This week we have another heart-warming story from our St. Louis Community. A man named Jake Austin runs a special service, a Shower the People truck, that offers free showers and other hygiene services to homeless people in the St. Louis area. We’re often reminded of how the homeless and other poor people need food, and what an excellent job so many of the food pantries do. We recognize that if a person has shelter, they have overcome some of the barriers to homelessness, but far from all.

There are still people who are literally living on the streets and what they face is incomprehensible, especially in the wealthiest country in the world. To eat and to find clothing, some actually engage in dumpster diving. But what then?

That’s where Austin and his cohorts come in. In a St. Louis Post-Dispatch story on “Shower the People,” Austin said, “Hot water and soap are wildly underrated in the world. You don’t realize what it means to you until you don’t have it.”

That resonated with Austin, who bought a truck he found on Craigslist for $5,000 and started Shower to the People.

Tangibly, the truck is equipped with two shower stalls and moves to different neighborhoods. Intangibly, it’s equipped with a ray of hope for many of the region’s homeless.

When it began operations a year ago, it offered showers two days a week. Now it’s four, with plans for more growth, Austin said. “We don’t have clients, we have friends and neighbors, and I’m excited about our growth.”

This is another “feel good” story for St. Louis. Fortunately, we’re fed a steady diet of them because we have Channel 5 (NBC affiliate) “on our side” [that’s their slogan] and Channel 4 (CBS affiliate) “never stops watching out for you” [their slogan]. With those two agents as our allies, we should have an army of charitable people and organizations that ensure that we never have people in our community who are hungry, homeless, or so left out in the cold that they have not showered in two months.

It was not a television station that broke the story of the “Shower the People” to us. It was St. Louis’ flagship daily newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. And they certainly care about us. No words could provide a greater call to action than Joseph Pulitzer’s platform, written on April 10, 1907.

I know that my retirement will make no difference in its cardinal principles, that it will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.

Joseph Pulitzer clearly got it. He talks about broad societal change to ensure that justice takes the lead over charity. He sees the well-being of citizens as a major concern of government and that responsible government must provide a safety net to protect all in need.

Perhaps it was inevitable as time went on the Post-Dispatch would have to trim its sails a bit to appeal to readers who were not nearly as progressive in thought or action as Pulitzer. At the time that he wrote his platform, there were nearly a dozen daily newspapers in St. Louis, so the Post-Dispatch could securely cater to the progressive niche.

As the Post worked to broaden its appeal, it had to seek out advertisers that were not comfortable with words like “never lack sympathy with the poor” or “always remain devoted to the public welfare.”

The TV stations crow about the great service they do for our community and the newspaper does indeed find time to provide some in-depth coverage to real acts of charity. But what is lost is how far we are from the words of Pulitzer’s platform.

A just society with a responsible government would never have need for a shower truck, much less homeless shelters or food banks. The society would recognize what is in Article I of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience3 and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

It is appropriate that we now cheer for Jake Austin and others who bring us the “Shower the People” truck. It is also appropriate that we cry that we are as far from justice as we are in 2017. No amount of “being on the side” of our charities will make up for a commitment to a solid government social and economic safety net. Whenever we cheer for the charity, let’s remember the omission of justice. And whenever the television station or newspaper tells us of the charity, let them remind us of the injustice that gave cause to the charity.

The post Charity: It feels so good it hurts appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Late every January – as reliable as the buzzards returning to Hinckley, Ohio each March – the revised Poverty Guidelines are published in the Federal Register…until Donald J. Trump became President.

As noted in the article below, the Trump administration pulled a couple of dozen of items (most very routine) from today’s Federal Register.  The guidelines were among the items yanked.

http://thehill.com/regulation/315839-trump-administration-withdraws-23-rules-from-federal-register

Oh, due to low inflation the numbers were not going to change much.  (I’m guessing the 100% poverty level for a family of four was going to climb from $24,300 in 2016 to about $24,360 this year.)  But they are going to increase.  Remember, government programs from food stamps to rural home loans utilize the guidelines.  And, many non-profits, such as food pantries, update their criteria based on the federal numbers.

Of course, we should not be surprised that the Trump Administration would interfere in such a mundane automatic function of the federal bureaucracy.  You see, the 2017 Poverty Guidelines will become facts when they’re issued.  Only the President gets to create facts.  Or, more correct, what he considers facts.

