March 23, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


BUSH: ONLY THE RICH GET GOVERNMENT HELP

As the subprime mortgage crisis washes over the economy, the Bush administration was very prompt to bail out investment firm Bear Stearns. The excuse is that the government can't allow a major bank like Bear Stearns to fail. But if you're the average person whose mortgage costs have gotten out of hand, tough luck, pal. This whole fiasco is a direct result of the anti-regulation ideology of reactionary conservatives, who believe in the "free market." Of course, the "free market" doesn't apply when it's the very rich. This article by By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum and Lori Montgomery is at www.washingtonpost.com:

Now that the Federal Reserve has pledged billions of dollars to rescue Wall Street bankers from possible default, lawmakers and regulators are turning their attention to helping average citizens -- from homeowners in danger of foreclosure to people who want to buy a home.

But unlike the Fed's rapid moves last week to stabilize financial markets, the consumer benefits are likely to progress slowly as they face resistance from the Bush administration on some broad issues and from special interests on some narrow ones.

Bush officials are working with lawmakers on proposals that would help new home buyers and small investors by strengthening rules that govern mortgage lending.

THE LIFE EXPECTANCY GAP

It turns out that the United States not only has a gulf between the rich and poor in income, but also in life expectancy. Being poor increases the chances for a shorter life. Right-wingers will undoubtedly spin this that poor people "choose" to live unhealthier lives. But lack of money dictates so many things. It dictates your diet because you buy the food you can afford. It dictates the health care you get or don't get. It dictates the kind of neighborhood where you live. Poor neighborhoods tend to have more crime than more affluent areas, for example. Poor people also tend to live nearer things like toxic waste dumps. This article by Robert Pear is at www.nytimes.com:

WASHINGTON — New government research has found "large and growing" disparities in life expectancy for richer and poorer Americans, paralleling the growth of income inequality in the last two decades.

Life expectancy for the nation as a whole has increased, the researchers said, but affluent people have experienced greater gains, and this, in turn, has caused a widening gap.

One of the researchers, Gopal K. Singh, a demographer at the Department of Health and Human Services , said "the growing inequalities in life expectancy" mirrored trends in infant mortality and in death from heart disease and certain cancers.

The gaps have been increasing despite efforts by the federal government to reduce them. One of the top goals of "Healthy People 2010," an official statement of national health objectives issued in 2000, is to "eliminate health disparities among different segments of the population," including higher- and lower-income groups and people of different racial and ethnic background.

Dr. Singh said last week that federal officials had found "widening socioeconomic inequalities in life expectancy" at birth and at every age level.

He and another researcher, Mohammad Siahpush, a professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, developed an index to measure social and economic conditions in every county, using census data on education, income, poverty, housing and other factors. Counties were then classified into 10 groups of equal population size.

In 1980-82, Dr. Singh said, people in the most affluent group could expect to live 2.8 years longer than people in the most deprived group (75.8 versus 73 years). By 1998-2000, the difference in life expectancy had increased to 4.5 years (79.2 versus 74.7 years), and it continues to grow, he said.

After 20 years, the lowest socioeconomic group lagged further behind the most affluent, Dr. Singh said, noting that "life expectancy was higher for the most affluent in 1980 than for the most deprived group in 2000."

"If you look at the extremes in 2000," Dr. Singh said, "men in the most deprived counties had 10 years’ shorter life expectancy than women in the most affluent counties (71.5 years versus 81.3 years)." The difference between poor black men and affluent white women was more than 14 years (66.9 years vs. 81.1 years).

The Democratic candidates for president, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, have championed legislation to reduce such disparities, as have some Republicans, like Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi.

Peter R. Orszag, director of the Congressional Budget Office , said: "We have heard a lot about growing income inequality. There has been much less attention paid to growing inequality in life expectancy, which is really quite dramatic."

Life expectancy is the average number of years of life remaining for people who have attained a given age.