Anti-Gay Laws Lead to Financial Woes for LGBT People

A new report confirms what many of us in the LGBT community have know for some time: anti-LGBT laws result in harm to LGBT individuals.  The Christofascists may claim that the don't "hate" gays but the consequences of their anti-gay animus motivated laws tell a far different story.  Anti-gay laws have ALWAYS been about harming gays and punishing us for not embracing the sick, neurotic religious beliefs of the Christofascists.  A new report by the Center for American Progress and the pro-LGBT Movement Advancement Project reveal the harm done by laws backed by the "godly Christian" crowd.  Here are some highlights from NBC News:

Shortly after her wife died in March, Arlene Goldberg had to give up the beloved South Florida home that the couple shared. Because Goldberg’s 2011 marriage to her partner of 47 years wasn’t recognized as legal in Florida, she was denied her wife’s social security benefits. 

Without that income, Goldberg, 67, couldn’t pay her mortgage. “I’m trying to figure out how I am going to get through this time,” she said from Fort Myers, Florida. “I really can’t even pay my bills.”

Goldberg is among an untold number of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people nationwide who suffer economic distress and in some cases, poverty, as a result of anti-gay laws such as same-sex marriage bans, or from a lack of legal protections, like non-discrimination ordinances, according to a new report by two think tanks, the progressive Center for American Progress and the pro-LGBT Movement Advancement Project. 

 

Census data and other research over the last decade have shown higher rates of financial hardship and poverty among gays. But the report’s authors make the connection between those difficulties and specific laws and policies by analyzing current incomes and poverty rates for LGBT people and their heterosexual counterparts in states that have protections and those that don’t. 

“You’ve got all of these laws that have indisputable economic impact,” said Ineke Mushovic, executive director of MAP. “In all these states that have the bad laws we actually are seeing lower incomes and higher rates of poverty (for gays) that is disproportionate to what’s happening with their heterosexual peer comparison.”

Key findings from the report, “Paying an Unfair Price,” include: 

- Same-sex couples raising children made about $10,000 less a year than their heterosexual peers in states banning same-sex marriage, whereas incomes for the two groups were almost at parity in states allowing gay nuptials, according to analysis of 2012 U.S. Census data. 

- Lesbian couples suffer a double financial hit due to their sexual orientation and the gender wage gap: In 2010, 7.6 percent of lesbian couples were poor compared to 5.7 percent of heterosexual couples and 4.3 percent of gay couples. 

- A study of transgender Americans revealed they were nearly four times more likely to have a household income under $10,000 per year than the overall population (15 percent versus 4 percent). 

-- And 29 percent of gay adults earlier this year said they were thriving financially, compared to 39 percent of heterosexual adults.

“When you’re thinking about anti-LGBT laws, people don’t really understand the real consequences that has on people’s survival, their ability to put food on the table, the ability to pay the rent.” 

Mushovic said the marriage bans and lack of legal protections needed to be viewed as a package, because of how they interacted to trigger a series of financial difficulties. For example, no marriage recognition generally means no shared health insurance for gay couples.

Some of the financial assistance that can be denied gays in states without same-sex marriage includes spousal, veteran and disability benefits, survivor’s pension and the ability to file joint taxes or claim a family tax credit. The denial of such resources hurts the most vulnerable, such as families, older adults and those already struggling financially, Mushovic said.

There's more.  Read the entire piece.  The take away is that Christofascists (and their political whores in the GOP) hate gays regardless of their lip service about "loving the sinner."  Worse yet, they hate the children of gays and continue to back laws that harm our children. 

America - the Land of Divisions

Throughout history religion has been a great divider.  After perhaps disease and famine, religion has claimed more lives through wars of religion and persecution of those of different faiths than any other force.  Yet, bizarrely, religion is given deference and special rights despite its historic toxicity.  Now, with Christofascists demanding exemptions from the laws that govern everyone else and embracing ignorance and opposing school curriculum  that teach science and a policies to confront climate change, is America poised to be divided between secular citizens and "religious" citizens?  That's the premise of a piece in Slate.  The article also looks at other causes for division many of which demonstrate the need for policies actively opposed by Republicans and their "real American" base. Here are highlights:

[F]or me, at least, Independence Day is also an opportunity for reflection on who we are as a nation and where we’re headed. I’ll admit that I’m worried.

