A Bit of "Cold Hearted," Unimaginative History
The history of a previous anti-poverty policy in the United States.
The right wing threats, screaming and whining was almost as great as under FDR.
MeanMesa is old enough to remember a time when the President of the United States actually spoke about poverty in the country. Granted, this was a long time ago, and not that many Americans can even remember this President all these years later, but, interestingly, this same President was busy doing all sorts of other things besides his "poverty policy" at the time -- some of them quite unpleasant and unpopular, but for this post we'll try to focus on his effort to solve the nationwide poverty problem.
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| Kennedy and Johnson [image] |
The President was Lyndon Baines Johnson. He took office after the assassination of President John Kennedy. President Johnson served as President for roughly six years. [Prior to the assassination, Johnson had been Vice President. He served as President for the last two years of what would have been Kennedy's term.] By the time came for him to run for his second "elected" term, he was so unpopular -- thanks primarily to his eagerness to continue the Vietnam War, that he declined another run for the White House. Richard Nixon won that election in 1968.
Because of his stubborn escalation of the war in Vietnam, President Johnson was also quite unpopular with MeanMesa. At the time his rather progressive plan to reduce poverty was pretty much completely overshadowed by the national damage inflicted by the war. [Economically, the war was "creating poverty" on its own -- its average cost was estimated at $1 Mn per minute for 20 years.] And of course, the Americans who were, predictably, the most active opponents of Johnson's anti-poverty plans were the "tax cut loving" Republican reactionaries of the day.
Poverty and Politics
Are "anti-poverty" policies going to be politically radioactive forever?
Don't bother bringing your Geiger Counter to the Democratic Convention.
The reason that this bit of "poverty fighting" history is included in this post is because even so much as mentioning the problem is so shockingly alien to the issues which now inhabit our rather embarrassing "politics as usual" discourse. MeanMesa has posted a great deal about these "last days" prior to the "full transition" to the approaching US oligarchy. Such a dismal viewpoint is appropriately relevant when the post is about poverty
Widespread, more or less permanent, poverty is an inescapable consequence of the rapid, upward wealth redistribution currently underway in the US. As more and more of the wealth of the nation is systematically transferred to the pockets of the well connected billionaires, the remainder of the population faces the increasingly "hollowed out" economy of what is left.
During the "well engineered" economic collapse of 2008, almost everyone in the country who owned anything at the outset wound up with 40% less by the time Obama had been able to move the wounded economy to the ICU. This 40% reduction took about six weeks.
The evidence of this is unavoidable. Roughly 65% of all new wealth generated in the US economy now flows directly into the dynastic fortunes of our soon to be total oligarchic masters. Concomitantly, as this redistribution proceeds, the predictable increase in poverty and near poverty [financial insecurity] increases proportionally.
At various times the billionaires, momentarily shocked by their self-created, precarious situation [i.e. guillotines], have taken steps to "buffer" the continuously more painful effect their ambitious policies have been imposing on the population. One might think that the issue of increasing poverty rates might have solicited a similar "cautious hesitation" in the execution of their overall scheme, but this turns out to not be the case.
The ever growing [and accelerating rates of growth] levels of US poverty are an unavoidable effect of creating the oligarch class, and the eager "oligarch candidates" roaming around at the atmospheric pinnacle of our current economy are clearly willing to accept such consequences as simply a "cost of doing business."
The oligarchs also control the content of the political narrative expressed in campaigns. If anyone is questioning the observation in the preceding paragraph, please note that any proposal for mitigating poverty is a topic almost perfectly avoided in the 2016 Democratic Presidential campaign rhetoric.
Understandably, the billionaires automatically hate any policy which might undermine their economic "harvesting" scheme. Obediently following the commands from above, Republicans, likewise, hate any job creating policy whatsoever, stranding them with their collective disdain for even the most modest investment in "jobs programs" -- a disdain apparently superseded only by their even greater disdain for any investment in a policy which might address the poverty disaster their decades long, previous policies have created.
Although mindlessly fostering "poverty creating" policies has long been part of the sold out GOP's "marching orders," has this same line has now been "comfortably injected" into the Democratic side, too? The elimination of Sanders' "populist contentions" has cast the possibility of attempting anything material with regards to the poverty question to a "very dusty, very distant, seldom visited, horizon."
DailyKOS
Open thread for night owls:
Zero questions about poverty in nine Democratic debates
[Visit this original article - DailyKOS]
Adam Johnson at Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting writes—In Nine Democratic Debates, Not a Single Question About Poverty:
Over 45 million Americans live in poverty—but you wouldn’t think potential leaders of the country are expected to know or care anything about this, listening to the questions asked by the elite journalists who moderated the Democratic debates this primary season.
A FAIR analysis of all nine democratic debates over the past seven months shows that not one question was asked about poverty. By contrast, 30 questions were asked about ISIS or terrorism (almost half of them concentrated in the December 19 debate, which took place days after the San Bernardino shootings) and 11 questions were asked Russia. Ten questions were asked about socialism or communism, all of which were directed at Bernie Sanders.
The candidates themselves have brought up poverty, either in their prepared remarks or in response to more abstract questions about the economy. Sanders brought up poverty in all but two debates, broaching the topic 12 times, or approximately 1.3 times per debate. Clinton brought up the issue five times in total, or a little more than once every other debate.
