Dear People of the World (formerly Dear Americans)

On 21 of December, the speech by a professor from UC Riverside, Dr. Ellen Reese was held in Hosei University, Tokyo. The speaker was critical of US welfare reform done since 1996. The purpose of the speech was to acknowledge Japanese people the welfare reform such as 5 year time-out period was worst thing for Japan to follow.

The main points were as follows,

1. The U.S. is the most affluent nation in the world but 1 in 10 people are living below poverty line. 1 in 5 children were living in the household of below poverty line.
2. Poverty is concentrated among ethnic minorities and single mother households. 
3. Federal poverty guideline was set in 1960s. It is already outdated.
4. Welfare reform started in 1996 did not actually reduce the poverty but glossed over serious facts to reduce welfare recipients.
5. A common myth is that the welfare recipients live extravagant lives, wasting tax payers's expense. In reality, federal public assistance does not provide enough money to lift a family out of poverty or even pay for all of a family's basic necessities.
6. Private welfare contractors are cheating on welfare recipients by encouraging them to to ask friends, families and churches for help to keep most of the money they have to use for the recipients.
7. The states with more Black people implement more strict policies on welfare.  
8. Those who time-out of welfare are in harder situation than those who left welfare for other reasons.
9. Time-out people, especially women have to rely on their former abusers, often their fathers and damage their mental and physical conditions.
10. The states with more strict welfare policy have higher rate of child abuse, fostering and out-of-home care cases.

It is very sad to know such facts.

The U.S. has been a role model of Japan since the end of World War 2. Japan was occupied by the U.S. force and democratized by them.

Thanks to the U.S. distribution of the wealth in our country has become much more even than prewar time. The constitution given by the U.S. insures citizens' rights to have healthy and cultural lives, which the government has to support.

Now the situation has changed. The U.S. has become "Do not follow" model.

Since Iraq war, the U.S. has spent too much money on military. Why not they want to spend that amount of money for the poor people in their own territory. The economy is going bankrupt by financial crisis. It is time to change.

 

I hope that in next year Mr. Obama can change the things better, pulling their troops from outside their territory and concentrating poverty issue in his country. The U.S. is not superpower any more.

The below is You Tube clips that post part of the speech (2 parts, 13 minutes).

 

 

Part 2

 

That is the title of a book written by Mika Tsutsumi, who wrote this book, which I wrote the review of.

She has lived in New York as college student and office worker but since she experienced 911 turmoil, she started to learn what went wrong in the U.S.

In this book, she paid attention to poverty issue. Some of the things mentioned overlap in her previous book.

The book became best-selling non-fiction book in Japan. It was sold at the price of 700 yen (US$7).

At first she talked about subprime loan crisis. The real estate business took mean advantage of poor people who have dreams of having their own houses, which they could never afford by their cheap salaries. They ended up losing  houses and dreams and then being poorer than before.

50 million people don't have medical insurance. 60 million live by the wage under $7 per day. 35 million people are in hunger. That was a result of free economy. The poor gets poorer, the rich gets richer.

Although so many are in hunger, but at the same time so many of them are suffering from obesity. The poverty and the obesity are linked. Poor people cannot afford healthy food. They had to buy cheap junk food which is filled with oil and contain less nutrition. They get fat but lack nutrition that result in sickness but they have no medical insurance to cure. The medical insurance issue she mentioned is similar to Micheal Moore's "Sicko."

Americans favour free competition, smaller government, and privatization. Hurricane Katrina was a catastrophie caused by privatization. FEMA was privatized and disaster prevention budget was cut-off.

In the last chapter, she described working poor became new type of military drafting system. A truck driver was offered high-paying job in Iraq by a military contractor. After months of labor in Iraq, he got leukemia because he drunk highly radioactive water. He had no insurance coverage to take care of his illness. Even though he got a big money for that job, he had to use all of it to cure the illness and ended up being poorer and getting heavy illness.

The poor people had no choice but to work for the military which offers only very hard and dangerous tasks.

That is the true figure of America, now. The popularity of Obama seems to be supported by those who experience such hard situations.

Today the U.S. marked very historical moment, Afro-American was nominated for presidential candidate of major political party. Some might hope because he is Black, he should know how the oppressed feel.

Can Ob(s)ama-Bi(nla)den change things better for the U.S. rather than fighting against terrorists outside their country? No more war and poverty, please! 

 

I just recently happen to know Ms. Mika Tsutsumi and read the book written by her.

The title was "Houdo ga oshiete kurenai America, Jakusha-kakumei (Revolution of The Weak behind The News, Why America still has Hope)."

The author graduated from the university in New York. Her major was the same as mine, International Relations.

After she graduated, she worked for Nomura Securities near the WTC and witnessed 911 attack. She got shocked to see what happened there and how Americans reacted to this incident. Then she became journalist and wrote the book. The book won the hornorable Journalist Award in Japan.

The book described how severe living in America is if you are poor. The most common bankruptcy case is inability to pay medical expense. If you are born in poor family, you cannot go to college because the tuition is too expensive for you. Military recruiters take advantage of high school children of the poor families. The military has all the lists of children left behind. High schools are obligated to provide students' personal information to the military by law. They call you and tell you that if you join the army, the army provides you the college tuition, and free medical treatment.

But such things never happen even after you join the army. You have to pay advance fee to get scholarship for the college, it is too high amount to pay by your cheap military salary. The military hospitals cannot provide adequate services because there are too many waiting in line. Why recruiters lied to you? He was afraid to go to the front line in case he could not meet the target line for recruitment.    

People in general are mindless and ignorant about the current situation. That is why they are easily manipulated by Big Powers. They don't know how Bush cheated the elections.

America was not free country as many believed. But she claims there are still many who want to change this harsh situation and some of the things they tried succeeded.

Well, I hope this book would be published in English, in USA.

There are things you don't know as long as you live in your country.

I learned some new things about my country when I was in U.S. Let's know about both of us each other.

If you want to contact her, I recommend you to visit her blog site. It is in Japanese. But you can easily find her email address on that site.

I am writing a novel using the facts introduced in her book. The title is 4 American Hostages in Baghdad.