Hey John:

We?ve certainly touched on this question before. Our discussion about the ?two Americas? theme championed by Senator Edwards in our most recent installment of Raising the Issue is a good example. Obviously (well, it?s obvious to me, anyway) we at the Justice Center think that candidates should be discussing the issue of poverty (and the closely related topic of the shrinking middle class) a lot. It is, indeed, one of the most distressing aspects of the 2004 political scene that in an era of profound economic distress that the presidential contest has spent the last 30 days mired in a ?debate? about what happened in Vietnam 35 years ago.

Fortunately, there is a new and good excuse to talk about poverty and the listing economy. Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau released the latest detailed poverty data.They tell a sobering, if not at all surprising story.

(An interesting side note here, that has raised more than a few eyebrows, is that the release came at least a few weeks early this year. Some anti-poverty advocates have voiced the suspicion that this may have been done for purposes of political timing, i.e. to help assure that the numbers have as little of an impact as possible in November. Whatever the case, we?ll do our best to keep the issue alive.)

Anyway, laying conspiracy theories aside, here are some of the salient findings: Since 2000, the number of Americans living in poverty has increased by 4.3 million and the number without health insurance has increased by 5.2 million. Median income (adjusted for inflation) has fallen by $1,535. Most of the newly poor were children under 18.
Not surprisingly — given the decline in textiles and other industries impacted by national trade policy — the story is even worse in North Carolina. Only two other states saw a bigger jump in poverty. More than one in six Tar Heels now lacks health insurance. Each of these disturbing facts arrives at a time when American worker efficiency and productivity are all-time highs.

Now, I know that you and some of your Locke colleagues such as Raleigh News & Observer columnist Rick Martinez have argued repeatedly that these facts should have little to do with the election because poverty is ultimately, a matter of personal choice. This argument, however, seems to me to amount to an effort to play a ?blame the victim? spin game with what really is a pretty simple and obvious set of facts that goes like this:

1) The American economy has been down for almost four years and has shed lots of good jobs — many of them to low wage employers overseas.
2) The cost of health care, housing and transportation are dramatically up.
3) Programs and initiatives designed to ease the effects of a roller coaster economy on average folks (unemployment insurance, public health insurance, childcare assistance, affordable housing investments and lower-income tax breaks) have all been slashed or neglected at the expense of large new tax cuts for the top 1% and an expensive war overseas.
4) The bottom-line result is a shrinking middle class and a general expansion of poverty and economic uncertainty.

With two months to go until election-day, one of the best gauges for North Carolinians attempting to measure the seriousness and integrity of any candidate is whether or not the candidate is willing to address (and propose aggressive solutions to) the fundamental inequities that plague our economy. If there is any justice in the world, such voter measurements will play the decisive role in the selection of our next crop of political leaders.