Define “poor”

A couple months ago, Fox “News” pundits pooh-poohed a survey about poverty in the United States, expressing amazement that, according to the survey, something like 90% of all poor people own a refrigerator. Fox’s rationale? If someone owns a refrigerator, how can they be poor?

A couple days ago, conservatives were at it again: Romney economic adviser Kevin Hassett in a Wall Street Journal article questioned how someone can be poor if they own a microwave oven (Daily Kos).

When I was ten, my family visited Puerto Rico. Several times during our stay we drove a causeway in San Juan over a shantytown on stilts along the banks of a dirty, marshy river. My father explained that people lived there because they couldn’t afford a house on land. Each time we took that highway, I stared at the houses and people below. I knew they were poor, yet they were fat and wore nice clothes. I was puzzled. This didn’t square with my picture of poverty. When you are poor, you're supposed to be starving and dressed in rags.

When my eldest daughter was 14, she went with a small group to Bangladesh through a project sponsored by her school. While they were there, they visited a slum in Dhaka. When she came home and talked about the visit to the slum, she was surprised that even though the people who lived there owned almost nothing, most of them had a cell phone.

I can’t tell if Fox News and Hassett are being deliberately obtuse or just disingenuous. Do conservatives really need to be told that how things look are not necessarily how things are? As a child, I didn’t know that cheap, high carbohydrate rice and beans were an Island staple and that clothing can be cheap or expensive. And things once deemed luxuries are inexpensive today, and to some people, necessities: Dhaka slum dwellers may live in shacks but they all have cell phones. Does this mean they’re not poor?

Poverty is not about the things people have. It’s about things and opportunities they don’t – nutritious food, appropriate clothing, decent housing, safety, education, and the ability to acquire these things for oneself and one’s family.

My message to Fox and Hassett?

Grow up!

© 2012 Kvick Thoughts. All rights reserved.

Age of selfishness (or getting my way – what I want, when I want, how I want)

I was making dinner and handed the onion chopper to my teenage daughter who was sitting at the table doing schoolwork. “Would you chop this, please?”

She accepted the chopper. “What are we having?”

“Lasagna,” I said, aware that that she doesn’t like it.

She suddenly stopped chopping. “I can’t support that.”

I laughed. Her reply epitomized the current political and social culture of the United States, if not the world: If you don’t like the outcome, don’t support the process! But as a parent, I was also a little irked: It’s one thing to express an opinion; it’s another not to cooperate because she doesn’t like the menu. As the designated cook for the family that night, I needed her help whether she liked it or not.

In an online article, “Why We Fight for Economic Freedom,” Charles Koch of the infamous Koch brothers tries to equate government intervention in American business with central planning in the former Soviet Union by listing a series of platitudes that warn about the danger of big government and power with no acknowledgment that American and Soviet economics evolved from completely different systems of government, and that, most tellingly, in the United States, “‘the government’” is you, me, and even Charles Koch. The irony, as any first-year economics student can tell you, is that unfettered economic freedom inevitably leads to oligarchy and monopoly, either public or private. “Nations with the greatest degree of economic freedom [read: limited government] tend to have citizens who are much better off in every way,” writes Koch. Not necessarily, Charles, unless you mean we’re all better off if we do what you tell us.

Harold Simmons, one of the biggest contributors to Republican candidates and causes during this election, also believes his business acumen justifies a certain derring-do. Charles Homans writes in The New Republic (May 10, 2012) that in 1993, Simmons used the pension fund of one of his companies to take over another company, a move the U.S. government deemed unduly risky. When he found himself in court, Simmons justified his action by claiming the deal was a prudent investment, but the judge ruled against him anyway. “‘That’s when I started contributing to politicians with free-market and antiregulation [sic] agendas,’ he later told [The Wall Street Journal]. ‘If the Labor Department hadn’t sued, that pension would be as rich as me.’” So in Simmons world, the ends justify the means? And what if he had been allowed to proceed and had been wrong? Bernie Madoff?

Democracy allows everyone an equal say in how they are governed in accordance with principles that permit them to live free from oppression or coercion by others. (Thanks, Wikipedia.) It does not mean getting your own way. Nor does it guarantee efficiency. Democracy is about helping as many people as possible get their own way while protecting us all from individuals and groups who would impose their will on everyone else if they could. When it comes to democracy, Koch and Simmons thrive because of government, not in spite of it. I guess they missed that day in civics class.

As I told my daughter, “If you don’t like what I’m making, don’t eat it.” But it's my job to make dinner for everyone, and as a member of the family, she's expected to help - even if she doesn’t like lasagna.

© 2012 Kvick Thoughts. All rights reserved.

(See related post Corporate give and take.)

Winning an election vote by vote

When you read about the ridiculous amounts of money being channeled by PACs and billionaires into the 2012 election – all sanctioned by the Citizens United Supreme Court decision – it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and discouraged.  How can a candidate without big money ever hope to win an election?

Then I think about Quaide Williams.

Quaide is a U.S. citizen who lives in Germany. Two years ago, Quaide, inspired by Republican Sarah Palin and her campaign bus, started planning a 6-week, trans-Europe voter registration bus tour to register Americans who live in Europe for absentee ballots in the 2012 election.

U.S. citizens who vote from abroad are an overlooked but increasingly important block of voters. In the 2008 U.S. senate race in Minnesota, for example, Al Franken won the seat by 312 votes. This is fewer than the total number of absentee ballots received in Minnesota during that election. And according to an article in The Huffington Post, if the number of U.S. citizens who live aboard were a state, it would be the 18^th largest in the U.S.

Although the tour was organized in cooperation with Democrats Abroad, Quaide and his fellow passengers, Americans who live elsewhere in Europe and who join him for a few days at a time, will help register any U.S. citizen who wants to vote regardless of party affiliation. Why?  Probably because they, like me, believe voting is essential for a healthy robust democracy. Of course, they would prefer to register more Democrats than Republicans, but they understand that the act of voting is important in itself.

The bus tour is essentially self-financed, and driver and riders rely on members of Democrats Abroad to house and feed them as they travel from city to city. Last Saturday, following a busy afternoon in Stockholm, Quaide and his “roadies” made a quick stop in Västerås, a city near me. I greeted them with coffee – this is Sweden after all – and a canister of homemade peanut butter cookies while they went into action. We received local media coverage and even registered a couple of voters.  An hour and a half later, at 6:00 PM, Quaide and his team hit the road again for a 5½-hour drive to Oslo. The bus tour will visit 27 cities in 13 countries.

Unless the PACs and deep pocket donors are literally buying votes, it’s still flesh and blood individuals – I can’t say “people” for legal reasons – who will decide this election.  And it’s important to remember that the biggest spender doesn't always win.

How do you counter the influence of big money in an election? Vote by vote, with dedicated volunteers and an occasional homemade cookie.

© 2012 Kvick Thoughts. All rights reserved.

Register for an absentee ballot

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