I wrote this in November of 2007, and posted it here at the time.  I’m reposting it because there’s so much in it that’s still relevant today, and little progress along these lines.  There’s a lot I could update here: newer information about gas prices; how the budget cuts have ended my long-term gainful employment and are causing serious problems throughout state government.  But I’m going to let this stand on its own and if I feel a need to update, I’ll do so in the comments.

Okay.

So.

Poverty.

Let me start by saying that, for a lot of people, it’s going to get worse.

I don’t mean it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

I don’t mean it’s going to get worse unless we elect a Democratic president.

I mean it’s going to get worse.

I’m not making a prediction here.

I’m just going with the odds.

What does this mean?

It’s simple.

On Tuesday night, I attended one of the many forums Vermont is holding around the state on childhood poverty.  There was a panel represented by a range of people, some of whom help distribute resources and some of whom are recipients of public assistance.  Doug Racine (whom, incidentally, I think should run for governor again, but I’ll talk about that in a whole other post) led the forum, discussing its goals as to reduce childhood poverty by 50% in Vermont over the next ten years.

And you know, I think we can do this.  When we put our minds to creative solutions, we can find ways to transform our world.  We can harness the power of children playing to run water pumps.  We’re very clever this way, and we’re capable of introducing great change.  And if we have the will, we can do it.

But in the meantime, many of us are struggling.  Gas prices are going up.  Medicine is getting more expensive.  Food is becoming more expensive and use of ethanol may make it worse.  The Water situation is not good.

And, really, most people do get by and manage, through various means, to tread water, for a good chunk of their lives.  But for each and every one of those people, it only takes one significant event to kick them hard in the gut and force them into the ream of requiring public support or some other form of assistance.

And really, even that’s a misnomer.  We all receive public assistance.  Do you use public roads without paying a toll?  Congratulations.  You’re on public assistance.  Are you using the internet right now?  (hint: the answer is “yes”).  You’re receiving a public benefit.  Yes.  Even if you’re paying for internet access, you’re still receiving a subsidized benefit.  Do you buy food with the hopes that it will be safe?  That’s because there are public officials who, in theory, regulate the production, storage and distribution of food.  That way, we don’t have to have a major salmonella breakout in order to find out that a company is using poor food practices.

These are public benefits for the public good.  When someone tells you that it’s wrong to take public benefits or that they’ve never had to receive any help from anyone and have made it all on their own, you know they’re either lying or completely self-deceptive.  We all receive public benefits.

From a financial standpoint, I’m doing reasonably well.  I have a savings account with a decent buffer and I have the resources to pay my rent for four months in advance at a time.  So I know that even if I were to lose a major client, I’d be fine for the immediate future and I have the skills and creativity that I could probably find work again long before my money were to run out.

One of the things I’ve learned in the last few years is that going from near poverty to a really nice income changes your perspective and changes your ability to allocate resources.  When it came to buying a new washing machine, I chose the best one I could find: it was more energy efficient and would last longer.  While other people end up getting washers which are more expensive in the long run, I can afford to buy one that’s more expensive up front but much cheaper over the next ten years.  Similarly, I could afford to buy a hybrid vehicle, meaning that while a lot of people I know are getting 25-35 mpg, I’m getting 45-55, making my fuel costs dramatically lower.

These options aren’t available to people without as many resources.

The way my insurance works, there’s an up front deductible.  I have to pay $1500 out of pocket before the insurance starts paying for everything and, when it comes to medicine, I still have to pay up front and then I get reimbursements down the line.  One of the medicines I’m required to take in order to prevent my diabetes from causing me long-term damage costs over $200/month.  I can afford that, especially knowing that I’ll get that money back.  When I accidentally lost a supply of medicine once (left it on top of my car and drove off.  Clever), it cost me $250 to replace it, and that was out of pocket.

When my car got broken into and much of my camera equipment was stolen, it ended up costing me over $1500 to replace, and insurance only reimbursed $500 of that.  The cost of repairing the broken window was below the deductible, so that came entirely out of my pocket.

So I’m out these chunks of money and they’re not painless, but they’re not debilitating either.

