Hope & Change™ update:

[Jolie Rouge]

Poverty expected to reach levels not seen since mid-1960′s
By Doug Powers • July 22, 2012 01:11 PM

Fortunately President Obama realizes this means he needs to do a better job when it comes to storytelling, so help is on the way: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78809.html http://michellemalkin.com/2012/07/13/obama-first-term-policies/



The ranks of America’s poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net.

Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the weeks ahead of the November elections.

The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest since 1965.

Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including in such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where voters are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth.

Remember though, Hope™ does not get actualized in just three and a half years. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/07/16/michelle_obama_hope_doesnt_get_actualized_in_three _and_a_half_years.html And I’m sure those TANF work requirement waivers will help pull people out of poverty. http://www.ijreview.com/2012/07/11045-obama-administration-waives-welfare-work-requirement/

Tom Blumer at Newsbusters questions the timing of the AP’s story so far in advance of the release of the Census report. Could it be to soften the blow in case the Census report comes out in October? http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2012/07/22/why-did-ap-do-1500-word-expected-poverty-rate-writeup-months-census-bure Say it ain’t so.


**Written by Doug Powers http://michellemalkin.com/2012/07/22/poverty-levels/

[Jolie Rouge]

Poverty levels on rise
By ASSOCIATED PRESS | 7/22/12 8:54 AM EDT

The ranks of America’s poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net. Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the weeks ahead of the November elections.

The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest since 1965.

Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including in such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where voters are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth. “I grew up going to Hawaii every summer. Now I’m here, applying for assistance because it’s hard to make ends meet. It’s very hard to adjust,” said Laura Fritz, 27, of Wheat Ridge, Colo., describing her slide from rich to poor as she filled out aid forms at a county center. Since 2000, large swaths of Jefferson County just outside Denver have seen poverty nearly double.

Fritz says she grew up wealthy in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch, but fortunes turned after her parents lost a significant amount of money in the housing bust. Stuck in a half-million dollar house, her parents began living off food stamps and Fritz’s college money evaporated. She tried joining the Army but was injured during basic training. Now she’s living on disability, with an infant daughter and a boyfriend, Garrett Goudeseune, 25, who can’t find work as a landscaper. They are struggling to pay their $650 rent on his unemployment checks and don’t know how they would get by without the extra help as they hope for the job market to improve.

In an election year dominated by discussion of the middle class, Fritz’s case highlights a dim reality for the growing group in poverty. Millions could fall through the cracks as government aid from unemployment insurance, Medicaid, welfare and food stamps diminishes. “The issues aren’t just with public benefits. We have some deep problems in the economy,” said Peter Edelman, director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy.

He pointed to the recent recession but also longer-term changes in the economy such as globalization, automation, outsourcing, immigration, and less unionization that have pushed median household income lower. Even after strong economic growth in the 1990s, poverty never fell below a 1973 low of 11.1 percent. That low point came after President Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty, launched in 1964, created Medicaid, Medicare and other social welfare programs. “I’m reluctant to say that we’ve gone back to where we were in the 1960s. The programs we enacted make a big difference. The problem is that the tidal wave of low-wage jobs is dragging us down and the wage problem is not going to go away anytime soon,” Edelman said.

Stacey Mazer of the National Association of State Budget Officers said states will be watching for poverty increases when figures are released in September as they make decisions about the Medicaid expansion. Most states generally assume poverty levels will hold mostly steady and they will hesitate if the findings show otherwise. “It’s a constant tension in the budget,” she said.

The predictions for 2011 are based on separate AP interviews, supplemented with research on suburban poverty from Alan Berube of the Brookings Institution and an analysis of federal spending by the Congressional Research Service and Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute. The analysts’ estimates suggest that some 47 million people in the U.S., or 1 in 6, were poor last year. An increase of one-tenth of a percentage point to 15.2 percent would tie the 1983 rate, the highest since 1965. The highest level on record was 22.4 percent in 1959, when the government began calculating poverty figures.

Poverty is closely tied to joblessness. While the unemployment rate improved from 9.6 percent in 2010 to 8.9 percent in 2011, the employment-population ratio remained largely unchanged, meaning many discouraged workers simply stopped looking for work. Food stamp rolls, another indicator of poverty, also grew.

Demographers also say:

-Poverty will remain above the pre-recession level of 12.5 percent for many more years. Several predicted that peak poverty levels - 15 percent to 16 percent - will last at least until 2014, due to expiring unemployment benefits, a jobless rate persistently above 6 percent and weak wage growth.

