Freies Politikforum für Demokraten und Anarchisten

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

The number of individuals receiving benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, otherwise known as food stamps, has exceeded 45 million for 53 straight months, according to data released by the Department of Agriculture.

http://freebeacon.com/issues/food-stamp-beneficiaries-exceed-45-million-for-53-straight-months/

These 15 Cities Are Destroying Homeless Camps Just Days Before Christmas

http://usuncut.com/news/15-cities-destroying-homeless-camps-just-days-before-christmas/

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

Free Press reporter Robert Allen and photographer Romain Blanquart spent Friday talking to residents of Flint to find out how they are dealing with the city's water crisis, which has left them without potable water because of lead and other contamination in the lines that resulted when the city was switched from the Detroit system to water drawn from the Flint River. It's a crisis that is drawing increased national attention and has put Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder in the cross hairs of the controversy.
http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/01/22/daily-winter-water-trek-flint/79197442/

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

Americans are about to get poorer in 2016 as the wealth effect reverses: 63 percent of Americans have no emergency savings.

The year is off to a tumultuous start. Markets around the globe are quickly realizing that hot money is going to hit a wall at some point. Many Americans are coming to the stark realization that the recession that ended in 2009 never really ended for the middle class. In fact, it might have been the nail in the coffin for the middle class. Much of the fragile gains really went to a small fraction of Americans and the financial system is predicated on siphoning off wealth from the working class. Many Americans are still living on the financial edge. A recent survey found that 63 percent of Americans have no emergency savings. Forget about having a robust nest egg. The retirement plan for many Americans is to work until they fall over dead. While the last few years brought in spending with debt this of course was set to reverse once the market had its first tiny correction since 2009. Americans are about to feel and become poorer in 2016.
http://www.mybudget360.com/americans-wealth-poor-2016-wealth-effects-income-gains/

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

One in seven Americans still depends on food stamps, according to Bloomberg News. Now with the US economy on the rebound, some states are imposing time limits on the program, and that could mean trouble for the 45.4 million people relying on them.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP, is the formal name for food stamps. Enrollment in SNAP exploded during the 2007-2009 recession when state and federal governments encouraged citizens to take advantage of aid. However, the apparent improvement in the US economy as a whole has not reached some of the country’s citizens.
https://www.rt.com/usa/331216-americans-food-stamps-restrictions/?

70% Of Jobs Added In January Were Minimum Wage Waiters And Retail Workers

For those curious where the big jump in earnings came from, the answer appears rather simple: the reason, according to the BLS' breakdown of jobs added in January (per the Establishment survey), of the 151,000 jobs added in the past month, retail trade added 58,000 jobs in January, while employment in food services and drinking places, aka waiters and bartenders, rose by 47,000 in January.

In other words, 70% of the job gains in January went to minimum wage workers.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-02-05/70-jobs-added-january-were-minimum-wage-waiters-and-retail-workers

Offshoring the Economy: Why the US is on the Road to the Third World

On January 6, 2004, Senator Charles Schumer and I challenged the erroneous idea that jobs offshoring was free trade in a New York Times op-ed. Our article so astounded economists that within a few days Schumer and I were summoned to a Brookings Institution conference in Washington, DC, to explain our heresy. In the nationally televised conference, I declared that the consequence of jobs offshoring would be that the US would be a Third World country in 20 years.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/30/offshoring-the-economy-why-the-us-is-on-the-road-to-third-world/

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

The US economy died when middle class jobs were offshored and when the financial system was deregulated.

Jobs offshoring benefitted Wall Street, corporate executives, and shareholders, because lower labor and compliance costs resulted in higher profits. These profits flowed through to shareholders in the form of capital gains and to executives in the form of “performance bonuses.” Wall Street benefitted from the bull market generated by higher profits.

However, jobs offshoring also offshored US GDP and consumer purchasing power. Despite promises of a “New Economy” and better jobs, the replacement jobs have been increasingly part-time, lowly-paid jobs in domestic services, such as retail clerks, waitresses and bartenders.

