Well, the average Americans aren't the "poor Americans" and they don't
identify with poor people. Here's a little tidbit that I'll share with you.
The person who helps me with food shopping and errands and her acquaintance
who now cleans my apartment, both work for a nearby public library. They
both recently read a book called Etched In Sand, which they both recommended
to me. The author is currently a politician in Suffolk County Long Island.
The book recounts her experiences, growing up in a dysfunctional family in
Suffolk County. Both these women talked about how wonderful the book was,
what a terrible childhood this woman had, and how wonderful it is that she
was able to overcome all that adversity and reach the position that she now
had. They marveled at what a really terrible parent her mother had been. I'm
almost finished reading this book. It describes the mother who is clearly
mentally ill, alcoholic, and therefore, abusive to her children. The
children grew up in unbelievable poverty, moving from place to place, living
out of their mother's car part of the time, not having enough to eat. What
is most striking to me about the story is how poorly the child welfare
system in Suffolk County worked, how there was no tracking of this family,
no protection for the children, no real attempt that is obvious from the
book, to intervene with the mother and help her get treatment. The author
dedicates the book to all children who are in need and she writes
encouragingly about how if one is strong, tries hard enough, and has the
will, one can survive and overcome. I find it very discouraging that this
woman, who is now a Suffolk County representative, who probably is in a
position to make some changes in the county's social welfare department,
emphasized only the importance of individual courage and effort in her
dedication because everything that she writes, is an indictment of how the
system fails families and of how children are defenseless against adult
pathology and indifference. I would have wanted her to write something about
the people who are in a position to help children in need. I have had my own
personal professional experience with how poorly the child welfare system
works. And so an article like the one I posted, which describes how the very
poor are used for profit doesn't surprise me. But I also know that unless
people are personally affected, they don't really care. And as in the case
of the author of Etched in Sand, even people who have been profoundly
affected, may not be able to accurately analyze these situations.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Friday, August 21, 2015 3:54 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Six New Ways The Poor Are Mistreated In The
United States | PopularResistance.Org
So, is there a message here? Is what happens in Greece or Puerto Rico
different than the examples given in this article?
When do the average Americans wake up and realize that Capitalism, and
especially Corporate Capitalism is an unfeeling, uncaring cruel Master.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/21/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Six New Ways The Poor Are Mistreated In The United States |state.
PopularResistance.Org Six New Ways The Poor Are Mistreated In The
United States | PopularResistance.Org popularresistance.org
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-in-th
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Six New Ways The Poor Are Mistreated In The United States
United States of Poverty and Inequality Map
Photo: United States of Poverty and Inequality Map
In the 1960s, the Lyndon Johnson administration launched an official
War on Poverty. Needless to say, poverty has emerged victorious. The
noble and necessary aim of poverty reduction might have helped
millions of people create lives of decency and dignity, and it might
have helped America assimilate into the developed world as a fiscally
responsible and morally honorable nation. But since they fail to
narrow the profit margin of the corporate class running America's
political system, poverty reduction programs are basically doomed.
As poverty worsens and spreads, with 25 million Americans constituting
the working poor, poverty relief programs face elimination from
austerity policymakers on the state and federal levels. In the absence
of any war on poverty, America has demonstrated dedication and
determination in its war on the poor. In a cruel combination of
exploitative profiteering from poverty, and unapologetic hatred for
the poor, state governments continue to pick the pockets of the
impoverished, relegating low-income earners to a vicious cycle of
punishment and recompense; life without parole in the poverty prison.
The war on the poor exposes the tyrannical turn of political
administration in the United States - a country committed to mutating
its criminal justice system, already more criminal than just, into an
apparatus of assault against its most defenseless citizens.
The following laws and policies give painful illustration to America's
attack on the poor in which the impoverished receive perpetual
punishment for their poverty. This compilation does not include the
mile-long list of policies that harm the poor, such as difficulty
acquiring health care and child care, regressive taxation, or the cost
of college. The following are policies in which state governments are
actively levying the legal system against the poor.
