ADAM CHRISTIAN ENTERPRISES GROUP: Are are a small group of like-minded people that provide help and guidance in all forms for people in need.Our services are to provide a way for people that have been let down in their lives who have a problem.This may range from a financial,business or a property matter. Or they may just need a friend to e-mail them or just to talk to when they feel lonely.News stories at http://acenewsservices.com/
Eradication of Smallpox Is Certified (1979): One of the deadliest diseases in history by sheer loss of life, smallpox was the target of a concerted, worldwide eradication campaign in the 20th century, and it became the first disease to have been successfully wiped out. Efforts focused on vaccination and quickly responding to and curtailing outbreaks. The last person to die from smallpox caught it at a laboratory, where samples of the now-vanquished disease remain. Who is the last person known to have contracted it in the wild? Discuss
Just picked this snippet up 40 minutes ago from my news desk!
The posts and articles provided by our news desk are not always representative of our personal views of the story.Tweet at #AceNewsServices or email to News and Views
Promoting Labor Rights is Everyone’s Responsibility:
This year’s Labor Rights Week theme, ‘Promoting Labor Rights is Everyone’s Responsibility,’ underscores the importance of partnerships between the Labor Department and other countries to educate migrant workers and their employers about U.S. labor laws.
Making America’s workplaces safe and fair for everyone is the hallmark of Labor Rights Week. We’re committed to ensuring that workers are safe on the job and paid what they’re owed by law. This means no one can be paid less than $7.25 an hour. It means overtime must be paid for each hour above 40 a week. And it means that employers must provide a safe workplace.
The department’s Wage and Hour Division, which enforces federal laws governing a minimum wage, overtime pay, child labor and the rights of migrant workers, and the department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is principally concerned with protecting workers from hazards on the job, are participating in Labor Rights Week events throughout the nation this week.
More information about Labor Department programs that protect migrant workers can be found at http://www.dol.gov/ilab/highlights/if-20120611.htm.
On Labor Day 2012 and every day, one of my top priorities is to help those looking for work get the training they need for good-paying jobs.
By 2020, 17 of the 30 fastest-growing occupations will require a postsecondary certificate or degree. That means that getting the skills employers want and need are critical to a successful career.
Tomorrow, Thursday, August 30 at 2 p.m. EDT I will host a live #LaborDay2012 Twitter chat. Whether you’re interested in how you can apply your skills to a new career or where to find job training programs in your neighborhood, I’m here to help.
Join the conversation by using the hashtag #LaborDay2012 or tweet questions in advance to @HildaSolisDOL. Don’t have a Twitter account? You can still participate by submitting questions to Connect@dol.gov by 10 a.m. EDT Thursday, August 30. RSVP for the #LaborDay2012 chat and get updates about upcoming Twitter events.
Here at the Labor Department, we have many resources to help you along your career path. I look forward to sharing these invaluable tools with you!
FEMA Region 9 strengthens tribal policies, relationships with hundreds of sovereign Indian Nations in California, Arizona, and Nevada
Extract sent to: Ace News Desk on the 20/08/2012 for immediate release.
OAKLAND, Calif. - Nearly 200 tribal leaders, emergency managers, first responders and other disaster preparedness officials, representing more than 60 tribal governments are meeting this week in Oakland, Ca. with Federal Emergency Management Agency officials , to discuss how to jointly prepare for, respond to and recover from the next catastrophic disaster that could strike tribal communities with or without warning in California, Arizona or Nevada.
Regional Administrator Nancy Ward spoke at this year's second annual Disaster Preparedness Partnership meeting along with Mark Ghilarducci, Secretary for the California Emergency Management Agency.
"FEMA recognises that even with the best planning, disasters are inevitable," said Nancy Ward, FEMA Region 9 Administrator. "This conference is one of the largest gatherings of its kind, and an excellent venue for tribal, state, and federal leaders and emergency management professionals to share success strategies and apply that knowledge to the unique issues facing our tribal partners today."
This year's conference will cover many pressing topics, including the Presidential Preparedness Directive (PPD- 8), tribal grants, the National Disaster Recovery Framework, "Tribes leading Tribes" mentoring program and critical infrastructure resources. During the current fiscal year, FEMA has provided more than $6 million dollars in federal funding aimed at strengthening core tribal capacities.
Tribal governments are essential partners in building resilient communities and the federal government has a unique government-to-government relationship with federally-recognised tribal governments.
"This is truly a wonderful collaboration," said Mark Romero, Chairman, Executive Board, Inter Tribal Long Term Recovery Foundation. "Especially in light of recent California wildfires it's so critical that we all work together to establish the best emergency management practises."
Tribal lands in Region 9 range from small allotments of a few acres to the Navajo Nation, the largest tribal territory in the country. More than 28% of these native homes are at or below the poverty level and face unique challenges when confronted by disasters on tribal lands.
Tribal leaders slated to speak at this week's conference include: Don Watahomigie, Chairman of the Havasupai Tribe; Robert Holden, Deputy Executive Director for the National Congress of American Indians; Cliff Puckett, Emergency Manager for the Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community; Ed Naranjo, Chairman for the Goshute tribes of Nevada & Utah; LaVonne Peck, Chairwoman of the La Jolla Tribe; Gary Fredericksen, Fire Chief for the Yocha Dehe Wintun Tribe; Mike Chandler, Fire Commission Member for the Yocha Dehe Fire Department; Wayne Burke, Chairman, Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe; and Randall Vicente, Governor of the Pueblo of Acoma.
FEMA also provides no-cost training for tribal leaders, emergency planners, first responders, and others. The following courses are offered at FEMA's Emergency Management Institute in Emmitsburg, Maryland:
- Emergency Management Framework for Tribal Governments (E580) provides a basic understanding of emergency management principles and how those principles can be used to help develop and implement emergency management systems.
- Emergency Management Operations for Tribal Governments (E581) helps tribal officials develop organisational structures, operational procedures, and resources for effective emergency management operations.
- Mitigation for Tribal Officials (E344) covers FEMA's disaster mitigation programs, tribal mitigation opportunities, and examples of mitigation success.
MEMBERS OF THE MEDIA: To request photos, attend and/or schedule an interview with a disaster expert or tribal liaison, please email your request to External Affairs Officer Mary Simms at mary.simms@fema.dhs.gov. Please include your name, media affiliation and contact information in your request.
