Poverty is a Criminal Offense Even Punishable by Death.

Out of Reach 2012

Even though corporate profits have soared to record levels in recent years and the 1% continue to line their already lined pockets, most Americans are still struggling; there has been no economic recovery for the 99%. However, the "recovered" wealthy politically connected class has thoroughly convinced the waning middle-class to hate the poor, an ongoing effort since 1980. They tell the middle class, "Look how much it costs you to provide food stamps, welfare benefits, etc., to the poor," covering up the fact that they are the ones plundering all of the wealth, and effectively keeping the 99% at each others throats, therefore blind to the truth.

The mainstream media ensures that most of us stay blinded to that truth by continuously droning on and on about this "economic recovery" when, in actuality, median household income is actually 4.4 % lower than it was when the last recession officially "ended".  Economic recovery? How can that be when over  100 million American citizens are on welfare?  But despite the growing inequality between rich and poor, too many Americans still support the policies that deny basic humanitarian aid to our nation's poor, a population that's growing by leaps and bounds.

So it is, in the richest nation in the world, millions of people are out of work--or underemployed--homeless, and hungry, as it becomes increasingly commonplace to criminalize homelessness, not to mention, the act of helping the homeless. Those who dare to go out into the community to bring food and supplies are finding themselves arrested at an alarming rate. Yet, how does one get a job once you no longer have a home address, phone number, bus fare? If you become too ill to work?

Meanwhile, people experiencing homelessness are dying all over the nation. All too often, these lonely people are as invisible in death as they were in life.  At the very least, 700 homeless people freeze to death in the US every year.  In the Bay Area alone, since November 28, 2013,  seven homeless people died from exposure to the cold

Did you ever hear of Hart Island? No?  Well, you're not alone.  Hart Island is "a thin, half-mile long blip of land at the yawning mouth of Long Island Sound, just across the water from City Island in the Bronx" and is the largest publicly-funded mass grave site in the U.S. which has been closed to the general public for the last 35 years. Almost one million unclaimed/unknown dead, mostly homeless, are buried there. Loved ones are prevented from freely visiting these almost impossible-to-find grave sites. In Arpil of this year, an online searchable database of burial records was set up, however, access is limited to a small gazebo near the dock, rather than any of the actual burial sites.

“Its most important role has been to serve as what’s known as a potter’s field, a common gravesite for the city’s unknown dead. Some 900,000 New Yorkers (or adopted New Yorkers) are buried here; hauntingly, the majority are interred by prisoners from Riker’s Island who earn 50 cents an hour digging gravesites and stacking simple wooden boxes in groups of 150 adults and 1,000 infants. These inmates—most of them very young, serving out short sentences—are responsible for building the only memorials on Hart Island: Handmade crosses made of twigs and small offerings of fruit and candy left behind when a grave is finished."

Moreover, 41 states have debtors' prisons. Even though the U.S. officially made debtors' prisons illegal in the 1830s, you can still be jailed for showing "contempt of court" during a creditor lawsuit.  In Ohio they're throwing people into jail for as little as $300! That's right, in Huron County, "more than one in every five of all bookings...involved a failure to pay fines." 

Most of the homeless in America are just regular people (over 40% working) trying to survive, a situation that anyone of us can find ourselves in, yet, so many remain callous, as if it cannot happen to them.  If society is judged by the way it treats the least of its citizens, well...

Links:

Cities' homeless crackdown: Could it be compassion fatigue?

Bloomberg Strikes Again: NYC Bans Food Donations to the Homeless.

Prohibitions on Sharing Food with People Experiencing Homelessness

Poor Give More Generously Than the Rich

Charity and the poor: The rich and their 'bah humbug' attitudes

Why the Rich Don't Give to Charity The wealthiest Americans donate 1.3 percent of their income; the poorest, 3.2 percent. What's up with that?

Why Do the Rich Give Less than the Poor?

Food Not Bombs

Interfaith Hospitality Network

A mother loses her job, a father is kept from working by an injury, a family is forced from their home by fire or natural disaster. Healthcare costs soar, public transportation is underfunded, affordable housing is almost impossible to find. These are the reasons why families now make up 40 percent of the homeless population, and why one out of every four homeless people is a child.

In response to this crisis, the Interfaith Hospitality Network brings the faith community together to help families regain their housing, their independence, and their dignity. IHN is a partnership of congregations within a community helping families who are facing homelessness. It offers an opportunity for volunteers of all faiths to reduce homelessness and transform lives.

Interfaith Hospitality Networks are currently operating in 41 states and the District of Columbia, in large cities, suburbs, and rural counties. They mobilize community resources: houses of worship for lodging, congregations for volunteers, social service agencies for assessment and referrals, and existing facilities for day programs. This strategy enables networks to help homeless families achieve lasting independence at a third of the cost of traditional shelters.

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Are Millions About to Go Over the Hunger Cliff?

While the price of food is substantially increasing, the food-stamp program is now set to downsize as there's a big automatic cut scheduled for tomorrow that will trim $5 billion from federal food-stamp spending, disproportionately affecting children, seniors, and people with disabilities. That's not counting the 900.000 veterans and their families who will receive cuts to their benefits as well.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), this cut will average less than $1.40 per person per meal and jeopardize the strength of the current economic recovery. Moreover, according to the Center for American Progress (CAP) "each $1 billion dollar reduction in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program eliminates 13,718 jobs," resulting in more than 68,000 job losses in the coming year.

Keep in mind that programs such as SNAP have what economists call a "multiplier effect"—in other words, "a dollar given to an entitlement recipient has amplified economic benefits. In this case, those consist primarily of the grocers who benefit when food stamp users shop in their stores. The estimated multiplier effect for food stamps is as high as 2 to 1."

