Here is an interview that David Beckmann, President of Bread for the World did with Spotlight on Poverty on the current budget and its effect on poor people here and abroad. To watch the interview click here.
This is an important issue; the proposed budget cuts are targeting those who are most vulnerable.
Hungry People Overseas Hit Hardest by Proposed Cuts
May 2011
The most alarming provisions of H.R. 1, the House spending bill discussed in this issue’s front-page story, affect some of the poorest people in the world. These provisions would make drastic cuts to international humanitarian and development assistance programs, such as emergency food aid, health (including HIV treatment), child survival, clean water, and sustainable agriculture.
Food aid and the McGovern-Dole program, which provides school lunches to children from poor families, would face the largest cuts: 46 percent. Hundreds of millions of dollars would be stripped from each of several other accounts, including Development Assistance, PEPFAR, Global Health and Child Survival, and the Millennium Challenge Account.
via Hungry People Overseas Hit Hardest by Proposed Cuts – Bread for the World: Have Faith. End Hunger..
See also this pdf file from Bread for the World: The US Budget: Myths and Realities.
Better Choices for Pennsylvania has a set of guiding principles which provide a moral approach to a PA budget.
The following two statements highlight that approach.
It is the legal and moral duty of Pennsylvania government, state and local, to efficiently deliver essential, quality services to Pennsylvanians. All Pennsylvanians – children, families, business owners, residential taxpayers, senior citizens, and others – benefit from this necessary government infrastructure.
A state budget that builds upon sound public investments. We must maintain strategic public investments in education, health care, transportation, natural resources and human services that make our state a desirable place to live and create a healthy climate for economic growth. The economic crisis should not cause Pennsylvania to lose ground on our gains in education and the economy.
An interesting theory.
The Class-Domination Theory of Power
by G. William Domhoff
April 2005
NOTE: WhoRulesAmerica.net is largely based on my book, Who Rules America?, first published in 1967 and now in its 6th edition. This on-line document is presented as a summary of some of the main ideas in that book.
Who has predominant power in the United States? The short answer, from 1776 to the present, is: Those who have the money have the power. George Washington was one of the biggest landowners of his day; presidents in the late 19th century were close to the railroad interests; for the Bush family, it was oil and other natural resources, agribusiness, and finance. But to be more exact, those who own income-producing property — corporations, real estate, and agribusinesses — set the rules within which policy battles are waged.
via Who Rules America: The Class-Domination Theory of Power.
The Census Bureau took a baby step toward redefining what is considered poor in America on Tuesday when it released several alternative measurements of poverty, fundamentally revising a one-size-fits-all formula developed in the 1960s by a civil servant.
via Census releases alternative formulas for gauging poverty.
The answer is this. When it comes to protecting the fortunes of America’s rich (mostly top corporate executives and Wall Street) and maintaining their strangle-hold on the political process, Senate Republicans, along with some Senate Democrats, don’t budge
via Robert Reich (Why Obama Wins on Foreign Policy and Gays but Loses on Economics and Taxes).
The two American economies — the Big Money economy and the Average Working Family economy — will continue to diverge. Corporate profits will continue to rise, as will the stock market. But typical wages will go nowhere, joblessness will remain high, the ranks of the long-term unemployed will continue to rise, the housing recovery will remain stalled, and consumer confidence will sag.
via Robert Reich (New Years Prediction (II): The U.S. Economy in 2011).
Online lessons geared toward teaching high school students economics as if people mattered. From United for a Fair Economy.
Looks like Santa is bringing a lump of something to working families, and it isn’t a fatter paycheck.
New data show America’s workers earned less in 2009 than in 2008, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Compensation was down by 3.2 percent in 2009 with declines in construction and manufacturing fueling the plunge. St. Louis County, the hardest hit, saw a decline of 11.5 percent.
via U.S. Workers Earned Less in 2009 Than in 2008 | AFL-CIO NOW BLOG.
History will record 2010 as the year Washington became “business friendly.”
via Robert Reich (The Year Washington Became “Business Friendly”).
Quite unlike today’s public, what Depression-era Americans wanted from their government was, on many counts, more not less. And despite their far more dire economic straits, they remained more optimistic than today’s public. Nor did average Americans then turn their ire upon their Groton-Harvard-educated president — this despite his failure, over his first term in office, to bring a swift end to their hardship. FDR had his detractors but these tended to be fellow members of the social and economic elite.
via How a Different America Responded to the Great Depression – Pew Research Center.
