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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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shared Detroit Free Press's photo.
Sad- almost like a third world country
It was morning in Delray in southwest Detroit, on a littered abandoned corner lot not far from the river. A half-dozen young men stood in holes they’d dug in the ground, chopping at the soil, yanking out anything remotely metallic that a scrapyard might give them a few dollars for.
This group of legal scrappers has found pride and fellowship in one of the few ways left for people with few skills to make money in the neighborhood: http://on.freep.com/1fWDhyH
Last edited by untanglingwebs on Mon Dec 02, 2013 7:11 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Mon Dec 02, 2013 7:01 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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John Carlisle: Delray's diggers find scrap metal, pride and fellowship
9:20 AM, December 1, 2013 |
What it's like to scrap metal in Detroit
What it's like to scrap metal in Detroit: Local Detroit scrappers take the art of scrapping to a whole new level by digging metals out of the ground and sifting like diamond miners. Mandi Wright/Detroit Free Press
By John Carlisle
Detroit Free Press Columnist
Domenic Anderson, 19, of Detroit checks out the pieces of metal he separated from dirt as his twin brother, David, digs at right on Nov. 20. / Mandi Wright/Detroit Free Press
Scrapper Domenic Anderson shows a piece of metal he unearthed while digging in an abandoned junk yard in Detroit on Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2013. / Mandi Wright/Detroit Free Press
Scrapper Doug Oswald, 45, who at times lives on site, sifts through dirt at an abandoned junk yard to find metals that translate into dollars. / Mandi Wright/Detroit Free Press
Crew leader and scrap permit holder Brad Baker, 31, of Melvindale swings a pick axe in an abandoned junk yard to find metals that translate into dollars. / Mandi Wright/Detroit Free Press
Brad Baker stood in a hole as deep as he is tall, hacking at the dirt with a pickax. He bent down and grabbed a rock he’d dug free.
“See the little pieces of metal in it?” he said. “That’s steel.”
It was morning in Delray in southwest Detroit, on a littered abandoned corner lot not far from the river. A half-dozen young men stood in holes they’d dug in the ground, chopping at the soil, yanking out anything remotely metallic that a scrapyard might give them a few dollars for — from thick steel beams and small copper fittings down to jagged shards of slag.
This was a scrapyard half a century ago, and over the years, tons of steel and copper and aluminum wound up buried in the lot. Since it closed, the neighborhood’s residents have been mining here, with the blessing of the lot’s current owner, since he’d have to pay to remove all that debris anyway if anything is ever done with the property.
A few of the men scooped dirt into plastic milk crates and shook them from side to side, sifting bits of metal free from the topsoil, like prospectors panning for gold. By the end of the day, they’d have a pile of steel fragments weighing hundreds of pounds.
“I’ve only got one place that actually will let us cash these out because it looks like rocks,” Baker said. “But this is metal right there.”
Digging with hand tools for scraps of metal is hard, dirty, backbreaking work. Yet job seekers show up all the time, asking for their chance to dig here. Because in desolate Delray, it’s one of the few ways left for people with few skills to make money.
They’re proud that they’re among the few legal scrappers out here, with permission and permits — unlike the crews they see on the streets around them, breaking into empty homes and stealing the pipes.
“It’s just been sitting here,” Baker, 31, said of the buried metals. “For anybody to build on it or anything it’s got to come out anyway. We do it and at the same time we get rid of debris, keep people from dumping, keep the hookers over here from hooking. We’re cleaning up the city, and we’re not hurting nobody.”
An honest living
Delray has become a ghost town. Years ago, it was a thriving Hungarian enclave whose main street was lined with its own stores, banks, movie theaters, churches, a hospital and a library.
But the city decided decades ago that this village it annexed would be an industrial zone. As factories moved in and the air grew more polluted, most of the residents left, just as the city intended. Now, more than 90% of the population is gone, and barely a couple thousand people remain.