Billions more in cuts are scheduled to occur in the following two years, despite the fact that food insecurity in America has not even begun to return to pre-recession levels.

But who cares? The stock market's soaring to new heights despite the income disparity that continues to widen at unprecedented levels.

“If you look across the world, riots always begin typically the same way: when people cannot afford to eat food,” -- Margaret Purvis, , president and CEO of the Food bank for New York City,

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Mother Teresa: Saint or Saint of the Media?

To be frank, I never was a fan of Christopher Hitchens, therefore, I never took his criticisms of Mother Teresa (born Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu) seriously, and I'm still not sure if his criticisms are valid. But I want to make sure I'm not allowing my dislike for Hitchens as an excuse to dismiss his accusations completely. After all, to Catholics and non-Catholics alike, Mother Teresa is a modern day icon of altruism, and selflessness in a world where all the focus is on the self, so her sacred personage represents an all-important light in what seems like a never-ending "Dark Night". Nevertheless, there is no justification for failing to get to the truth of the matter.

Through exposure of her private writings, it has come to the attention of many that Mother Theresa, like many Saints before her, did not feel the presence of God, that she experienced Christ "neither in her heart or in the Eucharist," yet despite this, she never stopped serving Christ. While the media played her doubts up as a failure, or hypocrisy on her part, many people of faith would call her continued devotion in the midst of "agonizing doubts" and torment, a sign of the highest level of faith that there is. To be sure, millions of people around the world can relate to her struggle.

However, one question remains. What kind of treatment did the sick and the dying receive in Mother Teresa's facilities considering the vast sums of money collected through her foundation, which included large sums from the Nobel Peace committee as well as numerous institutions and organizations, both religious and secular, not to mention, wealthy individuals?

Serge Larivee and Genevieve Chenard of the University of Montreal and Carole Senechal of the University of Ottawa reviewed more than 280 documents, representing 96% of the published work on Mother Teresa and the Order of the Missionaries of Charity that she founded. The investigators reported that physicians who visited her facilities “observed a significant lack of hygiene, even unfit conditions, as well as a shortage of actual care, inadequate food, and no painkillers.”

Be that as it may, there is nothing like personal first-hand observation. One man, a witness of Mother Teresa and the sisters in her order posted the following comment which may shed some more light on to this issue.

“I have personally witnessed and testify to the selfless and unmatched love Missionaries of Charity have displayed working with mentally disabled orphan children in Armenia. In 1988 Armenia's northern part was rocked by a strong earthquake leaving more than 20,000 dead. Within weeks Mother Teresa traveled to Armenia establishing a care center near the city of Spitak, which for many years operated in mobile homes. In 2003 I visited there after an American friend (Ph.D in Music) visited them and recommended me to visit as well. I was struck by the unparallelled love and care these young sisters were giving to more than 40 mentally disabled orphan kids. I would go against my consciousness to say anything less than great about these sister. To this day I remember the true, selfless love and enthusiasm they were putting in their care for these children. I knew I was not that strong, as probably the author of this book, to do the same.

These sisters, who came from different parts of the world, explained that they do this without seeking any reward in this world. Their eyes were toward the Kingdom of Heaven and toward the true love of Jesus, two concepts so foreign to the overwhelming majority of people, including those who are called to serve Him.

As Serge Larivée and his colleagues point out, even if Mother Teresa did not live up to the image portrayed in the media, there have been and continue to be positive effects that can be attributed to the image of Mother Teresa:

“If the extraordinary image of Mother Teresa conveyed in the collective imagination has encouraged humanitarian initiatives that are genuinely engaged with those crushed by poverty, we can only rejoice. It is likely that she has inspired many humanitarian workers whose actions have truly relieved the suffering of the destitute and addressed the causes of poverty and isolation without being extolled by the media. Nevertheless, the media coverage of Mother Theresa could have been a little more rigorous."

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2012: Foodstamps Thanksgiving in America.

More Americans will use food stamps to buy their Thanksgiving dinner this year than ever before, according to a new report from The Sunlight Foundation. That's right. This Thanksgiving, 42.2 million Americans will be on food stamps, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), average participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamp program, has increased 70% since 2007. And economists have warned that usage of food stamps won't go down until unemployment improves.

 One person on food stamps has a budget of about $1.25 per meal. In other words, a family on food stamps must buy an entire meal per person for less than the cost of a cup of coffee.

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Woman Arrested After Begging For Care At Hospital, Then Dies In Jail

It is said that all it takes for the triumph of evil is for "good" men to do nothing. Good? How is a man good if he does nothing to help another human being who is suffering? Dying? Especially if that man has taken an oath to watch over the life and health of  their fellow human beings (doctors), or has sworn to protect their fellow human beings (police). 

Sadly, for Anna Brown, a 29-year-old African American woman left homeless after a tornado in 2010 that destroyed her home, after she lost her job at a sandwich shop, met with the most blatant and callous disregard in her time of need, instead. 

Ms. Brown, 29, had sprained her ankle that week and on September 20, went to Saint Louis University Hospital for treatment. The X-rays were negative and she was given painkillers and discharged. But Ms. Brown was not satisfied, sensing something more was wrong with her. She refused to leave the hospital, so police were called. Hospital security called police, so Ms. Brown, in a wheelchair due to the pain in her legs, rowed herself next door to a children’s hospital. Though doctors there said she did in fact have tenderness in her legs, they said they could not treat her because it was a pediatric hospital. Refusing to return to SLU Hospital, an ambulance took her to SSM St. Mary’s Health Center, a hospital with a mission statement emphasizes “special concern for people who are materially poor and vulnerable.” Ms. Brown was homeless and on Medicaid after a tornado in 2010 destroyed her home and she lost her job at a sandwich shop.

