From HuffPo:

Extended unemployment benefits Congress put in place at the outset of the Great Recession didn’t discourage people from taking jobs, according to new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

Princeton University economics professor Henry Farber and San Francisco Fed economist Rob Valletta found that extended benefits might have encouraged people to continue to look for work longer so that they could remain eligible for benefits. While the longer searches for jobs could have boosted the unemployment rate by four-tenths of a percentage point, the compensation didn’t make the long-term jobless unwilling to work.

“It did not reduce the job finding rate,” Farber told HuffPost. He added the benefits probably helped the economy, however, not to mention the individual people who otherwise might have had no income. “These are people who spend the money you give them.”

The findings are similar to 2011 research by Jesse Rothstein of the University of California, Berkeley.

From The Atlantic:

Above is a picture I took of a chart showing how the scheme could work. The chart was produced by activist lawyers in the late 60s trying to demonstrate the effects of contract buying. There are four columns “Documented Price Paid By Speculator,” “Documented Price Change To Negro Buyer,” “Markup,” “Approximate Additional Interest,” and “Total Additional Charges.” In that chart you can literally see black wealth leaving one neighborhood and migrating to another. It was not just legal. It was the whole point.

Jim Crow — Northern or Southern — is usually rendered to us as an archaic system in which people irrationally decide to separate from each other just based on skin color. There’s a reason that so many of us remember Martin Luther King’s line about little white boys and little black boys holding hands. It’s comforting to us. Less comforting is that fact that Jim Crow amounted to the legal pilfering of resources from the black communities to advantage white people across generations. In Mississippi, it meant the right to reduce someone to sharecropping, or to benefit politically from their census numbers while not giving them any representation, or to tax them for services they did not enjoy equal access to. In Chicago, it meant the legalized theft of black wealth by white agents.

It is very hard to accept this — the wealth gap is not a mistake. It is the logical outcome of policy and democratic will. From the streets of Cicero on up, the point was to imprison black people in the black belt and then exploit them. The goal was pursued through public policy, private action, and open terrorism. The goal was accomplished.

From Think Progress:

Two Tennessee lawmakers introduced legislation that would tie welfare assistance under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program to the educational performance of students who benefit from it, and the legislation was approved by committees in both the state House and Senate last week.
Under the legislation brought by two Republicans, a student who doesn’t not make “satisfactory progress” in school would cost his or her family up to 30 percent of its welfare assistance, the Knoxville News and Sentinel reported:

The bill is sponsored by Sen. Stacey Campfield, R-Knoxville, and Rep. Vance Dennis, R-Savannah. It calls for a 30 percent reduction in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families benefits to parents whose children are not making satisfactory progress in school.

As amended, it would not apply when a child has a handicap or learning disability or when the parent takes steps to try improving the youngster’s school performance — such as signing up for a “parenting class,” arranging a tutoring program or attending a parent-teacher conference.

When Campfield introduced the legislation in January, he said parents have “gotten away with doing absolutely nothing to help their children” in school. “That’s child abuse to me,” he added. Tennessee already ties welfare to education by mandating a 20 percent cut in benefits if students do not meet attendance standards, but this change would place the burden of maintaining benefits squarely on children, who would face costing their family much-needed assistance if they don’t keep up in school.

From Prof. Robson of Constitutional Law Prof Blog:

In its unanimous panel opinion today in Lebron v. Sec’t Florida Dep’t of Children & Families, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed a district judge’s grant of a preliminary injunction against Florida Statute §414.0652 requiring drug testing of all persons who receive public benefits.

Recall that 16 months ago, Federal District Judge Mary Scriven issued a preliminary injunction against the controversial law championed by equally controversial governor Rick Scott requiring drug testing for each individual who applies for benefits under the federally funded TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) program to take a drug test, which must occur at an “approved laboratory” and be paid for by the applicant. As the Eleventh Circuit panel made clear, it was not resolving “the merits of the constitutional claim” but only addressing “whether the district court abused its discretion in concluding that Lebron is substantially likely to succeed in establishing that Florida’s drug testing regime for TANF applicants violates his Fourth Amendment rights.”

