Fact-esque

Food Stamps prime the Economic Pump

Globalization moved tens of millions of good jobs overseas to low-wage, low-tax countries; the banksters' refusal to loosen credit except for scams and rip-offs from which they would benefit has prevented legitimate businesses from borrowing money to grow on, thus adding jobs to a sputtering economy that desperately needs them, even though we provided the bankers with a financial "stimulus" to do just that; and the Bushies (with Bill Clinton's help) virtually destroyed all the elements of the safety net, calling it "welfare reform".

Given all that, it is more than a little ironic that local govts are now urging people to sign up for food stamps as a way of pumping up the local economy.

The Obama Disconnect: Hunger v Wall Street

Poppy Bush lost his bid for re-election in '92 largely because he was perceived to be too distant and disconnected from the suffering on Main Street that was the inevitable result of Reagan's pro-banker, pro-corporate, pro-Wall Street economic poolicies. Clinton won by concentrating on populist economic reform rhetoric and the whole campaign was directed by 4 famous words of James Carville's: "It's the economy, stupid." That strategy worked largely because Poppy looked disengaged and isolated from normal life. After all, he had to have barcode scanners explained to him.

Poppy was in fact disengaged and looked it. Obama is neither. He looks engaged, desperately so, and has begun to talk populist in an effort to connect to the perceived anger and disappointment of the vanishing middle class, and has even made at least one move toward changing the direction of his totally pro-bankster policies.

Honest Numbers At Last: 16% of Americans in Poverty, 17% Unemployed

After nearly a decade of the Bush Admin playing with statistics to ensure no one would know how bad it was, I give full credit to Obama for allowing his National Academy of Sciences to correct their poverty formula (or at least begin correcting it) so it reflects the real world instead of deliberately violating it.

Having said that, I then have to add that the price for the Bush Economy is turning out to be a lot higher than anyone but pessimists like me thought it was. That's the reason Bush hid it in the first place.

Dear Teabaggers,

As a fellow grassroots activist, let me first say that I feel your pain.  Some (maybe even most) of you are out there doing the First Amendment thing.  You're frustrated by government.  You feel out of control.  You probably get your news from FOX or another of the cable stations so you're even more misinformed than the rest of us who avoid those corporatist outlets.  You see suffering that's normally reserved for "Cadillac-driving Welfare Queens" and other lazy bums starting to creep up the class ladder and it's scary.  Maybe you're even suffering yourself - lost your job or watched your portfolio take a hit.  It's not exactly wondering where your next meal is coming from or how you'll pay for your kid's asthma meds, but it's still discomforting and, depending on your age, may be genuinely frightening.  You want to get that feeling of control back.  You want people to know what you know and pay attention.  I hear that.  I live that.  So when I see you being mocked and called crazy, I feel some sympathy.  It's not quite empathy because, based on what I understand of this teabagging movement, it's all about not paying taxes and scapegoating the "illegals," which makes me think that your movement is basically lazy and selfish and willing to be led by a truly hideous element of our society.  But I know it hurts to believe something is true and noble and be laughed at because of it.   So I won't laugh at you.

Here's what I will do:  I'll keep organizing communities that work for reduced military spending because our war economy is an abomination.  I will keep working for fair tax policy that works to have everyone and every corporation pay their fair share.  I will keep organizing for health care reform that covers everyone, reduces costs and improves care through the inclusion of a strong and independent public health insurance plan option.  I'll keep working to improve the chances you and your children and their children have to succeed by working to ensure government investment in human needs programs that help all of us - even the lazy bums who don't deserve it because, you know, it's in all our best economic interests to do so and because my moral center compels me to.

In the meantime, here's something you won't see on FOX or the rest of the cable news shows.   

Hunger in America

This is Joel Berg. His new book is called All You Can Eat: How Hungry is America?.  I'm reading it now and am learning a lot about what it took to get where we were in the late 70's just before Reagan came to tear it down.  I recommend it.