But I think about this, and how these events would have affected me when I was making less than $20k/year.  And really, the only reason I’ve got the work I have now is because I lucked into it.  I got hired for a short-term contract, which led to a long term contract, which led to other contracts.  One minor change in luck and this never would have happened.  I’d still be living near the poverty level and I’d be in that situation where I made too much money to receive health benefits but too little money to afford my own health care.  I’d be going on lower doses of medications in order to make them last longer, significantly affecting my long-term health and I’d have less control over my eating habits, opting for crap instead of good wholesome food, affecting my health once again and significantly impacting my quality of life.

This is the every day scenario for people in poverty.  You need a medication or you need food so you make your choices.  You need a car, so you find the clunker which constantly needs work and gets crappy mileage but it’s what you can afford, so you just never have the time to build up savings and every little thing that happens makes things worse.

If you add a child into the equation, it gets worse, just in terms of simple allocation of resources.

Now imagine that you’re not in poverty and that you have some means at your disposal, but you’re keeping afloat.  But you have to make choices.  Get the better health insurance or live in the better neighborhood.  Get the lower deductible for your car insurance or get the better school for your kids.

And you make choices the best you can, but then something happens.  It could be anything.  You’re laid off.  Your kid has diabetes.  Your or your spouse gets into an accident and needs four months of physical therapy.  Your house gets broken into.  Some of what you lose can be recovered but not all.

So you have to make more complicated choices and things get tighter.

And then gas prices go up and you have to decide between the really good job that pays better and comes with great benefits but costs you an extra $50/month for the commute or the crappy job that’s near where you live that doesn’t pay as well and doesn’t come benefits that are really as nice.

Or you’ve got a great job with great benefits and the company just decides that those benefits are too expensive.

And things get tighter.

Worse.

Sometimes we luck out.  Sometimes, in the midsts of all these difficult things, something gets better.  We luck into a new job.  We buy a lottery ticket and win $5k.  We inherit something from a wealthy relative we’d forgotten we had.

But, mostly, it just gets tighter.

And then, when we do need care, we go to the emergency room, because our insurance won’t provide for pre-screening.

And that’s more expensive.

For everybody.

So things get tighter.

For everybody.

And then there’s a drought in Georgia.  And Florida and Georgia fight over how to handle it because now they’re competing for precious resources.

And things get tighter.

For everybody.

So we’ve got this situation, with multiple levels of poverty causing multiple problems for people across the board.  We’ve got this squeezing out the poor and the middle class and, whether they understand it or not, it will eventually squeeze out all but the richest of us.  Those that have means which are so significant as to be almost untouchable will probably be generally fine, but even then won’t have a food supply which is necessarily safe. 

In the meantime, there are steps we can take that might not necessarily solve the problem but can, at the very least, help:

• Universal health care.  Until we’re willing to see to it that everyone is fully covered (regardless of citizenship or legal status), we risk immense problems.  Early screening and careful monitoring of health trends makes us safer as a country and as individuals.


• Loans and grants for community resource projects.  Providing resources to communities to build recycling centers, health clinics, composting systems and public transportation reduces strain on individual families and communities. 


• Creative energy systems.  Imagine what we could do if we used the motion of people walking on subway platforms to help power the subways themselves.  Imagine what we could do if we made a serious effort to invest in projects that find ways to take existing resources and make better use of them.


• Invest heavily in early education.  Research shows, time and time again, that early education is of immense benefit, not just to children, but to society as a whole.


• Get Over It.  People often seek public assistance when they don’t want to.  They receive social stigma for it.  They’re treated like dirt for doing so.  We need to start respecting that people who receive public assistance don’t want to be on public assistance and would avoid it if they could and just get them the help they need instead of constantly treating them like there’s something wrong with them that could be solved if they simply worked harder.

What are your ideas for what we can do to improve upon things?  How can we change our government, our people, our planet, to encourage true change that releases us from poverty?  Where do we go from here?

Believe it or not, I'm conflicted about the “Vote for the Scariest Jim Douglas” contest on the Vermont Dems website.

On the one hand, it seems a little … I dunno. Unprofessional, I guess. In the literal sense of the word, more than the pejoritive. Like something we bloggers would do. I was recently dismaying the lack of decorum on the state GOP website for calling NEA Chief Angelo Dorta a liar. This, although it avoids any invective harsher than “hypocritical,” still seems a bit – I dunno, untoward.

On the other hand, have you folks read that list?! It's the best, most comprehensive checklist of the reasons not to vote for Jim Douglas I've ever seen! For that reason alone, it should be required reading. The Dems website has been terrific for months, but that one page is the best resource I've seen yet (although it would be significantly improved with some linked text pointing surfers to details).