Those who stayed behind live with smog in the air, a fine mist of powders from the area’s industries coating their houses and cars, and the sour stench from the city’s wastewater treatment plant. Delray is in the most polluted area in Michigan, a University of Michigan study found.
There’s little to do here for fun, and few places to get unskilled jobs anymore — other than in this scrap lot. Neighbors have mined here for years and somehow still keep finding metal.
Domenic Anderson used to follow his dad down here and watch him dig.
“Everybody would sit there, dig, get along,” he said. “All the grown-ups would be doing their own things, running their own crews out of here, making their own money.”
Now he works here, too. He stood on a dirt mound next to his twin brother, David Anderson. The 19-year-old brothers live just down the street and work in the lot six days a week. They’re rough edged and dirt streaked, and they share a distinct southwest Detroit accent and a kind of small-town genuineness.
For them, it’s not just work; it’s also their social life. Most of the neighbors moved away long ago, so there weren’t many kids to play with when they were younger, and there aren’t many to hang out with now that they’re older.
“There’s no socialization, and I think that’s a bad thing for the kids growing up in these neighborhoods,” David Anderson said. “They don’t have socialization.”
They get that here now. After each day’s work, the guys — mostly in their teens and early 20s — make a big campfire using wood they’ve dug up, share beers, grill bratwursts and swap stories of growing up in this part of Detroit.
“I don’t know what it is about this place, but it brings people together, close together,” Domenic Anderson said. “Like family. I mean, I consider a lot of people down here family, they’ve been here so long.”
And they take pride in showing the people left in the neighborhood there are still honest ways to make money.
“They see people out here, digging it out of the ground, working hard like coal miners instead of ripping it off the buildings,” Baker said. “It’s a good thing.”
Domenic Anderson was standing nearby, bragging how he can earn $150 a day here. He uses it to take girls out, he noted.
Baker offered the younger man some fatherly advice.
“You ain’t gotta have money to get a girl, but you gotta have money to at least take them out,” Baker said. “You gotta carry your weight. You gotta have your own cigarettes and stuff.”
A home built with tires
For three days, that sheet of metal would not budge.
They’d yanked at it, dug around it, tried everything to get it free. It was 3 feet wide, over an inch thick and God knows how long. It would be a jackpot whenever they finally got hold of it.
And everyone working at getting it out would get a cut. Baker has worked here so long — 13 years — that he’s created his own crew. He’ll pay $50 for a day’s work from those who don’t want to fend for themselves, and he has no shortage of takers. He buys his guys lunch and pop, gets them beers at the end of the day and even helps some of them save to buy a cheap used car to get around in.
“I’m trying to grow up and be the kind of guy that helps people,” he said. “The better off they are, the better off they are to me, too.”
Baker even made a home for Doug Oswald, who was sleeping under a freeway overpass a few months ago. He showed up at a scrapyard where Baker worked, trying to sell scrap for someone else who paid him to be the middleman. Baker took pity on the homeless 45-year-old and offered him a job at the Delray lot.
“I came out here, and everything’s been good since,” Oswald said.
Now he lives here, too.
Someone keeps dumping old tires on the lot. Usually the guys just stack them off to the side. But a few weeks back, they gathered them and made a tire fort, as they call it, with slabs of wood and tarp forming a roof over walls of stacked tires.
They used it for shade, to get shelter from storms or just as a place to sleep if the campfire hangouts run late, and they don’t want to go home in the dark. Since it was built, some guys even started camping out here overnight.
But now it’s Oswald’s home. He couldn’t be happier about it.
“It’s working great,” he said of his new job. “I get food every day. Brad brings in stuff to drink, and he pays me for whatever we dig up.”
Oswald has been homeless two years now and never stayed in Delray before this. He’s grown fond not only of his coworkers but also the few-and-far-between neighbors who, like the police, stop by now and then to make sure everyone’s OK.
“I like it,” he said of Delray. “Everyone’s friendly. Better than the suburbs — a lot of snooty people out there. We’re like a family right here.”
