“They Get You Coming And Going”: In America, Being Poor Can Be An Expensive Proposition
Today I came across this very interesting, albeit depressing, bit of data. It’s an analysis by a travel site called Hopper that shows that it costs more to fly in states that have the lowest median incomes.
For example, the study found that in Mississippi, the poorest state, a “good deal” round-trip flight costs about $400, while in Maryland, the state with the highest income, an equivalent ticket costs around $300. The researchers also found that “typical round-trip airfare declines by $2.30 for every additional $1000 in median household income.” The reasons for the increased prices in the poorer states include “average distance traveled, demand density, and airline competition.” Presumably, there’s less demand and less airline competition in poor areas of the country because people there have less money for leisure travel, and also because those locales have less economic development and thus less business travel.
The higher price of air travel for low-income folks is yet another data point that paints a bigger picture: in America, being poor can be an expensive proposition. There are countless, painful examples of this. Food and other basic items tend to cost more in poor neighborhoods. The poor lack access to credit and so are easy prey for payday lenders charging exorbitant interest rates. Poor people are more apt to bounce checks; hello, fees for insufficient funds! There are also late fees for credit card payments — you know, the kind of thing listed in print so fine you need a magnifying glass to be capable of reading about it. But my personal favorites are those extra charges they tack on for restoring utilities they shut off because you couldn’t pay your bill on time in the first place. “They get you coming and going,” as my old man used to say.
In her classic book, Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich described a host of other expensive indignities that plague the working poor. For example, many of her low-wage co-workers were living in hotel rooms, which actually were far costlier, on a monthly basis, than local apartments. But the workers couldn’t move into the apartments because they lacked the month’s rent plus security deposit the landlord required. Many low-wage jobs also require uniforms, the cost of which comes out of the worker’s paycheck, or cars, which the workers are expected to maintain themselves.
There are even darker examples. I wonder how many Americans have put off going to the doctor because they lacked health insurance, sought treatment only when their symptoms were advanced, and ended up being bankrupted by medical bills as a result.
Many of the examples I’ve cited in this post could be greatly improved by some well-targeted regulatory fixes. The rights of workers and consumers against employers, the banks, and the credit card companies need to be vigorously championed, and in some cases, re-invented for our new digital era. There’s no earthly justification other than greed for the $35 bank overdraft ripoff, or the cell phone company gouging you to restore your service because your payment is late. It’s also long past time we bring re-regulation to the airlines. A more regulated airline industry might help bring down fares in certain overpriced markets. Our 30-year old experiment with airline deregulation has hardly been a rousing success — read the excellent 2012 Washington Monthly magazine article by Phillip Longman and Lina Khan for more information on this score.
In addition to more consumer regulation, we also need a much higher minimum wage and a far more generous safety net for poor people in this country. If poor people had more economic resources to begin with — if they simply had enough money to pay their bills on time, and to save a little money for a rainy day — they would never be forced to pay such an outrageously high price for being poor.
By: Kathleen Geier, Washington Monthly Political Animal, May 3, 2014
“It’s Not About Them, It’s About Us”: Guillotine Revival Movement Gains Momentum
When things began to go terribly wrong with Clayton Lockett’s execution in Oklahoma the other day—when instead of drifting gently off into unconsciousness and death, Lockett began to moan and buck on the gurney—one of the first things the officials did was lower the blinds over the window through which observers peered into the death chamber. Because after all, people shouldn’t have to witness a man suffer as the state is killing him, right?
Lockett’s execution was hardly the first botched one we’ve had, particularly with lethal injection, a process prison officials seem extraordinarily incompetent at implementing properly. But for whatever reason, it has brought about a more substantial debate about the death penalty than we’ve had in some time. And as part of that, it looks like my semi-serious advocacy for the return of the guillotine is finally gaining momentum. It already has endorsements from Conor Friedersdorf and Sonny Bunch, with more sure to follow.
Frankly, I’ve never bought the argument that the death penalty violates the Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.” Unusual, maybe—it has become not just unusual but unheard of in democratic countries (the nations with the highest number of executions last year were, in order, China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. of A.). But cruel? It seems that spending your life in prison is far worse than being executed. Though Lockett was in obvious pain for three-quarters of an hour before he finally expired, that pain couldn’t possibly match the extended agony endured by the tens of thousands of people we put in solitary confinement, where the lack of human contact literally drives them insane.