'Free Bradley Manning':
A group of 40 campaigners gathered outside the American embassy in London on Saturday to protest against the incarceration of a US Army private accused of leaking information to whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
Bradley Manning, 24, is charged with passing classified data and delivering national defence information to an unauthorised source.
Protesters gathered outside Grosvenor Square, London
It is claimed he sent hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and war logs to Julian Assange's Wikileaks website while working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq.
Manning could be sentenced to life imprisonment if convicted of the most serious offence, aiding the enemy.
On Saturday, protesters gathered in front of the heavily guarded Grosvenor Square building for more than an hour bearing Free Bradley Manning placards.
Ben Griffin, 34, a former SAS soldier and founding member of Veterans For Peace UK, addressed the crowd after observing a 30-minute silent vigil.
He said: "The most significant piece of resistance to the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan came when a young soldier released information that the US and UK governments would rather we did not know about.
"Among the files released through Wikileaks were the Afghan War Diaries which showed the day-to-day ritual killing and torture that has been going on in Afghanistan for years.
"Then the Iraq War Logs were released. As a result of those logs we found out about thousands of people killed in Iraq by US and UK troops that we did not know about.
"Through the diplomatic cable release we now know about the sneaky little deals with other governments so we do not know the reality of the wars.
Bradley Manning was incarcerated charged with passing classified data to WikiLeaks
"As a result of these leaks a young soldier has spent years in prison and still has not come to trial.
"As a result of action around the world the US military was forced to move him from Quantico (Virginia), to Fort Leavenworth (Kansas).
"That guy is still being held and for the last six months we've been coming here when Bradley Manning has been taken to a pre-trial hearing, when the military decide what is going to be allowed to come out in his case and what is not, and standing in solidarity."
Among the dozens of protesters were several wearing the V For Vendetta mask that has become associated with the hacking group Anonymous.
Others carried banners saying "Blowing the whistle on war crimes is not a crime" and "Free Assange, Free Manning, End the war".
One demonstrator who gave her name only as Val, from Bedford, said: "Bradley Manning, I think, is a hero.
"If anybody should have got the Nobel Peace Prize it is him."
Fellow campaigner 38-year-old Glyn Jukes, from Wales, said: "He stands for truth and justice at a time when very few others are."
A demonstrator talks to police outside the Embassy on Saturday morning
Another protester, who asked to remain anonymous, said: "I think Bradley Manning should be released.
"I do not think he has morally broken any laws and what he has done will only help society."
After more than an hour outside the US Embassy the group moved to Ecuador's London embassy where Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been holed up for more than two months.
On Sunday August 20 when Assange appeared on the balcony of the embassy, he called on the US to end its "war on whistleblowers" and demanded the release of Bradley Manning.
Assange described him as a hero and "an example to all of us".
Missouri GOP senatorial candidate Todd Akin's absurd comment that women's bodies can prevent pregnancies in cases of "legitimate rape" is disgusting. It also points to a deeper problem within the GOP.
Plainly, this is a party that hates women. And given the huge gender gap opening up in favor of President Obama over the presumptive GOP candidate, Mitt Romney, this has important implications for economic and social policy going forward. Because if they win, the Democrats are less likely to embrace the draconian fiscal austerity proposals now advocated by Romney’s advisors, along with the party’s regressive social agenda.
The current Republican Party is a perverse coalition of the top 1 percent and the socially conservative right. The latter are not well off for the most part. The Koch brothers (and others of that ilk) have managed to convince the have-not religious fundamentalists to vote against their own economic interests and support their internal colonialism through economically regressive policies which are exacerbating the country’s mounting economic inequality.
This is untenable over the long run. Skewing income distributions by shoveling money to the top always ends in a big political upheaval. The social conservatives are older and aging and becoming less of the total electorate. Someday the GOP’s infernal combination will blow apart because the top 1 percent will be rejected by the masses and the numbers of the social conservatives will dwindle too much.
Why? Largely because of today’s new generation of women. Although they represent varying degrees of economic progressivism to conservatism, this generation is largely rejecting the social conservatism of the Creationists and hardcore fundamentalists on the right. President Obama continues to outpoll Mitt Romney by substantial margins among women voters. I would guess that this will more than offset the appeal Romney holds among angry white males, increasingly alienated by a country that is becoming less white, more socially diverse, a veritable rainbow coalition of different ethnicities rather than a Caucasian-dominated nation. An older generation of women who saw no other way than to be dependent and kept and sexually repressed is dying out.
This will change the economic landscape. Why? Well, take a look at the latest bit of "economic wisdom" from the Romney campaign (I owe this observation to economist Bill Mitchell), which has just put out an economic paper, The Romney Program for Economic Recovery, Growth, and Jobs, written by Stanford’s John B Taylor, Harvard’s Greg Mankiew, Columbia’s Glenn Hubbard, and Kevin Hassett from the American Enterprise Institute. These men make the following claims: America took a wrong turn in economic policy in the past three years. The United States underperformed the historical norm shown in the administration’s own forecasts, and its policies are to blame …These short-term stimulus packages were ineffective, leaving the nation with higher debt, which acts as a drag on long-term growth because households and businesses understand that the administration must raise taxes significantly to pay off that debt.
Romney’s economic team also claims that “uncertainty over policy” (i.e. the large deficits and the private fear of large tax hikes) is preventing a sound recovery in private spending. This has been a common theme among the conservatives since the governments decided to deploy fiscal stimulus.
True, President Obama also retains an unhealthy obsession with "long-term fiscal sustainability" and "entitlement reform" (i.e. shredding the social safety net). But for the most part, he has avoided the worst of the excesses of the fiscal austerity fanatics in Europe and those of the Tea Party in the U.S. As a consequence, the U.S. economy has continued to grow. True, it is below trend, but it is still growing and generating some jobs, in marked contrast to what is occurring on the other side of the pond.