'I love this job'
The sun sank beneath the leafless trees at the yard’s edge, and the sky was growing dark. But Domenic Anderson would not stop digging.
Everyone else but his brother had gone home for the day, and he stood inside a hole, hacking away. Earlier he’d hit a buried pocket of oil with his pickax, which happens sometimes in this polluted lot. It spurted oil all over him, and now he looked like a coal miner. His hands were a ragged mess of calluses and cuts.
His brother David had cut a finger on a metal shard and wrapped the wound and the dirt that had gotten into it underneath some toilet paper. Both shrugged it all off. It’s a small price to pay for nearly instant cash.
David stood outside the hole, and Domenic would reach up and excitedly show him every rusted object he’d dig out. A Cadillac logo imprinted on steel. A thick metal brace. Part of an engine.
It finally grew too dark for David, and he headed down the street, framed by tall weeds and high-fenced factory yards on his walk home. Dominic went back to digging, to find just a few more scraps that he could turn into a few more dollars.
“I love this job,” he said. “You work at your own pace, you’re your own boss, make your own money, on your own terms. You ain’t getting pushed around by nobody.”
■ Viewing this article on a mobile device? Tap here to see the photo gallery
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John Carlisle is a columnist who writes about interesting people and places throughout the state. Read more columns at freep.com/carlisle. Contact him: jcarlisle@freepress.com or 313-222-6582.
Last edited by untanglingwebs on Mon Dec 02, 2013 7:10 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Mon Dec 02, 2013 7:04 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Is this different from children and adults sifting through garbage heaps for things to salvage?
America is on the decline. |
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Mon Dec 02, 2013 7:06 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Life In A Garbage Dump
Living in the United States, it’s hard to imagine that anyone in the world would ever have to live in a garbage dump.
But the reality is that right now — as you are reading this — young children in developing nations are being raised in a garbage dump. Their poverty-stricken parents have no alternative: the entire family must scour the dump daily in search of items that will help them survive.
These children and their families may live on the outskirts of the dump, and every day, the families go to work there. Such a child never gets to see what school is like; he never gets to experience simple childhood pleasures such as a playground with swings or a sandbox. Instead, this destitute child’s “sandbox” is filled with giant trucks dumping mounds of rubbish.
A poor child working in the dump hopes that today he will find something of value — perhaps a toy, something to eat or a new sweater. His treasure is what others have thrown away.
FAST FACTS - GARBAGE DUMPS
•Guatemala City Dump - you must pay to pick through trash
•Honduras Dump - children wait for the trash truck along with vultures
•Over 2,000 Honduran children work in dumps
•Garbage dumps emit methane, a gas that can cause nausea and vomiting
Due to the dire economic circumstances of the poorest communities in Latin America and the Caribbean, these families have no other options. Fathers, sons, mothers and daughters must go to the dump every day to simply live. They have no opportunities or spare time to enjoy… to play… to dream. They must simply survive.
Some children, who desperately wish for nothing more than a truck or a doll, manage to find one in the dump. Chances are that what they find will be shabby and incomplete — a truck missing a wheel, a doll without an arm — but these children are happy to have something to salvage… the closest thing to a “new” toy that they may ever experience.
Around noon, the hottest part of the day is approaching, and the fumes and the smell of the dump are circulating. It is lunchtime. Children who are working in the dump are hungry. They will not have a sandwich in a brown-bag lunch packed by their mothers; they will not find a shiny red apple amid the refuse, or experience opening a bag of potato chips. Instead, they will have what they can find to eat — someone’s leftovers.
These families will spend time in this dangerous and unhealthy environment searching for tin, aluminum cans and materials that can be recycled. Working at the dump, the family can make as little as $1 - $2 a day.
No child should have to grow up living in a garbage dump; this is not an experience that any human being should have to endure. However, the reality in developing nations today is that generations of families will spend their time together sifting through garbage, looking for something to eat, or a toy to play with, or salvageable items to be sold for income.
These children and families need basic essentials such as nutritious food, water and a healthy environment in which to live.
