La Carpio in San Jose, Costa Rica: House in the La Carpio urban marginalized community (slum) which has an estimated population of between 20 000 - 35 000. The sign says “Me salvé” (”I have saved myself”) – photograph by Eliana Carvalho from University of Peace
Jakarta Post – Oct 1, 2008 – Homeland - Residents of Pedongkelan, a slum area in East Jakarta, search for belongings in what remains of their shanty houses that were torn down by law enforcement officers on Saturday. The property will be relinquished to its rightful owner, PT Pulomas Jaya, which offered each of the 400 families Rp 1 million in compensation and to relocate them to a low-cost flat in Marunda, North Jakarta. [Note from the Queen: The rp is currently 9,485 to one dollar. Thus, each of these 400 families were given about $100 for their homes. Since they were searching for their belongings, I take it that they were not warned of the demolition. I regret that I did not capture the photograph as I returned to the Post to get it and it is not there any more—too controversial perhaps.]
Destroying the homes of the poor is such an outrage that it can’t happen in the USA?”—Wanta bet? It already has and more than once. And what’s more, the victims, more often than not aren’t offered a penny of financial compensation.
Read More »We know already, of course, what John McCain's solution to poverty will be: "Cut taxes for the rich."
Just as we know what John McCain's solution is for the Wall Street crisis: "Cut taxes for the rich."
Jus as we know what John McCain's solution is for education: "Cut taxes for the rich."
Dear ONE Member,
Two. Only two questions about global poverty have been asked in the history of modern presidential debates, going back to Kennedy-Nixon in 1960. That’s less than 1% of all questions asked.
To change that shockingly low figure, ONE is launching a new campaign to get “Just ONE Question” about the fight against global poverty asked at the 2008 presidential debates.
The first debate at the University of Mississippi at Oxford, Mississippi, will focus on foreign policy and is only 10 days away. Take action now by sending the message below to debate moderator Jim Lehrer. Click the link and we’ll send your message to Mr. Lehrer, urging him to ask Just ONE Question on the fight against global poverty.
http://www.one.org/debates/o.pl?id=562-3724540-GgBC0ix&t=2
At the presidential debate, please ask John McCain and Barack Obama just ONE question about their plans to fight global poverty.
This first debate will happen just one day after world leaders gather at the United Nations in New York for an emergency meeting on the Millennium Development Goals – the global pledge made in 2000 to halve extreme poverty and global disease by 2015.
Meeting those goals will require unprecedented U.S. leadership during the next eight years. For at least four of those years, John McCain or Barack Obama will be our president. It’s up to us to make sure that the issues being discussed at the United Nations in New York are also being raised with Senators Obama and McCain at the debate in Mississippi.
We can’t afford to have another presidential debate that ignores extreme poverty and global disease. Please ask Jim Lehrer for Just ONE Question on global poverty, and we’ll deliver your message to him next week, right when he’s sitting down to decide what he’ll ask the next President of the United States:
http://www.one.org/debates/o.pl?id=562-3724540-GgBC0ix&t=3
Thank you for your voice,
Josh Peck, ONE.org
QUEEN’S COMMENTS: I am not one who advocates that we let them eat cake.
Is this important issue to be forgotten? I’ve been wondering about it since the Edwards have been exiled from our Party and I found that at least one other person–Amy Goodman–has also been wondering about is as well. Both of the Edwards were scheduled to speak at the Democratic Convention on the issue of poverty.
The former senior adviser to the Edwards campaign, Chris Chafe, is now the executive director of the Change to Win coalition. This group of unions split from the AFL-CIO in 2005 and they are known for their early endorsement of Obama. In a recent interview, Amy Goodman asked Chafe about the absence of Edwards and his message at the convention and this was Chafe’s response:
“We miss him being here. He is an important voice in our party. … It is certainly a loss. … We have to look within ourselves in a moment of crisis when we have somebody of symbolic and strong value and leadership who takes a fall … we have to continue moving forward with all of the values, strengths, priorities and leadership that he brought to the race, we have to carry that forward … far beyond this election season.”
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QUEEN’S COMMENTS
In a recent interview, the Republican nominee, John McCain, gave a vague and somewhat flip answer to how he defined rich. He defined “rich” as any one with an annual income of over $5 million dollars a year and that those with incomes below $5 million were “middle class.” Like most Republicans, according to the world of John McCain, the poor don’t exist. [That is a classic Republican strategy-- perfected over the past 8 years by the current administrations--if we don't talk about it, it doesn't exist.]