Ms. Brown was given ultrasounds on both legs, which did not find any blood clots or other abnormalities, according to State inspectors who examined her medical records. The hospital gave Ms. Brown the number to several homeless shelters and sent her on her way. But Ms. Brown returned eight hours later, now complaining of leg and abdominal pain. Hospital staff refused to treat her, giving her discharge papers which she refused to sign. Richmond Heights Police, who were already at the scene, wheeled Ms. Brown out of the hospital, as she yelled “my legs don’t work!” At the request of the hospital, police arrested Ms. Brown and charged her with trespassing.

When they arrived at the jail, Ms. Brown told the police she could not put pressure on her legs, so they dragged her out of the car by her arms. Police listed “possible drug use” as their reason for Ms. Brown’s behavior, since hospital staff told them she was “fit for confinement.” Though the woman moaned in pain and begged for help, police dragged her into a jail cell and laid her on the concrete floor, even though a cot was right next to her. Ms. Brown stopped moving and breathing fifteen minutes later. Paramedics tried to revive her without success, so they rushed her back to St. Mary’s, where she died within an hour. The autopsy revealed she died from blood clots in her legs that ultimately lodged in her lungs.

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America is Filthy Rich. Yet, Half of all Americans Live in Poverty?

According to the Census, one in two Americans are poor or low income.

Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income.

The latest census data depict a middle class that's shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government's safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.

"Safety net programs such as food stamps and tax credits kept poverty from rising even higher in 2010, but for many low-income families with work-related and medical expenses, they are considered too 'rich' to qualify," said Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan public policy professor who specializes in poverty.

"The reality is that prospects for the poor and the near poor are dismal," he said. "If Congress and the states make further cuts, we can expect the number of poor and low-income families to rise for the next several years."

Yet, we're the richest country in the world! What gives?

Well, I thought what waytoomanybottlesofspicedrum had to say in response to the article: How Can the World's Richest Country Let Children Go Hungry? 6 Tricks Corporate Elites Use to Hoard All the Wealth was very interesting.

The world's richest country is, because of its wealth, evil. Wealth is an aberration in long view of the history of human living arrangements. Stratification (institutionalized hierarchy) only emerged in the Neolithic; for millions of years prior, humans and their taxonomic ancestors lived in much more egalitarian, equal, and communal groups (communal, not collectivist; this is an important distinction that helps smooth out the false antithesis between communal and individual, which are not at odds, like individual and collectivist are). The power an individual might hold in an early community was held on an ad hoc basis and based on some exceptional skill, like as a hunter. (By the way, hunting is far more humane than factory farming.)

Even after the emergence of stratified societies, most peasant hamlets maintained their generally communal and egalitarian ways, since they were geographically isolated from the centers of power and wealth, and thus people had to lean on each other directly to survive, due to the nonexistence of much communications and transportation technology.

Now we live in a giant globalized society that is impersonal, where human relationships are mediated by formal procedures and artificial top-down "norms" established by the media, where increasingly meaningless money is the measure of a human being, where the natural world is being depleted and trashed by a way of life that cannot endure very long, where competition is held up as a moral imperative, where viciousness is honored with admiration, where everything is assumed to have a monetary value so that its use and exchange can be "rationalized" according to the presumptions of discredited economic theories.

Too many Americans have abused nature to accumulate wealth, have divorced themselves from the natural world, have discombobulated communities and human relations, have sunk into lonesome isolation, have unregenerately turned toward aggressively defending this depraved system rather than face the fact that they've become corrupted and monstrous, have supported empire and exploitation and violence, and have created an evil society.

Our basic needs and longings - for community, for a decent amount of egalitarian fair treatment, for affinity with our environment, for seeing and enjoying the fruits of our labors - were shaped by our long past of living close to nature in communal groups, where the survival of the individual depended on the survival of the group, thus necessitating strong norms and an egalitarian culture to prevent infighting. We have strayed a long, long way from that. Hence why so many people have become rotten, un-empathetic, sociopathic degenerates who can't tell up from down, right from wrong, kindness from indifference, decency from cruelty, or their ass from a hole in the ground.

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U.S May Conduct Anthrax Vaccine Research and Testing on Children

In North Carolina , today, victims of the state’s 45 year-long eugenics program, extending from 1929 to 1974, that forcibly sterilizied women, men and children, are testifying before a state task force considering possible compensation.

At least 31 states sterilized people in this program that was billed as a way to cut down on poverty and other perceived social ills. This is all part of a-well documented, "shameful chapter of American history known as the Eugenics Movement." Their purpose: To "improve" the genetic make-up of the population, by sterilizing people "characterized as a drain on society".

Fast forward to July 7, 2011 and the Anthrax working group of the National Biodefense Science Board will convene to discuss what federal regulations will be required by the federal government to test the potentially lethal anthrax vaccine on children.

That's right.  If the federal government gets its way, despite adverse event reports related to the vaccine among adult test subjects that have included hospitalization, disability and even death, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is exploring the possibility of testing the vaccine on children.

Of course, the potential testing of this lethal vaccine is "rationalized" as a protection mechanism that will be helpful in the neverending black hole, called the "war on terror.  Totally ignored are the the vaccine's dangers, and, moreover, it "raises the specter of class- and/or race-based selection of medical test subjects which has haunted US health agencies for over a century."  The parents of these children will not be told the whole truth of what their children may expericnce.

If approved, you can be sure the children  chosen as "guinea pigs"  will come from the most vulnerable and poorest segment of society.  You see, in order to keep our pathological system working, it's essential that to maintain a certain percentage of the population in poverty. That segment is growing at a rapid rate which demonstrates just how valuable poor people are to the powers that be.

