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Posted on Sunday 12 September 2010


Report Released Saturday, One Day After President Obama Touted His Anti-Poverty Plans:  Since the inauguration of President Obama, the U.S. economy has shown few signs of climbing out of the nosedive that has been called the worst since the Great Depression. In actuality, despite huge amounts of  spending by the Obama administration including close to $1 trillion dollars in a stimulus program and ballooning budget deficits, unemployment has risen to an official number of 9.6%, although the unofficial numbers places it closer to 20%.

2009 Census Data To Be Released Thursday Expected To Show That 1 in 7 Americans Are Considered Poor, Jumping A Record Amount: This estimate by the Associated Press is based on an analysis done by interviewing six separate census-tracking demographers. The poverty level in 2008 as set by the federal government was $22,025 for a family of four. What the report found is that a projected 45 million Americans, or 15% of the population, are living below the poverty line compared to 13.2% in 2008. This jump of 1.8% represents the largest year over year increase since these records began to be tracked in 1959. With the greatest increase since 1965, 12.4% of working age Americans, or those between 18 and 64 years old, were poor in 2009, compared with 11.7% in 2008.

On Friday, President Obama said, "The most important anti-poverty effort is growing the economy and making sure there are enough jobs out there. If we can grow the economy faster and create more jobs, then everybody is swept up into that virtuous cycle." While this is common sense, his administration has come up painfully short in both areas.
In my last post, I mentioned poverty, "Interestingly, poverty hasn’t changed dramatically." I was referring to the period when Wealth Inequity was skyrocketing, before the Great Recession. Here’s that graph through 2008:
 
Since then, things have changed dramatically as this article documents. Obama is going to be blamed for these numbers, even though they are probably the result of the Bush Administration’s policies. But that doesn’t matter right now, Obama didn’t fix it. Could he have fixed it? I don’t know the answer to that, but it leaves us in a quandry – because a wide segment of Americans don’t think he tried hard enough – matched with a wide segment who think he did the wrong thing [or are at least going to claim that in their campaigns].
So, what’s a liberal to do? Most of us think Obama didn’t hit it hard enough. The fact that it was Bush’s "it" isn’t going to matter very much…
  1.  
    Joy
    September 12, 2010 | 3:57 PM
     

    I didn’t read all of Frank Rich’s op-ed in the NYTimes article about the situation with Obama and the state of the incoming Nov. election but he wrote about FDR’s rallying against a similar fight of the right in the 30s. That is precisely what the President needs to do now till the elections. I hope he’s read David Kennedy’s “Freedom From Fear”. There should be no mystery about people like Senator McConnell and Rep Boehner and who they really represent besides themselves.

  2.  
    1 Boring Old Man » damn!…
    September 16, 2010 | 4:49 PM
     

    […] I was talking about the poverty report coming out [what’s a liberal to do?…]. Well, it’s out now [One in seven Americans is living in poverty, Census shows]. It […]

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