Occupy Bahrain: The largest demonstration in Bahrain. We are the 99% - YouTube

via youtube.com

the number of US households living on less than $2 per person per day—a standard used by the World Bank to measure poverty in developing nations—rose by 130 percent between 1996 and 2011, from 636,000 to 1.46 million. The number of children living in

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=309161045818543&set=a.217603604974288.57691.217514361649879&type=1 

Occupy Wall St.

(H) Welfare reform—from bad to worse

A stunning report released by the University of Michigan's National Poverty Center reveals that the number of US households living on less than $2 per person per day—a standard used by the World Bank to measure poverty in developing nations—rose by 130 percent between 1996 and 2011, from 636,000 to 1.46 million. The number of children living in these extreme conditions also doubled, from 1.4 million to 2.8 million.

The reason? In short: welfare reform, 1996—still touted by both parties as a smashing success.

The report concludes that the growth in extreme poverty "has been concentrated among those groups that were most affected by the 1996 welfare reform." The law created the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant, replacing Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), which had guaranteed cash assistance to eligible families since 1935. Prior to welfare reform, 68 of every 100 poor families with children received cash assistance through AFDC. By 2010, just 27 of every 100 poor families received TANF assistance.

States were given wide discretion to determine eligibility, benefit levels and time limits, and the TANF block grant was also frozen at the 1996 level without being indexed to inflation so those dollars don't go as far now. A majority of states now provide benefits at less than 30 percent of the poverty line (about $5,200 annually for a family of three), and benefits are below half the poverty line in every state.

Arloc Sherman, senior researcher at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), provides an excellent analysis of the National Poverty Center report. He notes that while extreme poverty doubled, "it nearly tripled for female-headed households, which make up the bulk of the TANF caseload."

There was an opportunity recently in Congress to address, or partially address—or at the very least debate—the TANF debacle of sub-poverty benefits and declining caseloads. It wasn't widely reported, but along with the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance extensions, TANF was also up for reauthorization.

Congress not only took a pass on any serious debate, it threw a little gasoline on the fire.

It extended the TANF block grant through September 2012 but denied funding for the Supplemental Grants which go to seventeen mostly poor states. Dr. LaDonna Pavetti, vice president for family income support division at CBPP, notes that these supplements were created in 1996 because welfare reform resulted in poor states receiving "less than half as much federal funding per poor child as other states."

"This wasn't about money," Pavetti told me. "The money's already there in the TANF Contingency Fund. Congress could have done the exact same thing it did last year and redirected funds from the Contingency Fund to the Supplemental Grants. Total federal funding for TANF wouldn't have changed a bit."

Pavetti said some Democrats sought the redirected funding for the supplemental grants in the final bill but Republicans said it was outside the scope of the agreement. (Not that Democrats seemed to put up much of a fight, if any)

"These supplemental states have this extra pressure now, but it's just part of a bigger problem: you have a 1996 block grant that's eroded in value, you have increased need, and you have no way to adjust for that increased need," said Pavetti. "Add to that what's going on with state budgets and the supplemental grants denial just makes it worse."

According to Pavetti, these are some of the cuts supplemental states are already making: Florida is planning to cut its employment services for jobless workers despite a 9.9 percent unemployment rate; Georgia is reducing funding for child welfare services, child care assistance and substance abuse services; Louisiana has eliminated funding for Individual Development Accounts, which help low-income families build assets.

And here's a true sign of the times: Alabama is considering ending its participation in TANF entirely, which would cost the state upwards of $141 million in federal funding, and over 54,000 people—including 39,000 children—would lose their monthly assistance. Many of these children would absorb a double hit because the child support enforcement program would also be shut down, and it currently helps 218,000 Alabama families collect about $315 million a year. Presumably Alabama doesn't want to comply with the TANF requirement that a state spend some of its own dollars on programs for needy families or face fiscal penalties.

But it's not just the poorer states where the TANF situation is going from bad to worse. "You see cuts that are harmful to very poor families happening in the wealthier states too," said Pavetti.

With three Democrats crossing over to vote with Republicans, Washington State's Senate passed a budget that includes $202 million in cuts in the TANF program, an additional 2 percent cut to benefits, lowering the lifetime time limit to forty-eight months, and a loss of 4,000 child care slots. This comes on top of huge cuts last year, including a 15 percent benefits reduction and lowering of time limits, and a consequent 25 percent caseload reduction—meaning people were kicked off. Adjusted for inflation, Washington State's benefits are worth 40 percent less than they were in 1996 and the maximum monthly assistance for a family of three is currently just $478.

