The Scab Grab Teaches Scott Walker the Value of Unions

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I confess, I went to sleep last night when Seattle QB Russell Wilson threw a pick with about 3 minutes left in the game [Update: actually, in retrospect it was a missed 4th down throw]. With the Squawks down 5, I figured there was no way they were coming back.

And there was no way they were coming back. Plus, by that point, the game had already descended into a series of plays the outcome of which were randomly determined by arbitrary calls from the refs. It just wasn’t a contest between athletes anymore; it was an art project by a bunch of inexperienced refs.

And so, when Wilson threw a Hail Mary in the last 8 seconds of the game and Packers DB M.D. Jennings caught it, the refs instead called it a Golden Tate TD. What I’m gonna call the Scab Grab. Win, Squawks.

Which has led to all sorts of people who for years have been advocating the replacement of union auto workers, cops, and teachers, to embrace union workers over greedy owners. Perhaps the most stunning of these is this guy:

(The replies to this tweet are definitely worth the laugh, btw.)

The entire country has discovered that unions do more than just inconvenience them. They ensure that experienced workers are not prevented by greedy profit-seekers from placing safe quality work over profit.

But consider: this is the same kind of fight on which the same union busters were on the other side, just weeks ago, on the Chicago Teachers strike. There, experienced teachers were–and still are–at risk of being replaced by inexperienced workers with no control over educational conditions captive to the profit-seeking motives of a bunch of capitalists. And yet on that fight, so many liberals (to say nothing of Scott Walker and Rahm Emanuel) cheered on busting the union with cheap replacements. Perhaps because we don’t get to see how inexperienced teachers struggle to manage a classroom–just as scab refs struggle to manage a game–the effects of the union-busting are applauded, not jeered.

It seems Americans are more willing to entrust their children to inexperienced union-busting replacement workers than they are their spectator sports.

Update: This great Sarah Jaffe post explains why this lockout–and the NHL lockout–matter for workers rights generally.

 

Mitt’s DOES Have a View of Workers

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While I’m happy that Paul Krugman is observing the same thing I did here–that Republicans don’t care much about workers–I disagree with his observation that Mitt said nothing about workers in his RNC speech.

Lest you think that this was just a personal slip, consider Mr. Romney’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. What did he have to say about American workers? Actually, nothing: the words “worker” or “workers” never passed his lips.

Sure, he didn’t actually utter the word “worker,” but I maintain that this passage was the most telling of his entire RNC speech.

But today, four years from the excitement of the last election, for the first time, the majority of Americans now doubt that our children will have a better future.

It is not what we were promised.

[snip]

It’s not just what we wanted. It’s not just what we expected.

It’s what Americans deserved.

You deserved it because during these years, you worked harder than ever before. You deserved it because when it cost more to fill up your car, you cut out movie nights and put in longer hours. Or when you lost that job that paid $22.50 an hour with benefits, you took two jobs at 9 bucks an hour and fewer benefits. You did it because your family depended on you. You did it because you’re an American and you don’t quit. You did it because it was what you had to do.

But driving home late from that second job, or standing there watching the gas pump hit 50 dollars and still going, when the realtor told you that to sell your house you’d have to take a big loss, in those moments you knew that this just wasn’t right.

But what could you do? Except work harder, do with less, try to stay optimistic. Hug your kids a little longer; maybe spend a little more time praying that tomorrow would be a better day. [my emphasis]

As I’ve noted, it’s telling because Mitt has bragged about creating those $9 jobs–the ones he admits you can’t live off of. And it’s telling because of the solution Mitt offers to people working dead-end jobs: pray, and trust that Mitt, as President, will make it better.

We now know that would involve trusting Mitt to do something for a bunch of people he believes don’t work hard, even while he admits they’re working two jobs to pay the bills.

A fundamental part of Mitt’s election message is that Obama is responsible for the real and perceived decline in the American lifestyle that has been in decline for decades. He claims he will fix that.

But when you put all the things he believes together, it’s clear he believes he will fix it by badgering people he admits are struggling under two jobs to work harder.

It doesn’t make sense: the real answer has more to do with Mitt’s own faults, with his own method of getting rich. But that’s why it’s important to note Mitt’s contradictory understanding of real workers.

Now that MI’s Unemployment Has Gone Up over 1%, Will the Press Report It?

