Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » NYT

Silver Lining on Home Equity Loans

jstuart — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 17:25:51 +0000

New Orleans In some ways we all eventually come to grips with the fact that we are a “product of our raising,” as the expression down here goes and in the case of personal real estate and personal debts, I was my father’s son: conservative! When he retired after 38 years with an oil company, the first thing he did was pay off his mortgage. When I left a job I had held for 38 years, I paid off my mortgage. Land is an asset. Pay the notes and hold the land as long as you can. Save, don’t spend, was another part of the standard operating procedure. I know a lot of people who took out home equity loans to pay for this, that, and the other, especially children’s educations. I saved for it, and am still paying off the last $10,000 on the last of my children’s student loans. What did I know? I was the chicken, and it now sounds like my friends, and a lot of big whoops, may have been the foxes!

A front page article in the Times while I was off the grid in talking about home equity loans says it plainly: “…one of the paradoxes of the recession: the more money you borrowed, the less likely you will have to pay up.”

The banks are writing off these home equity loans at record levels and the default rate on such loans, given the collapse of housing prices in many markets, is busting the charts compared to other default rates. In 2009 lenders wrote off $19.9 billion in home equity loans and in the first quarter of 2010 wrote off $7.88 billion in such loans. It goes without saying that big bank balance sheets are probably carrying untold billions of dollars in bad loans that they are sequencing for write-offs in the future that are probably uncollectible but still on the books. When any collection is made, it seems little more than 10 cents on the dollar is being collected. The article quoted a Utah collection outfit plainly stating that anything more than $10-15,000 was simply uncollectable.

Damn!

The plain math for this weird mix of tragedy and opportunity is that if someone pulled out $100,000 or so in Arizona, California, Florida or wherever when the market value of their homes was soaring, then they might end up losing their home because they are underwater (though as I have counseled previously, in many cases their economic self-interest is already better from walking away rather than paying forever to never achieve equity), but they would have pocketed $90,000 free and clear. Bigger whoops with million dollar places might end up walking away with two, three, five times that amount.

Before the crying towel gets pulled out for the banks, remember that the default rate is still less than 5% and falling slightly, so it’s not like there aren’t a lot of chickens like me and fewer foxes out there, but don’t talk about “moral hazard,” because in this bubble the banks and the borrowers were co-dependents all the way up, and now, all the way down

Wrong Reasons, Right Move

jstuart — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 17:55:41 +0000

Helena Coming back on the grid for a day, you go through your email, answer the urgent calls, see what’s tweeting, hit the Facebook, and scan through the headlines in the New York Times and other papers to see what’s up. The last is the least rewarding task sometimes.

An irresistible headline jumps up on an editorial: “A Welfare Check and a Voting Card.” That’s a verse in my song, so I jump to that. Big mistake!

The good news is that the Obama Administration after delays dating virtually back to the passage of the National Voter Registration Action (NVRA) in 1993 is clearly issuing regulations to the states and making mandatory the so-called “motor voter” provisions that would require registration access and assistance for recipients of welfare and food stamps by government workers who work with these eligible families. That indeed is cause for celebration by all who are committed to democracy, full participation of the poor in what I have called “maximum eligible participation,” and, frankly, just plain following the law.

The Times editorialist was both wrongheaded and mean-spirited.

In the second sentence comes the first backhanded slap: “…but it could also reduce the impact of advocacy organizations whose role in registering voters caused such a furor in 2008.” WTF? Buddy, you want to reduce the impact of groups committed to full democratic participation by all Americans, then stand up with the Times for automatic registration or even better mandatory voting, don’t blame those of us committed to democracy for the fact that the government didn’t do what the law both allowed and required. Jerk-ball!

But, it gets worse. Later the editorialist offers this gem: “But it is worth remembering that the recession has brought millions of new people to food stamp and other welfare offices in the last two years, many of whom may not be traditional Democrats. In addition, government offices are much more likely to provide reliable registrations than Acorn (sic ACORN) or other advocacy groups that were widely accused of fraudulent sign-ups in the last cycle. Welfare offices generally have extensive methods of verifying identities in order to provide benefits, and it is illegal to provide false records there.

