According to the October 2005 Industrial Worker, using complied data from the Economic Policy Institute (www.epinet.org):

With the US Census bureau setting poverty at $19,307, poverty rate in 2004 was 12.7%, and 17.8% of all American children live in poverty.

In 2004 19% or all workers are without health insurance.

There many more interesting statistics in the article, demonstrating how the lower 60% of Americans are losing income, while the top are gaining, and how the top 20% of American households now earn 50.1% of all income.

But I would like to take a second to note the following:

If national unemployment in October 2004 was approximately 5.1% (US Dept. of Labor), and the poverty rate was 12.7%, this means that 7.6% of Americans living in poverty were not "unemployed". There are two possibilities for this: 1) they fell of the rolls - this means that after some time, people who are unemployed are no longer considered unemployed, because they give up looking for a job (even though they still might not have one), or 2) they are working and poor. So of the total number of people living in poverty, over half have either given up after months of searching or they are working and still living in poverty. To be honest, if I knew that most of the people in my impoverished boat, when finding a job, still live in poverty, I might give up and fall off the rolls myself.

The American dream of busting your tail and working up "the ladder" is a hoax. Plenty of people bust their tail working at a job and fall farther and farther into debt and poverty as they are working. Middle class workers are coming to realize that as a commodity (as Human Resources departments sees labor - just look at the title, "Human Resources". Humans are treated like gasoline or paper - just one other resource for production), they are expendable and will be cut off when downsizing takes place in order to maximize profit margins to make richer those who were rich enough to invest in stock to begin with.

And for those of you who like to bitch about federal taxes, Human Resources takes about 34 cents on the federal tax dollar, and the military takes about 48 cents on the dollar. That 34 cents? That's not just welfare, buddy. That's: Education, Health/Human Services, HUD, Food/Nutrition programs, Labor Department and the Soc. Sec. Admin (http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm) And the military still outspends all of that.

Something else to consider (from a 1996 report by the National Center for Policy Analysis):

"# Only 43 percent of all poor families receive food stamps . . .

# Only 19 percent of all poor families live in public housing or receive housing subsidies . . .

# Only 41 percent of all poor families are covered by Medicaid . . .

# Amazingly, 46 percent of all poor families receive no means-tested benefit of any kind from government . . ."

So if your going to bitch about taxes, then go picket the Pentagon. Or better yet, go picket your local Enron. According to the Libertarian group, _The Cato Institute_, in their report for the 105th Congress:

"There are more than 100 such corporate subsidy programs in the federal budget today, with annual expenditures of roughly $75 billion. Terminating those programs could save taxpayers more than $400 billion over the next five years."

Maybe instead of corporate subsidy, Bush can give the American impoverished worker a bigger tax break.