Buying the War

From Bill Moyers. Watch it -- the best account yet of failures of the press in the run up to the Iraq War, with due attention paid to the solid work done by Knight Ridder.

UPDATE: Terrific review/overview via Glenn Greenwald. And there's Amy Goodman's interview, with excerpts from the documentary.

The Accidental Inventor of the Modern Poverty Line

From the NYT:

Mollie Orshansky, a statistician and economist who in the 1960s developed the federal poverty line, a measurement that shaped decades of social policy and welfare programs, died Dec. 18 at her home in Manhattan, a family member said yesterday. She was 91.

. . . .

Miss Orshansky, whose parents had known poverty in Ukraine, worked for the Social Security Administration from 1958 until she retired in 1982. She was “one of a respected but mostly invisible cadre of women research professionals based at S.S.A. and other government agencies during the postwar years,” the historian Alice O’Connor wrote in “Poverty Knowledge,” a 2001 history of poverty research.

“These women,” Ms. O’Connor wrote, “found job opportunities in federal government and other ‘applied’ endeavors when university jobs were largely closed off to them, although within government they were often clustered in research bureaus focusing on such traditional ‘women’s’ concerns as social welfare, female labor force participation, families and children, and home economics. That experience as a career government statistician, a far cry from systems analysis, was what gave Orshansky the wholly unexpected designation as author of the government’s official poverty line.”

In 1963 and 1964, Miss Orshansky conducted the research that would become the basis of the poverty thresholds. She used the economy food plan — the cheapest of four “nutritionally adequate” food plans developed by the Department of Agriculture — and multiplied the dollar costs by roughly three to come up with a minimum cost-of-living estimate. (A household food consumption survey by the Agriculture Department had shown that, in 1955, families of three or more people spent about one-third of their after-tax cash income on food.)

Miss Orshansky devised more than 120 poverty thresholds, adjusting her calculations for family size and composition and rural-urban differences. She published her research in a seminal 1965 article in The Social Security Bulletin.

President Lyndon B. Johnson had declared a War on Poverty, but there was no official definition of the problem at the time. In May 1965, the Office of Economic Opportunity, the federal agency charged with carrying out the antipoverty effort, adopted the “Orshansky index” as the yardstick to measure poverty.

It was a use that Miss Orshansky herself had never intended. “Orshansky developed the index as a research tool, not an instrument of policy of a criterion for determining eligibility for anti-poverty programs,” the historian Michael B. Katz wrote in “The Undeserving Poor,” a 1989 history of antipoverty efforts.

The federal poverty guideline — $9,800 for a single person and $20,000 for a family of four in 2006 — has long been criticized as understating the true extent of poverty. It also seems outdated. Food today makes up a much smaller proportion of household expenses than it did in the 1960s; the costs of housing, transportation, child care and health care have risen far more sharply.

In 1995, a panel of the National Academy of Sciences urged several changes in calculating poverty, but no major changes have occurred, in part because they would have the politically unpopular effect of increasing the poverty rate, probably by a couple of percentage points, which would require an expansion of benefits.

Miss Orshansky, a lifelong liberal Democrat, expressed sympathy with the criticisms of the poverty line. “The best that can be said of the measure,” she once wrote, “is that at a time when it seemed useful, it was there.”

From our students

The student body of the Wurzweiler School of Social Work of Yeshiva University would like to extend our deepest condolences to the entire Virginia Tech community at this time of sorrow. Our hearts and thoughts are with all of the families and friends of those touched by this tragic loss.

Wages, Wealth and Inequality

From MissLaura at Kos. With pretty graphs and everything.

"What if John Edwards worked at Wal-Mart?"

It's just the right question.

Pundits opine over whether or not John Edwards should suspend his presidential campaign in the face of his wife's recurrence of cancer -- a personal decision that's none of our business. But here's something that is our business, every one of us: what happens when ordinary workers' loved ones become sick with cancer, or for that matter, the flu?

Read the whole thing here. Go on now, it's short.

Hat tip to the always useful Cursor.

The State of the World's Children 2007

From UNICEF. Executive Summary here.

The Mad Prophet of the Airwaves. Timely as Ever.

Let Them Eat. . . .Elsewhere

Cities set limits on serving food to homeless people

By Emily Bazar, USA TODAY

Cities are cracking down on charities that feed the homeless, adopting rules that restrict food giveaways to certain locations, require charities to get permits or limit the number of free meals they can provide.

Orlando, Dallas, Las Vegas and Wilmington, N.C., began enforcing such laws last year. Some are being challenged.

Last November, a federal judge blocked the Las Vegas law banning food giveaways to the poor in city parks. In Dallas, two ministries are suing, arguing that the law violates religious freedom.

