The number of children living in poverty in the United Sates has increased by four million since 2000
The number of homeless children increased 41% between 2007 & 2009
In 2009 an average of 15.6 million children received food stamps monthly, an increase of 65% over ten years.
A majority of children but more than 79% of black & Hispanic children in public schools cannot read or do math at grade level in the 4th, 8th or 12th grades.
These are disgusting facts. These are facts that have to outrage anyone with any kind of moral compass and yet there are whole segments of American society that willingly ignore them because they are inconvenient or because they feel they do not affect their own lifestyle or their vision of the American Dream.
The right wing led by the Teabaggers wants to reduce the deficit by stripping even more from the social network that is the last hope of these, our children. No new taxes, they scream as their own children are driven by limo to private schools, after which they attend ballet classes or a riding academies, to which they are shuffled by nannies and chauffeurs who will also bring them to the family yacht on the weekend and overpriced sports camps in the summer.
Yes their parents earned the money for these privileged children to enjoy these luxuries and yes it is only right that they partake of the reward of their parents labor but while all this luxurious living is gong on, wouldn’t it be nice, wouldn’t it be fair of their parents, wouldn’t it be “Christian” as the right loves to say, to share just some of the excess that will make our children of poverty live slightly better lives, that will give those less privileged an opportunity to actually make something of those lives, something more then what now faces them?
The disastrous settlement of the debt crisis has left the country in a limbo of tragic unemployment and despite the fact that “Jobs” are on everyone’s lips, no viable way to recover. Millions of words have been written and spoken on both sides of the impenetrable wall that’s separates the right and the left but no real solution to the problem of what will happen to the nation’s children seems to be in the offering. We are about to lose an entire generation of America’s youth.
I watched in cold fury this weekend as right wing talking heads like Jeff Sessions ® Alabama and Jason Chaffetz ® Utah babbled on about how business could not create jobs because they were unsure of how our tax and regulation policies would be affecting them. These are men elected by the American public to govern our land and they are either outright liars or too stupid to be allowed to sweep my sidewalk.
Anyone with even a modicum of intelligence knows that the problem with business creating jobs is consumption or the lack thereof. No one is buying because they have been busy paying down debt or are trying to lay something away as a shield against the stupidity and intransience of our leaders. As already stated in previous blogs, if no one is consuming than business can’t build plant and create jobs because there is no one to buy the products those plants and workers would create. No buyers for your product and you are soon out of business. So what is the solution? Create something that has a built-in consumer, a consumer that needs the product because it is an integral part of their life experience.
Infrastructure, everybody uses it, no matter how poor or lacking in funds. The need for it must be met or the country continues its decline into oblivion. Private business won’t pay for it unless they can own it and that’s not a viable idea so the government must fund it, either through direct investment or through an infrastructure bank that guarantees investments made by business.
Why do I continue to argue for infrastructure building in a time of great national debt; because the only way to lower national debt is to create income to pay it off. You can’t just cut, cut, cut. Our so, called entitlement programs were created by thoughtful forbearers, who understood that a first world nation, in order to flourish, had to make sure that all its citizens were given the opportunity to succeed. Cutting these programs throws those in need of them into the abyss, stealing from them any chance of achieving or keeping alive the American Dream.
Somewhere, in this mess created by Teabagger greed and intransigence and Obama’s cowardice we must find a way the government can finance a program that will create jobs. The private sector isn’t up to it but that’s why we have government and that’s why the concept of tiny government simply can’t work in a civilized country.
We are about to lose a whole generation of our children. We can’t do that and survive as the same country in which we grew up. A basic principal of successful business is that you have to spend money to make money. That’s where our country is now. Time to spend!