-Suburban poverty, already at a record level of 11.8 percent, will increase again in 2011.

-Part-time or underemployed workers, who saw a record 15 percent poverty in 2010, will rise to a new high.

-Poverty among people 65 and older will remain at historically low levels, buoyed by Social Security cash payments.

-Child poverty will increase from its 22 percent level in 2010.

Analysts also believe that the poorest poor, defined as those at 50 percent or less of the poverty level, will remain near its peak level of 6.7 percent. “I’ve always been the guy who could find a job. Now I’m not,” said Dale Szymanski, 56, a Teamsters Union forklift operator and convention hand who lives outside Las Vegas in Clark County. In a state where unemployment ranks highest in the nation, the Las Vegas suburbs have seen a particularly rapid increase in poverty from 9.7 percent in 2007 to 14.7 percent.

Szymanski, who moved from Wisconsin in 2000, said he used to make a decent living of more than $40,000 a year but now doesn’t work enough hours to qualify for union health care. He changed apartments several months ago and sold his aging 2001 Chrysler Sebring in April to pay expenses. “You keep thinking it’s going to turn around. But I’m stuck,” he said.

The 2010 poverty level was $22,314 for a family of four, and $11,139 for an individual, based on an official government calculation that includes only cash income, before tax deductions. It excludes capital gains or accumulated wealth, such as home ownership, as well as noncash aid such as food stamps and tax credits, which were expanded substantially under President Barack Obama’s stimulus package.

An additional 9 million people in 2010 would have been counted above the poverty line if food stamps and tax credits were taken into account.
Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, believes the social safety net has worked and it’s now time to cut back. He worries that advocates may use a rising poverty rate to justify additional spending on the poor, when in fact, he says, many live in decent-size homes, drive cars and own wide-screen TVs.

A new census measure accounts for noncash aid, but that supplemental poverty figure isn’t expected to be released until after the November election. Since that measure is relatively new, the official rate remains the best gauge of year-to-year changes in poverty dating back to 1959.

Few people advocate cuts in anti-poverty programs. Roughly 79 percent of Americans think the gap between rich and poor has grown in the past two decades, according to a Public Religion Research Institute/RNS Religion News survey from November 2011. The same poll found that about 67 percent oppose “cutting federal funding for social programs that help the poor” to help reduce the budget deficit.

Outside of Medicaid, federal spending on major low-income assistance programs such as food stamps, disability aid and tax credits have been mostly flat at roughly 1.5 percent of the gross domestic product from 1975 to the 1990s. Spending spiked higher to 2.3 percent of GDP after Obama’s stimulus program in 2009 temporarily expanded unemployment insurance and tax credits for the poor.

The U.S. safety net may soon offer little comfort to people such as Jose Gorrin, 52, who lives in the western Miami suburb of Hialeah Gardens. Arriving from Cuba in 1980, he was able to earn a decent living as a plumber for years, providing for his children and ex-wife. But things turned sour in 2007 and in the past two years he has barely worked, surviving on the occasional odd job.

His unemployment has run out, and he’s too young to draw Social Security. Holding a paper bag of still-warm bread he’d just bought for lunch, Gorrin said he hasn’t decided whom he’ll vote for in November, expressing little confidence the presidential candidates can solve the nation’s economic problems. “They all promise to help when they’re candidates,” Gorrin said, adding, “I hope things turn around. I already left Cuba. I don’t know where else I can go.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78809_Page2.html#ixzz21P5iljVo

[Jolie Rouge]

Fortunately President Obama realizes this means he needs to do a better job when it comes to storytelling...

President Obama to CBS: The Biggest Mistake of My First Term Was Not Explaining How Good My Policies Are
Posted on July 12, 2012

In an exclusive interview with “CBS This Morning” host Charlie Rose set to air Sunday morning, President Barack Obama, accompanied by the First Lady, opened up and revealed what he considers to be the biggest mistake of his first term.

No, it has nothing to do with his policies, those were good, he explained.

Instead, Obama told CBS News he needs to do a better job “explaining” where his policies will take the country during his second term — having good policy just isn’t enough.

He would also like to do a better job of “inspiring” the American people in the next go round. “The mistake of my first term – couple of years – was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right. And that’s important. But the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times.”

