poverty in America (or this great cuntry of ourn)

The changing face of poverty
Millions of Americans live in poverty, more families are suffering and hunger is seen growing. (more)

Hard at work but can't buy food
While the ranks of the working poor grow in number, should employers step up to stop the trend? (more)

Poverty in America

Yes, poverty is a reality in America, just as it is for millions of other human beings on the planet. According to the US Census Bureau, 35.9 million people live below the poverty line in America (http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/002484.html), including 12.9 million children.

This is despite abundance of food resources. Almost 100 billion pounds of food is wasted in America each year. 700 million hungry human beings in different parts of the world would have gladly accepted this food.

Here are some statistics on the nature of poverty and the waste of food and money in America.

-In 2004, requests for emergency food assistance increased by an average of 14 percent during the year, according to a 27-city study by the United States Conference of Mayors.

-Also in this study, it was noted that on average, 20 percent of requests for emergency food assistance have gone unmet in 2004.

-According to the Bread for the World Institute (http://www.bread.org/hungerbasics/domestic.html) 3.5 percent of U.S. households experience hunger. Some people in these households frequently skip meals or eat too little, sometimes going without food for a whole day. 9.6 million people, including 3 million children, live in these homes.

-America's Second Harvest (http://www.secondharvest.org/), the nation's largest network of food banks, reports that 23.3 million people turned to the agencies they serve in 2001, an increase of over 2 million since 1997. Forty percent were from working families.

33 million Americans continue to live in households that did not have an adequate supply of food. Nearly one-third of these households contain adults or children who went hungry at some point in 2000.

U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, March 2002, "Household Food Security in the United States, 2000"

It's About Time Someone in Congress Noticed. Thanks Keith Ellison

Addressing a gathering of atheists in his home state of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, a Democrat, compared the 9/11 atrocities to the destruction of the Reichstag, the German parliament, in 1933. This was probably burned down by the Nazis in order to justify Hitler's later seizure of emergency powers.

"It's almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that," Mr Ellison said. "After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it, and it put the leader [Hitler] of that country in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted."

To applause from his audience of 300 members of Atheists for Human Rights, Mr Ellison said he would not accuse the Bush administration of planning 9/11 because "you know, that's how they put you in the nut-ball box - dismiss you".

China Fights Back, Goes After U.S. Meat, But Americans Expected to Consume This Poison

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Frozen poultry products from Tyson Foods Inc. (TSN), the world's largest meat processor, were found to be contaminated with salmonella, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said on its Web site late Friday.

Other imports barred by China included frozen chicken feet from Sanderson Farms, Inc. tainted with residue of an anti-parasite drug, as well as frozen pork ribs from Cargill Meat Solutions Corp. containing a leanness-enhancing feed additive, the AQSIQ said.

A spokesman for Cargill denied the agency's claims, while officials at Tyson and Sanderson Farms were not immediately available to comment.

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Carlyle Group: A bunch of Sleazy Corporatist Fucks. That includes Bill Clinton

If it seems like Carlyle is doing a new deal every other day, that's not far off the mark. Last month, Carlyle and two private-equity partners bought Home Depot's supply arm for $10.3 billion. That was followed a week later by the purchase of Allison Transmission from General Motors for $5.6 billion. The day after that, Carlyle bought a building in Trieste, Italy.

On July 2, Carlyle disclosed that it was taking nursing-home chain Manor Care private for $6.3 billion. On July 5, it agreed to buy Annapolis-based ARINC, a communications company serving the military and the passenger airline industry. The next day, Carlyle announced its first real estate investment in Finland.

Where does Carlyle get all that money?

"It's called 300 days a year on a plane with 18 full-time fundraisers," said Daniel A. D'Aniello, a Carlyle managing director and one of the firm's three co-founders.

Led by David Rubenstein, another managing director and co-founder, Carlyle has an investor relations team traveling the world, pitching the company to public and private pension funds, universities, endowments and wealthy individuals.

The company has roughly $58.5 billion under management, and it anticipates the total will grow to $88 billion by the end of the year. "Under management" refers to the amount that investors, have given -- or contracted to give -- a firm to invest.

"The money comes from corporate and public pension funds, which means teachers, firemen, union members," D'Aniello said in a telephone interview yesterday.

Save The Airwaves from Corporatists!

America's airwaves have been damaged by a series of rule changes the past two decades that have ushered in an era of bland commercial radio and television.

The time has come for the Federal Communications Commission to use its power to work in the public's interest and improve broadcasting so communities are better served. It is important the FCC hold its final hearing regarding how well broadcasters are serving their communities. Five of six required hearings have been held, the most recent in Portland, Maine.

At the sixth hearing, the commissioners will undoubtedly be told by the public — as they were in Maine — that local television newscasts are a distorted reflection of their communities, and that radio has turned to a homogenized formula that is cheap to run, big on return.

Lockheed Martin Corp.'s CEO Robert J. Stevens

Lockheed Martin Corp.'s CEO Robert J. Stevens has had a lucrative career at the nation's largest defense contractor, and his pay has been outlined to shareholders for years.

But investors didn't know how lucrative his retirement could be. The Bethesda-based company has disclosed for the first time that in addition to $5.2 million in salary and bonus, plus stock awards and perks last year, Stevens also accrued more than $2 million in three pension plans, two 401(k) plans and a tax-advantaged plan mostly used by the corporate elite.
[...]
Stevens, whose pay package totaled $18.6 million, ranked among the highest-paid CEOs in Maryland last year, according to a survey by Salary.com of companies with headquarters here. Others included Constellation Energy Group Inc.'s Mayo A. Shattuck III, whose compensation package was worth $20 million, and Legg Mason Inc.'s Raymond A. "Chip" Mason, whose package was valued at $13.7 million.

