Forget the unemployment numbers-- as lots of commentators note (including Robert Reich), it's hard to take seriously a number that drops because people give up looking for work. And employment numbers don't usually reflect well whether people are working full-time or having their hours (and income) cut back due to involuntary part-time hours.

So I've long believed that the best number to track in recessions and recoveries is the aggregate number of hours worked across the whole economy. The Federal Reserve of St. Louis regularly tracks this number here and as the graph shows after the jump, the hours worked did seem to level off last month, after over a year of catastropic declines:

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I have the feeling that the town hall rowdies are boomeranging. It's dandy if Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, & Co. are the visible faces of the Just-Say-No squads. If health care reform advocates play their cards right, the shout-down squads barking at town-halling members of Congress are helping make up the minds of perplexed voters--against them. But I want to italicize: If health care reform advocates play their cards right.. The danger is that if the Baggers and Reformers are equated--He Screams/She Screams!--the conclusion that jumps from the reporting is: All energetic activists are equivalently nuts.

The first general rule is: scrupulous good behavior. As Sen. Claire MacCaskill says of the banshee town meeting disrupters,

"I'm sure not going to let their shouting and name-calling affect us. We're going to forge ahead and hope that everybody has good Midwestern manners. Rude and obnoxious is not persuasive. If people want to be rude and obnoxious, I think it hurts their cause."

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I just saw a wonderful documentary by film maker Aviva Kempner. Her previous work was the "Life and Times of Hank Greenberg," which was also terrific.

This film "Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg" is the story of Gertrude Berg who created a character, Molly Goldberg, that was featured in a huge radio and television hit show for almost 30 years. The show "The Goldbergs" was a family sitcom, only the family was Jewish and first-generation.

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We all had a good laugh at lawyer/realtor/dentist/beauty school dropout Orly Taitz this week, but less innocuous crazies -- those disgruntled (and disguised) town hall protesters -- also made their presence known. TPM readers, as is their wont, weighed in.

On the town hall teabaggery front, kgb999 questioned the wisdom of fighting fire with fire. Reform advocates shouldn't try to beat the shouters at their own game, kgb999 argues, but should take a more subdued tact and let the protesters do their own petard-hoisting.

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Apparently the Obama administration made a commitment to the drug companies that it would block efforts to reduce drug costs in the Medicare prescription drug program. This was apparently in exchange for a promise by Pharma to cut their prices to seniors by $80 billion over the next decade. While we may not know the full content of whatever agreement was actually struck, if this exchange is at its center, the taxpayers got a bad deal.

To give some context, the country is projected to spend more than $3.5 trillion on prescription drugs over the next decade. This is more than 2 percent of projected GDP over this period and comes to about $12,000 per family. That is real money even in the context of federal budgets.

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This week there's been discussion about rising trends in poverty, the fragility of the safety net, the possibilities and limits of social enterprise, and obstacles to reducing poverty. Despite the challenges ahead, I think it's important to recognize there is a lot we can do to reduce poverty and create solutions that will help families weather tough economic times in the coming decade.

More after the jump . . .

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I wanted to echo comments made earlier about how the decentralized nature of our safety complicates the delivery of aid to working poor families.

Elizabeth Kneebone wrote that,

Aligning services to meet the geographic reality of need means tackling the reality of a fragmented and siloed safety net. Scott outlines in detail the extent of the fragmentation in this system, from jurisdictional barriers to targeted funding constraints to the myriad government, nonprofit, and philanthropic actors involved in cobbling together the services and programs that make up our modern safety net. There are a lot of cooks in this kitchen, and, as Scott points out, the current structure of this system can make it difficult for communities to respond quickly and efficiently to sudden changes in demand and resources--changes exactly like the ones we're facing in the midst of this downturn.

Later, a post by Steve Smith noted,

At present, the silos and fragmentation in the service system among nonprofit social service agencies reflect in part the incentives contained within social programs and government contracts.

Although it feels remote, the fragmentation of our safety net isn't just a topic for wonks or academics, it has a profound practical impact on how our communities support working poor families.

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Steven Smith's recent post highlights an interesting feedback loop that exists between local and national policymakers and stakeholders. He mentions the Harlem Children's Zone--an excellent example of a grassroots initiative that knits together a range programs and services to provide a more complete and effective system of education and social services for neighborhood residents. This is an instance where local-level innovation has sparked a federal response. The success of the Harlem Children's Zone has garnered national attention as well as a desire from federal policymakers, as Steven mentions, to take this model "to scale". The U.S. Department of Education hopes to do this through its Promise Neighborhoods initiative, which would encourage grantees to "coordinate their efforts with programs and services provided by other Federal agencies, including the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Justice, and the Environmental Protection Agency."

