NewsTrust - Poverty - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Dislocated in America

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

St. Louis Post-Dispatch - Nov. 21 (Editorial) - What may be occurring is a seismic shift in the American economy, one that could leave as many as one in four Americans permanently unemployed or so drastically underemployed that he or she can’t make ends meet. That’s the situation today. The greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression has resulted in the greatest social dislocation since the Great Depression.

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Our Free Market Makes Economic Collapse Inevitable

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Bill Moyers Journal - By Bill Moyers, James Galbraith - Nov. 02 (Interview) - The headlines are trumpeting recovery — some are even proclaiming an end to the recession in the United States (unofficially, that is). The US economy grew in the third quarter for the first time in a year. But there are some caveats — although jobless claims dipped slightly, many analysts still warn of a "jobless recovery." for a number of years to come. And then there's the small print — will this recovery be permanent or is it a function of the stimulus masking bigger problems? The Wall Street Journal warned: "The recovery thus far has been heavily supported by federal money, casting a question mark over the economy's underlying strength as government support dwindles." That unease is echoed by JOURNAL guest James K. Galbraith

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Rebranding America

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 20:09:36 -0700

New York Times - Oct. 18 (Opinion) - President Obama reminds us that America is not just a country but an idea, a great idea about opportunity for all and responsibility to your fellow man.

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Welcome to the gilded age of poverty chic

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Boston Globe - By Renée Loth - Oct. 16 (Opinion) - Welcome to the gilded age of poverty chic

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Globalist: The Public Imperative

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Roger Cohen - Oct. 06 (Opinion) - Whatever may be right, something is rotten in American medicine. It should be fixed. But fixing it requires the acknowledgment that, when it comes to health, we’re all in this together. Pooling the risk between everybody is the most efficient way to forge a healthier society.

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For ACORN, Truth Lost Amid the Din

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Harold Meyerson - Sep. 23 (Opinion) - Actual instances of voter fraud were all but nonexistent. Why you might not know that.

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12 Shocking Ideas That Could Change the World

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - Sep. 22 (Opinion) - Warning: The people's ideas expressed here may be dangerous. For this year's list, we walked right past the usual suspects and went looking for trouble.

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Save the Slums

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Stewart Brand - Sep. 22 (Interview) - People are trying desperately to get out of poverty, so there's a lot of creativity; they collaborate in ways that we've completely forgotten how to do in regular cities. And there's a transition: People come in from the countryside, enter the rickshaw economy, and work for almost nothing. But after a while, they move uptown, into the formal economy. The United Nations did extensive field research and flipped from seeing squatter cities as the world's great problem to realizing these slums are actually the world's great solution to poverty.

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Even Glenn Beck Is Right Twice a Day

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Frank Rich - Sep. 20 (Opinion) - Unlike liberal critics of capitalist inequities, of course, Beck and his claque are driven by an over-the-top detestation of government. Washington is always the enemy, stealing their hard-earned money to redistribute it to the undeserving and shiftless poor (some of whom just happen to be immigrants or black). Though there is nothing Obama can do to stop racists from being racist, he could help stanch the economic piece of this by demonstrating how a reformed government can at times actually make Americans’ lives better. That’s what F.D.R. did, and that’s the promise Obama made, swaying some Republicans and even some racists, during the campaign.

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Kennedy, Modest and Honest

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Jonathan Yardley - Sep. 17 (Review) - The late lion of the Senate sums up his life and times.

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Afghanistan is now Obama's war

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Financial Times - By Clive Crook - Aug. 31 (Opinion) - Victory will be impossible without greater expense of lives and money, withdrawal involves great dangers and, to complete the president's quandary, his rationale for fighting does not convince

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Mass Medical Clinic's Sobering Message

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

National Public Radio - By Howard Berkes - Aug. 10 (Opinion) - For two-and-a-half days, about 800 doctors, nurses, dentists and optometrists treated 2,700 uninsured and underinsured people, most from Appalachia. No one was asked for an insurance card. There were no co-pays. And there were no bills.

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Obama's Health Care Plan Just Expands Status Quo

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Robert J. Samuelson - Aug. 10 (Opinion) - "The status quo is unsustainable for families, businesses and government." -- President Obama, June 13 One of the bewildering ironies of the health-care debate is that President Obama claims to be attacking the status quo when he's actually embracing it. Ever since Congress created Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, health politics has followed a simple logic: Expand benefits and talk about controlling costs. That's the status quo, and Obama faithfully adheres to it. While denouncing skyrocketing health spending, he would increase it by extending government health insurance to millions more Americans.

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A Scrap of Decency

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Bharati Chaturvedi - Aug. 05 (Opinion) - From India to Brazil to the Philippines, recyclers are experiencing a precipitous drop in income. Trash pickers and scrap dealers in Minas Gerais State in Brazil, for example, saw a decline of as much as 80 percent in the price of old magazines and 81 percent for newspapers, and a 77 percent drop in the price of cardboard from October 2007 to last December.