Hunger

Have you ever been really hungry with no immediate prospects for relief?   People live like that every day in the United States.  People go to work hungry and are expected to perform.  Children go to school hungry and are expected to learn.  We all lose under those circumstances.  And now it looks like the situation is getting worse as food stamps buy less and less:

Food stamp benefit levels are supposed to be sufficient to enable households to afford the “Thrifty Food Plan,” a low-cost but nutritionally adequate diet established by USDA.[1]  Since 1996, however, when Congress cut food stamp benefits, the level of benefits has fallen short in almost every month.[2]  (See figure 1.)

Periods of rapid food price inflation — such as the last several years — exacerbate this problem because food stamp benefit levels are based on food price data that become increasingly outdated over the course of the year.  For example, the actual cost of the foods in the Thrifty Food Plan for a household of four was about $430 more over the course of fiscal year 2008 than the Food Stamp Program assumed would be necessary to purchase these foods. Low-income households had to make up the entire difference on their own.  With food prices expected to continue rising in fiscal year 2009, food stamp benefits will likely once again be insufficient unless Congress enacts a temporary benefit increase.

If you read this blog, then you know what's coming next because there is a way out of this mess that will not only relieve hunger but also help everyone who wants a stronger US economy:

... Many economists are calling for another economic stimulus package in the face of what could be the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression.  As part of such a package, Congress should include a large — perhaps 10 to 15 percent — temporary increase in food stamp maximum benefits. Economists have ranked a temporary food stamp increase as one of the fastest, most effective forms of economic stimulus.[9]

A benefit increase in this range would cost $5 to $12 billion, depending on how long it remained in effect, but would generate even greater economic stimulus.  USDA’s Economic Research Service estimates that a $5 billion temporary increase in food stamp benefits would result in $8.2 to $9.2 billion in economic stimulus.  ERS has also written that using the food stamp program for economic stimulus would “result in increased demand and production in the agriculture and food sectors, stabilizing economic activities in these key rural sectors during downturns in the economy.”[10]

That's 74% rate of return on every tax dollar invested (assuming a $8.7B increase in demand).  The trillions of dollars we're pouring into the financial sector aren't getting that rate of return, even according to the most sanguine of establishment wishful thinking.   But we can get it by investing in temporarily increasing food stamps. 

So why don't we? 

 

The Public Wants What the Public Gets

Via Atrios I see that Matt Yglesias is trying to make lemonade:

Why not tie this bailout to something like the second stimulus package of enhanced food stamps, extended unemployment insurance, and enhanced aid to state governments straining under the yoke of Medicaid payments?

It’d be absurd for the government to be moving hundreds of billions of dollars around amidst an economic crisis while doing nothing for, say, janitors who get laid off from Lehman Brothers. The problems to worry about here are in the “real” economy. Propping up the financial sector can help accomplish that, but we also need to prop up normal people trying to pay the bills and weather the storm.

Yeah.  I love Matt for trying.  I wish I had thought to suggest it first with a straight face and I'm ashamed that I didn't.  But, in my defense, that idea won't happen in a million billion years, which is probably why my brain killed the thought before it could escape my idealistic subconscious.   This is what will happen:

All those hundreds of billions will be moved to protect and defend the ruling class.  When it comes time to pass an economic recovery package (this is that time, by the way but it's being used up with the bailout) and the appropriation bills that fund the sort of programs that Matt is talking about, we will be lectured by the GOP and their miserable Blue Dog minions about fiscal responsibility as if we are frackin' idiot children who can't balance our own checkbooks much less a great big federal budget.  They will shake their heads and wish that we could afford everything, really they do, but hard choices have to be made. 

People like me will beg people to take action - send an email - call your Congressperson - march in the street - show up at campaign events in great numbers and badger those sons of bitches on this point until they give in.   I'll be bitterly disappointed because not enough people will do what it takes and this radical reallocation of resources will continue unabated and those janitors that Matt talks about and their kids - and you and your kids - will continue to be casualties of a class war that just opened up another front.

On the bright side, there is no bright side but I did find a funny comment from that Yglesias post, so, you know, that's something:

It’s like Wall Street is playing D&D and the Dungeon Master is named Reality.

Financial Wizards: I cast my greed spell. It should do + 1 billion damage.

