Category Archives: Poverty

April 24, 2012

Video: John Stossel – The State Against Blacks

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Have big government “poverty measures” helped or hindered Blacks? Author-columnist-professor Dr. Walter E Williams joins John to explain.


Dr. Walter E Williams


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Posted in Affirmative Action, Government, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness, Poverty

April 9, 2012

RI’s minority youth living in concentrated poverty

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Sixty-four percent of Rhode Island’s children were non-white Hispanics in 2010, down from 73 percent a decade earlier…”And I have three children, and hopefully they will have children,” State Sen. Juan Pichardo, D-Providence, said. “When you look at the future of Rhode Island there’s no doubt the Hispanic community is going to continue to grow.”

Rhode Island’s growing numbers of young racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionately living in poverty, with the vast majority residing in cities with rates of child impoverishment well above the state average.

Thirty-six percent of Hispanic and 34 percent of black children in the state between 2008 and 2010 came from families with incomes below the federal poverty level, according to U.S. Census data. That compares with 12 percent of white children.

And in 2010, two-thirds of the state’s minority children were from Central Falls, Pawtucket, Providence or Woonsocket, according to newly compiled statistics from Rhode Island KIDS COUNT, a child advocacy organization. The child poverty rate in Central Falls and Providence is 36 percent. It is 35 percent in Woonsocket and 27 percent in Pawtucket. The 2010 federal poverty level for a family of four is just over $22,000.

“Concentrated poverty is becoming more concentrated,” said Elizabeth Burke Bryant, the organization’s executive director.

While advocates say poor children are more likely to have social, behavioral, health and other problems than those in more affluent areas, living in what’s called concentrated poverty exacerbates the ill effects of being poor.

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Posted in Education, Immigration, La Raza, Multiculturalism, Population, Poverty

March 19, 2012

Solutions for America: The Unsustainable Growth of Welfare

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Despite spending almost $16 trillion since the War on Poverty began in 1964, welfare programs have failed to reduce the causes of poverty, and instead have hurt many of the people they were intended to help.

THE ISSUE:

Despite spending almost $16 trillion since the War on Poverty began in 1964, welfare programs have failed to reduce the causes of poverty, and instead have hurt many of the people they were intended to help. Poverty in America is overwhelmingly linked to the absence of fathers and a lack of work, but welfare payments have had the destructive effects of eroding marriage and the work ethic in low-income communities. The welfare reform of 1996 transformed one program, significantly reducing welfare rolls and lowering child poverty. But today that reform is in jeopardy, and some 70 other federal means-tested programs need similar reform.

THE FACTS:

Welfare on the Rise. The growth of welfare spending is unsustainable and will drive the United States into bankruptcy if allowed to continue unreformed. Welfare spending is projected to cost taxpayers $10.3 trillion over the next 10 years.

The President’s Budget. President Obama’s FY 2011 budget request would increase total welfare spending to $953 billion, a 42% increase over welfare spending in FY 2008.

The Collapse of Marriage. The collapse of marriage is the predominant cause of child poverty in the U.S. today. When the War on Poverty began, 7% of children were born out of wedlock; today, the figure is over 40%. Most alarmingly, the out-of-wedlock birthrate among African–Americans is 72%.

Amnesty Will Make the Problem Worse. If the U.S. government were to grant amnesty or “earned citizenship” to illegal immigrants, the welfare system would be flooded with new recipients. Of the 11 million–12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., at least half lack a high school degree.

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Posted in Amnesty, Entitlements, Population, Poverty

March 9, 2012

America’s Third World: Pine Ridge, South Dakota

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Two Bulls has long harbored a conspiracy theory about the government: “Look how they brought welfare and our people lived on welfare and some of our people don’t even know how to work. They’re used to just staying at home all day, watching TV and drinking and taking drugs,” she told the Guardian. “That’s the state the government wanted us to be in and we’re in it.”

Unemployment at 80%. Fifteen people per home. Life expectancy rates of 50 years. The third world? Not hardly. Try South Dakota. The Pine Ridge reservation is home to an estimated 45,000 Oglala Sioux on more than two million acres. News of these conditions comes, perhaps unfortunately, from a British paper, England’s Guardian.

There are 310 Indian reservations in the U.S. Some are wealthy; many are not. The Oglala Sioux’s Prairie Wind Casino doesn’t bring massive profits like the casinos of other tribes in other states. More often, it’s Oglala Sioux who are gambling their money away.

The Pine Ridge tribal housing authority does receive $10 million a year from Congress, but it’s not enough to maintain existing homes, much less build many new ones. A third of homes on the reservation don’t have electricity or running water. Recently, local leaders built a 280-cell jail to replace the old 25-cell one. You know there’s something wrong when your best shot at new housing is committing a crime.

The police captain blames 90% of the reservation’s problems on alcohol dependence. And according to the law, the reservation is supposed to be dry. The few options available to young people include joining a gang or the military or bootlegging. Youth suicide is on the rise.

Tribe president Theresa Two Bulls is also contending with startlingly poor health for young and old reservation residents alike; half of the Oglala Sioux over 40 have diabetes and the infant mortality rate is three times the national average.