Earlier this week, Belgium eliminated the United States from the World Cup. But consider that there is a decent chance that Belgium might not exist by the time the next World Cup rolls around, because of the bitter divide between its Flemish speakers and its French speakers. I say this with a heavy heart. Yes, Belgium. Congratulations on scoring your goals. Now enjoy the dustbin of history as your nation is torn apart by deep-seated ethnopolitical resentment. Meanwhile, the United States, a sprawling and spectacularly diverse continental republic with a heavily armed and famously irascible population more than 28 times that of Belgium, will almost certainly be around come 2018 . . .

[W]e Americans should not rest on our laurels. America is big, awesome, and beautiful. We’re also divided in ways we can’t afford to ignore.

Could America break apart along religious lines, with devout Christians going one way and the rest of us going another? Think of the old “Jesusland” meme—the map of a North America divided between “Jesusland,” the states that backed George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election, and “the United States of Canada,” consisting of the states that backed John Kerry and Canada that delighted liberals enraged by Bush’s re-election. At least some devout religious believers fear that as the ranks of the religiously unaffiliated grow, and as secular Americans insist on imposing their values on others, the faithful might face persecution. 

But there are other threats to American national unity looming on the horizon. My admittedly unscientific sense is that we are living through a period in which Americans’ sense of solidarity or group cohesiveness is declining. Liberals tend to see this decline in solidarity as a symptom of income and wealth inequality. Conservatives blame it on a rising emphasis on ethnic identity over national identity, or the turn to moral relativism. I see it as a product of the economic and social isolation of huge chunks of our population.

One challenge is a thoughtless immigration policy, which makes it hard for immigrants currently living and working in the United States to find a foothold in American life.

Poverty among naturalized immigrants—that is, those who have become U.S. citizens—is lower than poverty among native-born Americans. Poverty among unauthorized immigrants, however, is extremely, heartbreakingly high, both because it is hard to make a living when you’re living in the shadows, but also because unauthorized immigrants tend to have the lowest skill levels. 

Then there is the intense concentration of poverty, the issue that keeps me up at night. While 14.9 percent of the U.S. population was below the poverty line in 2010, a quarter of all poor Americans lived in neighborhoods with poverty rates above 20 percent. These “poverty areas” are, as a general rule, disconnected from employment opportunities and high-quality educational options, and their inhabitants suffer from disproportionately high rates of violent crime and incarceration. The result is that the legitimacy of American institutions—the criminal justice system in particular, but other institutions as well—is on shaky ground in these parts of the country, as they seem to be rigged against those who live in them.

So as we celebrate the United States, let’s remember the forgotten corners of this country, where the promise of American life has yet to be fulfilled.

America's Failed Economic Recovery

Social mobility continues to plummet in America while increasing in what the Republicans like to call "Old Europe."  Who would have ever thought that Europe with its former rigid class systems and hereditary titles would provide more promise than America and the so-called American dream which is fading for many and those in the Millennial Generation in particular.  What's also amazing is that those pushing for a cruel oligarchy in this country - e.g. the Koch brothers and much of the GOP - seem to have forgotten that throughout history sooner or later the masses have revolted - sometimes violently - against oligarchs who have been suffused with greed and mistreated the rest of society.  A main editorial in the New York Times looks at how the future prospects for our younger generations is shockingly fading.  One has to wonder when the reckoning will eventually come.  Here are highlights:

The official line is clear: The worst is over, and recovery has given way to expansion.

But that’s not the whole story. Economic gains so far have mostly benefited those at the top of the income and wealth ladder. Worse, future growth is likely to be lopsided, because the foundation for broad prosperity is arguably the weakest it has been since World War II.

Take, for example, Americans age 25 to 34, the leading edge of the so-called millennials, the generation born in the 1980s and 1990s. They are worse off than Gen Xers (born from the mid-1960s to the late-1970s) were at that age and the baby boomers before them by nearly every economic measure — employment, income, student loan indebtedness, mobility, homeownership and other hallmarks of “household formation,” like moving out on their own, getting married and having children.

This group had the bad luck of entering the work force in the depressed and slow-growth years that started when the recession hit in 2007. Instead of spending the crucial early years of their work lives laying the groundwork for a solid economic future, many of them have struggled with unemployment and underemployment, and many have fallen so far behind where they would hope to be that recovering lost ground may well be impossible.

