In the basement of Hill House, a community center just outside of this city's
bustling downtown, Brooklyn Davis clutches a plastic fork and stabs eagerly at a
styrofoam plate piled high with waffles and syrup. He keeps a broad-billed,
oversized New York Yankees baseball cap pulled low over his ears, and has a NASCAR jacket -- festooned with the "Army Strong" trademark
and corporate logos from Office
Depot and Chevrolet and Old Spice -- wrapped around his thin frame.
"I found out I was poor in middle school," Davis says between bites, as he
recalls intermittent forays into the drug trade. "I had holes in my shoes and I
started getting ripped on. So I just started hitting the block, and I was like
'Man, nobody's going to be bothering me now. I've got money in my pocket.' But I
realized that can't go on too long."
Davis is now a Hill House regular, keen to have a chance at breakfast, access
to computers and the use of a telephone. The facility is anchored in the historic Hill District, a predominantly black and widely
impoverished neighborhood that begins in the shadow of the recently completed
Consol Energy Center arena -- the $320 million home to the Pittsburgh Penguins
professional hockey team -- and rises eastward along several of the city's steep
ridges.
They both want lawmakers to raise taxes on the rich.
The comedian of Nurse Betty and Dogma fame told the
Associated Press Wednesday that he could stand to pay higher taxes.
"I can pay higher taxes and people can have jobs or I can pay lower taxes and
I have my kids' teacher asking me for a loan because she's going to lose her
house, which is true," said Rock, who is worth an estimated $70 million, according to
celebertynetworth.com. "Stuff like that happens, so I'm going to lose the money
no matter what."
He is one of only five presidents to see the Dow Jones Industrial Average gain 50 percent or more through
his first three years in office, according to a report from Bespoke Investment
Group. Obama, who has overseen a 60 percent gain in the Dow since taking office,
joins two Democrats, Bill Clinton and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and two
Republicans, Calvin Coolidge and Dwight D. Eisenhower in the club.
It's not just executive compensation that's on the rise. A very solid number
of executives at major corporations have also received payouts that Mother Jones calculates would be equal to the earnings of 203
lifetimes for a median income American.
More than 21 CEOs received severance or "walk-away" packages worth $100
million or more since 2000, a recent report from GMI has found. The report calculated the
CEOs severance, or Golden Parachute as it's come to be called, by combining the
various forms of compensation executives receive including a year's worth of
annual base salary, stock option profits, stock awards, bonuses, benefits and
perquisites, pensions and other deferred compensation. All told, the golden
parachutes of the 21 CEOs were worth a combined $4 billion.
Despite his current surge in the South Carolina polls, Newt Gingrich's star
is not rising among one group of workers who have been a key talking point on
the campaign trail: unionized janitors who the former House speaker says make
"an absurd amount of money" and should be fired and replaced with poor
schoolchildren.
At a high school in Hudson, N.H., where Gingrich gave a speech last week, the
janitors are represented by the Teamsters union. They start off earning $16.86
an hour, or $28,324 a year, according to the local union contract.
Before Gingrich arrived on Jan. 9, several of them were readying the
auditorium for his event. The men weren't impressed by his plan for their jobs.
Those surveyed began with one basic point: If their jobs are turned over to
schoolchildren, they would be out of work. But they quickly moved on to what
they see as the more offensive issue: that a man like Gingrich -- who made
around $1.6 million offering advice to mortgage giant Freddie Mac -- would claim
to know anything about janitorial work.
"If you leave these custodians go, they're going to be out of a job," said
Jerry Mishow, head custodian at the school, who earns the top janitorial wage of
$25.41 an hour, or $42,688 a year. "Leave well enough alone."
"It just shows how out of touch with reality he is," added Brian McNamara,
another custodian.
"I don't think he knows what it feels like to be down in the trenches,
actually, you know, with the average everyday guy," said a third custodian,
Peter Petrakis.
That's so wrong on so many levels," Petrakis agreed.
Janitors are not the only people to disparage Gingrich's controversial strategy to fight both child poverty and the jobs
crisis by replacing adult janitors with working kids. Economists who study
job creation say it won't improve the economy, academics who study children and
poverty say it won't help poor kids, and unions who represent janitors say it's
an affront to working people.
"You could take one janitor and hire 30-some kids to work in the school for
the price of one janitor," Gingrich said at Monday night's Republican debate in
South Carolina. "And those 30 kids would be a lot less likely to drop out. They
would actually have money in their pocket."
His remarks were greeted with cheers from the audience.
"It's another absurd statement designed to appeal to the anti-union
right-wing base," said Robert Troeller, president of Local 891, International
Union of Operating Engineers, which represents New York City custodial
engineers. "A man with a million-dollar line of credit at Tiffany's has the
audacity to claim janitors are overpaid."