He continued, “It’s funny – when I ran, everybody said, well he can give a good speech but can he actually manage the job?” said Obama. “And in my first two years, I think the notion was, ‘well, you know, he’s been juggling and managing a lot of stuff, but where’s the story that tells us where he’s going?’ And I think that was a legitimate criticism.”

Of the all criticisms hurled at President Obama, him not being a good enough “story” teller is not one that frequently tops the list. “So getting out of this town – spending more time with the American people – listening to them and also and being in a conversation with them about where do we go together as a country,” Obama added. “I need to do a better job of that in my second term.”

“A better job of explaining,” asked Rose.

“Explaining but also inspiring,” Obama replied.

“Because hope is still there,” the First Lady added.

So there you have it. Obama, should he be elected to a second term, will try to sell his polices better to you, the voter, and make a conscious effort to be more “inspiring” — the campaign ad practically writes itself.

UPDATE: Mitt Romney released the following statement in response to Obama’s CBS interview: http://www.mittromney.com/news/press/2012/07/mitt-romney-being-president-not-about-telling-stories


“President Obama believes that millions of Americans have lost their homes, their jobs and their livelihood because he failed to tell a good story. Being president is not about telling stories. Being president is about leading, and President Obama has failed to lead. No wonder Americans are losing faith in his presidency.”

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/president-obama-to-cbs-the-biggest-mistake-of-my-first-term-was-not-explaining-how-good-my-policies-are/


Well, they are going to get it at the ballot box come November.

Related: The Obama campaign released a new chart showing what unemployment will be like in a second Obama term (if God forbid, there is one).

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/betterstories.jpg

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/330924.php

[Jolie Rouge]

Michelle Obama: Hope "Doesn't Get Actualized" In Three And A Half Years

MICHELLE OBAMA: Because hope is still there, you know? I mean, hope doesn’t get actualized in three and a half years. If that were the case, we’d be out of luck as a country. So people still need to grasp onto something important. And they need a leader and a message and, you know, a set of possibilities for their lives.

See video : http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/07/16Michelle_obama_hope_doesnt_get_actualized_in_thr ee_and_a_half_years.html

[Jolie Rouge]

Obama Administration Waives Welfare Work Requirement
Bert Atkinson Jr. July 20, 2012 10:31 am

In case you haven’t heard, Obama’s U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced on July 12 that it would grant waiver authority for the work requirements detailed in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. Since the law was passed by the Clinton administration in 1996, welfare recipients required those able to work to either work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving welfare. This new Obama announcement essentially allows states to make the decisions to waive that requirement.

According to the Heritage Foundation, “in the past, state bureaucrats have attempted to define activities such as hula dancing, attending Weight Watchers, and bed rest as ‘work.’ These dodges were blocked by the federal work standards. Now that the Obama Administration has abolished those standards, we can expect “work” in the TANF program to mean anything but ‘work.’” http://blog.heritage.org/2012/07/12/obama-guts-welfare-reform/

If you check out the Heritage Foundation’s graphic below, you can see how well the TANF work requirements have worked. “Within just a few years of TANF’s implementation, however, the number of caseloads was cut in half, and employment rates and earnings among the poor increased. Nearly 3 million families left welfare for work,” their release states. http://blog.heritage.org/2012/07/19/family-fact-of-the-week-how-welfare-reform-helped-families

http://www.ijreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/welfare-caseloads-have-declined-since-the-1996-welfare-reform.jpeg

In response, Senator Orrin Hatch (R – Utah) introduced a bill on Wednesday to address the issue. “I’m introducing this bill because the Obama administration grossly underminded the constitutional authority of the legislative branch to affect changes to settled law.” http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/238729-hatch-introduces-bill-preventing-obamas-changes-to-welfare-work-requirement

White House press secretary Jay Carney said the changes “are designed to accelerate job placement by moving more Americans from welfare to work as quickly as possible.”

Many critics of the Republican critics point to a 2002 letter to President Bush from Republican Governors, including Mitt Romney, that asked for more flexibility. http://democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/112/2005_Romney_Letter.pdf

So what argument do I have for that? That was 2002, and this is 2012. If you haven’t changed your mind about some issues in a decade, you aren’t human. In 2002, we didn’t have the ‘Food Stamp’ President trying to run running the country. Since 2008, food stamp spending has more than doubled. http://nation.foxnews.com/barack-obama/2012/06/07/food-stamp-spending-100-under-obama

http://www.ijreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Food-stamp-spending.jpeg


America can’t afford to waive the work requirements right now. This is not to say that welfare is bad – it helps many who need it, but it also helps many who don’t need it, and this move by President Obama gives people an incentive to find a way around working without fear of having their welfare taken away.