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During the recessions that occurred between 1980 and 1982, the national poverty rate increased by 2 full percentage points - more than 5 million persons entered poverty during that time. Poverty continued to increase after the 1982 recession officially ended, rising above 15% of the population in 1983. It wasn't until 1998 that poverty rates returned to their pre-1980 levels. After a few years of robust economic opportunity in the late 1990s, poverty rates rose again during the jobless recovery following the 2001 recession. From 2001 to 2007, more than 4 million Americans fell into poverty because they were unable to find good paying jobs.

Today, we find ourselves in a position comparable to the early 1980s. What are the prospects for reducing poverty after we emerge from the current recession into recovery?

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"When you got an all-out prizefight, you wait until the fight is over, one guy is left standing. 'N' that's how you know who won"

Remember, Rotwang is always inside the tent, pissing out. Never outside . . . As bad as the impending health care reform might be -- and it might not be bad at all -- I would not hesitate to take to these Town Hall meetings to defend it. I think the reaction to the mobilization on the Right has been a little panicked. I see opportunity.

When I look at what they are doing, I think about what I did in my misspent youth, which included disrupting meetings (and worse). Of course, we thought we had a good reason. Ha! Now a Member of Congress has been hung in effigy. Oh dear. Someone suggested Chris Dodd commit suicide, oh my. I shudder to recall the rhetoric aimed at the Bushists. This wounded reaction signals weakness, a disinclination to fight fire with fire. Whatever happened to the golden rule, do unto others what they have done unto you, and then some?

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Check out Matt Yglesias' takedown of the increasingly nutty Marty Peretz.

Peretz writes that "there is someone in [Obama's] entourage who is leading him astray, gravely astray. And that someone has it in for Israel and for American Jews, too."

This is scary. I'm not scared because I think that Reggie Love is an anti-semite (you know he's at the top of MP's list).

I'm scared because this month is my birthday and, like most people, I'm getting older. Soon (not too soon) I could be a crazy old geezer like Marty Peretz. I mean he wasn't always a bigot and a paranoid. In 1968, he backed Gene McCarthy and never talked about the anti-semites at all. He actually liked Martin Luther King!

But then time passed and he became the alta kocker at the Dunkin Donuts muttering about the "goyim" and those other ones likes Henry Louis Gates.

It could happen to me. I think I'm starting to develop a Yiddish accent (strange for a third generation American) and I keep playing Al Jolson records. Is this how it started for Marty?

Part of the motivation of Out of Reach is to call attention to the realities of how we help (and don't help) the poor, so that we can develop new and innovative strategies for reducing poverty.

As Arthur Brooks notes, social enterprise and social entrepreneurship are becoming increasingly central to community-based antipoverty strategies. One's first reaction may be to dismiss these approaches, particularly if the preference is for government to bear the responsibility for alleviating poverty. Our safety net, however, is highly dependent upon private nonprofit organizations for the delivery of assistance to the poor. Much of the funding may come from federal, state, and local government sources, but much of the help is provided by nonprofits. This is a relatively new development in the history of our safety net. Today, entrepreneurs working through private nonprofits and foundations are developing some of the most innovative and successful strategies for alleviating poverty.

It is my opinion that social enterprise cannot replace the public safety net, but I think it can become a more important and sophisticated complement to existing government safety net programs.

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Elizabeth Kneebone in her recent posting urges a more regional approach to social service provision as a strategy to address the access and delivery issues noted by Scott Allard in his recent book, Out of Reach. I completely agree with Elizabeth's suggestion. However, a regional approach would also require important and significant changes in social services policy.

First, a regional approach would require significant and ongoing investments in the infrastructure and capacity of nonprofit (as well as public and for-profit) social welfare agencies. This effort would almost inevitably produce consolidation and merger among agencies, especially since many newer agencies are relatively small and lack a diversified revenue stream. This consolidation may be positive in terms of service access and organizational effectiveness but it also may lead to less diversity among community-based agencies, unless government and private funders actively strive to support these agencies.

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I've never met Dov Yermiya, a Jewish Israeli peace activist who is now 94 years old. But I read of course the book he published in 1983 in which he wrote with anguish about the torture and other gross mistreatment of civilians he witnessed directly during Israel's invasion of Lebanon the year before.