Nevertheless, the Eleventh Circuit’s opinion, authored by Judge Rosemary Barkett, left little room to argue that the statute could survive a constitutional challenge. Barkett observed that in the “specific context of government-mandated drug testing programs, the Supreme Court has exempted such programs from the Fourth Amendment’s warrant and probable cause requirement only where such testing ‘fit[s] within the closely guarded category of constitutionally permissible suspicionless searches,’” requiring that the “proffered special need for drug testing must be substantial,” citing Chandler v. Miller, 520 U.S. 305 (1997). These special needs include “the specific risk to public safety by employees engaged in inherently dangerous jobs and the protection of children entrusted to the public school system’s care and tutelag.” The Eleventh Circuit easily found that welfare recipients did not fall into a special needs category.

Full post here.

† Criminal InJustice is a weekly series devoted to taking action against inequities in the U.S. criminal justice system. Nancy A. Heitzeg, Professor of Sociology and Race/Ethnicity, is the Editor of CI. Criminal Injustice is published every Wednesday at 6 pm.

Criminalizing Poverty

Editors Note: In the midst of a heated campaign season – one fraught with economic debates aplenty — there is one term we will probably not hear in any debate.

Poverty.

And yes one constituency left unmentioned.

The Poor.

The persistence of widespread poverty — some 40 million officially – in the so-called richest nation on earth is often a source of personal discomfort and political peril. And so, the poor, despite their mighty numbers, are often rendered invisible.

Often all too literally. A recent report by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty that examined 188 cities, there was a 7 percent increase in prohibitions on begging or panhandling between 2009 and 2011. Criminalizing homelessness in myriad ways was a central theme of the report:

City ordinance are frequently tools for criminalizing homelessness. Of the 234 cities surveyed for our Prohibited Conduct Chart (in the Advocacy Manual Appendix):
• 40 percent prohibit “camping” in particular public places, while 16 percent prohibit “camping” citywide;
• 33 percent prohibit sitting/lying in particular public places;
• 56 percent prohibit loitering in particular public places, while 22 percent prohibit loitering citywide; and
• 53 percent prohibit begging in particular public places, while 53 percent prohibit “aggressive” panhandling and 24 percent prohibit begging citywide.

The trend of criminalizing homelessness continues to grow. Among the 188 cities reviewed for the prohibited conduct chart in both the 2009 report and this report, we identified the following increases in criminalization measures:
• 7 percent increase in prohibitions on begging or panhandling;
• 7 percent increase in prohibitions on camping in particular public places; and
• 10 percent increase in prohibitions on loitering in particular public places.

The absence of meaningful public discourse on this disturbing trend prompts CI to republish an earlier piece, Media Justice and the Crime of Poverty –An interview with Tiny from POOR Magazine By Angola 3 News.. Wit gratitude as always.

It remains timely and provocative and reminds us that economic solutions must address the poor.

First not Last.

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From TP:

When local activist groups challenged Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton to live on a food stamp budget for a week to mark Hunger Awareness Month, he took them up on the offer and found out just how hard it was. Stanton kept a diary on the challenge, which allotted him roughly $29 a week, the same amount 1.1 million Arizonans receive from the Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP) each week.

By day four, Stanton noted that he was “tired” and “it’s hard to focus” after leaving the house for work without time to scramble eggs or eat a decent breakfast:

OK- ran out the door today with no time to scramble eggs or even make a sandwich. So I’m surviving on an apple and handful of peanuts, and the coffee I took to the office until dinner. I’m tired, and it’s hard to focus. I can’t go buy a sandwich because that would be cheating- even the dollar menu at Taco Bell is cheating. You can’t use SNAP benefits at any restaurants, fast food or otherwise. I’m facing a long, hungry day and an even longer night getting dinner on the table, which requires making EVERYTHING from scratch on this budget. It’s only for a week, so I’ve got a decent attitude. If I were doing this with no end in sight, I probably wouldn’t be so pleasant.

