It May Be A "Magic Bus" After All: NB As The Center Of Rapid Transit

CT Fastraks -- called the "magic bus" to critics such as former Governor John Rowland -- will start rolling 12 months from now (February 2015) on the 9.3-mile rail right of way from New Britain to Hartford.

The New Britain Herald's Scott Whipple previews the potential of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) for New Britain folks using the bus to get to Hartford's theater and cultural institutions in a Sunday story.

At drive time I've listened to WTIC's Rowland carp about a project (ironically) launched during his time in the Governor's office.

But next winter I am counting on it to get to the job in Hartford instead of sitting in stalled traffic on I-84.  It just so happens that the I-84 trek that intersects with I-91in Hartford has the most traffic volume anywhere in the nation. Not surprising given the limits and difficulty of what CT Transit busses currently offer.

New Britain's Terminal Takes Shape (CT DOT)

Right now, if the work day in downtown Hartford takes me past 5:30 pm, I'll miss the last departure for the "2" Express to the commuter lot at Brittany Farms.  I am left to get home some other way.  The CT Fastraks -- BRT or Bus Rapid Transit is a better name -- will keep going well into the night for the same regular bus fares we pay now.

For New Britain  the BRT system means a lot more than getting back and forth from Hartford for work, school or seeing the sites. The  terminal being built at the old Greenfield's site is the only stop with a significant amount of parking.  The two large municipal garages are expected to be utilized in an a yet to be defined arrangement between the city and the state Department of Transportation.

With ample parking and unused, long vacant commercial property in the center of New Britain,  BRT  is setting downtown up for  transit-oriented developments in retail, housing and new businesses. A small-scale renaissance is possible bringing people and commerce back after they left for the malls and the burbs a generation ago. Not exactly the "magic bus" Rowland and the naysayers are predicting.

Critics like Rowland linger. They predict low ridership will turn the region's first real stab at rapid transit into a boondoggle.   But more knowledgeable opponents who favored rail over a BRT system are resigned to making the project work as part of a network inclusive of rail or other options that will reduce traffic on the deteriorating I-84/I-91 corridor and connect communities for work, school and just getting around.

Twelve months and counting.

Tim O'Brien: A Call To Renew Rev. King's Work For Economic Justice

 By Tim O'Brien

This weekend, our nation, state and communities celebrate and remember the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his accomplishments. It is a time when I have always felt inspired by his work, as a leader, and by the movement that he embodies. No Martin Luther King Day passes without me feeling emboldened and empowered to carry forward work toward building a better future.

I believe that King is our nation's most important hero. Our nation has many great figures, well deserving of our honor, who strove and struggled to build our nation, by, of and for the people. Our nation is built on great ideals - democracy, justice, liberty and a decent life for all. But those ideals have all too often not been met in practice. For African-Americans, the experience was, instead, not just inequality, but the terror of violence and daily humiliation.  The work of King, and the movement he led, was the struggle to breathe life into our country's great ideals. His work was nothing short of making our nation, conceived in greatness, the great nation it was meant to be. He, and so many others, took on the face of grotesque oppression and successfully pushed it back.

King, himself, probably would bristle at the idea of himself being held up in this way. He was an organizer - yes, a community organizer. In that, he knew that, while sometimes a person can symbolize and personify a movement, the real truth is always that the movement is about us all, everyday people. It is people - all the people - who create change for the better, and it is the people - all the people - whose lives are made better from that work. On Martin Luther King Day, we honor King, himself, as well as the many people who struggled and sacrificed in the Civil Rights Movement and the movements for justice and equality before and since.

But King, himself, was extraordinary. He believed so purely in creating a better world. He believed deeply in the goodness of humanity and in our potential to set aside our differences for our common good. He would sacrifice of himself, over and over again, and, when he thought he had no energy left to give, would still muster a little more energy to give away to people thirsting for inspiration and hope.

Thankfully, we have, for the most part, put to rest the question of whether Martin Luther King should be honored as a national hero. Even those who, today, know that their own opinions differ from King's values must at least give lip service to the rightness and greatness of his work. Of course, one of the side effects of that acceptance is that political figures who do not agree with King's real values try to re-interpret his words to fit their own political agendas, such as saying that he would have opposed Affirmative Action, even when it is obvious that King would not have agreed with them. Other politicians try to appear to agree with King by lauding, post-fact, his leadership in winning reforms that are not controversial anymore, such such as doing away with overt "separate but equal" - even while those same politicians, to this day, perpetuate things, like voter suppression, that King would have told them are clearly wrongheaded. While it is easy to criticize defeated injustices, real courage is in challenging current injustices.