According to the latest census data, nearly 16 percent of those in their mid-20s to mid-30s were in poverty in 2012, compared with just above 10 percent of Gen Xers in 2000 and baby boomers in 1980. Nearly 14 percent of that age group were living with their parents in 2013, a higher percentage than in previous generations. And of those living at home, 43 percent (2.5 million people) would be counted as being in poverty if they were on their own.
Some of the trends in the latest data were evident before the recession, especially stagnating wages, delayed marriage and later childbearing. But the poor economy has intensified those conditions. For instance, in a study by the Pew Research Center of the entire millennial generation, 74 percent were unmarried; many of them said they wanted to marry but lacked the economic wherewithal.

What is shocking is that despite the known danger and despite the prolonged bad economy, more government resources have not been used to prevent and reverse such a huge waste of human capital. Instead, public resources for job creation and even for unemployment benefits have been too little and too late, if available at all.

Another shocker is that those in the 25-to-34 age group are the best educated cohort in American history, with more than a third having a bachelor’s degree or higher. Education is important. But clearly, education alone does not create jobs and opportunities that lead to prosperity. For that, a fair and functional economy is needed — one in which the government plays a robust role, alongside consumers and businesses, to promote full employment and to ensure a just distribution of gains.

Younger millennials are not appreciably better off than their older peers, though they have not yet lost as much ground. At the other end of the spectrum, many older Americans who lost jobs and assets in the recession also face an uncertain future.

Certain sectors of the economy, especially the financial markets, are indeed turning a corner. But true prosperity is impossible when the productive potential of young adults is being squandered.

Just as the GOP is courting long term political suicide by courting declining numbers of aging, angry white voters, so too are they setting the stage for a potential overthrow of the system they claim to honor.

Paul Ryan, Culture and Poverty

While apologists for Paul Ryan endeavor to say that Ryan's recent dog whistle statements blaming blacks for their own misfortunes are no different that those made by Barack Obama to young blacks, the reality is that Ryan's statements come from a white male born to wealth and privilege who has no clue how the poor live, especially poor blacks, and who by his budget proposals shows total indifference for the plight of the less fortunate.   GOP efforts to disenfranchise blacks and other minorities only further underscores Ryan's hypocrisy.  A column in the New York Times takes Ryan - and similar GOP racist/hypocrites to task.  Here are column excerpts:

Paul Ryan continues to be flogged for disturbing comments he made last week about men “in our inner cities” and their “culture” of not working.

In a radio interview with Bill Bennett, Ryan said, “We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.”

Reactions to the comment were swift and brutal.

Representative Barbara Lee, a California Democrat, said in a statement, “Let’s be clear, when Mr. Ryan says ‘inner city,’ when he says, ‘culture,’ these are simply code words for what he really means: ‘black.’ ”  Ryan has agreed to meet with the Congressional Black Caucus, of which Lee’s a member and which found his remarks “highly offensive.”

[A]t at a town hall meeting on Wednesday, Ryan was rebuked by one of his own constituents, a black man from Mount Pleasant, Wis., named Alfonso Gardner.  Gardner told Ryan, “The bottom line is this: Your statement was not true.” He continued, “That’s a code word for ‘black.’ ”

But instead of cushioning his comments, Ryan shot back, “There was nothing whatsoever about race in my comments at all — it had nothing to do with race.”

That would have been more believable if Ryan hadn’t prefaced his original comments by citing Charles Murray, who has essentially argued that blacks are genetically inferior to whites and whom the Southern Poverty Law Center labels a “white nationalist.” (The center’s definition: “White nationalist groups espouse white supremacist or white separatist ideologies, often focusing on the alleged inferiority of nonwhites.”)

Whatever Ryan meant by men “in our inner cities” and their culture, the comment obscures the vast dimension of poverty in America and seeks an easy scapegoat for it.

By suggesting that laziness is more concentrated among the poor, inner city or not, we shift our moral obligation to deal forthrightly with poverty. When we insinuate that poverty is the outgrowth of stunted culture, that it is almost always invited and never inflicted, we avert the gaze from the structural features that help maintain and perpetuate poverty — discrimination, mass incarceration, low wages, educational inequities — while simultaneously degrading and dehumanizing those who find themselves trapped by it.

