A theologian friend took her car to a Jiffy Lube for servicing. Not having anything to read, she picked up a manual on the coffee table about boating. A chapter on the rules for what happens when boats encounter one another on the open sea described two kinds of craft: burdened and privileged. The craft with power that can accelerate and push its way through the waves, change direction, and stop on demand is the burdened one. The craft dependent on the forces of nature, wind, tide, and human effort to keep going is the privileged craft. Since powerful boats can forge their way forward under their own power, they are burdened with responsibility to give the right of way to the powerless or privileged vessels dependent on the vagaries of the tide, wind, and weather. "Who wrote this thing?" my friend asked. "Mother Teresa? What's going on in our land when the New Jersey State Department of Transportation knows that the powerful must give way if the powerless are to make safe harbor and the government of the United States and the church of Jesus Christ and other people of God are having trouble with the concept?"
How do we answer her, political, faith, and community leaders and citizens of our nation? What is our "theory of action" or values compass as we seek solutions to rampant joblessness and poverty among millions of Americans, including 16.4 million poor children according to national U.S. census data released last week? What beyond politics and unbridled greed and power will calibrate our nation's decision making? Is cutting helpless babies the same as cutting some of the many budget-busting tax loopholes for millionaires and billionaires? Is cutting our children's teachers, nutrition supplements, Head Start and child care the same as cutting powerful corporate subsidies or tax breaks for corporate jets? A child cut from health care or unable to get services when abused or neglected may never heal. Is it right or fair for Congress to wield a budget guillotine -- called sequestration -- if a Super Committee of 12 cannot reach a responsible agreement on both revenue and budget cuts? This will leave a range of discretionary programs for children, the poor and middle class, and seniors on the chopping block. Does the irresponsible no-new-tax pledge signed by an astounding 279 current members of Congress (238 Representatives and 41 Senators), including the six Republican members of the Congressional "Super Committee," make the latter an irrelevant and unjust nonstarter? Are the hungry child and the huge corporate farmer who gets massive government "subsidies" (welfare) equally responsible for the deficit? I am reminded of French writer Anatole France's passage in The Red Lily: "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." Is that our leaders' and nation's code of morality and justice? If so, the very dream and idea of an America where all have a fair chance and level playing field is dead.
According to new national U.S. census data, over 46 million people in America are poor -- more than the entire combined populations of Iraq and Niger. A 2010 front page New York Times story reported that one in 50 -- or six million -- people in America had no income and depended on food stamps to stave off the wolves of hunger. It provoked almost no response. Children -- the most vulnerable and least culpable among us for the deficit -- are the poorest age group. And the younger they are the poorer they are. Inadequate national and state investment in early childhood and education, and government's failure to protect children now from continuing economic downturn, are making them poorer. More than one million children fell into poverty between 2009 and 2010; almost a half million fell into extreme poverty.
It is disgraceful that the number of poor children in our rich nation is greater than the entire combined populations of Haiti and Liberia -- two of the poorest countries on earth -- and that the number of children in extreme poverty is equivalent to the whole population of Israel. The number of poor children under age five, the years of greatest brain development, is more than the population of Sierra Leone. I have yet to hear political leaders in either party nationally or in the states say we will not cut young children who have no belts to tighten. I believe no child cuts and no cuts for the poor should trump no tax increases for the rich in a just society.
The budget debate today and the role of our national government is about who we are or want to be as Americans. Who is government -- our collective voice -- designed to protect? The powerful or the powerless, some or all of us? Whose responsibility is it to ensure all our children are healthy, housed, educated, and prepared to join a workforce to compete with and out innovate the Chinese and others in 5, 10, or 15 years? Parents cannot achieve this alone, especially when millions of jobs and homes have been lost. Will cutting child and family nutrition, early childhood programs, education, child care and after-school enrichment programs, and youth jobs close or widen the huge wealth and income gaps between rich and poor? Will these cuts make us a more or less secure society? Where has our common sense gone? Where has our moral sense gone? Are there no bottom lines? Will children's lives continue to be cut, ignored, and neglected because they don't vote or lobby or make campaign contributions? Will they continue to be punished for parents they did not choose and are not responsible for? Do we just let them die, go homeless, hungry, and unhealthy when jobless parents cannot provide the basic necessities of life through no fault of their own?