I think it is very important to point out, in this time of honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr., that this kind of benign-sounding lip service to the memory of King is intended to prevent a more complete recounting of King's actual values and what he stood for from shining a not-so-flattering light on the agendas many politicians are currently pressing in the halls of government.

Part of the pure goodness of King as a leader was his compulsion to stand up for what was right, no matter what the cost to himself. That was true of his work for civil rights and, in the years leading up to his assassination, it was why he took positions against the Vietnam War, against exploitation of people in other countries and for economic justice for all Americans.

His assassination occurred during his work to organize the Poor People's Campaign, which was meant to follow up on the important work for civil rights - even more directly challenging the systems of injustice in the country by advocating for economic justice. He asked, "What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn't earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a cup of coffee?" ¹  He spoke for economic justice as an essential part of the promise of our nation - "If a man doesn't have a job or an income, he has neither life nor liberty nor the possibility for the pursuit of happiness. He merely exists." ² And this was not only to advance communities of color, noting that white Americans also faced economic oppression and were likewise in need of reforms.

King challenged our nation to adopt reforms to make the free market work for everyone, African-American, Latino, white - everyone. Needless to say, in doing that, he was upsetting some very, very powerfulful monied interests in our country. "We have so energetically mastered production that we now must give attention to distribution," he wrote, and clearly laid out that this meant that, "We must create full employment or we must create incomes..." ³

The Poor People's Campaign in 1968 was organized to demand adoption of an Economic and Social Bill of Rights to make the promise of our nation real for everyone. The Economic and Social Bill of Rights (in a draft written in February, 1968, before King's assassination ⁴) was to proclaim:

"The Right of every employable citizen to a decent job." It is worth pointing out how this called for "good jobs", not just "dead end jobs," and was clear that it should be the responsibility of the country to ensure that this happened. The draft Economic and Social Bill of Rights proposed an ambitious federal job-creation program to make this a reality.

"The right of every citizen to a minimum income." A guaranteed standard of living for people, "too young, too old or too handicapped to work."

"The right of a decent house and the free choice of neighborhood." The draft Economic and Social Bill of Rights challenged that the more affluent were benefitted when, "Federally subsidized credit built suburbs and federally supported roads to access [them]," while other public spending displaced neighborhoods where whites and people of color of more modest means lived. It pointed out that, amidst a paucity of support for affordable housing, people of modest means were left to suffer in slum housing conditions. The proposed solution was the creation of many more units of decent, affordable housing.

"The right to an adequate education." Noting gross inequities in educational attainment along racial lines and that "only out-and-out racists believe that this tragedy is a consequence of inherent deficiency on the part of the child...", the draft Economic and Social Bill of Rights proposed, "a massive effort to upgrade the education available to" both children of color and white children and to fund higher education so that all Americans could afford to attend.

"The right to participate in the decision making process." The draft Economic and Social Bill of Rights placed importance on participatory democracy, "political action and voting protection."

"The right to the full benefit of modern science in health care." Noting the inhuman differences in health and mortality based upon income, the draft Economic and Social Bill of Rights proposed extending Medicare to everyone in America.

This draft⁵ of the Economic and Social Bill of Rights was clear that greater economic equity should be considered as part of America's great ideals and Constitutional promise: "Without these rights, neither the black and white poor, and even some who are not poor, can really possess the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. With these rights, the United States could, by the two hundredth anniversary of its Declaration of Independence, take giant steps toward redeeming the American dream."

The assassination of Martin Luther King took the great measure of the energy away from the Poor People's Campaign. It still went on as planned that summer, but it ended, having not achieved the goals for which King and so many others strove. As we well know, the objectives of the campaign, expressed in the Economic and Social Bill of Rights, for the most part, have yet to be achieved. Far from it, these are all, very much, front burner issues in our current politics. In the areas where there have been advances, those advances are now under powerful attack. In other areas, especially in the area of jobs, not having in place now what King advocated then makes middle class and poor people worse off now than they would have been. And when elected officials, such as President Barack Obama and our own Governor Dannel Malloy, press for changes that advance King's ideals, they must labor against difficult political headwinds.

