RedCeltic
29th November 2001, 17:07
I was reading through my e mail this morning, and saw an article about my home... Long Island NY... in Worker's World News. (a US Communist newspaper) While the deep divisions of classes that are present on Long Island are nothing new to me... I thought I would share this well writen article for all of you on this board... anyone who dares ask "Why are you a socialist.." after reading this article... it should be obvious... hunger and homelessness is all around me on this island domenated by the richest people in America... on the most expensive property.
HUNGER AND HOMELESSNESS SOAR
By Heather Cottin
Freeport, N.Y.
In the gourmet boutiques of Westhampton, Long Island,
shoppers decide whether to buy crabmeat or lobster for
their
guests. But in Mastic Beach, 10 miles away, a woman at a
soup kitchen tells a social worker from Adelphi
University:
"Our welfare benefits were cut. My husband lost his job,
so
we can't pay our bills. ... Our housing was condemned and
social services did not provide enough rent for new
housing.
... When we lost our jobs, we lost medical insurance."
The new Fairway supermarket in Plainview offers hundreds
of
international cheeses to tease the palates of Long
Island's
North Shore residents who can afford these delights. But
four miles away, in the Church of St. Kilian Outreach
Center
in Farmingdale, a parishioner says, "My biggest fear is
not
only going hungry, but ending up on the street because I
can't afford to pay rent. My food stamps have been
drastically reduced."
This was the picture long before the Sept. 11 disaster,
according to the report "Poverty Amid Plenty," published
by
Catholic Charities and Adelphi School of Social Work in
April 2001.
This is the new face of homelessness. According to
Newsday,
in June of 1999 suburban poverty was growing "at a
significantly faster pace than urban poverty."
Community Advocates--a housing-assistance agency--noted in
February that there were 50,000 homeless people on Long
Island, 20,000 of them children. Newsday on Nov. 13
reported
that "the homeless population of Nassau and Suffolk
counties
has sharply increased in recent months, the highest since
the mid-1990s. There are also hundreds of families on the
brink [of homelessness], including those who work, who
have
never been on public assistance."
But now Washington has confirmed that a full-blown
recession
is underway. Some 40 miles away, in New York City, the
problem of hunger and homelessness has reached critical
proportions.
Columnist Bob Herbert wrote in the New York Times of Nov.
22, "There are more than 1,000 soup kitchens and food
pantries in the city, and they are stretched beyond
capacity. Last year in New York, about 20 percent of the
pantries in the city had to turn people away because they
ran out of food. That figure is expected to reach 30
percent
this year, according to Joel Berg, director of the New
York
City Coalition Against Hunger."
Four days later the Times editorialized, "Food for
Survival,
the city's largest supplier of emergency food, estimated
that more than a million New Yorkers were relying on soup
kitchens, food pantries and shelters to avoid going
hungry.
The New York City Coalition Against Hunger, which
represents
about 1,000 kitchens and pantries, reported a similar
upsurge in demand. Unless more food becomes available, the
coalition's members say they will be forced to turn away
hundreds of thousands of hungry people."
People are hungry and homeless, and the situation is
deteriorating in the recession. But these problems are not
new.
On May 24, the Guardian of Britain did an analysis of
poverty in the U.S. Food bank use back then was "up 75
percent in some American cities, [and] one in five U.S.
children lives in poverty; 44.3 million are uninsured. ...
According to several new reports, it turns out that the
reason for deepening U.S. poverty is rather simple: it's
all
those rich people. Extreme wealth created in the top tier
of
the economy, rather than trickling down and making
everyone
better off, is having a direct negative impact on those
living in extreme poverty at the bottom."
RIPPING UP SAFETY NET FOR FUN AND PROFIT
Meanwhile, corporate lobbyists are flooding Washington
with
a myriad of tax cut proposals that will save the big
corporations billions.
The House on Oct. 26 voted to repeal the Alternative
Minimum
Tax on corporations. This is now part of the "economic
stimulus" package before the Senate. The AMT has required
profitable companies to pay at least some tax, no matter
how
many loopholes they can find.
If the Senate passes the House version, the repeal would
be
retroactive, so companies would get rebates of all the
Alternative Minimum Tax they've paid over the last 15
years.
