Posted on 01/10/2003 10:58:50 AM PST by fight_truth_decay
George W. Bush's America as seen by CBS News: Bread lines, reminiscent of the Depression-era, made up of average Americans with jobs. Over video of a long line in Marietta, Ohio, on the January 8 60 Minutes II, Scott Pelley ominously intoned: "The lines we found looked like they'd been taken from the pages of the Great Depression. It's not just the unemployed, we found plenty of people working full-time but still not able to earn enough to keep hunger out the house. If you think you have a good idea of who's hungry in America today, come join the line. You'd never guess who you'd meet there."
While Pelley never uttered the name George W. Bush once during his 12 minute piece, the implication came through. Pelley noted, for instance, how "since 1999, the number of people getting emergency food aid in Ohio alone has grown from 2 million to 4.5 million." Pelley contended in relaying the view of a groups which wants more government spending: "Nationwide, the problem is not just in rural scenes like this. The U.S. Conference of Mayors says the need for emergency food aid in major cities jumped 19 percent last year alone."
Pelley's emotions over facts style of reporting included this line: "Pre-schoolers come here with their parents and play in boxes as empty as the day's want-ads."
Pelley asked, "When you look at this line, what do you see?" And answered the question himself: "You know what I see? Some pretty average looking Americans." When Pelley suggested "a lot of people in this country would be surprised to see this line, surprised to see a food line in America again," a local Ohio food bank operator declared in a comment which ended the story: "Oh yeah, we've gone backwards. This is what I heard from my mom and dad. This is what it was during the Depression era. That, you know, people stood in line to get government commodities. We haven't come very far, have we?"
Though Pelley highlighted some heartbreaking cases, he refrained from examining the poor personal decisions which led his victim families to their plight. All the families he looked at receive food stamps.
Pelley began his report, which was brought to my attention by MRC analyst Brian Boyd: "We met some people standing in a line the other day, a nurse with a new baby, an army vet, three ladies who spent a lifetime working in the same factory. All of them and hundreds more were drawn to the line by hunger. We are about to show you bread lines in America that you may find hard to believe. With the recession there has been a sudden leap in the number of people on emergency food assistance. The lines we found looked like they'd been taken from the pages of the Great Depression. It's not just the unemployed, we found plenty of people working full-time but still not able to earn enough to keep hunger out the house. If you think you have a good idea of who's hungry in America today, come join the line. You'd never guess who you'd meet there."
Over video of a long line Pelley explained: "This is the head of a food line forming outside Marietta, Ohio. We're going to show you the end but that will take a while. The people in front came at dawn. Sometimes the food runs out before the line does. So it's best to get in early. "They've come with empty boxes and baskets and little red wagons and if they wait, up to five hours, they carry away groceries that will last a few days. Lately, the food's been coming once every few weeks. And each time the crowd is getting larger, stretching like the line on a graph marking the recession. "This day, a few weeks before Thanksgiving, the line was the longest it's been. Through the fair ground parking lot, out to the street and beyond. How many? We counted 896. One line from a thousand walks of life."
Pelley asked a woman: "Why do you have to come here?" Marslyn (sp?) Clark: "Because we really, my husband really doesn't make enough for all of our groceries." Pelley: "Is he working full-time?" Clark: "He works full-time." Pelley: "Usually Marslyn and her husband both work, but Marslyn is taking time off now for her new born, a girl named Autumn." Clark: "I'm a nurse and I have a good job, but this is just something that we have to do to get by right now."
After showcasing a veteran of World War II and the Great Depression, Pelley turned to Bob Garbo, head of the local affiliate of America's Second Harvest. He opined: "This is going in my mind backwards, I mean this is, we're doing things that we did before food stamps, before we had various programs. And quite frankly it's a little bit hard to watch sometimes." Pelley added: "Bob Garbo is watching as head of the local affiliate of the non-profit group America's Second Harvest. The food being distributed in his line comes mostly from government programs and from private donations. "This day the line grew so long that they brought an extra truck -- they hadn't done that before. But since 1999, the number of people getting emergency food aid in Ohio alone has grown from 2 million to 4.5 million. There are a lot of reasons: housing costs are rising and medical costs. Unemployment is up, and many jobs that are available are minimum wage." Garbo: "Our jobs are not high paying jobs. In rural America most of these jobs folks are getting when they come off of public assistance are $6 and $7 and hour jobs -- with no benefits, by the way."
Pelley soon profiled his first victim: "The issue is the working poor. Forty percent of the families in these lines have one parent working. Rick Payne is working full time in one of those big home improvement stores. But he's supporting a wife and four kids on $7.50 an hour. When we sat down with Payne, his wife Alexis and 12-year-old, Brandon, they had $17 to their name."
On a 40 hour a week basis over 50 weeks $7.50 an hour would total, by my calculation, $15,000 a year. Plus, as Pelley noted, the Paynes get $300 a month in food stamps. Yet at the end of the month they live on potato soup. Sounds to me like really bad money management.
Trying to generate viewer sympathy, Pelley asserted: "Almost half the people fed by these lines are kids. The Agriculture Department figures one out of six children in America faces hunger. That's more than 12 million kids. Nationwide wide children have the highest poverty rate. Pre-schoolers come here with their parents and play in boxes as empty as the day's want-ads."
Pelley talked with kids who wanted food and then profiled a woman who said she must mix milk with water to make it last for her baby, though she gets both welfare and food stamps.