Mainstream economic theory claims that that private spending is weak because we are scared of the future tax implications of the rising budget deficits. But the overwhelming evidence shows that if you own a business, you’re not going to invest while consumption is weak. And households will not spend because people are scared of becoming unemployed and are trying to reduce their bloated debt levels. Above all else, businesses need sales to encourage them to hire workers. A restaurant doesn't lay anyone off when it's full of paying customers, no matter how much the owner might hate the government, the paper work, and the health regulations; A department store doesn't lay off workers when it's full of paying customers; and an engineering firm doesn't lay anyone off when it has a backlog of orders.
And guess what? Women are not only more than half of the electorate, but they are a huge part of the overall aggregate demand for goods and services. Under the Republican agenda, women could well revert to a kind of economic serfdom, whose labor expended can be considered surplus to that required to maintain the survival of the man and his family.
In fact, if Romney's plan were to be introduced now or, worse yet, the automatic budget sequestration cuts proposed in the Budget Control Act from last fall were actually implemented, (which mandates across-the-board cuts to reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion over 10 years), then we'd likely experience a double-dip recession in the U.S. next year. Support for this view has been expressed by no less than the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) which argued in a report the other day, that the U.S. economy would slide into recession in fiscal 2013 if Congress fails to act to maintain current tax rates and avert deep cuts to federal spending.
Austerity advocates like Romney and Ryan are obsessed with putting the squeeze on public spending, especially broad social welfare and education. Their plans mean that workers get trapped in a low-skill, low-pay circle of disadvantage. The increasingly casualized labor market is reinforcing that pathology, particularly for women.
As strange as it sounds, the worst of these effects may well be thankfully nullified by the GOP's ongoing war on women voters -- the probable difference-makers in the upcoming election. Nat Silver of the FiveThirtyEight blog is the ultimate wonk pollster, and the best guestimates now are that President Obama today is only ahead by around 3 to 4 percent. I think it is a little more. I think Obama will do better as Romney’s tax issues bring more revelations and the GOP war on women becomes center stage. Given the desultory state of the economy today, if the president wins by anywhere near the same margin as in 2008, the handwriting will truly be on the wall for the party of social conservatives, angry older white men and the 1 percenters themselves.
The changes that are occurring in the overall population as the next generation -- particularly women -- takes over will be death to the past Republican coalition. The GOP will eventually realize that its anti-choice stance and all that goes with it is a huge problem. The party will find that its viscerally anti-feminist rhetoric and policies will be even more of a killer in the future. And a byproduct of that will be that the corporate predators who comprise so much of the top 1 percenters will also realize that they can no longer govern with the support of social conservatives who vote against their own interests.
I think this election will make everyone realize that the future of the U.S. has already begun.
The following is an excerpt from Dennis Marker's new book 15 Steps to Corporate Feudalism, published this year. In the text below, Marker shares one of the steps he sees as central to the destruction of the middle class since Ronald Reagan took over.
Your goal for this step is to figure out how to teach the middle class to hate their own government using a strategy that takes into consideration the political climate of the United States of thirty years ago.
Teaching the middle class to hate their government was an essential part of the plan to implement Corporate Feudalism. A middle class cannot exist without a strong government. This is because only a government has the power to stand up to the giant corporations of today’s world, or the powerful individuals and private armies of earlier times. It is the government that enforces the laws to protect the middle class from those who would like to become their economic rulers. That is why prior to the Industrial Revolution and the creation of the middle class all economies were run according to some version of the feudal system. If you want to put an end to the middle class and replace it with a feudal republic, you would need to change people’s perception of their government.
Obviously a government does not have to be on the side of its people, as can be seen by the existence of countless dictatorships and oligarchies throughout the world. Even the corporatocracy that currently exists in the United States falls far short of being on the side of its middle class. But US history shows that a government committed to serving its citizens can, in fact, help create and maintain a healthy middle class even in the face of powerful corporations whose only interest is maximizing their own power and profits.
It is like the story in old westerns of a big bad landowner who takes what he wants when he wants it, ruthlessly terrorizing a town without a strong sheriff. Any individual who tries to stop the landowner is beaten into submission or killed. The situation continues until the town finds a strong enough sheriff to regain control over the landowner and his gang. This is the Old West version of the feudal system. In westerns, the feudal lord comes first and the sheriff comes later. But in the United States of thirty years ago, the government was the strong sheriff keeping the late-twentieth-century feudal lords from taking what they wanted. As long as the government was supported by its citizens—particularly its middle class—no one could ride into town and steal what belonged to the people. But if the government were weakened or destroyed, a different situation would arise. The intent of the plan for Corporate Feudalism was to convince the middle class to fire their sheriff. And that’s just what happened.
Thirty years ago at the onset of the Reagan Revolution, the middle class basically appreciated and respected their government and believed that living in the United States was good for the middle class. They took their status for granted. The connection between what was good about the United States and its government was clear to the American public. For the most part, people believed the government was on their side and largely responsible for the high standard of living they enjoyed. Their government built the roads that made transportation easy. Their government made the laws and regulations that kept US workers safe at their jobs. Their government ensured that their food was safe. The labor strife that had empowered the middle class was now decades old, and the Vietnam War had ended, although not well. In many ways the United States of thirty years ago was a happy place, and most people understood their government’s role in keeping it that way. While there were problems, including the energy crisis, they seemed manageable. Not everyone was happy with everything the government did, of course, but there was general agreement that the US government was the best government anywhere.
Then the US government found itself in the crosshairs of the brand-new Reagan Revolution with no way to understand why it was under attack and no way to defend itself. For thirty years, it took blow after blow. Now, while still standing, that government is very different from what it was when Reagan took office. It is much weaker, no longer able to offer the protections or provide the services the middle class took for granted thirty years ago—the same kinds of services that many European democracies have continued to provide for their citizens during the period of US economic and social decline. And in its weakened state the US government has lost the support of the very citizens who depended on it the most, the middle class.
How did this happen? When Ronald Reagan got to Washington, he set out to convince the middle class that their government was their enemy, using his considerable powers of persuasion. The basic message of Reagan and the conservatives was that everyone would be better off if the federal government just disappeared. They were smart enough not to say this directly, however. Instead, they just landed one body blow after another without openly expressing their desire to destroy the government.
