forgetting pre-recession poverty.

by Hunter Morrison

The headline of CNN.com’s international page as I write this currently reads:  ”Recession pushing families on to streets.”  It chronicles the story of, you guessed it, a woman struggling to make ends meet, who got evicted, and now lives in her car.  There are no shortage of stories like this in the media, nor from the lips of politicians eager to tell heartbreaking stories from their electorate in order to gain an image of having sympathy and an understanding of the common man’s struggles.  Indeed, the media, politicians, and others have latched onto the stories of people who are now out of work, who are now struggling to find a job, a house, or support their kids.  Or the stories of those that lost their retirement fund, lost their house, lost their insurance, lost their car.   There’s been a lot of focus on the “new poor” in this recession.

Truth be told, I find that there’s nothing arguable reporting on the situation of those who have had hardship as a result of this economy.  It highlights how truly broken the system is, and how a great deal of lives are being ruined, or lived on the extreme edge.  The problem is that it’s taken the creation of a new poor class in America for people to start actually caring; to start actually noticing.  A lot of the reporting and coverage in this country is acting as if the problems people are facing now are somehow unique or somehow only a recent phenomenon.  This attitude continues the longstanding tradition of ignoring America’s most ignored class, the poor.  The way the media is talking about struggling people now, it seems as if it would shock some people if you told them that poverty existed in this country before the economy began its decline last year.  Some of the discussion that is now making the rounds is downright insulting to these people who were poor before, as well. Continue reading this article.

A bailout of trust, not banks.

by Hunter Morrison

This evening the Senate passed a revised bailout plan, with questionable new riders attached to it.  These new provisions aim to help entice more House members to support the bill, hopefully pushing it to pass within the week.  Whether or not this strategy for gaining approval will work remains to be seen, as some of the newer additions, while possibly bringing some new Representatives on board, may alienate others that already approved the initial version of the bill.  Yet, despite the changes, perhaps the biggest problem still facing the bailout plan is how the general public perceives it–as a bailout for Wall Street fatcats at the expense of Joe Taxpayer.

This gut reaction is leading many Americans to strongly oppose the plan.  It is a natural feeling, the banks and related firms were put into this situation through their own greed, and now the middle class is being asked to bail them out.  Is giving them more money a really good idea?  Our money?  It’s easy to have a strong negative reaction to this, and some have even been driven to call up their local Representatives in Congress, which surely helped fuel Nay votes on both sides of the aisle earlier this week.

Opposition to the bailout is not only natural.  In this case, it’s also entirely correct.  For its stated purposes, the bailout is ridiculous.  Yet, if a strong American economy is desired, then a bailout simply must be passed.  This appears to be contradiction, but it is a result of the stakes of the current crisis being ill-defined.  The issue has been framed in terms of fixing the problems on Wall Street, and while the bailout does have a possibility of doing that, it is really more about restoring trust into the American economic system.

Continue reading this article.