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Dent in democracy

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Dawn - By Dr S.M. Taha - Jul. 29 (Opinion) - The federal and provincial governments have finally decided to replace the present local government system with the old magistracy one under a bureaucratic administration. It comes as a surprise to many that the two mainstream political parties who were elected on their pledge to bring back democracy to the country should agree to implement a system that is not democratic. The government is justifying its decision by using the excuse of poor law and order in the provinces. That is a lame reason. Can the government name a single district in Punjab or Sindh where elections are not possible due to a crisis of law and order? The intention here is not to criticise the government, but to point out the folly of a decision that may well have a pernicious impact on our fledgling democracy and political forces. But first, let’s take a quick look at the significance that the local government holds for good governance. Local government is considered to evolve from the grass roots. It is the only system of governance that deals directly with an individual — from the time he/she is born until death.

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Not a Victim, but a Hero

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Nicholas D. Kristof - Jul. 26 (Opinion) - After being kidnapped at the age of 16 by a group of thugs and enduring a year of rapes and beatings, Assiya Rafiq was delivered to the police and thought her problems were over. Then, she said, four police officers took turns raping her. The next step for Assiya was obvious: She should commit suicide. That’s the customary escape in rural Pakistan for a raped woman, as the only way to cleanse the disgrace to her entire family.

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Do You Know a High-Achieving Student Kept From College Over Money?

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - Jul. 26 (Opinion) - But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe, as Delbanco says, we are ignoring many accomplished but poverty-stricken young scholars. Help me test that theory. My e-mail address is at the bottom. Send me the name and contacts of any gifted and motivated students you know who have been unable to go to college because of money. If their stories check out, I will confess my ignorance, tell why this happened to them and help them get where they want to go.

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His Maternal Instinct

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Nicholas D. Kristof - Jul. 19 (Opinion) - She is an illiterate woman from the tribal areas of Pakistan who almost died in childbirth a year after marrying at the age of 12. She suffered a horrific injury during labor called a fistula that left her incontinent and smelly, and for the next 13 years she was confined to her house — never stepping outside for shame at the way she was leaking wastes. He is a famous Pakistani ob-gyn who was educated in Ireland. After spending eight years there, he returned with plans to set up a fertility clinic for rich patients and zip around in a Mercedes-Benz. But he was so shattered by the sight of women dying unnecessarily in childbirth that he decided to devote his career instead to helping impoverished women like her.

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Why We Must Ration Health Care

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Peter Singer - Jul. 17 (Opinion) - Rationing health care means getting value for the billions we are spending by setting limits on which treatments should be paid for from the public purse. If we ration we won’t be writing blank checks to pharmaceutical companies for their patented drugs, nor paying for whatever procedures doctors choose to recommend. When public funds subsidize health care or provide it directly, it is crazy not to try to get value for money. The debate over health care reform in the United States should start from the premise that some form of health care rationing is both inescapable and desirable. Then we can ask, What is the best way to do it?

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A Strong Health Reform Bill

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Jul. 16 (Editorial) - Republicans may balk, but a bill proposed by the Democrats could solve the nation’s health care problems without driving up the deficit.

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HELP Is on the Way

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Paul Krugman - Jul. 06 (Opinion) - Let me start by pointing out something serious health economists have known all along: on general principles, universal health insurance should be eminently affordable. After all, every other advanced country offers universal coverage, while spending much less on health care than we do. For example, the French health care system covers everyone, offers excellent care and costs barely more than half as much per person as our system.

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The Poor Get Poorer

Wed, 20 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By Rana Foroohar - May. 20 (Opinion) - While Americans are worried about dips in their 401Ks, Asians are increasingly worried about more important things, like feeding their families, as the global recession continues to play out. I’m currently on my way to Asia (first Japan, then China and Hong Kong) with members of the Honolulu based East West Center, where I’m going to be studying the effects of the financial crisis here, and already, its clear that one major challenge is increased poverty.

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Understanding Indian election politics

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By Miranda Kennedy - Apr. 30 (Opinion) - India's middle class may set the agenda in the media and in Washington, but the poor dominate Indian elections. That's because voter participation is highest among the rural, poor, and low caste. These voters are even more likely to participate in local elections—upward of 80 percent turn out for village council races—a stark contrast with the United States and other advanced democracies, where many more people vote for president than for city council.

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It’s Tax Day, Did You File for EITC?

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Root - By Stacey Tisdale - Apr. 15 (Opinion) - The Earned Income Tax Credit is a tax credit for low- to moderate-income individuals and families. Congress originally passed EITC legislation in 1975 to, in part, offset the burden of Social Security taxes.

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The Inner Life

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Roger Cohen - Feb. 26 (Opinion) - “Please, please help me out,” she said. “Please. I’m trying to buy flowers for a funeral arrangement.” She was African-American, middle-aged, wide-eyed. Her words were not addressed to me but to the whole subway car. The slightness of her build belied the strength of her voice. So many things are dying at the moment — an entire free-spending epoch is being laid to rest — that I wondered which particular burial she had in mind. “My cousin was a good kid,” she said. “Please, please. For the funeral arrangement, I need flowers.” I was reading on the crowded subway when a distraught-looking woman stumbled into me. People averted their eyes. Early-evening fatigued, city-churned, they did not want to hear talk of funerals, much less help pay for them. They were headed home to hear a new president diagnose the state of America. Some shook their heads, thinking, “She’s crazy!”

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