We’re Number One!

Over the past couple of decades, a number of conservative politicians have championed a distorted American Exceptionalism characterized by the jingoistic boast, “We’re number one!”

According to a recent report highlighted by The Hill, one area in which we are indeed number one is child poverty. Currently, more than 46 million Americans live in poverty, and more than a third of those are children. The U.S. child poverty rate is 22 percent – the highest of any of the rich countries.

Congressional Republicans like Paul Ryan and state-level politicians like Indiana Governor Mike Pence blame child poverty on single mothers, and insist that the way to address the problem is to incentivize marriage. That “solution” ignores the fact that in countries with similar rates of unwed motherhood and a more robust social safety net (think Scandinavian countries), child poverty rates hover around 3 percent.

Attributing child poverty to low rates of marriage also flies in the face of a good deal of recent research suggesting that people who enjoy financial security are more likely to get and stay married. Indiana Governor Pence recently shared a statistic that upper-income folks and college graduates are more likely to have stable marriages as evidence that marriage brings financial security. Actually, it’s the other way around; people who aren’t sweating the rent are more likely to stay married.

As we academic types are wont to point out, correlation is not causation.

If unmarried mothers are not the cause of childhood poverty, what is? At a recent conference hosted by The Roosevelt Institute, the Century Foundation and the Academic Pediatric Association, participants considered the causes and consequences of poverty experienced by a significant percentage of the nation’s children.

Low-wage jobs are an obvious culprit. At least 30 percent of poor children live in homes where one parent works full-time. Full time work at the current minimum wage, however, cannot lift a family of three above the poverty line. Worse, most minimum and low-wage jobs are tenuous. Not only are benefits rare, but parents who miss work to care for a sick child are likely to see their pay docked while also risking termination.

Congressmen earn a base salary of $174,000 per year, so it is probably not surprising that few of them seem to understand the stresses poverty exacts from children. These children grow up in very unstable circumstances, with caregivers (usually mothers but increasingly grandparents) whose struggles to make ends meet sap time and energy that the more fortunate can devote to parenting.

If Congress is unlikely to recognize the social and human costs of an inadequate safety net any time soon, there are at least some state and municipal-level initiatives that hold promise. Several cities, most notably Seattle at $15 per hour, have recently raised their minimum wage. And the Massachusetts legislature has just approved a measure that will gradually raise that state’s minimum wage to $11 an hour by 2017, up from its current $8 level. Governor Deval Patrick is expected to sign it into law.

New York City and Memphis, Tennessee are experimenting with cash transfer programs, and a variety of cities have instituted home visitation programs meant to provide education and other services to low-income families, in an effort to improve cognitive and health outcomes for children in those families.

As promising as several of these experiments are, they are no substitute for a wholesale rethinking of this nation’s approach to poverty, especially as it affects our children.
The past decade has been dominated by a political rhetoric that can only be characterized as Social Darwinism – the belief (bolstered by a distorted Calvinism) that people are poor because they are somehow morally defective, that they are “takers” or lazy or “lack middle-class values.”

Little by little, those stereotypes are being challenged by sound research and by the stories of real people – by the nascent movement for a living wage and ample economic research demonstrating that a living wage benefits the entire economy, not just low-wage workers. That story needs to be told, and retold.

When it comes to child poverty, America should not be number one.

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A SLAPP Suit in Broad Ripple–Shame on Browning!

The IBJ recently reported on the most recent turn of events in the ongoing dispute over Browning Investment’s planned Broad Ripple development. According to the IBJ,

The developer of a $30 million apartment-and-retail project in Broad Ripple wants the development’s most vocal opponents to pay nearly $1 million in damages related to construction delays.

Browning Investments Inc. is asking that Good Earth Natural Foods and resident Patrick Skowronek pay the money for appealing the Metropolitan Development Commission’s decision to award Browning zoning variances to proceed with the project.

This is a perfect example of a SLAPP–a strategic lawsuit against public participation.

The purpose of a SLAPP isn’t to win, or even to litigate a legitimate dispute. It is a strategy sometimes used by large corporations or developers  in order to intimidate people who have the chutzpah to oppose them, a bullying tactic to silence critics by threatening them with the very substantial costs of defending against a lawsuit that the big guys can easily afford, but citizen-protestors cannot. The goal is to squeeze the people criticizing the development until they are exhausted, or out of money, or both, and abandon their opposition.

As a bonus, SLAPP suits also “send a message” that intimidates other people who might be tempted to join the opposition.

The zoning appeals process is there for a reason, and people are entitled to use it. Costs attributable to a delay while a dispute is mediated or litigated should be–and are– an anticipated cost of doing business.

Suing people who have pissed you off by daring to disagree with your business plan is–excuse the language–a dick tactic.

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What Color is the Sky in Your Universe?

It has been obvious for quite a while that Americans occupy different and incommensurate realities. But in the midst of the partisan and religious vitriol (often fed by an appalling lack of basic constitutional, economic and scientific knowledge), there is some evidence of–dare I say it–a creeping rationality.