Work doesn’t always alleviate poverty, in part because some people are forced to work for less than a living wage, though work does bring dignity. 

But this is in part the problem, and danger, of people like Ryan: There is an ever-swirling mix of inspiration and insult, where the borders between the factual and the fudged are intentionally blurred and cover is given for corrosive ideas.

Ryan is “one of the good guys,” a prominent Republican operative explained to me last week. Maybe so, but even good people are capable of saying and believing bad things, and what Ryan said was horrific. 

Sadly, like far too many Republicans, Ryan cannot see the common humanity of blacks, gays, or other minorities.  To him, we are not really human and we do not matter.  In fact, he and his fellow angry white Republicans wish we would conveniently disappear.  To me, this is one of the worse aspects of today's orally bankrupt Republican Party.

 

Ted Cruz’s Fake Filibuster

There are a lot of despicable politicians at both the state and national level.  But few at the national level disgust me more than Texas GOP Senator Ted Cruz and not just because he is all too reminiscent of Joseph McCarthy who lead the anti-communist witch hunts of the 1950's.  Rather, it is Cruz's hypocrisy and, in my view, his outright dishonesty.  Naturally, he claims to honor Christian tenants even as his votes are diametrically opposed to the principles of the Gospel message.  Ezra Klein takes Cruz's dishonesty apart in a column in the Washington Post:

"Americans feel like they don't have a voice," Cruz said. "I hope to play a small part in providing that voice for them."

[T]his is a bizarre argument for Cruz to be making. After all, Cruz himself is firmly on the wrong side of public opinion:

Cruz opposes raising taxes on the wealthy. The public supports it. Cruz opposes gun control. The public supports it. Cruz supports sharply cutting spending on Medicare and Social Security. The public opposes it. If Cruz actually believed his job was directly representing the will of the people, his voting record would be extremely different than it is.

Which is why it's so odd Cruz has chosen this argument. He could just be up there arguing against Obamacare. Instead he's arguing that we need to #MakeDCListen. He's making a broad, quasi-philosophical argument that senators should more fully reflect public opinion. But even he doesn't believe it. Cruz's filibuster is self-refuting.

Cruz epitomizes what's wrong with today's GOP.  Pompous, arrogant, disdainful of average Americans and their hopes and needs, and utterly opposed to the Christian values he claims to venerate.

Mississippi Joins Texas in Refusing to Process Spousal Benefits for Gay Troops

Mississippi - another paragon of bigotry, racism and Bible Belt hypocrisy - has joined Texas in refusing to process spousal benefits on state owned facilities, citing that state's animus inspired anti-gay constitutional amendment.   Given Mississippi's near last place ranking in almost any criteria other than perhaps poverty and obesity, one would think that the state would have more important issues to concentrate on.  But no, discrimination is always given top billing in a state that even Alabama looks down on as inferior.  The Washington Post looks at the situation.  Here are highlights:

The Texas National Guard refused to process requests from same-sex couples for benefits on Tuesday despite a Pentagon directive to do so, while Mississippi won’t issue applications from state-owned offices. Both states cited their respective bans on gay marriage.

Texas and Mississippi appeared to be the only two states limiting how and where same-sex spouses of National Guard members could register for identification cards and benefits, according to an Associated Press tally. Officials in 13 other states that also ban gay marriage — including Arizona, Oklahoma, Florida, Michigan and Georgia — said Tuesday that they will follow federal law and process all couples applying for benefits the same.

Mississippi National Guard spokesman Tim Powell said the main factor in determining where same-sex spouses could apply for benefits came down to the property owner. Powell said only National Guard offices on federal property would accept the applications in Mississippi, which also constitutionally bans gay marriage.

“It is our intent to provide benefits and services to our men and women in uniform and at the same time abide by federal and state statutes,” Powell said.

Pentagon officials said Texas appeared to be the only state with a total ban on processing applications from gay and lesbian couples. Spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen said federal officials will process all applications from same-sex couples with a marriage certificate from a state where it is legal.

Alicia Butler said she was turned away from the Texas Military Forces headquarters in Austin early Tuesday and advised to get her ID card at Fort Hood, an Army post 90 miles away. She married her spouse — an Iraq war veteran — in California in 2009, and they have a 5-month-old child.

In Florida, where gay marriage is banned, state Department of Military Affairs spokesman Lt. Col. James Evans said he was unaware of any policy that would prohibit accepting a request for processing benefits.