The repeal would allow many companies to pay zero U.S.
income tax in perpetuity.
Wouldn't we all like to get back the taxes we've paid over
the last 15 years?
Plenty of economists agree that the claims these corporate
tax cuts will "stimulate the economy" are bogus. They know
full well that the corporate moguls have no intention of
investing in an economy that is operating at a recession
level.
In a recession, people don't buy much. Inventories are
high
and manufacturers still have excess capacity, so tax cut
or
no tax cut, capitalists won't invest in expanding
production.
What this amounts to is robbery from the workers who don't
have the loopholes that businesses do. These taxpayers
will
be obliged, according to the Nov. 18 New York Times, to
give
$1.4 billion to IBM, $833 million to General Motors, $671
million to General Electric, $572 million to Chevron
Texaco,
and $254 million to Enron.
What Congress has accomplished since ending "welfare as we
know it" under Bill Clinton has been the whittling away of
the meager welfare system that was created under the New
Deal in the 1930s and expanded slightly under the War on
Poverty in the 1960s. In both these periods, worker
militancy pushed the government to do something for poor
people.
But "supply side" economics, which is just code words for
stealing from the poor and giving to the rich, has been
promoted since the 1970s, and has accelerated in this
declining economy.
Cutting assistance to poor families and failing to build
sufficient low-income housing in the past 30 years has had
a
devastating effect on the poor. Housing costs are the
single
most expensive part of a worker's budget. The
Adelphi/Catholic Charities report noted that poor families
spend almost 60 percent of their pay on housing. Finding
affordable housing is growing nearly impossible.
Even the paltry amount of assistance workers have received
for housing is being cut. The federal program known as
Section 8, which subsidizes low-income housing, is in
grave
danger. Congress, according to the Nov. 17 New York Times,
is now unwilling to provide $800 million for the program.
In
the tri-state region around New York City alone, this
program has enabled 62,000 households to afford apartments
by offsetting rent costs. Its disappearance would lead to
an
exponential increase in homelessness nationwide,
especially
affecting the elderly and disabled.
The capitalist class has its program--maximize profits at
any cost. The workers need to fight for their own
program--
one that would guarantee food and decent housing, day
care,
health care, culture and education for all.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
[email protected] For subscription info send message to:
[email protected] Web: http://www.workers.org)
HUNGER AND HOMELESSNESS SOAR
By Heather Cottin
Freeport, N.Y.
In the gourmet boutiques of Westhampton, Long Island,
shoppers decide whether to buy crabmeat or lobster for
their
guests. But in Mastic Beach, 10 miles away, a woman at a
soup kitchen tells a social worker from Adelphi
University:
"Our welfare benefits were cut. My husband lost his job,
so
we can't pay our bills. ... Our housing was condemned and
social services did not provide enough rent for new
housing.
... When we lost our jobs, we lost medical insurance."
The new Fairway supermarket in Plainview offers hundreds
of
international cheeses to tease the palates of Long
Island's
North Shore residents who can afford these delights. But
four miles away, in the Church of St. Kilian Outreach
Center
in Farmingdale, a parishioner says, "My biggest fear is
not
only going hungry, but ending up on the street because I
can't afford to pay rent. My food stamps have been
drastically reduced."
This was the picture long before the Sept. 11 disaster,
according to the report "Poverty Amid Plenty," published
by
Catholic Charities and Adelphi School of Social Work in
April 2001.
This is the new face of homelessness. According to
Newsday,
in June of 1999 suburban poverty was growing "at a
significantly faster pace than urban poverty."
Community Advocates--a housing-assistance agency--noted in
February that there were 50,000 homeless people on Long
Island, 20,000 of them children. Newsday on Nov. 13
reported
that "the homeless population of Nassau and Suffolk
counties
has sharply increased in recent months, the highest since
the mid-1990s. There are also hundreds of families on the
brink [of homelessness], including those who work, who
have
never been on public assistance."
But now Washington has confirmed that a full-blown
recession
is underway. Some 40 miles away, in New York City, the
problem of hunger and homelessness has reached critical
proportions.
Columnist Bob Herbert wrote in the New York Times of Nov.