Senate Attempt at Full-Year Appropriations Collapses
Child Care, Head Start, Disabilities, and Housing Programs Likely to Suffer
There was an outside chance that Congress would be able to agree on a full-year appropriations bill during the waning days of its session. For parents needing help with child care or placing their children in Head Start, the outcome was very important. These programs are facing a significant loss of funding as the temporary increase provided by economic recovery legislation expires. An omnibus spending bill proposed by the Senate Appropriations Committee would have mitigated the loss of the temporary funding by increasing child care base dollars by $681 million and Head Start by $840 million over their FY 2010 levels.
via CHN: Senate Attempt at Full-Year Appropriations Collapses.
The new tax deal embodies the essence of Reaganomics.
It will not stimulate the economy.
A disproportionate share of the $858 billion deal will go to people in the top 1 percent who spend only a fraction of what they earn and save the rest. Their savings are sent around the world to wherever they will earn the highest return.
The only practical effect of adding $858 billion to the deficit will be to put more pressure on Democrats to reduce non-defense spending of all sorts, including Social Security and Medicare, as well as education and infrastructure
… The Democratic Party can no longer ignore critical investments in the productivity of average workers. Nor can it ignore the increasing concentration of income and wealth at the very top, and the inability of America’s middle and working class to get the economy moving again.
The GOP hasn’t changed their story or their strategy since the 1990s. It’s the fault of big government. That was false then, and it’s false now. The structural problems are now much worse, and the cyclical recovery from the Great Recession pathetically anemic.
If the Democratic Party has stood for anything over the years it is to maintain and restore upward mobility for the majority of working Americans, ensure that the playing field isn’t tilted in the direction of the privileged, and limit the power of the richest among us to entrench themselves and their heirs into a semi-permanent plutocracy
via Robert Reich (Why Democrats Should Disregard Bill Clinton’s Endorsement of Obama’s Tax Deal).
Some Dem apologists say the deal is a $900 billion stimulus. Not true. The rich spend a smaller share of their incomes than everyone else, so the huge benefits going their way will barely stimulate the economy. (Their savings will move around the world wherever they can get the highest return.)
And while middle and working class consumers will get a small break from payroll taxes, they’ll use most of it to help pay down their debts because they know the tax break isn’t permanent while their debt payments and penalties are growing. Again, very little stimulus.
An extension of unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless will surely help them and the economy overall. But a new WPA to put the jobless to work would have been far better. The longer they’re out of work the harder it will be for them ever to get back in, even if and when jobs return. But apparently a new WPA wasn’t even considered
via Robert Reich (The Why-Should-I-Get-Out-Of-My-Chair Gap in 2012).
Rarely before in American history has there been more disconnect between Washington and the rest of the nation. Washington is obsessing about the projected federal budget deficit. Everyone else in America is worried about jobs
via Robert Reich (The Truth About the Federal Budget Deficit That Noone Is Willing to Tell).
Quiz: What’s responsible for the lousy economy most Americans continue to wallow in?
A. Big government, bureaucrats, and the cultural and intellectual elites who back them.
B. Big business, Wall Street, and the powerful and privileged who represent them.
These are the two competing stories Americans are telling one another
Read the rest of his analysis here Robert Reich (The Big Economic Story, and Why Obama Isn’t Telling It).
It’s hard to figure out what the corporations have to complain about. Corporate America registered the highest profits on record last quarter. Companies are sitting on more than a trillion dollars in cash. CEOs are pocketing record compensation. Wall Street is back handing out million-dollar bonuses. The president’s tax deal extends their tax breaks, promises a lower rate on their estates and extends billions in corporate tax subsidies.
The AFL-CIO provides a helpfu guide to just how well the barons meeting with the president are doing. John Chambers, the chairman and chief executive officer of Cisco, was paid $10.2 million during last year’s recession — about 320 times the $32,048 that the average worker took home. Kenneth Chennault, chairman and chief executive officer of American Express, made do with $17.3 million — or an astounding 524 times what the average worker makes.
via Opinion: Getting all of America working – Robert L. Borosage – POLITICO.com.
One of the many negative results of the failure to pass an omnibus spending bill–thanks to the Party of No.
A sweeping food safety measure heralded as a rare Senate victory just a few weeks ago looks like it might fall to the cutting room floor, as senators hammer out the details of a resolution to prevent a government shutdown.
Aides say Majority Leader Harry Reid must strip down the government funding measure to its bare bones so that the Senate can pass it quickly by unanimous consent and send back to the House, which had attached the food-safety measure to its version of the continuing resolution earlier this month. A vote on a package with other items would meet resistance from Senate Republicans, eating into floor time — the most valuable commodity in Congress at the moment as Christmas nears.
via Fate of food-safety bill bleak – Meredith Shiner – POLITICO.com.
We can save our country by adding eight words to the fundamental law of the land, the US Constitution. “Corporations are not persons.” “Money is not speech.”
This is an excellent article please read the link below.
via 8 Words That Could Save Our Country | The New Rules Project.
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