But back to our execution methods. It does seem that as the killing techniques have evolved, what we’ve called more “humane” methods are not about minimizing the suffering of the condemned, but about minimizing the gruesomeness of the spectacle, so that we can perform the execution without feeling like barbarians. It’s not about them, it’s about us. We did away with the firing squad in favor of the electric chair, even though the latter involves a lot more suffering, and why? Well, it involves just pulling a switch instead of actually pulling a trigger and sending a bullet hurtling toward a man’s heart. And there’s no blood splatter on the walls.
But the electric chair is pretty awful to watch—the body convulsing in obvious torment and all that—so we went to lethal injection. And despite the fact that we’re perfectly capable of knocking people out before surgery and gently putting a beloved pet to sleep, the geniuses who run our prisons can’t seem to do it without putting the condemned through substantial pain.
So if you recoil from the idea of the guillotine, ask yourself why. It’s fast, foolproof, and essentially painless. If you were going to be executed, wouldn’t it be near the top of your list for ways to go? You can’t argue that Clayton Lockett would have met a crueler end had his head been lopped off than what he actually went through. We could even come up with a more contemporary version, like a fast-moving saw blade that separates your brain from your body in a fraction of a second.
The visceral objection you have to that thought is not about the suffering of the one being executed, it’s about how you’d feel watching it. The guillotine, with its blood and severed head, would make us feel uncomfortable about what we’re doing when the state executes someone in our name. It would make us feel barbaric. As well it should.
If we’re going to keep the death penalty, we should be honest about what it’s for. It isn’t for deterrence, and it isn’t for justice. It’s for vengeance. We can try to make it “humane,” and we can draw the blinds when the truth of it comes uncomfortably close the surface. But that won’t change what it is.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, May 2, 2014
“Why Wisconsin’s Voter ID Decision Is A Very Big Deal”: Put Simply, Voter Impersonation Is A Fake Problem That Doesn’t Need A Solution
Some precautions are necessary—wearing a helmet when you ride a bike, using a seatbelt when you’re in a car—and others seem optional, like grabbing an umbrella on a cloudy day or wearing an apron when you make dinner. Others are dumb. You wouldn’t get snow tires if you lived in Miami, and there’s never a need for volcano insurance (unless you live in the shadow of Mount Etna, or something).
You can add one more item to the list of useless precautions: voter identification laws. In an opinion striking down Wisconsin’s voter ID law—signed in March by Gov. Scott Walker—Judge Lynn Adelman looks at the supposed menace of in-person voter fraud—the GOP’s reason for ID requirements—and finds nothing.
The state’s argument is straightforward: The voter ID law will “deter or prevent fraud by making it harder to impersonate a voter and cast a ballot in his or her name without detection.” To that end, it requires Wisconsin voters to produce an accepted, nonexpired form of state-issued ID to cast a ballot. If a voter lacks an ID, she can apply for one at the Wisconsin Department of Motor Vehicles, provided she has the right documents. And if she lacks a proper ID at the polls, she can cast a provisional ballot, and confirm her identity in-person on the Friday after the election.
Opponents say this unfairly burdens older and low-income people, and minorities in particular. It’s not that nonwhites can’t get identification, but that they are most likely to face circumstances—poverty, geographic isolation, etc.—that make it hard to obtain one. Further, they argue, voter identification isn’t necessary and harms more than it helps. It’s for that reason that the plaintiffs—the League of United Latin American Citizens of Wisconsin—say the law is an unjustified burden on the right to vote.
Judge Adelman agrees, and supports his stance with a treasure trove of evidence. Citing research on the incidence of in-person voter fraud in American elections, Adelman notes that, in eight years of Wisconsin elections—2004, 2008, 2010, and 2012—researchers could identify only “one case of voter-impersonation fraud.” And in that case, it was a man who “applied for and cast his recently deceased wife’s absentee ballot.” Likewise, after “comparing a database of deceased registered voters to a database of persons who had cast ballots in a recent election,” in Georgia, another researcher found “no evidence of ballots being illegally cast in the name of deceased voters.”
Adelman even notes the sheer difficulty of committing in-person voter fraud, throwing water on the claim that this could ever be common. “To commit voter-impersonation fraud,” he says, “a person would need to know the name of another person who is registered at a particular polling place, know the address of that person, know that the person has not yet voted, and also know that no one at the polls will realize that the impersonator is not the individual being impersonated.” He ends with a note that sounds like sarcasm, “Given that a person would have to be insane to commit voter-impersonation fraud, [the law] cannot be deemed a reasonable response to a potential problem.”