Let me try and understand the perverted logic here. Perhaps the writer would hope that you believe that the recession has had the salutary benefit in our democracy of pushing a more deserving class of the poor into government offices s/he would have us believe, and in fact it might not be a partisan group, as if the poor are somehow political and politically active. If the editorialist read their own paper they might have gotten the news that many of those pushed back were the marginally employed who had been pushed into lower wage employment by the draconian pushbacks in welfare and food stamps over the last decade and the total disinterest in government in security full participation from people eligible for any of these entitlement programs.

And, hey, correct me if I’m wrong, but where do you get off a cheap shot, low blow rehash of the Republican National Committee press briefings to simply take a cut with the “likely to prove reliable registrations than ACORN or other advocacy groups that were widely accused of fraudulent sign-ups in the last cycle.” Prove any of that anywhere, pal, or are you just drinking the partisan Kool-Aid, where a smear is as good as it gets. Luckily for this joker, Times editorialist in their anonymous bunker never have to face any accountability for their smears, innuendo, and misstatements.

Finally in a last act of total hypocrisy the writer tries for an upbeat note by using the example of Ohio and Missouri in recent years where suits by what he calls “advocacy groups” forced the law to be obeyed and hundreds of thousands came on the rolls. Please chicken hearted writer, don’t actually say that these “good” advocacy groups were included in the first order both ACORN and Project Vote, since you have just bitch slapped both of them all the way through this piffle.

At the end we agree though: “The more people who have access to the ballot, the better the country will be.” The difference is that I really believe in this – as do these constantly maligned advocacy groups – and our friend with his nose in the air was really holing his nose all the way as he typed out this piece.

I can’t tell you how nice it is to now be getting ready to head south and stop for two days at the famous (within a small circle of friends) Sleepy Time Duck Camp miles off the highway, way off the internet grid, overlooking a view of the Red Rock Lakes in the Centennial Mountains, the only north-south range in the Rockies at the border of Montana and Idaho. 12 hours up in the “real world” and I’m ready for the much more real world looking eye to eye with a bull moose or fat brown trout again before slapping leather home again.

Home Care Labor Crisis in USA & Korea

jstuart — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:43:47 +0000

New Orleans Meeting with three visitors and friends from Korea, Yungik Jeong, Young Mi Choi, and Hwang Inhul, who work with PSAU, an organization of the unemployed and irregular workers, as informal and unprotected workers are now known there, the conversation quickly came to plight of home health care workers or domestic workers as they are sometimes called in Korea. Similar to the US, this has become a fast growing occupation which they estimated already involves 400,000 workers, yet these workers are not allowed the usual protections and social security of other Korean workers and from what they indicated are actually banned from membership in labor unions.

It was painful for me to report that in the US after many years of employment increases and rising protections brought by unionization in many states, these same critical, yet low status health care workers, are facing a crisis in state after state. Announcement curtailments of workers has already expanded waiting lists in many states, and California where there may be close to as a many workers as exist in Korea faces drastic budget proposals by the governor. If all the proposals being discussed were realized my guess is that 200,000 home health care workers could see their jobs disappear with cutbacks in state subsidies. The loss of 200,000 union dues payers would also be critical for SEIU, AFSCME, and other unions representing home health workers.

The IMF crisis a little more than a decade ago in Korea finds its lingering wake in the severe cutback of labor protections. The Great Recession in the US may end up leaving a similar tsunami for many public – and private – employees as well.

Bob Hebert in the New York Times woefully reminded today that many are averaging a 25% cutback in income in the recession and that it may take 6 to 10 years to make up the ground to move back from income insecurity to any semblance of citizen wealth.

Discussions with my Korean friends was a painful reminder of the long tail of economic crises with no end in sight.

Weird Times on Tax Exemptions for Israeli Settlements

jstuart — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 16:13:32 +0000

New Orleans I was in Mexico City reading the Times on-line and, frankly, didn’t trust what I was reading completely until I could have the paper in my hot hands, but it’s still a strange and weird article printed on 7/6/10 entitled: “U.S. Gives Tax Breaks for Donations to Aid Settlements in the West Bank” and “Tax-Exempt Funds Aiding Settlements in West Bank: U.S. Gives Tax Breaks for Donations That Help to Sustain Efforts it Opposes.” The article ran in the prime real estate on the front page, right column at the top of the fold. Tax-Exempt Funds Aid Settlements in West Bank by Jim Rutenberg, Mike McIntire, and Ethan Bronner.

