NYT The Caucus - On the Road: Along the Rio Grande, Students Struggle to Surmount Poverty

[Pirate Smile]

On the Road: Along the Rio Grande, Students Struggle to Surmount Poverty
By Michael Powell


Barack Obama at the University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg, Tex. (Photo: Rick Bowmer/Associated Press)

EDINBURG, Tex. — A salutary aspect of life on the campaign trail, even in the bubble that is a candidate’s lot, is that one is reminded from time to time of the prosaic, not to mention heart-breaking, struggle of so many to escape poverty’s grasp.

So the Barack Obama campaign rolled into the flat emerald eastern edge of the Rio Grande Valley, which is the heart of Clinton country and, by the by, one of the poorer places in the United States. Here in this humid land, amid palm groves and orange trees, an overwhelmingly – about 90 percent – Latino population lives perched on precarious economic ledge. The median family income is about $31,000 and one-third of the residents have no health insurance.

-snip-
At a time when a house price crash has turned off the ATM that was home equity credit, these students told of turning to credit cards to finance education, and running up tabs in the tens of thousands of dollars, with interest rates that started at 11 percent, climbed to 18 percent, and then nosed north of 25 percent.

“I choose between paying my car loan and my books,” said one young woman.

“I’m 22 years old. I’ve been helping my brother and sisters for years, I’ve been a bouncer, a bartender—how can they not know I’m independent?” he said.

Mr. Obama, who was loquacious at the start, now listened quietly, nodding as students spoke. How much debt are you all carrying, he asked.

“About $22,000,” said one student.

“$31,000,” said another.

A pony-tailed Mexican American fellow spoke of working as a repo man. “I used to go after a lot of people like everyone here,” he said with a smile. “But I would also talk to a lot of doctors and lawyers who could not afford their bills.

“I wonder,” he said, “will I get a call like this some day?”

Speak about what you know

That’s a standard bit of of advice for candidates and so Barack Obama offered a surprising bit of advice to the students at University of Texas-Pan American.

“Books are a big scam” he said.

Say what? There were some slightly startled chuckles from the students.

“I taught law at the University of Chicago for 10 years,” he explained. “One of the biggest scams is law professors write their own textbooks and then assign it to their students, and they make a mint.

“It’s a huge racket,” he added.

Sounded like a man with some very big book bills left over from his law school days.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/22/on-the-road-along-the-rio-grande-students-struggle-to-surmount-poverty/

[sandnsea]

1. Nationally, median household income is $46,000

Median individual income is $26,000. LOTS of people live like this. This is the norm. I wish somebody would start telling the truth of it. I hope Obama can figure out a way to do that without scaring the top 20% into yelling class warfare.