Getting By In George Bush's America

I mentioned before that the Census Bureau released a report showing that the ranks of the uninsured have risen, both in raw numbers and as a percentage of the population. Also in the report was news that the nation's poverty rate has gone down for the first time in the history of this Administration.

The Census Bureau reported Tuesday that 36.5 million Americans, or 12.3 percent — were living in poverty last year. That’s down from 12.6 percent in 2005.

The median household income was $48,200, a slight increase from the previous year. But the number of people without health insurance also increased, to 47 million.

36 and a half million Americans are still a lot of people, and what's not remarked upon is that the average income in 2005 is still below that in 2000. And there are still structural issues that imperil both the working poor and middle-class Americans. Home prices have seen their steepest drop in 20 years and foreclosures are up 93% from the same point last year. The housing market has propped up the economy in many areas, and eventually this will result in less homes being built, hurting the construction sector, one of the few providing low-skilled workers with decent jobs. This was eminently predictable, and the new restrictions on bankruptcy protection really make it hard on those foreclosed upon to bounce back. Yet the Federal Reserve and the financial services industry saw fit to bail out rich hedge fund managers to stabilize the global economy by adding hundreds of billions in liquidity, which will give them every reason to do even more harm to the markets in the knowledge that they'll be bailed out down the road. And it only delayed something inevitable; stocks fell precipitously today.

There are still structural problems with this economy. While no-bid contracts proliferate and politicians conspire with big business to take profits out of the public treasury, they turn a blind eye to the real struggles working men and women face every day. We have an entire large American city being just flat-out neglected, only paid attention to on days like tomorrow's tragic anniversary. While infrastructure sits crumbling, while the Gulf Coast goes un-rebuilt, while social spending is meager, historically so compared to the rest of the world, while stratification between rich and poor continues to skyrocket, citing a statistic that a few more people are making a bit more than $20,000 a year as opposed to less seems to be to be irrelevant.

This bit of CW from the original article about the poverty drop is telling:

Poverty has not been a big issue in the campaign, and political scientists said they doubted the new numbers would change that.

“The poor are politically mute,” said Larry Jacobs, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota. “What rational politician would listen to the poor? They don’t vote, they don’t write checks, why care?”

Democrat John Edwards has made fighting poverty a centerpiece of his campaign. But, Jacobs noted, “He’s struggling to raise money and he’s lagging in the polls.”

Those with the voice set the agenda. That's still the case today, and anyone who advocates for them is shouted down. They'll cite a few statistics to ignore the plight of 36 million people who go to bed hungry. It's sickening.