Category: Poverty

3-D Printing

Hopefully my Sunday will be better than my Saturday…..for my time in the garden was cut short by monsoon rains all afternoon and into the evening…..

Homelessness is a big problem for many of our cities and towns and local governments have treated it like the plague…..they have made sleep illegal, made so benches could not be used for naps and put in spikes in places that would be good for napping….in other words a problem with these “bums” as so many like to call them….

While doing my reading I came across an article that I found very interesting……and it involves 3-D printing……

Food, water, and shelter are basic human needs, but 1.2 billion people in the world live without adequate housing, according to a report by the World Resources Institute’s Ross Center for Sustainable Cities. Today at SXSW, an Austin-based startup will unveil its approach to combat that deficiency by using low-cost 3D printing as a potential solution.

ICON has developed a method for printing a single-story 650-square-foot house out of cement in only 12 to 24 hours, a fraction of the time it takes for new construction. If all goes according to plan, a community made up of about 100 homes will be constructed for residents in El Salvador next year. The company has partnered with New Story, a nonprofit that is vested in international housing solutions. “We have been building homes for communities in Haiti, El Salvador, and Bolivia,” Alexandria Lafci, co-founder of New Story, tells The Verge.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/12/17101856/3d-printed-housing-icon-shelter-housing-crisis

A fascinating way to use 3-D printing and it would provide a much needed service to the community…..

Please let me have your thoughts on this…..

Advertisements

Why Do Some Americans Stay Poor

There is one aspect of American society that confuses many people especially those in other countries…..American poverty.

Many sociologists, economist and other social scientists have tried to explain this situation….few succeed.  This blogger tried to answer the question of Why Poverty 10 years ago….as I said….tried.

https://lobotero.com/2008/09/29/why-is-poverty-a-dirty-word/

It is a nagging question.  There are many myths to go with the question….the biggest of these is the answer that these poor people are freeloaders that do not want to work and all they do is take from the taxpayer.

It is a simple explanation that fits the narrative from the Reagan conserv years.  It was a myth then and it remains a myth today.  So why do some Americans stay poor?

In his State of the Union address, President Trump said “there has never been a better time to start living the American Dream.” But the new 2018 Prosperity Now Scorecard and its accompanying report says that isn’t so for low-income Americans.

“The system is, by just about all measures, stacked against those with low incomes and low wealth for the benefit of the wealthiest,” says the report from the nonpartisan but left-leaning Prosperity Now nonprofit, which provides research and recommendations regarding Americans with limited incomes.

One example: low-income people are ineligible for federal programs such as SNAP (food stamps) and TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) if they amass “even modest savings,” the report noted. Prosperity Now calls policies like this “a roadblock on the path to saving.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-the-real-reason-many-americans-stay-poor-2018-02-13

There is a considerable controversy about poverty and its relationship within inequality. From one point of view, any society with inequality is bound to have poverty. In other words, poverty is more likely to occur in a society which accepts inequality. Sociologists who adopt a relative definition of poverty accept that for the eradication of poverty, it is necessary to first abolish all inequality in income.

Now we know that the abolition of inequality in this country is never going to occur under this governmental standard.  Not too damn many Americans are poor because they want to be so…the system is the problem and a system change is not very damn likely.  Ergo the poor will remain poor and the wealthy will just continue to be exploitative and wealthier.

Closing Thought–08Feb18

After many decades of social activism there is one problem that could have been eliminated but there was never any seriousness to do so…..poverty.

And the poverty that irks me the most is child poverty……and the fact that it still exist is indefensible…..

The Trump administration’s proposals on the annual budget, the efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and restructuring of the tax system all point to a sad and even tragic conclusion. The poor will be poorer, dilapidated towns will continue to crumble, and crime will rise; but worst of all, our underprivileged children will be weaker, suffering from a lack of medical care and malnutrition with little or no prospect for better and brighter tomorrows.

The state of poverty in the United States, particularly among children, is abhorrent and scandalous, putting America, the richest and most powerful country in the world, in a shameful light. Successive American administrations are guilty of outrageous negligence toward poor children and have inflicted incalculable damage to millions who continue to suffer, causing a tremendous loss of human resources and productivity to the country.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/child-poverty-in-america-is-indefensible_us_59f21fabe4b06acda25f485c

I wish that I could have help end child poverty but all my hard work did little……sad to say that all everyone’s hard work has done little to eliminate the scourge of poverty.

Bye now…..until tomorrow……be safe, be well…..chuq

Closing Thought–11Dec17

Debilitating poverty……open sewage……poor education…..sounds like most Third World nations, right?

Maybe so but in this case it is some of the stuff a UN investigator on poverty found in rural Alabama……yes, right here in the US of A……

A United Nations official investigating poverty in the United States was shocked at the level of environmental degradation in some areas of rural Alabama, saying he had never seen anything like it in the developed world.

“I think it’s very uncommon in the First World. This is not a sight that one normally sees. I’d have to say that I haven’t seen this,” Philip Alston, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, told Connor Sheets of AL.com earlier this week as they toured a community in Butler County where raw sewage flows from homes through exposed PVC pipes and into open trenches and pits.

