US President Ignores
by Laurie David
"Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway"
by Carole Bayer Sager
hey! that's what this blog is all about!
sierra club's pat joseph interviews al gore
••can ye pass the acid test?•• ye who enter here be afraid, but do what ye must -- to defeat your fear ye must defy it. time bomb tick tock? nervous tic talk? war on war?
The American Dream Survey of non-supervisory workers conducted by Lake Research Partners shows that the American Dream is as powerful a concept today as it has ever been. America’s workers say the American Dream is not about getting rich or hitting the lottery—it is about achieving the basics of middle-class comfort and security: a good job, owning a home, a secure retirement, quality and affordable health care, and a better life for their children. However, on Labor Day 2006, in the midst of record corporate profits and a purported economic recovery, America’s workers feel the American Dream slipping away. In an America politically polarized into red and blue states, the American working middle class is remarkably united in its view of the American Dream.lines that stood out for me in the press release:
A majority of these working- and middle-class Americans do not feel they have obtained the American Dream, though most still believe it is obtainable. In this survey, they tell us that stagnant wages, skyrocketing health care, a rising cost of living and rising debt are putting the American Dream at risk. In a stunning change from past generations, and perhaps for the first time in our nation’s history, a majority do not believe the next generation of Americans will be better off than the current generation.
Whatever the business pages say, workers tell us they are facing tough times in America. Working Americans, though resilient, feel pessimistic about the direction of the country and the economy. They worry that not only their own opportunities, but those of their children, are stagnating or declining. Driving their bleak view of the future are workers’ experience of wages not keeping up with the cost of living, the fact that many must incur debt to pay for basic necessities like food and utilities, and that most are feeling forced to postpone retirement to an older age than they had expected.
These survey results are not only a portrait of stagnation, frustration, and worry, they also represent a call to action. Working Americans believe the American Dream is still attainable and that our country can and should do better. Across partisan and demographic lines, workers believe they can make things better if they become more politically active. Workers believe overwhelmingly in the right to unionize without fear of reprisal, and over two thirds believe joining a union would make things better for working people. In 2006, America’s workers are ready for change and are ready to participate in making that change happen.
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more than eight out of ten non-supervisory workers in America say that that no matter what you hear about the economy, working families are falling behind.and
On the issue worrying most workers, health care, they feel strongly (61%)—and 82% overall agree—that America cannot rely on the marketplace for health insurance; government has a responsibility to make sure Americans have health insurance.
Poverty Levels Stabilize; a First in 5 Years
Census Shows Rise in Nation's Poorest
those last 2 sound contradictory, but they're not. overall poverty actually declined by 90k people (which isn't considered a statistically significant drop), but the number living at less than half the poverty level grew by 300k.
so the poor got poorer. (and, of course, the rich got richer. ralph nader would say poor got poorer because rich got richer.)
THIS IS THE STORY OF THE HURRICANE
It was almost a year ago that the Gulf Coast suffered through the double-blow of Hurricane Katrina, and then the influx of every TV journalist on the planet, the latter crisis leading to dangerously high levels of hairspray.
To commemorate the event, the White House has announced that next week President Bush will mark the one-year anniversary of Katrina with a visit to the Gulf Coast. The trip will include an overnight stay in New Orleans, where Bush is expected to honor several hurricane survivors gone wild with the prestigious "Beads of Freedom."
Sen. Clinton: It strikes me as a little odd that we would deploy a system that hasn't succeeded and expect that to serve a deterrent value.
Sec. Rumsfeld: If you didn't do anything until you could do everything, you probably wouldn't do anything.
Defending Rumsfeld, Novak cherry-picked from Sen. Clinton's list of past "rosy picture" statements
If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts thru it will blow up everything in its way.
—Emile Zola, J'Accuse
Find the cost of freedom buried in the ground
Mother Earth will swallow you, lay your body down
—Stephen Stills
Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honor's at the stake.
—Shakespeare, Hamlet, act IV: scene 4
(i sometimes wonder if that quote sums up g w bush's philosophy. it's wrong, of course: hamlet was brilliant but haunted, so he made errors of judgment.)
You are a Social Justice Crusader, also known as a rights activist. You believe in equality, fairness, and preventing neo-Confederate conservative troglodytes from rolling back fifty years of civil rights gains.
Take the quiz at
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