Poverty in America

Is this the land of milk and honey or a land of Greed?

Gentle Reader,

Let me take a break from telling you the truth about Christianity to tell you the truth about where I live . I am in the State of Indiana and while it's flat and smells like car exhaust it's as good a place to be from as where you live. Why? Because we have a common problem! Let me be specific . There is a new bill floating around our government called the "Farm Bill" part of it deals with the food stamp issue. Well let me rant about what is really going on in this country. (Like you didn't know already) 

It takes a hurricane. It takes a catastrophe like Katrina to strip away the old evasions, hypocrisies and not-so-benign neglect. It takes the sight of the United States with a big black eye—visible around the world—to help the rest of us begin to see again. For the moment, at least, are Americans are ready to fix their restless gaze on enduring problems of poverty, race and class that have escaped their attention? Does this mean a new war on poverty? No, especially with Katrina's gargantuan price tag. But this disaster may offer a chance to start a skirmish, or at least make Washington think harder about why part of the richest country on earth looks like the Third World.

"I hope we realize that the people of New Orleans weren't just abandoned during the hurricane," Sen.(now President) Barack Obama said two years ago on the floor of the Senate. "They were abandoned long ago—to murder and mayhem in the streets, to substandard schools, to dilapidated housing, to inadequate health care, to a pervasive sense of hopelessness."

The question now is whether the flood waters can create a sea change in public perceptions. "Americans tend to think of poor people as being responsible for their own economic woes," says sociologist Andrew Cherlin of Johns Hopkins University. "But this was a case where the poor were clearly not at fault. It was a reminder that we have a moral obligation to provide every American with a decent life."

In the last four decades, none of of that obligation has been met. Social Security and Medicare have not made or eliminated poverty among the elderly [not any longer they don't even try witness the inflated salaries of your elected officials and compair that with the fact that they don't even hide their disregard for your needs ] . Food stamps  (See the food stamp challenge a way to make you think that these politicians care) we don't need another election where its politics as usual we need Statesmen NOT politicians have made severe hunger in the United States mostly a thing of the past [that’s way we go to bed hungry each night]. A little-known program with bipartisan support and a boring name—the Earned Income Tax Credit—supplements doesn’t help the puny wages of the working poor, help to lift millions into the lower middle class.

But after a decade of improvement in the 1990s, poverty in America is actually getting worse. A rising tide of economic growth is no longer lifting all boats. For the first time in half a century, the third year of a recovery (2004) also saw an increase in poverty. In a nation of nearly 300 million people, the number living below the poverty line ($14,680 for a family of three) recently hit 37 million, up more than a million in a year.

The food stamp challenge is another example to the rich trying to identify with the poor. Gentle reader, let’s face it America has lost it’s moral fiber and has totally disregarded the poor in America. It’s time to take back what was stolen from us, our rights

 Just my opinion,

Denis