When Wealth Controls The Agenda… Opportunity For Economic And Social Advancement Dries Up

This weekend's "must read" was Trip Gabriel's NY Times piece, 50 Years Into The War On Poverty, Hardship Hits Back. He writes that "much of McDowell County looks like a rural Detroit, with broken windows on shuttered businesses and homes crumbling from neglect." Ironically, "beginning in the 19th century, the rugged region produced more coal than any other county in West Virginia, but it got almost none of the wealth back as local investment." Today "nearly 47 percent of personal income in the county is from Social Security, disability insurance, food stamps and other federal programs… The poverty rate, 50 percent in 1960, declined-- partly as a result of federal benefits-- to 36 percent in 1970 and to 23.5 percent in 1980. But it soared to nearly 38 percent in 1990. For families with children, it now nears 41 percent."

McDowell County, the poorest in West Virginia, has been emblematic of entrenched American poverty for more than a half-century. John F. Kennedy campaigned here in 1960 and was so appalled that he promised to send help if elected president. His first executive order created the modern food stamp program, whose first recipients were McDowell County residents. When President Lyndon B. Johnson declared “unconditional war on poverty” in 1964, it was the squalor of Appalachia he had in mind. The federal programs that followed-- Medicare, Medicaid, free school lunches and others-- lifted tens of thousands above a subsistence standard of living.

But a half-century later, with the poverty rate again on the rise, hardship seems merely to have taken on a new face in McDowell County. The economy is declining along with the coal industry, towns are hollowed out as people flee, and communities are scarred by family dissolution, prescription drug abuse and a high rate of imprisonment.

Fifty years after the war on poverty began, its anniversary is being observed with academic conferences and ideological sparring-- often focused, explicitly or implicitly, on the “culture” of poor urban residents. Almost forgotten is how many ways poverty plays out in America, and how much long-term poverty is a rural problem.

Of the 353 most persistently poor counties in the United States-- defined by Washington as having had a poverty rate above 20 percent in each of the past three decades-- 85 percent are rural. They are clustered in distinct regions: Indian reservations in the West; Hispanic communities in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas; a band across the Deep South and along the Mississippi Delta with a majority black population; and Appalachia, largely white, which has supplied some of America’s iconic imagery of rural poverty since the Depression-era photos of Walker Evans.

Friends of Democracy wasn't focusing just on McDowell County or on West Virginia or on the rural counties that account for so much of America's poverty when they issued a report on how progressives can run against Big Money in politics and win. "Washington," they wrote, "is broken. Faith and trust in Congress is at a historic low. Issues that matter to the American people are falling to the wayside. You’re not running for office to perpetuate the status quo, you’re running to change it. To improve your community, strengthen your state and fix our country. The good news is running on fixing our broken campaign finance system is good for you as a candidate as much as it is good for the country. 7 out of 8 congressional candidates who ran on this issue in 2012 won-- we’re looking to double that number in 2014."

Just 11 percent of voters think that they are the priority of members of Congress. Too many voters have little faith that their needs factor into decisions that politicians make, believing that politicians instead cater to big donors and special interests instead.


Voters view Washington’s inability to address major issues of the day, like getting the economy back on track and solving our national energy policy, as the result of a broken political system that rewards the best fundraisers rather than those who can move ideas forward. The issue of money in politics is, in most voters’ minds, inextricably linked to addressing the major challenges confronting all of us, rather than a separate policy area on which to make yet another set of promises.

…Two bills in Congress are gaining great traction. In February 2014, two bills were introduced-- the Government By the People Act (H.R. 20), introduced by Leader Pelosi and Rep. Sarbanes (D-MD) with 130 original co-sponsors and the Fair Elections Now Act (S. 2023), introduced by Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin with 16 original co-sponsors. Both bills have unprecedented support from Democrats in Congress, political campaign donors, the traditional reform community as well as the larger progressive movement.