I have it in my hand now.

I just learned, in this open letter published today by Uri Avnery, that Yermiya, recently renounced the ideology and practice of Zionism with these stirring words:

I, a 95 year old Sabra (native born Israeli Jew), who has plowed its fields, planted trees, built a house and fathered sons, grandsons and great-grandsons, and also shed his blood in the battle for the founding of the State of Israel,

Declare herewith that I renounce my belief in the Zionism which has failed, that I shall not be loyal to the Jewish fascist state and its mad visions, that I shall not sing anymore its nationalist anthem, that I shall stand at attention only on the days of mourning for those fallen on both sides in the wars, and that I look with a broken heart at an Israel that is committing suicide and at the three generations of offspring that I have bred and raised in it.

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TPM reader MN puts his finger on the political problem with health care when he/she writes about not feeling the "necessity" he/she felt during the campaign:

Each time the President says "We will pass health insurance reform this year," each time I hear congressman (from both parties!) and pundits predict that, despite recent setbacks, health insurance reform is very likely to pass THIS YEAR, I think to myself, "Ok, he's got this in the bag. He doesn't need me to do anything." I don't know what the President can say to get all of us more motivated, but it might just come down to waiting for his back to be against the wall again.

The right knows it has its back to the wall. For them to have a chance of bouncing back, Obama has to fail. They turn out their disruption squads knowing how much is at stake for their political future.

One thing the shadow liberal activists don't (yet) realize is that if Obama loses on health care and the economy wobbles, 2010 shapes up to be a bad year: not the Waterloo devoutly hoped for by Republicans, but 1994 anyway. Then you can kiss the liberal renewal goodbye; wait another 15 years for a shot at health care reform; and fill the Blue Dogs with renewed vigor. Much of Obama's momentum will be shot.

I don't know that this is for Obama to say, but it surely is for progressives. Complacency is a wipe-out. The wall our backs are against is not the firing-squad wall but it's a wall nevertheless.

I like Robert Kaplan's writing. Even though he was a big Iraq war supporter, he publicly repented in 2004. His book, Balkan Ghosts, is terrific.

But, in general, I have not admired his work on Israel. Kaplan, who is an American, served in the IDF and I think that bonding experience colored his work. I'm sure he'd agree.

In any case, he is now off the reservation. Writing in Atlantic this month, he warns Israel that it is not only the administration which is critical of Israel, it is also Americans at large. He sees a parting of the ways unless Israel ends the occupation.

This is significant. I don't know how many American Jews have joined the IDF, a few thousand tops. 99% of American Jews wouldn't even consider it. But Kaplan cares about Israel so much that unlike the armchair warriors, he went over there to fight. That makes his endorsement of an imposed peace all the more significant.

"Both politically and demographically, time is not on Israel's side. Now that Iran is weakened by domestic turmoil, it may actually be in Israel's best interests for America, Saudi Arabia, and other moderate Arab states to impose a peace agreement by leaning hard on the Palestinians, as America twists Israel's arm. The result would be the return of almost all of the West Bank to a fundamentally demilitarized Palestinian state, even as many Israeli settlements are dismantled. What other resolution can there be?," he writes.

Interestingly, he sees the Walt-Mearsheimer book as critical in the change in the zeitgeist, not that the two professors changed it -- but that their book was evidence it was changing.

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Beyond shedding light on the shifting realities of how we provide support for low-income workers and families in this country, Scott's book really brings home the extent to which place equals access (or lack thereof) to a substantial chunk of our current safety net. The "holes" in the safety net--or the spatial mismatch between social services and the needs of low-income and poor residents--that Scott illustrates clearly have implications for the effectiveness and equity of poverty alleviation and work support efforts in the U.S.

And, as Scott pointed out in his post today, the geography of poverty is changing. Even before this recession, more poor lived in the suburbs than the cities of our nation's largest metro areas. A recent look at changes in unemployment and the demand for safety net services over the past year also shows us that suburbs are bearing the brunt of the current downturn alongside cities. Taken together, these pre- and mid-recession trends suggest that any existing mismatches between services and need will only be exacerbated as the pool of the poor population not only shifts geographically but grows overall.