Although most Americans consider basic education as an essential part of growing up, schooling is a luxury for poverty-stricken children. Without the education and skills needed to succeed, poor children are unable to break the cycle of poverty that has trapped families and communities for generations.
As members of one global family, we have the responsibility to reach out to our brothers and sisters in need. Please help Food For The Poor bring relief to families who struggle each day, living under inhumane conditions. Through your gift, you can help ensure that these children grow up in environments where they are free to play, laugh, learn and dream.
More on Garbage Dumps: La Chureca, Nicaragua - Experiences in Hell and Ravaging Through Garbage Dump is a Daily Routine to Children in Guatemala
- June 2011
Food For The Poor, Inc. |
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Mon Dec 02, 2013 7:14 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Mon Dec 02, 2013 7:17 am |
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pan8
F L I N T O I D
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quote:
untanglingwebs schreef:
shared Detroit Free Press's photo.
Sad- almost like a third world country
Webs, you can't be serious! And when was the last time you were in a third world country? Bleeding hearts in America have no idea. The poor are in their situation by their own poor choices and I have no sympathy For them. Failed to get an education because of laziness and lack of desire. Poor in America have welfare (Thanks LBJ), free cell phones (thanks dear leader) remote controls for their televisions. Get out and see some of the world webs before you post such BS. If America were so bad then why are millions upon millions trying to get here. I've spent extended periods in third world countries and America sure as hell isn't one of them.
Pan8 |
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Mon Dec 02, 2013 11:04 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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In the U.S. 49.7 Million Are Now Poor, and 80% of the Total Population Is Near Poverty
politicalblindspot.com
If you live in the United States, there is a good chance that you are now living in poverty or near poverty. Nearly 50 million Americans, (49.7 Million
In the U.S. 49.7 Million Are Now Poor, and 80% of the Total Population Is Near Poverty
Posted by PBSpot Admin 06 November 2013 241 Comments
If you live in the United States, there is a good chance that you are now living in poverty or near poverty. Nearly 50 million Americans, (49.7 Million), are living below the poverty line, with 80% of the entire U.S. population living near poverty or below it.
That near poverty statistic is perhaps more startling than the 50 million Americans below the poverty line, because it translates to a full 80% of the population struggling with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on government assistance to help make ends meet.
In September, the Associated Press pointed to survey data that told of an increasingly widening gap between rich and poor, as well as the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs that used to provide opportunities for the “Working Class” to explain an increasing trend towards poverty in the U.S.
But the numbers of those below the poverty line does not merely reflect the number of jobless Americans. Instead, according to a revised census measure released Wednesday, the number – 3 million higher than what the official government numbers imagine – are also due to out-of-pocket medical costs and work-related expenses.
The new measure is generally “considered more reliable by social scientists because it factors in living expenses as well as the effects of government aid, such as food stamps and tax credits,” according to Hope Yen reporting for the Associated Press.
Some other findings revealed that food stamps helped 5 million people barely reach above the poverty line. That means that the actual poverty rate is even higher, as without such aid, poverty rate would rise from 16 percent to 17.6 percent.
Latino and Asian Americans saw an increase in poverty, rising to 27.8 percent and 16.7 percent respectively, from 25.8 percent and 11.8 percent under official government numbers. African-Americans, however, saw a very small decrease, from 27.3 percent to 25.8 percent which the study documents is due to government assistance programs. Non-Hispanic whites too rose from 9.8 percent to 10.7 percent in poverty.
“The primary reason that poverty remains so high,” Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan economist said, “is that the benefits of a growing economy are no longer being shared by all workers as they were in the quarter-century following the end of World War II.”
“Given current economic conditions,” he continued, “poverty will not be substantially reduced unless government does more to help the working poor.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. government seems to think that the answer is cutting more of those services which are helping to keep 80% of the population just barely above the poverty line, cutting Food Stamps since the beginning of the month. Democrats and Republicans are negotiating about just how much more of these programs should be cut, but neither party is arguing that they should not be touched.
