Suburbs

Conor Lamb Victory In Pennsylvania Congressional Race Indication Of Major Democratic Wave This November In Midterm Elections!

Ronald 2 Comments

Democrat Conor Lamb won the Pennsylvania Congressional race in a strongly gerrymandered Republican district won by Donald Trump in 2016 by more than 20 points.

This should not have happened, and it is a sign of a major Democratic wave this November in midterm Congressional elections.

There are 119 GOP districts which are not as strongly Republican in 2016 as this particular Pennsylvania district.

The suburbs are starting to turn against Republicans nationwide, and that is the key to Democratic victory.

Joe Biden campaigned for Lamb, while Trump campaigned for the Republican nominee, and almost completely ignored him on Saturday night, as he gave the most unhinged imaginable speech, making a fool of himself, and every time Trump gives a crazy speech, he is losing support.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden was a major factor for Lamb, and this will boost his expected Presidential campaign.

People are starting to back away from Trump and his party, and remember only 23 seats are needed as a minimum to gain control of the House of Representatives. Many Republicans have decided not to run for reelection, and those numbers will now grow as a result of this Republican defeat yesterday.

The Democrats have now won 43 races since November 2016, while the Republicans have won just 4, and this includes the Governors of New Jersey and Virginia, and the Alabama Senate seat.

The tide is turning, and the key thing is not expecting that all Democrats must be hard left, as that is a prescription for disaster, and there is a need for more moderate Democrats, who will disappoint on some bills, but will generally back the party when push comes to shove.

Divided America: Clinton America Vs Trump America

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The final vote count is in for the Presidential Election Of 2016.

Hillary Clinton won 48.05 percent of the popular vote 65,844,610; Donald Trump won 45.96 percent of the popular vote 62,979,636, a lead for Clinton of 2.85 million votes, greater than 11 Presidents of the United States out of 44, including Trump.

Electoral votes–Trump 304, Clinton 227–other electoral votes went to Colin Powell 3; Bernie Sanders 1; Faith Spotted Eagle 1; Ron Paul 1; John Kasich 1, with Mike Pence gaining 305 for Vice President, and Tim Kaine 227; with Elizabeth Warren 2, Maria Cantwell 1, Susan Collins 1, Winona LaDuke 1, and Carly Fiorina 1. Trump is 46th out of 58 elections in percentage of the electoral vote.

Land area–Clinton 15 percent 530,000 square miles Trump 85 percent 3 million square miles

Population—Clinton 54 percent 174 million Trump 46 percent 146 million–not counting over 5 million votes for third party candidates combined.

Clinton won the cities and college towns, native American reservations, areas with heavy black and Latino populations.

Trump won many of the suburbs around cities, plus 80 percent of the nation’s counties.

So we are two Americas–totally different and hostile to each other!

The future is gloomy for any way to unite and advance America, and we have rough times ahead!

In 2015, What Does It Mean To Be Middle Class?

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Just about everyone likes to say they are part of the vast “middle class” in America, whether they are really poor, working class, struggling middle class, upper middle class, or wealthy, as it is the “in” thing to be!

The vast middle class concept developed in the years after World War II, when millions of Americans moved to the suburbs, more Americans went to college, and the idea of “conspicuous consumption” became part of the “American dream.”

That dream has vanished for tens of millions, including many who live in the suburbs, many of which are deteriorating, and with property values often down, and many in bankruptcy or near bankruptcy.

Many college graduates now are working in minimum wage or near such income jobs, far removed from their earlier expectations, and tens of millions live paycheck to paycheck and have no savings for retirement; do not have adequate or any health care; cannot afford to take vacations that educate and enlighten them and their children; have very few benefits of any kind at work since labor unions, which created the middle class to a great extent, have declined rapidly since the time of Ronald Reagan; and have no expectation that life will get better anytime soon.

This rapidly declining middle class includes millions of minority population, both African American and Latino; but also untold many millions more who are white and thought that by their race alone, they had an advantage, but no longer the case.

Banks and corporations have caused a great deal of this growing poverty in the former middle class, both from their abuse of their work force, but also from encouraging materialism and greed on the part of people who cannot pay for what they desire, but get suckered into signing on the dotted line of their credit cards and mortgages, automobiles and boats, second homes, and more personal acquisitions than they ever need, but are seen as essential to leave the image to others that they are “well to do,” when that is precisely what they are not.

Capitalism is looked at as the promoter of wealth, when for most Americans, it has made them slaves for the truly wealthy, the billionaires, and the super multimillionaires!

Paul Ryan Self Destructs Any Chance To Run For President!

Ronald 10 Comments

Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, who this blogger spent a lot of time working to undermine his Vice Presidential candidacy in 2012, and got blasted for it by right wing websites and bloggers, has again shown further evidence of what a terrible choice Mitt Romney made in his Presidential race, in selecting Ryan to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency!