22, "There are more than 1,000 soup kitchens and food
pantries in the city, and they are stretched beyond
capacity. Last year in New York, about 20 percent of the
pantries in the city had to turn people away because they
ran out of food. That figure is expected to reach 30
percent
this year, according to Joel Berg, director of the New
York
City Coalition Against Hunger."
Four days later the Times editorialized, "Food for
Survival,
the city's largest supplier of emergency food, estimated
that more than a million New Yorkers were relying on soup
kitchens, food pantries and shelters to avoid going
hungry.
The New York City Coalition Against Hunger, which
represents
about 1,000 kitchens and pantries, reported a similar
upsurge in demand. Unless more food becomes available, the
coalition's members say they will be forced to turn away
hundreds of thousands of hungry people."
People are hungry and homeless, and the situation is
deteriorating in the recession. But these problems are not
new.
On May 24, the Guardian of Britain did an analysis of
poverty in the U.S. Food bank use back then was "up 75
percent in some American cities, [and] one in five U.S.
children lives in poverty; 44.3 million are uninsured. ...
According to several new reports, it turns out that the
reason for deepening U.S. poverty is rather simple: it's
all
those rich people. Extreme wealth created in the top tier
of
the economy, rather than trickling down and making
everyone
better off, is having a direct negative impact on those
living in extreme poverty at the bottom."
RIPPING UP SAFETY NET FOR FUN AND PROFIT
Meanwhile, corporate lobbyists are flooding Washington
with
a myriad of tax cut proposals that will save the big
corporations billions.
The House on Oct. 26 voted to repeal the Alternative
Minimum
Tax on corporations. This is now part of the "economic
stimulus" package before the Senate. The AMT has required
profitable companies to pay at least some tax, no matter
how
many loopholes they can find.
If the Senate passes the House version, the repeal would
be
retroactive, so companies would get rebates of all the
Alternative Minimum Tax they've paid over the last 15
years.
The repeal would allow many companies to pay zero U.S.
income tax in perpetuity.
Wouldn't we all like to get back the taxes we've paid over
the last 15 years?
Plenty of economists agree that the claims these corporate
tax cuts will "stimulate the economy" are bogus. They know
full well that the corporate moguls have no intention of
investing in an economy that is operating at a recession
level.
In a recession, people don't buy much. Inventories are
high
and manufacturers still have excess capacity, so tax cut
or
no tax cut, capitalists won't invest in expanding
production.
What this amounts to is robbery from the workers who don't
have the loopholes that businesses do. These taxpayers
will
be obliged, according to the Nov. 18 New York Times, to
give
$1.4 billion to IBM, $833 million to General Motors, $671
million to General Electric, $572 million to Chevron
Texaco,
and $254 million to Enron.
What Congress has accomplished since ending "welfare as we
know it" under Bill Clinton has been the whittling away of
the meager welfare system that was created under the New
Deal in the 1930s and expanded slightly under the War on
Poverty in the 1960s. In both these periods, worker
militancy pushed the government to do something for poor
people.
But "supply side" economics, which is just code words for
stealing from the poor and giving to the rich, has been
promoted since the 1970s, and has accelerated in this
declining economy.
Cutting assistance to poor families and failing to build
sufficient low-income housing in the past 30 years has had
a
devastating effect on the poor. Housing costs are the
single
most expensive part of a worker's budget. The
Adelphi/Catholic Charities report noted that poor families
spend almost 60 percent of their pay on housing. Finding
affordable housing is growing nearly impossible.
Even the paltry amount of assistance workers have received
for housing is being cut. The federal program known as
Section 8, which subsidizes low-income housing, is in
grave
danger. Congress, according to the Nov. 17 New York Times,
is now unwilling to provide $800 million for the program.
In
the tri-state region around New York City alone, this
program has enabled 62,000 households to afford apartments
by offsetting rent costs. Its disappearance would lead to
an
exponential increase in homelessness nationwide,
especially
affecting the elderly and disabled.
The capitalist class has its program--maximize profits at
any cost. The workers need to fight for their own
program--
one that would guarantee food and decent housing, day
care,
health care, culture and education for all.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
[email protected] For subscription info send message to:
[email protected] Web: http://www.workers.org)