(Article by Simeon Ari; photo via AP Photo)
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Tue Dec 03, 2013 10:54 pm |
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pan8
F L I N T O I D
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And the debt is now $17 Trillion. Hope and Change you can believe in. Again I submit to you our "poor" have food banks, welfare housing and Medicaid. Remote controls for multiple TV sets and food stamps. America does not have a "poor" problem but a "spoiled" perception problem. Oh by the way that $17 trillion is by and large entitlements, freebies, $800 billion stimulus and wasted government programs. If there is "poor" in America it has life style choices as the root cause. Webs you can cut and paste lib talking points till the cows come home but don't pizz on anyone's leg and tell them it's raining.
Pan8 |
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Wed Dec 04, 2013 9:31 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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MSN News
December 5,2013
Growing wealth gap in US hurting economic mobility
Growing wealth gap in US hurting economic mobility in many major U.S. cities: A makeshift homeless persons structure is seen in Detroit. Reuters
A makeshift homeless persons structure is seen in Detroit. Reuters 6 hr ago | By Susan Heavey of Reuters
The disparity signals potentially dimmer prospects for some urban areas in a nation where cities have long been seen as beacons for jobs and opportunity, a new study said.
WASHINGTON - U.S. cities are increasingly divided between the rich and the poor, hampering residents' ability to move up the economic ladder, according to a study released on Wednesday.
Not only is a widening geographic gulf between the haves and have-nots hurting economic mobility, it signals potentially dimmer prospects for some urban areas in a nation where cities have long been seen as beacons for jobs and opportunity, the study said.
Researchers at New York University and University of California, Berkeley analyzed 96 metropolitan areas across the United States to see how a lack of economic integration within cities affects people's economic fortunes.
The study, commissioned by the nonprofit group The Pew Charitable Trusts, found American cities overall are now less economically mixed than in earlier decades, with increasingly deeper pockets of rich residents isolated from poor ones.
"There are more neighborhoods where poverty is more concentrated and wealth is more concentrated," said Patrick Sharkey, a sociology professor at New York University who helped lead the study.
That isolation makes it hard for the poor to improve their circumstances, the study found. For example, a low-income family in a more divided city typically sees four generations pass before reaching half the nation's mean income. In more mixed areas, it takes just three, it said.
Such economic segregation is increasing across the United States as the country continues to find stronger financial footing after the deep 2007-2009 recession.
Earlier on Wednesday, President Barack Obama returned to the issue with a speech on income inequality and economic mobility, calling for a renewed focus on actions that benefit the struggling poor and middle classes.
Wednesday's study adds to the growing body of evidence highlighting the nation's uneven economic recovery and growing class divisions.
Previous studies from Pew have shown that it is easier to move up the economic ladder in some parts of the United States, namely in the Northeast and parts of the Mid-Atlantic. Those in other states, mostly in the South, are less likely to improve their economic prospects.
Its latest findings show an impact at a more local level.
Among the cities studied, New York showed the deepest divide, followed by Newark, New Jersey; Washington, and Los Angeles. Cities with less division included Tacoma, Washington; Tampa and Orlando in Florida; Pittsburgh, and Boston.
Sharkey said the implications for Americans, especially the poor, go well beyond they kind of housing people have and "affects everything about the community," from school funding and politics to infrastructure investments and crime rates.
"We should really be thinking about economic mobility at a more local level," he said.
It also raises questions about the power of American cities.
"It's a trend that makes us think that cities will become less of an engine for economic mobility if they keep trending toward a scenario where the rich live in separate communities from the poor." |
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Thu Dec 05, 2013 4:29 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Tuesday, Dec 10, 2013 11:43 AM EST
Look at the stats: America resembles a poor country
We're number one, sure, but in things like early onset diabetes and per capita incarceration
CJ Werleman, Alternet
Look at the stats: America resembles a poor country
(Credit: Arman Zhenikeyev via Shutterstock)
This article originally appeared on AlterNet.