Given what Martin Luther King advocated for when he was with us, it is clear that, were he alive today, he would be pressing hard for significant change. It is no wonder than many politicians of today will spend their Martin Luther King Day glossing over the full depth of what King believed in. If they acknowledged his real policy objectives, they would have to admit that they disagree with what King would have wanted them to do.

So let us make this Martin Luther King Day one of renewing our commitment to the movement and the great and important objectives for which King gave his life. Let us not allow people who oppose justice, equality and fairness for all to dissuade us from doing what is right through their various tactics of harsh mean-spiritedness and silver-tongued distraction. King taught us that people of ill intent would try to make it difficult for people who stand-up what is right.  He also taught us that, "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." ⁶

We can, in our nation, our state and our communities have a better, fairer, more just, more equitable future for ourselves and generations to come - one that we can all share. Now, more than ever, we must renew the work that our great national hero, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., championed.

---

1 Joe Fassler, "'All Labor Has Dignity': Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Fight for Economic Justice", The Atlantic, February 22, 2011
2 Mark Engler, "Dr. Martin Luther King's Economics: Through Jobs, Freedom", The Nation, January 15, 2010
3 Mark Engler, "Dr. Martin Luther King's Economics: Through Jobs, Freedom", The Nation, January 15, 2010
4 "Economic and Social Bill of Rights", King Center online document repository
5 After King's assassination, the Committee of 100 created the version of the Economic and Social Bill of Rights that was advocated during the Campaign, which called for
“a meaningful job at a living wage for every employable citizen.”, “a secure and adequate income for all who cannot find jobs or for whom employment is inappropriate”, “access to land as a means to income and livelihood”, “access to capital as a means of full participation in the economic life of America” and “the right of the people to 'play a truly significant role' in shaping government programs design and implementation”, Amy Nathan Wright,"Unfinished Business", (2007) pages 195–197

6 NPR Staff"King's Son And Friend Talk New Memorial, Media", NPR website

[ Tim O'Brien is the former Mayor of New Britain and State Representative from the 24th District]

Mayor Hires GOP Chair: SEEC Complaint Involving Peter Steele For Campaigning From Mayor's Office Still Under Investigation

"Oh. What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive."  - Sir Walter Scott

In her campaign for Mayor last fall Erin Stewart was critical of Tim O'Brien  for rewarding political friends while in office. As Ms. Stewart said last year, she wanted to "take the city back from political cronyism."

In her first announced appointments Stewart tapped staffers from her youthful campaign team and appointed John Healey, an aide to Republican House Minority Leader Larry Cafero, to be a $90,000+ a year chief of staff. So far so good. New Britain mayors, coming into office just one week after elections, are entitled to assemble an office with people they know  -- even if the hires are political friends.

Two months after the election, however, Erin Stewart's promise to root out cronyism is just that -- a campaign promise not meant to be kept. More important,  her recent and unannounced hire raises new concerns about the use of  government resources for partisan political activity. Republican Town Committee Chair Peter Steele, a perennial GOP candidate, comes in -- "returns" is a better word -- as an aide at $45,000 annually. For Steele this is a pay hike and political reward.  He was a $25,000 a year aide to  Mayor Tim Stewart during his time in office.

GOP Town Chair Peter Steele
(NBRTC)

Here is where candidate Stewart's anti-cronyism pitch falls apart.  In that previous stint in the Mayor's office, Steele may have blatantly used  city resources to do political campaigning on the public's dime in the Mayor's office..

In a complaint filed early last year to the State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC) by O'Brien Aide Rosemary Klotz, Klotz asserted that when O'Brien came into office city information technology employees discovered "at least 200 files on city computers that indicate former Mayor Stewart and his staff, including Steele, used the machines to conduct campaign business."  After the complaint was filed SEEC investigators subsequently visited City Hall and collected evidence in the still unresolved case.