Polling shows that almost two-thirds of voters support passing an election law that would couple small donations with matching funds in exchange for taking no large campaign checks and an even bigger number of independent voters say that a candidate's position of campaign finance reform will be an important factor in their choice on election day. Voters don't like the idea of feeling disempowered by Big Money buying up democracy. Even voters in the reddest areas of the country. You may have read that Kansas-- which hasn't elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since the 1930s-- has a radical right governor, Sam Brownback, who just signed a bill guaranteeing that there will be no Medicaid Expansion in his state this year. Brownback is also the most hated governor in America and is very likely to lose his reelection bid-- to a Democrat-- in November. This month a poll showed Paul Davis beating Brownback 45-41%-- and by 48-35% among Independents. (Point of reference: Romney beat Obama in Kansas 60-38%, the Republican winning all but two of Kansas' 105 counties.)

Wisconsin is a much wealthier state than West Virginia. The medium household income is $50,395 as opposed to West Virginia's $38,482. But WI-07, the northwestern part of the state, has had a tougher time that most of the rest of the state. The medium household income is $45,868 and voters there see the connection between distorted wealth inequality and political power. The progressive Democrat running for Congress in the district this year is Kelly Westlund, who has been endorsed by Blue America. This morning she explained the connection:

"I knew our political process was broken when I decided to run for Congress, but I underestimated just how bad it really is. In a representative government, citizen voices ought to speak louder than campaign contributions, but as wealth consolidates at the very top, so does political power. The fact is, organizations on both sides of the aisle have embraced the money-driven approach to campaigning, and that means that the wealthy few can buy access to candidates and elected officials that regular people just can't afford. Equating money with free speech leaves the vast majority of middle- and working-class people at a serious disadvantage when it comes to engaging effectively in our shared democracy. I think that's wrong, and it's time we change it."

And speaking of disempowered voters, lets go back to West Virginia for a moment. In 2012 McDowell County also went for Romney and by an even greater margin than West Virginia as a whole-- 64-34%, two points better for the Republican than his statewide landslide. However, on the same day, Democrat Earl Ray Tomblin took 66% of the county's vote for governor and Democrat Joe Manchin took a startling 72% for the U.S. Senate seat. Democrat Nick Rahall was reelected to the House against Republican Rick Snuffer 65-35%. Short of kicking mass drug addiction, will getting Big Money out of politics turn things around for McDowell County? It's worth trying.

As Adam Liptak reported for the NY Times yesterday, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens says "the court had made a disastrous wrong turn in its recent string of campaign finance rulings. "The voter is less important than the man who provides money to the candidate," he said. "It’s really wrong."

He talked about what he called a telling flaw in the opening sentence of last month’s big campaign finance ruling. He filled in some new details about the behind-the-scenes maneuvering that led to the Citizens United decision. And he called for a constitutional amendment to address what he said was the grave threat to American democracy caused by the torrent of money in politics.

Maine's Tea Party Governor Paul LePage Wants To Abolish Child Labor Laws

Politics isn't something polite people people discuss at dinner, especially not with strangers. Not since high school when the class year book referred to me as gallant, has anyone accused me of being polite. The first day of my Galapagos cruise a few weeks ago, we hadn't even boarded the ship yet when I ferreted out that one of my fellow passengers was not just a Republican from Chicago, but a Republican from Chicago enamored of Rahm Emanuel! I despaired that everyone on the ship was going to be a Republican. But then I met Sheron and Stephanie, a sparkling and delightful mother/daughter team from northeastern Ohio. Sheron never misses a Rachel Maddow or Chris Hayes show. We had every breakfast, lunch and dinner together for the entire cruise.

One day Sheron told me her 92 year old father told her the only thing that never changed about the Republicans in his lifetime is that they are still trying to undo all the accomplishments of the "Old Man." No, not God, FDR. Just this year alone, we watched the Republicans cut the food stamps program to shreds, refuse to extend unemployment insurance, attempt to deprive working families of health insurance 47 times, try to lure Democrats into "compromises" to reduce Social Security benefits and to go along with their mania about cutting back on Medicare, while voting to abolish environmental and Wall Street regulations that protect ordinary Americans from greed-obsessed predators. Sharen's father was correct. The GOP has nothing to offer but destructiveness and an agenda of fluffing the wealthy and super-wealthy.