You’re exercising on a daily basis to eventually become an aerobics instructor? Under Obama’s new stance – take as much time as you need to get in shape, as long as you have mildly convincing goal or plan you can state to your local welfare office, he’ll keep paying you. (This is obviously an example, but if you can’t draw the line somewhere, holes in the new plan will be exposed as they always are.)

Humans are driven by incentive. Show a person a $20 dollar bill and tell them they will have to clap their hands 20 times for that money, and virtually everyone will do it. If one is paid to do nothing, it would be an irrational decision to start working.

The Obama administration needs to rethink this one. On second thought, let’s just vote them out…the more time they have to think the worse this gets.

http://www.ijreview.com/2012/07/11045-obama-administration-waives-welfare-work-requirement/

[Jolie Rouge]

Tom Blumer at Newsbusters questions the timing of the AP’s story so far in advance of the release of the Census report. Could it be to soften the blow in case the Census report comes out in October? Say it ain’t so.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2012/07/22/why-did-ap-do-1500-word-expected-poverty-rate-writeup-months-census-bure

Why Did AP Do a 1,500-Word Expected Poverty Rate Writeup Months Before Census Bureau's Report?
By Tom Blumer | July 22, 2012 | 10:31

In September 2010, the Associated Press prepared an advance report on the expected surge in the Census Bureau's official poverty rate, which rose from 13.2% to a 15-year high of 14.3%. Their stated preoccupation was not with the associated pain, but with "the unfortunate timing for Obama and his party just seven weeks before important elections when Congress is at stake."

Well, this year's official poverty rate will very likely be the highest seen since the mid-1960s, and there's a presidential election coming up. What's the AP, aka the Administration's Press, to do? It looks like the strategy is to get a comprehensive report out on how bad things are in July when few are paying attention, and then to give the official report short shrift when it arrives in mid-September. Here are excerpts from Hope Yen's nearly 1,500-word writeup: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_POVERTY_IN_AMERICA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-07-22-07-34-37


Note how Ms. Yen failed to tag Edelman's group, whose "areas of work" include expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit and whose efforts are supported by George Soros's Open Society Foundation, as "liberal" or "left-leaning." Later in her report, documenting discussions with the Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector, Ms. Yen had no problem tagging it as "conservative." How typical.

There are so many other problems with Yen's report it would take a term paper to vet them all. The only positive is that she at least had discussions with real people this time around.

Among the items notably missing from the discussion:


•The likelihood that the so-called "Great Society" programs of the 1960s initiated the creation of a permanent underclass and embedded an entitlement mentality which has done little but grow since then.

• The influence of family structure on child poverty. In 2010, based on data through 2008, Heritage noted that "single-parent families with children are nearly six times more likely to be poor than are married couples.

The overwhelming sense I have is that this is a "Let's get this done now, so we can just note it and move on in September when it will hurt Dear Leader" enterprise. Why else would you devote almost 1,500 words to a report which isn't coming out for another two months?

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2012/07/22/why-did-ap-do-1500-word-expected-poverty-rate-writeup-months-census-bure#ixzz21PC6TAor

comments


"the unfortunate timing for Obama and his party just seven weeks before important elections when Congress is at stake."

By all means let's worry about the presidents re-election,and dismiss how the report effects the poor. More people under the poverty line only effects the re-election effects not REAL PEOPLE!

It might have to do with story http://news.yahoo.com/us-poverty-track-rise-highest-since-1960s-112946547--finance.html

I read it but it seems to advocate for more safety nets than solutions

How MSM and your stereotype thanks you.

..

This Admin is betting, the more poor, the more dimwitted votes.

Being poor in the USA means you have AC, Cable, Several video games consoles, even a car (Caddie seems to be the car of choice).

Those of us who are busy earning our pay checks are the enemy to this Admin.

...