Requests for benefits for same-sex couples in Oklahoma, where gay marriage also is illegal, will be handled like those from heterosexual couples, said Oklahoma National Guard spokesman Col. Max Moss. . . . “As long as the soldier presents that marriage certificate or license, then we would treat that claim just like we would any other soldier that brings in a marriage license or certificate,” Moss said.

Survey: 4 in 5 in America Face Near Poverty, No Work

Wealth disparities in America now exceed those in Europe and even former banana republics.  And things seem to be getting only worse as more and more Americans live on the edge just a pay check away from financial ruin and ensuing poverty.  Yet, the GOP continues to seek to slash social programs and to cut taxes for the very wealthy.  The GOP agenda is the antithesis of what the "godly folk" of the GOP base ought to be pursuing if they really gave a damn about the Gospel message that they pretend to revere.  A new study reveals just how bad things have become.  A piece in Talking Points Memo looks at the findings:

Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.

Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.

As nonwhites approach a numerical majority in the U.S., one question is how public programs to lift the disadvantaged should be best focused — on the affirmative action that historically has tried to eliminate the racial barriers seen as the major impediment to economic equality, or simply on improving socioeconomic status for all, regardless of race.

Hardship is particularly growing among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among that racial group about their families’ economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987. In the most recent AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of whites called the economy “poor.”

“I think it’s going to get worse,” said Irene Salyers, 52, of Buchanan County, Va., a declining coal region in Appalachia. Married and divorced three times, Salyers now helps run a fruit and vegetable stand with her boyfriend but it doesn’t generate much income. They live mostly off government disability checks.

“If you do try to go apply for a job, they’re not hiring people, and they’re not paying that much to even go to work,” she said. Children, she said, have “nothing better to do than to get on drugs.”

The gauge defines “economic insecurity” as a year or more of periodic joblessness, reliance on government aid such as food stamps or income below 150 percent of the poverty line. Measured across all races, the risk of economic insecurity rises to 79 percent.

Marriage rates are in decline across all races, and the number of white mother-headed households living in poverty has risen to the level of black ones.

“It’s time that America comes to understand that many of the nation’s biggest disparities, from education and life expectancy to poverty, are increasingly due to economic class position,” said William Julius Wilson, a Harvard professor who specializes in race and poverty. He noted that despite continuing economic difficulties, minorities have more optimism about the future after Obama’s election, while struggling whites do not.

“There is the real possibility that white alienation will increase if steps are not taken to highlight and address inequality on a broad front,” Wilson said.

Sometimes termed “the invisible poor” by demographers, lower-income whites generally are dispersed in suburbs as well as small rural towns, where more than 60 percent of the poor are white. Concentrated in Appalachia in the East, they are numerous in the industrial Midwest and spread across America’s heartland, from Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma up through the Great Plains.

Buchanan County in southwest Virginia is among the nation’s most destitute based on median income, with poverty hovering at 24 percent. The county is mostly white, as are 99 percent of its poor.

More than 90 percent of Buchanan County’s inhabitants are working-class whites who lack a college degree. Higher education long has been seen there as nonessential to land a job because well-paying mining and related jobs were once in plentiful supply. These days many residents get by on odd jobs and government checks.

There is much more depressing news and the irony is that many of the poor whites stupidly support the GOP which is in reality their worse enemy.  Another irony is that Buchanan County, Virginia, is in the land of Bible beaters and open bigotry, yet residents wonder why no progressive business wants to locate there.  Who would want to move to a region filled with racists, homophobes and Neanderthals?  Bigotry and intolerance carries a high economic price.  Meanwhile, of course, the GOP blathers on and on about American exceptionalism.  

More Seniors Are Living in Poverty; Situation Likely to Worsen

As the Republican Party continues its push nationally and at the state level to restore the income disparities of the Gilded Age, the plight of many Americans is worsening, including senior citizens who will see their plight worsen under various budget cutting proposals.   Adding to the problem is the reality that many children of seniors have likewise been buffeted financially and may be less able to care for aging parents.  It's an ugly reality but one that most Republican elected officials could care less about - hence the refusal of many Republican governors to accept Medicaid expansion.  A piece in Politico looks at the problem.  Here are highlights:

An alternative census estimate shows that more of America’s seniors than originally thought are living in poverty — and that means the poverty rate could spike under certain Medicare reforms, a new analysis finds.