The tour through Alabama’s rural communities is part of a two-week investigation by the U.N. on poverty and human rights abuses in the United States. So far, U.N. investigators have visited cities and towns in California and Alabama, and will soon travel to Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia.

https://www.rawstory.com/2017/12/raw-sewage-hookworm-and-civil-rights-un-official-shocked-at-poverty-in-rural-alabama/

This in the “greatest” country in the world…….how pathetic is this?

That is it for me for today…..same time tomorrow….same blog…..be well….be safe……chuq

America’s First Black President

I remember when that was said about Bill Clinton….and today it sounds as moronic as it did back in the late 20th century.

I never understood why so many Black people think so highly of Clinton (that would be Bill not Hill)…..of all Americans he screwed them far more than any of the others.

His determination to make his Wall Street donors happy he helped remove Glass-Steagall which lead to the crash in 2008…but the on that I think was his worse path was for welfare reform….

This is a piece from 1997…..

I HATE welfare. To be more precise, I hate the welfare system we had until last August, when Bill Clinton signed a historic bill ending “welfare as we know it.” It was a system that contributed to chronic dependency among large numbers of people who would be the first to say they would rather have a job than collect a welfare check every month—and its benefits were never enough to lift people out of poverty. In April of 1967 I helped Robert Kennedy with a speech in which he called the welfare system bankrupt and said it was hated universally, by payers and recipients alike. Criticism of welfare for not helping people to become self-supporting is nothing new.

Source: The Worst Thing Bill Clinton Has Done – The Atlantic

To this day he is still held in high regards by Blacks and I still cannot see it.  He did nothing to make the poor less so….he did grease the palms of his high price donors at the expense of the nation’s poor.

He will never be high on my list of presidents.

Hillary Has a Plan For Poverty

I have had my fill of gossip in this election…..this is a reoccurring phenom in every election since Jefferson….it is getting sickening.

Instead of mentioning her plan for poverty on the campaign trail she issued an op-ed in NYTimes…….

Hillary Clinton penned an op-ed in today’s New York Times outlining her anti-poverty plan. She often talks about issues related to poverty, but this may be the first time in the general election that she has put forth a plan to address it. (she has been running for a year or more and it is important now…why?)

Clinton writes:

The best way to help families lift themselves out of poverty is to make it easier to find good-paying jobs. As president, one of my top priorities will be increasing economic growth that’s strong, fair and lasting. I will work with Democrats and Republicans to make a historic investment in good-paying jobs — jobs in infrastructure and manufacturing, technology and innovation, small businesses and clean energy. And we need to make sure that hard work is rewarded by raising the minimum wage and finally guaranteeing equal pay for women. (what part of this is a plan?  Sounds like the same platitudes we always hear)

Source: Clinton’s anti-poverty plan – AEI | Poverty Studies Blog » AEIdeas

The American Enterprise Institute…..whose main concern is the maximizing of corporate profits…..

These are the same promises we always hear at election time…..where is the plan to actually get this done?

But to be fair…here is a link to the original report……

Source: Full-Report.pdf

It is a lengthy report and if you read it then tell me where the promise can be fulfilled.

All this is just a re-hash of the bullshit from the DLC in the 1990’s……her plan will benefit no one but corporate interests…..

Please DO NOT be fooled by the bullshit passed off as a “plan”.

But speaking of a job…..let’s say Clinton wins the election and you would like a job in the White House….what must you do?

If you’re wondering how to get a job in a Hillary Clinton White House, start by reading campaign chairman John Podesta’s hacked emails.

From a billionaire plugging a federal official for a cabinet appointment to Podesta himself plugging the daughter of a friend for an internship, the trove of Podesta’s correspondence posted by WikiLeaks is a portrait of Washington insiderism, showing powerful people turning into supplicants using connections and flattery.

In other words…DREAM ON!
I am out….gone to start my weekend…..hope all have a wonderful weekend….

Relying on Millions of Dollars in Food Stamps

How many times have you read something by the nose picking bunch on the Right that makes you feel dirty?  Well….most of it……..

Mostly they go on and on about all those people that are looking for hand-outs…all the freebies the government has to offer….it really gets their goat when a poor family needs food stamps just to feed their children….and of course they say if they weren’t so damn lazy then they would have a good job and not need any government help….ever read this ranting crap?

Remember an attack on one is an attack on all…….

I cannot wait to hear what moronic excuse they have for not showing any interest in this story….

The Department of Defense has shown little concern about food security among active-duty military personnel.

Military service members on active duty spent $24 million in food stamps at military commissary shops from September 2014 to August 2015, and 45 percent of students in schools run by the military are eligible for free or reduced-price meal programs.

For years, the military has been embarrassed by reports showing that some active-duty service members struggle to feed their families and use government benefits to get by. A recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the Department of Defense (DoD) does not fully understand the scope of the problem.

Source: US Soldiers Are Relying on Millions of Dollars in Food Stamps to Survive

Well what does the “Patriotic Right” have to say about this?

I realize that the troops are only important at rally times or during some holiday in their honor…..

We ask out troops to “defend” this country with their lives and yet we cannot see that their families do not have to depend on food stamps to feed their children…..kinda pathetic.

But what can you expect from a country where 98% has no idea what it means to serve?

Our troops and vets deserve so much more than this country is willing to give them and yet their fate depends on the cowards that hide behind them….the American way!