1. Limits on ATM Withdrawals for Welfare Recipients in Kansas
Governor Sam Brownback and his supporters in the state legislature of
Kansas have turned their state into dystopian inspiration for a
post-apocalyptic thriller, slashing social services, and leaving the
poor to suffer - and in many cases actually die - for lack of basic
essentials. In April, Brownback signed a bill making it illegal for
welfare recipients to withdraw more than
$25 from an ATM at one time. Although the policy might violate federal
law, state officials have recently expressed steadfast commitment to
its implementation and enforcement. The policy manages to achieve the
trifecta of mean-spiritedness, dangerous negligence of human needs,
and Orwellian intervention into the private lives of citizens from the
sentence of jail time.
2. Revocation of Driver's License in Iowa For Missing Student Loan
Payments
Failure to make student loan payments in Iowa will result in
delinquent borrowers losing their driver's licenses. With student loan
defaults on the rise, and rates of poverty, even among the
college-educated, increasing, states are developing punitive measures
to damage the lives of those already buried in student debt. Tennessee
will revoke the nursing license of a nurse who fails to make student
loan payments. Iowa is the worst offender, however. Losing the ability
to drive, especially in a largely rural state without sophisticated
public transit, will reduce the potential for poor people to work,
take children to school and take any step toward escaping poverty.
(Montana had a similar law that was repealed.)
3. Arkansas Arrests and Prosecutes People for Missing Rent Payments
According to an in-depth, detailed investigation by Human Rights
Watch, "Arkansas is the only US state where tenants can end up as
convicted criminals because they did not pay their rent on time."
Arkansas has a unique and singularly monstrous "failure to vacate"
law. Failure to Vacate allows prosecutors to charge tenants as
criminals without any evidence outside the landlord's testimony.
Tenants face fines far exceeding the rent they owe, and in many cases, a
record.
Violation of Failure to Vacate will also appear on the tenant's
criminal record. If a tenant fails to pay rent on time, the landlord
instructs them to leave the premises, and the tenant is still present
after a grace period of 10 days, the tenant falls onto the vicious
mercies of the draconian criminal justice system. One missed paycheck,
one unexpected expense or one pink slip, and 10 days is all that
separates poor renters in Arkansas from imprisonment and a criminal
commitment to enhance that suffering.
4. Using the Poor as ATMs: Harsh Financial Penalties for Minor
Infractions and Traffic Violations
The Justice Department did not find cause to prosecute former
Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson in the killing of
Michael Brown, but it did gather undeniable evidence proving that the
poor, and in this case, mostly black residents of Ferguson live under
occupation from the Ferguson police force. "Officers routinely conduct
stops that have little relation to public safety and a questionable
basis in law," the Department of Justice explained. "Issuing three or
four charges in one stop is not uncommon,"
according to the report, "Officers sometimes write six, eight, or, in
at least one instance, fourteen citations for a single encounter." In
2012, 19 percent of Ferguson's budget derived from the imposition of
fines and court fees.
Ferguson is not alone in viewing the poor as living, breathing ATMs.
New York over the past 10 years has consistently adopted "broken windows"
policing policies. Many poor citizens live in constant terror of
police penalty, because without enough money to pay their fines and
court fees, they can land in jail.
5. The Return of Debtors' Prisons
After an exhaustive study of legal harassment and predatory targeting
of the poor in Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, and Washington, the
ACLU concluded "that poor defendants are being jailed at increasingly
alarming rates for failing to pay legal debts they can never hope to
afford." The Supreme Court ruled the imprisonment of poor people for
failure to pay legal fees unconstitutional, but many states ignore the
law with impunity, as their powerless victims have little recourse to
challenge their jailers. In Georgia, to cite one egregious example,
authorities prosecuted a mentally ill teenager for stealing school
supplies. The cost of her incarceration in juvenile detention centers
came to a total of $4,000. The teenage girl was released only after
her mother was able to pay the bill in full. In the Georgia case, and
many others across America, the state functions as hostage taker,
demanding family members pay ransom for the release of their loved
ones.
6. Voter Identification Requirements Suppress Poor People's Votes
Voter Identification requirements in southern states, and elsewhere,
make it much more difficult for the poor to exercise their civic right
to oppose the very policies, such as those enumerated above, that
damage them.