In 1993, Bill Clinton and followed by George Bush, put into place massive changes to the Welfare program. Please note the difference between welfare benefits and food stamps. One is a way of life, one is a temporary assistance program. The major changes to welfare were due to requirements of all welfare recepients to apply for work , find employement , or enter an education or training withing a certain time frame. When the deadline passes or the applicant completed the necessary requirements, welfare benefits ceased but medical care for the children continued. As a result over the last 10 yrs, there has been a massive drop in the welfare rolls. Keep in mind the story, give a man a fish....etc...Well it worked.

Even with the massive rise in unemployment, the welfare rolls rose only 1% in the last 4 yrs. The food stamp program rose 30%. This means that the changes were effective but with the unemployment rates rising, more than the poor are in need of assistance.

Now, consider that the media has been spewing, since 2008, all this war on the poor, the evil rich, fair redistribution., blah blah, is all underminded by a study of the real reasons for the decline in welfare rolls. So they come back recently with all this new "analysis " of the poor in this country with false premises and unrealistic solutions. THEY dont want you to know the truth. THEN, low and behold, Obama comes out with a plan to cancel the work and training part of the Clinton welare reform act. Obama now is encouraging people to go back to dependency on the government for subsistance living arrangements.

The media is assisting by focusing on false numbers compared to food stamps in order to cover for Obama admin goal to encourage government dependency. USEFUL IDIOTS, I know I use that all the time, but they are following their chosen role well.

You must also consider this. Every government institution is intertwined. When one program changes its regs, others follow. The majority of welfare receipients were single mothers. Heaven forbid, these women become self sufficient and get their kids out of poverty. So, support enforcement, housing, medicaid, all changed their rules to maintain this group of women in some sort of government dependent program even after they entered the world of wage earner. Unearned Income Credit is an example of the IRS contribution to this ideology.

Over the 10 years, someone in DC noticed the success and the decline in the welfare roles. Cant have that so, here come changes to take us back to an era where minorities in particular, and the generational poor go back in their place. And the media is helping Obama sell this ideology. Dont forget to include, taxpayer funded media, abortions, birth control, expanded medical coverage.

Remember, the goal of socialism is NOT for solutions to improve peoples lives and secure independence but rather to establish an arena intended to bring people back to government dependency. Raise taxes, mandate medical coverage,( government programs), enact rules and regs detrimental to business, increase unemployement, create atmosphere of class divide and envy, and then......

Connect the dots folks......

If I and other right wing morons can figure this out, why cannot others, so much more wise and intelligent, see the wizard behind the curtain. Unfortunately, it will take a clue bat or s*** hitting the fan before the idiots have a revelation that we morons have already figured out. ( sorry for another cajun rant)

[Jolie Rouge]

What's the AP, aka the Administration's Press, to do? It looks like the strategy is to get a comprehensive report out on how bad things are in July when few are paying attention, and then to give the official report short shrift when it arrives in mid-September. Here are excerpts from Hope Yen's nearly 1,500-word writeup...

Jul 22, 5:47 PM EDT
US poverty on track to rise to highest since 1960s
By HOPE YEN Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net. Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the critical weeks ahead of the November elections. The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965.

Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including in such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where voters are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth. "I grew up going to Hawaii every summer. Now I'm here, applying for assistance because it's hard to make ends meet. It's very hard to adjust," said Laura Fritz, 27, of Wheat Ridge, Colo., describing her slide from rich to poor as she filled out aid forms at a county center. Since 2000, large swaths of Jefferson County just outside Denver have seen poverty nearly double.

Fritz says she grew up wealthy in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch, but fortunes turned after her parents lost a significant amount of money in the housing bust. Stuck in a half-million dollar house, her parents began living off food stamps and Fritz's college money evaporated. She tried joining the Army but was injured during basic training. Now she's living on disability, with an infant daughter and a boyfriend, Garrett Goudeseune, 25, who can't find work as a landscaper. They are struggling to pay their $650 rent on his unemployment checks and don't know how they would get by without the extra help as they hope for the job market to improve.

In an election year dominated by discussion of the middle class, Fritz's case highlights a dim reality for the growing group in poverty. Millions could fall through the cracks as government aid from unemployment insurance, Medicaid, welfare and food stamps diminishes. "The issues aren't just with public benefits. We have some deep problems in the economy," said Peter Edelman, director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy.

He pointed to the recent recession but also longer-term changes in the economy such as globalization, automation, outsourcing, immigration, and less unionization that have pushed median household income lower. Even after strong economic growth in the 1990s, poverty never fell below a 1973 low of 11.1 percent. That low point came after President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty, launched in 1964, that created Medicaid, Medicare and other social welfare programs. "I'm reluctant to say that we've gone back to where we were in the 1960s. The programs we enacted make a big difference. The problem is that the tidal wave of low-wage jobs is dragging us down and the wage problem is not going to go away anytime soon," Edelman said.