The post Trump disappears poverty guidelines from Federal Register appeared first on Occasional Planet.

It should not surprise us that 2016 has been the year of the Trump voter. It could well have happened without Donald Trump.

Just think of how when you listen to young kids on the playground, the words you frequently hear are, “My turn, my turn.”

Democrats are fond of playing identity politics. “Back then” it used to be blue-collar workers, farmers, immigrants and even small businesses. As we moved past the New Deal, with the help of Eleanor Roosevelt it became African-Americans. Ms. Roosevelt also helped to clarify that women would be an important constituency of Democrats.

As the 1960s moved to the present, the quiltwork of Democrats came to include the elderly, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, and urban professionals. Demographers and pollsters loved to slice and dice the populations and Democrats have always felt that the way to win the game is to have the greatest number of puzzle pieces in their pile.

But every time that a group gained its own recognition as a political force, it meant that another piece was taken from the core of “we.” Who was left behind without an identity?

The answer is that those left behind were those with whom no one else wanted to be associated. By a process of elimination, that became white men, particularly those who were neither economically well off or well educated. There were also the women who broke bread with them and shared a bed at night. What these people lacked was a source of pride around which they could rally. Virtually everyone else had left them.

These people may have been considered red necks, but that identity only went as far as niche TV or music; not an open political force. In fact, many of these people did not and do not hold more prejudice than the rest of us. But there was still a certain shame about them. The went about doing their business and when it became time to vote, they often did it with anger and disdain.

George Wallace tapped into them in the 1960s and 70s. Richard Nixon did as well. Nixon called them the “silent majority” and indeed they were a big part of those who gave him a near majority in 1968 and a real majority in 1972.

But when it came to the Democrats identifying these voters as a constituency, there was always a certain reluctance. The chic thing to do was to have the educated, the “people on the move,” women, and ethnic minorities at the vanguard of the coalition.

The low point for the Democrats may have been 1984 and 1988 when their candidates, no matter how well-intentioned, were boring white men. Something had to change. By 1992, the party had Bill Clinton who would be considered by some to be America’s “first black president.” That mythology broke the log-jam.

Two more not-so-exciting white men did not fare well for the Democrats in 2000 and 2004. Then the Democrats started playing “my turn” politics for real in 2008 and 2012 with Barack Obama and 2016 with Hillary Clinton (who came in a close second for the nomination in 2008). By 2020, it will have been sixteen years since a white male will have been the Democratic nominee for president.

For those forgotten Americans (and we’re still looking for a better name for them. You can help us with our informal poll by voting here.), the celebrations for Barack Obama and the breaking the glass ceiling with Hillary Clinton may have just been too much. They used to think that all the turns were theirs. Now they wonder if their turn will ever come again with the Democrats.

This does not mean that Democrats need to go back to nominating white men. What it does mean is that the “forgotten Americans” who voted for Trump need to be as tightly woven into the fabric of the Democratic party as any other group. They can’t just be the “left-behinds” or “them.” First, Democrats need to come up with a respectable name for them; then Democrats need to get beyond hating them and finally Democrats need to embrace them along with every other group.

The post It’s not surprising that now is the time that “Forgotten Americans” rose up appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Throughout the coming weeks of sport and competition, keep in mind the cost Rio and Brazil are bearing to host us. More than 77,000 citizens have been forced from their homes and communities and placed in public housing far out on the peripheries. Many can’t afford their new rent.

Since 2009, “Pacification” forces have been deployed throughout many of Rio’s working-class communities, (paradoxically) killing 307 residents in 2015 alone  — the majority young, black men. A “shoot first, ask later” attitude matched with virtual impunity has lead to the deaths of children by stray bullets, innocent youth by prejudice and suspicion, and a retaliatory spike in violence and crime (followed by a 103% increase in police killings only recently). An involved property developer was quoted admitting the “pacification” strategy was really one of deliberate isolation, designed to hide the squalor and disarray working-poor communities are subjected to not by gangs, but by the government. His goal, he said, was to make Rio, or at least give the impression of, “a city of the elite.”

