Texas Pride

Take a look at the world Bush and company created in Texas before they moved on to Washington. I am afraid if the rest of the country does not wake up, and if they elect another Right Wing team in November here is an example of what they have to look forward to that I found on Bluedaz http://txsharon.blogspot.com/ .

http://www.dallasnews.com/s/dws/photography/2007/bottomline/

Texas - at or near the bottom:

1 - A child is born into poverty every 7 minutes.
2 - Has the highest rate of people living in poverty.
3 - A child is abused or neglected every 10 minutes. Texas ranks 50th for the highest teen birth rate.
4 - Texas leads the country in executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976
80-90% of the homeless population living on the streets are affected by mental illness. One in four is a veteran.
5 - Texas ranks 50th in the nation for the most people without medical insurance - (that is THE BOTTOM.)
6 - Texas has the second highest rate of incarceration.
7 - Texas has the second highest income gap between rich and poor.
8 - Texas is the first in the nation for cancerous emissions into the air and toxic chemicals released into water.
9 - Texas is home to three of the poorest counties in the nation - (these are in the southwest part of the state, an area Bush never visited while governor.)
10 - Texas is home to three of the most polluted cities in the U.S.
11 - Port Arthur, Beaumont and Orange have the highest rate of cancer incident and death in the state. (hydrocarbon toxins and emissions)
12 - 5.6 million Texans do not have health insurance.
13 - Texas has the highest teen birth rate and the most repeat teen births in the nation. (Texas requires middle schools to teach abstinence as the only method that is 100% effective in preventing pregnancy.)

On the health care issue notice Texas Republican members of congress such as Rep. Burgess stands in the way of expanding CHIPS. They bring the state nothing but shame.

Carpet Bagging - Reconstruction

The Republican Southern Strategy - Carpet baggin Reconstruction

“"The South historically was just a poorer part of the country and didn't have the focus on education that other parts of the country had," said Jeff Kuhner, a spokesman for the Fordham Foundation, an education think tank in Washington.
"Part of its strategy for the past 25 to 30 years has been cheap, undereducated labor, they don't have labor unions. But human capital is just as important as investment capital."”

Source: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/20922.html Study: Most students in South are poor.

The Republican Southern Strategy is to have all American except for the have and have mores to be “undereducated labor” void of labor unions or representation in the government is working. Note the number of Americans now living in that breeding ground of “undereducated labor” – severe poverty.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/staff/tony_pugh/story/15655.html

“WASHINGTON—The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, millions of working Americans are falling closer to the poverty line and the gulf between the nation's "haves" and "have-nots" continues to widen.”

And as always the south leads the way.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/16/us/16mississippi.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
“In Mississippi, Poor Lag in Hurricane Aid
By LESLIE EATON
GULFPORT, Miss.,
Nov. 14 — Like the other Gulf Coast states battered by Hurricane Katrina, Mississippi was required by Congress to spend half of its billions in federal grant money to help low-income citizens trying to recover from the storm. But so far, the state has spent $1.7 billion in federal money on programs that have mostly benefited relatively affluent residents and big businesses. The money has gone to compensate many middle- and upper-income homeowners, to aid utility companies whose equipment was damaged and to prop up the state’s insurance system.”

These three articles need little expansion. Notice the relationship between Mississippi and this poverty creeping across the country. In the Study: Most students in South are poor the authors point out that twenty years ago it was only in Mississippi that the majority of school children were poor. Now after the example Haley Barbour, the second only Republican governor elected in Mississippi since Reconstruction not only has Mississippi become the poster state for this strategy but with his Republican and Bush ties carpet bagging Reconstruction is spreading rapidly throughout not only the south but the entire nation.

The NYT’s article about Mississippi points out the special attention that the state of Mississippi got from Barbour’s old friend G. W. Bush.

“Mississippi is the only state for which the Bush administration has waived the rule that 50 percent of its Community Development Block Grants be spent on low-income programs, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which administers the program. It is also the only state to ask for such waivers. “

To continue the Republican attack on the poor Barbour vetoed a sales tax on reduction bill on groceries in 2006. Yes, groceries. Can you see it spreading, reduce upper levels of income taxes on the rich, remove the estate tax and make up the difference by taxing groceries.