"Policymakers are trying to balance the state budget by taking money directly from low-income families," Kim Justice, policy analyst for the Washington State Budget and Policy Center, told me. "This is no way to balance a budget in tough times."

So how does this rise in extreme poverty and gutting of benefits look on the ground?

Jack Frech, director of the Athens County Department of Job and Family Services in Appalachian Ohio, where he has been doing this work since 1973, told me that the state has cracked down on people who fail to meet their thirty-hour weekly work requirement "and in the last six months or so they've driven at least 30,000 people off of assistance. The welfare caseload in Ohio is dropping rapidly."

He's traveled throughout the county of late to see how conditions are changing.

"There's a growing number of families out there—through the combination of time limits and sanctions—who have no cash whatsoever, they're just surviving on food stamps," he said. "The housing conditions—people are doubling, tripling up even in little trailers. These kids are hungry, they're sleeping in chairs, or makeshift beds, crammed together. They can't afford transportation—they're stuck out in these communities with no way to go anywhere or do anything."

Frech used to have funding to help with car repairs and transportation, but that's mostly been cut. There is some gas money but that doesn't help with the vehicle or insurance which few clients can afford after covering the basics. But if they can't make their thirty-hour-a-week job cleaning the dog shelter, or maintaining roads or gravesites, or doing some cleaning for a government agency—"jobs that do very little to prepare them for better jobs out there," according to Frech—they are cut from TANF.

But what disturbs Frech as much as anything is the fact that there is no political discussion of these issues whatsoever.

"Neither political party is showing any interest in tackling this problem because both parties have hung their hat on this whole idea that welfare reform was a success. You can't have millions of children living in extreme poverty and call your family support income system a success," he said. "The TANF program is only for families who have children, and yet you intentionally give them an income that you know is at best half of what they need just to live at the poverty line. I can't think of any other public policy in America that is more intentionally harmful to children than the TANF program, and I run the program here."

Crystal S., a single mother of three in Philadelphia and a participant in Witnesses to Hunger, would probably agree with Frech's assessment.

"It seems like they give you just enough to let you know that you're 'less than'?" she said. "Just enough for you to realize that life sucks. Just enough for you to hang yourself."

London: Taking Fashion Policing Way Too Seriously « @lissnup

lissnup 7:28 pm on March 10, 2012 Reply
Tags: arrests ( 10 ), Bond Street, clothing, fashion, Harriet Wheeler, Mulberry, police ( 3 ), shopping, style   

London: Taking Fashion Policing Way Too Seriously

An art specialist today told how she was handcuffed, arrested and held for seven hours after attempting to exchange an unwanted gift.

Harriet Wheeler was left “embarrassed and humiliated” after staff at a Mulberry store called the police in the belief that the jacket she was trying to return was stolen or a fake.

Miss Wheeler was finger-printed, photographed, DNA tested and locked in a cell for seven hours before being cleared by police.

The drama unfolded last Friday when Miss Wheeler, 25, went to the New Bond Street store and tried to exchange a £2,000 quilted black leather jacket given to her by a friend. She said: “When I brought it in, it took ages for it to be sorted out. The store manager kept telling me it wouldn’t be much longer. Eventually the police walked in. The area manager then came over with the two officers and said, ‘Come with us’.

“I didn’t know what was going on and when the police officer said I was under arrest for handling stolen goods I was in shock. Then she whacked the handcuffs on me. I was so upset, I was in a mess.”

Miss Wheeler, from Wandsworth, told how after waiting an hour for a patrol car to arrive, she was then “paraded” down New Bond Street in handcuffs to a police station.

“It was so humiliating,” she said. “I was left in a cell for four or five hours and when I asked how long it would be they replied, ‘How long is a piece of string? You could be looking at staying overnight.’ Then hours later a detective breezed in and said they had got hold of my friend, who was on holiday in Barbados, and he corroborated my story that the jacket wasn’t stolen.”

Miss Wheeler said she is a “good and loyal” Mulberry customer but staff assumed the jacket was stolen because only a limited number had been made and one in the same size had been stolen from the store. She added: “It’s been hugely embarrassing. I feel angry and it’s left a bitter taste in my mouth.”

A Met spokesman said: “Following enquiries the woman was released and no further action was taken.”

A spokeswoman for Mulberry said staff called police after being “forewarned that a customer was attempting to return a product which had not been sold by Mulberry”. The company declined to comment further on the misunderstanding but suggested the jacket was not authentic.