40-year long Tuskegee experiments in which the US Public Health Service withheld syphilis treatment from infected black men to measure the effects of the disease.

In October of 2010, President Obama apologized to Guatemala for tests during the 1940s when the US Public Health Service used prostitutes deliberately infect 700 prisoners, soldiers and patients with emotional and mental problems with syphilis both through visits with prostitutes and pouring bacteria for the disease onto skin abrasions on the subjects' bodies.

Vaccine testing has its own special place in the annals of this kind of integrity-free medical research. In the early 1960s, mentally disabled children at a residential state school in New York were deliberately infected with viral hepatitis so that they could be test subjects for the disease.

A 1978 CDC test for a hepatitis B vaccine which sought "promiscuous homosexual male" volunteers has some interesting connections to both HIV and the previously rare opportunistic diseases associated with the AIDS virus. As recently as 1990, the CDC and Kaiser Pharmaceuticals gave 1,500 black and Hispanic 6-month old infants an unlicensed measles vaccine without the approval and consent of their parents.

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Dr Cornel West letter to President Obama on Poor and Unemployed

Cornel West "Barack Obama Is The Black Mascot Of The Wall Street Oligarchs"

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Incarceration Instead of Education?

At one time, it seemed that prison was reserved for violent offenders who posed a threat to public safety and to those who were repeatedly convicted for felonious acts. Those times have changed. The number of federal crimes, newly enacted by Congress, have exploded over the last three decades.

Consider this. From 1925 to 1972, the prison population fluctuated between 100,000 and 200,000 inmates. In 1980, there were less than 500,000 Americans in prison. On June 30, 2002, the number of incarcerated topped 2 million. At the beginning of 2008, the nation’s total inmate count was more than 2.3 million. To be sure, the great majority of America's incarcerated population has one thing in common: poverty. Yet, it's clear the opposite is occurring. Rather than trying to reduce the over 4,000 offenses that carry criminal penalties in the United States Code, more are being created everyday... in addition, lawmakers are upgrading misdemeanors to felonies!

Take, Tonya McDowell, a 33-year-old homeless mom, who was charged with "first-degree larceny and conspiracy to commit first-degree larceny for allegedly stealing $15,686 from Norwalk schools," for using her babysitter's, Ana Rebecca Marques, address to send her six-year old to school.  Not only that, Ms. Marques was kicked out of her residence at the housing authority.  Can you say, 

Dr. Boyce Watkins, a social justice advocate and Syracuse University professor said the following:

“The message now is that they would rather incarcerate than educate. This is no different from the days when slaves were jailed for trying to learn to read."

Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness  would agree, I'm sure.

In another case, in January, Kelley Williams-Bolar of Akron Ohio was convicted and sent to jail after she used her father’s address to enroll her two children in a suburban school district, in an effort to better their education.

"Additionally, Williams-Bolar’s father, Edward L. Williams, was charged with a fourth-degree felony of grand theft, in which he and his daughter are charged with defrauding the school system for two years of educational services for their girls. The court determined that sending their children to the wrong school was worth $30,500 in tuition"

What makes these arrests all the more horrifically absurd, is that our nation's elitist thugs not only go free, but are continuing to reap enormous reward.

Links:

Children of Incarcerated Parents Fact Sheet

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Hyatt Exploits Recession to Boost Profits

This past Wednesday. Tom Ashbrook, host of On Point interviewed Barbara Ehrenreich, author most famous for Nickel and Dimed On (Not) Getting By in America and two women, hotel housekeepers, recently fired by Hyatt Hotels Corp who hired replacements at half their wages.

The two women were part of a group of 98 employees Hyatt mercilessly fired from housekeeping - some of whom gave over 20 years of service, and who were tricked into training their replacements unknowingly - in a cost cutting measure in August, with absolutely no warning whatsoever. Many of the fired housekeepers made $16 an hour while the replacements make $8 an hour. Hyatt will now have the burden of maintaining the same quality of service, considering the replacements, paid only half the wages, will be responsible for double the work load (from 16 rooms to 32 rooms per day).

As Barbara Ehrenreich pointed out, Hyatt's problem was not the housekeeper's hourly wages, rather it's the executive salaries, bonuses and stock options that cost the corporation. In other words, corporate greed trumped common sense, and hopefully Hyatt's despicable cost-cutting measures will come back to bite them in the same place their brains obviously reside.

Today, after experiencing negative publicity, a threat to boycott from the Governor and taxi drivers, and public outcry against the hotel company, Hyatt said "it’s arranged full-time jobs through an outsourcing firm for the 98 housekeepers it recently fired from its three hotels in Boston and Cambridge and replaced with cheaper outsourced workers".

"Hyatt has faced withering criticism and even a boycott threat from Gov. Deval Patrick over the firings, which sparked protests yesterday in Chicago, where the company is headquartered".

However, these women, who were ruthlessly replaced, want to return to their jobs.

“Hyatt’s latest proposal is simply a smokescreen designed to trick people into thinking Hyatt is doing the right thing. It does not provide the women with the one thing they really deserve.

These women have made it clear that they want to be returned to the jobs they have held for years, and Hyatt’s PR scheme does not diminish their determination.” -- Janice Loux, president of United Here Local 26

Currently, Gov. Deval Patrick spoke with local Hyatt management and worker representatives, and is reviewing the proposal.

Unfortunately, Hyatt is only one of many hotel chains who treat their employees so unfairly.

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When Unregulated Capitalism Does Not Apply

Recycled post from 9/1/07:

Republicans and wealthy businessmen love to promote unregulated capitalism labeling anyone that questions the "invisible hand" -- the metaphor coined by the economist Adam Smith in his book, The Wealth of Nations -- as a communist. What they don't tell you is that they only believe in unregulated capitalism when it applies to the "working class". In other words, Wall Street loves unregulated capitalism when its gouging the average citizen, but demands government intervention when the crème de la crème anticipate the "invisible hand" might tug at their purse strings.

