George Zornick writes The Senate Hears Tales From the Struggling Middle Class:
?Families who are scraping by every day see no real relief in sight,? Amanda Greubel, an Iowa mother of two, told a roomful of U.S. Senators Thursday morning. ?We hear that corporate welfare continues and CEOs get six-figure bonuses at taxpayer expense, and we look across the kitchen table at our families eating Ramen noodles for the third time this week?.We know that money talks around here, and that means you don?t hear us.?The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions heard Greubel?s pleas during a hearing called ?Stories from the Kitchen Table: How Middle Class Families are Struggling to Make Ends Meet.? As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee three floors below, outlining American plans for ?longer-term sustainable development that focuses on spurring growth? in Afghanistan, Senators on the HELP Committee heard about the urgent need for ?nation building here at home,? as President Obama put it in his address to the country last night.
Greubel and her husband work for the public school system in DeWitt, Iowa, and both had their salaries reduced during recent state spending cuts. She tried to convey to the committee the real effect it had on her family. ?The loss of that income required a complete financial, emotional, and spiritual overhaul in our family,? Greubel testified, describing shopping trips to Goodwill stores and discount supermarkets, and cold cereal for her children at dinnertime. ?We did everything that all the experts said we should do, and yet we?re still struggling. When you work as hard as we have and still sometimes scrape for the necessities, it really gets you down.? ...
It was overall an unusual display in the Senate, as stories of economic hardship were brought directly into official hearing rooms. Sen. Tom Harkin, who chairs the committee, appeared visibly distressed during some of Greuber?s testimony and later called it ?one of the most eloquent statements about the plight of the middle class and what?s happening to families out there that I?ve ever heard.? (You can watch her testimony here, at the 51-minute mark).
But the hearing also had a feeling of futility to it. The Senate is mired in gridlock, and earlier this week wasn?t even able to pass re-authorization of the Economic Development Act, which would have provided grants to economically distressed areas to generate job growth. The reauthorization enjoyed wide bipartisan support in the past.
? ? ? ? ?
At Daily Kos on this date in 2008:
This week the Washington Post will be taking a two-part, front page look at the failure of al-Hurra, an Arabic-language propaganda network financed by the U.S. government and created to win those ever-elusive hearts and minds in the Middle East. But let?s save you some time because the reason for this $350 million dollar failure is pretty much summed up in these three lines:[A] succession of executives who either had little experience in television or could not speak Arabic.One news anchor greeted the station's predominantly Muslim audience on Easter by declaring, "Jesus is risen today!"
In 2004, when an Israeli airstrike killed the spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, virtually all Arabic news channels interrupted their regular programming. Al-Hurra continued with a cooking show.
And now that the mystery of why al-Hurra only manages to attract 2% of its target audience is solved, perhaps the Washington Post could take some time to investigate the Pentagon sponsored propaganda program that propelled us into a war in Iraq. The one that has cost more than $500 billion, 4,103 American and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives. Because the Washington Post still hasn?t bothered to report on that story.
? ? ? ? ?
Top Comments can be found here. High Impact Diaries can be found here.
political news political news articles politics news current political news
No comments:
Post a Comment