Very few plans for improvements in these communities that helped win Rio the games in 2009 were implemented. The single metro line that was completed only reaches the most affluent areas, and bus lines have been changed to avoid poorer areas. Some of those areas have been literally walled-off from highways and travel routes. Rio legislation requires community participation in budgeting, yet the community as a whole has been left in every meaning of disregard. The internationally-lauded family financial assistance program that helped raise 50 million Brazilians into the middle class over the last decade recently ran out of funding. Schools and hospitals have seen funding cut and even been closed over and over while politicians and elite public servants raise their salaries and ignore the constitution (well, at least they’re working to change that so their activities wouldn’t be illegal…). Even the police and other first responders, who are clearly playing such a central role in this event, went without pay because of shameless corruption and mismanagement on the city and state levels.

On the Federal level, President since 2010 Dilma Rousseff was ousted several months ago amid the largest corruption scandal in Brazilian history on accusations of accounting tricks in order to clean up her record for reelection. The Senate investigative committee, full of those who voted to impeach her, found no evidence at all of the crime. More than half of those in Congress who voted to impeach her, however, are implicated and/or convicted in the multibillion dollar scandal, among others (of course). Several recorded conversations have been leaked revealing that the motivation behind impeachment is killing the investigation. The former-Speaker of the House Eduardo Cunha, who championed and prioritized her impeachment process over the past year, was found guilty of multiple counts of corruption and stripped of his title (though not his perks, unlike Dilma). Current President and former-Vice President Michel Temer — who is also implicated in the ongoing scandal — operated very closely with Cunha to drive the effort for impeachment, promising cabinet offices to leaders of major parties to draw support. Within three weeks, three cabinet ministers in Temer’s all white, all male, all millionaire cabinet had resigned facing corruption charges (including, ironically, the anti-corruption minister). REMINDER THAT HIS PREDECESSOR DILMA WAS THE COUNTRY’S FIRST FEMALE PRESIDENT.

This so-called “soft coup” by the pragmatic corporatist party of Temer, Cunha, and Rio’s mayor — Eduardo Paes — has been fueled in large part by the country’s mass-media, who have a history of supporting conservative coups. For instance, when paper Folha de São Paulo polled Brazilians on their thoughts on Dilma vs. Temer, Folha published results construed to show that the majority of the country wanted Temer to remain president until the end of the term. In reality, originally unreleased data implied that a clear majority still wanted new elections. Domestic media as a whole are now suggesting Temer run for reelection in 2018, though he is legally banned from doing so for violating campaign finance laws in his last personal campaign. Other media have downplayed anti-Temer protests and highlighted and even exaggerated anti-Dilma acts, while offering mostly pro-impeachment commentators on air and in print.

Though most Brazilians did and do support Dilma’s impeachment for her lack of charisma along with her being head of government during a major scandal, just as many or more did and do not want Temer as president (he received a shockingly low 1% of the vote in a presidential poll only months ago). He’s less popular now than Dilma at her worst. Yet, he, unlike Dilma, refuses to entertain the notion of new elections. With no vote or other input by the nation, he is pushing major “reforms” with a huge swing to the right from the previously social-democratic government, privatizing the nation’s resources and slashing any and all social programs (in order to please “Goldman, Sachs and the IMF” and his adoring foreign investors — those with no investment whatsoever in the country or people, only in making money), while simultaneously increasing the salaries of the judges who will vote on whether to proceed with Dilma’s impeachment and whether or not to indict he and those in his party and new coalition. That coalition heavily features the right-wing party who has lost four consecutive elections to Dilma’s center-left party.

Clearly, there is quite a bit for Brazilians to be angry about, so please — POR FAVOR — cut them some slack over the next few weeks. They, like most of us, would prefer to continue to be able to go to school and to get an ambulance in under 5 hours. Keep them and their struggles in sight and in mind. An investment of your patience, attention, and empathy will go a long way to finally grant the longtime “Country of the Future” its rightful place as a country of today.

The post The social and political costs of the Rio Olympics appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Wouldn’t it be nice if all of our political stereotypes were affirmed with every individual? You know, for progressives it would be easy if every Republican was gun-toting, uneducated, war-mongering, angry and generally uncouth. Without naming names, there are plenty of such types to go around. And before we go any further, progressives must keep in mind that others have their own stereotypes of us: tree-hugging, always politically correct, disrespecting authority, and even bed-wetting. Because I largely travel in the company of progressives, I know that the stereotype of liberals may be accurate about two per-cent of the time.