 As millions of Americans continue to struggle in a sluggish economy, a growing portion of the country says that poverty is caused by circumstances beyond individual control, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

The poll shows a significant shift in American opinion on the causes of poverty since the last time the question was asked, nearly 20 years ago. In 1995, in the midst of a raging political debate about welfare and poverty, less than a third of poll respondents said people were in poverty because of issues beyond their control. At that time, a majority said that poverty was caused by “people not doing enough.” Now, nearly half of respondents, 47 percent, attribute poverty to factors other than individual initiative.

America’s porous social-safety net is largely attributable to a stubborn belief in individual responsibility for social mobility and a corresponding insistence that only lazy people or those who are somehow morally deficient find themselves at the bottom of the economic heap.

Rooted in Calvinism (earthly success as a sign of divine favor) it is a worldview that conveniently overlooks all the ways in which government helps the middle and upper classes and focuses opprobrium on anything that could be labeled “welfare.” (Corporate subsidies are economic development; Social Security and Medicare are insurance programs, etc.).

As a country and society, we perversely refuse to recognize the systemic and institutional causes of economic disadvantage until the pain is widely enough shared and its roots impossible to miss. It wasn’t until the Great Depression that people were willing to recognize the need for even a minimal social safety net. The NBC poll is just one data point. But there are others.

Sane Republicans are speaking out about climate change. Dick Cheney is increasingly seen as the bad joke he has always been. Young people are demonstrably more inclusive than their elders. Same-sex marriages are close to being fait accompli everywhere. There are more tolerant Americans than there are Theocratic Christians, and the ranks of the former are growing while those of the latter are declining.

Although Obama’s election unleashed a depressing torrent of hitherto suppressed racism, the fact remains that we did elect an African-American President. Twice.

There are signs that it’s getting better. If we can just survive the Crazy…

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Greg Zoeller, Mike Pence, Micah Clark and the Dustbin of History

Well–yesterday certainly was a DAY in Indiana!

Federal Judge Richard Young–no wild-eyed ‘librul’– issued a beautifully-crafted, soundly-sourced opinion invalidating Indiana’s ban on same-sex marriages. As a (recovering) lawyer, I read the entire decision with appreciation for its logic and application of precedent; it was extremely well-written, without more than occasional resort to the “legalese” that jurists so often employ.

As quotable as much of the 36-page opinion is, however, my favorite paragraph is this:

“In less than a year, every federal district court to consider the issue has reached the same conclusion in thoughtful and thorough opinions–laws prohibiting the celebration and recognition of same-sex marriages are unconstitutional. It is clear the the fundamental right to marry shall not be deprived to some individuals based solely on the person they choose to love. In time, Americans will look at the marriage of couples such as Plaintiffs, and refer to it simply as marriage–not a same-sex marriage. These couples, when gender and sexual orientation are taken away, are in all respects like the family down the street. The Constitution demands that we treat them as such.

At virtually the same time as Judge Young handed down his ruling, the 10th district Court of Appeals was upholding lower court decisions invalidating Oklahoma and Utah bans.

It’s over. I know that is a bitter pill for our elected homophobes to swallow, let alone the folks whose fundraising depends upon demonizing gay folks, but it could hardly have come as a surprise. The handwriting has been on all the walls for several years now.

It’s past time for Greg Zoeller to stop spending Hoosier dollars defending discrimination. His determination to appeal a decision that mirrors every other decision the courts have handed down is an exercise in futility, a waste of time and money, but of course, he and Pence and the other Professional Christians can’t help themselves.

They refuse to understand that they already live in the dustbin of history.

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Capitalism? Or Corporatism?

Inequality has become the topic du jour–and as with so many other topics Americans debate, what anyone means by “unequal” and if and why inequality matters depends on one’s perspective.

In a capitalist system, some people will do better than others. There is nothing wrong with that; the promise of a bigger reward for building a better mousetrap spurs innovation and benefits us all. It’s only when the disparity in rewards becomes disproportionate and  especially when those rewards become disconnected from actual economic productivity that things get seriously out of whack.

When what people make is a reflection of their connections and/or the success of their lobbyists, it’s time to consider whether we still have a capitalist system, or whether what America  currently has is corporatism–a system where power is exercised through large organizations in pursuit of their own economic agendas, to the detriment of the common good.

Capitalism creates opportunity; corporatism keeps it “all in the family,” exacerbating inequality. Consider the following statistics and draw your own conclusions:

Between 1947 and 1972, the average hourly wage, adjusted for inflation, rose 76%. Since 1972, it has risen 4%.

In 2011, the poverty rate for female-headed families with children was 40.9%

In 2009, CEOs of major corporations were paid a wage that was 269 times the average compensation of American workers.

Between 1979 and 2007, wages for the top 1% rose ten times as fast as those for the bottom 90%–156.2% versus 16.7%.

There’s much more, but you get the picture.

The question is, how do we return to a system where the market actually decides the winners and losers, rather than the oligarchs?

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