February 23, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

SHAFTING MEXICO'S POOR

I find this story interesting on several levels. I worked for Mission Foods, a division of the Gruma Corporation, for several years. Mission makes tortillas, chips, and Mexican pastries. I heard mention of the head of Gruma, Roberto Gonzalez Barrera, when I was there. He was called "Don Roberto" and his portrait in the conference room reminded me of Don Corleone. Gruma has major ties to Archer Daniels Midland, and both companies are doing quite well at the expense of Mexico's poor, who rely on tortillas to survive. This article by Tom Philpott is at grist.org/comments/food/2007/02/22/tortillas/:

Indeed, the same company responsible for rigging up the U.S. corn-based ethanol market is also profiting handsomely from soaring tortilla prices. Archer Daniels Midland, the leading U.S. ethanol maker and the world's biggest grain buyer, owns a 27 percent stake in Gruma, Mexico's dominant tortilla maker. ADM also owns a 40 percent share in a joint venture with Gruma to mill and refine wheat -- meaning that when Mexican consumers are forced by high tortilla prices to switch to white bread, Gruma and ADM still win.

In Mexico, the tortilla is more than an iconic food with ancient roots. It's a dietary staple -- as important in its way as rice is to the Asian diet. According to the Mexican business daily El Financiero, Mexicans who eat a traditional diet gain 50 percent of their calories, and 70 percent of their calcium, from tortillas and other corn-based products. Another expert reckons tortillas account for 40 percent of protein in such diets. Corn cultivation originated in Mesoamerica -- comprised of present-day southern Mexico and parts of Central America -- and the region still maintains the crop's most robust store of genetic diversity.

Traditional Mexican fare -- tortillas and beans, supplemented by chile-pepper-based condiments and, when possible, meat -- still largely sustains the nation's vast working-poor population. The median Mexican income is $4 per day, meaning that half of the nation's 107 million people live on that much or less. Fed by similar diets, cultures ranging from the ancient Mayans to the 16th-century Aztecs flourished.

US POVERTY DRAMATICALLY INCREASING

There's something wrong with an economic system that rewards a very few with most of the country's wealth. I don't buy the right-wing argument that rich people are better, more creative, harder working, etc. It's a convenient rationale for a system that is stacked against working people in this country. We now have the highest poverty rates in over 30 years. Poverty and Republican administrations go together. This article by Tony Pugh is linked at www.commondreams.org:

The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, millions of working Americans are falling closer to the poverty line and the gulf between the nation's "haves" and "have-nots" continues to widen.

A McClatchy Newspapers analysis of 2005 census figures, the latest available, found that nearly 16 million Americans are living in deep or severe poverty. A family of four with two children and an annual income of less than $9,903 - half the federal poverty line - was considered severely poor in 2005. So were individuals who made less than $5,080 a year.

The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That's 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period. McClatchy's review also found statistically significant increases in the percentage of the population in severe poverty in 65 of 215 large U.S. counties, and similar increases in 28 states. The review also suggested that the rise in severely poor residents isn't confined to large urban counties but extends to suburban and rural areas.

The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps explain why the median household income of working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.

These and other factors have helped push 43 percent of the nation's 37 million poor people into deep poverty - the highest rate since at least 1975.