I would argue that Republicans fit more into some semblance of the stereotypical cage that many progressives give them. And when progressive run into a Republican who does not fit the stereotypical image that we have of them, it can become challenging. But do not totally fear, progressives are much better at tolerating ambiguity than conservatives.

Wisconsin congressman and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan certainly presents challenges for progressives. He is somewhat of the anti-Trump, which appeals to many, but in reality he is but one among many Republicans who fit that moniker. It’s more than that. He seems like the kind of guy who you would trust to take your kid with his family on an “American vacation.” He’s most likely polite to people who wait on him. In his personal life he probably has equal respect for men and women and does not bear ill-feelings towards those whose sexual orientation is different from his own. But dammit, those ideas of his can be unnerving.

As reported in The Economist:

A dogmatic conservative, Mr. Ryan has often used the budget process to score ideological points. He puts too much faith in supply-side reform as a growth-boosting counterweight to austerity. He launched a hapless effort to defund the health-care reform that is President Barack Obama’s main domestic achievement.

He is a devotee of the author Ayn Rand and has said,

“What’s unique about what’s happening today in government, in the world, in America, is that it’s as if we’re living in an Ayn Rand novel right now. I think Ayn Rand did the best job of anybody to build a moral case of capitalism, and that morality of capitalism is under assault.”

He has supported generous tax cuts for the wealthy and railed against expenditures to maintain a social safety net, even for children and the elderly. How could a nice guy have such seemingly nasty positions on the issues?

We could learn a thing or two from Reagan biographer Peggy Noonan who told the story that if Reagan was taking a stroll outside the White House and a beggar came up and asked him for a dime, the President without hesitation would reach into his pocket and give him one. But if the same beggar was to be the beneficiary of an economic program that would help him, it’s likely that Reagan would have opposed that program and left the beggar starving.

It is indeed somewhat of a conundrum for progressives when we encounter a Ronald Reagan or a Paul Ryan. How they can personally be so nice while supporting public policies that are Republican-mean is difficult to understand.  This is why it is helpful to study the Republican Brain to gain more insight. In the meantime, it makes sense to be cordial with the likes of Reagan and Ryan, but also to beware.

The post Paul Ryan: When a Republican does not look like a demon to progressives appeared first on Occasional Planet.

If charity was the answer to our problems, then there would be no homelessness in America, no poverty in general. We would have a much better health care system and school systems that truly met the needs of children and society’s common good. But this is not the way that it is, much to the chagrin of Republicans.

The United States is a charitable nation, and as previously reported in Occasional Planet, Republicans are far more charitable than Democrats. But as our recent Occasional Planet public opinion survey shows, the issue is not that Democrats are stingy, rather it is that they see government as the best way to address problems like hunger.

Occasional Planet asked* a random sample of 550 Americans, “In your opinion, what is the best way to address hunger in America?”

Slightly more saw government assistance rather than charity as the preferable way to solve hunger, however nearly six in ten said that both avenues are of equal value. But as we break it down to various demographic or affiliation groups, we find a clear pattern.

You can see inside the red ellipse that Republicans are almost ten times as likely as Democrats to think that charity alone is the best way to address hunger in America. Inside the blue ellipse, we see that Democrats are about 2 ½ times as likely as Republicans to think that the best way to address the issue is through government assistance. On all counts, Independents expectedly fall in the middle.

Party affiliation involves a choice. But are demographic factors behind the party affiliations the cause of these differences? First a look at gender:

Even without the ellipses, you can see that the differences are negligible. What about race and ethnicity?

The differences between what Caucasians and minorities think is statistically insignificant.

When it comes to income level, we do see one significant difference:

Respondents who live in households with annual incomes of less than $50,000, have only about a third as much confidence in charity as those making over $50,000. This is particularly interesting because the “blue respondents” (those from households with incomes under $50,000 per year), are the very people who are frequently on the receiving end of both charity and government assistance. With only 7% of the blue respondents thinking that charity is the best way to address hunger, it is pretty clear that those who know best do not think that the job can be done best through charity alone.