Not to bring too much religion into the discussion, but some of the biggest supporters of this Southern Strategy are Christians in the south. They seem to skip over the admonishment of James, considered in many circles as the brother of Jesus, when he said, “But you have insulted the poor. Is it not the rich who are exploiting you? Are they not the ones who are dragging you into court?” (James 2:6) It seems to me that not only the Christians are being lead to serving the richest among us at the harm of the most in need, but our whole country is, if we continue to allow the Republican’s Southern Strategy to expand.

Education - Dropout Mills

This morning CBS has a story on Dropout Factories http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/29/national/main3425857.shtml where over 60% of high school students drop out before graduation. They are not diploma mills, rather they are Dropout Mills. Here are a few thoughts on the education and poverty issue.

We are a nation of three classes. The first two classes as defined by our president during a fund raising event are the haves and have mores. And then there are the rest of us. Within the rest of us are the pockets of extreme and persistent poverty and underclass. It is within those last two you find these dropout mills.

My wife is a teacher that entered the profession later in life. As a Navy family we moved a lot and only after my retirement and our settling down was she able to pursue her chosen profession. With in the last 12 years she has worked in middle schools in both low income and upper middle class schools. The differences between the two are obvious for anyone willing to look. In the lower income areas all most 90% of the children are on subsidized lunch program. Their parents are not home, because they work multiple minimum wage jobs just to survive. Often the only food some of these kids would get would be the lunches at school and over weekends many eat little or nothing. A child in these schools that gets sick can not go to a doctor so the parents wait until the child can not move and then runs them to the county emergency rooms.

This study in the CBS report and dozens if not hundreds of other such studies tell us the same thing. Poverty pockets breed poverty and maintain an underclass where crime of all sorts is concentrated. One only has to look at a map of any of our major cities that depict locations of murders and other crimes to realize children in these areas are exposed to horrors that no child should be exposed to and that children in even moderately better neighborhoods are not exposed to.

The study points out that Utah is void of these dropout mills. Why is Utah an example of non-drop out mills? Is it because there are no poor people living there? I doubt that. But with a small population it is most likely there are less concentrated areas of poverty, poor kids still are on the subsidized lunch programs, and still go to emergency rooms, but they go to school with middle class and even the have more kids. They are surrounded by examples of how to better themselves. Their graduation rates, I bet, are within the norm of the other children.

I read an essay a year or so ago from one of the “scholars” at the Hoover Institute in California. He was building a case against couples living together without getting married or some other moral issue by using Sweden as an example of how when a society allows such things the bad morals of the underclass creep up to the "have and have mores".

How is that possible for bad morals of the underclass to creep up to the upper classes? The article said it was because of the disappearance of the underclass in Sweden, thus all the evil morals of the underclass were transferred to the upper class. How did Sweden (and all the Nordic countries) all but eliminate them? Two reasons were given, basic health care for all their citizens and public education up to and including college. There are poor people in these countries, but their children have the very same opportunities as other citizens. They call it “family values.”

Now before conservatives scream about the socialist in Sweden and other Nordic countries take a quick look at some interesting “capitalist” statistics from The Economist issue of October 20, 2007:

GDP change for 2007 shows the US at a 2.0% growth and Sweden at 3.4% growth, Netherlands at 2.2% growth and Norway at 3.5% growth.

Balance of trade (in billions of $) over the last 12 months shows the US at – 810.7, Denmark at + 4.2, Sweden at + 18.1, Norway at + 54.5 and Netherlands at + 49.9.

Oh but they are in massive public debt you say – well here are the current account balance for government spending over the same 12 months (in billion $):

US is in the hole by another – 793.2, Denmark up a + 4.3, Sweden up a + 29.7, Netherlands up a + 53.5, and Norway up a + 54.6. Now why you might ask would we want our government to have that much cash on hand? Well those countries also have a lot of baby boomers about to retire, looks like they are prepared.

A little more on the "haves and have mores." Based on figures from the IRS on incomes in 2005 the top one percent of income earners now have a lager piece of the economic pie than any other time since the Roaring Twenties and the median income is down below what it was in 2000. Just this morning McClatchy News service is running an article about the increase of poor children in public schools. According to the article in 2000 there were only four states with a majority of it's students being poor. There are now, as of 2006, FOURTEEN states with a majority of students being poor. The article can be found here http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/20922.html .

Have a great day and keep fighting for ALL our children and all our schools.

Randy T