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Poor Off the Radar of Rich, Powerful |
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by Marilou Johanek
(No verified email address) |
17 Sep 2005
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They can be ignored or marginalized because they don't vote, have no influence save for a few advocates, and don't represent any political threat to the controlling party.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of citizens living below the poverty line in 2004 - 37 million - rose for the fourth year in a row. The numbers have not declined since Mr. Bush became President. |
It wasn't racism that doomed the poor, mostly black population of New Orleans. To be sure, racism is alive and well in America, but that didn't destroy the lives of the destitute.
No, what left them to their own sparse devices was elitism. Unlike some, I don't think the Bush Administration revealed a racist side with its "unacceptable" post-Katrina response. Rather it revealed an elitist-driven culture out of touch with a big slice of America that lives paycheck to paycheck.
George W. Bush and Friends don't hate the disadvantaged; they just can't relate. And vice versa. It's safe to say few among Katrina's dirt poor victims in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi have had the luxury of playing at life until age 40, like the President.
Few could depend on the financial generosity of family benefactors to repeatedly bail them out of failed business ventures like the President. And unless they hit a lottery jackpot, none will ever know what it's like to summer at a vacation compound on the coast or winter at estates in Texas.
Those perks come from belonging to an elite East Coast dynasty that made its fortune in oil and rubs elbows with the upper crust as opposed to the desperately deprived.
It didn't shock Kennebunkport society that the senior Bush never saw a grocery store scanner before the 1992 presidential campaign. His wife, Barbara, was likewise out of her league when she opined that the poor who lost what little they had to Katrina were better off after the hurricane than before.
Elitism. It's what doomed the expendable poor of New Orleans and what makes the impoverished masses easy to overlook in every big city and small town across the land. The super poor, crowded together in substandard housing, public shelters, or the family car, are a distant matter of interest to the super rich more concerned with repealing the estate tax than funding Head Start programs.
Yet New Orleans exposed the ugly bulge in the national pie chart that lives hand to mouth. The catastrophe forced the nation to look at the lopsided balance between the have-nots and the opulent lifestyles of the rich and famous.
It showed America and the world how shamefully the indigent are often treated in the richest country on earth.
There are millions who wear hand-me-downs from Goodwill, if they're lucky, and almost never eat three square meals a day. They're at the bottom of the economic curve, earning minimum wage at jobs on nobody's career path. Most work without safety nets, like health insurance.
Their kids go to the worst schools in the community. They have the highest drop-out rates. Their chance of succeeding much past table cleaner at Burger King is minimal.
The wealthy prefer not to dwell on the fact that many Americans born into the insidious cycle of poverty can't pull themselves up by their bootstraps because they can't afford boots. They need a hand, not a hand-out, from their government to get beyond nothing to lose.
They need a lifeline that won't break for lack of funding when they pull on it for strength and sustenance. But they're at the mercy of those in power. They can be ignored or marginalized because they don't vote, have no influence save for a few advocates, and don't represent any political threat to the controlling party.
The Bush Administration fawns about faith-based good works, inner-city development with private capital, and charitable deductions for the underprivileged, but its heart is with the corporate money-changers. It is their welfare the administration is dedicated to safeguarding with tax breaks and incentives to boost business investments and record profits.
From its privileged pedestal the administration sees a thriving aristocracy hoarding all the wealth as somehow beneficial to the greater good. The affluent, argue administration millionaires, have the ability to raise the standard of living for all. You know, a rising tide lifts all boats.
The theory is bunk and the proof is New Orleans. Like the discredited trickle-down dogma, it is meaningless to the penniless washed out of their homes along the Gulf coast.
Same goes for the poverty-stricken waiting for relief from New York to Toledo and Los Angeles.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of citizens living below the poverty line in 2004 - 37 million - rose for the fourth year in a row. The numbers have not declined since Mr. Bush became President.
Not surprising when empathy for the poor remained an elusive commodity even after a national disaster named Katrina.
© 2005 Toledo Blade
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