So here is what we learned from this survey on addressing hunger in America:

1. Most Americans think that the way to address hunger in America is through a combination of charity and government assistance.
2. The people in our society who are the poorest and most likely to be recipients of charity and government assistance do not have very much confidence in the effectiveness of charity alone.
3. By a factor of ten, Republicans are more inclined to favor charity as the sole solution to hunger in America than Democrats are.
4. Perhaps most importantly, this may be why charitable giving by Republicans is greater than that of either Democrats in the United States or Europeans as a whole. However, the Democratic view that government assistance is a much better way to solve hunger than charity is very consistent with the strong support that Bernie Sanders has received in his presidential bid.

Bernie has touched many nerves in the electorate, and this survey clearly demonstrates that one of them is that his own party is much more supportive of government programs than with voluntary charity.

*Occasional Planet interviewed 550 Americans on January 14-15, 2016, using the services of the online-site Survey Monkey. The sample size is reliable +/- 4.5%, 95% of the time. It is demographically balanced by gender, ethnicity, age, income and geographic region.

The post Addressing hunger: Republicans say charity; Dems say government appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Last night, I attended a presentation looking at trends in world population since biologist Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb in 1968, a best-selling work of non-fiction that scared everyone, and spurred the Zero Population Growth [ZPG] movement. This morning, I learned that China is ending its decades-old, one-child policy. What a juxtaposition!

So, what happened? Why didn’t the population bomb detonate? And how does China’s policy reversal play into this story?

I learned most of what I now know about the complicated aftermath of The Population Bomb from Sara Weiser, a reporter for The Retro Report, an innovative, documentary news organization. Retro Report, founded in 2013, looks back at some of the big news stories of recent years to see what has happened since, how things may have changed, or even to correct the record:

From The Retro Report website:

How often does a great story dominate the headlines, only to be dropped from the news cycle? How often do journalists tell us of a looming danger or important discovery – only to move quickly to the next new thing? What really happened? How did these events change us? And what are the lingering consequences that may affect our society to this day?

…Complicating matters, the first draft of history can be wrong. When news organizations fail to invest the time and money required to correct the record or provide context around what really happened, myth can replace truth. The results are policy decisions and cultural trends built on error, misunderstanding or flat-out lies.

Retro Report is there to pick up the story after everyone has moved on, connecting the dots from yesterday to today, correcting the record and providing a permanent living library where viewers can gain new insight into the events that shaped their lives.

Weiser applied these questions and principles to Ehrlich’s predictions. Her reporting focused on India—whose exploding population inspired Ehrlich’s research and dire predictions. Ehrlich predicted that, if birth rates continued at their 1968 rate, by 2000 there would be so many people on Earth that there might not be enough food to sustain life.

The result of Weiser’s exploration of post-Population Bomb India is a documentary report, which you can view here. [Highly recommended.]

In her report, Weiser includes archival clips from 1960s news reports sharing Erhlich’s dire warnings, interviews with Ehrlich and some of his followers—then and now—an examination of India’s governmental policies [for better and for worse] that have impacted the country’s birth rate, and commentary on other factors that have played a role in defusing the predicted population bomb.

What’s the answer? It’s complicated. Weiser’s report shows that, while India has instituted policies that have been effective in promoting sex education, birth control and voluntary sterilization, the results differ in rich and poor regions of the country. There’s also measurable inequality between regions regarding the availability of education and healthcare services for women and children. One of the lessons of the report is that, as healthcare services improve, families—who often rely on children as revenue-producers in agricultural areas—feel more confident that their children will survive, so they don’t feel compelled to have so many.

And then, of course, there is the Green Revolution factor. As the report reminds us, you don’t need as many hands on the farm when you have modern machinery and better-yielding crops. Clearly, Ehrlich did not foresee the development of the genetically modified seeds that have revolutionized farming.

Finally, there’s the bottom line: It has been demonstrated many times that, as families—particularly women—become more educated and more economically secure, birth rates decline. And, in fact, as the documentary notes, we now have a situation in which economically developed countries—Japan is a prime example—are worrying that their birth rates are too low.

Which brings us to China.

China’s decision to end the one-child-family rule, instituted in 1979, may offer the ultimate repudiation of Ehrlich’s prognostications. China remains cautious about overpopulation–it’s still limiting families, but now the limit is two children, not just one. But the lifting of the one-child restriction reflects China’s worry that its population has begun to age out of the work force, with not enough younger replacements. Interestingly, although the one-child limit has been seen as onerous and inhumane by many, the rising economic status of many Chinese families has already spurred a trend toward voluntarily smaller families.