However, poverty is an issue that is on the minds of many Americans today and, in spite of the Republican newspeak that has abounded for the past 8 years, there are some concerned Americans who are looking closer at the issue of how poverty is defined in America.
About a week ago the Queen read an article that appeared in The Christian Science Monitor titled: Who’s poor? It depends on where you live, some say.
Read More »Yesterday, watching those poor people lining up for buses to yet again flee a hurricane, my heart broke.
With all our riches how can there still be people in America who are so obviously so impoverished and helpless?
Unfortunately, it is because our system of education is broken, failed, shameful.
How can any politician believe that property taxes from impoverished areas can pay for world class schools and world class teachers?
A factor in our broken system of education is that first, teachers are underpaid so that schools for teachers "sometimes" fail to attract the most talented people.
Second, the curricula are not teaching prospective teachers how to really teach.
I want every teacher in America to receive the same starting pay as computer programmers and engineeers.
I want better curicula for preparing teachers.
And I want 3,000,000 more, high paid, talented, dedicated teachers who are fully prepared to teach THE LOVE OF medicine, bioscience, math and engineering, starting in the first grade.
Let us all work for an America where everey child has absolutely equal and excellent education, so that in the future no American is so unprepared for life that they end up helplessly standing in line for buses to flee for their lives.
Please donate, tax deductible, to these goals at http://www.fluni.com
I cannot think of anything more consistent with the core values of our Democratic Party.
_______________
Good Morning Flint! 07/08/09
http://flinttalk.com/viewtopic.php?p=31792#31792
_______________
"The world faces three simultaneous crises - a food crisis, a climate crisis and a development crisis," [1] In the turmoil of our current world economic crisis we still have under developed contries needing the basics in aid to develop infrastructure and educate their people.[trb]The G8 has been looked to for help from these still developing African nations with disappointment.[trb]
Aid groups accused some of the G8 nations -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States -- of walking away from earlier commitments.[2]With the hardship facing the G8 its no wonder Africa is paid les sattention. But we are in this world together Globalization brings the countries in poverty to our door step.[trb]
People wonder why African nations are skeptical about the on-going G8 Summit on the Japanese Island of Hokkaido. Well, three years after the promises made at the Gleneagles summit in Scotland there is still little to show that the �Make Poverty History� rallying call was not just a mirage.It was bound to be.[6]
BLOG SUMMARY( Full article at http://goodmorningflint.blogspot.com/ )
1.THE WORLD SHARES THE ECONOMIC CRISIS, DOES THIS CALL FOR MARKET CONTROL?
2.MAJOR POWERS ACKNOWLEDGE THEY CANNOT GO IT ALONE.
3.BROKEN PROMISE TO AID.They [the G8]..
4.AFRICIAN NATIONS IN NEED MEET G8.
5.COMMODITY PRICES CONTINUE TO RISE.
6.THE IMPACT OF RISING OIL COSTS AND THE DOUBLING OF COMMODITY PRICES.
7.G8 ASKED TO DOUBLE ITS AID.
8.THREE CRISES CONVERGING.Ban said: "The world faces three simultaneous crises - a food crisis, a climate crisis and a development crisis," Ban told reporters. "The three crises are deeply interconnected and need to be addressed as such."[1] "Food and fuel, sustenance and energy, malnutrition and health, it does not get more basic than that,"[3]
9.AID DELIVERY SCANDALOUS.
10 .WORLD WIDE 105 MILLION MORE TO JOIN THE POOR.A preliminary World Bank study released last week estimated that up to 105 million more people could drop below the poverty line due to rising food prices, including 30 million in Africa.[1]
â�"what is this---
THIS BLOG-BY TERRY BANKERT�Good Morning Flint� IS A STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS, QUOTES AND HEADLINES OF A MORPHED BREAKING NEWS ISSUE USING MULTIPLE SOURCES FOR COMPARISON AND CONTRAST CREATING A UNIQUE OPINIONED ARTICLE.
----END OF ARTICLE---- Read More »
The bill of goods that Americans have been sold in the package of globalization with all its many trade agreements to serve the multinational corporations is that development reduces poverty. To listen to the Republicans you would think that all the world needs is for corporations to set up shops in countries all over the world, but it is not that simple--nor have multinational corporations shown that they are to be trusted to look out for the interests of workers--quite the contrary as a matter of fact.
If you are interested in learning more about the true relationship between poverty and development, I suggest that you visit the "Poverty and Development" section of the Global Policy Forum. There you will find links to many articles that intelligently analyze the relationship of Poverty to Development, Democracy and Human Rights.