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| Don't even mention it unless you're looking for trouble. [DailyKOS] |
According to the 2014 census, 14.5 percent of Americans, or over 45 million people, live in poverty, up from 11.3 percent in 2000. Child poverty (which Sanders points out consistently) is especially troubling, with an estimated 16 million Americans under the age of 18 living below the poverty line.
It's Politically Dangerous to Talk About Poverty
It's even more dangerous to try to do something about it.
Ask LBJ.
President Johnson had "a way" with his Congress. This Texan was famous for corralling a recalcitrant Senator up against the wall in the Oval Office and "reading him the riot act." Aside from being able to endlessly extend the Central Asian war in Vietnam, Johnson accomplished an astonishing number of other rather impressive, rather progressive, objectives during his administration -- but still, many of the techniques he employed to this end were unquestionably "meat handed" in a way that only a towering Texas politician could muster.
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| Lyndon Johnson left office in 1969. [image WP] |
It must be noted that during this period many of the Republicans in Congress were still somewhat stable; FOX hate radio had not yet been invented; and, over 20% of the US population was in the throes of dire, more or less permanent, poverty. Although it took a prolonged, agonizing, political bloodbath to put Johnson's "Great Society" anti-poverty programs into law, we can see the effect in the chart [right].
By 1970, ten years after Johnson left office, the national poverty rate had declined from over 20% to less than 12%. It remained at this lower level until the "poverty creating" policies of the Reagan era policy of upward wealth redistribution boosted it back up to over 15% -- roughly where it is now. [2016]
Washington Post
The Great Society at 50
LBJ's unprecedented and ambitious domestic vision changed the nation.
Half a century later it continues to define politics and power in America
By Karen Tumulty
May 17, 2014
One day shortly after starting his new job as presidential adviser and speechwriter, Richard N. Goodwin was summoned to see the boss. Not to the Oval Office, but to the White House swimming pool, where Lyndon B. Johnson often went to ruminate.
Goodwin found the leader of the free world naked, doing a languorous sidestroke. Johnson invited him and top aide Bill Moyers to doff their own clothes: “Come on in, boys. It’ll do you good.”
It was an unorthodox manner of conducting official business. As they bobbed in the tepid water, the president “began to talk as if he were addressing some larger, imagined audience of the mind,” Goodwin later wrote in his memoir.
The 32-year-old speechwriter forgot his chagrin as he was drawn by “the powerful flow of Johnson’s will, exhorting, explaining, trying to tell me something about himself, seeking not agreement — he knew he had that — but belief.”
This happened in early April 1964, just a little more than four months after a tragedy in Dallas had made Johnson the 36th president of the United States.
“I never thought I’d have the power,” Johnson told Goodwin and Moyers. “I wanted power to use it. And I’m going to use it.”
“We’ve got to use the Kennedy program as a springboard to take on the Congress, summon the states to new heights, create a Johnson program, different in tone, fighting and aggressive,” he said. “Hell, we’ve barely begun to solve our problems. And we can do it all.”
Johnson’s vision would come to be known as the Great Society — the most ambitious effort ever to test what American government is capable of achieving. And in doing so, to discover what it is not.
In laying it out, LBJ even set out a specific time frame for it to come to fruition — 50 years, a mark that will be reached on Thursday. Johnson launched his program with a University of Michigan commencement address, delivered on the clear, humid morning of May 22, 1964, in Ann Arbor.
Today, the laws enacted between 1964 and 1968 are woven into the fabric of American life, in ways big and small. They have knocked down racial barriers, provided health care for the elderly and food for the poor, sustained orchestras and museums in cities across the country, put seat belts and padded dashboards in every automobile, garnished Connecticut Avenue in Northwest Washington with red oaks.
“We are living in Lyndon Johnson’s America,” said Joseph A. Califano Jr., who was LBJ’s top domestic policy adviser from 1965 through the end of his presidency. “This country is more the country of Lyndon Johnson than any other president.”
MeanMesa encourages visitors to read this entire article. It is fascinating on its own merit, but in the context of today's desperate politics, Johnson's energetic risk taking approach makes it an almost esoteric encounter. Even though it may appear to a remnant of the distant past, it isn't.
Getting Used to Perpetual Poverty
Welcome to the oligarchy. Borrow some money to regain your standard of living.
The Banksters need your business.
No one is any longer looking to the Congressional millionaires currently in control of the government for any relief from the gnawing factors sustaining these high levels of poverty. Sooner or later, even Republican voters may finally realize that these politicians are not working for anyone who isn't financing their re-election campaigns.
"Fleshing Out" Republican "Leadership"
- They hate science and education. Both represents threats to their political careers.
- They hate infrastructure. If tax money is spent for any project which might be used by the "non-contributing class," they consider it theft.
- They love tax cuts. They have no concern for the long term damage they cause as the hollow out the economy. They have given no thought to the collapse of their "export to low wage workers then import to the domestic market" business plan. Soon enough, none of us will even be able to afford the after market Chinese goods.
- They consider poverty an acceptable price to pay for the creation of their oligarchy.
- They have no concern about the inevitable rise in violence as more and more Americans careen below the poverty line. For them law enforcement and corporate prisons are nothing more than "minor issues" associated with establishing the oligarchy.
MeanMesa sees no evidence that the current unacceptable level of suffering will relent any time soon -- or, perhaps, ever. There is now an eerie silence on the topic from the Democrats.
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