For example, Reagan attacked government workers, contending they were lazy, they wasted taxpayer money, and they involved themselves in issues they knew nothing about, like regulating large businesses and corporations. Within the first few years of Reagan’s election, the morale of the federal workforce plummeted as these employees saw their image shift from being considered public servants trying to make life in the United States better for everyone to being seen as lazy, despised bureaucrats wasting taxpayer money. Far from being a place where committed public servants worked to help the public, Washington, DC, became known as the place where crooks, thieves, and lazy workers stole taxpayer money for foolish purposes or their own personal benefit.
While federal workers had unions to protect their jobs, they did not have high-priced lobbyists and media consultants to safeguard their image. The unions representing federal workers came under the same harsh attack as the workers themselves, but the attacks went largely unanswered. The nation’s first movie star president had intentionally created this negative image of government workers, and he was convincing.
Following Reagan, other conservatives continued to lead the charge against the government, often using the same language the Reagan administration had employed. Few found language more effective than the Reagan one-liner, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help,” but they didn’t need to. The leap from John F. Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” to Reagan’s cynical and supposedly frightening “I’m from the government and I’m here to help,” had been successfully made.
In addition to waging a full-scale campaign against the government and its employees, the Reagan administration also implemented another practice that was equally destructive to the image of government—filling government positions with people who hated government, a practice that continues to this day. For those seeking to change the United States from a middle-class democracy to a corporate feudal republic, there are three major advantages to this practice. First, you give government jobs to your conservative friends and cronies. Second, you keep dedicated public servants who want to see government succeed out of government. Third, and most importantly, you have a cadre of conservative ideologues working inside the government to sabotage and destroy the government at every turn.
The advantages for conservatives of sabotaging and destroying the government are almost limitless. Looking at a few examples from George W. Bush’s administration shows why. Thirty years ago the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), a government agency committed to protecting the public by monitoring the safety of toys and other products, made a positive difference in people’s lives. However, during George W. Bush’s administration conservatives who filled many of the civil service positions and all of the politically appointed slots did not believe the government should be in the business of helping to protect the public, and they did everything in their power to avoid carrying out their responsibilities. When Congress tried to give the CPSC more money to do a better job of regulating products imported from China, for example, the Bush-appointed agency head refused. She said they had plenty of money to do their job, although in reality they weren’t doing their job at all. Then reports started coming in about unsafe toys originating in China. People were outraged, as they should have been, and blamed the government. By failing to do their jobs, the conservatives were encouraging people to give up on their own government, which was exactly what conservatives wanted.
Thirty years ago, in an effort to make their point, conservatives often exaggerated the examples of government corruption and waste, but during George W. Bush’s administration scandals involving everything from toys to military contracting became the norm. And who were the perpetrators of most of these crimes against the United States and its taxpayers? They were government-hating conservatives working inside the government, placed there for this very reason. Each time one of these conservatives was caught in another scandal, the American public’s view of government deteriorated a little more. If you believe in a government that helps its citizens, this seems bad. But if you believe that the best government is no government this seems great, so the people who wanted to establish Corporate Feudalism couldn’t have been happier.
That was the plan used by Corporate Feudalists to convince millions of middle-class people to hate their own government. Did you think of a more effective way to accomplish this goal? Or do you believe the plan that was used was the most effective one available?
The police came at four in the morning with a battering ram to the Cruz home in Minneapolis, Minnesota. And that was only one of the five eviction attempts required to finally claim the home for the banks.
“After we had been peacefully occupying this house for over a month without any incidents, then they come in with a battering ram and blame us for disturbing the peace,” said Nick Espinosa, one of the organizers with Occupy Homes Minnesota, which has taken the lead in saving local families from being put out on the street.
The battering ram was just adding insult to injury—the Cruz family was being evicted through no fault of their own, because PNC bank had made a mistake in processing their payments. The Occupy Homes crew moved into the house to try and defend it while the sheriff's department came once and then twice to evict.
“We had people who were locking down to concrete barrels and other devices to prevent them from evicting the house and we were mobilizing people to come and defend the house,” Espinosa said. Over the course of the five eviction attempts there were 26 arrests. The last time Espinosa was arrested along with 14 others and charged with rioting in the third degree, defined as “Violence or the threat of violence to people or property when more than three are gathered.”
They face up to two years in prison. Espinosa noted, “There are 15 people now facing riot charges who were arrested doing nonviolent civil disobedience, basically sitting down and linking arms on the front steps of a house.”
“The chief of police was there the night I was arrested. Four other officers stepped over us as we were sitting in front of the door,” he continued. “He stepped directly on top of us, on our shoulders and necks, to come into the house.” The previous day police had grabbed protesters by the neck to move them out of the way, and women activists complained of feeling sexually assaulted, having been groped by the police. “Somebody's hand went up one of my friends' shirts,” Espinosa said. One of the Cruzes' neighbors was arrested while standing on the sidewalk outside her house holding up a sign in support of Occupy Homes.
The battle to save the Cruz home is just one of many being fought by organizers around the country to stop the epidemic of foreclosures, many rooted in fraud or bank error – foreclosures that continue to shake the economy four years after the housing bubble burst. No high-level bankers, of course, have been charged with any crime for the systemic fraud and misconduct that led to the economy's near collapse; but peaceful community activists standing up for their neighbors face serious jail time.
“The city has the option to use their discretion about how they react to situations like this,” Espinosa said. “There are plenty of other crimes that they could be pursuing. They don't have to come and respond to that issue of people being in this house, that's technically trespassing.” Evicted by Bank Error
“We had made the sheriffs very aware of the situation and said don't get involved in this, just let it be, we're working out a solution,” Espinosa explained.
PNC Bank, the mortgage lender, failed to process an online payment made by the Cruz family—and then demanded two months' worth to make up for it. The family couldn't come up with the money, and the bank moved to foreclose.
“We began working with a local nonprofit that was supposed to be working out a loan modification,” Alejandra Cruz explained in a blog post that accompanied a Change.org petition to save her family's home. The bank told the family they would work on a solution, but the family was served with an eviction notice anyway.
Alejandra and David Cruz are college students and DREAM act organizers; their family is from Mexico City. “Until now,” Alejandra pointed out, “many families in the Latino community have been afraid to stand up when they are being mistreated by the banks that fraudulently foreclose on families across the country. The banks have used this fear and manipulation of a complicated legal system to profit from honest, hardworking people.”