The latest manifestation came yesterday, not in Texas, Mississippi, Utah or South Carolina but at the 73rd annual Maine Agricultural Trades Show. There, one of the country's most ignorant and backward GOP governors, Paul LePage, told attendees that he thinks 12 year old children should be working-- no not doing their school homework… doing the work his rich donors would like to pay them to do for less than adults would take to work. LIke most Republicans, LePage would like to repeal a piece of New Deal legislation known as the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (which established the minimum wage, guaranteed time-and-a-half for overtime and prohibits most employment of minors. This law was the result of progressive activism going back to the beginning of the 1900s but it took the Republican economic excesses of the 1920s and the inevitable Great Depression that followed-- when desperate adults were willing to work for the unfair wages employers offered children-- that Congress finally passed the Fair Labor Standards Act. Finally sick to their stomachs at the Republicans' crusade against working families, the voters defeated even more Republicans in 1936, leaving them with only 88 seats in the House and 16 in the Senate. That year FDR was reelected against Alf Landon, who ran on a ticket to repeal Social Security. Roosevelt won every state but two and Landon managed to win only 36% of the national vote. The law excludes agriculture and to this day as many as half a million children pick almost a quarter of the food currently produced in the U.S.

Maine's own child labor laws, going back to 1847, have always been aimed at keeping children in school. Minors under the age of 16 may not be employed in the following occupations:

1. Any manufacturing occupation;
2. Any mining occupation;
3. Processing occupations (such as filleting fish, dressing poultry, cracking nuts, or laundering by commercial laundries and dry cleaners, etc.) when performed in a processing industry such as a plant;
4. Motor vehicle driving and outside helper on a motor vehicle;
5. Operation or tending of hoisting apparatus or of any power-driven machinery other than nonhazardous office machines or machines in certain retail, food service, and gasoline service establishments;
6. Construction occupations involving:
a. Maintenance and repair of public highways;
b. All roofing occupations;
c. All trenching and excavation operations;
7. (Federal law prohibits minors under 16 from doing any construction work.)
All work in boiler or engine rooms;
8. Outside window washing that involves working from window sills, and all work involving the use of ladders, scaffolds or their substitutes;
9. Cooking (except where visible to the public) and baking;
10. Occupations which involve operating, setting up, adjusting, cleaning, oiling, or repairing power-driven food slicers and grinders, food choppers and cutters, and bakery-type mixers;
11. All work in freezers and meat coolers;
12. Occupations involving the use of power-driven mowers or cutters, including the use of chain saws;
13. All warehousing occupations, including the loading and unloading of trucks and use of conveyors;
14. All welding, brazing, or soldering occupations;
15. Occupations involving the use of toxic chemicals and paints;
16. Selling door-to-door (except when the minor is selling candy or merchandise as a fund-raiser for school or for an organization to which the minor belongs, such as Girl Scouts of America) or work in a traveling youth crew;
17. All occupations on amusement rides, including ticket collection or sales;
18. Any placement at the scene of a fire, explosion or other emergency response situation. (See Section D. Junior Firefighters); and
19. All occupations that are expressly prohibited for 16-and 17-year olds.

Conservatives and reactionaries like LePage have never been happy with the government intervening to prevent exploitation by "the makers." In his speech he said Maine is failing to use one of its most valuable resources-- it's youth.

“We don’t allow children to work until they’re 16, but two years later, when they’re 18, they can go to war and fight for us,” LePage said. “That’s causing damage to our economy. I started working far earlier than that, and it didn’t hurt me at all. There is nothing wrong with being a paperboy at 12 years old, or at a store sorting bottles at 12 years old.”

LePage has said previously he started working when he was 11. Maine law requires students who want to work before they reach the age of 16 to get a work permit from their school superintendent and meet other requirements.