DALLAS HOMLESS: The 'Lord's table' deemed illegal

"Going after the volunteers is new," says Michael Stoops of the National Coalition for the Homeless. "They think that by not feeding people, it will make the homeless people leave."

City officials say the rules were prompted by complaints about crime and food safety. Some say they want control over locations so homeless people can also get services such as addiction counseling and job training.

"The feedings were happening several times a week" in parking lots and sidewalks downtown, says Dewey Harris, director of Wilmington's Community Services Department. "A lot of the merchants said, 'We feel uncomfortable when you have all these homeless being fed downtown when we're trying to attract tourists.' "

Last March, the city restricted meals on public property to designated locations and required a permit. One spot has been approved: a city park parking lot.

Dallas also limits outdoor food giveaways to approved locations. Those distributing food must take a food-handling course and get a city permit, says Karen Rayzer, director of environmental and health services. A violator can be fined $2,000.

Orlando adopted an ordinance in July that requires a permit to serve more than 25 people in a park within 2 miles of City Hall, where most food giveaways were taking place. An applicant may serve twice a year in each park.

"This ordinance wasn't established to ban feeding," says city spokeswoman Heather Allebaugh. She acknowledges that some groups ignore the law.

City Commissioner Robert Stuart voted against it. He is executive director of the Christian Service Center for Central Florida, which feeds 325 homeless people a day but, as private property, is not affected.

"It's not fair to take a population without a home and make them criminals," he says. "And I don't think we ought to be limiting the opportunity to help others."

Every Day This Morgue Fills Up

Richard Engel's War Diary -- watch.

Five Minutes on Income Inequality

Because it bears repeating

From Reuters, this time:

High rates of mental health disorders are being diagnosed among US military personnel soon after being released from duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to investigators in San Francisco.

They estimate that out of 103,788 returning veterans, 25 percent had a mental health diagnosis, and more than half of these patients had two or more distinct conditions.

Those most at risk were the youngest soldiers and those with the most combat exposure, Dr. Karen H. Seal at the Veterans Administration Medical Center and associates report in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Seal's group based their findings on records of US veterans deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan who were seen at VA health care facilities between September 2001 and September 2005.

In addition to the high rate of mental health disorders, about one in three (31 percent) were affected by at least one psychosocial diagnosis.

The most frequent diagnosis was post-traumatic stress disorder. Other diagnoses included anxiety disorder, depression, substance use disorder, or other behavioral or psychosocial problem.

Myths about the developing world

This video is brilliant (and a model for you profs out there of effective power-point use). Oh, funny too, in a very Swedish sort of way. . . . . .

Welcome Home.

From CNN.com:

Nearly a third of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan who received care from Veterans Affairs between 2001 and 2005 were diagnosed with mental health or psychosocial ills, a study published Monday has concluded.

The study was published in the March 12 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine and carried out by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco and the San Francisco VA Medical Center.

They looked at data from 103,788 veterans; about 13 percent of them women, 54 percent under age 30, nearly a third minorities and nearly half veterans of the National Guard or Reserves.

Of the total, 32,010 (31 percent) were diagnosed with mental health and/or psychosocial problems, including 25,658 who received mental health diagnoses. More than half (56 percent) were diagnosed with two or more disorders. . . . .

Blaming the Victims

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich:

How can you have the mess we have in New Orleans, and not have had deep investigations of the federal government, the state government, the city government, and the failure of citizenship in the Ninth Ward, where 22,000 people were so uneducated and so unprepared, they literally couldn't get out of the way of a hurricane.

Read more here. And if you've not seen Spike Lee's documentary, When the Levees Broke, it's astonishing, powerful stuff. Maybe someone should arrange a screening?

UPDATE: More New Orleans, from The New Yorker.

This looks good

presents THE STATE OF WELFARE: Spitzer, NYC and the Future of Public Assistance Tuesday, March 13, 2007, 8:15 am to 10:30 am Theresa Lang Community & Student Center, Arnhold Hall 55 West 13th Street, Second Floor (between 5th and 6th avenues) New York's city and state welfare agencies have new leaders, and both must implement last year's revised federal TANF regulations. How do local strategies mesh with Washington's latest demands? What will be the impact of new employment rules on people who struggle to work, if they can work at all? And will the low-wage workforce gain access to more––or fewer––temporary supports? SPEAKERS: Robert Doar, Commissioner, NYC Human Resources Administration David Hansell, Commissioner, NYS Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance Jillynn Stevens, Director of Policy, Advocacy and Research, Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies and a representative from Community Voices Heard MODERATOR: Andrew White, Director, Center for New York City Affairs Please arrive early for coffee and bagels. Admission is free, but you must reserve a seat by calling 212.229.5418 or emailing centernyc@newschool.edu.

