US Census Bureau Confirms Rising Poverty, Falling Incomes, and Growing Numbers of Uninsured
by Stephen Lendman
In early September, The US Census Bureau released its new report titled, "Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2008" showing disturbing data that portends much worse ahead under a president and Congress doing nothing to address it. In 2008, poverty reached 13.2% of the population, its highest level in 11 years, the result of millions losing jobs during the first year of the gravest economic crisis since the 1930s. For blacks, the figure was nearly double at 24.7%, and 31% of all Americans were impoverished for at least two months between 2004 and 2007, years of economic expansion.
PermalinkThe new GOP: Civility optional
Mary Shaw
Today's GOP is no longer the party of Lincoln, the party of Eisenhower, or even the party of Reagan. Today's so-called conservatives are anything but conservative in their seemingly desperate displays of anti-Obama sentiment.
Indeed, their behavior in 2009 makes their 2004 anti-Kerry chants of "flip-flop" seem almost charming by comparison.
It was bad enough when some of the needlessly frightened sheep started bringing loaded guns to health care town hall meetings -- even including a meeting where President Obama was the featured speaker. (Remember how George W. Bush's handlers would systematically banish -- and sometimes actually arrest -- citizens who merely sported tee-shirt slogans that they disagreed with?)
Late Breaking—Sometimes Broken—News
by Rosemary and Walter Brasch
WNEP-TV, a large regional station in northeastern Pennsylvania, led its noon news, Friday, Sept. 11, with the announcement that there was finally a compromise on the state budget.
The legislators have been playing politics, stalling, and delaying for more than two months, leaving Pennsylvania the only state without a budget. To the viewer, it seemed that the executive branch and the legislative branch finally figured out that the people's money needed to be budgeted and used. This would have been great news--except that in the same story, we also learned there were still some details to be worked out.
Freezing Israeli settlements is only leading to their expansion
Daoud Kuttab
[CLICK ON MAP TO ENLARGE] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to approve new Jewish settlements on the eve of a possible settlement freeze is the latest round in a cycle that has been repeated so many times over the past 40 years that it would seem mundane if it were not so dangerous. The cycle goes something like this:
American or international pressure mounts on Israel to stop settlement activities in the Occupied Territories. Israeli settlers and their supporters then gather even more energy to expand onto more Palestinian land, build more exclusively Jewish settlements, and destroy more Arab homes before the so-called "freeze" comes into effect. The peace process, not surprisingly, becomes a joke while this happens. Eventually, world pressure subsides and the freeze fails to materialize. In the end, more Jewish settlements appear. Indeed, the great paradox of this cycle is that more settlements are built during times of negotiations than during times of conflict.
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