Franklin D. Roosevelt was the 32nd president of the U.S. He served from 1933-1945 during the Great Depression.


When elected for his second term, he stated this during his Inaugural Address:

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."


My question to all you is this, How have we progressed? If we were to give this "test" a grade, what grade would you give our nation?



God bless you all!

Imagine

IMAGINE a country where health care aides can't afford health insurance. Where food industry workers may depend on food banks to help feed their children. Where childcare teachers don't make enough to save for their own children's education.

IMAGINE a country where the economy is increasingly not working for working people.

IMAGINE a country where the minimum wage has become a poverty wage instead of an antipoverty wage. The minimum wage has lagged so far behind necessities that keeping a roof over head is a constant struggle and family health coverage costs more than the entire annual income of a full-time worker at minimum wage.

IMAGINE a country where childcare workers, mostly women, typically make about as much parking lot attendants and much less than animal trainers. Out of 801 occupations surveyed by the labor department, only 18 have lower median wages than childcare workers.

IMAGINE a country whose school system is rigged in favor of the already privileged, with lower caste children tracked by race and income into the most deficient and demoralizing schools and classrooms. Public schools budgets are heavily determined by private property taxes, allowing higher income districts to spend more than poorer ones. In the state with the largest gap, state and local spending per pupil in districts with the lowest child poverty rates was $2,280 greater in 2003 than districts with the highest child poverty rates. The difference amounts to about $912,000 for a typical elementary school of 400 students-money that could be used for needed teachers, books, computers, and other resources.

IMAGINE a country where the typical white household has about six times the net worth-including home equity-as the typical household of color.

IMAGINE a country that doesn't count you as unemployed just because you're unemployed. To be counted in the official unemployment rate you must be actively searching for work. The government doesn't count people as "unemployed" if they are so discouraged from long and fruitless job searches they have given up looking. It doesn't count as "unemployed" those who couldn't look for work in the past month because they have no childcare, for example. If you need a full-time job, but you're working part-time-whether 1 hour or 34 hours weekly- because that's all you can find, you're counted as employed.

IMAGINE a country where prison is a growth industry. The government spends more than $25,000 per year to keep someone in prison, while cutting cost-effective programs of education, employment, community development, and mental illness and addiction treatment to keep them out. (Insane huh?)

IMAGINE a country that imprisons black people at a rate much higher than South Africa did under the apartheid. One out of eight black men ages 25-29 are incarcerated in prisons or jails compared to one out of 59 white men in the same age group. The nation's bureau of justice statistics reports that incarceration rates for black men of all ages were five to seven times greater than those for white men in the same age groups. Incarceration rates for black women are generally four times higher than for white men.

IMAGINE a country where health care is managed for healthy profit. In many countries, health care is a right. But this nation has health care for some instead of health care for all. Nearly one out of five people under the age of 65 has no health insurance, public or private. Health care is literally a matter of life or death.

What country is this?
It's the United States.

Martin Luther King Jr states: "A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. We are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside; but...one day the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be beaten and robbed as they make their journey through life...

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth...There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid or day laborer."


(adapted from "Imagine a Country-2006" by Holly Sklar)

God bless you ALL!

Politics...

I have made it no secret that I am a fan of Barak Obama. I am not too political, yet this year I have really studied and read about Obama, Clinton, and McCain. I have recently picked up Obama's book-the Audacity of Hope. This book is a political one, less about his childhood life (like his first book-Dreams of my Father).

The content of his chapters range from values and politics to faith and race. Here is an excerpt of his chapter, Race, in which really struck a cord with me:

A man talking to Obama says this about the westside of Chicago (where I live):
"See these kids out here, they just don't care. Police don't scare 'em , jail doesn't scare 'em-more than half f the young guys out here already got a record. If the police pick up ten guys standing on the corner, another ten'll take their place in an hour. That's the thing that's changed...the attitude of these kids. You can't blame them, really, because most of them have nothing at home. Their mothers can't tell them nothing-a lot of these women are still children themselves. Father's in jail. Nobody around to guide the kids, keep them in school, teach them respect. So these boys just raise themselves, basically on the streets. That's all they know. The gang, that's their family. They don't see any jobs out here except the drug trade. Don't get me wrong, we've still got a lot of good families around here...not a lot of money necessarily, but doing their best to keep their kids out of trouble. But they're just too outnumbered. The longer they stay, the more they feel their kids are at risk. So the minute they get a chance, they move out. And that just leaves things worse. "

Obama goes on to talk about stories (teenage rap sheets, teachers dealing with students threats and obscenities, etc.) and then he says this...:

"There was a time, of course, when such deep intergenerational poverty could still shock a nation...Not anymore. Today the images of the so called underclass are ubiquitous, a permanent fixture in American popular culture-in film and TV, where they're the foil of choice for the forces of law and order; in rap music and videos, where the gansta life is glorified and mimicked by white and black teenagers alike; and on the nightly news, where the depredation to be found in the inner city always makes for good copy. Rather than evoke our sympathy, our familiarity with the lives of the black poor has bred spasm of fear and outright contempt. But mostly it's bred indifference. Black men filling our prisions, black children unable to read or caught in gangland shooting, the black homeless sleeping on grates and in the parks of our nation's capital-we take these things for granted, as part of the natural order, a tragic situation, or perhaps, but not one for which we are culpable, and certainly not something subject to change..."


I could write on and on about what he said in response to this...and maybe I will in latter posts. He has some great ideas on how to bring folks out of poverty. But as I read this book, I sit and realize what Mr. Obama is really about. He is about change...he is about hope. I pray that if he becomes our next president, he does change our country...for the good. I know he is very liberal in a lot of his beliefs...yet I also know that Obama desires a lot of changes that America is in dire need of.

I hope that I haven't offended any hard core conservatives that are Obama haters. If you have an opinion or question...send it my way, I'd love to hear why you are or aren't supporting him.


God bless you all!

(BTW, my feelings or political choices do not in any way represent the feelings/political choice of my employer...lol)