The estimate, which takes into account health spending and regional cost of living, finds 1 in 7 seniors lives in poverty. It was previously thought that just 1 in 10 did.

And a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis released Monday breaks this poverty data down for seniors state by state — and notes that under some proposals to reform Medicare, these poverty levels would keep climbing.

Kaiser finds the supplemental measure’s poverty rates for those 65 and older are higher in every state than the rates in the official estimate.

And in 12 states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Nevada, Wisconsin and Wyoming — the supplemental poverty measure for seniors is twice as high as the official estimate. In New Hampshire, the percentage of seniors in poverty is three times as high under the supplemental measure.

Kaiser’s analysis showed the supplemental measure also finds poverty hits seniors hardest in certain areas. In Washington, D.C., it shows 1 in 4 seniors lives in poverty. In California, 1 in 5 lives in poverty.

The Kaiser brief says it’s meant to provide context for the many spending proposals being tossed around — particularly those that focus on shifting costs in Medicare and paring down Social Security benefits.

America sadly continues to see far too many of its citizens as disposable trash.   It's especially ironic that the GOP which claims to support Christian values is in the forefront of throwing individuals on the trash heap.

Census Data Shows 1 In 2 People Are Poor Or Low-Income

Welcome to the sick world of the GOP where the extremely rich are favored and everyone else? We're kicked to the curb and told to fend for ourselves. Making the picture even more obscene is the fact that the political party that champions this inequity wraps itself daily in religion and pretends to be the party of "family values." Wealthy families' values perhaps, but surely not the values of most Americans. The hypocrisy could hardly be more stark. And things are likely to get only worse as social mobility in America plummets and the wealth disparities sky rocket. A new release of census data shows just how bad things are becoming with 50% of the population either poor or low income. Here are highlights from the Huffington Post:

WASHINGTON -- Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans – nearly 1 in 2 – have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income.

The latest census data depict a middle class that's shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government's safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.

"Safety net programs such as food stamps and tax credits kept poverty from rising even higher in 2010, but for many low-income families with work-related and medical expenses, they are considered too `rich' to qualify," said Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan public policy professor who specializes in poverty.

"The reality is that prospects for the poor and the near poor are dismal," he said. "If Congress and the states make further cuts, we can expect the number of poor and low-income families to rise for the next several years."

Mayors in 29 cities say more than 1 in 4 people needing emergency food assistance did not receive it. Many middle-class Americans are dropping below the low-income threshold – roughly $45,000 for a family of four – because of pay cuts, a forced reduction of work hours or a spouse losing a job. Housing and child-care costs are consuming up to half of a family's income.

States in the South and West had the highest shares of low-income families, including Arizona, New Mexico and South Carolina, which have scaled back or eliminated aid programs for the needy.

About 97.3 million Americans fall into a low-income category, commonly defined as those earning between 100 and 199 percent of the poverty level, based on a new supplemental measure by the Census Bureau that is designed to provide a fuller picture of poverty. Together with the 49.1 million who fall below the poverty line and are counted as poor, they number 146.4 million, or 48 percent of the U.S. population. That's up by 4 million from 2009, the earliest numbers for the newly developed poverty measure.

Paychecks for low-income families are shrinking. The inflation-adjusted average earnings for the bottom 20 percent of families have fallen from $16,788 in 1979 to just under $15,000, and earnings for the next 20 percent have remained flat at $37,000. In contrast, higher-income brackets had significant wage growth since 1979, with earnings for the top 5 percent of families climbing 64 percent to more than $313,000.

The United Staes Flunks At Social Justice

UPDATED: Beneath the chart I have set out some highlights from a related column in the New York Times. I find it extremely disturbing to see the direction in which this nation is headed. Again, the facts disclose the utter hypocrisy and toxicity of the Christianist/Tea Party/Republican version of Christianity which now seems best defined by unbridled greed and hatred of others.