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Today, social service programs offering job training, adult education, emergency food and cash assistance, mental health and substance abuse services, and child care receive about $150 to $200 billion a year - tens of billions of dollars more than what is spent on welfare, food stamps, and unemployment insurance combined. Yet, while you can mail someone a food stamp benefit card, you cannot mail job training or child care. The location of social service programs is critical.

In his post, Dean Baker refers to evidence in Out of Reach of mismatches in the safety net. For example, I find that high-poverty predominately minority neighborhoods have about half as much access to social service programs as low-poverty predominately white neighborhoods.

Why do these mismatches exist? How do we reduce mismatch?

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Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry might have brought Senatorial gravitas to the US-North Korea relationship and have opened connections for Pyongyang beyond the White House. Al Gore, if he had gone to help secure the release of journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee from the hard labor camp where they have been incarcerated, would have diversified his public profile. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, had he gone, would have added to his somewhat legendary roster of successful engagements with global thugs to try and secure the release of innocent people from the trap of hard-edged international tensions.

But Bill Clinton, who is today in North Korea, ignored potential landmines and surprisingly took on the challenge of engaging North Korea to win the release of these journalists. For his efforts, Clinton will most likely reap significant political credits with Barack Obama and his team -- not just for pulling a Bill Richardson and getting the woman out of the hole they were in -- but for steadying a US-North Korea relationship that was in a fast downward spiral.

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It reminds me of when your spouse stops talking to you for leaving your shoes in the living room when she's really mad because you forgot your anniversary.

AIPAC is blasting President Obama for presenting a White House freedom medal to Mary Robinson, former Irish President. It claims she is anti-Israel and quotes the late Congressman Tom Lantos (known for championing human rights except when the violator was Israel) as saying she is a bigot.

All this over a medal -- a medal! -- simultaneously being presented to civil rights leader, Joseph Lowery (close friend and supporter of former Representative and pro-Palestinian activist Cynthia McKinney), Bishop Desmond Tutu (long time critic of the occupation) and the great gay rights activist Harvey Milk (a Jew who shunned Judaism).

The administration says that it is honoring Robinson for her human rights work, especially her leadership on women's issues. I guess it never occurred to the White House to scour the record of every White House award recipient to make sure he or she was okay on Israel (or gay marriage, or immigration, or evolution, or choice).

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In an article in today's Wall Street Journal, Douglas Feith and Abram Shulsky have joined the chorus of neo-conservative pundits who have been criticizing the Obama administration for taking modest but essential steps towards the president's stated goal of eliminating nuclear weapons. Why anyone would listen to Feith and Shulsky, who were involved in promoting bogus intelligence on weapons of mass destruction to sell the Iraq war is beyond me. But these two men and their neo-conservative cohorts -- from John Bolton to Richard Perle to Frank Gaffney -- have been receiving far too much space in our nation's op-ed pages (particularly, but not only, in the WSJ) for their ill-considered theories about nuclear weapons.

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Thanks to the army of commenters. I've tried to read all the comments. I appreciate the bracing criticism of Marquis SeaToShiningSea and Economides as well as what I take to be the supportive comments from artappraiser and buck. Now I will take the opportunity, as Dan Quayle used to say, to stand by all my misstatements.

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When the poverty figures for 2008 are published in late August by the Census Bureau, many expect there to be an increase in the national poverty rate. The actual increase in poverty due to the recession and precise estimates of poverty for neighborhoods and communities, however, will not be known until more census data is released next year. Nevertheless, figures released later this month will provide a sense of how the recession is affecting the national poverty rate.

Typically, we think of rising and persistent poverty as a problem for cities - particularly central cities. Yet, the truth about poverty today in America may surprise you.

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Doni Remba made a name for himself last year by rebutting Republican Jewish Coalition lies about Obama as fast as the lying liars could put them out.

In the end, nobody believed the RJC or the other Obama haters in general and he got 78% of the Jewish vote.

Now the lying liars are back again and so is Remba with a terrific new site that will rebut the lies about Obama's efforts to achieve Middle East peace.

Going to a Bar Mitzva? Worried about meeting one of your fascist relatives and not knowing what to say when he quotes from one of those hate e-mails. Doni is to the rescue.

Check it out.

Scott's work on new ways of helping the poor has changed a lot of thinking on the subject--where the poor reside, how they are served, etc. I'd like him to address an issue that many people wonder about in my world.

I lead a free enterprise-oriented think tank, and we have several scholars doing work on new approaches to aid in the developing world. (See, for example, an example of Mauro De Lorenzo's work here.) Our scholars are of the view that traditional aid can be unhelpful insofar as it suffocates the conditions for local entrepreneurship--which is the only real engine for sustainable growth in prosperity.