Reality: There is a strange force at work called rational asset pricing. Your spell has the reverse effect! Minus 1 billion damage! How many hit points do you have again?

Financial Wizards: Ummmm…not a billion.

Reality: That’s alright. I’ll just give you additional hit points that I steal from the future of your children.

Financial Wizards: Cool! Can I try that spell again?

Reality: Of course but you’ll have to wait a few turns. The amount of future you can steal is finite but it renews itself every generation.

Californians Fight Food Crisis, Utahans Fight Gas Crisis

There's bound to be an upside to every disaster, I suppose, and you might say the bright side of the Bush economic free-fall is the once and final (we hope) death of standard conservative ideals like "every man for himself" and "starve the beast". Seems things work better when we do the opposite.

1) California is fighting the cost of food by going back to an old, anti-conservative model. They've thrown "Look Out for #1" on the trash-heap in favor of communities combining in a joint effort.

This is how far some people will go these days to get locally grown food: In California, more than 40 residents volunteered their back yards to an aspiring young farmer who couldn't afford to buy land of his own. In exchange for a weekly supply of produce, they would let him till their all-American lawns into rows of lettuce, broccoli, squash and peas.

These weren't Bay Area yuppies, either.

How Much?

I'm re-posting this video because while I get a kick out of the trouble McCain's inability to know the extent of his staggering wealth is causing his campaign, and while I certainly hope that it causes him much more trouble as we get closer to election day, I want to remember that he isn't the only person who may not always understand and appreciate how lucky he is to have what he's got.

Child Poverty Increases - Again; Colorado Beats Nation

For the 7th straight year, hunger in America has increased, especially among kids. In this particular race to the bottom (brought to you by Bush), Colorado and New Hampshire are leading the pack.

Colorado experienced the nation’s largest rate of growth in impoverished children from 2000 to 2006, according to a study released Tuesday.

The study, by the Colorado Children’s Campaign, a nonprofit group that focuses on child welfare, said that the most recent census data show that 180,000 children — 15.7 percent of the state total — were living in poverty in Colorado in 2006, a 73 percent increase since 2000.

New Hampshire and Delaware experienced the second- and third-largest rates of increase in child poverty, about 47 percent and 45 percent respectively.

George must be so proud. This is what he's been aiming at all this time and, once again, he has succeeded. We are going to decrease the surplus population.

“What the data is telling us is that we’re headed in the wrong direction in terms of taking care of our lower-income population,” the president of the Colorado Children’s Campaign, Megan Ferland, said.

Jeez, yah think?

At a news conference on Tuesday, Gov. Bill Ritter Jr. called the statistics “awful” and said that “they clearly demonstrate that we have a responsibility to people who live on the margins.”

“It’s intolerable that 180,000 children are living in poverty in this state,” said Mr. Ritter, a Democrat who took office last year.

Aw, Bill. The Pubs who came before you didn't think so. They understood the concept of how govt "enables" lazy kids by making sure they have food. Then they get "dependent" on tax money.

That's...baaaaaad. Much worse than merely starving to death.

In a supplemental document, the Colorado Children’s Campaign said the state spent less per capita on its residents than its neighbors to the north and south, Wyoming and New Mexico. Those states experienced a decrease in child poverty during the same six years as the study.

This is, naturally, a false correlation since, as we've all been told by conservatives for 30  years, throwing money at a problem doesn't solve it.

Except when it does, of course.

“This report and this finding validate a lot of what we largely know, in that Colorado continues to lag behind in key areas of public investment,” an institute spokesman, Scott Downes, said. “That prevents us from creating the kind of future that we want for our communities, our children and generations to come.”

Mr. Downes attributed the situation in part to a “knot of fiscal restraints” like a 1992 constitutional amendment, the Tax Payer’s Bill of Rights, that was intended to restrain state spending.

Well, it did restrain state spending. On starving kids. But fiscal restraint is fiscal restraint, and you know, eggs..omelets..,.etc. Somebody has to win and somebody has to lose and as long as the loser ain't me I don't care who it is.

- Social Darwinism 101 (by Newt Gingrich and James Inhofe)

And so on.