'Stop kicking people when they're down'

August 9, 2011 By Fred Clark 125 Comments

If we want to reduce poverty, we have to stop doing the things that make people poor and keep them that way. Stop underpaying people for the jobs they do. Stop treating working people as potential criminals and let them have the right to organize for better wages and working conditions.

Stop the institutional harassment of those who turn to the government for help or find themselves destitute in the streets. … At least we should decide, as a bare minimum principle, to stop kicking people when they’re down.

That’s from Barbara Ehrenreich, founder and senior pastor of Saddleback Church, an evangelical megachurch in Lake Forest, Calif. She …

Wait, sorry. That’s wrong. Rick Warren is the founder and senior pastor of that Orange County megachurch and, well, he’s been known to disagree with Ehrenreich about that bare minimum principle she recommends.

Ehrenreich is actually a liberal journalist and author of the best-selling book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. That book evidences a deeper empathy and a more Christlike concern for the poor than we’ve seen yet from anyone who bears the title of “senior pastor” at a megachurch.

The quote above is from her recent essay “Turning Poverty Into an American Crime.” Here’s a bit more from Ehrenreich:

When the Parentes finally got into “the system” and began receiving food stamps and some cash assistance, they discovered why some recipients have taken to calling TANF “Torture and Abuse of Needy Families.” From the start, the TANF experience was “humiliating,” Kristen says. The caseworkers “treat you like a bum. They act like every dollar you get is coming out of their own paychecks.”

The Parentes discovered that they were each expected to apply for 40 jobs a week, although their car was on its last legs and no money was offered for gas, tolls, or babysitting. In addition, Kristen had to drive 35 miles a day to attend “job readiness” classes offered by a private company called Arbor, which, she says, were “frankly a joke.”

Nationally, according to Kaaryn Gustafson of the University of Connecticut Law School, “applying for welfare is a lot like being booked by the police.” There may be a mug shot, fingerprinting, and lengthy interrogations as to one’s children’s true paternity. …

… Anyone can fall into debt, and although we pride ourselves on the abolition of debtors’ prison, in at least one state, Texas, people who can’t pay fines for things like expired inspection stickers may be made to “sit out their tickets” in jail.

More commonly, the path to prison begins when one of your creditors has a court summons issued for you, which you fail to honor for one reason or another, such as that your address has changed and you never received it. Okay, now you’re in “contempt of the court.”

Or suppose you miss a payment and your car insurance lapses, and then you’re stopped for something like a broken headlight. … Now, depending on the state, you may have your car impounded and/or face a steep fine — again, exposing you to a possible court summons.

“There’s just no end to it once the cycle starts,” says Robert Solomon of Yale Law School. “It just keeps accelerating.”

At the very minimum, can we at least stop kicking these people when they’re down?

Filed Under: class warfare Tagged With: , 125 Comments
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  • Consumer Unit 5012

    I’m my more cynical moods (which is all the time), I think that what we need is a system for out-bribing lobbyists.  A website which tracks how much “donations” Senator X has received, with “donate” buttons to try and outbid the lobbyists on issues liberals think are important.

  • Lori

    I’m my more cynical moods (which is all the time), I think that what we
    need is a system for out-bribing lobbyists.  A website which tracks how
    much “donations” Senator X has received, with “donate” buttons to try
    and outbid the lobbyists on issues liberals think are important.

    I seriously doubt we have any hope of out-bidding people like Blackenship, the Kochs and the Wall Street money.

    Also, I don’t think we want to give Congress member such obvious incentive to play both ends against the middle.

  • Lunch Meat

    Has anyone here heard of http://www.americanselect.org/ and does anyone think it has a chance of working? The basic idea, as I understand it, is that people on the internet vote on the issues that should be a priority, create the questions to address those issues, nominate people who will have to answer those questions, and then through the votes of members the organization will nominate one candidate for President and VP, and if they get enough support, they will put it on the ballot in all 50 states. And through the magic of the Interwebz, this is supposed to work.

  • ako

    When I tried to argue the
    Progressives-Should-Just-Stay-Home-Then-If-The-Dems-Don’t-Want-Our-Votes
    line in the comments at Pandagon a while back, I was told that the
    Democratic establishment always views electoral losses as a sign that
    they should move further to the right.* Which in fact does appear to be
    true. Damn it.

    As far as I can tell the Democratic establishment responds to everything by wanting to move further to the right.  It’s like Republicans and tax cuts for the rich.

    If progressives support Democrats to the hilt, then the Democratic establishment assume our support comes for free and moves further to the right to pick up centrists.