The bottom line of the article, which ran more than two full pages seems to have been that over the last 10 years groups with 501c3 tax exemptions from the IRS have given more than $200,000,000 with such tax benefits to support Israeli squatting settlements on land where they are forbidden and that should tax privileges interfere with announced U.S. foreign policy objectives for a two-state solution support both Israel’s nationhood and a Palestinian state as well.

This all seems more like an editorial position than a fact based news article. Furthermore, there was obviously a lot of time and money spent doing the research and driving us to a position that somehow there was something very wrong about people getting tax breaks for something that was contrary to US policy. That’s what leaves me very, very uncomfortable and scratching my head.

My personal position is independent here. I’m totally fine with a two-state solution, and believe it is long, long past due, and that and 3 pesos will buy you a ticket for the Metro in Mexico City for all anyone might care. I’m also very, very good with creating a fairer tax code that didn’t allow the rich to hide so much money in foundations and other dodging schemes rather than allowing us to have more revenues to achieve citizen wealth and greater equality in the United States. Stone me now!

But, the notion that it is front page news or somehow a scandalous problem that under existing rules and regulations someone or something would get a tax exemption opposing US policy is wildly wrongheaded, politically dangerous, and deeply disturbing on almost any reckoning of free speech and associations. Here the Times allowed fuzzy waffling to take the place of almost any reasoned argument for the point of whatever point they were straining so hard to make. It was not until a quarter through this long, long piece that the authors finally get around to saying: “…the tax code encourages citizens to support nonprofit groups that may diverge from official policy, as long as their missions are educational, religious, or charitable.” Ok, so what’s the beef then, fellas?

Then the witch hunt begins. First they raise they infer there may be too many nonprofits, almost a million. So much for the classic de Tocqueville argument! Second, they testily concede that in their review of various settler supporting groups “most generally live within the rules of the American tax code” but both the way they say it and the rest of what they have to say seems to rip this veil apart as quickly as they looked around it. Within sentences they are zinging one group for violating the code by making a donation that seemed political, and in another couple we are wallowing in Jack Abramoff land with other disgraced lobbyists and money runners.
And, the rest follows in this vein.

What’s up here? My guess it is the Times simply reaching. The Israeli Prime Minister was due to visit President Obama, and these boys wanted to seem to have some news on the eve of the arrival. So, they grabbed a couple of threads and tried to weave a coat, even though in doing so they mangled and besmirched both their point and a lot about what constitutes philanthropy and nonprofit work with this broad brush.

If the Times wants to make a strong case for a two-state solution, then hear, hear and put it on the editorial page without trying to throw out the baby (the right to oppose government policy) with the bathwater (the scofflaws that may be abusing the tax code). Is that too much to ask?

Jornaleros: Livelihoods and Public Safety

jstuart — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 13:16:16 +0000

New Orleans My heart sank as I read the New York Times editorial in the wake of the 9^th Circuit Appeals court upholding an ordinance crafted by the City of Redondo Beach (California) pushing day laborers off the streets in the name of traffic safety. The editorial said all of the right things, but when I read that the 9^th Circuit was basing their decision on a similar finding in ACORN v. City of Phoenix, 798 F.2d 1260, 1273 (9th Cir. 1986), I knew immediately that day laborers were in big, big trouble.

The first paragraph of the decision was chilling:

“This appeal raises a First Amendment challenge to

Redondo Beach Municipal Code § 3-7.1601, which prohibits

the act of standing on a street or highway and soliciting

employment, business, or contributions from the occupants of

an automobile. We have previously upheld a virtually identical

ordinance against a constitutional challenge. See ACORN

v. City of Phoenix, 798 F.2d 1260, 1273 (9th Cir. 1986). We

reach the same result here and hold that the Redondo Beach

ordinance is a valid time, place, or manner restriction.

Accordingly, we reverse the contrary decision of the district

court.”

