Santorum's Gospel of Inequality
By CHARLES M. BLOWNYTimes Published: February 17, 2012
"
Santorum Praises Income Inequality."
His charitable giving was just 1.8 percent of his adjusted gross income.
The Obamas were the highest, giving 14.2 percent, even though their
income was second lowest.
Motown No. 1 on the Poverty Top 40
That was Fox News's headline about Rick Santorum's speech at the
Detroit Economic Club on Thursday. Santorum said, "I'm not about
equality of result when it comes to income inequality. There is income
inequality in America. There always has been and, hopefully, and I do
say that, there always will be."
Unbelievable. Maybe not, but stunning all the same.
Then again, Santorum is becoming increasingly unhinged in his public
comments. Last week, he said that the president was arguing that
Catholics would have to "hire women priests to comply with employment
discrimination issues."
Also last week, he suggested that liberals and the president were
leading religious people into oppression and even beheadings. I kid
you not. Santorum said: "They are taking faith and crushing it. Why?
When you marginalize faith in America, when you remove the pillar of
God-given rights, then what's left is the French Revolution. What's
left is a government that gives you rights. What's left are no
unalienable rights. What's left is a government that will tell you who
you are, what you'll do and when you'll do it. What's left in France
became the guillotine."
Yet for Santorum to champion income inequality in Detroit, of all
places, is still incredibly tone-deaf.
Detroit has the highest poverty rate of any big city in America,
according to data provided by Andrew A. Beveridge, a demographer at
Queens College. Among the more than 70 cities with populations over
250,000, Detroit's poverty rate topped the list at a whopping 37.6
percent, more than twice the national poverty rate. And according to
the Census Bureau, median household income in Detroit from 2006-10 was
just $28,357, which was only 55 percent of the overall U.S. median
household income over that time.
This is a city that last year announced plans to close half its public
schools and send layoff notices to every teacher in the system.
This is a city where the mayor's pledge to demolish 10,000 abandoned
structures was seen as only shaving the tip of the iceberg because, as
The Wall Street Journal reported in 2010, "the city has roughly 90,000
abandoned or vacant homes and residential lots, according to Data
Driven Detroit, a nonprofit that tracks demographic data for the
city."
This is not the place to praise income inequality. Last week, at a
hearing before the Senate Budget Committee, Kent Conrad, the chairman
of that committee, laid out the issue as many Americans see it:
"The growing gap between the very wealthy and everyone else has
serious ramifications for the country. It hinders economic growth, it
undermines confidence in our institutions, and it goes against one of
the core ideals of this country — that if you work hard and play by
the rules, you can succeed and leave a better future for your kids and
your grandkids."
This is arguably even more true of people in Michigan than for the
rest of us. Even though income inequality in the Detroit area isn't
particularly high, looking at the issue as an urban one in the case of
cities like Detroit is problematic. The whole region took a hit. The
comparison for cities like Detroit may be more intra-city than
inter-city.
As Willy Staley argued in 2010 in an online column for Next American
City magazine: "In richer cities, the inequality is put side-by-side,
in an uncomfortable, loathsome way; for cities left in the dust of
deindustrialization, the inequality is presents (sic) as existing
between cities, not within them. Gone is the city/suburb divide
between rich and poor, income inequality manifests itself within
wealthy cities and between cities."
And it is this feeling of being left behind by the American economy
and abandoned by Republicans that is pushing Michigan into the blue.
Public Policy Polling, a Democratic polling company, found this week
that Obama would handily defeat all the Republican candidates in
head-to-head matchups in the state. The company's president, Dean
Debnam, said in a statement: "Michigan is looking less and less like
it will be in the swing state column this fall." He continued, "Barack
Obama's numbers in the state are improving, while the Republican field
is heading in the other direction."
Santorum went on to say about income inequality during his speech on
Thursday: "We should celebrate like we do in the small towns all
across America — as you do here in Detroit. You celebrate success. You
build statues and monuments. Buildings, you name after them. Why?
Because in their greatness and innovation, yes, they created wealth,
but they created wealth for everybody else. And that's a good thing,
not something to be condemned in America."
Santorum might want to take a walk around Detroit to see who's
celebrating and to see how many statues he can find to honor people
who simply invented something and got rich.
Furthermore, as a newspaperman and a former Detroiter, I'd like to
direct him to the James J. Brady Memorial. Detroit1701.org, maintained
by a University of Michigan emeritus professor, calls it "one of the
more attractive memorials in Detroit." It pays tribute to Brady, a
federal tax collector, who set out to address the issue of child
poverty in the city by founding the Old Newsboys' Goodfellows of
Detroit Fund in 1914 — what is essentially a local welfare fund.
The group provides "warm clothing, toys, books, games and candy" to
local children every Christmas in addition to sending poor children to
summer camps, the dentist and to college.
Then again, charitable giving doesn't appear to be high on Motor Mouth
Santorum's list of priorities. As The Washington Post pointed out,
based on Santorum's tax return disclosure this week, he has given the
least amount to charity of the four presidential candidates who have
disclosed their tax returns. (Ron Paul has not.)
His charitable giving was just 1.8 percent of his adjusted gross income.
The Obamas were the highest, giving 14.2 percent, even though their
income was second lowest.
Maybe that's the imbalance we should praise.
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
--
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