Send a thank-you note to Romania for keeping us out of last place

Last week the Children's Defense Fund (CDF) released a report on child poverty in America. Done in partnership with the Urban Institute, it presents some troubling stats but also nine strategies for reducing child poverty by 60%.

First, the bad news: 

• It's not just that over 21 million American children live in poverty, but that this nation ranks 34th out of 35 industrialized nations in how well it addresses the problem. (Last place goes to Romania, which has an economy 99 times smaller than ours). Think about it: a nation with the world's largest economy fell next to last in civic response to children living in abject poverty.

• Every year that we keep children in poverty costs this nation $500 billion. If you look upon them as individuals, it may be easier to understand the long-range problems emerging from the toxic stress of a childhood spent in poverty: fewer cognitive skills, impaired brain function, less productive adult years, aggravated health outcomes, criminal behaviors, and "dynasties" of poverty through future generations.

But here's what we can do:

• Download the CDF report. It's a cogent and detailed piece of nonpartisan reporting.

http://www.childrensdefense.org/library/PovertyReport/EndingChildPovertyNow.html

Get the details on the nine proposed strategies. Spread the word. Make it a part of your volunteer efforts, church ministry, or philanthropic planning. For example, advocating an increase of your state's minimum wage to $10.10/hour would help.

• Educate your policymakers on the proposed changes and policy improvements, and their consequences. Remember that humanity lives on both sides of a defined poverty line*: such changes would not only benefit kids living under the poverty line but also children in jeopardy just above it.

• Don't let anyone tell you this country cannot afford to end child poverty. CDF's policy recommendations would cost $77 billion, just 2% of our national budget. For further perspective, consider that Americans represent only 5% of the world population, but 37% in military spending, yet in 2013, more than 45% American children lived in homes where there wasn't enough to eat.

The bottom line: Whether or not you have children, no American citizen should remain a bystander to what is a national moral disgrace.

* The poverty line is defined as $23,834 for a family of four.

Why Everyday Nigerians Ought to Matter to Everyday Americans

While the world wept and marched with France over the shocking attack on Charlie Hebdo, the Boko Haram (BH) insurgency massacred 2,000 elderly, women, and children in northeast Nigeria. What's more, the world barely noticed. With Nigeria's elections set for February and given the BH's aspirations for statehood, cold-blooded massacre may just be the BH's way of hitting the campaign trail. But why should Americans care about what transpires in the villages of Nigeria? After all, we have our own troubles.

Here are the top three reasons why Nigeria matters to us.

Textile vendors in Lagos, Nigeria

Reason 3:  We have history together. A longtime ally of the U. S., Nigeria is regarded as our proxy on the African continent. We can't afford to let Nigeria destabilize any further into an ongoing humanitarian nightmare of atrocities, which also spell thwarted economic initiatives and disrupted educational opportunities. Current Nigeria is an economic and humanitarian paradox — it lives in fragments of tribal and ethnic tensions, yet also amazing human resilience. Despite its advantages (see below), most of its people live below the poverty line, rendering them — especially women and children — especially vulnerable to groups like the BH.

Reason 2:  We can do a huge amount of lucrative business together. Porsche, Intercontinental Hotels, MAC Cosmetics, and L'Oreal are just some of the corporations currently working in Nigeria. Home to Africa's biggest population, the largest economy on the continent ($510 billion GDP), the nation is rich in resources, not the least of which is an extremely industrious and entrepeneurial population with an emerging middle class. It's also been predicted that Nigerian millionaires will increase 47% by 2018, and Goldman Sachs has put Nigeria on its "Next 11" list of nations that will be off-the-charts moneymakers in the 21st century. Nigeria's success can also serve as a model for other weak African nations, which brings me to . . . 

The Number 1 Reason:  We both need a stable Nigeria in order to fight a more effective war against terrorism. In Nigeria, terrorism and its humanitarian outrages are inextricably entwined. Look at the region: Nigeria lies in and below the Sahel, a semi-desert stretch below the Sahara that's become a "terrorist corridor" where militias and jihadist groups (emerging from more tenuous nations) are trading huge amounts of weapons and supplies with each other. Close by, Libya has become a convenient arms depot and shelter for militants, and France is again fighting Islamists in Mali. Continued weakness in that region means incubation of yet more "boondock jihadists."

The savage power of the BH must be nullified as quickly as possible, and its leaders brought to justice. This is not only because it's the right thing to do — the humanitarian thing to do — but because if and when the BH attains even an illegitimate statehood, they'll be harder to stop — their atrocities against the vulnerable and defenseless will only grow with impunity, and reach a point where these aren't just committed against Nigerians. They will also become a hub for providing materials, training, and moral supports to jihadists in Syria, Iraq, even Europe.