The invisible poor

The research finds the neediest kids actually tend to live in the richest states.

This line from an editorial in today’s Record pretty much sums up how miserably we are failing the most needy in our society.

According to a story in The Record, a new study

low-income children in New Jersey are in poorer health, exercise less, read less, participate in fewer after-school clubs and teams, and live in more dangerous neighborhoods than most poor children in the country. They are also more likely to be overweight, have asthma, live in a single-parent household, have emotional and behavioral difficulties, and have parents who lack secure employment.

“The distance between the haves and the have-nots in New Jersey is very big,” said William O’Hare, the report’s co-author, a demographer and senior fellow at the philanthropic Annie E. Casey Foundation, which advocates for needy children and families. “There are a large number of kids who aren’t doing very well in the state and need the attention of New Jersey’s leaders.”

Very true — and underscored by this:

The neediest kids tend to live in the richest states, including New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts. O’Hare said the findings may reflect the fact that big Northeast cities are home to some of the most concentrated poverty in the country.

Southern states, which are disproportionately poor, ranked far better than many other states in the well-being of their low-income children. Poor children fared best in states such as Utah and North Dakota, perhaps, said O’Hare, because they have a greater sense of community.

This is unconscienable. As Peter Wise, the former director of the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen, is fond of saying: We live in one of the richest states in the country. That we have such extreme pockets of poverty in places like the state capital is a moral travesty.

Obviously, the state can do more, but so can the feds. And wouldn’t it be nice if someone other than John Edwards talked about the issue seriously on the campaign trail?

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

E-mail me by clicking here.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

Updating a bad dog law

Assemblyman Neil M. Cohen, a Union County Democrat, is hoping to bring a much-needed does of rational thinking to the fight over whether a Princeton German shephard should be put to death for mauling a landscaper in June.

The dog, Congo, was ruled vicious and ordered put to death by Princeton Township Municipal Judge Russell Annich Jr. A state Superior Court judge issued a stay and allowed the dog to return home, pending the family’s appeal.

Guy James, Congo’s owner, says the landscaper entered his yard against his orders. Mr. James’ dogs — he owns six — were in the yard, scaring the landscaper, who then reacted by striking the dogs and then knocking Mr. James’ wife to the ground. That’s when Congo attacked.

The case is a troubling one, as I’ve mentioned in earlier an earlier post, because dogs are territorial and extremely loyal to their owners. I would expect my dog, Honey (or almost any dog), to react in a similar manner under similar circumstances — a point Mr. Cohen makes:

“The nature of a dog is to protect those around them,” said Mr. Cohen. “It’s outrageous that Congo may have been provoked into attacking and this fact is being ignored by authorities.”

Mr. Cohen’s bill, A4597, would change state law to treat a dog provoked to attack differently than an unprovoked dog that caused bodily injury to a person or domestic animal during an attack. According to Cohen’s office, the bill would define striking, grabbing, poking and prodding as threatening actions that could incite a dog to defend itself, its offspring or its owner or the owner’s family. And the bill would require a dog to be found vicious beyond a reasonable doubt — the same standard used for humans charged with a crime — and give municipal courts an alternative to humanely destroying a vicious dog by giving the owner the option to comply with precautions for keeping a potentially dangerous dog.

Other provisions include:

  • allowing owners to keep their dog during the appeals process as long as they comply with statutory precautions, including posting signs on their property and minimizing a dog’s potential threat to people and other animals;
  • allowing an owner and owner’s family to visit their dog during times when their dog might be impounded;
  • establishing a six-month statute of limitations for animal control officer to seize and impound alleged vicious or potentially dangerous dogs;
  • and eliminating the need for an owner to obtain liability insurance for potentially dangerous dogs.

There is talk that a plea arrangement might be worked out that could save the dog. I certainly hope so. After all, the dog was only doing what dogs do and the landscaper should have known better than to disregard the homeowner’s order to wait in the car.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

E-mail me by clicking here.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.

The Clinton myth

Hillary Clinton and her supporters generally offer three or four reasons that the New York senator should be the Democratic nominee for president next year: her experience in the executive branch during her husband’s administration, her ability and willingness to take the fight to the GOP and her chances of succeeding in the general election.

I’ve always been a it dubious of the first — while she was more involved in policy than any first lady in history and possibly more than most vice presidents, she was not an official part of the policy apparatus and her claims to experience essentially boil down to her being the wife of a powerful man. I don’t mean to demean her abilities — which are myriad — or to diminish her real experience as a corporate lawyer, children’s advocate or senator. Oval Office experience, however, is another story.

Then again, I suspect that the experience argument is designed to do more than establish a difference between herself and her chief rivals — Her senate experience, after all, isn’t notably greater than theirs. It is designed to play into rank-and-file Democrats continued, and mostly irrational, love affair with Bill Clinton. The Clinton name, for Democrats, evokes grand memories of a time when they were on top of the world, a rebirth — except, as Thomas Schaller points out today in The Baltimore Sun, the Clinton years were not so good.

Yes, there was a Democrat in the White House, but the party found itself in a surprisingly precarious position at the end of the Clinton years, with Clinton’s vice president running a campaign that sought to minimize its connection to the Clintons and Democratic infrastructure in disarray around the country.

After the eight-year Clinton reign, the Republicans were in better shape. In January 1993, the Republicans were in the minority in Congress, among governors and even in state legislative chambers. By January 2001, they boasted majorities in all three. Plenty of Democrats who lost races during the 1994 “Republican Revolution” have painful memories of the Clintons’ early-term political blunders on gays in the military and health care reform.

Nor was much progress made in the 1990s closing the ideological infrastructure gap. After Al Gore’s defeat in 2000, the Clintons raised millions of dollars for organizations like David Brock’s Media Matters for America and the John Podesta-led Center for American Progress. But the failure to build these institutions when the Clintons held the White House must have tickled congressional Republicans already giddily constructing their formidable K Street Project.

As for Hillary Clinton’s ability to “fight the Republicans,” I think the jury is still out. “(F)ighting,” as Schaller says, “is not the same as winning.”

The truth is that Hillary Clinton’s win-loss record in political conflicts with the Republicans isn’t so great.

Yes, she handily won both of her Senate contests in New York. But her adopted home state isn’t exactly unfavorable partisan terrain, and her opponents were none too impressive.

And

Despite major policy achievements – the 1993 budget package, the 1995 Dayton Accords, the 1997 minimum wage increase – the Clintons had few political knockouts. Victories in the wake of the 1995 government shutdown and the failed impeachment attempt resulted more from GOP overreach than strategic, proactive haymakers thrown by Bill and Hillary.

In the end, Democrats need to reconsider their vetting process. Electability is fool’s gold, as the Kerry campaign should have proven. John Kerry was chosen because of his war record and the sense among Democrats that it would create a coat of armor that Republicans couldn’t pierce. Once they did, it was clear that Kerry offered little to get excited about.

Hillary Clinton may have a lot to offer, but Democrats should remember 2004 and be wary of candidates whose chief claim to the nomination is that they offer the best hope of winning.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

E-mail me by clicking here.

Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.