NEWSBYJANELL ROSS

If you listen to politicians talk about America’s 14.5 million-person unemployment problem there’s usually a lot said about the seemingly double-jointed powers of tax cuts or government spending.

What you don’t often hear are the words “pre-employment credit screening.”

But, a report released in December by the New York-based nonpartisan research and advocacy organization Demos indicates that credit checks should truly be the topic of many more conversations.

Millions of unemployed Americans may be getting caught in a very serious feedback loop. They can’t find work because of their credit score. But, they can't improve their credit score because they can’t find work.

Tell Congress that its time to help Americans in the deepest financial trouble find the jobs they need.

It seems employers looking to hire everything from shelf stockers to bank tellers, CEOs to child care workers are running credit checks on job applicants.

The theory behind the checks is simple: an employee with a poor credit history – particularly pending debt collection suits -- is under the kind of pressure that makes them prone to participating in fraud, theft, bribery and other ethical lapses on the job.

There is just one problem: there isn’t any evidence to support that idea. In fact, there’s ample evidence that just the opposite is true. It turns out that when employees are deep in debt, they tend to buckle down and work harder according to the Demos report.

We’ve all been waiting.

Some of us might be angrier than others. But, it’s safe to say that most Americans have been waiting for an executive perp walk – a line of businessmen and maybe a few women rounded up and hauled in to face charges for the economic turmoil, tsunami of foreclosures and layoffs they unleashed on the world.

It’s also safe to say that with the economy still in flux many of us have decided to settle for rigorous oversight of high-interest and high-risk financial products. We'll take the regulatory equivalent of a beat cop, if that cop is well armed.

Checkers and plaid.

Shorts and coats.

High energy prices and a refusal to study a rate-reduction program for the poor.

Some things really don't go together or make much sense at all.

But in Connecticut - a state with some of the nation’s highest energy costs, regular winter storms and a state legislature that has resisted even studying the cost of a low-income heating assistance program – it is truly a cold and unreasonable season for the poor.

Connecticut is the only state in New England where utility companies are not required to offer low-income customers a discounted service rate.

A new study released by the Bloomfield, Connecticut-based non-profit Operation Fuel, found that thousands of Connecticut households struggle to pay their heating bills (the study assumes that any household that has to spend more than 6 percent of its income on heating costs may be in trouble).

Nearly 50,000 Connecticut households sought help paying their utility bills during the fiscal year that ended June 30, according to Operation Fuel's report.

If ever there was a moment for the late Gary Coleman’s endearing but nakedly race and class-charged catchphrase, “What you talking bout Willis?” this may be it.

In late December, a new report released by the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed that the combined effect of the recession, rising unemployment and preexisting health care system dysfunction left a record-setting 50 million people without health insurance in 2010. In fact, there are now nearly as many uninsured Americans under age 65 as there are people enrolled in public health insurance programs such as Medicare, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and military/VA health care combined.

Sadder still, most of the people who don’t have insurance are members of households where someone works but can’t afford or does not have access to an employer-provided health insurance plan. In fact, 40 percent of the uninsured earn incomes that place them well below the poverty level, according to the Kaiser report. Just to put the situation in perspective consider this: in 2010, the federal poverty level for a family of four was $22,050 and the average annual cost of an employer-sponsored plan was about $13,770. The latter is typically shared by an employer and employee but in 2010, the employee share of the bill rose, on average, about 30 percent, the Kaiser study found.

So far, Ted Williams – a homeless man with a velvet voice and multiple job offers after a moment in the YouTube spotlight – is shaping up to be the feel-good economic story of the year.

Oprah, MTV and ESPN think there is a place for Williams at their networks. A pair of Washington Post bloggers think President Obama should give Williams a shot at the soon-to-be vacant White House Press Secretary job.

Kraft Foods, Inc. has already put Williams and the free publicity he attracts to work. The once-homeless Williams is the not-at-all-ironic voice behind Kraft's homestyle mac and cheese.

Still, there’s an aspect of Williams’ nearly-everywhere tale that isn’t getting enough attention.

For the rest of America’s 14.5 million unemployed individuals, a YouTube-enabled 15-minutes of fame and cynical job recommendations probably aren't what's needed. American companies that have emerged from the Great Recession, begun posting record-setting profit increases or simply have the financial wherewithal to throw rapid and real opportunities at Williams, have also got to start hiring ordinary people for ordinary jobs.

That’s why it’s time for 112th Congress to expand and renew the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act.

"The unbanked." That's the term the government uses to describe the estimated 17 million adults — nearly eight percent of the U.S. adult population — who did not have a bank account in 2009. Most can not qualify for a bank account due to very low incomes, bad credit or check-writing histories. Another 43 million adults are considered "underbanked" because they can't get their basic financial needs met through a government-insured and regulated bank.

Instead, they make major purchases through expensive rent-to-own programs, patronize pawn shops, check-cashers and payday lenders and frequently purchase money orders. The unbanked and the underbanked end up doing their financial business much the same way.

That's a way of life that gets pretty expensive. In 2004, a University of Michigan study (pdf) examined the cost of being unbanked or underbanked. It found that a person earning $12,000 a year could spend $250 just cashing all his pay checks. That same person should also be prepared for additional fees to pay bills, purchase or cash money orders and access other financial services. He won't be making many financial gains.