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Posted in Employment, Poverty

This ‘modernising’ government is turning the clock back – to the violence and illiteracy of the 18th century

Posted on March 9, 2012 by ifnm| Leave a comment

The poverty-stricken alcoholics of the 18th century lived their miserable lives in appalling slums, but by the mid 20th century such slums had all but disappeared. Now they are back. Overcrowded, filthy, insanitary houses with dirty, broken-down sheds in what were once their back gardens have brought the Third World into England. Once we took our standards into the Third World; now the flow has been reversed.

Very often when I raise my head and mutter, or even shout, that things were arranged better in my young days, I am told that “You can’t turn the clock back.” It is a way of closing down the discussion. There is then no need to consider whether or not things were better. You just can’t put the clock back, so that is that. Francis Maude was at it yesterday, seeking to prevent any discussion of whether or not Conservatives should be in favour of changing the definition of marriage, which has served us across so many cultures and religions so well for so long.

Even before that, I think it was the recent trial of the couple who murderd a little boy because they believed he was a witch that started me thinking about that dishonest way of thinking. Lots of people here in England used to believe in witchcraft, and witches were tortured and burned to death. Such barbarous atrocities were stopped long years ago, but oddly enough it is again the modernisers who have themselves turned the clock back to those days when people believed in witchcraft.

Nor is that all. Once not so very long ago tuberculosis was a widespread fatal disease here. Good public health policies began to overcome TB during the early 20th century; by the 1950s it was almost eliminated, and by the late 1970s just about extinct. Over the last 15 years the clock has been turned back, and TB is now back in our great cities.

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Posted in Europe, Immigration, Poverty

February 12, 2012

The Skyscraper Slums of Caracas

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“That is when the problems began. The mall was supposed to improve the neighborhood, create jobs, and make this a better place to live. Now, crime has soared. Traffic and noise have become unsupportable as the government decided to use part of the mall as a warehouse for food. Trucks come and unload at all hours of the night, making it difficult to sleep.” Yelitza Campos, the neighborhood activist.

There is perhaps no better symbol of the depths to which Venezuela has sunk under President Hugo Chávez than Centro Comercial Sambil La Candelaria, a shopping mall in Caracas, the country’s teeming capital. In 2008, when he ordered its expropriation, Chávez called the mall a “monster of capitalism.” Yelitza Campos, who heads a neighborhood association across the street from the megamall, calls it a “nightmare.”

For Marta Navarro, it is simply a roof over her head.

For the past 11 months, Navarro, 23, and her three young children have been living in a small wooden cubicle carved out of one of the mall’s aboveground parking levels. One of an estimated 50,000 displaced people in Caracas, Navarro considers herself lucky.

Her living space measures 12 feet by 12 feet and has jury-rigged electrical outlets. She and her family share a large bathroom with hundreds of other refugees on each floor; there is no hot water. Residents hang their clothing along the rails, while Bolivarian National Guard units watch over the entrance, restricting access.

“The government provides us everything we need,” Navarro says. “They deliver three meals a day to our cubicle, and they provided beds and furniture when we moved in. My children attend school here, and one of my neighbors even gave birth in a clinic on the parking deck.” She sighs and looks around. “I can’t complain but it’s not home. It just doesn’t seem like home.”

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Posted in Democrats/Progressives, Government, Infrastructure, Poverty, Radicals, South America

January 31, 2012

World lacks enough food, fuel as population soars: U.N.

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The world is running out of time to make sure there is enough food, water and energy to meet the needs of a rapidly growing population and to avoid sending up to 3 billion people into poverty, a U.N. report warned on Monday.

As the world’s population looks set to grow to nearly 9 billion by 2040 from 7 billion now, and the number of middle-class consumers increases by 3 billion over the next 20 years, the demand for resources will rise exponentially.

Even by 2030, the world will need at least 50 percent more food, 45 percent more energy and 30 percent more water, according to U.N. estimates, at a time when a changing environment is creating new limits to supply.

And if the world fails to tackle these problems, it risks condemning up to 3 billion people into poverty, the report said.

Efforts towards sustainable development are neither fast enough nor deep enough, as well as suffering from a lack of political will, the United Nations’ high-level panel on global sustainability said.

“The current global development model is unsustainable. To achieve sustainability, a transformation of the global economy is required,” the report said.

“Tinkering on the margins will not do the job. The current global economic crisis … offers an opportunity for significant reforms.”

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Posted in Population, Poverty

December 2, 2011

Hard Times Generation: Families living in cars

Posted on December 2, 2011 by ifnm| Leave a comment

Never has unemployment been so high for so long. And as a result, more than 16 million kids are living in poverty – the most since 1962. It’s worst where the construction industry collapsed.

More than 16 million children are now living in poverty and, for many of them, a proper home is elusive. Some cash-strapped families stay with relatives; others move into motels or homeless shelters. But, as Scott Pelley reports, sometimes those options run out, leaving an even more desperate choice: living in their cars. 60 Minutes returns to Florida, home to one third of America’s homeless families, to find out what life is like for the epidemic’s youngest survivors.

The following is a script of “Hard Times Generation” which aired on Nov. 27, 2011. Scott Pelley is correspondent, Bob Anderson and Nicole Young, producers.

Never has unemployment been so high for so long. And as a result, more than 16 million kids are living in poverty – the most since 1962. It’s worst where the construction industry collapsed. And one of those places is central Florida.

We went there eight months ago to meet families who’d become homeless for the first time in their lives. So many were living day-to-day that school buses changed their routes to pick up all the kids living in cheap motels. We called the story “Hard Times Generation.”

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Posted in Employment, Poverty