Greg Kaufmann | The Nation
This Week in Poverty: What We Talk About When We Talk About Poverty
Here’s a twist: in the second presidential debate, one candidate used the word “poverty” without saying anything about poverty; the other didn’t use the word at all but managed to speak a fair amount about it.
Make sense? Stay with me.
Governor Romney used this talking point: “There are 3 1/2 million more women living in poverty today than when the president took office”; and again, “I mentioned 3 1/2 million women more now in poverty than four years ago.” He also used what has become a staple of his campaign as a bludgeon against President Obama’s record: “There are more people in poverty—one out of six people [lives] in poverty.”
#TalkPoverty: Fifteen Questions for the Second Presidential Debate
I’m not exactly sure how tonight’s town hall-style debate will work—whether Candy Crowley will have the opportunity she surely deserves to push President Obama and Governor Romney further in their responses to questions posed by the audience.
If she does, I hope she will consider these questions below. They are just fourteen (and one posed by me) of the thirty-one questions offered by experts and also families that have lived in poverty as part of The Nation’s “#TalkPoverty: Questions for Obama and Romney” campaign. Most of these were offered before the first debate, but since they weren’t asked or answered, we’re asking again. Thank you Peter Edelman, Mariana Chilton, Jessica Bartholow, Tim Casey, Lisalyn Jacobs, and Equal Voice families for all of your great questions.
The Nation encourages you to tweet this article to @CrowleyCNN and your networks—who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky and a town hall participant will read it too. Use #TalkPoverty to push your own questions about poverty during the debate and to weigh in on whether the candidates are taking this issue seriously enough.
This Week in Poverty: Cutting Poverty in Half in Ryan’s Wisconsin
In last night’s vice presidential debate, Congressman Paul Ryan twice brought up the Republican ticket’s talking point that 15 percent of Americans live in poverty, and twice failed to offer a single idea on how a Romney administration would help create opportunities for low-income people.
He simply insisted, “We want to get people out of poverty, in the middle class, on to lives of self-sufficiency.”
The good news is that if Ryan truly wants to reduce poverty in a significant way—to make his mark as a champion of low-income people—he need not look any further than the thinkers in his own Badger State.
#TalkPoverty: After the Debate, More Questions from Families for Obama and Romney
The streak is alive!
It doesn’t receive the kind of attention that the Chicago Cubs do for years without a World Series title; or even New Orleans Saints quarterback, Drew Brees, for the number of games straight in which he’s thrown a touchdown pass.
But it’s a streak worth pay attention to: at least five presidential or vice presidential debates straight without a single question about poverty, dating back to 2008!
#TalkPoverty: Thirteen Questions for the First Presidential Debate
Editor's Note: Join Nation writers, editors and readers tonight for an online debate watch party—complete with humor, analysis and political drinking games! RSVP here.
A few months ago, anticipating that the presidential campaigns would fail to focus in any substantive way on the record levels of poverty now plaguing the country, The Nation kicked off a campaign to push the candidates to think and talk about this issue.
“#TalkPoverty: Questions for Obama and Romney” profiles experts who have devoted their lives to fighting poverty, and gives them the opportunity to ask the presidential candidates the questions that they want answers to. Next, The Nation will hound the campaigns for responses.
This Week in Poverty: The Invisibles in Mississippi and the US
Before there was Clinton-Gingrich Welfare Reform in 1996 there was Mississippi Governor Kirk Fordice’s “Work First” pilot program in 1995.
That year, the Clinton administration granted the Republican governor a waiver to implement a new work requirement in six counties that Fordice claimed would result in 50 percent of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) recipients getting off welfare and into jobs within three years.
One of the targeted counties was Harrison County, where Reverend Carol Burnett was running a literacy program for low-income women in east Biloxi. Burnett—one of the first women United Methodist ministers in Mississippi—would later serve as director of the state’s Department of Human Services (DHS) Office of Children and Youth in a Democratic administration.
#TalkPoverty: Tim Casey and Lisalyn Jacobs's Questions for Obama and Romney
This is the fourth post in TheNation.com's #TalkPoverty series—an effort to push a deeper conversation about poverty into the mainstream political debate. The series profiles people working on poverty-related issues and lays out the questions they want President Obama and Governor Romney to answer. You can read the first posts here, here and here.
When Tim Casey was 6 years old, his father was committed to a psychiatric hospital. His mother suddenly found herself alone with four kids.
“For the next several years we survived on welfare,” Casey tells me. “And I learned from personal experience how inadequate the welfare system was, and how inhumanely it was administered. I had a real interest as I grew older in trying to do something about that.”
This Week in Poverty: Poverty Tour 2.0 Hits the Battleground States (VIDEO)
Last week, I wrote about “Poverty Tour 2.0,” the latest effort from broadcaster Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornel West to elevate poverty as a pressing national issue and push a substantive conversation about it into the presidential campaign. The tour visits four battleground states this week, including Virginia, where it arrived yesterday at TC Williams High School in Alexandria, just outside of the nation’s capital.
I had the opportunity to attend the event—a town hall meeting that included not only Smiley and Dr. West but inspiring interviews with iconic figures like Peter Edelman, Dolores Huerta, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Ralph Nader, and other passionate antipoverty advocates and thinkers.
I also spoke with some of the high school students in attendance about their own experiences dealing with poverty.
Welcome to 'Poverty Day': The One Time of Year When America Cares About the Poor
Yesterday, the US Census Bureau released its annual data on income, poverty and health insurance coverage. This kicks off the one week every year when we can absolutely count on a veritable frenzy of stories and headlines about poverty. The other fifty-one weeks? Not so much.
As Hannah Mathews, director of childcare and early education at CLASP, puts it, “As is tradition on ‘poverty day,’ journalists, advocates and politicians alike will express outrage for the dismal poverty statistics…. But by week’s end, it’s far too likely that the poor among us will have fallen out of consciousness.”
Nevertheless, there were definitely some great materials released by antipoverty advocates and experts yesterday that deserve attention. Below is just a small sample.
Why Native Women Need VAWA (VIDEO)
In July, I reported that Republican House leadership is blocking reauthorization of a strengthened Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). No one needs this bill passed more desperately than Native women: one in three will be raped in their lifetimes; two in five are victims of domestic violence; six in ten will be physically assaulted; and on some reservations, the murder rate of Native women is ten times the national average.
The Senate version of VAWA includes new protections for Native women by allowing tribal court systems to prosecute domestic violence abusers—whether the abuser is native or not. Currently, most sexual assaults and domestic violence crimes on Native lands go unpunished, particularly by non-Native abusers.
The Indian Law Resource Center has released a new short video to educate people on the issue and urge lawmakers to take action now. Check it out below, and take action here. Congress needs to know that even during election season, people still care about this issue and are paying attention.
Latest
-
May 2, 2013 - 6:06 PM ET
-
May 2, 2013 - 2:53 PM ET
-
May 2, 2013 - 2:19 PM ET
Blogs