Fred Brooks, one of the legendary ACORN canvass directors during the early and mid-1980’s, and now a professor of social work at Georgia State University in Atlanta, when running a program for us in Columbus, Ohio, introduced a brilliant piece of low technology, but stunningly effective grassroots fundraising methodology called “tagging.” Based on annual fundraisers by firefighters (who used their boots) and other groups, with a recycled tennis ball can and masking tape with a slit on the top, an armada of “taggers” including members, organizers, and street kids would collect at busy traffic intersections and ask for contributions to support either ACORN or Local 100, and in return for a donation would hand the driver a “tag” thanking them and describing the organization’s work. The money raised was serious. Danny Cantor (now head of the NY Working Families Party), Cecile Richards, an outstanding class A tagger (and now head of Planned Parenthood), Kirk Adams (now chief of staff of SEIU), Beth Butler (executive director of A Community Voice in Louisiana), and their teams would often net over a $1000 back then on a Saturday tag even after paying 40% of the can to their taggers and discounting leakage (theft) of some cans which was common on the streets. But, as good as tagging was, the pushback was as fierce in various communities.

In the New Orleans area restrictions became onerous and expensive even though often honored in the breach. In Denver an organizer running a successful tag program was arrested and convicted of “public begging,” and in places like Phoenix ordinances were crafted to try and prevent or curtail any tagging that could arguably interfere with traffic in the name of public safety. ACORN’s defense, led by our attorney Steve Bachmann at the time, was straight up first amendment freedom of speech, which of course it was. With such arguments we prevailed in places like University City, a suburb outside of St. Louis, and other venues. We expected to prevail in Phoenix, but it didn’t happen. We elected not to appeal to the Supreme Court so that we could leave as much confusion as possible between various decisions in different appeals districts and keep more “bad law” from being made by the courts.

Now my friends at NDLON (the National Day Laborers Organizing Network) and their chief lawyer, Chris Newman, are caught in the same dilemma as various California cities copied the original Phoenix ordinances protected by the 9^th circuit. It’s hard to be optimistic about courts anywhere around California not deciding that traffic comes first with livelihoods very distant on the list.

It’s hard to believe that we will end up with many choices other than to craft political decisions because I’m no more optimistic of a fair shot in the courts on these issue now than I was more than 20 years ago. Maybe the answer is in set aside jornaleros areas like the ones maintained by the City of San Antonio? Maybe the answer is to not ruffle the feathers and to make it work on the streets wherever it is possible and make some other deals in these smaller uptight California communities?

Anyway you look at it, we’ve drawn a tough hand.

As for tagging, I think about it all the time, and mark my words, I’m going to bring it back to support ACORN International in streets and cities near you. I’m just not telling when and where!

Health Care Wars Ongoing

jstuart — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 20:21:20 +0000

New Orleans Perhaps the number three rule of politics, right after “everything begins with a base” and “money rules,” is that the “devil is in the details.” Now that Congress has voted and the President has signed, we need to get off of the arguments about how few slices of the half-a-loaf we got, and get to thinking – and fighting – about the battle in the trenches both nationally and state by state involved in keeping some of that bread on the table. There are bright yellow lights flashing, so let’s heed the warning signals.

Insurance companies, bums that they are, have already indicated that they see the universal coverage of children as “optional,” making some legislators “enraged” already according to the New York Times.
Fourteen Attorney Generals have already filed suit to try and block implementation of the healthcare reform in their states. Some governors have volunteered to oppose their AG’s. Other governors, like my own Jindal, have seen this next round as a way to continue to push them into the national arena. Hard to see that any of these suits have much merit, but the use of litigation as a political tool is certainly in the top 20 on the rules of politics now.

A headline in the Times: “Overhaul Will Lower the Cost of Being a Woman” was an eye catcher for me even if it was buried on D2 in the Science section. It reminds everyone that there was no bar for sex discrimination by insurance companies in their unilateral and often arbitrary assertions of risk. Marcia Greenberger of the National Women’s Law Center pointed out that because no organization getting federal dollars, and that’s all health insurers, could discriminate based on gender that the days for his problem “are numbered.” But she also presciently warned that insurance companies were all-pro at driving the money machine and she never wanted “to underestimate what a creative mind might be able to come up with…” My bet is that where they will start is simply by asserting that something is not discriminatory and make us have to prove it is. Be ready for that. If they don’t think twice about popping back at children, women are definitely next.

I’m not even going to comment on the “repealers” that are dead set to make this an issue in the midterm elections, but it is coming.

If there’s one thing we must have learned by now is that if we ever thing we’ve won and it’s over and take our eyes off of the opposition, then we will find one defeat after another in the details. I’m afraid on healthcare we have to understand that we won a battle but the war is ongoing and to win healthcare for all Americans, it’s only just begun.