Ryan, who knows nothing about budgets, except that the poor, the elderly, the disabled, veterans, and the young should see cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and other social programs; and there should be no extension of unemployment compensation for desperately unemployed people; and there should be no rise in the minimum wage, now has gone off the “deep end” with his assertion that those who live in the “inner cities” have no sense of the importance of work, and have not worked for generations!

This is a direct and racist assault on African Americans in particular, but also on Hispanics and Latinos, who are a majority of the poor in the urban areas of our nation.

But Ryan acts as if it is only minorities who are poor, and are unemployed, and in some cases, have not worked in a long time. From this statement, one would think that whites are not poor, that they all work, that they all have a heritage of understanding the point of work, and nothing could be further from the truth!

It is a fact, and always has been, that the vast majority of the poor do not live in cities, and are not minorities, although one would think so from a stereotype!

The fact is that there are millions of whites who live in the rural and suburban areas of the nation, and many are them do not work, have no hope of work, and live in depressed conditions often worse than urban slums. Many of these people are living in “Red” states, where Republicans vote to hurt their own constituents, while making it seem as if only minorities do not work, or have no work ethic. They live in Appalachia, the Great Plains, the Rockies, in comparatively sparsely populated areas, as compared to the urban areas on the East and West Coasts.

More whites receive food stamps, and the level of poverty percentage wise is higher in such places as Kentucky, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, and Alaska.

It is the lack of education; the tendency to have large families which are also dysfunctional; the reality of drugs and alcohol; the refusal of these state governments to give a damn about their white poor, along with minority poor; and the tendency to turn poor whites against poor minorities so that the GOP can keep power in the House and in the state legislatures, which is destroying generation after generation of deprived people of all races!

Only when there is a REAL war on poverty, instead of exploiting the issue based upon race, as Paul Ryan has now done, will we ever be able to guarantee a good future for millions of whites, as well as African Americans and Latinos!

And Paul Ryan, your potential Presidential candidacy is dead in the water, and while you might run, you have forfeited any realistic chance to be President of the United States, but that was clear, anyway, in 2012!

The Growing Democratic Party Suburbs: The Death Knell Of The Republican Party!

Ronald 1 Comment

Traditional views of American politics tell us that the cities, the urban areas, are overwhelmingly Democratic in loyalty; that the suburbs, which blossomed after World War II, are Republican, as people escape the city and urban problems, and are heavily white; and that the exurbs, those areas much further away from the cities, are Republican, along with the widespread land we consider rural areas.

So as long as the Republican Party wins the suburbs, the exurbs, and the rural areas,a they can be competitive and win national elections.

But it is now apparent by statistics that the suburbs are rapidly turning Democratic, as they have become no longer white “flight” havens, but instead have become a mix of Americans of all races and religions and cultures, and sadly, poverty has come to the suburbs, in some ways almost as badly as in the cities, due to the Great Recession.

The Republican refusal to accept that poverty is not the fault of citizens, but of circumstance, and rejection of the concept that everyone should be entitled to health care, is having a long range effect on Americans living in the suburbs.

It is not just economic factors, but also social factors, such as the issues of gay marriage, abortion rights, labor rights, concern about the environment, education, and the recognition of the need to adjust to a changing American society, which is also helping the Democrats, as the Republicans come across as mean spirited, biased, prejudiced, uncaring about anyone except the wealthy, and refusing to recognize the demographic changes that have developed in suburbs, as well as the cities.

So a political party that thinks it can survive and prosper on the basis of winning the exurbs and the rural areas is a party in total denial, as while there are massive land areas where these people live, the percentages of population living in those areas is miniscule, compared to the larger population numbers in the suburbs, as well as the cities.

While many Congressional districts can be gerrymandered and give the Republicans greater influence than they should rightfully have in the House of Representatives, their agenda and public persona of their leadership insures that the cities and the suburbs will be majority Democratic for a long time, giving the Presidency and the Senate to the Democrats. In the long run, this guarantees that the future Supreme Court , and even the lower courts, will be heavily influenced by Democratic Presidential appointments, which are considered and approved by the Senate, where Democrats need to fight to keep control so that they can promote the agenda of Democratic Presidents, and resist a Republican House majority based on artificial conditions, that can eventually be turned over to a Democratic Party majority over time.

Economic Reality Grim For Most Americans, Whether Based On Race Or Education Level!

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Growing evidence shows that the effects of the Great Recession, and really the policies of Republican Presidents and Congresses since 1980, have created a grim reality for a vast majority of Americans—likelihood of poverty, deprivation, and lack of opportunity, even for college graduates in large numbers for a long period of years! And where one lives does, and will have a dramatic effect on the long term futures of millions of citizens!

A study shows that four out of five adults in America will struggle with joblessness, near poverty, or reliance on welfare for part of their lives! 76 percent of whites will experience such a situation by the age of 60!