He also makes a key point about public perception: Insofar that anyone believes that in-person voter fraud is a problem, it’s because elected officials—almost all of them Republican—treat it as such, as they push for these laws. Put simply, voter impersonation is a fake problem that doesn’t need a solution.
As for the burdens of voter identification? Adelman makes two important points. First, that a substantial number of registered Wisconsin voters—300,000, or 9 percent of the total—lack a qualifying ID. Of these voters, a substantial portion live at or below the poverty line. In practical terms, what this is means is that they lack the time or resources needed to get a valid ID. If you work a low-wage job, odds are good that you can’t take time off to go to the DMV, and even if you could, you would need the cash to obtain the documents you need to prove your identity, like a birth certificate or a passport.
It’s at this point that, in my experience, voter ID proponents scoff at the idea that someone would lack these documents. But it’s more common than you think. According to a 2006 survey from the Brennan Center for Justice, as many as 13 million Americans lack ready access to citizenship documents, which overlaps with the 21 million who lack photo identification. Moreover, millions have inconsistent documents—a passport that doesn’t reflect their current name (a problem for many married women) or a photo ID that doesn’t have their current address. Under the Wisconsin law, both groups would be barred from casting a normal ballot if they went to the polls.
Adelman’s second point elaborates on the burden. If you drive, you receive a daily benefit from the act of gathering one’s documents and getting a license. If the voter ID requirement does anything, it offers the benefit of voting at “no additional cost.” By contrast, he notes, a “person whose daily life did not require possession of a photo ID prior to the imposition of the photo ID requirement is unlikely to derive any benefit” from owning one. At most, they can keep voting. Or, put another way, they have to pay the same costs without the same benefits. It’s unfair.
By the end of Adelman’s opinion, there are no pieces to pick up, and there is no legislative recourse for defenders of voter ID. Adelman ethered the rationale for voter identification, and struck down the law. Now, Republicans and Democrats will fight the upcoming elections on more even ground.
This ruling is significant for more than what it means for Wisconsin. As Ari Berman notes for The Nation, it’s part of a larger trend of courts striking down voter identification laws. In the last year, four other states—Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Texas—have had their requirements reversed by federal courts.
What’s more, the Wisconsin decision marks the first time a voter ID law has been invalidated under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, as opposed to a state constitution. In turn, this gives fuel to the Justice Department’s present suits against voter ID laws in North Carolina and Texas—also filed under Section 2.
The real question looking forward is whether Section 2 will survive. The Supreme Court has already destroyed the “pre-clearance” section of the Voting Rights Act, and conservatives are gunning for Section 2 in their drive to end race-conscious policymaking. If successful, they would end the government’s ability to fight voting discrimination, and leave us with a country where states—like Wisconsin—are free to burden the fundamental rights of our most vulnerable citizens.
By: Jamelle Bouie, Slate, April 30, 2014
“Money Can’t Always Buy Respectability”: Sterling Shielded His Racism With Wealth, Until People Finally Couldn’t Take It Anymore
Pat Buchanan had an interesting column about Donald Sterling and his long history of racism, often self-proclaimed. His point: follow the money.
For years, Sterling has been in court for discrimination and he has made racist comments on the record. He was fined nearly $3 million by the Justice Department for discriminating against blacks and Hispanics in his housing units. Yet, because of his vast wealth, people seemed to look the other way. The Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP was even about to give him a Lifetime Achievement Award.
I don’t often agree with Buchanan on such matters, but he had a point. Why do the Duck Dynasty boys continue to skirt any serious repercussions from racist comments? Why does A&E keep them on and others ignore the racism? Follow the money.
Big, wealthy franchise owners often don’t pay for their outrageous comments and actions. Take Donald Trump – his buffoonery knows no bounds. It really is only when wealth and power with good sense confront wealth and power with bad sense that we see change.
A friend sent me a review of the court case from 1970 when the Kenwood Country Club in Bethesda, Md., was forced to change its discrimination policies. I remember it because my old boss, Sen. Frank Church, along with others such as former Republican Sen. Robert Griffin, Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Nicholas Johnson and Rev. Richard Halverson (later Senate chaplain), filed a suit against Kenwood.