Stacey Mazer of the National Association of State Budget Officers said states will be watching for poverty increases when figures are released in September as they make decisions about the Medicaid expansion. Most states generally assume poverty levels will hold mostly steady and they will hesitate if the findings show otherwise. "It's a constant tension in the budget," she said.

The predictions for 2011 are based on separate AP interviews, supplemented with research on suburban poverty from Alan Berube of the Brookings Institution and an analysis of federal spending by the Congressional Research Service and Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute. The analysts' estimates suggest that some 47 million people in the U.S., or 1 in 6, were poor last year. An increase of one-tenth of a percentage point to 15.2 percent would tie the 1983 rate, the highest since 1965. The highest level on record was 22.4 percent in 1959, when the government began calculating poverty figures.

Poverty is closely tied to joblessness. While the unemployment rate improved from 9.6 percent in 2010 to 8.9 percent in 2011, the employment-population ratio remained largely unchanged, meaning many discouraged workers simply stopped looking for work. Food stamp rolls, another indicator of poverty, also grew.

Demographers also say:


-Poverty will remain above the pre-recession level of 12.5 percent for many more years. Several predicted that peak poverty levels - 15 percent to 16 percent - will last at least until 2014, due to expiring unemployment benefits, a jobless rate persistently above 6 percent and weak wage growth.

-Suburban poverty, already at a record level of 11.8 percent, will increase again in 2011.

-Part-time or underemployed workers, who saw a record 15 percent poverty in 2010, will rise to a new high.

-Poverty among people 65 and older will remain at historically low levels, buoyed by Social Security cash payments.

-Child poverty will increase from its 22 percent level in 2010.

Analysts also believe that the poorest poor, defined as those at 50 percent or less of the poverty level, will remain near its peak level of 6.7 percent. "I've always been the guy who could find a job. Now I'm not," said Dale Szymanski, 56, a Teamsters Union forklift operator and convention hand who lives outside Las Vegas in Clark County. In a state where unemployment ranks highest in the nation, the Las Vegas suburbs have seen a particularly rapid increase in poverty from 9.7 percent in 2007 to 14.7 percent.

Szymanski, who moved from Wisconsin in 2000, said he used to make a decent living of more than $40,000 a year but now doesn't work enough hours to qualify for union health care. He changed apartments several months ago and sold his aging 2001 Chrysler Sebring in April to pay expenses. "You keep thinking it's going to turn around. But I'm stuck," he said.

The 2010 poverty level was $22,314 for a family of four, and $11,139 for an individual, based on an official government calculation that includes only cash income, before tax deductions. It excludes capital gains or accumulated wealth, such as home ownership, as well as noncash aid such as food stamps and tax credits, which were expanded substantially under President Barack Obama's stimulus package.

An additional 9 million people in 2010 would have been counted above the poverty line if food stamps and tax credits were taken into account.

Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, believes the social safety net has worked and it is now time to cut back. He worries that advocates may use a rising poverty rate to justify additional spending on the poor, when in fact, he says, many live in decent-size homes, drive cars and own wide-screen TVs.

A new census measure accounts for noncash aid, but that supplemental poverty figure isn't expected to be released until after the November election. Since that measure is relatively new, the official rate remains the best gauge of year-to-year changes in poverty dating back to 1959.

Few people advocate cuts in anti-poverty programs. Roughly 79 percent of Americans think the gap between rich and poor has grown in the past two decades, according to a Public Religion Research Institute/RNS Religion News survey from November 2011. The same poll found that about 67 percent oppose "cutting federal funding for social programs that help the poor" to help reduce the budget deficit.

Outside of Medicaid, federal spending on major low-income assistance programs such as food stamps, disability aid and tax credits have been mostly flat at roughly 1.5 percent of the gross domestic product from 1975 to the 1990s. Spending spiked higher to 2.3 percent of GDP after Obama's stimulus program in 2009 temporarily expanded unemployment insurance and tax credits for the poor.