So, was Ehrlich wrong? Yes and no. He didn’t—and couldn’t– foresee some of the factors that drove lower birth rates. But he was prescient about the impact of having too many people on the planet. Today, while birth rates have diminished in many places, the same factors that spurred the slowdown—primarily the improving economic status of families—have created a new monster: We may not be growing in numbers as quickly as Ehrlich predicted, but each of us has access to and is using more of Earth’s finite resources. Now what?

The post The fizzling of The Population Bomb: China ends its one-child policy appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Squandering $2 billion dollars in essentially free money is not what anyone would call “fiscal conservatism.” But that’s exactly what the phony fiscal conservatives in Republican-dominated state legislatures have done this year, according to Kevin Drum, of Mother Jones. This spectacular hypocrisy is the result of their obstinate, obstructionist, nihilistic, knee-jerk hate for all things Obama–and their utter disregard for the well-being of their economically disadvantaged constituents–which in this case comes in the form of not expanding Medicaid in their states.

Drum explains:

In 2015, according to a survey by the Kaiser Foundation, spending by states that refused to expand Medicaid grew by 6.9 percent. That’s pretty close to the historical average. However, spending by states that accepted Medicaid expansion grew by only 3.4 percent. Obamacare may have increased total Medicaid enrollment and spending, but the feds picked up most of the tab. At the state level, it actually reined in the rate of growth.

In other words, the states that have refused the expansion…are actually willing to shell out money just to demonstrate their implacable hatred of Obamacare. How much money? Well, the expansion-refusing states spent $61 billion of their own money on Medicaid in 2014. If that had grown at 3.4 percent, instead of 6.9 percent, they would have saved about $2 billion this year.

So, Drum concludes, “states that refuse to expand Medicaid [like Missouri] are denying health care to the needy and paying about $2 billion for the privilege.”

And there’s even more:

The residents of every state pay taxes to fund Obamacare, whether they like it or not. Residents of states that refuse to expand Medicaid are paying about $50 billion in Obamacare taxes each year, and about $20 billion of that is for Medicaid expansion. Instead of flowing back into their states, this money is going straight to Washington DC, never to be seen again.

So, the bogus fiscal conservatives running state legislatures hate Washington so much that they are sending it $50 billion per year with no expectation of return on investment. [Note to self-proclaimed “free-market-capitalism” Republicans: Please review your notes from Capitalism 101 on ROI.]

This is what passes for “governance” in America today.

The post Screw the poor: Not expanding Medicaid cost red states $2 billion in 2015 appeared first on Occasional Planet.

You can tell a lot about a society by what its citizens compliment themselves about. You might also learn a great deal about a society’s insecurities by what citizens say to make themselves feel good.

The United States is perhaps the most charitable nation in the world. According to the 2014 World Giving Index, the U.S. actually tied with Myanmar (you can use that factoid to win some points, somewhere, somehow). The U.S. is the only country that ranked in the top ten of each of the three categories: (a) the percentage of people who donate in a typical month to charity, (b) volunteer time and (c) help a stranger.

This is much to gloat about, but is it possible that this positive trait covers up shameful statistics for the United States?

We are proud of the money and sweat equity we give to food panties. According to the non-profit Feeding America, the U.S. has 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries and meal programs that provides food and services to people each year. But our pride is possible only because according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, one in six people in America faces hunger. If wealth were distributed in the United States so that all people had the financial resources to feed themselves, then there would be no need for charity to be a source of food for our citizens. America would be less charitable.

More than 3.5 million Americans experience homelessness each year. The figure is nearly 580,000 each night. Thirty-five percent of the homeless population are families with children,  the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population. Twenty-three percent are U.S. military veterans. Yet hundreds of churches and other non-profit organizations run shelters for the homeless. Americans are indeed very charitable towards these organizations, but it is no substitute for a nation in which every citizen has sufficient income or wealth to have a roof over his or her head. We make charity possible by failing to insist that government fulfill its obligation to provide a basic standard of living for all Americans.