Pelley conceded: "Most of the people in line don't look like they're starving. We noticed some were even overweight. But hunger in America isn't starvation, it's malnutrition -- children too hungry to concentrate in school, the pain of skipped meals. There may be some in line who are taking unfair advantage of a free food program even if they have to wait for hours. But it's also true that many in these lines are new to hunger: losing jobs or getting hit with medical bills, for example, just months or weeks ago. "We visited another line in McArthur, Ohio, where the holidays were closing in and so was the weather. This line is about 40 percent longer than it was just three years ago. Nationwide, the problem is not just in rural scenes like this. The U.S. Conference of Mayors says the need for emergency food aid in major cities jumped 19 percent last year alone."
On to his third victim family, Pelley highlighted a woman whose marriage broke up and the kids now only can eat at school, but the 12-year-old brings some food home. The family supposedly can't eat, yet Pelley reported they get $700 a month in welfare and food stamps.
Garbo compared the situation to the fear of terrorism: "I'll tell you in all honesty I sense a fear. It's a fear. We talk about terror nowadays. The terror is fear. And if you really get to visit with families who are really up against it, there's a fear."
Back to the Payne family, they figured out you can work more than just one job and now make some money for cleaning their church each Sunday. But, and in the TV world of victims there is always a but, the father teared-up as he related how he cannot afford to pay his son the promised $5 a week for helping with the church clean-up.
Pelley wrapped up his anecdotal piece with this exchange between himself and Garbo: "When you look at this line, what do you see?" Garbo: "You see pain." Pelley: "You know what I see? Some pretty average looking Americans." Garbo: "Oh yeah, sure, this is southeast Ohio, buddy. This is it, this is it and you'll see this pretty well all over the country probably." Pelley: "I think a lot of people in this country would be surprised to see this line, surprised to see a food line in America again." Garbo: "Oh yeah, we've gone backwards. This is what I heard from my mom and dad. This is what it was during the Depression era. That, you know, people stood in line to get government commodities. We haven't come very far, have we?"
If true, that would be quite an indictment of the billions spend in the war on poverty, but Pelley didn't broach that liberal failure.
As for how the Bush era has brought us full circle to Hoover, remember that the GDP is growing at a healthy rate, inflation, which most ravages the poor, is at a historically low level, unemployment is at barely 6 percent, well below where it stood in 1980, and the full welfare state is humming and sending out checks and food stamps to all of the poor.
For the Web-posted version of Pelley's story: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/01/08/60II/main535732.shtml
For a picture and bio of Pelley: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1999/06/23/60II/main51732.shtml
Deanna Streets worked for 23 years, but in 1989 the single mom quit her job at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base to raise the son of her teen-age daughter, who had cerebral palsy.
She needed help making ends meet and went on welfare in 1990, eventually taking in another grandson. Once welfare reform was approved, Streets accepted a work assignment that combined training and working as a receptionist at a local social service organization.
Streets, now 55, is grateful for the job training she received and said it led her to a good job as a typist with the city of Dayton.
"They give you food, they give you medical. You just can't beat it," Streets said of the welfare system. But, she said, "You've got to work for something. Nothing in life is free. If you get off your butt and do something positive you feel better. It worked for me."
Not long ago, "welfare mothers" were political pariahs. These women and their families were a favorite target of politicians and scorned in the public arena. At worst, they were portrayed as lazy and manipulative; at best, they were victims of a system that both liberals and conservatives said trapped them in a life of poverty and dependence.
In 1996, a Republican Congress and Democratic President Bill Clinton fulfilled a promise to "change welfare as we know it," enacting the landmark Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.
The law dramatically revamped a welfare system that began in the Roosevelt Administration as a program for widows and evolved into a seemingly never-ending source of welfare checks for poor people.
Under the revamped system, states get federal grants called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families and are responsible for offering the poor cash assistance and work supports, such as child care and transportation subsidies. Thanks to the change that made childless people ineligible for cash assistance, 70 percent of welfare households are now single women with children.
Furnas, the Springfield-Burkhardt Neighborhood Association president, sees the strain in her east Dayton neighborhood, particularly in the wake of the recession.
"I get calls that they're losing their house, their utilities are shut off, they don't have any medical insurance so they can't go to the doctor," she said. "(Welfare reform) just created a larger number of working poor."
States like Ohio, in the face of a weakened economy and a strapped state budget, sliced resources for some anti-poverty programs. The cuts cost Montgomery County $1.6 million, forcing reductions in programs that help people finish job training or find and keep jobs.
The economic downturn has also battered state budgets and cut into the funding for many of the programs that made welfare reform successful. Cuyahoga County sued the state of Ohio after the legislature last fall used federal welfare money to help cover the state's $1.5 billion budget deficit.
http://www.activedayton.com/ddn/project/welfare/0616welfare.html
I am shocked, SHOCKED!
Adam Smith must be spinning in his grave! To imagine that there would be a big demand for free stuff!
;-)
My sister used to go to the food bank even though both she and her husband were working, and they both made good money.
Plenty of retired ones.
How many unemployed people pay income tax or capital gains tax or dividend tax?
Ms. Escobar has taken the president's policies somewhat personally. "I'm a Republican and I'm not ashamed to say it," she said. "But I'm very upset that they have done nothing for us."
I asked if she had voted for Mr. Bush. "I sure did," she said, then added, "I feel very betrayed."
For those who don't know, Marietta and the SE Ohio region is in Appalachia. It is and most likely will be an economically-distressed area, even in 'good times' for the rest of the country. They did not pick a representative area, but instead went to a region that will always have its share of poverty and working poor.
BTW, this area of the country did have some decent-paying jobs at one time, in the coal-mining business. The coal in this region is high in sulfur content. The environmentalists succeeded over the years in tightening SO4 emissions from coal-burning power plants, thereby reducing demand for this kind of coal. The result? Mines closed. Unemployment and poverty went up. So what this story doesn't tell you is that a significant amount of the poverty in the region is the fault of environmentalist wackos.
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