Sylvia Allegretto: In recent expansions post-recession income gains have taken longer to materialize and given the enormity of the Great Recession it may be years before we see any improvement.
A Policy Rx To Fix Homelessness
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Charley James: One speech on homelessness won’t do it; The White House needs to own the issue to keep it front and center, as do members of Congress who are concerned about poverty.
Suddenly Homeless: The Invisibles
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Charley James: While the national poverty rate is around 13%, it’s more than 15% in rural areas and is a primary cause of homelessness.
Census Bureau Prison Miscounts Burden Local Governments
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Leah Sakala: Rather than forcing counties and municipalities that house prisons to grapple individually with the distortions caused by flawed population data, it is far more logical for the Census Bureau to count incarcerated people at home in the first place.
Right-Wing Social Engineering: “Forced Divorce”
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Carl Matthes: It came as no surprise to gay men and lesbians that if ultra-conservatives kept digging around in this year’s barrel of Republican candidates, past Trump, Bachmann, Cain, Perry and even Gingrich, they would eventually reach Rick Santorum.
Harsh Enforcement May Not Drive Unauthorized Immigrants Out
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Seth Hoy: The idea that harsh state immigration enforcement policies are “working”—that is, forcing unauthorized immigrants to return home—just doesn’t seem to hold water.
Texas: Undercutting Latino Vote
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Andrea Nill: The creation of only one new Latino district in a state where Latinos are driving population growth and will soon be the majority amounts to anything short of Republican gerrymandering.
Of Course Poverty Is On the Rise In Charles Dickens’ America
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David Love: That anyone can actually utter the words “the recession is over” at a time of mass unemployment, foreclosures, homelessness and general despair tells you all you need to know about America. The nation actually exists as two nations: the few that have, and the many who don’t.
Blacks Prison and Unemployment
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Sherwood Ross: Slumlords charge exorbitant rents. “Convenience” stores charge higher prices. Military recruiters have their pick of jobless youth desperate for work. And the for-profit, private prisons increase their head count (and income) as the judicial system hands off the young drug peddlers caught in the legal web. As the Kaiser Family Foundation reported, African-Americans fill 40 percent of the nation’s prison cells. Yet they make up just 13 percent of the nation’s population.
Robert Reich’s Ignored Warning on Chief Justice John Roberts
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Robert Reich: Viewed as a whole, the record suggests that Roberts is likely to place a higher value on property than on community, and is likely to view the Commerce Clause as hobbling the effective reach of the federal law and regulation. As such, John Roberts may have more in common with his namesake before Justice Roberts switched sides in 1937 than after that historic switch.
The Tea Partiers and Herpes
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John Delloro: Longtime labor and international activist Bill Fletcher likened the Tea Party movement to herpes—they have always been there lying dormant and inevitably re-emerge whenever the nation’s immune system goes down. Highlighting the racist overtures of this inflammation on the body politic, Bill adds that it will take more than “economic inoculation” in order to return them into a slumbering state. In other words, just addressing “bread and butter” issues will not be enough. We still need to address race.
Worker Rights: An International Covenant?
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Ron Wolff: The International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), a multilateral treaty promoted by the United Nations, commits its parties to work toward stated objectives for all its citizens. As of December 8th, 160 countries had ratified it. Not us. The United States has “signed,” but the Senate has never ratified.
McClintock Press Secretary Slams Eran, Eran Talks Back
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Adam Eran: Bill George, the press secretary for Congressman Tom McClintock protests that in some previous editorials, I’ve maligned his boss with “utterly preposterous charges.” Unfortunately, I’ve done my homework, and Mr. George’s specific answers are either wrong, or misleading.
Why Counting Undocumented Immigrants in the 2010 Census Counts for a Lot
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Not counting undocumented immigrants could slow recovery from the economic recession and lead to bad public policies based on incomplete and inaccurate census information.
Lou Dobbs Show Cites Fear Mongering Anti-Immigrant Astronomist As Population Growth Expert
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Last night, in a segment warning of the environmental perils associated with US population growth, The Lou Dobbs Show featured Ben Zuckerman — an anti-immigrant activist who attempted a nativist takeover of the Sierra Club back in 2004. Dobbs correspondent Casey Wian allowed Zuckerman to insert himself into a discussion about a new report released [...]
Rep. Michele Bachmann Distorts Immigration To Block Health Care Bill
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Bachmann doesn’t point out that 9.5 million of uninsured noncitizens that she cites includes both legal and undocumented immigrants.
No Nonsense Census
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There’s been another informed and intelligent decision by the Obama administration. In August 2008, in an LA Progressive article entitled “Census Nonsense,” which decried the Bush administration’s move to exclude legally married same-sex couples from being counted as married couples during upcoming the 2010 census, I wrote, “…to capsulize the situation, as it stands now, [...]
AB 1281 Brings Outdated Racial And Ethnic Data Collection Practices Up To Current Standards
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Schools in the United States have historically reflected the classification of students’ race and ethnicity based on the categories utilized by the federal government. Those classifications have been set in many different ways over the years as demographic changes have occurred and people’s nomenclature for themselves or their group(s) have been updated by the U. [...]
New Americans: A Springboard for California’s Economy
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Earlier this year, the Washington Post reported that analysts across the country have been worried that the economic crisis has fueled an increase in hate groups and racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric. With its large immigrant population and current economic woes, California is in the belly of the beast. Yet, while many restrictionists and anti-immigrant groups are [...]
A Bad Time for Budget Cuts to California’s Aged, Disabled, Poor, and Uninsured
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The latest numbers are just in from the United States Census Bureau. According to analyses from the California Budget Project (CBP) they show that for low and middle income Californians there has been a decline in the real (inflation adjusted) household income. A separate analysis by Health Access California shows that more Californians are uninsured [...]
Census Nonsense
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Witnessing the Bush administration’s politicalization of the nation’s governmental agencies, it would be a surprise to learn that the United States Census Bureau (CB) had escaped the political correctness-du-jour, especially in light of it’s history.
Can’t Stand Out to be Counted
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Every 10 years the U.S. Census Bureau, now metaphorically, comes knocking on our doors. But when the census surveys arrive in 2010 in married households of same-sex couples in Massachusetts, we will be reclassified as either unmarried or as same-sex partners if it’s a childless household, and single-parent families if we have children.
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