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I’ve been a little mystified by reporting on Michigan’s unemployment of late. There was this NYT story that gave credit to Rick Snyder credit for, “presiding over an employment rebound in a state that not long ago had the highest jobless rate in the nation” (and which I beat up here). There’s this MLive article that reports, “the state’s jobless rate has dropped from a high of 14.2 percent in August 2009 to 9 percent last month” without noting that that 9% was .7% higher than recent lows. And even this AP report on Rick Snyder’s decision to lay off a almost a quarter of the unemployment staffers (with the part timers Snyder laid off last month, 35% of unemployment staffers have been cut) didn’t say that unemployment actually started creeping up before Snyder made the layoff decisions.

Unemployment went up again in the last month, to 9.4% (some of this likely stems from a shift in model year layoffs and will probably go down next month), effectively reversing the last year of job gains and up 1.1% from its recent low.

Will the Snyder-loving press start reporting these job losses?

To be fair, I don’t think Snyder deserves all of the blame. Obama’s failure to provide real mortgage relief has been a big weight on economic growth in Michigan, even as the auto bailout and the energy investments have added jobs.

But Snyder has cut a lot of job-supporting efforts put in place under Jennifer Granholm. Not to mention–by gutting unemployment insurance staffers–cutting public employment so far as to bring down the rest of the economy.

Rick Snyder, like Mitt Romney is promising to do at the national level, promised his business friendly ways would grow MI’s economy. Instead, it looks like they’ve dampened the efforts that were put into place.

The Missing Two Minutes: Mitt’s Case for Permawar

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In an effort to excuse Mitt’s disdain for 47% of the country, Republicans are pointing out there’s a break in the tape from the Mitt fundraiser. MoJo explains the break this way.

According to the source, the recording device was inadvertently turned off between these two segments. The source noticed quickly and began to re-record, resulting in an estimated a one-to-two minute loss of tape.

The appearance of a hand at the front of the bar in the first frames of the second video, in front of the camera, may suggest that that person had just restarted the video and was standing there to make sure it was recording.

Now, I suggested that the 2 minutes consisted of Mitt showing physical proof to support this claim he made (perhaps because he wanted to prove he’s even a bigger dick than LBJ).

It’s speaking softly but carrying a very, very, very big stick. And this president instead speaks loudly and carries a tiny stick.

But there’s a much more logical explanation.

The transcript MoJo put up shows that during the gap, Mit concludes his discussion of how he intends to attract swing voters, and then seems to respond to a question from a donor about the size of our military.

What I have to do is convince the 5 to 10 percent in the center that are independents that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not, what it looks like. I mean, when you ask those people…we do all these polls—I find it amazing—we poll all these people, see where you stand on the polls, but 45 percent of the people will go with a Republican, and 48 or 4…

[Recording stops.]

Romney: …and about twice as much as China, not 10 times as much like it’s reported. And we have responsibility for the whole world. They’re only focused on one little area of the world, the South China Sea, the East China Sea, that’s it. And they’re building a military at a rapid rate. So this idea that somehow we’ve already spent so much money in the military—it’s like, guys, don’t overthink how strong we are. We—you probably know it, this was a couple of years ago, but we had one of our aircraft carriers sailing by Japan, and the Chinese pulled up behind it in a diesel sub, in a super-quiet diesel sub, pulled up behind it. It could have been torpedoed.

Now, I actually would be interested in the 2 minute gap, since Mitt somehow makes light of the fact that we spend more on our military than the rest of the world combined. And finds some way to suggest we only spend twice as much as China–which doesn’t even work out as a percentage of GDP.

In any case, in addition to the completion of Mitt’s understanding of election math (which seems not to add up), what we miss is the question he’s responding to–which seems to question whether our military needs to be as large as it is–and beginning of Mitt’s case that our military does need to be that big. Part of that argument seems to be based on the fact that a Chinese sub once got close to one of our ships–which would seem to address technology and training, not gross expenditures. And part of it seems to misunderstand where the Chinese sphere of influence extends to.

But in general, it appears to be Mitt’s case for increasing (or at least sustaining) the funding to our military even while we can’t afford to keep teachers in classrooms.

It would be interesting to see this 2 minute gap: because it would show that the same guy who disdains 47% of the country also believes we have the “responsibility” to police the entire globe.

The missing 2 minutes show that the oligarch blowing off half his country intends to expand the American empire.

An Auspiciously Timed Republican Meltdown

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[youtube]MU9V6eOFO38[/youtube]

The Republican party is in a bit of a meltdown in response to the leak of Mitt’s comments about the 47% of the country he disdains. Some–mostly the pundits not facing voters in November–are embracing his claim that Democrats are moochers (ignoring that a lot of the seniors, poorer service members, and Red State working poor are actually Republican voters). Others–especially those on the ballot in November–are attacking Mitt for being such a cad.

