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You'd never know it from reading SCLM stalwarts like the WaPo or the NY Times, but we have a very real human crisis unfolding in this country. To their immeasurable credit, it took the Fort Worth Weekly gets the story right:
- The swelling of charity caseloads in Tarrant County didn't start with 9/11. Most agency directors say it started in early 2001, with the recession that preceded the World Trade Center terrorism. But those who've watched the economy and worked to help those in its bottom ranks say the roots of the current squeeze go back much further and deeper than 2001 -- and that the real problems aren't likely to be solved by the current brightening of economic forecasts.
In Tarrant County, as in much of this country, they believe, the American middle class is thinning out, becoming a frail version of the workhorse that has carried the economy for so long. Unemployment rates have begun heading downward in recent weeks, but September's rate was the highest for that month in more than 15 years. Employment opportunities these days, for those who can find them, are likely to be Jobs Lite: part-time, low-wage, benefit-free.
At the same time, thanks to decisions made in Washington and Austin, the social safety net for those who've fallen is also thinner and patchier than it's been in many years. Poverty is easier to slide into and tougher to dig out of -- and the hole is getting pretty crowded.
The direct link to the story, "Poverty by Policy," is here. The Weekly is a pretty smalltime journalistic operation in a pretty smalltime city, as evidenced by their webmaster's failure to get the headline graphic referenced correctly on the web. For journalism, though, they often leave their big-time big-money competitors looking like the lazy hacks that they've become.
The blogosphere would do well to give stories like this the wider audience they deserve.