Poverty

For all his talk of "compassionate conservatism," President Bush has done remarkably little to empower America's poor. What a contrast with his predecessor, Bill Clinton, who radically reformed welfare, moved millions of people off the dole and into jobs, and made a serious dent in poverty. The Bush administration's inaction leaves it to America's next president to pick up where Mr. Clinton left off. But while Mr. Clinton's reforms encouraged welfare recipients - mostly single mothers with children - to work, it's time to focus on the other side of the poverty equation: the men who father their children.

Maryland, one of the wealthiest states in the nation, ranks only 24th in the well-being of its children, according to the latest Kids Count report. That's a notch below last year and a drop of five places in two years, pointing to a continuing, shameful gap and a need to reorder state priorities. This year's look at the condition of children by the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation shows that, nationally, the rates of child deaths, teen births, high school dropouts, teenagers who were not in school and not working, infant mortality and teen deaths have all shown some improvement since 2000.

It's not exactly a secret that the poor pay more for everyday goods and services than their wealthier neighbors. But a local group has just put a dollar figure on that "poverty premium" - about $2,800 a year for low-income residents in the Baltimore metro area. In a report released yesterday, the Job Opportunities Task Force says that residents in low-income neighborhoods often spend more for financial services, home-related expenses, auto costs and groceries than residents in higher-income communities.

President Bush has turned to his inner circle of loyalists to clean up the mess made by one of its own. But given the parameters within which he was working, the president seems to have made the best possible choice in naming Robert B. Zoellick to replaced Paul Wolfowitz as president of the World Bank. Unlike Mr. Wolfowitz, Mr. Zoellick is a competent manager who is highly regarded in the diplomatic, financial and international development communities. Also unlike the man he would replace, Mr. Zoellick is no ideologue.

India needs faster growth to create more jobs for its expanding population and to make it easier to relieve poverty. The awkward truth is that although the economy is sprinting ahead, most people are only crawling. Although the educated middle class has enjoyed big salary increases and a surge in the value of their homes and shares, the 60 percent of the population close to or below the poverty line have not yet seen a material gain. Measured by the commonly used Gini coefficient, India has less income inequality than China or America.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama was fresh from delivering a rousing speech in Southeast Washington when he decided to take a few minutes to greet three news media types. After the Illinois senator jokingly expressed envy about our casual attire, radio talk-show host Joe Madison of WOLB reminded the senator that in his line of work, he really didn't have to wear anything. I was trying to get the picture of a naked Madison sitting in a radio studio out of my mind when Obama walked up, looked me straight in the eye and shook my hand.

It is a "sacred task" and a religious obligation for Jews to work to alleviate poverty in their communities and in the world, according to a rabbinical letter on the poor approved yesterday by the world's Conservative rabbis.The rabbis, who wrap up the five-day meeting of the Rabbinical Assembly at the Sheraton Inner Harbor Hotel today, approved "You Shall Strengthen Them: A Rabbinic Letter on the Poor," which urges their congregations to participate in local action programs, to give to charity and to study what Judaism teaches about their religious obligation to those less fortunate.

THEY CAME in cold and fresh from the shelters and the social welfare agencies. Some on foot, some by bus, many clutching shopping bags stuffed with clothing, they migrated through the big business lanes of downtown Baltimore and funnelled into the Pratt Street entrance of the Convention Center, down the grand staircase, past the water fountains and into the cavernous, concrete heart of the city's tourism complex. Where usually are found white-collar professionals with briefcases and name tags were close to 3,000 of Baltimore's poor.

THE MEDIA love a good summer scare -- as long as the horrors aren't too real. So as "The Blair Witch Project" was spooking its way onto the covers of both Time and Newsweek, a far more frightening story involving real children in real America was all but ignored by the mainstream press.A new study by the Children's Defense Fund shows that in one year, from 1996 to 1997, the number of children living in extreme poverty -- defined as less than half of the poverty level -- rose by 26 percent among single-mother families.

Here is an excerpt of an editorial from the Chicago Tribune, which was published Monday.REPUBLICAN presidential front-runner George W. Bush's faith-based, anti-poverty plan offers something old, something new, several things borrowed and, as a political play, something quite shrewd.The idea of government fighting poverty through religiously affiliated groups has been around for years. It also has worked remarkably well in various forms in various states, including Texas, where Mr. Bush is governor.