AlterNet Last week, President Obama gave one of the most important speeches of his presidency when he spoke about the rapidly growing deficit of opportunity in this country. It was the president’s most focused and deliberate address on income inequality to date, but for many it wasn’t nearly alarmist enough, for it didn’t recognize how far this nation has fallen. It’s time we call it what it is: we’ve become a third-world nation.
America has become a RINO: rich in name only. By every measure, we look like a broken banana republic. Not a single U.S. city is included in the world’s top 10 most livable cities. Only one U.S. airport makes the list of the top 100 in the world. Our roads, schools and bridges are falling apart, and our trains—none of them high-speed—are running off their tracks. Our high school students are rated 30th in math, and some 30 countries have longer life expectancy and lower rates of infant mortality. The only things America is number one in these days are the number of incarcerated citizens per capita and adult onset diabetes.
Three decades of trickledown economics; the monopolization, privatization and deregulation of industry; and the destruction of labor protection has resulted in 50 million Americans living in abject poverty, while 400 individuals own more than one-half of the nation’s wealth. As the four Walmart heirs enjoy a higher net worth than the bottom 40 percent, our nation’s sense of food insecurity is more on par with developing countries like Indonesia and Tanzania than with OECD nations like Australia and Canada. In fact, the percentage of Americans who say they could not afford the food needed to feed their families at some point in the last year is three times that of Germany, more than twice than Italy and Canada.
The destruction of labor has been so comprehensive that first-world nations now offshore their jobs to the U.S. In other words, we’ve become the new India. Foreign companies now see us as the world’s cheap labor force, and we have the non-unionized South to thank for that. Chuck Thompson, author of Better off Without Em, writes, “Like Mexico, the South has spent the past four decades systematically siphoning auto jobs from Michigan and the Midwest by keeping worker’s salaries low and inhibiting their right to organize by rendering their unions toothless.” Average wages for autoworkers in the South are up to 30 percent lower than in Michigan.
In Sweden, the minimum wage is $19 per hour and workers enjoy a minimum of five weeks paid vacation every year. In the U.S. the minimum wage is a tick above $7 per hour and workers can expect no more than 12 days of annual vacation. So guess what? IKEA has set up a factory in Virginia. Volkswagen has set up in Tennessee, and the likes of Hyundai, KIA, BMW, Honda, and Toyota have all set up in the South to take advantage of the world’s latest cheap labor source. Moreover, the profits of these foreign companies goes toward stimulating their economies instead of ours.
So, it’s amusing when Republicans blame Detroit’s bankruptcy on liberal policies because nothing could be further from the truth. Detroit is bankrupt thanks to the Republican business model that has turned the entire South into a third-world banana republic. A business model that the rest of the country is forced to compete with i.e. lower wages, low corporate tax rates, low property taxes, and low environmental and labor protection, which results in a migration of industry and jobs from the northern states, which means a shrinking of the tax revenue base in cities like Detroit. Since 2000, the population of Detroit has fallen 20% and property tax revenue has plummeted 26%. Take this as an illustration of how we are in a never-ending death spiral race to the bottom.
Obama’s speech clearly depicted an America losing touch with its ideals. Not only is the middle-class fast becoming the working poor, but upward mobility is becoming almost impossible to attain. At a time when America should be investing in its own future, it is dealing with a sequestration that was never meant to have happened. It happened because the GOP congress would rather destroy the economy than see a black president succeed. Also, raising revenues runs against the GOP’s fundamental pro-corporate strategy of “starving the beast” i.e. starving the federal government of the revenues it needs so it can use deficits as an excuse to cut programs like Social Security and Medicare and replace them with for-profit alternatives.