Enough with The Talk on Immigration Reform

jstuart — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 15:16:10 +0000

New Orleans Frankly, I don’t read editorials in the New York Times. Usually they just made me mad. Saturday though there was one that was mad enough already under the headline: “Republicans Wanted.” The editorial was about the meetings last Thursday between President Obama and advocates for immigration reform.

Telling it like it is, the Times laid it our clearly: “Enough with the talk.”

Amen to that!

The notion that the President would ask the advocates to go round up Republicans I hit on the other day, and the editorialist was reading over my shoulder the other day when he correctly says, “…that’s enough to make anyone want to reach for the plug and pull it.”

The March in March is a game changer, but only the starting innings, the first quarter, the early round, but in truth winning or losing is now all in the streets, all in the barrios, all in the bodegas, and all at the grassroots now. Let’s take the “governor” off of the accelerator and stop downplaying the pain, tragedy and anger of the immigrant experience.

In the meeting with the President, all reports indicate Angelica Salas from CRLA , the great immigrant rights organization in Los Angeles, hit hard and wouldn’t back up on her insistence that deportations had to stop and the President had to lead. We need this and more. The charm offensive has to end. The cajoling has to take second seat.

Enough with the talk!

Killing the Tea Party with Guns

jstuart — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 18:34:52 +0000

New Orleans The New York Times pumped a couple of rounds into the Tea Party in a front page story today. They missed the heart, but they were probably aiming more to cripple, than kill. Despite the palpable anger so clearly motivating a vast national, though embryonic, movement, David Barstow, the reporter on the story had no trouble painting most of them not simply as cute neophytes in politics, but as whacko-fringe rabbits running outside of the fence lines of American politics. This was a hatchet job with a blunt blade, but the Tea people have done it to themselves.

A conservative blogger asked me my opinion of why the Tea Party was getting traction, and the Minutemen were not? My answer was simple: guns. You cannot build a mass movement in America to create political power with guns. Period! End of sentence. The majority of Americans understand guns, and many of them own guns and are comfortable with them, especially in the West and South, as opposed to the East, but nobody, absolutely nobody in their right mind believes that guns should be anywhere around politics. This is a bright line dividing principle of contemporary American politics and separates the citizen activists from the right wing nut.

Despite the success in Massachusetts and lively pressure being applied by Tea people in a number of states with the Republicans trying to hijack the movement in every way possible, Barstow and the Times had no problem putting their story in the wild, wooly, West and bringing it to Idaho. Except the rich and Sun Valley, the rest of coastal America is scared of Idaho. This is big mountain, Mormon country in their view. It is also the home of one violent, fringe nutcase group after another (and the Unabomber?), and it was easy for the Times to bring them into the story as fellow travelers here.

But, as I say, they didn’t need to work hard. A Republican candidate for the Senate in Indiana (Bayh was too selfish to stand in front of these kinds of folks?) was quoted as saying he was getting his guns ready – just like his audience – if they didn’t like the results in upcoming elections. And, there were other stupid comments from Tea people putting guns in the mix.

Barstow could sneak around on this story because he could slip in a paragraph that reflected real understanding like: “They are frequently led by political neophytes who prize independence and tell strikingly familiar stories of having been awakened by the recession. Their families upended by lost jobs, foreclosed homes and depleted retirement funds, they said they wanted to know why it happened and whom to blame.” Those are fair questions begging for answers, but most buried in the blunt blows of this story.

ACORN gets its mention as a scourge of the right with the fabrication that it is “stealing elections” in the same slap as Obama “trying to control the Internet and restrict gun ownership.” (Does anyone but the Times capitalize “internet” anymore?) I hate to see it when we are on the brunt end of this slick sell, and it’s painful to read even if the Tea people deserve it and brought it on themselves.

The real questions will still remain about why people are being moved like this and where they are going and what can be done to meet their anger and needs. The Republicans trying to seize control and leadership will be brought down by the fringers – and the guns – if they are not very, very careful, and thus far they have been sloppy and stupid as well. Meanwhile the Democrats will tut-tut about it all and still not move forward in the way that makes sense, but instead too often desert the battlefield with the Bayh kinds of politicians.

What a mess and now there are guns firing in the background!