The offshoring of US manufacturing and professional service jobs to Asia stopped the growth of consumer demand in the US, decimated the middle class, and left insufficient employment for college graduates to be able to service their student loans. The ladders of upward mobility that had made the United States an “opportunity society” were taken down in the interest of higher short-term profits.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44261.htm

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

Talk about nightmares: the children of a city, thousands of them, may have been poisoned by lead in its drinking water in a process set off by adults intent on saving a little money, who learned of the dangers and then ignored the warnings of scientists, revealed nothing to the public about the risks to their health, insisted on the water’s safety, and in some cases suppressed information about its actual state. As anyone who has picked up a paper or turned on the TV news in recent weeks knows, this is a basic description of the ongoing crisis in Flint, Michigan, in which “austerity” economics dictated that a city switch to extremely corrosive water that often came out of the tap discolored, and sometimes left those who bathed in it with severe rashes. You undoubtedly also know that an anti-corrosive agent which might have prevented most of the corrosion in the city’s water pipes, and so the lead poisoning of untold numbers of its residents, was skipped at a savings of approximately $100 a day. And lest you think that any lessons have been learned, Republicans in Congress, eager (like Michigan Governor Rick Snyder) to save a few bucks at whatever cost to the health of people they could care less about, refuse to fund a fix to the problem. As Reuters reported recently, “Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, said aid to Flint must not add to U.S. budget deficits for 'what is a local and state problem.'"
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176101/tomgram%3A_rosner_and_markowitz%2C_welcome_to_the_united_states_of_flint/#more

Die Rolle von Veolia in der Wasser-Tragödie von Flint, Michigan

Im Februar 2015, fast ein ganzes Jahr bevor die Nachricht von der umfassenden Vergiftung in die Schlagzeilen kam, begutachtete der größte private Wasserkonzern Veolia, das Wasser in Flint als sicher. Veolia war von der Stadt beauftragt worden, die Wasserqualität zu begutachten, über die sich viele Einwohner beschwert hatten. Eine Frabrik von General Motors hatte sogar die Verwendung des Flinter Leitungswassers gestoppt, weil es bei Autoteilen Rost verursachte.

Veolia, ein französischer transnationaler Konzern, bewertete Flints Wasser als “in Übereinstimmung stehend mit staatlichen und Bundes-Gesetzen.” Während der Konzern geringe Änderungen vorschlug, um Farbe und Qualität des Wassers zu verbessern, erwähnte der Bericht nicht das enthaltene Blei.
http://berliner-wassertisch.info/die-rolle-von-veolia-in-der-wasser-tragoedie-von-flint-michigan/

10 Things they won't tell your about the Flint Water Tragedy .

But I will , by Michael Moore
http://michaelmoore.com/10FactsOnFlint/

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

To say that we live on a 1% planet isn't just a turn of phrase. In fact, it would undoubtedly be more accurate to speak of a .1% or a .01% planet. In recent years, wealth and income inequalities have grown in a notorious fashion in the United States -- and, as it turns out, globally as well. In January, Oxfam released a report on the widening gap between global wealth and poverty. It found that, between 2010 and today, the wealth of the poorest half of the planet’s population fell by a trillion dollars, a drop of 41%, while that of the richest 62 people (53 men and nine women) increased by half a trillion dollars. Put another way, those 62 billionaires were wealthier than the bottom 50% of the world’s people, while the richest 1% owned more than the other 99% combined. The direction in which we're heading is obvious. Just consider that, in 2010, it took 388 of the super-rich to equal the holdings of the bottom 50%; now, that number is 326 people smaller.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176104/tomgram%3A_peter_van_buren%2C_minimum_wage%2C_minimum_chance/#more

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

Allein im US-Bundesstaat Pennsylvania sind geschätzt 10.000 Gefangene an Hepatitis-C erkrankt. Diese ließe sich relativ einfach behandeln - allerdings mit einem extrem teuren Medikament. Also schaut das zuständige Departement of Correction (DOC), die Gefängnisbehörde, tatenlos zu, wie sich die Krankheit ausbreitet und ihre Nebenwirkungen entfaltet. Gefangene werden im Gefängnishospital mit einem Arm und einem Bein ans Krankenbett gefesselt und - auf gut deutsch gesagt - lässt man sie elendig verrecken
http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/47/47593/1.html

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

Nearly one-third of US households on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) rely on food pantries to supplement their food budget, according to data highlighted this week by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which administers SNAP.

The USDA reports that in 2014, 23 million American households received SNAP benefits, formerly known as food stamps. Of those households receiving SNAP benefits, 32 percent report they had visited a food pantry in the previous 30 days.

Households receiving other government food assistance also visited food pantries in significant numbers. Twenty-three percent of households using the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program visited a pantry, as did 23 percent of households where children are receiving free or reduced-price school lunches.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/03/09/food-m09.html

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

The new commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Robert Califf, told a panel of FDA advisers last week that he will do "everything possible under our authority" to help the federal government curb an epidemic of drug overdoses.