Mattea Kramer and Jo Comerford of the National Priorities Project write:
“Robust public investment had been a key to US prosperity in the previous century. It was then considered a basic part of the social contract as well as of Economics 101. As just about everyone knew in those days, citizens paid taxes to fund worthy initiatives that the private sector wouldn’t adequately or efficiently supply. Roadways and scientific research were examples. In the post–World War II years, the country invested great sums of money in its interstate highways and what were widely considered the best education systems in the world, while research in well-funded government labs led to inventions like the Internet. The resulting world-class infrastructure, educated workforce, and technological revolution fed a robust private sector.”
America is in urgent need of significant investment. We need to, as Obama said, “not be stuck in a stale debate from two years ago or three years ago. A relentlessly growing deficit of opportunity is a bigger threat to our future than our rapidly shrinking fiscal deficit.”
That’s one part of the solution. The other part is a rejection of the Republican Party business model. A higher minimum wage; higher taxes on corporations and the rich; and a greater percentage of the labor force protected by collective bargaining will help restore the America whose middle-class was once the envy of the world, and whose people were among the happiest and healthiest on the planet. |
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Tue Dec 10, 2013 1:44 pm |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Policy MIC
The UN Is Accusing the U.S. of Something You Might Expect in a Third World Dictatorship
Eileen Shim's avatar image By Eileen Shim April 2, 2014
, The UN Is Accusing the U.S. of Something You Might Expect in a Third World Dictatorship
"Cruel, inhuman and degrading." These are words you often associate with third-world countries, war zones or even off-the-book sites like Guantanamo Bay. You probably wouldn't expect to hear those words applied to park benches, subway stations and empty stairwells in cities across America.
But that's exactly what the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights argued in a recently released and damning periodic report on the state of human rights in the U.S. Though the report covered everything from the death penalty and gun violence to drones and rendition, the most eye-catching section was the UN's condemnation of the criminalization of homelessness in the U.S., which "raises concerns of discrimination and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment"
"I'm just simply baffled by the idea that people can be without shelter in a country, and then be treated as criminals for being without shelter," said Nigel Rodley, a human rights lawyer and the chairman of the UN committee. "The idea of criminalizing people who don't have shelter is something that I think many of my colleagues might find as difficult as I do to even begin to comprehend."
The background: The criminalization of homelessness is indeed a growing problem in the U.S., with more and more cities opting to arrest people for loitering or occupying public spaces — and applying violent tactics in certain cases. Last month, the Associated Press reported that a mentally ill, homeless man was jailed in Rikers Island and eventually "baked to death" in his cell. Another sick, homeless man was killed in March after a standoff with the Albuquerque police.
And escaping homelessness is not simply a matter of choice. Even those who attempt to find employment are often denied for not having a permanent address, which makes it nearly impossible to escape the cycle of homelessness. Despite the proven economic benefits of eliminating homelessness, the American system punishes those who have trouble escaping their circumstances — without giving them a leg up. More and more, it seems like the "American Dream" really is nothing more than a dream.
Eileen Shim
Eileen is a writer living in New York. She studied comparative literature and international studies at Yale University, and enjoys writing about the intersection of culture and politics.
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Mon Apr 07, 2014 2:54 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Within a Generation, America Is on Track to Become a ... - PolicyMic
23 hours ago ... If you've been suspecting America has been rapidly stumbling downhill since the start of the millennium, there's now evidence to back that view ...
www.policymic.com/articles/87203/within-a-generation |
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Thu Apr 10, 2014 8:49 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Within a Generation, America Is on Track to Become a Second-Rate Nation
Tom McKay's avatar image By Tom McKay 24 hours ago
If you've been suspecting America has been rapidly stumbling downhill since the start of the millennium, there's now evidence to back that view. The U.S. is far from No. 1 — it's now No. 16.
New data from the Social Progress Imperative demonstrates that the U.S. is falling behind. The study ranks countries according to their Social Progress Index, which includes not just GDP but variables like "personal safety, ecosystem sustainability, health and wellness, shelter, sanitation, equality and inclusion, and personal freedom and choice."
The results were pretty uninspiring. For the second-richest country in the world per capita ($45,336), we sure are lousy compared to a lot of other countries in the overall ranking. And on specific issues the U.S. stands a lot worse. America ranks 70th in health, 69th in ecosystem sustainability, 39th in basic education, 34th in access to water and 31st in personal safety.
