[Ahmad Masood/Reuters]

Song in my head:
Preacherman, dont tell me,
Heaven is under the earth.
I know you dont know
What life is really worth.
Its not all that glitters is gold;
Half the story has never been told
So now you see the light,
Stand up for your rights. Bob Marley



Poverty

Thirty million Americans who work full time are living in poverty. The federal minimum wage in the United States is $5.15 an hour and has not been raised in almost 10 years.

Someone working full time at minimum wage earns $10,712 a year—that's $8,000 less than what the government defines as poverty.

Why should you care? These are the very people we rely on every day. They are the teachers' aides in your child's classroom. They are caring for your aging parents in the nursing home. They make sure your hotel rooms, your offices and your schools are clean. They are security guards keeping buildings safe. They are paramedics who are there in your most desperate hour. Oprah.com

It's not my style to recommend a tv show. Until now. Friday's Oprah show on poverty in America was a moving show that depicts the reality of an essential, yet underpaid and undervalued part of our society. I was moved to tears. I was outraged. I was shocked. Christy Hardin Smith of Firedoglake explains a shameful situation...

Here are some real family values: Americans who live on minimum wage have not had an increase in that pay for ten years — a decade at the same pay rate — while expenditures, especially costs on energy prices, have gone up, up, up. They are squeezing their budget every way you can think, just to survive, to feed their kids, to give them a decent home. And they are working their butts off — two and three jobs for each parent, leaving the kids hanging out quite a bit with grandma and grandpa, who get to enjoy their golden years by being permanent babysitters (who can’t afford both their prescription meds and food…but hey, who is counting…).

If there is a reason to kick the GOP out this fall...this is it..The reality is painful, unconceivable, and seriously unaddressed by the GOP...

Perhaps it isn’t the most politically savvy thing to do — but you know, I see people every single day where I live having to make choices on their medication or their family eating, on their kids getting one new outfit for school or buying gas for the car to get back and forth to work. And I get the feeling that the GOP doesn’t have a clue that people have to do that sort of thing to just live these days. (Hint: try spending time in the poorer part of your districts instead of just at fundraisers at the homes of wealthy donors. You’ll get a whole new perspective.)

And if the Republicans in charge of Congress can not feel any shame at what they are doing — at a time when they have run up the biggest deficits in the history of this nation (oh yeah, I got yer fiscal responsibility here — I don’t want to hear the word "conservative" in describing these yahoos ever again), at a time when the "working poor" are more and more numerous, at a time when they preach "family values" out of one side of their mouths but could honestly give a crap at how those families survive once a child is out of the womb because it is an "every man for himself" kinda world that they live in, then the hell with them. FDL Link

Poverty...a cycle that is hard to break. Make one mistake and you are struggling to catch up. Don't dare to get sick...who can afford sacrificing a day's pay. You need to go to the doctor but have no health insurance. Your doctor prescribes a medicine which he has no idea of its retail cost. So you go get an advance on a paycheck from a sleazy payday lender and pay outrageous interest rates...

The poor don't have the economic savvy to realize that a $15 "fee" on a $100 cash advance for two weeks is a mind-boggling 390% APR. Sometimes they take out loans to pay off their other loans (the poor's version of refinancing your mortgage to pay off your credit card debt), and they end up in a mess from which there's no escape.

Rebekah O'Connell, a consumer credit counselor at Triangle Family Services, (a United Way agency in Raleigh, N.C.) commented, "It'd be great if it was the middle class and it was just the plumber and all they need is $200 this one time to get them by. But that’s just not the reality. These are people who are really not making it. . . .They’re not fixing a blown tire or a pipe—they’re paying the rent.[Payday lenders are] taking advantage of people in time of need . . . .We’ve got to get some controls on the interest rates. Three, four hundred percent? There ought to be a law." Sacraments Wholesale Link