The latest Romney campaign dog-whistle (fog horn???) below. Of course, Newt Gingrich is involved. Here come the criminalizing, racialized archetypes, as predicted, so many months ago, by Kay Whitlock CI: Criminalizing President Obama:

Welfare Queen/Lazy Black People Wanting What Belongs to Whites

As he sought the presidency thirty years ago, Ronald Reagan famously invoked images of a “welfare” queen” who drove a Cadillac, had one child after another out of wedlock, scammed public assistance programs by using bogus Social Security numbers, falsely collected veteran’s widow benefits, gave various addresses, and the like. He didn’t say this mythic person was black; he didn’t have to. He often featured this story while campaigning for “states’ rights” in the South. This woman wasn’t real; she was a toxic, public relations amalgam of already-existing racist criminal archetypes and hatred for the New Deal, the War on Poverty, and other public initiatives aimed at helping poor and low-income people. To do this, Reagan tapped into a long legacy of pathologizing, criminalizing views of black women – including Jim Crow images and Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1965 report for the Lyndon Johnson administration, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action” (popularly referred to as The Moynihan Report).

Infamously, this report identified black family structure – not the intersections of virulent poverty and systemic racism – as “destructive.” Blame was placed squarely on the growing numbers of families headed by single mothers who, Moynihan claimed, were increasingly giving birth to “illegitimate” children and becoming dependent on welfare.

Newt Gingrich refers to President Obama as “the food stamp president” and refers to poor [read: black] children having a “poor work ethic,” suggesting they might replace school janitors.

He’s invoking the entire racist, criminalizing archetype, and this kind of GOP stoking of racial resentments is widespread. Public commentator Juan Williams, who is not generally known for his progressive politics and who regularly appears on FOX News and offers his opinions in the Wall Street Journal and other conservative media makes note of the tactic:

Race is always a trigger in politics, but now a third of the nation are people of color — and their numbers are growing. With those minorities solidly in the Democratic camp and behind the first black president, the scene is set for a bonanza of racial politics.

The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any for the racial content of his message. The code words in this game are “entitlement society” — as used by Mitt Romney — and “poor work ethic” and “food stamp president” — as used by Newt Gingrich. References to a lack of respect for the “Founding Fathers” and the “Constitution” also make certain ears perk up by demonizing anyone supposedly threatening core “old-fashioned American values.”

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The New York Times:

CHILDERSBURG, Ala. — Three years ago, Gina Ray, who is now 31 and unemployed, was fined $179 for speeding. She failed to show up at court (she says the ticket bore the wrong date), so her license was revoked. When she was next pulled over, she was, of course, driving without a license. By then her fees added up to more than $1,500. Unable to pay, she was handed over to a private probation company and jailed — charged an additional fee for each day behind bars.

For that driving offense, Ms. Ray has been locked up three times for a total of 40 days and owes $3,170, much of it to the probation company. Her story, in hardscrabble, rural Alabama, where Krispy Kreme promises that “two can dine for $5.99,” is not about innocence. It is, rather, about the mushrooming of fines and fees levied by money-starved towns across the country and the for-profit businesses that administer the system. The result is that growing numbers of poor people, like Ms. Ray, are ending up jailed and in debt for minor infractions…

Half a century ago in a landmark case, the Supreme Court ruled that those accused of crimes had to be provided a lawyer if they could not afford one. But in misdemeanors, the right to counsel is rarely brought up, even though defendants can run the risk of jail. The probation companies promise revenue to the towns, while saying they also help offenders, and the defendants often end up lost in a legal Twilight Zone.

Here in Childersburg, where there is no public transportation, Ms. Ray has plenty of company in her plight. Richard Garrett has spent a total of 24 months in jail and owes $10,000, all for traffic and license violations that began a decade ago. A onetime employee of United States Steel Corporation, he is suffering from health difficulties and is without work. William M. Dawson, a Birmingham lawyer and Democratic Party activist, has filed a lawsuit for Mr. Garrett and others against the local authorities and the probation company, Judicial Correction Services, which is based in Georgia.

“The Supreme Court has made clear that it is unconstitutional to jail people just because they can’t pay a fine,” Mr. Dawson said in an interview…

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