Guaranteed Tips and Happy Costa Ricans

jstuart — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 17:15:31 +0000

San Jose Nicholas Kristof did a column in the Times in his usual didactic, rah-rah fashion trumpeting the happiness of Costa Rican people (http://bit.ly/6i0csw). He cites a couple of different “surveys” where Costa Ricans self-evaluate and cobbles this together with the point that in 1949 the government shutdown its army and investigated more in education subsequently, including additional language skills. Maybe, though any column that seems more written for the Costa Rican Tourism Bureau and to expense out a personal vacation on the Times tab makes me skeptical.

Ask me I and I think there are a couple of other pieces to this puzzle.

For one in an economy where tourism is a central driver, the real key to happiness for workers is the fact that they weld on an automatic 10% on all purchases at restaurants (while the country benefits from tourism exploitation by adding 13% for itself, which is smart too). The tips are pooled among the wait staff which produces decent professional staff without people being subservient to the little bit extra from the tipped economy. Furthermore from what my shaky Spanish could determine, wait and similar staff are still paid what passes for the minimum wage as well as the special “solidarity” pay which is an end of the year bonus that is part of the legal framework for workers. If a country is going to allow tourism to be a huge economic driver, guaranteeing tips will produce big time happiness!

As usual in Kristof’s touting of the virtual unmitigated benefits of globalization he advertises for how wonderful it would be to have more English speaking ex-pat communities throughout Costa Rica who could benefit from the emphasis on the educational systems requirements for additional language training in schools. Hmmm. Might be worth paying some small attention to what the “happy” Costa Ricans are saying about this as well. Nobel Prize winner and current Costa Rican President Oscar Arias was quoted recently about how Costa Ricans have “lost Tamarindo” the beautiful Pacific Beach area that has now been overrun by tourists and upscale second home developments. Costa Ricans have been pushed out of the area by hotels, condos, and soaring prices outside the reach of the Ticos who have lived along these coasts as fishers and framers for generations.

The “green” piece of Costa Rica’s marketing is mainly just that along the intentions and rhetoric are good, and certainly good enough to make Kristof happy. Seeing a sign on the ferry to the Nicoyan Peninsula that said “recycle now” along with a big arrow to the huge garbage can said a lot to me about the state of the current practice. The national parks also seem to be pricing out Ticos and their own patrimony in many areas. Talking to Costa Ricans there is a huge fight to not pave roads to places like Playa Manzilla and even the Monteverde area with its famous cloud forest in order to keep tourists out.

Kristof’s continued blind advocacy of “dollar diplomacy” is not a prescription for the future happiness of the Costa Rican people, though as usual he could probably find a way to be happy as a pig in stuff as long as he enjoys his drive and windshield survey of the world.uaran

Bailout the Poor

jstuart — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 13:36:37 +0000

San Francisco Erik Eckholm of the Times is one of the last reporters on the “poverty beat” in the country, and by god I almost feel a personal obligation to read his pieces and try to get the word out before the paltry news of the poor disappears from papers altogether. He was on the point noting that Census Bureau figures indicate the lowest poverty rate in a dozen years and falling family income by more than 4% to hardly $50,000 per year which is the lowest rate in a decade.

At least this year almost all of us can say that we have done our part, since even if we didn’t slip below the poverty line, most of us can see we did do our share to pull down family income averages by making way less money over the last year. Next year of course will be worse.

More people also lost health coverage. The only bright light there was that poor children were better covered. Huh? Well, the expansion of the SCHIPs program made a difference, and it shows up in the numbers.

Although this seems obvious, I can’t help pointing out that these citizen wealth investments are not like bank bailouts where after the handout, you get no change, a slapdown, and new reports of more trouble. When the government invests in the citizen wealth of the poor, it actually makes a difference and people are better protected and less poor.

With about 40 million people below the poverty line in the USA and 45 million without health insurance, I would argue those are numbers worth doing something about. If we can worry about Wall Street bankers and spend big money (rightly!) to prevent 9 million foreclosures, why can’t we spend money making sure that families are pushed back above the poverty line and get health care protection?

Yesterday, I talked about the money that is being lost in states from the bailout because of the problem some states are having making the 20% match. In a disaster like Katrina, the government has the authority to waive the match to allow access to FEMA funds. We have a poverty disaster now. Why don’t we bailout the poor with a billion or so to allow citizens in all 50 states below the poverty line to get a hand up?

If not, let Health and Human Services simply reclassify the poor as casual employees of AIG, and they could share in the gazillions there enough to crawl back to a level of higher income security.