LePage also told show attendees he believes Maine can strike a better balance between conserving its natural resources and developing its economy and that doing so would bring prosperity.

“You’re the folks we want to bring prosperity to,” he told several hundred people at a luncheon at the show, held at the Augusta Civic Center. “If the revenues go up, I can go golfing. If not, I’m going to have to continue working 80 hours a week.”

LePage didn't mention what every conservative harbors in his heart or whatever they have that substitutes for a soul-- the reinstatement of slavery… which would allow "the makers" to play even more golf. Meanwhile, today, on the 50th anniversary of the War Against Poverty, the Republican Party has been amping up its war against the poor. Rubio, Rand Paul and Paul Ryan, who has consistently insisted America replace the safety net with more tax breaks for the rich, are making speeches about how to "fight" poverty. This was President Obama's statement this morning:

As Americans, we believe that everyone who works hard deserves a chance at opportunity, and that all our citizens deserve some basic measure of security. And so, 50 years ago, President Johnson declared a War on Poverty to help each and every American fulfill his or her basic hopes. We created new avenues of opportunity through jobs and education, expanded access to health care for seniors, the poor, and Americans with disabilities, and helped working families make ends meet. Without Social Security, nearly half of seniors would be living in poverty.  Today, fewer than one in seven do. Before Medicare, only half of seniors had some form of health insurance. Today, virtually all do. And because we expanded pro-work and pro-family programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit, a recent study found that the poverty rate has fallen by nearly 40% since the 1960s, and kept millions from falling into poverty during the Great Recession.

These endeavors didn’t just make us a better country. They reaffirmed that we are a great country. They lived up to our best hopes as a people who value the dignity and potential of every human being. But as every American knows, our work is far from over. In the richest nation on Earth, far too many children are still born into poverty, far too few have a fair shot to escape it, and Americans of all races and backgrounds experience wages and incomes that aren’t rising, making it harder to share in the opportunities a growing economy provides. That does not mean, as some suggest, abandoning the War on Poverty. In fact, if we hadn’t declared “unconditional war on poverty in America,” millions more Americans would be living in poverty today. Instead, it means we must redouble our efforts to make sure our economy works for every working American. It means helping our businesses create new jobs with stronger wages and benefits, expanding access to education and health care, rebuilding those communities on the outskirts of hope, and constructing new ladders of opportunity for our people to climb.

We are a country that keeps the promises we’ve made.  And in a 21st century economy, we will make sure that as America grows stronger, this recovery leaves no one behind. Because for all that has changed in the 50 years since President Johnson dedicated us to this economic and moral mission, one constant of our character has not: we are one nation and one people, and we rise or fall together.

This morning, Rep. Chellie Pingree, Maine's progressive leader, blasted Republicans in general without singling out LePage or his latest dysfunctional crusade.

Because of heartless Republican obstruction, 3,300 jobless Mainers now have to choose between putting food on the table or heating their homes in this bitter cold.

This should never be a choice anyone has to make… Take a look at this tragic fact: since the expiration of emergency benefits at the end of December, 4 out of every 5 unemployed Mainers have been left out in the cold without benefits. This number ties New Hampshire for the highest in the Northeast and is well above the national average for the number of unemployed not getting benefits.

Not only that, the Maine economy loses $1 million each week that unemployment benefits remain expired. That's $1 million not being pumped in the local economy to help small businesses grow or struggling families make ends meet.

What Works Better-- America's War On Poverty Or The GOP's War On Poor People?

Conservatives always ignore history and always want to reargue their issues. Today we're hearing the same tired, discredited arguments for why the rich should be the focus of government largesse and why helping the poor is a waste of money. When you hear today's crop of ignorant teabaggers and erudite think tank loons arguing against the minimum wage, they are trying the same nonsense they tried-- and failed with-- for decades. Today the far right Club for Growth, predictably, demanded that all the senators they own vote against extending unemployment benefits. Overturning FDR's New Deal will always be at the tip-top of the Republican policy agenda. It's why working people who haven't been brainwashed by Fox and Hate Talk Radio never trust them-- despite their best efforts to divide working families through a policy of racism, homophobia, misogyny and xenophobia.

