Category Archives: poor

Social Security going up by 1.7 percent

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…your grocery bill, gas bill, etc. will go up by 25 percent…/snark

Link.

See, this is what I don’t get–they were just saying not two months ago that this was one of the worst droughts on record and our grocery bills were going to be severely affected–but this article states that food prices have pretty much stayed the same.

Ahem.

Like I’ve noted in my personal grocery bills, I’ve seen several items jump $1 or $2 per item in a month’s time, which really adds up if you’re on a restricted budget, as folks on S.S. are.  They know that every time there’s a S.S. increase, it isn’t enough, and the prices will go up accordingly.  (No, I’m not on S.S. or disability.)

I’ve done a quick search of several articles, and they all insist, via the Consumer Price Index that grocery prices have remained the same.

I looked up the table they publish:  http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpid11av.pdf for the 2010-2011 price list…and somebody ain’t telling the truth, here…

You have to scroll down to get specifics, and looking at something that most poor folks purchase: ground beef went up 11%.  Eleven freaking percent in one year!  White bread 5%; Cereal 3%; Bacon 13%; Fresh Fish and Seafood 8%; Eggs 9% Milk 9%; Potatoes 12%; Coffee 14%;  Butter 14%; Peanut Butter 6%….and non-food:  fuel oil 30%; water and sewage 5%; motor fuel 26% and on…

(note that medical care only went up 3%…well, now, the oil companies aren’t getting nearly as much attention from the politicos as the medical community’s medical costs increases…hmmm…twenty-six percent should garner a little more attention, dontcha think?)

But they’ll give you a 1% increase…

…so you can try to make that can of dog food go a little further…after all, the top 1% need those tax breaks so they can…feed and house their horses…and  John McCain needs another house…

 

Are you optimistic…

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Chicago the band has posted this up.  Wow.

The pictures of New Orleans after Katrina really cause you to draw in a breath…how little things have changed, eh?

Limbaugh has been harping on how the Koch Conservatives are not racists, and how President Obama brought up how the Stafford Act was not enforced for the restoration effort after 9/11 in New York City nor for the other hurricane (the name escapes me at the moment) in Florida….but it was enforced for the victims of Katrina…

They state there was no racism involved in the non-effort of Bush.

My experience was different.

In my hometown (I should probably say the place I grew up in, because “home” has a warm, fuzzy feeling, and this was a cold, dark negative place) had a radio station that had changed ownership and was airing Limbaugh on the AM side.  When Katrina hit, they were asking for donations.  They specifically stated that the money would go to a certain county in Mississippi.  I asked someone with knowledge about demographics if this particular county voted Repub or Dem.  The answer:  Repub.

They were only going to send money to this county.  What a disgusting display of coldness towards human beings.

Holy Crap

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Secret Cold War tests in St. Louis…

From the story:

But in 1994, the government said the tests were part of a biological weapons program and St. Louis was chosen because it bore some resemblance to Russian cities that the U.S. might attack. The material being sprayed was zinc cadmium sulfide, a fine fluorescent powder.

Now, new research is raising greater concern about the implications of those tests. St. Louis Community College-Meramec sociology professor Lisa Martino-Taylor’s research has raised the possibility that the Army performed radiation testing by mixing radioactive particles with the zinc cadmium sulfide, though she concedes there is no direct proof.

…makes you wonder what they’re doing now, in unsuspecting neighborhoods, for the war on terrorism?

My thoughts went to the chemtrails and how much they affect me and others.  I’ve definitely noticed a correlation between behavior and continuous (daily) spraying of trails.  When I had this last migraine, they had been spraying five or six trails at a time, all day,  every day, for three weeks.  (And I noticed that just before the elections in 2008, they were spraying the hell out of the skies for the four days prior to election day–keep your eyes on the skies before this election, folks, and see if you see the same phenomenon.)

Here’s a report on a news station:

I’ve read this this website before, but I can’t remember if I posted it.  A little dramatic, but I think there is cause for concern.

I went to the Environmental Working Group website, and could find nothing on the chemtrails.  Nothing on the Union for Concerned Scientists, either.

Joe Marmon has sued California authorities for contaminating the air.

Here’s a European take on the chemtrails phenomenon.

Czech Republic:

Slooooow Food

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…versus Fast Food.  Here’s a link to the Slow Food website.  As the website states, Slow Food is a way of life–a sustainable way of feeding ourselves without destroying the environment (and ourselves) in the process.

Carlo Petrini founded the Slow Food movement after the first McDonald’s opened its doors in Italy.

The National Heirloom Expo is held annually to draw attention to what’s happening with the GMO seeds and to promote heirloom seeds (non-GMO).

Seed Savers website here.   Another website here.

Finally, here’s Treehugger.com, where those dirty effing hippies must hang out.  🙂

Note that in the comments, the readers state there is a controversy with Seed Savers being stacked with corporate toadies….intrigue among the seeds. <sigh>

A rather depressing article here. 