“I believe what they were doing is saying they were negotiating and then with the other hand pushing forward with the eviction so they didn't have any responsibility to work with the family,” Espinosa said.
This process is so common that it has a name: dual tracking. It's also been called out by lawmakers and attorneys general as unfair and deceptive to homeowners. "We don't think that a homeowner who is making a good-faith effort to work through their troubled mortgage should have the roof ripped out from over them while they are negotiating, or trying to negotiate," Geoff Greenwood, a spokesman for Iowa Atty. Gen. Tom Miller, told the Los Angeles Times last year.
Yet the process continues, and families across the country struggle with it every day, often without the support of neighbors and organizers willing to put their bodies on the line and risk arrest to keep them in their homes.
Alejandra and David took a road trip across the country in June to PNC's headquarters, but the bank's executives refused to bend. (Last year, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency found PNC, one of the nation's largest banks, to have “unsafe and unsound” mortgage servicing and foreclosure practices, including robo-signing.)
For now, the Cruzes are living in an apartment and continue to pressure the bank to work out a solution to get them back in their home (which was bought by Freddie Mac at a sheriff's sale, and remains boarded up). They continue, as well, to organize with Occupy Homes in support of other families.
The system is stacked against families like these, though—banks have expensive lawyers and go through this regularly, while families struggling to pay the bills have little help. “The legal system is not the battleground for us to win against the banks,” Espinosa said. “The way we're going to do that is through popular pressure and people power.” Keeping Up the Fight
Espinosa considers the arrests and riot charges an escalation by the city to try and stifle their organizing and direct action. “For them it's a political issue that exposes the fact that they're complicit in all these foreclosures and that if they weren't sending the police with our city resources to come and evict families who are being thrown out through no fault of their own, the banking system would not continue to profit off of tearing communities apart.”
“The city is trying to make an example out of people, especially core organizers, by using trumped-up charges to try to force us to take a worse plea deal,” he continued.
He and others have been offered plea deals, but they refuse to take the deals unless the riot charges are dropped against all of them. “We're using court solidarity to demand that everybody gets a fair deal,” he explained. “We're ultimately asking them to drop all the charges because we think it's ridiculous that they're going after peaceful protesters protecting their neighbors instead of the banks who crashed our economy through massive fraud.”
Minneapolis's mayor, R.T. Rybak, had released a statement before the arrests saying “The City is not in the foreclosure business,” and “The City plays a limited role to protect public safety.” Yet, Espinosa noted, the normally-progressive mayor's words didn't match his actions. “If you cared about people and cared about doing something about the foreclosure crisis, your priorities would not be trying to intimidate people with bogus riot charges.”
“He has the power to direct the police not to enforce the evictions, he has the power to publicly state that banks should be negotiating with people and we couldn't get him to do that,” Espinosa continued. “I'd much rather be going after the bank than going after the mayor, but when he puts himself between our ability to do the work and acts as a protector of the bank then he puts himself in the crossfire and becomes a political target.”
Occupy movements around the country have dealt with this problem: some argue that the movement should focus solely on the banks, while others note that it's impossible to do so when the political and legal systems enforce the banks' will and offer little recourse to everyday people.
However, Espinosa noted, there's an upside to the ridiculous charges and police brutality (not to mention wasted resources in keeping the home under guard and prosecuting peaceful protesters). Local support for their movement has grown, from neighbors up and down the Cruzes' block to local celebrity Brother Ali, a hip-hop artist who had been a supporter of Occupy Homes for a while but took his first arrest as part of the civil disobedience at the Cruz home. Because of canvassing the block for support, Espinosa said, Occupy Homes also found another homeowner fighting foreclosure and helped him get a mortgage modification. “A lot of new people have been galvanized by the outrageous nature of these charges,” he noted.
Occupy Homes Minnesota continues to fight for local families, having just celebrated Monique White's victory and the victory of Espinosa's own mother in keeping their homes. Despite the distraction that the ongoing struggle over criminal charges poses, they remain determined to win both the right for the Cruzes to return to their home and their legal battles.
“If they want to take people to trial and try to convince a jury that we were rioting by sitting down and linking arms,” Espinosa said, “we can do that.”
When you think about the terrible effects of climate change, I bet you picture droughts, hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes, which makes sense — climate change is causing weather patterns to go absolutely crazy. But the crazy weather leads to other consequences that we often don’t think about when we hear the globe is warming up. Here is a list of 5 frightening effects from climate change this summer. 1. Increased Suicide
Besides destroying crops and causing food prices to spike, droughts have recently been linked to an alarming consequence: suicide. In a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers found a link between droughts and suicides among men ages 30 to 49 living in rural areas in Australia. After evaluating 40 years of drought and suicide data for the state of New South Wales, droughts were linked to a 15 percent increase in suicide risk among these men. This link was also found in men under 30, though no link was found among women.
Though research for this study was completed in Australia, links between droughts and suicides have been made before, particularly in India where thousands of farmers kill themselves each year. In fact, a recent article states that one farmer in India commits suicide every 12 hours.
As the United States is seeing its largest drought since 1956, there are reasons to be concerned about the correlation. While the authors of the study note, “suicide is a complex phenomenon with many interacting social, environmental, and biological causal factors,” there are plenty of explanations for the correlation. The authors write that farmers and farming communities lose a lot of money when droughts destroy their crops. They also state that farmers experience mental distress when witnessing the devastation of their livestock and crops.
The authors remind us that if we don’t truly work to stop climate change, we will have to face the disturbing effects. They conclude in their abstract: “Elucidating the relationships between drought and mental health will help facilitate adaptation to climate change.” 2. West Nile Virus
What do you get when you combine increasingly warm weather and thousands of mosquitoes? A huge outbreak of West Nile virus. As droughts are causing creek waters to stop flowing, mosquitoes are finding the perfect breeding spot in the standing water. Mosquitoes also mature and thus breed faster in the heat. Meanwhile, warm weather also decreases the virus’ incubation period. This all allows the virus to spread rapidly. In addition, earlier springs and milder winters lengthen breeding season.