The Federal Reserve is not part of our government the way we have been taught to believe; it is more powerful than government, the President, congress and the courts, yet most of us think of the Federal Reserve as an institution that operates in "our" best interest when that is only true if "our" best interest happens to coincide with the best interest of the affluent.

The Federal Reserve, chartered by an act of Congress,-- Federal Reserve Act of 1913 -- on December 23, 1913, could best be described as an, independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporation, although it is not a governmental institution, it does have substantial governmental ties.

The bottom line is that the Federal Reserve controls the money and their main objective is to bailout the wealthy. If the "invisible hand" is doing its job and assisting the rich get richer the Fed allows unregulated capitalism but if the "invisible hand" is working against the interest of the moneyed citizens capitalism will be regulated and no one will have to worry about being labeled a communist.

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Could Lack of Health Insurance be a Form of Population Control?

Jay Weaver, creator of the blog, other people's emergencies: random thoughts of an urban paramedic, talked about the 22 years of the utter heartbreak to the miraculous joy he's encountered as a paramedic on the streets of Boston on the NPR radio show, Here and Now. In the beginning of his career, Jay went on to describe a call from a mother, living in the poorest section of the inner city, whose child had had a bad cough for several weeks.

"At first", Jay said, "I did not understand why anyone would call a paramedic for a cough but I soon realized lack of health insurance gave her very little choice and that she was only trying to protect her child. "

"Why not walk?", said radio host, Robin Young.

Jay went on to explain, "The ambulance was the safest form of transportation due to the stray bullets so common in that area."

The mother and daughter Jay spoke of are not the only ones caught between the destructive path of illness and the destitution of poverty. Using hospital emergency as a form of "health insurance" is the only thing available to some uninsured people and only one of the many hidden costs to having so many uninsured citizens. By not getting the preventive care needed, the uninsured are much more likely to wind up in emergency rooms, where care is much more costly.

"People have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room." -- President Bush, addressing an audience in Cleveland.

Uh, Mr. President, emergency care is far more expensive than a doctor visit. Who do you think pays for the high cost of unnecessary emergency care? "We the people" do, of course and we pay out far more than we would if those same people who use emergency care were insured.

Lack of health insurance kills more people than homicide, most types of cancer, and six times the number of people who died on 9/11...well over 18,000 people annually. Why is this so? Insuring all our citizens is a relatively easy, cost the least amount of money to implement and would overall, not only enhance our quality of life but save a hell of a lot of money over time. America spends the most money on health care in the world yet ranks 37 out of 191 countries in quality of health care. "We the People" spend more than any other country on covering our citizens, however, not only do so many of our citizens lack coverage but our wealthy nation has a lower life expectancy than countries who spend much less.

“Lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States. Although America leads the world in spending on health care, it is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not ensure that all citizens have coverage.” —Institute of Medicine

"Things are getting worse," Maria Gomez said. "What we are seeing is a lot of people coming in who cannot qualify for government programs." These families earn too much to qualify for free care but don't make enough to pay for their own health insurance, she said.

Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont are the only states that have enacted and are implementing reform plans that seek to achieve near universal coverage of state residents. Twelve states, WA, OR, CA, CO, MN, WI, IL, NM, PA NY, CT, KS, are moving toward health care reform.

The World Health Organization (WHO) performance on level of health ranking measures how efficiently a system translates spending into overall health.

Recently, the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation compared health care across six countries.

"Overview: Despite having the most costly health system in the world, the United States consistently under performs on most dimensions of performance, relative to other countries. This report—an update to two earlier editions—includes data from surveys of patients, as well as information from primary care physicians about their medical practices and views of their countries' health systems. Compared with five other nations—Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom—the U.S. health care system ranks last or next-to-last on five dimensions of a high performance health system: quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives. The U.S. is the only country in the study without universal health insurance coverage, partly accounting for its poor performance on access, equity, and health outcomes. The inclusion of physician survey data also shows the U.S. lagging in adoption of information technology and use of nurses to improve care coordination for the chronically ill."

Could the lack of health insurance coverage in a country as wealthy and competitive as ours be an under-the-radar "Katrina" like program to control population growth at the lower end of the spectrum?

No way! That's crazy! Only those idiots, prone to conspiratorial thinking, could conceive of such a ridiculous theory. Rational people know there is a perfectly logical explanation such as the words 'health' and 'wealth' rhyme and therefore are compatible. The word 'poverty' rhymes with nothing.

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Why Do Our Welfare Laws Discourage Getting off Public Assistance?

After almost two decades of marriage, a friend of mine, primarily a mother and housewife for the last twenty years, found herself and her children on public assistance after her husband abruptly left one day without notice, immediately filing for divorce. At the time of his departure, she was not employed, mostly due to an undiagnosed medical condition, although she was working part-time in exchange for her children's tuition.

After departing, her husband attempted to strong-arm her, financially, in an attempt to convince her to use his attorney. Against his wishes, she did retain an attorney of her own, with the help of relatives, in order to protect the rights of her children and herself. This infuriated him and he continued to use his financial advantage to punish her as much as possible, disregarding his children's needs.

She discovered she was eligible for Medicaid, as she had no health insurance. A few months later, she found a part-time job with benefits and she gave up the Medicaid even though the cost of her health insurance pretty much consumed her paycheck. Shortly thereafter she lost her job due to medical problems of her own and her children, and she went back to Medicaid.