The U.S. safety net may soon offer little comfort to people such as Jose Gorrin, 52, who lives in the western Miami suburb of Hialeah Gardens. Arriving from Cuba in 1980, he was able to earn a decent living as a plumber for years, providing for his children and ex-wife. But things turned sour in 2007 and in the past two years he has barely worked, surviving on the occasional odd job. His unemployment aid has run out, and he's too young to draw Social Security.

Holding a paper bag of still-warm bread he'd just bought for lunch, Gorrin said he hasn't decided whom he'll vote for in November, expressing little confidence the presidential candidates can solve the nation's economic problems. "They all promise to help when they're candidates," Gorrin said, adding, "I hope things turn around. I already left Cuba. I don't know where else I can go."

Online: Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov

National Association of State Budget Officers: http://www.nasbo.org

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_POVERTY_IN_AMERICA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-07-22-07-34-37

[Jolie Rouge]

How Obama tax hike hurts an Ohio small business
posted at 8:41 am on July 24, 2012 by Ed Morrissey

People know that raising taxes in a recession is a bad idea. Even Barack Obama acknowledged that, in 2009:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8glbYVk3WSo&feature=player_embedded

But why is it a bad idea to hike taxes in a recession, especially on people with capital at work in the economy? Meet Arnie Kaufman, an Ohio small businessman who runs his pipe manufacturing business as an S-corporation, and whose business will get hammered by Obama’s proposed tax hike. Kaufman explains that businesses can’t print their own money, and that capital seized by the government is capital that won’t be put to use in expanding the business. It’s either expansion or taxes, as Kaufman explains: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag5BbNgaORY&feature=player_embedded

Eh, what’s he complaining about? It’s not like he and his father built that business.

The office of the House Majority Whip, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, put this video out this morning, along with this press release:
http://majoritywhip.gov/


Founded in 1958 by Arnie’s father Martin Kaufman, Woodhill is one of 940,000 family owned and operated small businesses that would be hit with higher taxes under the President’s proposed plan, according to the National Federation of Independent Business. http://bit.ly/MWjPhX

“It’s a snowball effect. If the taxpayer doesn’t have the money in his pocket he’s not going to spend it and that dampens sales,” Kaufman continued.

A recent report published by Ernst and Young, confirms the far-reaching devastation that the President’s plan would have on the economy: 710,000 fewer jobs and economic output reduced by 1.3% in 2013. The report continues on to conclude: “Specifically, this report finds that the higher rates will have significant adverse economic effects in the long-run: lowering output, employment, investment, the capital stock and real after-tax wages when the resulting revenue is used to finance additional government spending” (Executive Summary, Page i http://1.usa.gov/Nvoxos ).

“With the economy already at a near stand still, the President’s proposed tax hike on American small businesses comes at the work possible time for job creators,” Majority Whip McCarthy said. “Independent reports confirm that raising taxes on more than 900,000 small businesses threatens 710,000 jobs and would reduce economic output by 1.3%. It just doesn’t make any sense to punish American families and small businesses already struggling to make ends meet in this tough economy.”

BY THE NUMBERS: Looming Tax Hikes and the Obama Economy

•$2,679 – Average Ohioan’s tax increase per tax return if the Obama tax hike goes into effect
•$2,183 – Tax increase on a family of four earning $50k per year if the Obama tax hike goes into effect
•41 – Record number of straight months with unemployment at or above 8%
•39.9 – Average number of weeks that it takes to find a job
•23.4 million – Americans unemployed, underemployed or have given up looking for work

On July 27, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy will lead House Republicans in Stop the Tax Hike Day – a day of district focused events drawing greater attention to the fact that the President’s tax hike plan would put the brakes on what is already anemic economic and jobs growth.

Before the August recess, House Republicans plan to vote on extending all the current tax rates for one year to ensure greater economic certainty for hardworking American families and small businesses during this tough economic time.

One year doesn’t bring a lot of certainty, of course, but there is little hope that the Democrats in the Senate or Obama himself will take 2009 Obama’s own advice, even as the economy slips toward recession. In 2010, a Congress controlled completely by Democrats joined forces with Obama to fight the election on the issue of economic fairness, and then punted the question two years after getting humiliated in the midterms. Now they want to fight the same battle and expect a different outcome, but the longer they wait to extend the current tax rates, the more businessmen like Kaufman have to prepare for the possibility theywon’t — and that means Kaufman and other small businessmen won’t put any risk into expansion, which then means that we won’t see any significant job creation for perhaps as long as another year … if then.