I’m most fascinated by the Weekly Standard’s John McCormack’s attack on Mitt’s purported misunderstanding of conservatism.

The same kind of person who says, “Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect…. So my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

These appear to be the words of somebody who doesn’t understand American conservatism and its relationship to the American idea. Conservatives don’t believe in economic determinism. Conservatives know–and explain why–their economic policies will help the poor, as well as senior citizens, working families, and our troops who pay no income taxes. Conservatives realize that the Republican party is not the party of people who want to be rich, it’s the party of people who want to be free.

[snip]

But in an interview this afternoon, he conceded yet again that his tax policies won’t appeal to half the country. “I’m talking about a perspective of individuals who I’m not likely to get to support me,” Romney told Neil Cavuto on Fox News. “I recognize that those people who are not paying income tax are going to say, gosh, this provision that Mitt keeps talking about, lowering income taxes, that’s not going to be real attractive to them.”

The strange thing is that Romney’s tax plan isn’t actually aimed at lowering taxes. It’s a revenue neutral plan that is designed to spur growth–and create jobs–by lowering rates and reducing or eliminating tax loopholes. Maybe it’s a hard plan to sell, but I’ve watched Paul Ryan persuasively makethe case to skeptical constituents that taxreform would grow the economy and create a fairer tax code.

McCormack takes Romney to task for saying out loud the poor won’t benefit from “tax reform” and blathers about how “freedom” will “spur growth.” He takes Mitt to task because he’s not as convincing as Ryan when he claims cutting taxes further will benefit everyone.

The meltdown is so delicious because Republicans don’t seem to know whether to abandon the myth that has driven the Republican Party for the last 50 years or not.

And because the Congressional Research Service just came out with analysis that it is, in fact, a myth.

Income tax rates have been at the center of recent policy debates over taxes. Some policymakers have argued that raising tax rates, especially on higher income taxpayers, to increase tax revenues is part of the solution for long-term debt reduction.

[snip]

Other recent budget and deficit reduction proposals would reduce tax rates.

[snip]

Advocates of lower tax rates argue that reduced rates would increase economic growth, increase saving and investment, and boost productivity (increase the economic pie). Proponents of higher tax rates argue that higher tax revenues are necessary for debt reduction, that tax rates on the rich are too low (i.e., they violate the Buffett rule), and that higher tax rates on the rich would moderate increasing income inequality (change how the economic pie is distributed). This report attempts to clarify whether or not there is an association between the tax rates of the highest income taxpayers and economic growth.

[snip]

Throughout the late-1940s and 1950s, the top marginal tax rate was typically above 90%; today it is 35%. Additionally, the top capital gains tax rate was 25% in the 1950s and 1960s, 35% in the 1970s; today it is 15%. The real GDP growth rate averaged 4.2% and real per capita GDP increased annually by 2.4% in the 1950s. In the 2000s, the average real GDP growth rate was 1.7% and real per capita GDP increased annually by less than 1%. There is not conclusive evidence, however, to substantiate a clear relationship between the 65-year steady reduction in the top tax rates and economic growth. Analysis of such data suggests the reduction in the top tax rates have had little association with saving, investment, or productivity growth. However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution. [my emphasis]

Thus, at precisely the moment when Republicans are beating up on Mitt for suggesting–even if inadvertently–that the poor have no self-interest in his tax cuts for the rich, the non-partisan CRS comes out and shows that, in fact, they do not (and have not, for two generations).

It remains to be seen whether any political entity will push this point home (indeed, one of the tax cut plans that CRS says would lead to more inequality is the President’s own Catfood Commission plan).

But Republicans don’t appear to know how to respond to Mitt speaking the truth, admitting that the poor have no interest in seeing rich people like him get further tax cuts, and speaking the truth in such a snotty disdain.

Learning to Overcome the Public Opinion Industry, at Home and Abroad

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There is an American pain and a volatility in the face of judgment by elites that stem from a deep and enduring sense of humiliation. A vast chasm separates the poor standing of Americans in the world today from their recent history of greatness. In this context, their injured pride is easy to understand.

In the narrative of history transmitted to schoolchildren in states purchasing Texas-selected textbooks and reinforced by the media, [], Americans were favored by divine providence.