Bill and Melinda Gates controlling the world food supply along with Monsanto is a scary thought.  It’s apparently not enough for them (Gates)  foisting “education reform” on the children of the United States…

…and his comments on environmentalists being against GMO’s speak of his true intent…

As the Grist article states, organic farming has proven to be effective during times of drought, more so than chemical-based farming.  And it goes on to remark about organic/sustainable farming being ideal for the poor communities.  It’s a no-brainer to me:  you put food scraps in a compost pile that turns into a rich soil that you put back into the ground.  This rich compost returns nutrients and beneficial microbes back to the soil.  One of the problems with chemical farming is that it strips the land of nutrients and the soil deteriorates, requiring more water than compost-rich soil.  Any poor person could do that–returning food scraps back to the soil is free.

An interesting article here.

John Ikerd is a retired professor out of the U of Missouri.  He’s an advocate of sustainable farming and has written extensively about it. Link here.

The problem that most folks are unaware there is a problem.  They go to their grocers, see rows of fresh food and shelves stocked to the hilt, and think everything is great….

…and the only thing left will be GMO food that makes them ill…

Romney still hates the poor…

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*yawn* <coming from someone who brags at paying less than his fair share in taxes who expects the gov’t to pick up the tab for feeding and care of his horse and hides money in foreign bank accounts…>

Yes, we are all victims who *love* being dependent on the gov’t for handouts.  It’s sooo much fun not being in control of your own life.  It’s sooo much fun being the object of scorn.  And it’s freaking hilarious to be sick and not have that illness recognized–so much easier to just call someone lazy…I just don’t understand why more people aren’t doing it. /snark

 

Show me the money…

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Adidas is not paying workers of a factory closed even though they have promised to adhere to a code of conduct.

After I became aware of the use of sweatshops for clothing, I started to deny my kids certain clothing they wanted because it was made in a country operating sweatshops.  I recall yelling matches with one of my daughters because she couldn’t have the “cool” clothes these stores were selling.

At my university, there was a hunger-strike because the university was using sweatshops for its apparel.  There was a lively discussion on it in one of the classes (a rare thing, believe me, because classes were set up to have lecture-only–rarely did we have meaningful discussions)  –angry students were going to grill some steaks by the hunger-strikers.  These folks had done nothing to them–they were protesting mistreatment to other human beings—so why would that anger them? Unbelievable.

I used to own several shirts with the university’s logo on it.  I threw them out when I learned of the sweatshops.  What still boggles me is when people find out that the chic clothing they’re wearing is made by someone earning a $1 per day, they merely shrug their shoulders and go on with their lives.

As it became harder and harder to buy non-sweatshop clothing, I thought I could just sew all my clothes, but when went to the fabric stores and looked at the place of manufacture–yep, you can guess it–China, Guatemala, etc.  I couldn’t even buy fabric made in the U.S. to sew with.

Here’s a website of stuff still made in the U.S.A.  I can’t make any claims to know about the fair wage practices of the manufacturers, so enter at your own risk.

 

 

Chicago public school teachers to strike

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Story here.

Emanuel is just another member of “the team” that is trying to undermine public education.  (haha, I typed “undermind” at first–perhaps a better term? 🙂

…because, you know, bankers, financiers, business-oriented people who look at kids as products or resources to be exploited.  They look at the kids with $$ in their eyes–what can we squeeze out of them?  What kind of profit can we make off of them?

This report from Indiana.

From the story:

But Russ Simnick, president of the Indiana Public Charter School Association, said it’s disingenuous to compare charter schools with other schools based on the ISTEP results. For one, such comparisons are between individual charter schools and the overall results of school corporations, in which high and low ISTEP scores are lumped together. Thus, he said, larger corporations have a better ability to mask their lower scores than smaller individual schools. A more honest comparison, he said, would involve lumping all charter schools together and treating them as one school corporation in order to compare with others.

Simnick also disputed Schnellenberger’s statistics on the lowest 50 ISTEP scores; he said only four were charter schools, and all of these opened in 2008. He said it’s not fair to expect such young schools to post high ISTEP scores, especially since many charter schools are in some of the most challenging communities and take in students who just transferred from poorly performing schools.

 

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Unbelievable.  What a way to worm out of accountability.  The teachers from public schools have made the argument for not giving them a failing grade for the above reasons–children from “challenging communities” are difficult to bring up to speed if they are poor, the parents are not involved, and there is some learning/behavioral difficulty.
But charter schools officials want to claim it’s not their fault that the kids are failing?

This from Pennsylvania.  Nepotism? Um, yeah.  Nice little game they have going there.

Notice how they use the same lines as the Indiana officials–the kids are poor performers, they’re special needs…blah, blah, blah.  If you’ve got only a 15% graduation rate, you’re not the people to be teaching kids. Period.

This from Miami.  Taxpayers should not be funding them at all.  But that would cut into the profit margin for the education vultures, wouldn’t it??  You know, privatize the profits while socializing the costs, eh?