These numbers lead AlterNet's CJ Werleman to conclude America is "fast becoming a second-rate nation," and it's hard to disagree with some of his points. For example:
America's rapid descent into impoverished nation status is the inevitable result of unchecked corporate capitalism. By every measure, we look like a broken banana republic. Not a single U.S. city is included in the world's top 10 most livable cities. Only one U.S. airport makes the list of the top 100 in the world. Our roads, schools and bridges are falling apart, and our trains — none of them high-speed — are running off their tracks.
Where's our money? What is America spending its incredible wealth on, if not health care, infrastructure and the maintenance of its cities? Common Dreams thinks a lot of it is big-business-friendly governance, estimating that frivolous subsidies, corporate handouts and tax policy that lets the richest shirk their tax bills cost a family making the mean income of $72,000 a year about $6,000 yearly — $1,231 of that total is thanks to revenue losses from corporate tax havens. And on top of America's reckless spending appeasing big business, the country spends more on its military than the entirety of either Europe or Asia.
It wouldn't be so much of a problem if all this spending somehow trickled back down to the everyday American, but it doesn't. It's enriching middlemen like the financial services industry and rentiers' industries like Big Oil. It's also going to the 1%. University of California, Berkeley, economics professor Emmanuel Saez estimates that 95% of economic gains from 2009-2012 went to the top 1% of earners across the country. UC Santa Cruz professor G. William Domhoff claims that the 1% controlled 35% of the country's net worth in 2010 and 42% of all financial wealth. (The top 5%? A combined 63% and 72%, respectively.)
These problems have since gotten worse, with a "well-placed member of the sprawling financial services industry" writing for Domhoff's blog noting that "from 2009 through 2011 (the latest available data), the net worth of the top 7% gained 28% while the bottom 93% dropped 4% ... overall, things are not looking better economically for 9 out of 10 Americans." Even the average physician, assuming the ability to save a staggering $4,000-5,000 a month, would have a tough time getting into the 1% at the end of their career.
Change we can believe in? We can still get out of this hole, but it will be tough if the process continues to skew in favor of corporations and the wealthy. Both parties are guilty of pandering to the rich, but the GOP is taking 1%er budget priorities to a whole new level.
For example, the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 69% of the cuts in Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wisc.) 2014 budget, which slashes $5.2 trillion in spending over 10 years, would come from the lower end of the income spectrum. While Ryan claims his budget will end corporate welfare, the vast majority of cuts will come from nondefense discretionary spending — specifically anti-poverty programs, Medicaid expansion, unemployment benefits, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), food stamps, etc. And there's no plausible way to plug the revenue hole his budget creates without substantial cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
In other words, the GOP plan is to radically reform the budget by cutting out all the parts working- and middle-class Americans rely on.
Members of the Republican Study Committee think he's not cutting enough and want $7.4 trillion to go out the window. On the other hand, the Democratic Party's budget (while far from a leftist wish-list) raises the minimum wage to $10.10, gives federal spending on infrastructure, education and scientific research a boost, overhauls immigration, extends emergency unemployment insurance and keeps cost-lowering reforms like the ACA intact.
As Werleman writes:
The countries ranked highest in social progress are doing the complete opposite. They're investing in schools rather than drones. They're expanding collective bargaining laws rather than busting unions. They're providing their citizens with universal healthcare and education rather than selling these basic human rights to the highest bidder.
We can continue down a path that will make the U.S. a second-rate country within a generation or we can invest in our future and work to raise the standard of living for all Americans regardless of their class status. Which way will America go?
Tom McKay's avatar image
Tom McKay
Tom is a live news writer for PolicyMic, where he produces killer trending content and writes about national political issues and elections. Before working for PolicyMic, he graduated from New College of Florida with a B.A. in Political Science and ... |
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Thu Apr 10, 2014 8:51 am |
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