The residual welfare state in practice - flexible capitalism and fry them (or inject in these humane days)!
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
To: PROGRESSIVE SOCIOLOGISTS NETWORK <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 26 January 2000 16:43
Subject: Getting Bushwacked


>Well, its about that time of the year, or every four years, do we vote for
>socialists, greens, or hold nose and do Gore-the lackey of WTO and inventory
>of internet. Hey, for me its easy, my buddy Joel Kovel is running on the
>Green Party ticket, but for those who consider  the choice between  Gore and
>Bush  on criteria other than kissing the ass of global capital, consider
>this.    Lauren Langman
>
>George W. Bush's Texas: poverty and death
>
>George W. Bush, the reputed "frontrunner" for the
>Republican nomination as US Presidential candidate,
>boasts of his policy of "compassionate conservatism" -
>which is nothing more than a modern version of social
>Darwinism. Texas, as Bush likes to brag, is the
>"second largest state in the nation.... If Texas were
>a nation, it
>would have the eleventh largest economy in the world."
>Yet, Bush's state has one of the worst records in the
>entire US on both poverty and the death penalty.
>
>According to figures compiled by the Center for Public
>Policy Priorities, one out of every six Texans lived
>in poverty in the 1990s, and "These rates are
>significantly
>above the national average." Data from the National
>Education Agency, the US Department of Education, and
>other federal and state agencies, show that Bush's
>Texas holds a near-record in poverty, lack of health
>insurance, and lack of public education. Among the 50
>US states, Texas ranks second in the number of people
>suffering from hunger, the number of children in
>poverty, and the percentage of population without any
>health insurance. Texas ranks first in percentage of
>children
>and percentage of poor working parents who have no
>health insurance at all. In terms of "benefits," Texas
>is at the other end of the list: In the size of
>welfare payment
>for eligible families ($201/month), Texas is 47; in
>per capita funding for public health, Texas is 48; as
>for teachers' salaries and benefits, Texas is 50; in
>the number of
>public libraries and branches, Texas is 46; and the
>high school completion rate, is 46 in the US.
>
>Of all children and youth up to age 18 in the state,
>26.9% (1,502,000) are poor. In the time 1994-97,
>24.5%, or 1,497,000, of all children and youth in
>Texas under
>age 19, had no medical insurance. Child poverty
>escalated under Bush's regime: In 1979-83, 24.4% of
>children under the age of 6 in Texas were poor; this
>jumped
>to 30.3% in 1992-96, according to the National Center
>for Children in Poverty. By 1996, over 572,000 Texan
>children were living in poverty.
>
>Since 1996, when the Conservative Revolution's
>"welfare reform" bill was made US law, the situation
>has grown much worse. In January 1999, the Urban
>Institute
>released a survey showing that Texas families report
>significantly greater problems obtaining daily
>necessities, including adequate housing and food, than
>the rest of
>the nation; some 17% of low-income parents doubt they
>can get medical care for their children. According to
>1998 data from the Children's Defense Fund, every 23
>minutes a baby is born in Texas with low birthweight,
>and every four hours, a baby dies during its first
>year of life. Texas cut 302,786 people from the
>welfare rolls
>between August 1996-September 1998, second only to
>California, which has a much larger population. Bush
>even wanted to put private corporations in charge of
>determining families' "eligibility" for welfare, but
>this was prevented by the US Department of Health and
>Human Services in 1997. The private "screeners" would
>have received a bonus for keeping eligible families
>off welfare.
>
>Bush's newly proposed $1.7 trillion "tax cut plan"
>over 10 years shows more of the same. According to a
>December 1999 analysis by the Citizens for Tax Justice
>and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy,
>based in Washington, Bush's tax policy is a sop to the
>very rich. The poorest people in America, those in the
>lowest 20% of the population, with an income of less
>than $13,300, will get an average tax cut of $43 a
>year, amounting to only 0.6% of Bush's tax cut. In
>contrast,
>the top 10% of the income bracket, those with an
>income of $89,000 or more, would receive an average
>tax cut of $8,362, amounting to 61.6% of Bush's tax
>cuts.
>But for the top 1%, with an income of $301,000 or
>more, the average tax cut would be $50,166 a year,
>36.9% of Bush's plan.
>
>Governor Bush is also a killer. He is proud that he
>has killed more people under Texas capital punishment
>laws, - 113 in five years, - than any other US
>governor.
>He plans to execute three prisoners on Death Row
>during the month of January (all three committed their
>crimes as juveniles), and will execute five more
>during the
>early primaries. Bush's cruelty was shown last year,
>in the execution of Karla Faye Tucker. After he had
>refused to grant her clemency, Bush told a reporter
>for
>Talk magazine, in a high-pitched, mocking voice, how
>Tucker has asked: "Oh please, don't kill me." Hundreds
>of leaders around the world, including Pope John
>Paul II, had asked Bush to grant Tucker clemency.
>
>




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