I am not one to advocate handouts to the lazy and shiftless. That said, I do believe in helping those in need, including the poor and hungry and the ill. Moreover, with one of the nation's main political parties wearing Christianity on its sleeve almost incessantly, one would expect that the USA would stack up decently on a measure of the social justice available to it's citizens. As the chart below (click the images to enlarge them) from the New York Times reveals, that expectation would be sadly mistaken. Indeed, it is the policies advocated by the quasi-religious party a/k/a the Republican Party and its adherents that bear much of the responsibility for the USA's pathetic score. The disconnect between the feigned religious belief of the far right and their actual adherence to Christ's message could not be more stark. The fact that supposedly far less religious nations score far better that America is nothing less than an indictment of conservative Christians and the political whore in the GOP.

We are slowly — and painfully — being forced to realize that we are no longer the America of our imaginations. Our greatness was not enshrined. Being a world leader is less about destiny than focused determination, and it is there that we have faltered.

We sold ourselves a pipe dream that everyone could get rich and no one would get hurt — a pipe dream that exploded like a pipe bomb when the already-rich grabbed for all the gold; when they used their fortunes to influence government and gain favors and protection; when everyone else was left to scrounge around their ankles in hopes that a few coins would fall.

We have not taken care of the least among us. We have allowed a revolting level of income inequality to develop. We have watched as millions of our fellow countrymen have fallen into poverty. And we have done a poor job of educating our children and now threaten to leave them a country that is a shell of its former self. We should be ashamed.

Poor policies and poor choices have led to exceedingly poor outcomes. Our societal chickens have come home to roost.

This was underscored in a report released on Thursday by the Bertelsmann Stiftung foundation of Germany entitled “Social Justice in the OECD — How Do the Member States Compare?” It analyzed some metrics of basic fairness and equality among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries and ranked America among the ones at the bottom.

Among the damning finds on the USA, 21.6 percent of America children are affected by poverty. In contrast that figure is 3.7 percent in Denmark. The Christian Right can bad mouth "old Europe" all they want, but the truth is secularized Europe does a far better job at applying Christ's Gospel message to public policy than the falsely pious in the USA.

Recession Denial

Bob Herbert has a op-ed column in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/10/opinion/10herbert.html?hp) which enunciates what I have been discussing in a number of recent posts. Namely, that the U. S. economy is headed for real trouble and no one seems to want to face the reality. Pretending a problem is not in fact happening does not make it go away. All of the "job growth" and other smoke trotted out by the Chimperator's minions do not change the facts. Here are some highlights:

If it looks like a recession and feels like a recession ...“Quite frankly,” said Senator Charles Schumer, peering over his glasses at the Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, “I think we are at a moment of economic crisis, stemming from four key areas: falling housing prices, lack of confidence in creditworthiness, the weak dollar and high oil prices.”

While Mr. Bernanke and others are waiting for the official diagnosis (a decline in the gross domestic product for two successive quarters), the disease is spreading and has been spreading for some time. The evidence is all around us. Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland told Mr. Bernanke that many members of Congress are holding forums in their districts “to help people who are coming to our doors, literally with tears in their eyes, and trying to figure out how they’re going to manage a foreclosure that’s right around the corner.”

The housing meltdown is getting the attention, but there’s so much more. Bankruptcies and homelessness are on the rise. The job market has been weak for years. The auto industry is in trouble. The cost of food, gasoline and home heating oil are soaring at a time when millions of Americans are managing to make it from one month to another solely by the grace of their credit cards.

The country has been in denial for years about the economic reality facing American families. That grim reality has been masked by the flimflammery of official statistics (job growth good, inflation low) and the muscular magic of the American way of debt: mortgages on top of mortgages, pyramiding student loans and an opiatelike addiction to credit cards at rates that used to get people locked up for loan-sharking.

And the most popular measure of inflation, the Consumer Price Index, does not include the cost of energy or food, “the two most significant aspects of the increased cost of living for the American people.”

The elite honchos in Washington and their courtiers in the news media are all but completely out of touch with the daily struggle of working families. Thirty-seven million Americans live in poverty and close to 60 million others are just a notch above the official poverty line. An illness, an auto accident, the loss of a job — almost anything can knock them off their rickety economic perch.

We hear over and over that consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of the gross domestic product, but we seldom hear about the frightening number of Americans who are trying desperately to maintain a working-class or middle-class style of life while descending into a sinkhole of debt.

Yet for the GOP, the most serious issues continue to remain illegal immigrants (many of whom do labor American workers refuse to do), gay marriage and employment non-discrimination, and trying to start another war in the Middle East based on "cooked" information. Why the Democrats aren't jumping on this situation much more is dumbfounding.