Evening Standard.

via lissnup.wordpress.com

Obama Eligibility Controversy Receives International Attention | Western Journalism.com

Obama Eligibility Controversy Receives International Attention

March 9, 2012 By George Spelvin 85 Comments

inShare30

The English language version of the Russian publication “Pravda” (a word which ironically means either truth or justice) is revealing what perhaps is the most mind boggling piece of the puzzle of Barack Obama’s nativity story heretofore hidden from public knowledge.

“Arizona + Minor v. Happersett + Hawaii State/U.S. Citizenship issues = justia and the scrubbing of Minor off the internet=a puzzle coming together, showing what Obama really is” summarizes one columnist,  commenting on Pravda’s scoop.

One free legal search site allegedly scrubbed the penultimate Supreme Court decision regarding definition of NATURAL BORN CITIZEN before the 2008 election; Minor  v. Happersett either was just dropped or somehow (minimized) by “Justia.com (which) is owned by an Obama supporter.”

Pravda goes on to assert that the “systematic scrubbing of Minor v. Happersett in the summer of 2008 (involved)  erasing the name and specific text quoted from the case, along with specific citations to it out of dozens of Supreme Court cases” citing Minor in “over 138 years of American Supreme Court History!” .

Further confusion of the entire nativity story involves a uniquely struck law specific only to Hawaii which conveys U.S. citizenship to any citizen of Hawaii born on or after April 30, 1900.  And this is why, “the campaign itself created the entire birth certificate controversy” mainly pardon the pun, as a red herring to draw the public away from Minor.

In the Minor case Supreme Court Justice C.J. Waite delivered an opinion supporting ordinary citizen, Mrs. Virginia Minor, who had sued a Missouri election official who refused to sign her up as a voter because she was a woman.  “According to the decision (in Minor);” at common-law with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens, also.  These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.  Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. 162, 167 (1874).”

Pravda specifically points out: “As long as the public was wondering about what being born under ‘the British Nationality Act of  1948′ meant, and the birth certificate “birther” controversy in general, they were NOT looking into laws which would have legally prevented the senator from assuming the role ofcandidate and then President!”

And Pravda is calling Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s press conference“an earth shattering revelation.”   “Without doubt, this is a serious Law Enforcement Officer, not one to be taken in by tin-foil-hat wearing loons.”  In a very insightful evaluation of U.S. mainstream media, Pravda continues: “the American Press is aggressively protecting the presumed President of the United States, pushing the fraud upon both America and the world, supporting a man who may well have usurped the office. . .one can easily imagine the reaction of the press had this scenario been about George W. Bush in 2004.”

So we may very well have the answer to America’s spin control story on steroids from a famous Russian news outlet which is doing the story our own fourth estate simply will not touch.

When we have to get our truth from Pravda, what’s next?

via westernjournalism.com

Irena Sendler - Warsaw ghetto - she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants. She was caught, and the Nazi's broke both her legs, arms and beat her severely.

this is the most amazing story ..please read and share if you think the same x

Wall Photos

Look at this lady - Let us never forget!
The world hasn't just become wicked...it's always been wicked.
The prize doesn't always go to the most deserving.

Irena Sendler died 12 May 2008 (aged 98) in Warsaw, Poland.
During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw ghetto, as a
plumbing/sewer specialist.

She had an 'ulterior motive'.
She KNEW what the Nazi's plans were for the Jews (being German).

Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried and she
carried in the back of her truck a burlap sack, (for larger kids).

She also had a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi
soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto.

The soldiers of course wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking
covered the kids/infants noises.

During her time of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500
kids/infants. She was caught, and the Nazi's broke both her legs, arms and beat her
severely.

Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept
them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard.

After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it and
reunited the family. Most had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or adopted.

Last year Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize.

She was not selected.

President Obama won one year before becoming President for his work as a
community organizer for ACORN and Al Gore won also --- for a slide show on Global Warming.

In MEMORIAL - 63 YEARS LATER

I'm doing my small part by forwarding this message. I hope you'll consider doing the same...

It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended.

This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated!

Now, more than ever, with Iran, and others, claiming the HOLOCAUST to be 'a
myth'.

It's imperative to make sure the world never forgets, because there are
others who would like to do it again.

This post is intended to reach 40 million people worldwide! Join us and be a link in the memorial chain and help us distribute it around the world.

Please send this e-mail to people you know and ask them to continue the
memorial chain. Please don't just delete it.

It will only take you a minute to pass this along...
By: Morgun Powder

by: Diane Sori