So I dunno. Does the strong, comprehensive messagng outweigh the neener-neener-factor? Does the neener-neener factor matter? Maybe the Party sites should be acting more like blogs (or maybe it's not a matter of should or shouldn't, maybe it's just a matter of inevitability)

Senator Leahy is concerned:

Based on an initial review of (Attorney General nominee Mukasey's) response to the letter, I remain very concerned that Judge Mukasey finds himself unable to state unequivocally that waterboarding is illegal and below the standards and values of the United States

The concern is based on Mukasey's non-response to the waterboarding question. TPM characterizes it this way:

Mukasey explains that he can't definitively say that waterboarding is torture because 1) he doesn't know whether it is in use, or whether a similar technique is in use, 2) he doesn't want any public statement of his on the issue to place any interrogators in legal jeopardy, and 3) “I would not want any statement of mine to provide our enemies with a window into the limits or contours of any interrogation program we may have in place and thereby assist them in training to resist the techniques we actually may use.”

So we have an AG nominee who is hedging on whether or not torture is “torture,” and therefore may or may not support the Bush administration's fetishistic embrace of it as legal.

So we're all concerned. Not over Mukasey's answers, which most observers, I suspect, fully anticipated. What concerns us is whether or not Leahy and the other Judiciary Committee Dems will look the other way on this guy, once again hoping that a strong expression of concern will be enough to protect Americans from these people (while really scary threats – like a MoveOn ad, require the US Senate to take a stand).

In case folks hadn't noticed, the contributor list on the sidebar has altered a tad. NanuqFC had told me some time ago that she needed to pull back from the expectation of being a Front Pager, but I talked her into holding off a bit. As of now, though, I've instituted a new category. Front Pager Emeriti. Front pagers past who are backing off, but who maintain front page posting rights, and as such may pop in from time to time. I added former FPer mataliandy to the list as well.

Also stepping back is Brattlerouser, who has a bit too much on his plate these days (including the imminent arrival of a new kid… congrats B, keep us apprised).

To fill in the gaps left by the semi-retirement of Nanuq and B'rouser is new front pager Caoimhin Laochdha, a GMD usual suspect, as well as an occasional commenter on the mothership. (CL, you just gotta make sure the “put diary on front page” box is checked when you post a diary). CL continues our (unintended) tradition of running a Vermont political blog with nobody from Chittenden County on the front page. Funny, that.

Those America-hating Vermonters are at it again. This time it's the most fiendish plot of all. It came to light via Glenn Greenwald in connection to  a piece he'd written for Salon “regarding the politicization of the Army in Iraq, as evidenced by its constant coordination with, and leaking to, the likes of Matt Drudge, The Weekly Standard, and the most extremist right-wing blogs.” Well, the official spokesman for Gen. David Petraeus, one Col. Steven A. Boylan, took umbridge. Thus began a weird series of emails back and forth, which the Colonel tried to deny after the fact (at least some of them), even though, from an IT perspective, it seems that – yes indeed – they came from his email account.

The initial email was replete with gems like this:

You are either too lazy to do the research on the topics to gain the facts, or you are providing purposeful misinformation — much like a propagandist. . . .

But after, among other things, castigating Greenwald for a lack of courage, he seemed to have his own sense of personal responsibility dry up when questioned about the appropriateness of the email. It wasn't his fault. It must have been someone else. Who else exactly?

Heh…

(Boylan to Greenwald): If you do a search on the web, you will also see that I have been a victim of identity theft of late in Vermont

Didn't you just know it was gonna be some latte-sipping, Volvo-driving, sushi-eating, New York Times reading liberal from Vermont? Probably Dean himself. Maybe Sanders. Hell, it was probably some crazy “blame America first” blogger.

You can't trust 'em.

That Benen guy may look 16, but I hear he's really like, 67 or something.

Baruth's a fiction writer (that makes him a professional liar, right?).

No doubt the massive beard sported by Jack McCullough is just there to smuggle things past airport security for his terrorist buddies.

Megadittoes, baby!

The quoted sections below are all from the Burlington Free Press or the Rutland Herald, reporting on the same-sex marriage commission’s hearing last night

Let’s start with the Free Press:

“A marriage license would deliver no more rights than a civil union license,” Greg Johnson told the Vermont Commission on Family Recognition and Protection. That marriage license wouldn’t unlock the 1,096 benefits that the federal government offers only to married men and women, he said. It’s also unlikely it would open doors in states other than the eight where Vermont civil unions currently receive some recognition.

