Back-to-back pieces, in yesterday's and today's NY Times, by columnists Charles Blow and Bob Herbert, respectively, remind us of the ongoing, qualitative and quantitative devastation currently reigning on Main Street.
On June 27th, 2009, around the time some in this community--many of the same folks that still remind us of our recovery, which is really only about their recovery--were waxing poetic about our economic "recovery," I posted this diary...
NYT: Bob Herbert's Elegant Simplicity, "No Recovery In Sight"
Bob Swern
Daily Kos
Sat Jun 27, 2009 at 10:10 AM EDT
New York Times Op-Ed columnist Bob Herbert knows a story when he sees it. That's why he chaired the Pulitzer Prize jury for spot news back in 1993. As a 13-yr.-old, I was delivering the Newark Star-Ledger to about a quarter of Montclair, New Jersey back when he had just started his first reporting gig there. IMHO, Herbert does a better job of telling it like it is than almost anyone. He takes the facts--and just the facts--and tells the story.
Today, his New York Times column, "No Recovery In Sight," is exceptional, if for no other reason than Bob Herbert's style: elegant simplicity.
Then again, if you've been reading my diaries on the economy for the past 20 months, you'll notice some similarities between what Herbert's telling us -- far more concisely stated than anything I could ever write -- and what I've been saying for almost two years.
With joblessness reaching record levels now, in terms of the record-breaking amounts of people unemployed and underemployed, anyone who puts forth the notion of a "recovery" being in sight is, simply, full of it. From a strictly political point of view, if nothing else, this is the truth. And, this is a political blog, right?
Again, here's the link; read what is, IMHO, the gospel: "No Recovery in Sight." Above all else--like the way all great news reporting should be when it's at its best--it is sublimely elegant in its simplicity...
So, here we are, another 20 months later, and as far as I'm concerned (and, I think you'll agree as far as Bob Herbert's concerned, too), if you're not in the top 10%-20% of our society actually "living the recovery," things have gone from bad to worse. Again, from Bob Herbert, this time promoted from his usual Saturday column slot to a much more visible, Sunday NY Times Op-Ed...
"The Human Cost of Budget Cutting"
By BOB HERBERT
NY Times
February 20, 2011
John Drew believes, quaintly, that we are our brother’s keeper.
President Obama does not seem to believe this quite as strongly. And, of course, many of the Republicans in Congress do not believe it at all.
Mr. Drew is the president of Boston’s antipoverty agency, called Action for Boston Community Development, which everyone calls ABCD. In today’s environment, people who work with the poor can be forgiven if they feel like hunted criminals. Government officials at all levels are homing in on them and disrupting their efforts, sometimes for legitimate budget reasons, sometimes not.
The results are often heartbreaking...
Herbert continues on to explain how organizations throughout our country, such as Boston's ABCD,"...serve as a lifeline...to poor individuals and families who desperately need the assistance provided by food pantries, homeless shelters, workers who visit the homebound elderly, and so forth They offer summer jobs for young people and try to ward off the eviction of the jobless and their dependents."
Herbert notes that 20 million of us "...receive some kind of assistance from community action agencies over the course of a year."
We should keep in mind the current extent of economic suffering in the U.S. as we consider President Obama’s misguided plan to impose a crippling 50 percent reduction in the community service block grants that serve as the crucial foundation for community action agencies. The cuts will undoubtedly doom many of the programs. (The Republicans in the House would eliminate the block grants entirely.)
It’s a measure of where we are as a country that this has not been a bigger news story.
Herbert reminds us how drastically budget cuts will -- and are -- directly affecting a myriad of public, private and hybrid services, such as: "Head Start, job training and child care programs, legal services, affordable housing for the elderly, domestic violence intervention, and on and on."
The sheer profound nature of these cuts means: "...jobs are eliminated and vital services are no longer available. Poverty and its associated costs to governments increase." It's about being "...very effective in preventing evictions, working diligently with landlords, tenants and others to keep individuals and families from becoming homeless." It's also about keeping "...individuals and families in their homes," and keeping "...taxpayers from having to foot the very expensive bill of housing individuals and families in shelters."
Herbert closes by telling us he "couldn't agree more" with Obama budget director Jacob Lew's NYT comment: “The budget is not just a collection of numbers, but an expression of our values and aspirations.”
But, if the effect of draconian budgets cuts on America's poor and middle class doesn't resonate with our country's status quo, Charles Blow points out in Saturday's NYT edition that, perhaps, the self-absorbed question should be posed to those on Wall Street: "What will the neighbors think?" (That's our sovereign "neighbors" that Blow references below, of course.)
Empire at the End of Decadence
Charles M. Blow
NY Times
February 19, 2011
America is great in many ways, but on a whole host of measures — some of which are shown in the accompanying chart — we have become the laggards of the industrialized world...
...
...Yet this reality and the urgency that it ushers in is too hard for many Americans to digest. They would prefer to continue to bathe in platitudes about America’s greatness, to view our eroding empire through the gauzy vapors of past grandeur...
...
...Republicans have even submitted a draconian budget that would make deep cuts into the tiny vein that is nonsecurity
This cannot be. Financing for education and social services isn’t simply about handouts to the hardscrabble, it is about building an infrastructure that can produce healthy, engaged and well-educated citizens who can compete in an increasingly cutthroat global economy.
One of President Obama’s new catchphrases is “win the future,” but we can’t win the future by ceding the present and romanticizing the past...
But, perhaps most striking in Blow's column is the reprint of this chart from the International Monetary Fund (IMF): "American Shame." (a/k/a "How the International Monetary Fund's Advanced economy countries compare on various measures.")