Enter Texas-based Mango Financial, Inc. Mango — backed by brothers Rogelio and Bertrand Sosa — offers its customers a prepaid debit card with a few of the advantages of doing business with an actual bank. (To be clear, it's far from the only prepaid debit card operation on the market. Everyone from Russell Simmons to the Kardashian sisters have lent their names and images to prepaid debit card companies.)

But what makes Mango unique is that the Sosa brothers are trying to reach the unbanked with low-cost bank-like services. In addition to the Mango card's unusual features — free bill-paying and a $5 monthly fee that can be avoided if a customer loads $500 or more per month on their card — Mango offers customers a high-yield savings account option.

Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released another one of its informative but not exactly exciting reports. Despite quarter after quarter of very limited hiring and lots of firing, companies managed to increase productivity by 1.9 percent.

The terms are dry and the numbers preliminary, but they do tell us a lot more than Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino ever has in two seasons on some East Coast shore, and millions of people watched him each week.

To put it simply, productivity is a measure of just how many goods and services companies produced, divided by labor costs (hours for which employees and owners were paid). When productivity goes up, either output has risen or the cost of labor has gone down.

New technologies, ideas and products emerge every day that make increased efficiency possible. But that might not be what's happening here. The AP described what happened between July and September as "modest" productivity gains and an "improvement" over the 1.8 percent productivity dip earlier this year.

But that three percent jump represents the biggest increase in productivity in about a year. That's a feat accomplished with very little corporate hiring and plenty of firing.

It seems business really managed to do more with less. Could it be?

First, there was Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County. The HBO documentary chronicled the tragic experiences of the working poor living miserably in pay-by-the week motels near the happiest place on earth.

In terms of exposure, it didn't hurt that the film's director, Alexandra Pelosi, happens to be the daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Then, there was Winter's Bone, a feature film that, while fictional, painted a picture of the kinds of hard decisions that poor people entangled in the criminal justice system sometimes have to make to survive or remain free.

Winning the Grand Jury Prize for best drama at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival didn't do the film or its message any damage.

Now, with the release of the Census Bureau's latest data, the ugly truth has been revealed and is getting a lot of attention. One in seven Americans were living in and struggling with poverty in 2009.

Things have gotten so bad that poverty consciousness — knowledge of its causes, an understanding of its consequences and a belief that it really exists in the United States — may have reached a long-time high.

So if there are more Americans who now know that poverty is more than the simple failure to locate and use one's bootstraps, what's next?

Will someone designate the color, size and proper placement of the anti-poverty equivalent of a  Live Strong bracelet to raise millions for the American poor? Will a celebrity, who incidentally earns more than 20 times the national median income (pdf) for one film, lobby to become the UN's Goodwill Ambassador to the United States? Will people stop believing that Antoine Dodson's ability to embody a series of stereotypes then become a Youtube phenomenon with merchandising options is actual evidence of a viable pathway out of poverty for others?

There's an old saying that goes something like this: by the time America gets a cold, black America has pneumonia.

Well, on Thursday it seemed that whoever said it first had it right.

More than 14 percent of Americans found themselves living below the poverty line in 2009, according to newly-released U.S. Census Bureau data. Thanks in part to the Great Recession, 43.6 million people — one in seven Americans — are poor.

That was the news almost every information outlet made clear. And, given that there were about 39.8 million poor Americans in 2008, that's a remarkable one-year increase.

By most accounts, this is the story of America in a recession — a portrait of millions pushed into poverty rather than those who were already incapable of escaping it. Another big part of the story that hasn't gained much attention is  just how bad the Great Recession has been for black and Hispanic individuals in 2009.

Here are some of the most disturbing details (pdf): nearly 26 percent of blacks and just over 25 percent of Hispanics were poor in 2009. Only about 9.4 percent of white Americans were poor during that same period of time.

To be fair, gargantuan gaps between white, black and Hispanic poverty rates (and income levels (pdf)) aren't new. They just got worse — much worse — in 2009.

The reasons are complex and interrelated. They rage from the quality of schools and teachers that serve the nation's low-income kids to, yes, poor personal decisions. But they are also the direct legacy of decades of discriminatory policies and practices affecting everything from the way housing is sold to the way banking is done and other wealth and poverty drivers far too numerous to name. And it's not just a question of what's happened in the past. Poverty disparities are very much a function of what is still happening right now.

The number of people living in poverty is rising at an alarming clip. Millions of Americans are out of work. But the most pressing political debate of the week appears to be whether or not an individual earning $250,000 or more should enjoy a continued tax break.

Thankfully, this month a small non-profit called Bridges to Cultural Understanding will host a pair of programs aimed at enhancing public knowledge about American poverty in Battle Creek, Michigan.

Right about now, you are probably wondering just who is left in Michigan who doesn't understand poverty. Even before the rest of America woke up to this week's grim projections about growing poverty, Michigan was in deep, deep trouble.

For example, while the nation's 9.6 percent August unemployment figure was not a cause for celebration, Michigan newspapers registered a kind of resigned relief that just 13.1 percent of its residents were unable to find work last month. After all, in August 2009, a full 14.3 percent of Michigan's workers were unemployed.

But it seems there's a cadre of Michigan residents who have managed to retain such limited knowledge of poverty and compassion for the poor that Bridges staffers think the workshops are needed.

Enter the group's "Understanding Poverty for Business and Community Members" and "Poverty Simulation" workshops. At the first, for the appealing price of $0,  facilitators will guide attendees as they explore the perceptions and definitions of poverty, the major factors that contribute to it and the "hidden rules" of living in it. There will be a one-page test to help participants determine how well they would manage life as a member of different economic classes.