I’ve heard this argument before. This argument is the same as the argument which pretends that global warming doesn’t exist. Don’t bother trying to reduce carbon emissions! It won’t help enough anyway. Why even bother? But really, this is about more than just what’s happening today. It’s about what’s right, what’s relevant and what’s worth doing.

Here’s Johnson again, as reported in the Herald:

Meanwhile, some states have taken upon themselves to either recognize or reject civil unions or same-sex marriage, Johnson said. Right now, eight states recognize Vermont’s civil unions as a marriage equivalent, he said, but more than 40 states have passed laws defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

This is a little misleading. While 40 states have laws defining marriage as between one man and one woman, Vermont is one of those states and not all those states have received constitutional challenges. It’s not clear from this extreme simplification of a complicated issue where the truth of the matter lies.

What’s more relevant, however, is even simpler. Having a two-tiered system in Vermont is wrong. Even if it produces no specific tangible benefits anywhere else in the country (it does, but I’ll get to that in a bit), it’s still right to lead on this. Vermont was the first to move towards Civil Unions. Vermont should be the first to take the step of being the first state in the union to move towards full marriage recognition without a court requirement.

Why should we do this?

Because we’re ready for it and it’s clear and obvious that there’s a need for it.

Let’s put it in simple terms. The Hearld reports on a comment by Peter Teachout from last night’s hearing:

But there are intangible differences between civil unions and traditional marriage, such as that marriage is more widely recognized as a union in the common culture, according to Teachout. The Vermont court did not address that in its 1999 ruling that led to civil unions, but same-sex couples do speak of feeling separate or unequal from heterosexual couples due to the distinction, he explained.

In Vermont, some legislators who supported civil unions lost their seats after that historic move. Two years later, Republicans lost their short-lived majority. Today, Republicans hold a fairly small minority in the legislature, with Democrats and Progressives holding a fairly impressive dominance. The political damage of civil unions was small and short-lived. Howard Dean, who signed the bill into law, was re-elected with a clear (though close) victory, exceeding the 50% necessary to avoid the election being moved to the legislator, against some blistering attacks from both the right (anti-civil-union Republican Ruth Dwyer) and the left (Progressive Party stalwart Anthony Pollina).

In Massachussetts, when the state legislature refused to take active steps to block court-mandated same-sex marriage, none of them, no one who came out directly in favor of same-sex marriage lost their seat.

I mention these two facts for very relevant reasons. The Free Press references Vermont Law School professor Michael Mello’s statement at the hearing:

“If the Vermont Legislature adopted gay marriage, the rest of the country and world would pay attention,” Mello said. Unlike in 2000, when the Legislature was under pressure from a court decision, a change now would signal something significant.

Civil unions changed the nature of our political dialogue. While they were once vehemently opposed by the right, when same-sex marriage was debated in Massachusetts they become the more conservative alternative to marriage. They became the fall-back right-wing position.

Vermont led, in a baby steps, the pathway to full equality. Now it’s time for Vermont to grow up and take responsibility for its earlier vote and replace it with full marriage equality.

Will it work in other states? Only a few, for the moment. This will change, over time. But, in the meantime, take this scenario: a same-sex couple is traveling with their kid in Wisconsin and there’s a car accident. The one member not incapacitated by the accident is the one who’s not biologically related to the child. So when the nurse asks if you’re a family member, what answer do you think will make the most sense? That nurse may not be legally obligated to let the conscious family member make decisions, but it’s a lot more likely that the nurse will recognize the relationship if the response is “we’re married” than if it’s “we have a civil union.”

This is real. It is tangible and it goes way beyond symbolic gestures.

Cross-posted from Rational Resistance. 

We've been discussing whether it's a good idea for Congress to pursue the resolution declaring the Turkish genocide of Armenians to be what it was: genocide. Is it meaningful at this late date, is it the right time to be doing it, does it hurt our foreign policy to do it?

 Chris Hitchens is interested in the same questions, only he's approaching it from a slightly different perspective. He's got a piece in Slate arguing, as the title puts it, that the United States should be squeezing Turkey, not the other way around.