According to the Center for Disease Control, West Nile virus has infected 1,118 people and killed 41 people across the nation. Human cases have been detected in 38 states, while human and animal cases have been detected in 47 states. Texas, especially Dallas County, has been hard hit, with 586 reported cases and 11 deaths. 3. River Obstruction
What’s the number-one thing you need to distribute goods along the Mississippi River? Water. But the drought has shortchanged the river this summer, as its water levels hit a record low. For instance, the water level near Memphis is 12 feel lower than normal. As a result, 11 miles of the river was recently closed when a vessel ran aground. The river’s shutdown halted nearly 100 boats and barges from passing. Obstruction of riverways can have devastating effects on the economy. In 2010, more than $40 billion worth of cargo passes along the Mississippi River.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has responded with lots of dredging, a process of clearing out an area of water by scooping up sediment. However, as we often realize, trying to put a bandage on our environmental crisis rarely works. Dredging causes its own environmental impact, including harming marine ecosystems and spreading toxins near the site.
USACE is dredging in an attempt to make the river deep enough so heavy barges can pass. Shippers have had to lighten their barges, which is increasing their fuel and labor costs, and is, of course, not very sustainable.
The river has since opened, but several ports along the river have closed, and low water levels are expected to affect cargo until October.
The captain of one dredge, Frank Segree, said, "If we lose the river system it's just like losing the interstate highway system …Commerce is a vital part of our nation. This is a main artery for commerce." 4. Nuclear Plant Shutdown
Nuclear power plants often rely on cold waters to cool their reactors. But as hot weather is causing water temperatures to rise, nuclear plants have had to respond. In Connecticut, the Millstone nuclear plant was recently shut down as the waters surrounding it reached nearly 77 degrees, 2 degrees higher than the 75 degrees the reactor was designed to withstand.
In July, an Illinois nuclear plant, whose reactor was built to work in water below 98 degrees, asked for special permission to continue operation when the waters around it reached 102 degrees. Permission was granted partly because if a nuclear plant shuts down, cold water must be available to cool all equipment.
Craig Nesbit, the owner of the plant, told the New York Times, "Last thing in the world you’d ever want to do, if there was no safety implication, is shut down a 2,600-megawatt nuclear plant in the biggest heat wave in the last 30 years."
Other plants in the Midwest have faced similar problems with warm water temperatures as well as low water levels, which inhibit reactors’ pipes from drawing up water.
Although we should be focusing on creating more sustainable initiatives than nuclear energy, even greener energy projects are struggling to meet the supply of our large energy demand. For example, California’s hydroelectric power plants cannot produce as much electricity this summer due to the drought. Perhaps, the only truly sustainable approach we can take is to change our resource-consuming lifestyles.
Still, the worst-case scenario is not simply a reduction of energy, but a nuclear plant meltdown. Emergency officials in Connecticut even held a drill to deal with two fictitious accidents at the Millstone nuclear plant. They prepared for a release of large amounts of radioactivity from the reactor. The governor declared a general emergency, closing parks, moving schoolchildren to evacuation centers, evacuating residents within five miles of the plant and distributing potassium iodide pills to guard against absorption of radioactive iodine through people’s thyroids. 5. Cows Fed Candy
With corn nearly $9 a bushel due to the drought, Nick Smith, the co-owner of United Livestock Commodities in Kentucky, said his farm had to come up with a cheaper way to feed his cattle. The remedy? A concoction of candy rejected for human consumption, an ethanol byproduct and a mineral nutrient.
Joseph Watson, also a co-owner of the farm, said, "Just to be able to survive, we have to look for other sources of nutrition."
Watson claims the cows seem to be doing okay. But since cows are designed to eat grass — not corn, and certainly not an expired candy and ethanol mixture — the sweet mixture probably won’t be promising. And there are human side-effects, too: cows that don’t eat grass are more prone to developing E. coli, which can infect various types of food we eat.
Just this past week, a produce supplier in California recalled its romaine lettuce in fear of possible E.coli contamination. So vegetarians, don’t think we’re in the clear. Nobody is safe from these terrible climate change consequences that are affecting people -- and animals -- worldwide.
Thu, 08/23/2012 - 14:32
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Remember Carole Morison from the documentary “Food, Inc.“? She was the chicken farmer under contract with Perdue, the country’s third largest chicken processor, who offered a rare look at what an industrial chicken farm looks like. The chickens barely had room to move, and many died daily due to the conditions and their accelerated breeding. She was tired of it — by agreeing to take part in the film, Morison put her livelihood in jeopardy. Perdue terminated her contract in 2008 after she refused to entirely enclose her chicken houses.
Her eyes were opened to the truth and she now uses sustainable farming methods and has never been so happy and content!
Barnet Civil and Family Court Centre on Regents Park Road, Finchley. It is a civil and family courts centre. The building’s address is St Mary’s Court, and the photographer believes that there used to be a school of the same name on this site. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A move has been a foot for many a year whereby successive governments have tried to find a family friendly way to deal more effectively, with family disputes over children! Some cases have dragged out over many weeks and months and of course costs have spiraled out of control. So sooner rather than later something had to be done.
The news today provided an insight to the new system and its implementation and l have added an extract or flavour of what has been published! Extract of published proposal:- Proposals to change the culture of family courts and speed up cases in England and Wales have been published. The plans include a single family court run by judges and magistrates to replace the current system where judges sit in multiple court buildings. Family courts often deal with child custody cases following divorce or separation. The “time-wasting” use of expert witnesses is to be cut substantially. There will be a time limit of 26 weeks for all but exceptional cases involving children’s futures. Last spring, the average case took 57 weeks, falling to 51 weeks in the last quarter. The Mail hopes that the issue of secrecy in family courts is addressed: “But would it be asking too much if he might address the veil of secrecy that hangs over family courts – all the more worrying, since the numbers of children in care have surged by 10,000 to 30,000 since the horrifying Baby P case in 2008? Yes, children’s identities must be protected. But transparency and publicity are always the strongest shields against miscarriages of justice.” My Views:-
The fact that we are looking at reducing time taken to process these cases seems on the face of it, an excellent way but by cutting the time in these types of cases, leads to problems! The wasted time as it has been called provides the judges with a broader picture of certain cases,as a number of key facts, do not always come to light until late into the case! This golden opportunity would be lost and mistakes on custody of vulnerable children, may well be awarded to the wrong person. This may lead to further court cases, causing further trauma for both the child and the other parties concerned.We are not simply dealing with cases of theft or even a simple divorce [ Not that these cannot be long drawn out] but in these cases a young, vulnerable child!