The tony neighborhood of Kenwood had a long history of covenants prohibiting sales of homes to anyone who was not “Caucasian” – no blacks, no Hispanics, no Asians, no Jews. Not only was membership denied in the Kenwood Club, but as a member you could not even bring a non-white guest to the club. Many were unaware of this until a women member wanted to have a Wellesley College lunch in 1968 and invited the then-Mayor Walter Washington as the speaker. No can do, said the club.
The result was the successful lawsuit and the resignation of members such as Secretary of State William Rogers, Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, former Postmaster General Edward Day and the President of George Washington University, Lloyd Elliot. Wealth and power confronted wealth and power. But that was more than 40 years ago and maybe it is time that we don’t just ignore the slights and side comments and behavior of the Donald Sterling’s of the world, but rather stand up to those who think they are untouchable because of their bank accounts.
Many still believe they can buy respectability. Many believe they can accumulate great wealth and escape responsibility for their actions. It is a shame that we still have to follow the money, even if it finally was successful with Donald Sterling.
By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, May 1, 2014
“Better Love It Or Leave It, Because We Cling To Guns”: The Hatred Is Still Out There, Waiting For The Next Crusade
The times they have a changed. I remember when the extreme right-wing nuts were social pariahs. No mainstream politician or national media organization would openly embrace or advocate for them. They were either percolating as white supremacist racists, shamed KKK holdouts, Hell’s Angels road bandits, or grouped into a category labeled “survivalists.” They were all armed and willing, had caches of enough weapons and supplies sometimes hidden in bunkers, and they were going to save America. We knew they existed, sometimes gave them some thought, but mostly ignored them as pesky bugs that one just has to monitor and avoid as best as possible, because there was a powerful sense that the rightness of the American Dream machine would prevail.
This was also a time when America’s youth were “crusaders” against government over-reach. Despite their being armed only with the first amendment, idealism, and organizing peaceful and mostly non-violent protests, a majority of Americans angrily called them unpatriotic and yelled for them to “love it or leave it!” Odd to realize now how that slogan was never aimed at the right wing nuts.
During the same period of social discontent when the Black Panthers “stood their ground” armed with the second amendment, the FBI and all shades of law enforcement agents either killed many of them in shoot-outs or imprisoned others. Americans, in the mid-west, and from coast to coast supported the government and its agents with patriotic fervor for ridding society of those illegal treasonous Hanoi Jane and black militant types. The chaotic unrest of the ’60s and ’70s faded as the social crusaders donned work suits and NBA team uniforms and assimilated back into the melting pot.
Fast forward to Cliven Bundy’s “home on the Nevada range,” where the big ugly truth stood its ground that America is still a Civil War house divided across one hundred fifty plus Aprils. What first appeared to be a resurgent state rights sagebrush rebellion on steroids took a prickly cactus turn.
There was the usual and now quite predictable circus of “Republican” characters that jumped on this event to spin the narrative, score political points, spend Koch brother monies, stoke the base, create another poster child victim of Obama’s illegal government over-reach, and gain another propaganda win.
The shocking surprise was the turnout of “first responders.” The neo-minutemen and women that flocked to the Nevada “Concord” from other states, forming a volunteer armed citizenry, that took up sniper positions, and were ready to place women as the first receivers of bullets against federal agents enforcing the law against the cattle welfare queen, Cliven Bundy. This group was more than ready and desirous of martyrdom to bring about their larger cause, the overthrow of the evil empire.
Just when did it become fashionable and acceptable, and not punishable for armed treason against the government? That is exactly what occurred there. No one was saying, “love it or leave it” to this posse, because they cling to guns, because they have become embedded into a way larger fabric of American society than their predecessors were able to. I wonder if the gush of the Republican power elite somehow legitimized and thus emboldened these folks? Could this have become the first shots of the rewriting of the Civil War?
Thankfully, the same guy that started this defused the standoff. Cliven Bundy talked. No longer an obscure desperate lone ranger, Cliven had the embrace and love from the Republican machine that empowered him to spew his Civil War era racism. The same machine that gaveth him a platform, now couldn’t find enough cactus, sagebrush, or moral platitudes to distance themselves fast enough. Oh well, no one promised unconditional love.
It is beyond me why the extreme right wing Republican power machine doesn’t do a better job vetting the Cliven Bundys. Does so much power and money breed such stupidity? I guess in their mind they won anyway. They know the hatred is still out there waiting for the next crusade, and it isn’t the sort of group that anyone other than me might politely ask of them, but here goes, please, “America, love it or leave it!
By: Alen Schmertzler, The Huffington Post Blog, May 2, 2014
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