Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.

The shame of the nation: More people are going hungry

Another bit of bad news that demonstrates that the economy may be in recovery, but it is not getting better.

WASHINGTON — The number of Americans who lived in households that lacked consistent access to adequate food soared last year, to 49 million, the highest since the government began tracking what it calls “food insecurity” 14 years ago, the Department of Agriculture reported Monday.

The increase, of 13 million Americans, was much larger than even the most pessimistic observers of hunger trends had expected and cast an alarming light on the daily hardships caused by the recession’s punishing effect on jobs and wages.

About a third of these struggling households had what the researchers called “very low food security,” meaning lack of money forced members to skip meals, cut portions or otherwise forgo food at some point in the year.

The other two-thirds typically had enough to eat, but only by eating cheaper or less varied foods, relying on government aid like food stamps, or visiting food pantries and soup kitchens.

“These numbers are a wake-up call for the country,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

I wish it was a wakeup call, but with so many facing economic uncertainty the methods we’ve relied on for far too long (private and faith-based food pantries and soup kitchens) just won’t cut it now (they do not have the means).

A federal response is necessary, but unlikely — very much to our shame as a nation. In the meantime, maybe we should take Swift’s sarcastic advice and just eat the poor.

Mythology of cost: Health care v. the war

Let’s do some simple arithmetic: The heathcare reform legislation approved by the House of Representatives last week — H.R. 3962 — is estimated to cost $891 billion over 10 years, while reducing the federal deficit by $109 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That’s about $90 billion a year.

Compare this with the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which the CBO estimates cost the nation $604 billion during their first six years and have been cost in the neighborhood of $100 billion a year over all.

Basically, we could pay for healthcare — and maybe some other needs — were we to end the disastrous military conflicts and focus our attentions on repairing the cracks in our own foundations, cracks that have been widening with every dollar spent on war.

The discussion of our budget deficit rarely gets framed this way; rather, we talk only about our domestic priorities — heatlh care, infrastructure, the regulatory agencies — as contributing to the ballooning deficit and debt. Money spent on war, however, is a different animal altogether.

This is the point David Sirota makes today in his OpenLeft blog post, commenting on a weekend New York Times story on the costs of an expanded Afghan war:

Kudos, of course, to the Times for even reporting on the unfathomably large costs of intensifying militarism and adventurism. But as you’ll see in the story, there’s no attempt to put the costs into any context – specifically, there’s no mention that an escalation in Afghanistan would mean outlays for the one-year Pentagon budget is approaching the total outlays of the entire 10-year health care bill.

Earlier, in his syndicated column, Sirota sums up a contradiction that blames domestic spending — specifically spending that has a liberal or progressive goal, like eradicating poverty, ameliorating poverty’s impacts or making sure everyone has health coverage — for pushing the federal budget into deficit.

When the House considered a health care expansion proposal that the CBO says will reduce the deficit by $11 billion a year, tea-party protesters and Congress’ self-described “fiscal conservatives” opposed it on cost grounds. At the same time, almost none of them objected when Congress passed a White House-backed bill to spend $636 billion on defense in 2010.

The hypocrisy is stunning — lots of “budget hawk” complaints about health legislation reducing the deficit and few “budget hawk” complaints about defense initiatives that, according to Government Executive magazine, “puts the president on track to spend more on defense, in real dollars, than any other president has in one term of office since World War II.” And that estimate doesn’t even count additional spending on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Sirota blames “skewed reporting” and the lying liars like Sen. Joe Lieberman, who cherry-pick numbers and ignore what might be inconvenient to their argument.

I can but agree, though the failures of the news media are due not to any skewed motivation but rather to a flaw in how journalism is now practiced in Washington and the state capitals. Journalists have become stenographers to power — or boomboxes for the powerful, if you’re talking about broadcast/cable — who do nothing more than regurgitate what they are told by disingenuous politicians.

Add to this the ingrained desire to chase conflict and you have a recipe for lies and distortion becoming accepted wisdom — afterall, to paraphrase a quotation attributed to Vladimir Lenin, tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.

Grassroots: Blow up the Senate (not literally)

Grassroots — on the undemocratic nature of the U.S. Senate — is on The Progressive Populist Web site.

Doggie diaries: The story of Rosie and Sophie Sleep like a dog

Rosie is sound asleep — it's amazing how she can go from being a ball of craziness to “Sleeping Beauty” in seconds.

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The good, the bad and the ugly

The immigration plan outlined by Janet Napolitano yesterday at the Center for American Progress can best be summed up by the title of a Sergio Leone spaghetti western: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

The plan is good in that it creates a pathway toward legalization for the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants currently in the United States and focuses most of the law-enforcement efforts on employers who use undocumented workers and the coyotes who smuggle them into the country.

The bad is the specifics of the pathway, which include requiring

illegal immigrants who hope to gain legal status … to register, pay fines and all taxes they owe, pass a criminal background check and learn English.

This raises the question of what kind of fines and whether they will act as an impediment toward bringing the undocumented out of the shadows.

The American Immigration Council calls for a relatively simple process that could include small fines and avoids onerous requirements and other rules designed to minimize the number of people who can be legalized. It has offered a blueprint that seems to make sense. Basically, it includes:

Covering as many people as possible, which “makes sense from a humanitarian perspective” and gives the program its best chance of succeeding.

Creating a “straightforward process that measures prospective, rather than retrospective, eligibility” and does not include “overly onerous, politically motivated initial requirements.” This “will maximize the likelihood of success,” the organization says.

Avoid large fines and focus on “Basic proof of identity and a criminal background check(s).”

Minimize the impulse to punish people. There is likely to be considerable political pressure to impose high fines, require people to leave the country before applying, limit the ability to bring in immediate family, or complete other requirements in exchange for legal status. While these measures sound tough, they are counterproductive. In order to achieve the broadest possible legalization, the eligibility criteria and evidentiary standards must be achievable by a maximum number of people.

Focus on “integration into the community and a commitment to becoming a lawful permanent resident.”

Upon registration, applicants should be a on a path that leads to a green card, provided they meet specified criteria. The criteria that most seem to measure commitment—paying taxes, learning English, working hard or going to school, staying out of trouble—can be built into the requirements for successful completion of the program, but the trade off must be legal status that can eventually lead to citizenship. Without the promise of a green card, legalization is nothing more than an expanded temporary worker program, running the risk of creating a second-class citizen with the right to work, but with no incentives to put down roots and no opportunity to remain lawfully. Newly legalized immigrants must not be granted a distinctive status that singles them out from other legal immigrants, inviting discrimination and abuse.

And then there is the ugly — the continued heavy focus on enforcement and the “fence,” which she praised and which the administration does not appear ready or willing to abandon.