Say it--The Plague of Poverty by Deborah Emin

[Joanne98]

The problem is not the lost middle class, the problem is there is no middle class left. We have a plague of poverty sweeping across the country but no one in government has the guts to address that issue. It is not about color but about shame.

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Hey, I am angry and disappointed and all those things progressives have a right to feel after handing Obama the majority he has enjoyed in Congress. But more than that, I am angry and frustrated to watch as each person now wanting to claim the mantle of progressive refuses to come out and say what is so damn obvious--the country is running out of people who can make ends meet ever.

It is something I feel particularly attuned to, living in a section of Queens, NY not far from one of the worst foreclosure areas in the entire city. Yet no one talks about this. We talk about all the bankers.

Who cares about the bankers? They can take care of themselves. How about helping the people who have no safety net and are in despair and their kids are getting stressed out because their parents are working, if at all, two or three jobs and the chances of getting out of high school keep getting slimmer because the mayor keeps closing the schools and the chances of work are worse at each turn of the economic news.

Forget the bankers.

When I travel between NYC and Iowa as I do several times a year, I see what the plague looks like. It is not swine flu, it is deserted communities, boarded up stores and houses, it is the unmown lawns on the highways because they do not have the money to do that. It is the loss of highway patrol cars sitting there waiting to catch a speed demon. It is the smell of despair when a kid has to take a job as a cashier at a gas station rather than affording college. Or a kid changes sheets on beds for minimum wage and tips because there are no real businesses in the town.

I have walked into K-Marts the size of airplane hangars that were deserted, with customers lined up making returns, not buying new goods.

I have seen how we destroyed the farms and built these new housing developments. Now we cannot fill them.

But closer to home, the number of empty and newly built apartment buildings on Queens Blvd. and Lefferts that have been sitting empty not for weeks or months but in some cases now for a couple of years.

And the empty hospital building on Queens Blvd. with a for sale sign on it. A hospital can be for sale?
Continued>>>

http://www.opednews.com/populum/diarypage.php?did=15650

[butterfly77]

1. And the repubs want more..

they say starve the beast. They really think that this will keep going on and they will be so comfortable with all of the riches they have stolen. I don't think so.

[winyanstaz]

2. IMO the problem IS the Bankers and the Polititians.....

This government is a failure.
We have not even hit bottom yet and still nothing is being done for the people...only for the rich.
To hell with the rich..they already have enough.
There will be NO recovery without jobs.
That IS the bottom line.

[truedelphi]

4. Yet Geithner could stand in front of the House Committee on Oversight

And Government reform just yesterday and say with his voice bursting with pride, that his actions, and those of Paulson and Bernanke, have saved this nation from a most horrible situation.

They have said this meme so often they believe it!

[maryf]

3. All these empty buildings, and all these homeless people to boot, nt

[winyanstaz]

5. It is insanity and GREED run amuk....

If any building sits empty for more than 1 year...it needs to be turned over to low income housing.