 On this occasion I think Hitch is right. On the other hand, the reasons he's right illustrate once again what a mess Bush has made of American foreign policy. We wouldn't be nearly so concerned about pissing off Turkey if we didn't need them so badly in our war on Iraq. Because we need their help, we're dependent on them, so we can't afford to tell the truth about the Armenian genocide.

So why are we talking about this as though it's Nancy Pelosi's fault, and not Bush's? 

Pretty grim few days, not just for the Obama campaign, but by extension for Americans and Democracy. Obama's new kind of politics looks just like the old this week in the worst possible way; that is, fanning the flames of homophobia to bring in votes. If you missed the details, the basics were diaried here. Suffice to say that the freshman from Illinois has had several opportunities to make this right, but has continued to dig in, in the process demonstrating either a callous indifference to the people hurt by McClurkin's anti-gay rhetoric, or a disturbing level of arrogance by deciding that if people have a problem with his giving this kind of garbage a national microphone and stamping his own endorsement on it, it's just their problem. (If you're curious how this played out – it went basically according to a worse-case scenario).

Obama – of course – was a no-show, just as he's often a no-show on controversial issues in the Senate of late. For my part, I'm going with the arrogance theory over callousness, as it would be consistent with what was on display iin the last couple paragraphs of this weekend's NYT piece, as well as the dug-in “if you build it, they will come” style of campaign he has run.

So this guy, who for most of the year has been my second choice, has now dropped into the Hillary “no way” column for me. The great uniter has thoroughly alienated me (and for an example of what a good job he's doing uniting us all, take a look at the comments at dKos on the topic. It's a pretty piss-poor display, and was utterly avoidable).

But what's really depressing is where this likely leaves me – and many other liberals – looking ahead to the General election. It's likely that either Clinton or Obama will be the nominee. I think for all of us, this was supposed to be the year that – for maybe the first time in memory – we were going to get to vote for a candidate we actually liked – somebody we might actually want to see as President – rather than, yet again, being faced with a “lesser of two evils” choice. In the post-Dean era, after ALL the work we've all done across the country on this party – and with the incredible opportunity afforded by a thoroughly discredited and rejected Republican Party – we were supposed to move beyond that tiresome scenario (even if just barely).

But apparently, not yet. For me, at least, not if it's one of these two. Clearly a lot has happened in the last few years.

But clearly a lot still needs to.

Okay, here's another thing I just don't get: Valerie Plame Wilson suddenly becoming some kind of hero to civil libertarians and other liberals. She was in Burlington today (I did not go, had plenty of exposure on last week's 60 Minutes and Fresh Air with Terry Gross, thanks). 

Her sound bite about her book (and all this exposure is definitely about selling the book) is that the story is “about speaking truth to power” and “holding your government to account for its misdeeds.”

Say what?! This from a CIA covert operative? I know lefties and liberals (being one myself) tend to support victims of tyrants, but come ON! Yes her cover was blown by vicious thugs making an example of a critic by targeting her as “collateral damage.” Yes, it ended her covert career (hence the book and the massive media exposure cum sellathon).

She said on 60 Minutes that some of her “assets” had disappeared, and one had likely been killed, IIRC. Those weren't “assets,” Valerie, but people who took risks, people whom you used. I'm sure you chalk their probable detainment and interrogation up to the misdeeds of the Bush administration. But they would not have been at risk if your agency  had not put them there in the first place.

Plame Wilson is hardly destitute, hardly liberal, and at least to my mind, hardly someone whose lectures on ethics and morals I would give credence to, much less the $28 cost of admission and the $26 list price for the book (though I found it on Overstock.com a mere week post-release for just over $14, and Amazon has it at under $16). Click here for an appropriately skeptical review of her talk in South Burlington.

Yes, I suppose she gets some points for not quietly going away, and Joe gets some points for having written the yellowcake fraud expose in the first place.

But, remember, folks, “The enemy of an enemy is NOT necessarily a friend.” And for a willing tool of an agency that specializes in deceit to suddenly feel victimized when her bosses use the same tactics on her and her husband is, IMO, the rankest hypocrisy that disqualifies Valerie Wilson Plame from even uttering the words “speak truth to power” and turns the phrase “holding one's government accountable for its misdeeds” in her mouth into a hollow mockery.

NanuqFC

In a Time of Universal Deceit, Telling the TRUTH is a Revolutionary Act. — George Orwell