The Children's Defense Fund's trademarked logo is based on the old fisherman's prayer -- "Dear Lord be good to me. The sea is so wide and my boat is so small." It shows a tiny little sailboat on a vast sea drawn by a young child many years ago based on the prayer. Never has it seemed more poignant and appropriate than today as our children are being tossed all about in a rough and uncertain sea of life without rafts by killer economic and political waves from the wakes of gigantic, powerful ocean liners -- capsizing small child boats. Is our nation protecting the Titanic -- a burdened boat enjoined to give right of way -- rather than protecting the child's small privileged boat struggling without power to reach safe harbor?
What can you do? Demand your political leaders protect the child's small boat -- the privileged boat -- and tell the powerful burdened boat to give them the right of way.
Follow Marian Wright Edelman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ChildDefender
The Titanic passengers did not vote to hit the iceberg.
When a taxpayer earns money at their job, is it their money or the government's money? The government determines a tax on the worker, and some of the money now becomes the government's money. When there is a change in the tax law, and the rate changes, or there are deductions, whose money is changing hands? Is it the government giving back money tot he taxpayer? Or is it actually the taxpayer keeping more of what they earned and won?
Maybe this seems like semantics, but it is much more than that. It is to easy for people to think the government owns the money. Tax cuts are not an expense. They are allowing the citizens to keep more of what they earn.
Does the government really know better how to spend money than the taxpayers?
Also in 2007, the "captain" at the moment called for the lifeboats to be deployed with the cry, "Weathy and privilidged, first!"
Even now, Boehner and his cronies are insisting that the wealthy need all the lifejackets do that their "job creating" investment does not fall beneath the waves.
Those exhausted from trreading water are called "weak" and "lazy".
It's nearly gone and I cannot for the life of me understand why we would choose a different America - one that is cold and heartless.
I grew up in rural America and now that I think about it back then most of us were farmers. Small communities that through necessity worked together to bring in a harvest every year.
We are no longer small communities tied to the land. The area I knew as home is now a shell, gone are most of the farms and the people with them. The people there still do their best to help each other but the families that remain are dying out since the young people move away to find employment. I am a prime example of that.
We are no longer connected as we once were, now we hardly know our neighbors and are concerned only with ourselves and our immediate families. Now it seems we are all about ourselves. It's me, me, me.
The America I grew up in is gone and with it the careing and working together. If we keep going on our present course we may find ourselves back there again out of necessity. I wonder how many could "live off the land" again? If we don't change course we may find out.
Jesus gave our free food, wine, health care, and education, and told his follower to do the same, quietly without fanfare, like the Liberal did with food stamps, and welfare, not loudly and profanely like the monarchs did throwing coins out the carriage window to watch the serfs scramble, or the modern days monarch going to swanky parties as "benefits" to the poor.
How did that ever get twisted in to the GOP/Tea let em die, hang em high, kill all Muslims disaster?
Charity has never worked in history. The closest we as a species have come to fulfilling Jesus' call to help the poor, is using the power of the democracy, the republics to systemically care for the poor. I think Jesus would be pleased and proud of that accomplishment.
Vote for the Kucinich, Dean, Grayson CPC progressives in the primaries and the dems in the general.
Only Tories vote for the GOP/Tea., Right?
The MIC robbed us.
54% of our F taxes for WAR. http://www.warresisters.org/pages/piechart.htm
Twice the rest of the world combined.
If we cut our War by 90%, The USA would still spend the most on WAR.
The citizens safety net, green energy investments and infrastructure, did not bankrupt us.
The MIC, the Banksters and the ungrateful rich robbed the citizens and the world.
The U.S. is divided by the forces of greed and self-interest who don't care. In fact, they follow the Reaganite ideology that the wealthy are blessed and the poor deserve to be poor because they are merely "lazy."
That right-wing ideology worked like a charm for the Reaganites for the last 30 years. But look where it got us.
Have you had enough? Wouldn't it be great to fulfill the real American Dream of the Founding Fathers, with real equal rights, real freedom of religion (with freedom from Theocratic imposition), real justice, and real domestic tranquility and peace?
Listen to the songs of man whose message can make a difference, at http://www.soundclick.com/ttap You can read a short summary of his message there too, and there's a link to a greater message.