October 31, 2014

Child poverty in the U.S. is among the worst in the developed world

The United States ranks near the bottom of the pack of wealthy nations on a measure of child poverty, according to a new report from UNICEF. Nearly one third of U.S. children live in households with an income below 60 percent of the national median income in 2008 - about $31,000 annually.

In the richest nation in the world, one in three kids live in poverty. Let that sink in.

With 32.2 percent of children living below this line, the U.S. ranks 36th out of the 41 wealthy countries included in the UNICEF report. By contrast, only 5.3 percent of Norwegian kids currently meet this definition of poverty.

More alarmingly, the share of U.S. children living in poverty has actually increased by 2 percentage points since 2008. Overall, 24.2 million U.S. children were living in poverty in 2012, reflecting an increase of 1.7 million children since 2008. "Of all newly poor children in the OECD and/or EU, about a third are in the United States," according to the report. On the other hand, 18 countries were actually able to reduce their childhood poverty rates over the same period.

For the richest country in the world to also have one of the world's highest childhood poverty rates is, frankly, an embarrassment. Like our high infant mortality rate, child poverty in the U.S. reflects the failure of policymakers to seriously grapple with the challenges facing the most vulnerable members of society.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/10/29/child-poverty-in-the-u-s-is-among-the-worst-in-the-developed-world/?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost

October 31, 2014

Pope Francis'Wealth Made from Financial speculation intolerable-Speculation on Commodities a Scandal

Francis has been labelled a communist by some hard right elements in the US after denouncing the ‘tyranny of capitalism’, calling the wealth made from financial speculation as intolerable and saying speculation on commodities was a scandal that compromised the poor’s access to food.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2813459/Pope-Francis-insists-no-communist-just-following-Catholic-teachings-defending-rights-poor.html

Why are we allowing Goldman Sachs to speculate on food when As the U.S. emerges from the worst recession since the Great Depression, 25% of children don’t have enough food to eat

Goldman lobbied Congress to drive our costs up to make themselves more money. They even named it after themselves "Goldman Sachs Commodity Index" GSCI

Now millions in this country are suffering without enough to eat because Goldman Sachs needed more money.

Just as easily as this was started, just like the Koch brothers introducing oil speculation, we can reverse this and stop these bastards from stealing our money.

October 31, 2014

Young people want to spend money on jobs and schools. The old like war and Social Security

Three of these trends are intuitive. People over 65 are fans of a government program whose main purpose is giving money to people over 65. And you'd expect a population segment made up overwhelmingly of retirees not to be especially concerned about job creation. You'd also expect people under 35 — who may still be in college, or have student debt, or have kids starting to enter school — to care more about education.

The military spending trend is where this gets really interesting. You can think of reasons for why young people would be less inclined to spend a lot on defense. Older people are likelier to be veterans and to have friends who were veterans, for one. But all of the most plausible theories have nothing to do with life cycles. If knowing or being a veteran helps explain this, then one would expect younger people to put a lower priority on defense spending more or less indefinitely, as the all-volunteer military isn't going anywhere, and if anything should be expected to shrink relative to the population.

There's no obvious reason to think the share of adults under 35 who think military spending should be a major priority will grow over time. And if it doesn't, that implies a pretty significant political shift on that issue.

http://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/6zM13V7ithmq5Bo-BD8Vfshih9k=/800x0/filters:no_upscale%28%29/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/2404502/us-age-most-impt-gov-spending.0.png

http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/10/30/7091339/government-spending-defense-education-jobs-social-security


How is it then, they expect us to believe that Millennials are turning out to support Republicans?

Because the media is a bunch of fucking liars!

October 30, 2014

25% of children in US don’t have enough food to eat

Child poverty in America is at its highest point in 20 years, putting millions of children at increased risk of injuries, infant mortality, and premature death, according to a policy analysis published Monday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics.

As the U.S. emerges from the worst recession since the Great Depression, 25% of children don’t have enough food to eat and 7 million kids still don’t have health insurance, the analysis says. Even worse: Five children die daily by firearms, and one dies every seven hours from abuse or neglect.

“It shouldn’t be this hard for kids to grow and thrive in the world’s richest, most powerful nation,” co-author Bruce Lesley, president of the Washington-based child advocacy organization First Focus, said in a written statement.
lRelated Improved parenting may fortify low-income kids against poverty effects

The report -- co-written with Dr. Glenn Flores, professor of pediatrics at University of Texas Southwestern -- notes that although 24% of Americans are children, only 12% of the National Institutes of Health’s 2013 budget was devoted to pediatric research.

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-child-poverty-20141021-story.html

October 30, 2014

They told us the cost of living was so high because of gas prices

Everything has gone up since gas went through the roof, food, heat, all transported food etc.

So now that the cost of oil is dropping quite a bit, is everyone's cost of living going down?

