep cuts in programs that provide food stamps, Medicaid and federal student loans. This will serve no other purpose than to exacerbate the problem. More than 25 million people depend on the Food Stamp Program each month to help feed their children, including 520,000 people in Washington state.

When Congress returns from vacation, leaders ought to rally around protecting the Food Stamp Program from up to $3 billion in anticipated cuts and structural changes. This task deserves heightened priority because the House and Senate agriculture committees are expected to make a decision on the cuts by Sept. 16.

Studies on the Food Stamp Program have show an efficient program in which more than 98 percent of benefits go to eligible families and with an error rate at an all-time low. Currently, the average food-stamp benefit is 95 cents per person per meal. Feeding people for so little is a bargain that ought to be maintained.

Former Democratic vice-presidential candidate John Edwards recently visited Seattle to raise awareness about poverty. Now running the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina School of Law, Edwards called the growing numbers of the poor one of the great moral issues of our time.

He is right. America ought to respond to this moral dilemma with compassion.

---

The Other America Is Still With Us

Dotty Lynch is the Senior Political Editor for CBS News.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 7, 2005
http://www.cbsnews.co...

You can't blame Barbara Bush for wanting to help put the best face on her son's predicament. But not since former Attorney General Ed Meese suggested that people go to soup kitchens on holidays because the food is free and they don't want to pay for it has a remark about the poor caused such a jolt.

While touring the Astrodome in Houston with her husband and President Clinton, she told NPR that people evacuated to Texas were on the way up. "What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.''

A real win-win, huh?

But Mrs. Bush isn't the only one to have a tin ear about the poor. For the past week, as the misery of thousands of people was front and center on TV, 24/7, the constant refrain was, "This doesn't look like America; it looks like the third world." But, in fact, what the hurricane did was to make the invisible poor visible and touch the American consciousness in a way that was gut-wrenching and could not be ignored.

The poor have been out of fashion in American politics and media for the past few years. As Republicans feasted on the boom time of the 1980s, Democrats decided that they were losing elections because the middle class thought they had been abandoned. So Democrats ditched their New Deal rhetoric and replaced it with the language of middle-class squeeze. Issues like infant nutrition and hunger were pushed aside for reforming welfare and community policing.

But one mainstream Democratic politician who has veered from that course is former presidential candidate and Senator John Edwards. Since the election, Edwards has gone back to North Carolina where he founded the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina.

Edwards' central campaign speech in 2004 was about the "Two Americas" - the divide between the wealthy and the poor. Last week, he sent out an e-mail to supporters zeroing in on income disparity in New Orleans, an "even harsher example of the two Americas. Twenty-three percent of the population in New Orleans lives in poverty. Those are chilling numbers. Because of Katrina, we have now seen many of the faces behind those numbers. This is an ugly and horrifying wake-up call to America."

The fact that evacuation plans virtually ignored the plight of those who lacked transportation and some disposable income is appalling. Edwards is now working on some proposals to deal with the unique situation of the poor during disasters, as well as wide-scale issues of poverty in America.

The Census Bureau released new poverty statistics last week which showed that there are now 37 million Americans living in poverty; up 1.1 million since 2003. During the early 1960s, President John F Kennedy read Michael Harrington's "The Other America," which described America's invisible poor and described a culture of poverty. The book had a huge impact on Kennedy and the country and formed the basis of Kennedy's and then Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty, using the resources of the federal government to tackle the problem. But clearly that war was not won.

The blame game over hurricane relief has started to disintegrate into partisan wrangling and bureaucratic solutions. But the overarching fact of the past week is that the poor are so much with us. Is there any hope that the lasting the impact of Katrina will be a renewed commitment to reducing poverty? Not just at times of natural disaster but for all times.

###

What You people don't even live anywhere near Katrina and You keep whining let me educate you. these people are still living rent free with satelite food stamps and comforts the rest of us have to pay for. Drive down to Cameron Louisiana there is a huge concentration camp of fema trailors probably 1000 or more all with satelite dishes. These people are wanting for nothing but incentive to get a job. The money was so miss managed I know a cook whom didn't miss a day of work but yet he made enough money to buy a escalade and his wife some fake boobs. What I find is sad is its been over 2 years and these people can't ever seem to better themselves even before katrina they were poverty stricken. So nothing has changed in the grand scheme of themes. What I really find disturbing is a party that cries about poverty but gives no incentive for people like these to lift themselves out of poverty. You people have miss guided beliefs if you think these people are going to ever better themselves. If you don't believe me travel to Mississippi and look at the gulf coast those people rebuilt then goto Cameron louisiana and look at the Concentration Camp. Oh and btw before you cry foul pick up the new orleans news paper and look at the murders and crime then you will understand why the have security guards and a fense around the place. Oh here is another question why is it the day after Katrina the city of Lafayette which is considered a pretty decent city with little crime went out and bought more guns in one week the all the guns stores sold in the previous year. Why because we read the New Orleans news paper and guess what crime here did spike but it didn't get to bad because we knew but Houston on the other hand has a epidemic.

You write and sound ignorant. Mississippi was fixed because of Haley Barber and his friendship with the president. The only reason the president went to Louisiana was for a photo op. The president screwed New Orleans because the govenor and mayor were both Democrats and it is a poor city so he could care less about poor African Americans. Crime has been a problem for a long time in that city so tell me thing new. It's to bad you are a blind follower of the worst president ever elected? in the United States. What do no bid contracts mean to you?