Chevron's Toxic Easte Dump in the Amazon:Pablo Fajardo

More Privatization of Government

SAIC provides scientific, engineering, systems integration and technical services and products to the U.S. military, the intelligence community, the Department of Homeland Security, other civil agencies and clients in select commercial markets.
[...]

SAIC was criticized for its work in Iraq, where it had contracts to establish a TV news operation and advise the oil industry. The contracts were criticized by the Pentagon inspector general for lack of competitive bidding and poor results.

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The role of private contractors in Iraq

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American troops are being abused with extended tours of duty, over-reliance on the National Guard and recall to duty after their original tours have been completed. And they're all being paid nominal military salaries for this abuse.

Meanwhile, how much are U.S. taxpayers shelling out for these American and foreign contractors? What is their average salary compared to that of an American soldier?

[...]

Lockheed Given another billion dollars of taxpayer money to privatize military

High oil prices are dampening consumer confidence.

True or False: U.S.'s Broadband Penetration Is Lower Than Even Estonia's

Although President George W. Bush promised during his re-election campaign that all Americans would have access to affordable broadband by 2007, many rural Americans have no way to connect. It's impossible to tell how many, in part because of the bizarre way the FCC measures the issue: if just a single building in an entire ZIP code is connected—a library, a school, a business—then all people in the area are counted as having access, even if there's no cable and their phone company won't give them DSL. (Because the signal deteriorates over distance, the telcos find it prohibitively expensive to offer the service to customers in far-flung areas.) Many rural homes can theoretically get broadband by satellite dish, but the cost is high and the service not as fast as other alternatives. In any case, a new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that fewer than one in four rural Americans has high-speed connections at home, compared with about 40 percent of suburban and urban dwellers. (A more recent survey pegs total U.S. penetration at 50 percent; South Korea's is 90 percent.)

Rupert Murdoch, Owner of Fox Propaganda Network, is a law breaking scum

Pentagon Spends $78 Billion a Year that we know of on Weapons and Space Research, Some of it Whacky, All of it a waste

"With large stocks of plutonium, Pakistan can build a new generation of lighter, more powerful weapons that can more easily be launched via missiles and can cause far more damage," said David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), which, along with DigitalGlobe, provided the satellite image to ABC News.

The image, taken on June 3, indicates the new reactor is a replica of a second heavy water reactor, also under construction, at Khushab, approximately 109 miles south of Islamabad, Pakistan's capital.

ATT offers $10 DSL, but tells no one about it

Oil Industry Wages Economic Terrorism

A push from Congress and the White House for huge increases in biofuels, such as ethanol, is prompting the oil industry to scale back its plans for refinery expansions. That could keep gasoline prices high, possibly for years to come.

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Angry Reaction To Selection of Lockheed To Replace Canada's Aging Transports

Canada will spend $3.2 billion to acquire 17 C-130Js, as well as on infrastructure, training, and other related project expenses.
[...]
Not only can the C-27J perform most of the same missions of the Lockheed craft at a third of the purchase price and a fifth of the maintenance cost, Giordo added -- it can also be used to replace Canada's aging search-and-rescue aircraft, saving even more money.
[...]

The FSS Mess, Privatization and the Lack of Personal Responsibility

Somewhere, somehow, Marion Blakey and her Administration seem to have lost sight of their mandate to provide for the safety of American citizens who travel by air. Perhaps it was when she made the decision to get rid of those pesky general aviation aircraft by starting the user-fee juggernaut. Perhaps it was earlier, when someone saw that one of the portions of the FAA, the Flight Service Station system, was carrying out its designated function rapidly, accurately, safely, and generally working in a nearly flawless manner. Naturally the reaction was that such a situation was intolerable. Because ongoing competence in the field of safe aviation could not be allowed to continue, the FAA went through a grueling and expensive process to fix it. In October of 2005, ostensibly to save the taxpayers money, it entered into a $1.7 billion contract to "privatize" (is that really a verb?) a portion of the FAA that worked well. I know, children ... one would think that if private industry could do a government function better than the government, then the FAA would have privatized one of the parts of the FAA that doesn't work. Children, such a thought would require us to apply that evil concept, logic, to the operation of political machinery. Children, you know very well that logic should never be used when traveling through the looking glass into privatization land.

The $1.7 billion contract with Lockheed-Martin was to save 20% off the cost of having the work done by FAA personnel, who apparently were evil, money-grubbing government employees who had committed the mortal sin of competence. Of course, there were those sticks-in-the-mud who felt that the numbers didn't add up. After all, you have to pay enough to hire the kind of talent needed to staff the Flight Service Stations, located where the briefers could have detailed local knowledge of the prevailing weather patterns, and equip them with the latest computers, and finally allow for the kind of profit that shareholders will demand (on the order of 8-15%). How can Lockheed-Martin do this for less than the folks who have been doing it so very well for so many years without the cost of a return to the stockholding mutual funds?

Well, those who were skeptical were told to close their eyes, click their heels together and get with the program. Even when the FAA's own internal investigative folks looked at the contract and pronounced that there were grave doubts as to whether Lockheed-Martin could pull it off, Marion Blakey and her friends decided that such talk was defeatist and shouldn't be considered. Besides, Lockheed-Martin contributed nicely to the appropriate politicians, so a politically appointed sort doesn't want to make waves, even if she is in a job involving air safety. Nevertheless, for people whose sole purpose in employment is air safety, to shrug off an objective report by one's own agency that indicates that a critical safety function is imperiled is, at least in my opinion, reckless and irresponsible in handling our money. If someone dies as a result, it may become criminal.

League of Conservation Voters: Where the Candidates Currently Stand