The obstacle to gaining independence arises when she starts to earn money. At that point, she loses Medicaid, even if the job she gets has no health insurance or does not pay her enough to purchase her own plan. Caught between a rock and a hard place, my friend, along with millions of other people must choose between public assistance and getting a job that potentially could make things even more difficult.

Lisa Hendley is another example that illustrates this dilemma. After spending time in a domestic-violence shelter, Lisa found herself and her daughter a place to live with the help of Housing Stability Plus, a program to aid shelter residents in renting private apartments. She found a job at a grocery store and thought she was on her way to getting off of public assistance.

However, she was told by her city caseworker that she needed to quit her $8-an-hour job, because she made too much income to be eligible for the program's housing aid. Faced with the choice of keeping her job or her apartment, she chose the roof over her family's head, paralyzing her efforts to reach independence.

The point of these stories and millions of others, is that our system blatantly discourages people from working. The system was designed to keep people on the dole or make it almost impossible for millions of people to reach the "American Dream".

Where's the incentive to work when every penny made will finance health care? Where's the incentive to work when every dollar earned by the welfare recipient must be reported to the authority and thus deducted from his pay?

An employed person must incur the cost of being employed...he or she must wear the right clothes, transport himself to and from work, find childcare etc., thus in many situations, it becomes more expensive to be employed in low paying jobs without health insurance or where the company deducts the majority of that person's earnings to pay for insurance than it is to be unemployed.

Why not encourage working by allowing the welfare recipient to keep his welfare check until he no longer needs help? Maybe even match the person's earnings, dollar for dollar, up to a certain level? In other words, why not make it possible for those, who may not be as fortunate, skilled or talented as others are, but truly want to get off welfare, become independent of the system? Wouldn't that be beneficial to taxpayers, our country, the world at large?

Welfare law should be designed to invigorate and restore a person's sense of purpose by emphasizing human initiative, and provide surmountable challenges that will inspire people to discover their own abilities. Instead, the system traps those experiencing financial hardship and becomes the solution rather than a springboard to opportunities for success.

People with enough power and money to influence legislation are intelligent enough to figure out that human beings, by nature, will not seek employment when the alternative, unemployment, is less costly. Therefore one can only assume welfare legislation is a deliberate attempt to keep a certain percentage of people dependent on the system.

But why would a supposedly free nation like ours keep a good portion of our population dependent on welfare, the very thing most of the politically powerful claim to despise? These same people love to evangelize on and on about personal responsibility? There is something wrong here.

I can only think of two reasons why this is so. The first one, is no matter what Jesus says, being poor in this country is a sin, and therefore must be punished. The second reason is a certain percentage of the population must be disempowered in order for the very few at the top to remain in power.

If anyone has any other reasons or disagrees with me, please let me know.

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Winner-Takes-All World: From Mud Cookies to Truffles

The hand of a woman is covered in mud as she makes mud cookies on the roof of Fort Dimanche, once a prison, in Port-au-Prince, Friday, Nov. 30, 2007. Rising prices and food shortages threaten the nation's fragile stability, and the mud cookies, made of dirt, salt and vegetable shortening, are one of very few options the poorest people have to stave off hunger.




World's Most Expensive Truffle Brings $112,000





The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reported that government aid to developing countries reached record highs in 2005, peaking at $106.5 billion. That sounds like a lot of money until you look at the percentage each country gave of its gross national income. The United States gave the most, $7.5 billion, which accounts for (0.2 % GNI) ; followed by Japan at $1 .1 billion (0. 8 percent GNI); the United kingdom at $10.8 billion (0.48 percent GNI); and France $10.1 billion (0.47 percent GNI). Although the United States contributed the highest dollar amount, it gave the lowest percentage of its GNI.

The data from the UNDP (1998) report the 358 richest people in the world possess a fortune equivalent in value to the combined income of the poorest 45 percent.

There is something wrong with this picture. Why should some people have to eat "mud cookies" while an infinitesimally small percentage of people feast on fungus, fungus that cost more than gold, but ends up in the same digestive tract as the mud, where it is converted into the "great equalizer" none of us like to discuss and for good reason.

Even newly-created wealth becomes concentrated in the possession of the already wealthy -- wealth condensation -- preventing those who eat mud cookies from ever getting a shot at eating a "Tollhouse cookie" let alone a truffle. The truffle-eaters who already hold all the wealth, have the means to invest in new sources of creating wealth and thus become the beneficiaries of recently acquired wealth, adding on to the great abundance of valuable material possessions or resources already so readily available to them. Meanwhile, the poorest members of a society are forced to spend all their income on bare necessities - food, housing, medicine - and will have nothing left over to invest as the wealthiest people do.

It's very much a "winner-takes-all" global economy where all the wealth is held in a very small part of each country's population or if speaking in global, the majority of the wealth is held in the hands of very small number of countries. Most of this can be attributed to the structure of markets and technology today.

As the globe continues to shrink, it will be harder and harder to avoid the interconnectedness between all of us, whether we live in Haiti, the USA, Africa, or the Middle East. Unavoidably, our continually shrinking world will cause interdependence, where we, the United States, will depend on other countries to remain healthy, free of violence, terrorism, ect because we are no longer isolated from the problems of other countries...it will become much more difficult to prevent whatever it is we are trying to avoid from crossing over into our territory.

Organizing our world economy in the interests of the super or hyper-rich can only heighten the chance this world will cease to exist. Many of our current domestic and foreign policies, which give enormous advantages to the rich over and above the already enormous advantage they already have over the poor and middle-class just by having such an abundance of wealth will become more than a moral question as it is now, and a more a question of our own survival.

