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Friday, September 14, 2012

Daily Kos: Why you should care about what happens to the poor

Daily Kos: Why you should care about what happens to the poor:


Why you should care about what happens to the poor

is because increasingly Americans are slipping down the economic scale, headed in that direction.
There were several segments on Morning Joe that addressed this - remarks by Mike Barnicle, the segment with Cornel West and Tavis Smiley.
As Smiley put it, "the former middle class who are now the new educated poor."
Yesterday I went to a book event at the AFL-CIO headquarters here in DC.  The author was Hedrick Smith, who was a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, and who approached his latest book, the just-released Who Stole the American Dream?, as a reporter.
Joe Scarborough pointed out that, not including his show this morning, a study released yesterday said that 0.2% of the stories on the current campaign dealt in any way with the poor.
I have just begun the Smith book.  He has pulled together a lot of important material, and had the assistance of the likes of people at the AFL-CIO and Larry Mishel and those at the Economic Policy Institute.
I am going to ask you to continue below the fold where I will share a bit from the beginning of the book and from my notes from yesterday's author sesssion.