Children and Families with Special Needs

A new report

"An Unusual Economic Expansion"

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.

. . . . . . .

The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That's 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period. McClatchy's review also found statistically significant increases in the percentage of the population in severe poverty in 65 of 215 large U.S. counties, and similar increases in 28 states. The review also suggested that the rise in severely poor residents isn't confined to large urban counties but extends to suburban and rural areas.

The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps explain why the median household income of working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.

These and other factors have helped push 43 percent of the nation's 37 million poor people into deep poverty - the highest rate since at least 1975.

The share of poor Americans in deep poverty has climbed slowly but steadily over the last three decades. But since 2000, the number of severely poor has grown "more than any other segment of the population," according to a recent study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Read the rest here

Do WeCARE?

From Community Voices Heard: "This report highlights the
findings from discussions with over 700 welfare recipients in HRA’s
Wellness, Comprehensive Assessment, Rehabilitation and Employment
(WeCARE) Program as well as in-depth focus groups, one-on-one interviews
and phone surveys with 100 of those participants. The report explores
how effective HRA’s newest program for individuals with mental and
physical barriers to employment has been in serving this population. It
also makes recommendations on how to improve the implementation of this
program.

In 1996, President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work
Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), creating the Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grants and establishing time
limits and stricter work requirements as well as limiting education and
training options for public assistance recipients. Ten years later,
while welfare rolls have dropped nationwide, many people remain in
poverty and those still on welfare are struggling with physical, mental
health and substance abuse barriers which prevent them from working or
attaining full self-sufficiency.

In New York City, one in five people live in poverty and welfare agency
officials estimate that 55.7 percent of the welfare agency’s caseload is
partially or completely unable to work. In early 2005, the New York
City Human Resources Administration (HRA), the city agency that
administers welfare programs, implemented the WeCARE Program to
determine which public assistance recipients and applicants have
multiple and complex barriers to employment and provide them with
specialized services that were not available under HRA’s previous
support and workforce development programs. HRA allocated over $200
million over three years to serve an annual 45,600 public assistance
recipients with potential disabilities. This report is a study of how
the WeCARE Program is supposed to work and whether or not it is
providing the support and specialized services it is designed to deliver
to public assistance recipients with disabilities."

From Bad to Better?

From City Limits:

Midway through an effort to find permanent housing for 100 homeless veterans in 100 days, the city’s Department of Homeless Services (DHS) is on target to meet its goal. Working with the federal Veterans Administration and local advocates for the homeless, DHS launched the 100 Veterans in 100 Days initiative Dec. 21 as a kind of solution-oriented sprint. It’s part of the city’s broader goal of moving from managing homelessness with shelters to ending it through the expansion of affordable and supportive housing.

One in three homeless men are veterans, according to the Veterans Administration (VA), and the vast majority – 97 percent – of homeless veterans are single men. Those involved in the project for veterans say its key innovation is integrating the VA into the wide network of organizations involved in homeless services in a way it wasn’t previously.

A good article -- read the rest.

Don't Be Silly

Our healthcare system is just fine -- best in the world. From Agence France Presse:

A homeless paraplegic man wearing a soiled gown and a broken colostomy bag was found crawling in the street after being allegedly dumped on Los Angeles' skid row by a hospital, police said.

The incident, which took place in broad daylight on Thursday and was seen by several witnesses, was described by police as one of the worst cases of homeless dumping they had ever seen.

"I can't think of anything colder than that," Los Angeles Police Department detective Russ Long told the Los Angeles Times. "There was no mission around, no services. It's the worst area of skid row."

Witnesses noted the license plate of the medical van, and police later linked it to the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center.

Police are questioning officials from the hospital over what appears to be the latest case of "homeless dumping" in the city.

Kaylor Shemberger, executive vice president for Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, told The Times that, "if some of the facts are correct, it is clearly not in line with our policy of handling these types of patients."

In November, Los Angeles officials charged healthcare giant Kaiser for dumping a patient in the city's homeless district.

Kaiser stands accused of returning a 63-year-old woman to skid row in March after she received treatment at the healthcare provider's Bellflower hospital.

Surveillance cameras recorded a taxi driver dropping off the woman, Carol Ann Reyes, who wandered around in a hospital gown and slippers before a volunteer from a nearby homeless shelter came to her aid.

Kaiser has been charged with false imprisonment and dependent adult endangerment in relation to the case, Los Angeles justice officials said.

The Bellflower is among 10 Los Angeles-area hospitals being investigated for whisking homeless patients back to skid row, city officials said.