by Ginger Betzer

Created on: July 12, 2008   Last Updated: March 24, 2009

Sadly enough, poverty has become a very important news story in America today. With all the coverage concerning economic recovery, stimulus, and Obama bail outs, the focus of our media bombards us with the crisis in our economy. To add fuel to the fire, we now find that members of the upper corporate elite have engaged in crimes, immorality and dishonesty in almost every area of business and politics. As if the average citizen of America isn't demoralized enough, now we find that unemployment and home foreclosures have reached an all time high. Religious groups rally to provide more soup kitchen and financial help to the unemployed, but the magnitude of our nations economic depression is creating intense feeling of hopeless. So, I guess the answer to "What does it take to make poverty an important news story?" is...make it very familiar and real to a large group of people.

My concern is that this story of poverty and economic hardship is creating a foundational change in America that will not be in the best interest of all Americans, rich or poor. Presented with facts and figures that seem to "scare" Americans enough to allow any kind of change regardless of it's long term effect on our country is the first danger of this recession. If we accept a modified form of socialism so things will "get back to normal" we are doing a great injustice to our children and grandchildren and paving the way for a world economic system that will eventually treat American citizens as mere numbers in it's giant clog of world domination. For government intervention to dictate how rich we may become or what type of financial ventures we may pursue is in direct opposition to our constitutional right for the pursuit of happiness.

What does it take to make poverty an important news story? It takes an economic crisis. It takes political agenda. And, most of all, it takes a misconstrued radical President that pushes change at any cost, it takes liberal governmental representatives that fails to oppose presidential bills that will be detrimental to the future of our country. With China receiving more and more of our manufacturing and corporations cutting back on employment, there is nothing positive that would give hope to the idea that job openings will be increasing. Quite the opposite. Do we sit and wait for Obama to fix it all for us at any cost? Please, let's not let economic poverty be equated with religious, moral and political poverty. That would be the biggest crisis of all.

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