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Senator Schumer is now saying that on health care we may need to go the reconciliation route and pass a strong health care bill without the Republicans. Bravo. Why not? Health care reform is popular with the public. We can't allow it to be brought down by lies and the visceral hatred of Obama on the part of a loudmouth segment of the GOP -- a segment motivated not by the issue at all but, in my opinion, their horror at having this particular President sitting in "their" White House.

Then, of course, there are the bluedogs and Senate "moderates" whose motto should be. "All the money you want for war but not one dime of tax revenues for the health of the American people. Iraq was great. When can we hit Iran?"

Our model should be George W. Bush who, with no mandate whatsoever (to put it mildly), put through his program. Bipartisanship? Hell no. He just did whatever he wanted and relied on his base to have his back. As inept as he was, or seemed, Republicans in Congress were terrified of him (not to mention Cheney and Rove) and knew that defying the White House would ruin them. (A GOP equivalent of Evan Bayh would....well, no point, imagining. There would have been no such thing).

Obama may have to play that game.

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I have been struck by the fact that some recent studies found that relocating poor families to middle income areas had a limited impact on the education and career path on the children. I was skeptical of this finding, primarily because it seemed so counter-intuitive. In addition to getting access to better schools, poor children living in middle class neighborhoods would have far better employment opportunities (we're talking summer and after school jobs at fast food restaurants, not internships at Goldman Sachs), less exposure to gangs and crime, and would be in contact with people better positioned to help them through tough times.

For these reasons, I found it very difficult to believe the results of studies that showing that moving poor families had little effect on the life path of their children. Scott's book relates to this literature, because it suggests that even if the concentration of poor families in poverty ridden neighborhoods did not make a difference to life prospects of the children in the past, it is likely to make a very big difference in the future.

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Short answer: extremely.

In case anyone is in any doubt, they should read the transcript of what Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said at the end of his meeting with Hillary Clinton in Washington yesterday.

The core of what he said there:

I would be remiss if I didn't express our thanks and appreciation to President Obama and to Secretary Clinton for their early and robust focus on trying to bring peace to the Middle East...

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A few years ago, I was interviewing the program director of a nonprofit organization that offered job search and training services to low-income persons. During the interview, a woman entered the office a little frantic. She just had been laid off and was looking for help finding a job. After finding few job opportunities searching on her own, this particular nonprofit was the first place she turned to for help.

Eventually the program helped her arrange a few interviews, offered some advice on how to interview successfully, and provided bus passes to cover her commuting costs that week. The nonprofit sector was a key source of support in times of need for this woman and for many other working poor persons in that community. It was my impression that she, like many other program clients, would turn to the local welfare office for cash assistance only as a last resort.

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This week at Cafe, Scott Allard joins us for a discussion of his book Out of Reach: Place, Poverty, and the New American Welfare State. Allard surveyed upwards of 2,000 government and nonprofit agencies to put together this comprehensive book on how social services help low-income populations in urban areas. He is the Associate Professor in the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration.

Joining the discussion are Elizabeth Kneebone, Senior Research Analyst of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution; Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research; Steven R. Smith, Professor of Public Affairs at the University of Washington; and Dean Baker, Cafe regular and Co-Director of the Center For Economic and Policy Research.

Last Friday, just as Congress was preparing for August recess, Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) dropped an important new piece of legislation: The Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009. We at Free Press are urging Congress to support this bill, and you can urge them too.

This bill would make an open Internet the law, once and for all. That's a huge turning point for those of us in the media reform movement who have been pushing for Net Neutrality for years, and for anyone concerned with free expression and civic participation. This bill could become the First Amendment of the Internet age.

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Kid: "He had it coming, right, Will?"
Munny: "We've all got it coming, Kid."

To understand health care reform, it is helpful to have faced Death. The near-death experience brings into sharper relief the reality underlying assorted canards surrounding reform.

My favorite is the notion, advanced by liberal and conservative alike, that the proper objective of reform is to control costs by eliminating treatments that are ineffective. This sounds reasonable unless you have faced Death. I have faced Death, admittedly through the eyes of another, but I think I know a couple of things. I am not claiming to be heroic. I am not asking for sympathy or trying to be emotionally manipulative. Just put yourself in these shoes for a second, as a dispassionate thought experiment.

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