Suppression schemes, especially ID laws, harm only those who cannot
afford a photo ID. The Brennan Center for Justice at the New York
University School of Law studied the results of voter identification
regulations in Texas, and concluded, in the words of its director,
Myrna Perez, "The law has a disenfranchising effect. It hits poor
voters the hardest."
In a deadly one-two punch of democracy deterrence, many American
states are now levying the political and legal system as a weapon
against the poor, and then paralyzing the poor in their attempt to
fight back.
***
Norman Mailer, while promoting his novel about the life of Jesus
Christ, The Gospel According to The Son, explained that anxiety
troubles the American heart, because most Americans identify as
Christians and prefer to pretend they live in a "Christian nation,"
but on some deep, intuitive level suffer from the awareness that they
violate the basic principles of Christianity on a daily basis. The
Synoptic Gospels are filled with excoriations of the rich, and
implorations to help the poor.
The ongoing transformation of the criminal justice system into a
harassment and exploitation enterprise targeting "the least of these,"
to use Biblical language, exposes America as a nation not only
indifferent to the suffering of the poor, but enthusiastic in its
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Six New Ways The Poor Are Mistreated In The United States
United States of Poverty and Inequality Map
Photo: United States of Poverty and Inequality Map
In the 1960s, the Lyndon Johnson administration launched an official
War on Poverty. Needless to say, poverty has emerged victorious. The
noble and necessary aim of poverty reduction might have helped
millions of people create lives of decency and dignity, and it might
have helped America assimilate into the developed world as a fiscally
responsible and morally honorable nation. But since they fail to
narrow the profit margin of the corporate class running America's
political system, poverty reduction programs are basically doomed.
As poverty worsens and spreads, with 25 million Americans constituting
the working poor, poverty relief programs face elimination from
austerity policymakers on the state and federal levels. In the absence
of any war on poverty, America has demonstrated dedication and
determination in its war on the poor. In a cruel combination of
exploitative profiteering from poverty, and unapologetic hatred for
the poor, state governments continue to pick the pockets of the
impoverished, relegating low-income earners to a vicious cycle of
punishment and recompense; life without parole in the poverty prison.
The war on the poor exposes the tyrannical turn of political
administration in the United States - a country committed to mutating
its criminal justice system, already more criminal than just, into an
apparatus of assault against its most defenseless citizens.
The following laws and policies give painful illustration to America's
attack on the poor in which the impoverished receive perpetual
punishment for their poverty. This compilation does not include the
mile-long list of policies that harm the poor, such as difficulty
acquiring health care and child care, regressive taxation, or the cost
of college. The following are policies in which state governments are
actively levying the legal system against the poor.
1. Limits on ATM Withdrawals for Welfare Recipients in Kansas
Governor Sam Brownback and his supporters in the state legislature of
Kansas have turned their state into dystopian inspiration for a
post-apocalyptic thriller, slashing social services, and leaving the
poor to suffer - and in many cases actually die - for lack of basic
essentials. In April, Brownback signed a bill making it illegal for
welfare recipients to withdraw more than
$25 from an ATM at one time. Although the policy might violate federal
law, state officials have recently expressed steadfast commitment to
its implementation and enforcement. The policy manages to achieve the
trifecta of mean-spiritedness, dangerous negligence of human needs,
and Orwellian intervention into the private lives of citizens from the
sentence of jail time.
2. Revocation of Driver's License in Iowa For Missing Student Loan
Payments
Failure to make student loan payments in Iowa will result in
delinquent borrowers losing their driver's licenses. With student loan
defaults on the rise, and rates of poverty, even among the
college-educated, increasing, states are developing punitive measures
to damage the lives of those already buried in student debt. Tennessee
will revoke the nursing license of a nurse who fails to make student
loan payments. Iowa is the worst offender, however. Losing the ability
to drive, especially in a largely rural state without sophisticated
public transit, will reduce the potential for poor people to work,
take children to school and take any step toward escaping poverty.
(Montana had a similar law that was repealed.)