The New Britain Herald in a March 26, 2013 story by Lisa Backus, reported:

"Klotz's complaint alleges that the files, which range from campaign fundraising lists to lists on which residents would allow campaign signs on their lawns, were created and maintained on city computers, by Stewart and city staff members Peter Steele, Joe Shilinga and Lisa Carver, on city time."
The dates of when the files were created range from 2003 as Stewart was running a mayoral re-election campaign to 2011 when Stewart ran in a special election to fill a vacancy in the state Senate 6th District. The documents, obtained by the Herald, include drafts and final versions of campaign mailings, scripts for electoral "robo-calls," and "primed" voter lists indicating voter preference."

As of now that SEEC investigation about  using the Mayor's office for partisan Republican work is active and awaits a judgment from the commission.

The hiring of  GOP Chair Steele in and of itself isn't surprising. What is disturbing is that an unresolved case  alleging campaign work in the Mayor's office by former Mayor Stewart and Peter Steele still hangs in the air.

To be true to her high-mindedness against "political cronyism" it's time for Mayor Stewart to publicly announce the hiring of GOP Chair Peter Steele and provide the specifics on what his job functions are at $45,000 a year.

For all the campaign talk of cronyism in the O'Brien administration, every position in the last term had a clear function and every hire was tasked to be working in service to the city, not a political party.

At the very least the public has a right to know what Peter Steele does and when he does it on the City Hall clock.

ALEC: Buying Influence and Tilting Laws Against Solar Energy

Let the Sun Shine In

Why would the ALEC network of state-level lobbyists want to make solar energy cost-prohibitive for homeowners and businesses?

By Isaiah J. Poole

Now the Koch brothers are coming after my solar panels.

I had solar panels installed on the roof of our Washington, D.C. home this year. My household took advantage of a generous tax incentive from the District government and a creative leasing deal offered by the solar panel seller.

Brookhaven National Laboratory/Flickr

Our electric bills fell by at least a third. When people make this choice, the regional electric company grows less pressured to spend money to expand generating capacity and the installation business creates good local jobs. Customers who use solar energy also reduce carbon emissions.

What’s not to love?

According to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative network better known as ALEC, our solar panels make us “free riders.” What?

Yes, according to ALEC, an organization that specializes in getting the right-wing agenda written into state laws, people like me who invest in energy-efficiency and shrinking our carbon footprints ought to be penalized.

Why does ALEC want us punished? Since it’s bankrolled by, among others, the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, it’s hard not to surmise that they’re worried about a threat to fossil fuels businesses. Koch Industries’ operations include refineries, oil and natural gas pipelines, and petrochemicals

That’s no conspiracy theory. Recently the British newspaper The Guardian wrote aboutthe assault on solar panels as part of a broader exposé on ALEC.

John Eick, the legislative analyst for ALEC’s energy, environment and agriculture program, confirmed to The Guardian that the organization would support making solar panel users pay extra for the electricity they generate. That’s already about to happen in Arizona, where homeowners who use solar panels will pay an average of about $5 extra a month for the privilege, starting in January.

The solar power industry called the new rule a victory only because power companies in the state were demanding assessments of as much as $100 a month — more than high enough to deter families from considering switching to solar.

Making solar energy cost-prohibitive for homeowners and businesses is part of a larger ALEC objective, affirmed at its recent annual meeting, to continue its effort to eliminate state renewable energy mandates.

According to meeting minutes, ALEC has already succeeded in getting legislation introduced in 15 states to “reform, freeze, or repeal their state’s renewable mandate.” ALEC lobbyists are pushing policies through states that will speed up climate change and increase pollution. They’re threatening the renewable energy industry, which is already creating new jobs and saving money for homeowners and businesses.

Without the current policy paralysis in Washington and a lack of bold, creative thinking about how to build a new, green economy at the national level, they wouldn’t be making so much headway.

My organization, Institute for America’s Future — together with the Center for American Progress and the BlueGreen Alliance — recently published a report that shows what’s at stake with ALEC’s destructive agenda.

Our “green industrial revolution” report recommends tying together a series of regional solutions that take advantage of the unique assets of each part of the country, such as the abundance of sun in the West and the wind off the Atlantic coast, into a cohesive whole.

These regional strategies would be supported by smart federal policies, such as establishing a price for carbon emissions and a national clean energy standard, creating certainty and stability in the alternative energy tax credit market, and providing strong support for advanced energy manufacturing.

