If we wanted charity to help the poor:

While charitable donations in the United States this year are expected to total more than $200 billion, a record, a big portion of this impressive sum — especially from the wealthy, who have the most to donate — is going to culture palaces: to the operas, art museums, symphonies and theaters where the wealthy spend much of their leisure time. It’s also being donated to the universities they attended and expect their children to attend, perhaps with the added inducement of knowing that these schools often practice a kind of affirmative action for “legacies.”

I’m all in favor of supporting the arts and our universities, but let’s face it: These aren’t really charitable contributions. They’re often investments in the lifestyles the wealthy already enjoy and want their children to have too. They’re also investments in prestige — especially if they result in the family name being engraved on the new wing of an art museum or symphony hall…

Robert Reich’s Blog: Why Charity Doesn’t Begin at Home

I am not as down on Cleveland as Jeff is with all this public urination stuff, because I have seen other cities. There is a war going on in most cities in America between homeless people and the municipal government. In Atlanta, they have a team of lawyers working on ways to make it illegal to be poor. In Las Vegas and a few cities in Florida, they have decided that feeding people only makes more people poor and so they outlawed the distribution of food on the streets. Cincinnati, Austin, and Los Angeles are all developing ways to make it difficult to exist if you do not have a home. I would not be surprised if all these cities were meeting on a regular basis to compare notes on the best strategy to make their homeless population disappear through law enforcement…

clevelandhomeless: Interesting Post on Public Urination

“we’re webcasting with the Mayor this morning“

As many of you that have met me in person know, I am an African-American. I grew up here in Cleveland, even though I live in Akron now. I just read Mansfield Frazier’s most recent article on Cool Cleveland, Race in America. In it, Mr. Frazier, who is also African-American, talks about how debate and converstation that isn’t specifially about race ends up with race in it. One example being his radio appearance with Ward 11 councilman Michael Polensek, who is white, over the letter that Councilman Polensek wrote to a law-breaking constituent of his ward.:

A few weeks ago when I first responded in print to the letter Polensek wrote (see the Cool Cleveland archives if you missed it) my point was — and remains — nasty letters alone will not solve the problem, but with that said, I honestly believe the best place for the young thug who sparked the debate is prison. According to government statistics he is twice as likely to die a violent death in the streets as in the joint. Nonetheless, people read and internalize what they wish, and gloss over the rest. More than a few White Polensek supporters wrote me to say how tired they were with everything always being about race. Polensek himself said on the radio show that he was “tired of this race crap.”

Mr. Frazier also says, and this is the line that should be on a poster somewhere:

If White folks think they are tired of race being the central issue in American culture, if they just think they are tired of hearing about race all the time, then they ought to try being Black.

From one of the campaign’s bloggers:

He began at Beatitude House, which provides housing and support to homeless women with children in the Youngstown area. Beatitude House opened in 1991 to “offer housing and support to any woman dreaming of better opportunities for herself and her children.”

The founder of Beatitude House, Sister Margaret Scheetz, saw a too-prevalent problem in Youngstown - a cycle of poverty and homelessness that many women and their children were caught up in. Believing that education was the best way out of poverty she sought to offer these women an opportunity…. John went from meeting with women just getting on their feet at Beatitude House to meeting with business leaders at the Youngstown Business Incubator. It’s a very different setting, but an organization working to do a very similar thing as Beatitude House - which is to create opportunity where there is none…

Was one of the topics we talked about on SoI’s this morning, in case you missed it.

Join the Campaign to Change America / John Edwards ‘08 Blog

This is one of the best comments to a post here on BFD I’ve ever read. Just wanted to share it.

What comes around goes around … The fact that poverty levels rise with the tide of inflation is not a new concept … During the Great Depression of the 1930s, formerly well-off farmers and businesspersons found themselves suddenly poor … Both Ma Joad in “Grapes of Wrath” and Jesus remind us that “the poor will always be with us” … Lower income folks seem to survive better in times of economic crisis because 1. they do what they have to do to survive, and 2. they are marginally protected by the “safety net” of welfare … The poor are the “canaries in the coal mine” … The business of government and smart-thinking entrepreneurs should be to “plateau” poverty levels … Under the current “tax cuts for the wealthy” scenario, the rich get richer, the middle-class get poorer, and the poor stay poor …

Comment by Fred O’Neill — June 6, 2007 @ 7:06 pm

This editorial, Uneasy in the Middle, by the Editor-in-Chief of U.S. News & World Report does an excellent job summarizing the problem and offers three remaining imperatives. If the poverty problem continues unchecked in Cleveland, it goes without saying that the middle-class creep will only make it worse.

The American middle class is worried-and with reason. Middle-class workers have long been the foundation of American society. In recent decades, they have seemed more prosperously buoyant than ever, living in bigger houses with a panoply of utilities, gadgets, and entertainment systems. So why the angst?

The roots are primarily economic. Even in these boom times, anxiety levels rival those of the early Reagan recession years. In particular, people have great and growing fear about losing their jobs. And we are at one of the rare points in our history when Americans have stopped dreaming of a better life for their children. Now the hope is negative: that their children won’t be forced into a lower standard of living. Americans used to feel sure each generation would do better than the last—but someone has run away with the ladder. Now the middle class lives with the same uncertainties that dog the poor. So close do many feel to the economic margin that they fear they’re but one illness or one job loss away from catastrophe.

US News & World Report | Uneasy in the Middle | Posted: 6/3/07 | 6/11/07 Print Edition

First, we learn The “gap” continues to widen here and now we learn the same thing is happening in Japan.

Humm, in discussion here at BFD about the U.S. Jonathan comments, “I’m not sure the data are definitive on whether it is harder to gain economically now than it was in the past.” Methinks the same thing happening in a country that is in ways essentially a Mini-me further validates the data and makes it pretty damn definitive.

If a rising tide lifts all boats, then why are millions of Japanese like Nehashi treading water? There’s an entire generation of people in their late 20s and early 30s who came of age during Japan’s so-called lost decade, a stretch of economic stagnation that started to ease in 2003. Through that period, with Japanese companies in retrenchment mode, young people faced what came to be known as a “hiring ice age.” Many settled for odd jobs or part-time work to make ends meet but hoped eventually to find their way into regular employment with the stars of corporate Japan. Instead, they’re being passed over in favor of new graduates—a serious problem in a country that still values lifetime employment and frowns on midcareer job-hopping.

This group is called the “lost” or “suffering” generation. Some 3.3 million Japanese aged 25 to 34 work as temps or contract employees—up from 1.5 million 10 years ago, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. These young people have earned various less-than-desirable classifications in hierarchy-conscious Japan. They might be keiyakushain, or contract workers, typically lower-paid than full-time staff, with fewer benefits and minimal job security. Or they’re hakenshain (people employed by temp agencies); freeters (those who flit from one menial job to the next); or, at the bottom, NEETS (an acronym coined in Britain that stands for not employed, in education, or in training). The plight of such folks was the subject of a recent TV drama called Haken no Hinkaku, or Dignity of the Agency Worker, the saga of a twentysomething temp who must put up with the snobbery of full-time colleagues despite her long list of qualifications.

Japan’s Lost Generation: Japan Inc. is back, but millions of young workers have been left behind - Business Week - May 28, 2007