3. Arkansas Arrests and Prosecutes People for Missing Rent Payments
According to an in-depth, detailed investigation by Human Rights
Watch, "Arkansas is the only US state where tenants can end up as
convicted criminals because they did not pay their rent on time."
Arkansas has a unique and singularly monstrous "failure to vacate"
law. Failure to Vacate allows prosecutors to charge tenants as
criminals without any evidence outside the landlord's testimony.
Tenants face fines far exceeding the rent they owe, and in many cases, a
record.
Violation of Failure to Vacate will also appear on the tenant's
criminal record. If a tenant fails to pay rent on time, the landlord
instructs them to leave the premises, and the tenant is still present
after a grace period of 10 days, the tenant falls onto the vicious
mercies of the draconian criminal justice system. One missed paycheck,
one unexpected expense or one pink slip, and 10 days is all that
separates poor renters in Arkansas from imprisonment and a criminal
commitment to enhance that suffering.
4. Using the Poor as ATMs: Harsh Financial Penalties for Minor
Infractions and Traffic Violations
The Justice Department did not find cause to prosecute former
Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson in the killing of
Michael Brown, but it did gather undeniable evidence proving that the
poor, and in this case, mostly black residents of Ferguson live under
occupation from the Ferguson police force. "Officers routinely conduct
stops that have little relation to public safety and a questionable
basis in law," the Department of Justice explained. "Issuing three or
four charges in one stop is not uncommon,"
according to the report, "Officers sometimes write six, eight, or, in
at least one instance, fourteen citations for a single encounter." In
2012, 19 percent of Ferguson's budget derived from the imposition of
fines and court fees.
Ferguson is not alone in viewing the poor as living, breathing ATMs.
New York over the past 10 years has consistently adopted "broken windows"
policing policies. Many poor citizens live in constant terror of
police penalty, because without enough money to pay their fines and
court fees, they can land in jail.
5. The Return of Debtors' Prisons
After an exhaustive study of legal harassment and predatory targeting
of the poor in Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, and Washington, the
ACLU concluded "that poor defendants are being jailed at increasingly
alarming rates for failing to pay legal debts they can never hope to
afford." The Supreme Court ruled the imprisonment of poor people for
failure to pay legal fees unconstitutional, but many states ignore the
law with impunity, as their powerless victims have little recourse to
challenge their jailers. In Georgia, to cite one egregious example,
authorities prosecuted a mentally ill teenager for stealing school
supplies. The cost of her incarceration in juvenile detention centers
came to a total of $4,000. The teenage girl was released only after
her mother was able to pay the bill in full. In the Georgia case, and
many others across America, the state functions as hostage taker,
demanding family members pay ransom for the release of their loved
ones.
6. Voter Identification Requirements Suppress Poor People's Votes
Voter Identification requirements in southern states, and elsewhere,
make it much more difficult for the poor to exercise their civic right
to oppose the very policies, such as those enumerated above, that
damage them.
Suppression schemes, especially ID laws, harm only those who cannot
afford a photo ID. The Brennan Center for Justice at the New York
University School of Law studied the results of voter identification
regulations in Texas, and concluded, in the words of its director,
Myrna Perez, "The law has a disenfranchising effect. It hits poor
voters the hardest."
In a deadly one-two punch of democracy deterrence, many American
states are now levying the political and legal system as a weapon
against the poor, and then paralyzing the poor in their attempt to
fight back.
***
Norman Mailer, while promoting his novel about the life of Jesus
Christ, The Gospel According to The Son, explained that anxiety
troubles the American heart, because most Americans identify as
Christians and prefer to pretend they live in a "Christian nation,"
but on some deep, intuitive level suffer from the awareness that they
violate the basic principles of Christianity on a daily basis. The
Synoptic Gospels are filled with excoriations of the rich, and
implorations to help the poor.
The ongoing transformation of the criminal justice system into a
harassment and exploitation enterprise targeting "the least of these,"
to use Biblical language, exposes America as a nation not only
indifferent to the suffering of the poor, but enthusiastic in its
Six New Ways The Poor Are Mistreated In The United States | PopularRes