Many local economists and child welfare advocates were puzzled this week when new census data came out showing a 3 percentage-point drop in Baltimore's childhood poverty rate from 2007 to 2008. How could the rate be declining when the economic meltdown was getting under way? Maybe the study was just a little off. The 3-point swing was within the margin of error, after all. But even if this year's number is a bit high or low, the truth is Baltimore's poverty rate for children has been on the steady decline for at least two decades.

Despite a decrease in poverty among city children, nearly one in five Baltimore residents were living below federal poverty levels in 2008, according to Census Bureau data released Tuesday. Census Bureau data showed that 19 percent of Baltimore's population lived in poverty last year, putting Maryland's most populous city well above the national rate of 13 percent. The city data are in line with figures from 2007, but a 3 percent decrease in the number of city children living in poverty last year left local analysts searching for answers to what they call a statistical anomaly amid a sagging economy and the rise of unemployment in the area.

WASHINGTON - - The government's first broad look at the recession's impact on American households in 2008 shows that the nation's poverty level jumped to an 11-year high, incomes sank for almost every group and the number of people without health insurance rose to 46.3 million. As bleak as these statistics were from the Census Bureau on Thursday, they captured only a part of the devastating effects of the economic downturn that worsened last fall and into this year. Analysts say they expect the official poverty rate, which rose to 13.2 percent, from 12.5 percent in 2007, to keep climbing this year and next, reversing the gains made in the 1990s.

We are on the cusp of a historic agreement to control health care costs, improve the quality of care and patient safety, and cover most, if not all, of the uninsured. But such an agreement seems to be slipping away. A compromise could be reached along these lines: 1. Trim the reach and cost of the new subsidies. Lawmakers could reduce the cost of the bills brought out of congressional committees by extending Medicaid coverage automatically only to everyone living in poverty, but not to the near-poor.

We arrived at the frozen river separating China and North Korea at 5 o'clock on the morning of March 17. The air was crisp and still, and there was no one in sight. As the sun appeared, our guide stepped onto the ice. We followed him. We had traveled to the area to document a grim story of human trafficking for Current TV. During the previous week, we had interviewed North Korean defectors, women who had fled poverty and repression only to find themselves in a bleak limbo in China. Some had found work in the online sex industry; others were forced into arranged marriages.

Michael S. Steele hit the nail on the head the other day when he noted that Republicans are generally stuck in a rut when it comes to addressing black audiences. Speaking in New York City at the 100th convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the chairman of the Republican National Committee observed, "I spent some time looking at previous remarks by Republicans before this body, and I was struck by the litany of phrases that Republicans often cut and paste into a speech ... 'Party of Lincoln' four or five times ... oh, and one of my favorites, 'Bull Connor was a Democrat.

Osly St. Preux and his mother hopped on the back of a truck and rode for hours along rutted roads in northern Haiti before they finally arrived, barefoot, at the hospital run by nuns and often staffed by American volunteers. When Osly, then 12, took off his shirt for a surgeon from Baltimore, the doctor couldn't believe what he was seeing. The tumor growing out of Osly's right armpit was enormous, a gnarled, bulbous mass larger than a grapefruit and getting bigger by the month. Dr. Mojtaba Gashti knew almost immediately that he and his team, who every spring make a pilgrimage to Haiti to perform surgery, would not be able to save Osly - not there, in fairly primitive conditions in one of the poorest places on the planet.

Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon recently said the city is entering into a period "worse than the Depression." This week, Jim Press, vice chairman of Chrysler, told the Associated Press, "If we have a catastrophic failure of one of these car companies, in this tender environment for the economy, it's a huge blow. It could trigger a depression." These leaders are far from alone in their apocalyptic thinking. In an unscientific, online survey in The Baltimore Sun, 46 percent of respondents agreed that "the U.S. is heading for an economic downturn on a par with the Great Depression."

Since 2001, the government has spent almost $50 billion for national biodefense at sites such as Fort Detrick and other specialty laboratories and universities, and this amount is likely to increase further with ambitious plans to build high-containment laboratories across the country. To be sure, there is an excellent rationale for improving our defense against biological threats. But the diseases that we are preparing against do not currently exist in our country. There is no inhalational anthrax, smallpox or bird flu, and it is unclear whether we are likely to face such biological threats any time soon.

Gov. Martin O'Malley and Baltimore health advocates announced the launch yesterday of a $150,000 advertising campaign designed to let uninsured Baltimoreans know that thousands more of them are eligible for Medicaid. Under a law that went into effect in July, parents with annual incomes up to 116 percent of federal poverty guidelines, or about $20,500 for a family of three, are now eligible for Medicaid. Before the new guidelines were passed, only parents making less than 40 percent of poverty were eligible.