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Global Employment Trends for 2008

In contrast to last year (2007), where an increase of more than 5% global GDP growth of led to a stabilization of global labor markets with more people in work resulting in a net increase of 45 million new jobs and only a slight increase in the number of people unemployed; the International Labor Office (ILO) in its Global Employment Trends report (GET) projected five million more people could be unemployed due to global economic turbulence largely due to credit market turmoil and rising oil prices.

“This year’s global jobs picture is one of contrasts and uncertainty”, said ILO Director-General Juan Somavia. “While global growth is annually producing millions of new jobs, unemployment remains unacceptably high and may go to levels not seen before this year. What’s more, though more people are in work than ever before, this doesn’t mean that these jobs are decent jobs. Too many people, if not unemployed, remain among the ranks of the working poor, the vulnerable or the discouraged.”

The challenges facing the regions have remained relatively unchanged. Not only is there a low impact of growth on the job but there is also another concern: the ongoing (but already slightly decreasing) growth does not have as substantial impact
as necessary to reduce the levels of working poverty, especially in the poor regions of the world. There are still 486.7 million workers in the world who do not earn enough to lift themselves and their families above the US $1 a day poverty line and 1.3 billion workers do not earn enough to lift themselves and their families above the US $2 a day line. In other words, despite working more than four out of ten workers are poor. To make a long term inroad into unemployment and working poverty, it is essential that periods of high growth are better used to generate more decent and productive jobs. Reducing unemployment and working poverty through creation of such jobs should be viewed as a precondition for sustained economic growth.

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Microlending: Turn a Profit While Doing Good

Muhammad Yunus, winner of last year's Noble Peace Prize and founder of The Grameen Bank, lived amongst the poorest of the poor in Bangladesh, where he worked as an Economics professor in 1974. He wanted to see how he could best help this growing group of famished people, out of an unrelenting guilt that wouldn't let up after the number of starving seemed to increase all around him and he literally saw people dying right in front of him.

Muhannad Yunus decided to let those, in the process of perishing or suffering severely from hunger, teach him the best way to help them out of this nonexistence.

He started offering them tiny loans for self-employment. These microloans provided them the opportunity to start generating their own income based on the skills they already had. Now his microlending program serves 2.5 million people in more than one hundred countries spanning five continents.

In the beginning, the bulk of the money used in microlending has come from philanthropic groups but pension fund giant TIAA-CREF, and other millionaires, investors and institutions are pointing micro-finance toward a more commercialized route providing a way for lenders to get a steady return on capital and practice social responsibility at the same time.

Micro-finance loans earn relatively competitive interest rate of return, approximately 5-7 percent and loan repayment for micro finance is over 97%!! Yet, only four percent of the demand for micro finance is being met right now, according to MicroCapital. The problem seems to be that technology is not available to track and account for loans to meet the huge demand. IBM has launched a new partnership with CARE that promises to change all that in the very near future.

Micro-financing is where we should invest our money. There is a wide-open market in need and now that the technology will soon be available, there is little excuse not to lend. It sure beats investing in sub prime mortgages.

“While Americans gave record sums to charity last year, some are finding that loaning their money can be altruistic as well... The basic idea is to make small, short-term "microloans" to impoverished entrepreneurs who don't otherwise have access to capital -- helping improve their businesses and therefore their lives.”-- Wall Street Journal

Kiva -- an innovative way of allowing people around the world to make loans. Everyday people can act as banks, and make a loan of as little as $25 over the Internet. Kiva.org puts potential 'social investors' in touch with small businesses in the developing world, which promise to send e-mail updates on how the business is developing.

ZanaNetwork -- Small and mid-sized businesses that need a small infusion of capital can now apply for micro loans. The loans, which range from $5,000 to $25,000, can be delivered in as little as three days, the company says.

ACCION International -- ACCION International is a private, nonprofit organization with the mission of giving people the financial tools they need – microenterprise loans, business training and other financial services – to work their way out of poverty.

FINCA International -- Provides financial services to the world's lowest-income entrepreneurs so they can create jobs, build assets and improve their standard of living.

Grameen Foundation USA -- Support microfinance programs that enable the poor, mostly women, to lift themselves out of poverty and make better lives for their families. To do this, Grameen Foundation partners with a worldwide network of microfinance institutions.

TechnoServe -- having received Charity Navigator's top rating for two straight years, TechnoServe helps entrepreneurial men and women in poor rural areas of the developing world to build businesses that create income, opportunity and economic growth for their families, their communities and their countries.

"The starving people did not chant any slogans. They did not demand anything from us well-fed city folk. They simply lay down very quietly on our doorsteps and waited to die.

There are many ways for people to die, but somehow dying of starvation is the most unacceptable of all. It happens in slow motion. Second by second, the distance between life and death becomes smaller and smaller, until the two are in such close proximity that one can hardly tell the difference. Like sleep, death by starvation happens so quietly, so inexorably, one does not even sense it happening. And all for lack of a handful of rice at each meal. In this world of plenty, a tiny baby, who does not yet understand the mystery of the world, is allowed to cry and cry and finally fall asleep without the milk she needs to survive. The next day she may not have the strength to continue living. -- Muhammad Yunus"

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Why Does Our Government Overwhelm the Overwhelmed?

Jefferson Parish president, Aaron Broussard, openly wept during a television interview in which he declared, "Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area, and bureaucracy has to stand trial," after the Katrina debacle, when more red tape was added for the victims of this terrible disaster.

Hurricane Katrina illuminated the issue of how often unnecessary procedures and red tape keep most of the poor or "almost poor" in America permanent members of the underclass. Government programs impose more hurdles on people, most of whom can barely keep their heads above water as it is. Instead of throwing the drowning person a life preserver or rope, he is handed a complicated instruction manual on how to save himself.

It seems as if the Bush Administration's mission is to not only ensure the permanency of this country's underclass but to increase its membership exponentially.