". . . Billions of people across the globe live in squalid conditions of hunger, disease, and desperation. This pandemic poverty represents the world’s most pernicious and deadly scourge. Yet for the privileged minority, the horrors of poverty seem to be a natural, inevitable part of the geopolitical landscape. Leaders in the developed world profess their commitment to “poverty eradication,” but none are willing to address the systemic causes of poverty. Furthermore, the political and corporate elites at the helm of the world economy have a powerful interest in maintaining the economic status quo.
Multilateral institutions devoted to “development” overwhelmingly adhere to neoliberal growth oriented strategies of capital accumulation, privatization, and investment. These institutions, including the World Bank, consistently ignore evidence that growth does not necessarily alleviate poverty and may, in fact, exacerbate it. . . "
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/develop/indxmain.htm
People like me can ill afford to "foot the bill" for another Republican blunder. Every time Bush wants to cut spending, my food stamp allotment goes down as food prices go up. The Republican war on the poor has got to end.
The surplus of the Clinton years was spent long ago on the War in Iraq. Republican spending has put the rising national debt into overdrive. It may take generatiions to recover from this administration.
I have emailed my state representatives to vote against any effort to privatise Social Security. Please take a minute to do the same.
from huffington post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/27/mccain-calls-obama-insens_n_98882.html
yeah. like the gopee is so sensitive to the poor.....
As I address in my online book, Economic Security for All: How To End Poverty in the United States, in 1989 the Solutions to Poverty Workshop determined what is required to end poverty in the U.S. and where we can get the money. Though the specifics need to be updated, the same logic still applies. Read More »
because SOMEBODY has to take care of this problem. it's called relief.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jai-6os_m0hyZDG-Qfm3CJmgoNWAD8V37E6G0
"Today I received a petition from more than 85,000 Americans who are members of the ONE campaign. I applaud their activism and share their urgent concern for the challenges of poverty and AIDS, especially in Africa. I want to assure the ONE campaign and all Americans that I am committed to aggressively combating poverty and disease around the world. I support the bipartisan renewal of the PEPFAR program, and as President I will go further. I have called for spending at least $50 billion over the next five years to fight AIDS worldwide. I have also called for spending $10 billion over five years to get kids in school around the world, and have committed to the bold goal of ending malaria deaths on the continent of Africa by the end of my second term. I am also committed to visiting Africa during my first term as President, to see the progress of our efforts and to assess first hand the necessary strategies to combat disease and poverty. I look forward to working with the ONE campaign and other organizations when I am President to ensure that addressing the needs of the world's poorest countries is an essential component of our nation's foreign policy."
i checked obama's website, and could not find any press releases on this subject. it is my understanding that ONE sent the petition to all the candidates. i am grateful that hillary responded to it.
the amazing paul krugman in today's ny times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/opinion/18krugman.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
Ignorance
Let’s all ignore what is happening around us. Nothing has changed because our business leaders keep telling us that where in a normal phase of the economy. Even though it now takes 2 members of a household to survive economically and we notice that the factories where we once worked have moved overseas only to leave vacant spaces of crumbling walls and broken windows. Decay is all around it’s almost as if the capitalist powers are jumping ship within the U.S. in order to salvage their bottom line within this global economy. At this point in time the business power structure is either trying to drive the evolution of the population into servile units of production, or make for a quick exit to new lands to plunder. Read More »
One of the many reasons why I am against Hillary Clinton is because I am firmly convinced that she is the only democratic candidate who will lose the election for the Democrats. But many Democrats forget that Bill Clinton is also a polarizing figure among Americans as well. We forget that he inherited a Democratic Congress which he lost after only two years as president. Bill, like his wife, also polarizes people.
But I have other reasons as well for not voting for Hillary and I will continue to share them as is my right.
WHAT DID THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION ACTUALLY DO FOR THE PEOPLE?
On the plus side, Bill Clinton reversed Reagan’s antics and he raised taxes on the wealthy, and lowered them for the working and middle classes. This did contribute to economic expansion. In 2000, Clinton’s last year, the surplus amounted to $236 billion. This surplus was due in part to making the rich pay more taxes and by reducing the taxes on the middle class but there were other sources for this surplus which are not so good—TANF being one of them.
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I am voting for John Edwards because I believe that he will do something about this and I want to help him to help America to remember the forgotten class--the poor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUCCcEfweFk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdtZ4JUnbH0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUv5tazcVjY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ko8uKEgtcdQ&feature=related
http://onevote08.org/candidatesvideos/
This is a great site. It contains videos of all the presidential candidates going on record with their plans to combat extreme poverty and global disease. Each one of the candidates has a separate video.
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