A report released by the US Centers for Disesase Control and Prevention (CDC) in January revealed that drug-overdose deaths reached a new high in 2014, totaling 47,055 people. Opioids, a type of powerful painkiller that requires a prescription, were involved in 60% of those deaths.
http://www.businessinsider.de/robert-califf-abuse-deterrent-drugs-have-a-big-flaw-2016-3?r=US&IR=T

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

America’s political blame game continues while children continue to suffer life impairing harm. The nation was riveted this week as Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Chief Gina McCarthy were grilled over the shameful inaction on the Flint, Michigan water crisis by members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. There is plenty of blame to go around. But where is the action for the children and families of Flint? Every day we delay the damage to children and their families grows. While Congressional members were calling for accountability and resignations, water in Flint was being tested again. Recent testing at one home in Flint found lead poisoning levels of 11,846 parts per billion. When 5,000 parts per billion is considered hazardous waste, why are we wasting time apportioning blame before the problem is fixed and the poor children and families of Flint have fresh, clean water to drink and cook with and bathe in? Tick, tock, tick tock.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marian-wright-edelman/tick-tock-tick-tock-flint_b_9501676.html

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

new study by a University of California-Berkeley economist says that at current sluggish levels of job growth, entire regions of the United States, which were hit hardest by the Great Recession will not return to “normal” employment levels until the 2020s. This amounts, to “more than a ‘lost decade’ of depressed employment” for “half of the country,” wrote economist Danny Yagan.

The new study is one of many showing that the fall of the official unemployment rate, touted by the Obama administration and the news media as proof of a robust economic recovery, if not a return to “full employment,” is largely based on the fact that millions of workers fell out of the labor force in the years preceding and following the 2008 financial crash.

The labor-force participation rate fell to a 38-year low of 62.4 percent last fall, and only climbed up to 62.9 percent in February. According to the Economic Policy Institute, February’s official jobless rate of 4.9 percent—the lowest since the pre-recession level of 4.7 percent in November 2007—would really be 6.3 percent if the country’s “missing workers” were included. These include 2.4 million workers who have given up actively looking for work.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/03/21/econ-m21.html

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

Every two years since 1981, the Detroit- and Brooklyn-based monthly newsletter Labor Notes has rallied union members and wannabe members, as well as some union staff and elected leaders, to join in a long weekend of sharing stories, strategies and wisdom gained in their workplace skirmishes.

They are the sort of people that bosses everywhere—and a few union officials—might call “troublemakers,” and they have adopted the moniker as a badge of honor (including holding “troublemaker schools” and producing tactical handbooks for do-it-yourself organizers).

Last weekend, around 2,200 labor activists, from diverse age groups, industries, personal experiences and nations (about 150 visitors from 22 countries), gathered in Chicago for a packed line-up of workshops and plenary sessions in the largest of these conferences.

Some workshops focused on learning skills (such as how to figure out the cost of a contract to employers) or tactics (including such oldie-but goodie actions as “salting,” that is, getting pro-union workers hired at businesses that are organizing targets). Conference panels also discussed strategies for particular employers or industries, such as the auto industry or postal service, and how to make the best use of different kinds of strikes and resistance inside the workplace, such as “working to rule,” which effectively slows down production.
http://inthesetimes.org/working/entry/19045/labor_notes_union_conference_steps_up_its_game

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

often noted in the passionate writings of Henry Giroux, poor Americans are becoming increasingly 'disposable' in our winner-take-all society. After 35 years of wealth distribution to the super-rich, inequality has forced much of the middle class towards the bottom, to near-poverty levels, and to a state of helplessness in which they find themselves being blamed for their own misfortunes.

The evidence keeps accumulating: income and wealth -- and health -- are declining for middle-class America. As wealth at the top grows, the super-rich feel they have little need for the rest of society.
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/05/23/disposable-americans-numbers-are-growing

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

Retailers have blamed the weather, slow job growth and millennials for their poor results this past year, but a new study claims that more than 20 percent of Americans are simply too poor to shop.

These 26 million Americans are juggling two to three jobs, earning just around $27,000 a year and supporting two to four children — and exist largely under the radar, according to America’s Research Group, which has been tracking consumer shopping trends since 1979.
http://nypost.com/2016/07/06/a-staggering-percentage-of-americans-are-too-poor-to-shop/

US Income Inequality Reaches Highest Level In History

A new study by economist Emmanuel Saez claims that the top 1% income earners in the United States hit a new high in 2015. The study used data from the IRS to show “families at or near the top of the income ladder did substantially better in 2015 than those below them. The share of income going to the top 10 percent of income earners—those making on average about $300,000 a year—increased to 50.5 percent in 2015 from 50.0 percent in 2014, the highest ever except for 2012.”
https://www.mintpressnews.com/us-income-inequality-reaches-historic-high-shadowproof/218091/

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

Among the troubling statistics in a new report released Tuesday was the rising concentration of poverty in city neighborhoods, and expanding number of census tracts where the poverty rate stood at 40 percent or higher.