Wednesday is the 50th anniversary of the War of Poverty and in the Daily Beast this morning, Michael Tomasky lashed out against the arguments that intellectual feather-weights Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Paul Ryan (R-WI) have been making about how the whole project was a dismal failure. It wasn't.

Our problem is when conservatives like Rubio talk gibberish: “Isn’t it time to declare big government’s war on poverty a failure?” No, it isn’t. It’s high time to say the war on poverty was a success. A wild success, indeed, by nearly every meaningful measure. But no one thinks so, and a big part of the reason is that most Democrats are afraid to say so. They’d damn well better start. If we’re really going to be raising the minimum wage and tackling inequality, someone needs to be willing to say to the American people that these kinds of approaches get results.

You may have seen the big Times piece Sunday that looked back over the half-century war on poverty, kicked off by Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 State of the Union address. The article noted that in terms of health and nutrition and numerous other factors, the poor in the United States are immeasurably less immiserated today than they were then. But it did lead by saying the overall poverty rate in all that time has dropped only from 19 to 15 percent, suggesting to the casual reader that all these billions for five decades haven’t accomplished much.

What’s wrong with thinking is that we have not, of course, been fighting any kind of serious war on poverty for five decades. We fought it with truly adequate funding for about one decade. Less, even. Then the backlash started, and by 1981, Ronald Reagan’s government was fighting a war on the war on poverty. The fate of many anti-poverty programs has ebbed and flowed ever since.

But at the beginning, in the ’60s, those programs were fully funded, or close. And what happened? According to Joseph Califano, who worked in the Johnson White House, “the portion of Americans living below the poverty line dropped from 22.2 percent to 12.6 percent, the most dramatic decline over such a brief period in this century.” That’s a staggering 43 percent reduction. In six years.

The war on poverty then lost steam in the 1970s. Some of that was Johnson’s fault-- money that might have been spent fighting poverty was diverted to bombing and shooting the Vietnamese. Some of it was the fault of liberal rhetoric. Johnson and others would speak of eradicating poverty, and of course eradicating poverty is impossible, and when it didn’t happen, conservatives were able to say, “See?” (Democrats ought to have learned their lesson along these lines; Barack Obama made a similar mistake in 2009, vowing that the stimulus would keep the jobless rate under 8.5 percent.) And so the public started electing politicians who told them poverty couldn’t be cured by government but only by pulling up one’s bootstraps and friending Jesus more aggressively.

But even for its shortcomings, the Great Society and the war on poverty did absolutely amazing things. I’d like my fellow West Virginia natives to imagine our capital-poor state without the billions the Appalachian Regional Commission has spent since 1965 on roads, local economic development, community health clinics, and numerous other projects. The Great Society brought federal billions to schools, made college possible for millions of kids from modest means, educated innumerable doctors, and so much more. And it’s always worth remembering that the official poverty rate, now 15 percent, overstates the true number because it doesn’t take into account certain policies that don’t offer direct subsidies to poor people, notably the Earned Income Tax Credit, a once bipartisan policy that went to 27.5 million families in 2010 and encourages work and lifts many millions of families above the poverty line.

The political problem is that Americans don’t know about or focus on these successes. They just know that we tried, and poverty still exists. Thus has the “war” frame ended up being extremely handy for conservatives, who will always be able to point to the existence of poor people and therefore to make the claim that the whole thing has been a failure. That is why Rubio can say what he says in his new video and have people who don’t know any better nodding their heads in agreement. And it’s why Ryan can prattle on as he does about government and dependency. I can assure you that when both unveil their specific policy platforms later this year, they’ll consist of a mix of things that a) already exist in some form; b) have been tried and proved tricky to implement; c) sound good in theory but will be woefully underfunded; or d) have been studied to death, with findings suggesting their impact will be minimal.