[snip]

If America’s rise was spectacular, its fall is accelerating and unsparing.

As the Administration continues to insist that the widespread protests against US symbols are merely a response to a crappy video, more and more people are rebutting that by describing the many grievances people in the Middle East have with the US. There’s Fouad Ajami’s unselfconscious version emphasizing pride, which I’ve parodied above (the italics and links are the changes I’ve made). Robert Wright talks about drones, Palestine, US troops in Muslim countries. Flynt Leverett talks about some of the same issues as Wright as well as our support for dictators.

And while I agree with Wright and Leverett, I want to look more closely at something Leverett somewhat acknowledges, but which AJE host Shihab Rattansi discusses at more length in the segment including Leverett.

As Leverett notes, in countries where there are no dictators policing speech in the Middle East, the US will need to engage in public opinion much more aggressively–and ultimately, the US will need to acknowledge that its policies are not favorable to most residents fo the Middle East.

But as Rattansi notes, our allies–Saudis and Qataris and others–are funding the Salafists behind the protests. These Saudi-funded Salafists are using the opportunity created by the Arab Spring and many of the same tools used by Arab Spring protestors to create the image of a PR problem that will polarize the region and with it create a demand–even among some in the US, I suspect–for more authoritarian control. The Saudis are spending money to, among other things, create a desire for less democracy. And they do that by tapping into and magnifying that underlying discontent.

And we don’t seem to understand how–or frankly, have the leverage–to respond to that.

That should surprise no one. The elite in the US don’t have a response to utterly parallel efforts here in the US. We need look no further than the Islamophobic sources who funded the Innocence of Muslims in the first place.

But I think a more apt parallel is the Tea Party. It arose out of a very real discontent, largely rooted in the decline of the middle class that had already been channeled from class into race. But then oil oligarchs like the Koch brothers funded it and fed it into a carefully channeled protest theater. And it has had an effect very similar to what the Salafists are trying to accomplish in the Middle East: generating electoral support for extremist candidates who in turn embrace policies that bring the country closer to oligarchy. And now both the Democratic and Republican parties are terrified of the protest theater the Tea Party can muster. Yet rather than engaging and winning on the issues, both parties cow before Tea Party confrontation, usually letting the Tea Party lead the debate further to the right.

As we talk about how to respond to unleashed public opinion in the Middle East–now being aggressively purchased by oligarchic elites–perhaps it’s time to consider what we need to be doing better here at home? We have a tough time demanding that President Morsi more aggressively take on the Salafists when both parties shy away from taking on the Tea Party, either by calling out its now completely artificial status or by winning the debate on the issues.

Of course, there’s an even better issue, both in the Middle East and here. One of the underlying sources of discontent is the effects of the neoliberal policies American elites (again, of both parties) continue to push. It’s not improving the lives of average people, anywhere in the world. And so in the same way our policies on drones and Palestine need to improve if we want to win over public opinion, we also need to address another major underlying source of discontent that makes it so much easier to polarize crowds and make them desire more authoritarian solutions.

Rahm Sues Teachers Because They Want to Read, Engage in Democracy

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The Chicago teacher’s strike is getting closer to agreement: while the draft agreement limits the test-driven evaluation to the levels required by the state and provides means for some means to provide support staff (counselors, for example) in needy schools, But it still permits Rahm to shut schools so he can open unproven charters to enrich his friends.

And so the union wants to spend 2 days so teachers can actually read the agreement, discuss it, and vote democratically.

After a civil and frank discussion, the House of Delegates voted NOT to suspend the strike, but to allow two more days for delegates to take the information back to the picket lines and hold discussions with the union’s more than 26,000 members throughout Chicago. Teachers and school staff will return to the picket lines of the schools at which they teach at 7:30 a.m. Monday and, after picketing together, will meet to share and discuss the proposal. Citywide members will picket at the Chicago Public Schools Headquarters, 125 South Clark, at 7:30 a.m. and will meet thereafter at a downtown location.

“This union is a democratic institution, which values the opportunity for all members to make decisions together. The officers of this union follow the lead of our members,” President Lewis said. She continued, “the issues raised in this contract were too important, had consequences too profound for the future of our public education system and for educational fairness for our students, parents and members for us to simply take a quick vote based on a short discussion. Therefore, a clear majority voted to take this time and we are unified in this decision.”

Reading and democracy!

In response, Rahm has said he will sue, arguing that the teachers are striking over something other than wages, as they have been prohibited from doing.