15 percent of the American people, nearly 47 million of the population, are in poverty, with higher percentages of African Americans and Hispanic-Latinos, but in absolute numbers, whites are 41 percent or 19 million of the poor, double what African Americans are in numbers. Most of these poor whites live in Appalachia, the industrial Midwest, and the heartland of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and the Great Plains, areas of rural communities , and even in many suburbs, in areas where 60 percent of the poor are whites.

So working class whites, those without college degrees, are in a terrible state, unable to look forward to the accomplishment of the “American Dream”!

But the problem is that even those who have a college education are facing a horrible job market. Many are unemployed, while even more who are working, are underemployed, working part time, and also, many are working in jobs that do not require a college degree, so are wasting years trying to break in to the job market they planned for, but are unable to engage in, due to the Great Recession and its aftermath!

Additionally, it has been demonstrated that where one lives has a dramatic effect on climbing up the income ladder! Social mobility up the income ladder is MUCH harder in the Southeast and industrial Midwest, including such cities as Atlanta, Charlotte, Memphis,. Raleigh, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and Columbus!

At the same time, social mobility and rising up the income ladder is best in the Northeast and the West, including New York, Boston, large areas of California and Minnesota, and Pittsburgh, Seattle, and Salt Lake City.

It is extremely disturbing that earlier studies of social mobility demonstrate that a smaller percentage of people escape childhood poverty in America than in Canada, Australia, France, Germany, and Japan.

Affluent children tend to remain so, achieving a lot of success by as young as age 30, while children from poverty rarely see much improvement, and that is not just a race issue, as whites have the same results, based on how they were born, rich or poor!

The need to deal with social mobility and opportunity, for working class whites and minorities, are the agenda that Barack Obama is pursuing as he travels the nation, calling for an economic plan for the future, including improvements in education, infrastructure, new technologies, and environmental challenges to overcome climate change!

There is no more important agenda for the nation than the providing of economic opportunity, in a nation where the middle class has been decimated, from its high point, 40 years ago, in 1973!

The Poor Often Forgotten: The White Underclass

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Whenever there is discussion of the problem of poverty, the tendency of most people is to assume that poverty is found only in the city ghettos across the country, and that poverty is found only among African American and Hispanic and Latino communities.

The thought that there might be millions of white poor people in rural areas and in the suburbs, particularly since the Great Recession hit in 2008, which has caused the loss of more jobs and foreclosure of homes on a massive basis than ever in the past 80 years, has not been generally recognized.

Many of the white poor are single mothers with children, but also includes families where both mother and father have lost their jobs, and also people in their 50s and 60s who are unlikely ever to get a full time job ever again, sadly, and also senior citizens and the disabled who are in a terrible state of affairs when it comes to medical care and having adequate money for food and other necessities.

Of course, there are minorities in the same boat, but in actuality, there are many more forgotten whites than minorities. And instead of the Republican Party being willing to recognize this reality, instead they love to use the race card to imply that the vast majority of poor are nonwhite, when just the opposite is the case.

The growing income inequality and education gaps are the true crisis for America’s future, and we do not see the Republican Party willing to address this truth, but instead utilize fear and hysteria to keep many whites from voting for the party who really cares about their future, the Democrats under Barack Obama!

The “Near Poor”: A New Category Of Poverty

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In the past, we have known that poverty existed, and the fact that about 49 million people, one out of six in this country, are in that sad state, a large percentage of them being children.

But now the Census Bureau, through gathering of new data, has come up with a new category, the “near poor”.

This category is approximately 51 million people, making for a total of about 100 million people, one out of THREE, who are either in poverty or in “near poverty”!

Of course, the “near poor” are better off than those defined as “poor”, in the sense that they work and own a car, but they own a car with a lot of mileage, do not make enough to have a sense of “getting ahead”, and often do not have health care coverage, which means if they get sick or have an accident, it sets them back with heavy bills that can push them over the line into poverty.

There is no room for error among this group, as they teeter on the verge of bankruptcy from unexpected bills that may crop up, and they are unable to have much hope about the future.

One third of the “near poor” are elderly, and 39 percent are children. The “American Dream” is not coming through for these people at both ends of the age spectrum! The group of 51 million people is just “scraping by”, and there is a sense of hopelessness.

If one has an income under $50,000 in major metropolitan areas, he or she fits into this group if part of a family of four, and they have suffered from a decade of flat wages, as well as the economic collapse of the Great Recession. The fact that many live in the suburbs is misleading, as we are witnessing the growing poverty of many suburban communities, and the foreclosures on many homes, decimating what were once middle class neighborhoods.

As the saying goes, there is no “wiggle room” for this category of “near poor”, as they struggle every day to stay “above water”, with the danger of “drowning”, falling into poverty.