A few years ago, when the Bush Administration was pushing for somewhere between a half trillion and three quarters of a trillion dollars in new tax cuts for wealthy Americans, they were also planning to get tougher with the working poor by forcing EITC (Earned Income Tax Credits) recipients to go through a precertification process because the EITC was actually helping the working poor. The [EITC] credit is already confusing for taxpayers considering the instruction manual alone is 54 pages. Yet, the Bush Administration wanted to make it a little bit tougher for this group of Americans, some of whom work two and three jobs just to make ends meet.

Many people complain that these social programs designed to help the poor will foster dependence on the government and instead of a safety net, will become a way of life. The problem with that argument is that many of the working poor are working around the clock and still can't pay their bills; can't take their children to the doctors; and can't help their children with homework when children need help more than ever to keep up with "No Child Left Behind".

"If you give a person a fish, he eats for a day; teach him to fish, and he will eat for a lifetime," is a favorite quote of those opposed to welfare yet the way our system is set up it does the exact opposite. People in need do not get a chance to "learn to fish for a lifetime" because either they are working too many hours to find the time to locate these programs and climb through all the hoops necessary to gain entrance, or they fail to qualify because they're working.

Government bureaucracies are structured to obstruct those less fortunate from working their way out of the underclass because the people at the top want to stay on top. In order for those at the top to stay in control a certain percentage of the population must be kept busy struggling to survive. This will prevent a large number of the "underclass" from discovering what's really going on which may unite them to become a force to be reckoned.

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Too Many Americans are Working Hard but Cannot Make Ends Meet

Catholic Charities USA, President Father Larry Snyder urged our federal government to do more for the poor when he described the current state of poverty in the United States as both "unacceptable" and a "moral crisis".

"Poverty in America: Beyond the Numbers",a report that offers a national and state-by-state snapshot of how and where local Catholic Charities agencies across the country are serving the greatest numbers of individuals in need of healthcare, food, employment, and housing services," shows Catholic Charities USA served 7.9 million clients (1 out of every 10 people below the poverty line) in 2006.



Between 2002 and 2006:

The number of clients receiving food service programs increased 60%.

Request for temporary shelter increased 24%!

45% of Catholic Charities' clients were either under 18-years old or over 65.

In April of 2007, Father Larry Snyder gave testimony before the Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support of the House Committee on Ways and Means on the steady increase in the number of families seeking assistance.

"Through our daily work at Catholic Charities agencies across our nation, we see the impact of poverty on families. The many misconceptions about the nature of poverty in the United States reinforce the commonly held view that poverty is due to failures and deficiencies of individuals, rather than the failures of structures that we put in place through the economic and political choices we make as a nation. While it is true that individual choices and behaviors do influence one’s chances of living in poverty, these individual behaviors are frequently outweighed by the structures and policies that shape the opportunities of people who are poor." -- Father Larry Snyder

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The "Shining City on a Hill" Only Shines for a Select Few.

Over twenty years ago President Reagan told us of how he envisioned "all" Americans living in the "shining city upon a hill," economic rhetoric that President Bush twists his tongue around every chance he gets. The reality is we are not all living in the "shining city upon a hill." Only a very small percentage of Americans reside in this "shining city" while most of us are struggling to make ends meet. This year seems twice as bad as last year for the poor and middle-income America.

The Bush administration evaluates our economy from the perspective of investment. They emphasize the performance of the stock market, deemphasizing the purchasing power of the average worker's paycheck or the financial conditions of those who are working too hard to find out what's going on. These hard-working people are the silent majority and that's the way Bush wants to keep it. God forbid the "silent majority" have the time, or are not so enmeshed in their own financial struggles that they figure out conservative Republican supply-side or trickle- down economics is the very reason they struggle and worry every day if they will have enough to eat tomorrow, next week or next month.

The buying capacity of the same wages Americans earned last year has eroded to the point where people are struggling to keep up with the cost of living. Higher rent, food, gasoline, energy and medical bills are making the lower half of middle-income America live more like the poor, and the poor -- unless they can figure out all the bureaucracy involved in finding poorly funded social services -- are left to fend for themselves the best they can. Some are lucky enough to find a church or other charity group to minister to their needs but others are left to eat and live like wild animals.

Whether it is illness, death, divorce or job loss, too many people today live on the edge, one unfortunate event away from plunging into financial ruin. This shouldn't be in a country as wealthy as ours. We have more than enough resources to make sure every citizen can find ways to meet the most basic of needs -- food, shelter, medical care, and hope, for without hope of improving one's circumstances, life is not worth much.

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Global Warming to Hit Worlds Poor the Hardest.

Climate Change Summary Says Asia And Africa Will See Danger, Death, And Extinction Of Species Unless Countries Adapt:

Global warming's effects now still may be more pesky than catastrophic. But a new scientific report says that when the Earth gets a few degrees hotter, inconvenience will give way to danger, death and extinction of species.

The world faces increased hunger and water shortages in the poorest countries, massive floods and avalanches in Asia, and species extinction unless nations adapt to climate change and halt its progress, according to a report approved Friday by an international conference on global warming.

The poorest parts of the world, especially Africa and Asia, will be hit hardest, says the summary from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, issued Friday after a long, contentious editing session.

In a New York Times article, Scientists Detail Climate Changes, Poles to Tropics, James Kanter and Andrew C. Revkin report on how climate change is already changing the planet and detail how it will get worse.

"In its most detailed portrait of the effects of climate change driven by human activities, the panel predicted widening droughts in southern Europe and the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, the American Southwest and Mexico, and flooding that could imperil low-lying islands and the crowded river deltas of southern Asia. It stressed that many of the regions facing the greatest risks were among the world’s poorest."

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