The count of high-poverty census tracts has nearly doubled in the city, from 19 to 37 since 2000. Fully one-third of Rochester residents live in poverty, and nearly another third require some outside assistance to get by, according to estimates in the ACT Rochester and Rochester Area Community Foundation update to its 2013 report on the state of poverty and self-sufficiency across the Greater Rochester region.
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2016/09/20/report-highlights-rising-poverty/90730104/

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

The White House took its first steps Monday toward what would be a dramatic reshuffling of the $3 trillion-plus federal budget, sending guidance to agencies that calls for a $54 billion increase in defense spending and corresponding reductions to most non-security agencies.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46555.htm

Shocking Video Exposes Tent City Crisis In Failing California

Citizen journalists have captured stunning video of homeless encampments that are spiraling out of control in the shadow of Disneyland and Anaheim Stadium in California.
FULL STORY: http://www.infowars.com/shock-video-e...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t01AemE68s4

How 90% of American Households Lost an Average of $17,000 in Wealth to the Plutocrats in 2016

America has always been great for the richest 1%, and it's rapidly becoming greater. Confirmation comes from recent work by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman; and from the 2015-2016 Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databooks (GWD). The data relevant to this report is summarized here.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46606.htm

Thousands of Detainees Used as Forced Labor, a Violation of Anti-slavery Laws

Tens of thousands of immigrants detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were forced to work for $1 day, or for nothing at all -- a violation of federal anti-slavery laws -- a lawsuit claims.

The lawsuit, filed in 2014 against one of the largest private prison companies in the country, reached class-action status this week after a federal judge's ruling. That means the case could involve as many as 60,000 immigrants who have been detained.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46604.htm

'Day Without Immigrants': Protest closes restaurants in US

The heart of Philadelphia's Italian Market was uncommonly quiet. Fine restaurants in New York, San Francisco and the nation's capital closed for the day. Grocery stores, food trucks, coffee shops, diners and taco joints in places like Chicago, Los Angeles and Boston shut down.

Immigrants around the U.S. stayed home from work and school Thursday to demonstrate how important they are to America's economy, and many businesses closed in solidarity, in a nationwide protest called A Day Without Immigrants.
http://www.chron.com/news/texas/article/Day-Without-Immigrants-protests-being-held-10936467.php

Hinter der parteiübergreifenden Mauer

Während die westliche Presse die Erweiterung der Trennmauer zwischen den Vereinigten Staaten und Mexiko unwiderruflich verurteilt, erinnert uns Manlio Dinucci, dass sie nicht von einem protektionistischen Willen stammt, sondern ganz im Gegenteil, von der Globalisierungs-Politik. Diese Konstruktion ist ein überparteiliches Projekt, angefangen von Bill Clinton, und von George Bush Jr. und Barack Obama weiter verfolgt.
http://www.voltairenet.org/article195110.html

The Illusion of Freedom: The Police State Is Alive and Well

There is something being concocted in the dens of power, far beyond the public eye, and it doesn’t bode well for the future of this country.

Anytime you have an entire nation so mesmerized by the antics of the political ruling class that they are oblivious to all else, you’d better beware. Anytime you have a government that operates in the shadows, speaks in a language of force, and rules by fiat, you’d better beware. And anytime you have a government so far removed from its people as to ensure that they are never seen, heard or heeded by those elected to represent them, you’d better beware.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46537.htm

palestina libera · Beiträge: 1665

The Republicans’ plan to replace the Affordable Care Act is a disaster for the health of the American people. But that may be nothing more than a byproduct of the bill’s main impact: it will increase inequality, and make the rich even richer than they’ve become in the last few decades.

It’s not a “health” plan. It’s a wealth grab for the already wealthy. Its benefits will go, first and foremost, to billionaires who make more money from investments than from work. The 400 highest-earning households in the country will get an average tax break of $7 million per year under the Republican plan.
https://ourfuture.org/20170309/222500

The bill's sponsor also championed a bill to declare magic a national treasure.

Obamacare may be replaced with the "World's Greatest Healthcare Plan of 2017,” a new bill introduced in the U.S.House of Representatives that would repeal the Affordable Care Act and favor a privatized system.
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Worlds-Greatest-Healthcare-Plan-Will-Cut-Off-Millions-20170308-0029.html

In Southern California, Inmates Pay for Comfortable Jail Stays

Pay-to-stay detention facilities are increasing in Southern California, and for deep-pocketed offenders, they are paradise. These facilities show that Southern California operates a two-tiered system of jails, where those with more cash flow can ride out their time behind bars in relative comfort while others are subjected to degrading living conditions.
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/In-Southern-California-Inmates-Pay-for-Comfortable-Jail-Stays-20170309-0010.html