A friend, who counsels food pantry customers, tells me that – as the winter progresses – she has noticed increasing numbers of desperate, hungry and homeless “nouveaux poor.” They are formerly middle-class and working people who are have become surplus. They bring to mind the powerful Phil Ochs song There But For Fortune because, like many of us, they were just one illness, one job, one drink, one cop from disaster. (To see Phil Ochs sing his song in a time-warp 1967 Bitter End Video click here , or, for a somewhat downtempo take by Peter, Paul & Mary (1982), here.)

In this context, are you disturbed to see Mayor Bloomberg media boosters cranking out copy concerning his miserable skirmish on poverty? Tuesday’s New York Times, for example, features an editorial Mayor Bloomberg Tackles Poverty praising efforts which, to my mind, are microscopic, half-hearted and feeble.  read more »