The second point is the issue relating to secrecy and to numbers of children in care, is it not better that a child is put into care, either short-term or long if the welfare of that child is threatened. Let us be honest with ourselves at this point, do we not live in a precarious world of bad if not in some cases evil people. Who prey on these types of children as a vent for some twisted ideas, laid upon them by their parents or lack of good parental control! When l was young we called this ” falling in with the wrong crowd” well it has got worst not better! So some veil of secrecy must be up held as protection against these types of people and much worse using cases like this to further their own ends! We all know how much money can be made with a good story, some unscrupulous journalists hang onto a story like a ” dog with a bone ” holding on to every bit of it, just to make their facts fit a story!
Finally and the reason for my heading for this story and what is behind it all! Whenever changes to policies in government take place they have a monetary aspect, as l said by the fact cases drag out over many months! The related costs of ” legal aid” can run into hundreds of thousands of pounds and it all has to be paid for by the good old taxpayer! Well in these austere days for some, our politicians can make us feel better with words like, WE CARE, WE WANT TO HELP and my favourite WE WANT TO SAVE THE TAXPAYER MONEY! So by proposing SWEEPING changes and a DRASTIC overhaul they will be able to save money, for WHO and at WHAT COST!
This could lead to SWEEPING AWAY THE LEGAL AID SYSTEM so if you can pay and remember the costs for private legal services are much higher for the legal eagles. Then with no system of help for the less well off, we will see a lot more miscarriages of justice in this country.
So l for one look for many more of these ” Sweeping Changes and Drastic Overhauls ” and will report as l see them occurring!
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English: Three “Layers” Of Creative Commons Licenses Русский: Трия “слоя” лицензий Creative Commons (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Creative Commons (Photo credit: jorgeandresem)
New Creative Commons License Chooser – Creative Commons
Latest news just made available for the changes to improve creative commons licenses and make it easier to understand.
Creative Commons is proud to announce the launch of our new license chooser tool. The license chooser has been completely redesigned for greater clarity and ease of use. While the original license chooser was successful at simplifying the act of selecting a license and applying it to one’s work, its linear workflow resembled a registration process. Furthermore, as the tool had been extended numerous times, its interface became more and more cluttered. While the redesign is a total user interface overhaul, feature-wise there isn’t anything new that wasn’t already somewhere in the license engine. This may come as a surprise to many users familiar with the old tool. New Creative Commons License Chooser – Creative Commons.
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Thank you Ian {Editor}
This was a snippet of news picked up just a while ago, that interested me as to the ramifications! It seems that this was a joint decision by the coalition on the surface of it, but the full article on the this story, reveals a lot more!
Anyway here is the extract firstly courtesy of the IFS and Paul Johnson: The Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned that poor families are set to have their council tax benefits cut due to the Coalition telling councils to cut their benefit bills by 10%. IFS chief Paul Johnson said: “They could decide to take 10% off the current cost of council tax benefit, which means some council tax recipients will be worse off. It’s quite hard to do this without affecting those who receive 100% council tax benefit – the very poorest.” Labour peer Baroness Hollis said the proposals were “deeply unfair”. Under the present situation these rules apply and provide these guidelines: Council Tax Benefit: key facts about the current system
Council Tax Benefit (CTB) provides means-tested help to people on a low income who have to pay Council Tax. For working age people there is a limit on savings of £16,000. If you claim means-tested out-of-work benefits (Income Support, Jobseeker’s Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance) you generally receive full assistance, so that you do not pay Council Tax at all. If you are in work or have other income you can still receive CTB but are likely to get less than the full amount, so that your Council Tax bill will be reduced but not eliminated. A more generous system applies to pensioners. If you claim Pension Credit (guarantee element) there is no limit on the amount of savings you can have and you will normally not pay Council Tax at all. Pensioners with higher incomes can also qualify, even if they do not get Pension Credit, and depending on their circumstances can qualify with an income of £400 a week or more. Around 60% of pensioners are entitled to CTB, though many fail to claim.
Under the new system whereby the amount of benefit is cut by 10% these rules would be drastically amended: The government’s reform proposals: The government’s consultation paper makes the following proposals:
Help with Council Tax will be a local authority responsibility and will not become part of Universal Credit (as DWP and some commentators have urged)
The amount provided to local authorities for the new system will be 10% less than current spending on CTB
Support for pensioners will not be affected by this cut in spending and will remain at existing levels with existing rules
Local authorities will be free to establish whatever rules they choose for their schemes for working age people (and will administer the scheme for pensioners using national rules)
Central government will provide a fixed amount of money to local authorities to operate their new schemes. Unlike current arrangements, this central government grant will not be ring-fenced and will not vary according to demand
New local schemes to provide help with paying Council Tax must be in place by April 2013
The consultation paper only directly affects England and separate proposals are likely to be made in Wales and Scotland. However, the 10% spending reduction affects all parts of Great Britain and in the analysis below and in the Annex it is assumed that Wales and Scotland follow suit in protecting the position of pensioners. Impact of the expenditure cut:
When the new system of local support for Council Tax is introduced in April 2013 the amount provided to local authorities will be reduced by 10% relative to current expenditure on CTB, saving around £480 million a year. However, characterising this as a 10% cut is disingenuous, as pensioners are in effect excluded from the new system. In terms of the population of working age claimants, who are the only ones that can be affected by new rules, the cut is much larger than 10%.
The national picture is shown in the table below. It shows the kinds of people who are currently claiming CTB and how this relates to the savings target of £480 million. Working age people are divided into those who are receiving full CTB, almost all of whom will be claiming claim means-tested out-of-work benefits (Income Support, Jobseeker’s Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance), low earners who are receiving some CTB but have to pay some Council Tax themselves, and other people who are receiving some CTB but are not in work. Options for meeting the savings target: ‘equal pain’
As shown by the analysis above, local authorities have to make very large savings from working age claimants to meet the government’s savings target. One approach to this would be to impose an ‘equal pain’ rule and reduce all benefit payments by the same proportion (19% on average nationally). However, for those claimants currently getting full CTB this would mean starting to collect Council Tax from a group who currently pay nothing. Moreover, the reason they do not pay anything at the moment is because they qualify for means-tested benefits like Income Support, where by definition the amount of money they have to live on is at ‘safety net’ levels.