Food?

Heat going down?

Power bills should be going down too....

October 30, 2014

Is it possible the media is manufacturing consent for a stolen election?

Everywhere we turn, Americans have been screwed over financially, they know Republicans are responsible, but media keeps telling us we will vote for them anyway.

And everywhere, Duers, Redditors etc. just say "guess Americans are stupid"


Isn't it possible, the same lying media that started two wars based on lies, is still propping up Bush as some statesman, has Republicans on Tv constantly lying about everything....could they still be lying?

They covered up the other stolen elections....why would they start telling the truth now?

In 2004, when exit polls showed exact opposite results as exit polls(the canary in the coal mine)....

media stopped doing exit polls.

The media is THE PROBLEM in this country, so why is everyone listening to their BS about how everyone is voting for Republicans now..

and when the GOP steals it again, everyone will just believe the corporate media take on the situation...?

October 30, 2014

Pope Francis insists he is 'no communist' and just following Catholic teachings after defending poor

Caring about the poor doesn’t make me a Communist, the pope has insisted.
Francis said that he had been labelled a Marxist simply for following church teachings on defending the rights of the less well off.‘It is strange, but if I talk like this, there are those who say that the Pope is a communist,’ he added.

Church doctrine commands Catholics to fight ‘for the dignity of the rural family, for water, for life and for all to benefit from the fruits of the earth,’ he said.
He said it was right ‘to combat the structural causes of poverty, inequality, unemployment and [loss of] land, housing, social and labour rights’
Christians must also confront the destructive effects of the ‘Empire Of Money’ – namely forcible displacements and migrations, human and drug trafficking, war, violence,’ he said.

Francis has been labelled a communist by some hard right elements in the US after denouncing the ‘tyranny of capitalism’, calling the wealth made from financial speculation as intolerable and saying speculation on commodities was a scandal that compromised the poor’s access to food.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2813459/Pope-Francis-insists-no-communist-just-following-Catholic-teachings-defending-rights-poor.html

October 30, 2014

Getting Seriously Desperate: Romney, Cruz to campaign for Sullivan in final days of Alaska US Senate

“Alaska is ground zero in the battle for the Senate majority. Everyone knows how important this race is,” Sparks said in a phone interview. “Sen. Cruz and Gov. Romney reached out and said they wanted to help, and we obviously jumped at the opportunity.”

Romney and Cruz offer Sullivan’s campaign an opportunity to appeal to two swaths of Republicans. Cruz can help Sullivan woo voters in the party’s more conservative wing, who could be tempted to support Libertarian candidate Mark Fish, while Romney appeals more to the Republicans’ establishment wing.

“Early Christmas, Ted Cruz is coming to town,” Lance Roberts, a conservative Republican activist from Fairbanks, posted on a Facebook group Tuesday evening.

http://www.adn.com/article/20141028/romney-cruz-campaign-sullivan-final-days-alaska-us-senate-race

Early Christmas for Democrats?

Most of the comments highlight the fact that people are not impressed, quite the opposite

October 26, 2014

Fracking company that Teamed up with Susan Komen Dumping Toxic Sludge in this Guy's Backyard!

For some time, workers at the company have driven back to a dirt hill on the east end of the property and dumped a remnants of a cement mixture into the woods. The growing pile of the white, dusty residue mixed with areas of a green-tinged, pungent chemical prompted a visit from an Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation investigator on Thursday. He said the company has assured him that it will no longer be disposing of its excess cement by dumping it onto the ground. “It certainly is bad practice,” said DEC Environmental Program Manager Steven Russell. “BJ Hughes management agrees with that. They’ve instructed their crews to not do this type of thing again and they’re in the process of developing a plan to clean that stuff up.”

As he walked along the south end of his three-acre parcel Thursday, his feet sinking into the frozen mud and leaves, he talked about discovering the mushy mess leaking into a pit on his property. “This started probably back in early August,” Campbell said. “When I brought this property a year ago, there was none of this here. ... It’s all over the woods out here. I can walk back 100 yards and it’s all over the bushes and trees.”

A dusty film has hardened over the bases of many of the trees running between the two properties, but that Campbell said he is more concerned about the foul-smelling, oily liquid that he cannot identify. He snapped a branch off a tree and used it to dig through a thin layer of ice coating the top of a large puddle that straddles the boundary between the two properties. He smelled the liquid oozing off of the stick and wrinkled his nose.

“They just said it’s nothing more than Portland cement. But that is not Portland cement. That is chemicals of some sort ... I don’t know what it is. It is pitiful stuff. It stinks. I stuck my finger in it one day — I wasn’t thinking to much about it — and I smelled it and it just smells horrible. Then later on down the trail there, I wiped my eye and then it started burning.”

http://peninsulaclarion.com/news/2014-10-23/baker-hughes-investigated-for-dumping-in-nikiski