I remember watching coverage after Katrina and thinking about the faces of all of those people on TV. For all intents and purposes those are the people that my job is about. The voiceless forgotten poor without transportation, medical care and resources. I naively thought that the events in NOLA particularly would ignite a national debate about poverty in the US. As it turns out, the federal government is not showing any signs of caring any more about those people than they did before Katrina.

Right now Congress is wrestling with the budget. It hardly gets any mainstream news coverage. I can only tell you about the parts that directly effect my work. They have zeroed out the already meager line items of some extremely necessary and successful rural programs. A quarter of the US population lives in rural areas. My program is being level funded so I am not talking about my job here. But the work we do is already hard enough without taking away the meager resources we did have. I know all of you who are teachers or work for non-profits understand this reality. I just find it so frustrating that we haven't learned a damn thing from our history. Why do we let them get away with taking the few positive and helpful things that the low income and poor have? These aren't handouts, we are attempting to meet basic human needs, things that most people take for granted. These are excellent results-driven programs that save money in the long run. Not to mention that they improve quality of life and save lives.
We spend $9 billion a month in Iraq. It's not a question of patriotism, it's a question of priorities.