    If progressives stay home, the Democratic establishment assumes there is no way to get us motivated and moves further to the right to pick up centrists.

    If progressives vote for candidates that actually support our views over the mainstream choice, the Democratic establishment assumes we’re all unreasonable cranks that can’t possibly be appeased and moves further to the right to pick up centrists. 

    If progressives vote for the Democrat and then vocally criticize him for the next several years for not being progressive enough, the Democratic establishment still writes us off as unreasonable cranks and moves further to the right to pick up centrists.

    I’m trying to think of a better answer than despair, but I’m stuck.

  • http://twitter.com/FearlessSon FearlessSon

    I seriously doubt we have any hope of out-bidding people like Blackenship, the Kochs and the Wall Street money.

    Also, I don’t think we want to give Congress member such obvious incentive to play both ends against the middle.

    Outbidding them does not require that we have more money than them, just that we can apply more money than them.  If we can establish some kind of lobby finance reform and anti-astroturfing laws, we could do a lot of defang people like the Kochs, Wall Street firms, and industry advocates.  

    The trick is that they will be looking for any kind of cracks and loopholes in that they can.  We need something flexible enough that the spirit of it is enough to enforce compliance.  

    You know, come to think of it, that whole “money is free speech” thing pisses me off because it introduces the ridiculous concept that, say, taxation is an imposition on free speech.  We need some kind of issue that will force this kind of thing back in front of the courts and get them to overwrite their precedent on this.

  • http://twitter.com/FearlessSon FearlessSon

    I seriously doubt we have any hope of out-bidding people like Blackenship, the Kochs and the Wall Street money.

    Also, I don’t think we want to give Congress member such obvious incentive to play both ends against the middle.

    Outbidding them does not require that we have more money than them, just that we can apply more money than them.  If we can establish some kind of lobby finance reform and anti-astroturfing laws, we could do a lot of defang people like the Kochs, Wall Street firms, and industry advocates.  

    The trick is that they will be looking for any kind of cracks and loopholes in that they can.  We need something flexible enough that the spirit of it is enough to enforce compliance.  

    You know, come to think of it, that whole “money is free speech” thing pisses me off because it introduces the ridiculous concept that, say, taxation is an imposition on free speech.  We need some kind of issue that will force this kind of thing back in front of the courts and get them to overwrite their precedent on this.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7NB5FJ2VSINZPTPUGCJI6C24SU Kadia

    I’ve always felt that one of Progressivism’s major mistakes in recent years is focusing too much of its energy on the federal government and not enough on state and especially local politics. Right-wingers have taken control of school boards and municipal governments and have already succeeded in, for example, producing textbooks that basically make Ronald Reagan into a Founding Father. This might seem petty and irrelevant but they basically now have a head start in redefining what American government and American leaders should look like for the next generation of voters. They’ve also managed to pretty much do away with Roe v. Wade, not by attacking the Supreme Court’s decision but by taking over the lower courts and handing down decisions that essentially abolish abortion — knowing that they won’t face nearly as much opposition as they would by trying to do it on the federal level.

    Renewing our focus on local and state governments will produce much more immediate, concrete, and realistic improvements for people on the ground. It might even get people to trust in good government; if we make local and state governments — the levels that most people interact with on a regular basis — more responsive and helpful, people might be willing to trust the federal government too when it tries to get involved in health care or education.

  • Amaryllis

    FWIW: The U.S. (which is to say, the Library of Congress) has just appointed a new Poet Laureate. A man who is said to know What Work Is.

  • P J Evans

    we have the man who ran on hope talking about cutting medicare, medicade, and freaking Social Security
    A lot of us are thinking that it was one of his goals all along, and it was the hope-and-change talk that was put on to get votes. (Or, as I saw elsewhere, he has glamor, not charisma. And in this case, you my want to think of it as glamor in the magical, not the Hollywood, sense.)

  • P J Evans

    The trick is convincing the people in power, most of whom are the direct
    beneficiaries of that top 1%’s self-interest, to do something about it.
    Explain that taxes are the association fees they owe government, and those who have a lot (houses, cars, money) owe more because they have more?

  • P J Evans

    My point is that the institutional power in the Democratic party already
    thinks that the DFHs cost them an election and it didn’t make them a
    damn bit more responsive to them. Rather the opposite.

    Given that most of the institutional power in the Ds seems to be held by people who were Republicans not so many years ago, and that that crook Nixon is more liberal than they are … I think they’re still stuck in the 60s, fighting the Vietnam War and the liberals, and the rest of us have moved on.