This is the way to unleash the kind of innovation and job creation our economy — and our rapidly warming planet — desperately needs.

My solar panels are the envy of my block and I wish more of my neighbors will be able to make the same choice I did. But they won’t if fossil-fuel dinosaurs like the Koch brothers and right-wing organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council keep casting their dark clouds on efforts to build a clean energy future.

It’s time for them to step aside and let the sun shine in.

Isaiah J. Poole is the editor of OurFuture.org, the website of the Campaign for America’s Future. OurFuture.org
Distributed via OtherWords. OtherWords.org

DEMOS Report: A Higher Wage Is Possible

From www.demos.org

There is enormous public support for increasing the minimum wage in recognition of deep recessions and income equality. DEMOS' new report shares how it can be done:

November 19, 2013

|

Catherine Ruetschlin,

Amy Traub

American workers are working harder for less, with productivity rising but living standards stagnant or declining.¹At the same time, stock market wealth and incomes for the highest-paid Americans have risen.² Against this backdrop, the pay practices of the nation’s largest private employer have come under increased scrutiny. Walmart, with 1.3 million U.S. employees and $17 billion in annual profits, sets standards for all other retailers and across the supply chain of one of the nation’s fastest growing industries.³ Walmart’s practices impact the public sector and taxpayers as well when employees earn too little to meet their needs and require public assistance.⁴ Finally, Walmart is a leader in promoting an employment model in which workers earn too little to generate the consumer demand that supports hiring and would lead to economic recovery. In the last year, Walmart employees themselves have been increasingly vocal in protesting their low pay. Since the last holiday season, Walmart employees in stores throughout the country have repeatedly spoken out in pursuit of a modest wage goal: the equivalent of $25,000 a year in wages for a full-time employee.
KEY POINTS

• Walmart workers and a growing number of community supporters are taking a stand this holiday season, calling for wage increases and sufficient hours on the job to earn the modest income of $25,000 a year. This brief explores one way to pay for raises.

• Walmart spent $7.6 billion last year to buy back shares of its own stock. The buybacks did nothing to boost Walmart’s productivity or bottom line. If these funds were redirected to Walmart’s low-wage workers, they would each see a raise of $5.83 an hour.

• Curtailing share buybacks would not damage the company’s competitiveness or raise prices for consumers.

• If Walmart redirected its current spending to invest in its workforce, the benefits would extend to all stake-holders in the company—customers, stockholders, taxpayers, employees and their families—and the economy as a whole.

LINK TO FULL STORY AND REPORT

A Higher Wage Is Possible

11-22-63

It's a week and a November 22nd when every Baby Boomer is going to tell you where they were and I am no exception.

At age 13, I was in Mrs Sonigan's 7th grade speech class when the class abruptly ended at Pickering Junior High near Wyoma Square in Lynn, Massachusetts. This was just one year removed from the Cuban Missile Crisis when, at age 12, I thought it was over for me and everyone else by way of nuclear annihilation.  But then Kennedy, not listening to General Curtis "Bombs Away" LeMay,  and Khrushchev, resisting his own hawks in the Kremlin,  cut the deal to allow me to get to junior high.

I don't know whether the news from Dallas came over the principal's office intercom or from Mrs Sonigan herself on that Friday. But school got out early for the weekend. There was a bus ride home full of nervous guessing by some classmates and then a long, sad three days of black and white television.

President and Mrs. Kennedy descend the stairs from Air Force One at Love Field in Dallas, TX, 22 November 1963.  

(Cecil Stoughton. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

The murder of the 46-year-old 35th President in Dealey Plaza profoundly changed the course of U.S. History in ways we'll never know.  Some historians and observers says Vietnam and much of the turbulence of the 1960s may have been averted had Kennedy lived. On the other hand, there is some doubt that Kennedy could have gotten all that was attained in the aftermath and mood created after his death. President Johnson's  legislative genius is greatly responsible for the civil rights acts and a War against Poverty (Head Start, Meals on Wheels) that came out of the Kennedy and Johnson years.

The war in Vietnam that haunted JFK's Defense Secretary Robert McNamara  and the subsequent murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy (on the night of my senior prom) killed the "high hopes" Kennedy brought.