That’s why raising taxes in a recession is a bad idea. Too bad 2012 Obama doesn’t consult a little more closely with 2009 Obama.


http://hotair.com/archives/2012/07/24/video-how-obama-tax-hike-hurts-an-ohio-small-business/

[Jolie Rouge]

Billionaires Say The Way President Obama Is Running The Country Is "Stupid"
Wednesday, 13 Jun 2012 04:11 PM By Christian Hill

The United States could soon become a large-scale Spain or Greece, teetering on the edge of financial ruin. That’s according to Donald Trump, who painted a very ugly picture of where this country is headed under its current leadership. Trump made the comments during a recent appearance on Fox News’ “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.”

According to Trump, the United States is no longer a rich country. “When you’re not rich, you have to go out and borrow money. We’re borrowing from the Chinese and others. We’re up to $16 trillion in debt.”

It’s clear that Trump holds President Barack Obama responsible for the ballooning debt. Trump stated that the way Obama is running the country is “stupid.” He goes on to point out that the downgrade of U.S. debt is inevitable. “We are going up to $16 trillion very soon, and it’s going to be a lot higher than that before he gets finished. When you have [debt] in the $21-$22 trillion, you are talking about a downgrade no matter how you cut it.”

Ballooning debt and a credit downgrade aren’t Trump’s only worries for this country. He says that the official unemployment rate of 8.2 percent “isn’t a real number” and that the real figure is closer to 15 percent to 16 percent. He even mentioned that some believe the unemployment rate to be as high as 21 percent. “Right now, frankly, the country isn’t doing well,” Trump added, “Recession may be a nice word.”

While 15 percent to 16 percent unemployment, a looming credit downgrade, and ballooning debt are a bleak outlook for the United States, they are hardly as alarming as the scenario laid out by another economist.

Without earning celebrity status or having his own television show, Robert Wiedemer did something else that grabbed headlines across the country: He accurately predicted the economic collapse that almost sank the United States.

In 2006, Wiedemer and a team of economists foresaw the coming collapse of the U.S. housing market, equity markets, private debt, and consumer spending, and published their findings in the book America’s Bubble Economy. But Wiedemer’s outlook for the U.S. economy today makes Trump’s observations seem almost optimistic.

Where Trump sees ballooning debt and a credit downgrade, Wiedemer sees much more widespread economic destruction. In a recent interview for his newest book Aftershock, Wiedemer says, “The data is clear, 50% unemployment, a 90% stock market drop, and 100% annual inflation . . . starting in 2012.”

When the host questioned such wild claims, Wiedemer unapologetically displayed shocking charts backing up his allegations, and then ended his argument with, “You see, the medicine will become the poison.”

The interview has become a wake-up call for those unprepared (or unwilling) to acknowledge an ugly truth: The country’s financial “rescue” devised in Washington has failed miserably.

The blame lies squarely on those whose job it was to avoid the exact situation we find ourselves in, including current Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and former Chairman Alan Greenspan, tasked with preventing financial meltdowns and keeping the nation’s economy strong through monetary and credit policies.

At one point, Wiedemer even calls out Bernanke, saying that his “money from heaven will be the path to hell.”

But it’s not just the grim predictions that are causing the sensation; rather, it’s the comprehensive blueprint for economic survival that’s really commanding global attention.

The interview offers realistic, step-by-step solutions that the average hard-working American can easily follow. The overwhelming amount of feedback to publicize the interview, initially screened for a private audience, came with consequences as various online networks repeatedly shut it down and affiliates refused to house the content.

Bernanke and Greenspan were not about to support Wiedemer publicly, nor were the mainstream media. “People were sitting up and taking notice, and they begged us to make the interview public so they could easily share it,” said Newsmax Financial Publisher Aaron DeHoog, “but unfortunately, it kept getting pulled.”

“Our real concern,” DeHoog added, “is what if only half of Wiedemer’s predictions come true? That’s a scary thought for sure. But we want the average American to be prepared, and that is why we will continue to push this video to as many outlets as we can. We want the word to spread.”

http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/Trump-Obama-Stupid-Country/2012/06/15/id/442491?PROMO_CODE=F354-1


[I]Editor’s Note: See the disturbing interview with Wiedemer. http://w3.newsmax.com/a/aftershockb/video47.cfm?promo_code=F354-1

[Jolie Rouge]

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/524363_500088603339084_207070375_n.jpg