It is basically Republican politicians who stand in the way of providing a livable safety net for American citizens. They oppose: raising minimum wages, offering a guaranteed income, expanding Social Security and Medicare where necessary, fully funding health care for veterans, and providing even minimal health care for many poor people in states that resist Medicaid expansion. Who benefits from Republican obstinacy? Three sectors of our society:

1. American business, which pays lower taxes because we do not fully fund a safety net. At the same time, business brag about their charitable donations, even though they are far smaller than would be their fair share in providing a livable level of income for all Americans.
2. Churches and other religious organizations, who benefit from the holes in the safety net. Churches can take the lead in charitable enterprises. But if the government was taking care of all Americans, religious institutions would be largely stripped of their charitable functions. That in turn would likely be a disincentive for many Americans to join or remain members in religious organizations.
3. Wealthy people in the United States, who can brag ’til the cows home about how charitable they are, even though the amount that many give is far less than what would be their fair tax in a society that cared for its poor, its infirm, its children, and its senior citizens.

I previously wrote  about how Republicans are more charitable than Democrats and Europeans. They love to brag about it. They and the causes that they support receive ongoing adulation from Americans, particularly from mainstream media outlets. What is not said is that it’s all a good economic deal for Republicans. They are able to pay less and brag more. Regrettably, this may be too difficult a concept for most Americans to understand.

The post Americans are too charitable appeared first on Occasional Planet.

A recent article published here on Occasional Planet stated that the Republican debates last Thursday night were not as much of a clown car as expected. A friend of mine watched the Republican debates and had a similar take on how the Republicans sounded.

However, the realities of the world in which we live came home to roost for him the following day. Conversations with, and requests from, several people repeatedly burst the bubble of the mean-spirited economic policies that all of the GOP candidates share.

No sooner had his alarm clock gone off at 7:30, when a twenty-four year old friend of his called and reluctantly asked if he could have $350, because his children’s clothes had been destroyed in a fire at their mother’s house. And since he was going to take the boys, two and four years old, into his own new apartment, he needed money for a bunk bed and a microwave. This was hardly the first call my friend had received from the twenty-four year-old. The young man was now working one full-time job and another part-time, but since the paychecks were erratic, he had needed money for a monthly bus pass. A few days earlier, he needed help paying his cell phone bill; he had to stay in touch with his employers, his children and day-care, as he was juggling the responsibilities of essentially being a single parent. Prior to this, my friend had been helping the young man pay off fines from a myriad of North St. Louis County jurisdictions, where he had been found guilty of what we now call “poverty crimes.”

My friend couldn’t help but wonder how different things would have been for his friend if he was living in a European democracy or Canada. In these industrialized countries with a large measure of socialism in their economic policies, there is an awareness that for all of us, there are times in our lives when “shit happens,” and an economic safety net is necessary in order to seamlessly help people through difficult times.

According to the “Republican Seventeen,” when rough times occur in the U.S., people should either declare bankruptcy or pull themselves up by their boot-straps. What these Republicans fail to recognize is that if you’re poor, you really can’t declare bankruptcy. And as for pulling yourself up by your boot-straps, well that only works if you have boot straps. The twenty-four year old friend of my friend is working his butt off, well over twelve hours a day, but still has not been able to catch up basic expenses, much less to begin saving.

Later that day, my friend received a call from another of his friends. She’s sixty-five years old and not in good health. Her Social Security can get her through two, perhaps, three weeks of the month. Now she was calling my friend because she had four  prescriptions waiting for her at Walgreen’s. She did not have money for the co-pays. My friend helped her out with those co-pays. This happened while the Republicans were urging cutbacks in Social Security.

This friend of mine has repeatedly helped others and rarely complains.

But I am outraged by how callous our society can be, with that meanness mainly fueled by Republicans. Because so many in our society see charity as an adequate substitute for social justice, those in need are repeatedly placed in positions where they have to go into “asking” mode. “Asking” can easily become begging. Republicans repeatedly fail to do the math; charity can provide only 3 to 5 percent of the costs of an adequate safety net.

In so many sectors of our society, the power elite seems to think that begging should be a normal part of the human experience. It can be those citizens among us who do not have the economic wherewithal to adequately support themselves; it can be college students who can only secure their education if they assume long-term burdening debts; and it can be our political leaders, who bombard us continuously with dire requests for money in support of their campaigns.

Yes, most of those Republicans sounded articulate. The media was quick to pick that up. What the mainstream press continuously refuses to do is to say that the basic tenet of the modern Republican Party is meanness. No matter how well they phrase their words, they are still mean.

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