Emanuel called the strike “illegal” and said he would go to court to seek an injunction to block the labor action.

“I will not stand by while the children of Chicago are played as pawns in an internal dispute within a union,” Emanuel said, adding that the union walked out over issues that are not subject to a strike under Illinois state law.

Because the last thing we want to teach American school children is about reading and democracy.

Lanny Breuer Admits That Economists Have Convinced Him Not to Indict Corporations

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I’ve become increasingly convinced that DOJ’s head of Criminal Division, Lanny Breuer is the rotting cancer at the heart of a thoroughly discredited DOJ. Which is why I’m not surprised to see this speech he gave at the NYC Bar Association selling the “benefits” of Deferred Prosecution Agreements.  (h/t Main Justice) He spends a lot of his speech claiming DPAs result in accountability.

And, over the last decade, DPAs have become a mainstay of white collar criminal law enforcement.

The result has been, unequivocally, far greater accountability for corporate wrongdoing – and a sea change in corporate compliance efforts. Companies now know that avoiding the disaster scenario of an indictment does not mean an escape from accountability. They know that they will be answerable even for conduct that in years past would have resulted in a declination. Companies also realize that if they want to avoid pleading guilty, or to convince us to forego bringing a case altogether, they must prove to us that they are serious about compliance. Our prosecutors are sophisticated. They know the difference between a real compliance program and a make-believe one. They know the difference between actual cooperation with a government investigation and make-believe cooperation. And they know the difference between a rogue employee and a rotten corporation.

[snip]

One of the reasons why deferred prosecution agreements are such a powerful tool is that, in many ways, a DPA has the same punitive, deterrent, and rehabilitative effect as a guilty plea:  when a company enters into a DPA with the government, or an NPA for that matter, it almost always must acknowledge wrongdoing, agree to cooperate with the government’s investigation, pay a fine, agree to improve its compliance program, and agree to face prosecution if it fails to satisfy the terms of the agreement.  All of these components of DPAs are critical for accountability.

But the real tell is when he confesses that he “sometimes–though … not always” let corporations off because a CEO or an economist scared him with threats of global markets failing if he held a corporation accountable by indicting it.

To be clear, the decision of whether to indict a corporation, defer prosecution, or decline altogether is not one that I, or anyone in the Criminal Division, take lightly.  We are frequently on the receiving end of presentations from defense counsel, CEOs, and economists who argue that the collateral consequences of an indictment would be devastating for their client.  In my conference room, over the years, I have heard sober predictions that a company or bank might fail if we indict, that innocent employees could lose their jobs, that entire industries may be affected, and even that global markets will feel the effects.  Sometimes – though, let me stress, not always – these presentations are compelling. [my emphasis]

None of this is surprising, of course. It has long been clear that Breuer’s Criminal Division often bows to the scare tactics of Breuer’s once and future client base. (In his speech, he boasts about how well DPAs and NPAs have worked with Morgan Stanley and Barclays, respectively.)

It’s just so embarrassing that he went out in public and made this pathetic attempt to claim it all amounts to accountability.

The Elites Cling to Their Jobs

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After the job numbers on Friday showed that we continue to tread water on job creation, Chris Hayes tweeted,

Dirty secret about the jobs crisis: A lot of the policy elite in both parties don’t think there’s much to be done.

I asked him whether that was because of political reasons–that they couldn’t pass anything through Congress–or because of ideological ones, because “they think this is structural or there’s no possible room for maneuver.” He responded,

not political reasons. a lot of people buy the structural story and Reinhart-Rogoff post crisis account

(Here’s a Paul Krugman post on Reinhart-Rogoff for background and a critique.)

Though he did retweet Dan Froomkin’s point that “Policymakers have tons of ways to create jobs, many just aren’t possible w/o crushing GOP obstruction.” “Oy. Time to get a new set of elites,” I said the guy who had written the book on such matters.

Twilight of the Elites

I’ve been meaning to post on Hayes’ Twilight of the Elite since I read it months and months ago. I agree with Freddie DeBoer that the book feels kluged together. Unlike DeBoer, I thought Hayes’ description of the many failures of the elite its best part: the Catholic Church pedophile scandal, the Katrina response, our failed and permanent wars, the financial crisis. Hayes’ indictment of the elite is a concise proof that our elites really aren’t worthy of their name.

The rest of the book maps out both what Hayes understands our current elite to be, the reasons for its failures–which Hayes argues is the decline of the educational meritocracy put in place last century, and a proposal to reverse that trend and so, Hayes hopes, to return our elite what he sees as its proper function.