  • http://aaron.acephalo.us Aaron

    Your faith in obscenely rich people’s sense of fair play is rather stronger than mine.

  • http://aaron.acephalo.us Aaron

    Your faith in obscenely rich people’s sense of fair play is rather stronger than mine.

  • http://aaron.acephalo.us Aaron

    Your faith in obscenely rich people’s sense of fair play is rather stronger than mine.

  • http://aaron.acephalo.us Aaron

    Establishment Progressives will holler about spoiling, and if they make the ballot in 2012 and Obama loses then we’ll never hear the end of it, just as with the 2000 elections. Me, though? I’m about to sign up, and if they really do get ballot access next year then I suspect I won’t be declining to vote in the presidential race after all. I’ve been looking for something like this, or at least for something like this that’s credible, for years.

  • http://aaron.acephalo.us Aaron

    Establishment Progressives will holler about spoiling, and if they make the ballot in 2012 and Obama loses then we’ll never hear the end of it, just as with the 2000 elections. Me, though? I’m about to sign up, and if they really do get ballot access next year then I suspect I won’t be declining to vote in the presidential race after all. I’ve been looking for something like this, or at least for something like this that’s credible, for years.

  • http://aaron.acephalo.us Aaron

    Granted, it’d be nice if their idea of the political universe didn’t run from “not very progressive” to “refulgently progressive”, with the occasional sop to Tea Party types here and there. It’s still better by far than anything else I’ve got.

  • cjmr

    @LMM22:disqus New Haven as in CT?  We’re a little more than an hour away from there.

  • Lori

    And through the magic of the Interwebz, this is supposed to work.

    I’m extremely cynical about anything that supposed to work because of the magic of the interwebz, but I’m in favor of the having people in power actually give a crap what people really care about and need. Since I have no better ideas about how to make that happen I’m not inclined to spit on anyone’s efforts.

  • Lori

    And through the magic of the Interwebz, this is supposed to work.

    I’m extremely cynical about anything that supposed to work because of the magic of the interwebz, but I’m in favor of the having people in power actually give a crap what people really care about and need. Since I have no better ideas about how to make that happen I’m not inclined to spit on anyone’s efforts.

  • Lori

    I’ve always felt that one of Progressivism’s major mistakes in recent
    years is focusing too much of its energy on the federal government and
    not enough on state and especially local politics.

    The other place we have totally dropped the ball is judgeships. The Right has done a very good job getting pro-business, anti-labor, anti-environment, anti-woman judges on the bench at all levels. The Left has an abysmal record in this area and if we totally turn it around tomorrow we’ll still be paying for that failure for decades. Citizens United is a perfect example of what happens when Progressives don’t fight hard enough for the courts.

  • Kogo

    *And I don’t think anyone who was crushed by a collapsing building under
    US bombardment was particularly comforted to know that *I* opted not to
    own a share of the moral responsibility for the outcome of the last
    election.*

    Doesn’t matter: Because they’re going to be crushed under that building/bombardment anyway. So, again: Moral purity for me is all that can be attained at this point in the history of the empire.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jeff-Lipton/100001171828568 Jeff Lipton

    It is so called because after they are sealed in, no one can really say if that person is alive or dead unless they open it, and no one is going to open it.

    Sorry for the late response on this…

    So the prisoner remains in the Catbox until they die, either of natural causes or (more likely) the generator finally hits the Fatal Number (band name!)?  Do the remains remain in the Catbox forever?  Seems to me that after some set period of time, **someone** is going to have to open the Catbox.

    (I can see an option where, if the prisoner is still alive after X cycles, the death sentence is revoked.  That makes at least a little sense.)

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jeff-Lipton/100001171828568 Jeff Lipton

    If we can establish some kind of lobby finance reform and anti-astroturfing laws

    And if horses had wings, beggars could fly.

    Or something.

    You know, come to think of it, that whole “money is free speech” thing pisses me off because it introduces the ridiculous concept that, say, taxation is an imposition on free speech.

    That’s probably the LEAST offensive thing about “money is speech”.  It is an out-of-the-blue rationalization for Scalia et al to make campaign reform a pipe dream.

  • Consumer Unit 5012

    The Republicans put together something similar:  
    http://www.americaspeakingout.com/

    Some of the most popular ‘suggestions’ are “stop the War on Drugs” and “raise taxes”.  ODDLY ENOUGH, these suggestions never seem to get into Republican policies… :-P

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