Local authorities have some experience of the difficulty of extracting small amounts of money from people living in poverty. The ill-fated Community Charge (or ‘Poll Tax’) of the early 1990s imposed a minimum 20% charge on all citizens, whatever their income or status, so that local authorities had to trace and collect money from everyone living in their locality. While the property base for Council Tax will make the task somewhat easier, that experience shows the difficulty with moving away from full rebates for the poorest. Administering the system is likely to be expensive, with many of the 2 million people now expected to pay likely to opt for weekly or monthly payments, and there is always the possibility of mass non-compliance, as occurred with the Poll Tax.
It may therefore make more sense to look at completely removing entitlement to help with Council Tax from some groups. As well as helping with the administrative problems outlined above, this approach has two advantages. First, it means that particularly vulnerable groups, such as people with disabilities or children, can be protected from the cuts. Second, it is the most effective way of increasing work incentives for particular groups, as it will make them poorer when unemployed and no worse-off when in employment. Options for meeting the sales target – removing entitlement for some groups!
There are a number of groups who might be candidates for removing from entitlement altogether. For instance, one possibility would be to restrict eligibility for support to tenants, so that owner occupiers were expected to pay the full amount of Council Tax whatever their circumstances. In terms of collection it might be possible to treat unpaid Council Tax as a charge against the value of the property, so that people who could not pay would effectively find arrears added to their mortgage. And low earning owner-occupiers are one of the main groups to benefit from Universal Credit, enjoying help with mortgage payments where none is available currently, creating a further reason for treating this group less favourably. Around 1.5 million CTB claimants are owner-occupiers, and though the majority of these are likely to be pensioners it is likely that removing entitlement from this group would be just about sufficient to meet the savings target.
However, a criterion based on tenure-type would necessarily affect claimants with children or disabilities, two groups who local authorities would hope to protect (and, in the former case, which they have a statutory duty to protect under child poverty legislation). A more attractive route might therefore be to remove from Council Tax support all working age people who do not meet certain criteria, such as having dependent children, living in a household where someone is disabled, being pregnant or a full-time carer. Such conditions would largely mirror the conditions for claiming Income Support and Employment and Support Allowance, so that in effect claimants of Jobseeker’s Allowance would be excluded from the scheme. Nationally around 600,000 people receive full CTB because they are claiming income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance, though around 20% of these have dependent children. Subtracting claimants with children, the likely saving nationally from removing Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants would be around £420 million, and once savings on working non-disabled childless people are included it is likely that the saving target would be met. The harshness of such an approach cannot be denied. A single unemployed person without children or disabilities currently receives £67.50 a week to live on, and forcing them to pay Council Tax would reduce this to closer to £50 a week. It is difficult to see how they will make ends meet, and collection of Council Tax from this group is likely to be a severe problem. Nevertheless, maintaining support for people with children or disabilities, and avoiding the potential administrative nightmare of imposing ‘equal pain’, will necessarily involve making difficult choices such as this!
Ed says! What is your opinion on Climate Change and Global Warming? email your News and Views to me at Ace News Desk or tweet this post and article at #AceNewsServices
All the posts are provided by me and any comments l provide are my own view of the markets and are not the views of the article writer and or news provider.
So to blog or not to blog, that is the question I asked myself nearly 18 months ago! Should I, shouldn’t I?
My life had drastically changed over the previous year, long term illness had seen to that. I went from being a professional Qualified Driving Instructor running my own business into the land of the ‘non-working’ (and NOT through choice!).
I had loved my job, it was fun, enjoyable and different every day. I was seen as a professional, not just someone’s mum or wife. Don’t get me wrong I love being both of those and it’s what my blog is based around, however, that’s not what I want to be defined as – I am more than that. I have a brain, ideas, I am creative and my mind is always on the go. I am my own person.
But let’s face it life is never simple, it likes to throw the odd curveball at you just to see what your made of. So, after being diagnosed with M.E / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (you know- that 80’s ‘Yuppie Flu’ thing...YES it’s real people, I can vouch for that!) my whole lifestyle changed. I could no longer physically work. I could no longer earn money and contribute financially. I had to rely on and become dependent on others.
This as you can imagine did not go down very well. My mind was still whirring. I needed desperately to keep my brain engaged and active and be something other than just the ‘ill me’, even if it was just in the virtual world. That’s when I took the plunge and started a blog. I had a lot to say and share, although to be honest I never really thought anyone would actually want to read it! But I blogged for me, my sanity and to put down in black and white what was going through my head.
My blog name was, and still is, perfect for me- I was (and still am) a Mum in Meltdown. I don’t necessarily feel the need to post daily, I will post when I have something to share or just get off my chest. I have since added a page for my M.E journey in the hope of raising more awareness of this ‘invisible ‘ illness that I, and thousands of others, live with every day( my symptoms are real people…….REAL). I have also added a craft page documenting my return to the knitting craft after many years, with the hope of improving, learning and hopefully selling in the near future (see I told you I had a creative side!)
I have also become totally obsessed engaged with the social networking side of blogging. Twitter and Facebook are fab for information, gossip and a good old virtual chat! Now I know that sounds a bit sad to some of you- but hey, some days that can be all I’m physically capable of, so each to their own and all that.
I see no sign of me giving up my blog anytime soon. I don’t earn from it (YET!!! But wouldn’t that be nice) but it documents my life and state of mind at the time. Even if no one were to read it I would still feel better in myself having written it all down and cleared it from my head.
I love what I get from it…………………………………….MY SANITY!
I BLOG THEREFORE I AM!
So in the virtual words of good old twittersphere #thatisall
One of the deadliest diseases in history by sheer loss of life, smallpox was the target of a concerted, worldwide eradication campaign in the 20th century, and it became the first disease to have been successfully wiped out. Efforts focused on vaccination and quickly responding to and curtailing outbreaks. The last person to die from smallpox caught it at a laboratory, where samples of the now-vanquished disease remain. Who is the last person known to have contracted it in the wild? Discuss