It’s in his conception of the elite where I disagree with Hayes. First, he assumes our elite is primarily based on intelligence.

Of all the status obsessions that pre-occupy our elites, none is quite so prominent as the obsession with smartness. Intelligence is the core value of the meritocracy, one which stretches back to the earliest years of standardized testing, when the modern-day SAT descended from early IQ tests. To call a member of the elite “brilliant” is to pay that person the highest compliment.

In his critique of Hayes, DeBoer unpacks several of the problems why we shouldn’t use intelligence as a measure of meritocracy generally (and I’ll follow up on this in a later post).

Educational outcomes are dictated by a vast number of factors uncontrollable by students, parents, or educators, and the lines are never as bright as “took a test prep class/didn’t.” If it’s anything like the SAT and most other standardized tests, the Hunter exam is undermined by sociocultural factors that condition our metrics for intelligence.

At its most basic, the logic of “meritocracy” is ironclad: putting the most qualified, best equipped people into the positions of the greatest responsibility and import.

DeBoer’s talking about why shouldn’t use education. But I’m not even sure we do, except as a stand-in for a kind of cultural indoctrination (which is sort of what DeBoer is saying).

Our elites aren’t so smart

Among the symptoms of the failure of the elite Hayes offers, after all, are steroids in baseball, the Sandusky scandal, and the financial crisis. The importance of athletic failures should make it clear that book-smart people aren’t our only elites. And while many of the people responsible for the financial crisis came through elite schools (though I can attest that even weak students at those elite schools got great offers from the bankster industry, because they were culturally appropriate, which was more important than academic success), a lot didn’t.

Indeed, I’d like to suggest that the consummate elite–the guy wielding more power in our society than anyone else–is Sheldon Adelson. He’s a working class CCNY dropout who succeeded by making massive bets and also by using all means–with lots of dollar signs attached–to influence elites around the world. Any conception of the elite that doesn’t account for the way Sheldon Adelson can single-handedly play one of the most significant roles in the so-called democracy of two countries is a misunderstanding of what traits our society values. The smart people? They’re just the servants of the ballsy gamblers who rode a string of luck and ruthlessness to power.

Read more →

What You Won’t Hear at the DNC: Children Are Going Hungry in the Richest Country in the World

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Here’s what the Secretary of Agriculture–who is in charge of our nation’s Food Stamp program–had to say about food and hunger at his DNC speech last night:

You know, rural Americans are a special people. Their labor puts food on our table and fuel in our gas tanks.

[snip]

Today, President Obama is making smart investments in clean energy—wind, solar, biofuels —as part of an all-of-the-above energy strategy that supports thousands of jobs, not in the Middle East, but in the Midwest. And in this season of severe drought, President Obama has acted to help, while calling on Congress to act as well.

For Tom Vilsack, corn is what you pour into a car, not what you put into hungry bellies, not even during a year of record drought.

And here’s what the Chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, who is up for re-election and who is fighting with Paul Ryan’s obstructionist House Republicans over whether the Farm Bill will cut food stamps, had to say about food and hunger while she stood on the DNC stage last night:

 

 

(In other, um, words, Obama gave Debbie Stabenow no speaking role.) Even Elizabeth Warren, who gave a great speech focused on how rigged the game is against struggling families, didn’t talk about hunger. Bill Clinton got huge cheers, though, when he made clear that Obama wants to require the poor to work more for welfare, not less.

And yet this week Vilsack’s Ag Department just released the annual report on Food Insecurity showing that more action is needed. (h/t Jeff Bryant) Among other things, the report showed that the number of US households that experienced very low food security last year–6.8 million households or 5.7% of the population–went up last year to the elevated levels of 2008 and 2009. And while parents and policies usually shield children from hunger, in 374,000 homes, they weren’t able to (which remains at the level of 2010). Altogether, 17.9 million people were food insecure at some point last year.

I learned yesterday that if I were one of these 17.9 million people I’d be sunk. Rather than watch the early speeches last night (conincidentally, I came home just in time to see Vilsack), I attended a local poverty simulation as part of Hunger Action Week. We broke up into “families” and tried to get through a month making ends meet without enough money to do so; I was the single mother of 3 kids, aged 9 to 17, whose ex-husband had recently lost his job and stopped paying child support.

I found I immediately went into panic mode just figuring out how to pay for transportation to start negotiating the system (it was one thing that added up but wasn’t an obvious budget item). Read more →