It will be Democrats’ job to make sure Rubio and Ryan can’t get away with their ideological sleight of hand. They will undoubtedly speak solemnly, for example, of teenage pregnancy and child-bearing, confident that most Americans don’t know that the incidence of these behaviors, even in the African-American community, has decreased dramatically since 1990. If we are entering a new phase of fighting a war on inequality, Americans need to know some facts about the last war that firmly support the view that the effort and resources have done far more good than harm. The Democrats just have to be willing-- and proud-- to say it and say it and say it.

Eloise Reyes, the grassroots progressive running for the Democratic nomination in the Inland Empire (CA-31), is one of those candidates willing to explain why she's proud to say it and say it and say it-- which is, in great part, why Blue America has endorsed her. (The DCCC is backing an empty suit and loser named Pete Aguilar, who already lost to Gary Miller is this deep blue district in 2012, even though Aguilar has gone on record in favor of reducing earned Social Security benefits to retired seniors.) This morning, we asked Eloise, about the role of War on Poverty programs in San Bernardino.

The War on Poverty is about so much more than reducing the number of Americans who live below a particular economic threshold. It is about breaking cycles of injustice and empowering Americans to lift themselves up out of social and economic disparity. When we invest in programs and initiatives that combat poverty, we show our commitment to creating opportunity for all Americans, tackling racial discrimination and providing a safety net for the most vulnerable members of our society, like the elderly and the disabled.

And history has shown that when the war on poverty has been waged with sufficient funding and political muscle, it has been remarkably effective and has had real and meaningful effects on the lives of millions of Americans. Even so, we continue to see House Republicans march in lockstep with their predecessors in Congress, who have fought tooth and nail for decades against efforts to alleviate poverty and address its root causes. California’s 31st Congressional District is just one community where this battle rages.

Here in the Inland Empire, one in five children lives below the poverty line. Yet our current Member of Congress, far-right conservative Gary Miller, is more committed to fighting a war on the War on Poverty than actually improving the lives of the people he represents. Even amongst the field of Democratic candidates running for this House seat, we see Pete Aguilar supporting proposals like the Chained CPI, which would dramatically chip away at the benefits of Social Security recipients. Clearly, the first step in continuing to combat poverty-- both in CA-31 and nationally-- is electing the right Democrats to office.

Let's get rid of right-wing garbage like Miller and make sure Steve Israel doesn't sneak in "Democratic" versions of the same anti-working family corrupt elitists like Pete Aguilar. While Israel is hiring tutors to teach Aguilar Spanish, so he can try to relate to the community, you can contribute to Eloise's grassroots campaign here.


UPDATE: At Least One House Candidate In Hawai'i Remembers How Much Good The War On Poverty Did For His State

Stanley Chang is the progressive in a crowded field of Democrats hoping to replace New Dem Colleen Hanabusa in the first CD. The majority-Asian-American district is deep blue (D+18) and encompasses Honolulu and the southern area of Oahu. Several of his opponents-- particularly Donna Mercado Kim and Mufi Hannemann are so far to the right that they are as bad as any Republican. This afternoon, Chang told us that the war on poverty isn't something from the past but an ongoing commitment Americans make to society.

"Simply put, we are losing the war on poverty because we've all but given up on fighting it.  In many cases, the Republicans in Congress are not just rooting for our failure, but are actually cutting ever larger holes in the social safety net that the poorest American families fall right through. Late last month, we saw Republicans cut unemployment benefits-- a nice holiday gift-- after a year that also saw cuts to food stamps and other important programs for millions of Americans. The failure of Republican governors to accept Medicaid expansion is a perfect example of this. The Medicaid Expansion program under Obamacare will allow poor Americans (mostly working single mothers and veterans, yes veterans) to go to the doctor instead of the Emergency Room, where costs skyrocket before being passed on to the rest of us.

"We know the math works: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I'm proud to join the fight in the war on poverty because I know that it is one we can start winning again, if we're willing to try."