Let’s start with something upbeat. At its board meeting last Wednesday, RIPTA extended its free fare pilot bus pass program another month, as Rhode Island Current reported. The program provides unlimited travel to riders ages 5 to 65 living at or below 200% of the poverty line.1
Pat Crowley, one of the RIPTA board members, was puzzled by the $40,000 per month cost estimate of the program. He was not alone. This was Pat’s reaction on Xwitter.
Apparently, RIPTA staff claims a cost of $1.70 per day per pass. Is that supposed to be income lost from people without money who, without a pass, would not have taken the bus? Extra busses perhaps? There were none.
Also last week, the RI Public Utility Commission approved a 70% increase of its electric utility rate. If all other costs stay the same, that increase will typically add in 35% to people’s electric bill. People who are already struggling to make ends meet, will run the risk of becoming homeless. That often is a killer, as this bar chart shows:
Inequality.org writes about this chart:
After rising steadily for many decades, U.S. life expectancy dropped dramatically by 2.5 years during the pandemic to 76.4 in 2021. Given past trends, the impact of this drop probably fell most heavily on lower-income Americans. A landmark 2016 study published by the Journal of the American Medical Association found that low-income Americans, particularly men, live shorter lives than those at the top of the income scale. In 2014, men in the top 1 percent of the income distribution could expect to live 15 years longer than those in the bottom 1 percent. For women, the difference was about 10 years.
Policy murder is what the Poor People’s Campaign calls policy choices that lead to the death. In the U.S. 800 from die poverty on an average day. Friedrich Engels in 1885 coined the term “social murder” for policies that send people to their grave prematurely. “Policy murder” may be better: it implies that those who make the policies are murderers.
Inequality in the U.S. has reached an appalling level. The same is true in the rest of the World According to Milton Friedman, the Father of Neoliberalism. As inequality.org writes:
The U.S. income divide has not always been as vast as it is today. In response to the staggering inequality of the Gilded Age in the early 1900s, social movements and progressive policymakers fought successfully to level down the top through fair taxation and level up the bottom through increased unionization and other reforms.
While I’m writing, I get text messages saying that Michael Nugent was just arrested. Apparently, he is not alone. Steve Ahlquist wrote about Michal yesterday and was on the scene today. This is the first paragraph of yesterday’s post:
The Administration of Providence Mayor Brett Smiley is continuing its cruel policy of evicting unhoused people from public property without first ensuring that the evicted person has a safe environment to land in. On Wednesday, September 27th, at 11 a.m., an officer with the Providence Police Department approached Michael Nugent, who has set up camp, and panhandles, at the Orms Street Route 95 overpass.
Stay tuned for further details; Steve was on the scene today.
If you agree that this cruelty must end, join Better Lives Rhode Island, DARE, Gather Together United As 1, HOPE, the Rhode Island Homeless Advocacy Project, the Rhode Island Housing Justice Committee, and the Rhode Island Poor People’s Campaign at City Hall in Providence, this October 4, Wednesday, at 3pm.
The following, proof of the delinquency of the State, is from last week's ProJo: “What is the state not spending on?”
Despite the big promises to address Rhode Island's top-of-the-news housing – and homelessness – crisis, the "Housing & Community Development" arm of the state's Executive Office of Commerce spent $76.5 million less than the $148.7 million in mostly federal dollars state legislators earmarked for:
Development of Affordable Housing
Homelessness Assistance
Site Acquisition
Down Payment Assistance
Workforce Housing
Affordable Housing Predevelopment Program
Home Repair and Community Revitalization
The statewide Housing Plan
Homelessness Infrastructure
Why, you may ask, are the priorities of this country so deeply depraved? We have known the answer to that question since Dr. Martin Luther King’s Beyond Vietnam:
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
That approach was then in 1967; this is what spiritual death looks like. And here is a pie chart for desert. The numbers are from SIPRI, an organization held in high regard.
The abject truth is that the U.S. spends more on its war economy and militarism than the next eleven countries put together. Stated differently, 4% of the world population—the U.S.—is responsible for 39% of the global war economy spending. The U.S. does this as it spreads “democracy and freedom” across the globe and leaves behind unexploded cluster munitions, mines, and toxins including depleted uranium, a lethal cocktail known as remnants of war.
200% because the poverty guide lines are antiquated and totally inadequate.
This is excellent thank you!
Great article