Being Irish and Catholic and living in Massachusetts we took it  like a death in the family. In truth, however, the mourning  was ecumenical and universal.  "This is a sad day for all people," President Johnson drawled getting off the plane with Kennedy's body. Before 24/7 cable, McLuhan's electronic "global village" connected all in grief and shock to watch the events unfold on TV.

The other and more uplifting thing to remember about 11-22-63 is that a ton of people in local and national offices, including me, came into or got interested in politics and public service because of Kennedy's "Ask not" call to serve.

That is still the lasting part of JFK's 1,000 days in office -- days long ago but not forgotten this week.

Other Words: Food Stamp Cuts Will Stoke Hunger

A commentary from former Norwalk Mayor Bill Collins and Emily Schartz Greco on the GOP's move to feed the wealthy and starve the poor.....

Food Stamp Cuts Will Stoke Hunger

From www.otherwords.org

Food Stamp Cuts Will Stoke Hunger

Demand for SNAP benefits won't retreat until the economic recovery stops benefitting only the richest Americans

By Emily Schwartz Greco and William A. Collins

Would you believe that the nation’s cabinet has approved an executive order defining food as a legal right? No, not our nation.

India has taken this bold step. Malnourishment afflicts 42 percent of Indian children, and part of their government’s response to this entrenched problem is defining efforts to end hunger as more than a welfare challenge.

USDAgov/Flickr

Here in the United States, we’ve got a hunger problem too. Yes, it’s not on India’s scale, but nearly 50 million Americans — 16 percent of us — live in what experts call “food-insecure” households. The number of hungry Americans has held steady since 2008, when the Great Recession began.

UNICEF rates child welfare among 29 of the world’s richest countries.We’re in 26^th place — ahead of Romania, yet behind Greece, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

Clearly, we should do more to help the most vulnerable among us, right? Well, Congress doesn’t agree. So now the world’s largest economy will let more people go hungry while our lawmakers squabble over how deeply to cut food stamp spending.

Food stamp benefits for poor families have already taken a hit. Even though hunger never declined from its peak during our alleged economic recovery, a small benefit increase in the 2009 stimulus package expired on Halloween. The end of this $5 billion safety net extension will trim $36 per month for a family of four enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program food stamp program, known as SNAP .

The Republican argument for cutting food stamps is based on the program’s growth. The government spent around $80 billion on SNAP benefits in the past year, more than twice levels seen before the Great Recession. That increase followed the boost in the value of the food stamps people could qualify for and the expansion of the number of people poor enough to qualify.

Simply put, we’re spending more on food stamps because widespread economic problems increased the number of empty larders in America. It’s possible that higher benefits compelled more people to apply, but that’s beside the point.

Had the economic recovery been widespread, we might be spending less on SNAP. Instead, the richest 1 percent inhaled all economic growth and then some. In 2010 and 2011, the 1 percent snatched 121 percent of the recovery’s bounty. This mind-boggling statistic means that the bottom 99 percent experienced a net decline in income.

Demand for food stamps won’t retreat until the economic recovery reaches the rest of us. And food stamps are a powerful economic stimulus because every dollar in increased SNAP benefits generates about $1.70 in economic activity.

So what’s Congress going to do? Pare back benefits even more. The House has passed two different versions of a Farm Bill, the SNAP program’s legislative home. One left food stamps out altogether and the other slashed SNAP spending by $4 billion each year.

The Senate’s version would cut SNAP outlays by $400 million per year. Either of these reductions would come on top of the $5 billion decline in support for this meager lifeline that helps one in seven Americans with less than $1.50 for every meal.

Can the private sector do something? Well, sure.

Workers employed by many of our largest corporations, such as Walmart and McDonald’s, are compensated so badly that millions of them qualify for government anti-poverty programs. If they’d just pay a living wage, fewer Americans would turn to stamps, Medicaid, and other safety-net options.

If seeing your tax dollars subsidize giant corporations that refuse to pay their own workers enough to get food on the table strikes you as unfair, this business trend may cheer you up: Companies selling their wares to the poor are lowering their sales forecasts due to the SNAP cuts. Including Walmart.

Emily Schwartz Greco is the managing editor of OtherWords, a non-profit national editorial service run by the Institute for Policy Studies. OtherWords columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk, Connecticut. OtherWords.org