U.S. Poverty Posts Record Gain. Getting Worse.

Poverty in the U.S. is going up.


Some excerpts (Italicized):


Bowing to the Obama administration, a federal appeals court Monday gutted its own decision that had dramatically narrowed the government's search-and-seizure powers in the digital age.


The 9-2 ruling by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals nullifies Miranda-style guidelines the court promulgated last year that were designed to protect Fourth Amendment privacy rights during court-authorized computer searches. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, as solicitor general last year, had urged the court to reverse itself amid complaints that federal prosecutions were being complicated, and computer searches were grinding to a halt, because of the detailed guidelines.


The original ruling required the government to cull specific data described in the search warrant, rather than copy entire hard drives. When that's not possible, the feds were advised to use an independent third party under the court's supervision, whose job it would be to comb through the files for the specific information, and provide it, and nothing else, to the government. The ruling said judges should "deny the warrant altogether" if the government does not consent to such a plan in data-search cases.


"The most important anti-poverty effort is growing the economy and making sure there are enough jobs out there," Obama said Friday at a White House news conference. He stressed his commitment to helping the poor achieve middle-class status and said, "If we can grow the economy faster and create more jobs, then everybody is swept up into that virtuous cycle."
Should those estimates hold true, some 45 million people in this country, or more than 1 in 7, were poor last year. It would be the highest single-year increase since the government began calculating poverty figures in 1959.


Democrats almost certainly will argue that they shouldn't be blamed. They're likely to counter that the economic woes — and the poverty increase — began under President George W. Bush with the near-collapse of the financial industry in late 2008.


There is an argument for giving responsibility of some of what is happening to the Bush administration, but the first year and a half of the Obama administration was largerly focuses on issues other than the economy (i.e. health care). They will likely pay for this in the upcoming elections.


What is poverty? Has our view of poverty changed over the centuries? Is the American idea of poverty the same as the Nigerian? What can we do to help those in poverty to escape it?

(ORIGINAL LINK) FOXNews.com - U.S. Poverty on Track to Post Record Gain Under Obama's Watch