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Critics of the lottery call it nothing more than a scam that sells hopes and dreams to the poor. Is this true? Does the lottery target the poor? See for yourself here in this installation of "Geeks on Caffeine." Note: The author requests that you visit his web site and refrain from pasting the cartoon within the thread. Thanks!

New Yorkers feel the pinch, call for tax on richMore than three-quarters of New Yorkers say they are feeling the pinch from pricey food and gas prices, and 80% were in favor of a so-called "millionaire's tax," according to recent polls. Elisabeth Butler Cordova August 06. 2008 3:13PM The deteriorating economy continues to weigh heavily on New Yorkers’ minds, according to two polls released Wednesday. With a remarkable one-month increase of 9%, 81% of New York residents say they are feeling the effects of rising food prices, according to a new Siena Research Institute survey. About 78% of New Yorkers...

I just found this website: http://www.kiva.org/ The company screens entrepreneurs in developing areas who are looking for microloans, then posts their loan applications online. Anyone who wants to can lend them money in increment as small as $25. For instance, if a potato farmer in Peru loses their seed crop to blight, they can apply for the loan needed to buy new seed to restart their farm. Microloans have gotten a lot of attention from lending institutions because, even though it involves lending to people who seem high-risk, the default rates have turned out to be very low. Kiva's default...

Groups say they will sue over polar bears, drillingBy DAN JOLING Associated Press Writer Posted on Mon, Jun. 09, 2008 ANCHORAGE, Alaska --Two conservation groups plan to sue to protect polar bears from petroleum exploration and drilling off Alaska's coast. The Center for Biological Diversity and Pacific Environment gave the federal government formal notice Monday that they will sue under the Endangered Species Act to protect the bears, which were listed as threatened last month by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne. Polar bears are threatened - likely to become endangered - because their sea ice habitat has melted dramatically and computer...

Mexico's Poor Seek Relief From Tortilla ShortageLorne Matalon in Reynosa, Mexico for National Geographic NewsJune 4, 2008 During a protest in México City in January 2008, 28-year-old secretary Anibel Ordonez was one of many chanting "Tortillas si, Pan no!" while waving some of the flat corn disks in the air. The chant was a play on the initials of Mexican President Felipe Calderón's National Action Party, the PAN, which also means "bread" in Spanish. It was also a potent reminder of the effects of skyrocketing food prices on Mexico's poorest citizens. Tortillas are filling—Mexicans eat up to ten every day—but...

Poor, white and exploited I keep thinking I should be mad at West Virginia. Not because Barack Obama was recently beaten like a redheaded stepchild — to use my father's expression — in that state's primary. No, I'm thinking I should be upset about "why" he was beaten. According to exit polls, two out of every 10 voters said race was a major factor in how they cast their ballots. Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" ran a clip of a white woman who explained her refusal to vote for Obama thusly: "I guess because he is another race. I'm...

The general election is about to unfold and we’ll soon see how smart or how foolish Americans really are. The U.S. may be the richest country on earth, but the economy is tanking, its working families are in trouble, it is bogged down in a multitrillion-dollar war of its own making and the price of gasoline has nitwits siphoning supplies from the cars and trucks of strangers. Four of every five Americans want the country to move in a different direction, which makes this presidential election, potentially, one of the most pivotal since World War II. And yet there’s growing...

‘Tax Cuts for the Rich’ Dangerous Rhetoric Thomas C. Patterson, Goldwater Institute Daily Email, April 29, 2008 The presidential candidates are promising some pretty pricey stuff. But you and I aren't going to have to pay for it. No, the free health care, free college, subsidized mortgages, and other goodies can be paid for by repealing President Bush's “tax cuts for the rich.” But here's the problem. There were no Bush tax cuts for the rich. The rates were cut, but the rich pay more taxes than ever. The top 1 percent of earners now pay 36.9 percent of all...

WASHINGTON, March 16, 2008 – Information gleaned from 48 foreign fighters detained in Iraq offers insight into al Qaeda’s methods, a Multinational Force Iraq spokesman told reporters during a briefing today in Baghdad. “The foreign detainees told similar stories about what happened to them once they were smuggled into Iraq,” said Navy Rear Adm. Greg Smith, director of Multinational Force Iraq’s communication division. “These 48 men told us they were lured here with the promise they would be killing Americans … but they were disappointed that most of the violence they saw was directed at the Iraqi people … fellow...

CHIBA, Japan - China, India and other developing nations must join industrialized countries in reducing greenhouse gas emissions if the world is to avert a global warming disaster, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said at a climate change conference Saturday. An agreement to succeed the Kyoto global warming pact that expires at the end of 2012 will have to find a way to include developing nations, while allowing them to grow their economies, Blair told the meeting of 20 nations. "The dilemma is this: how to cut a deal that has both the developed and developing in it, recognizing...

China's Richest Ask For A Tax Break Shu-Ching Jean Chen, 03.04.08, 2:41 AM ET HONG KONG - No issue evokes more emotion in China than the widening gap between rich and poor. Zhang Yin, China's richest woman, touched a raw nerve on Monday when she effectively asked China's parliament for a tax break. At the opening session of the yearly meeting of the National People's Congress, the plain-talking female founder of Asia’s largest containerboard manufacturer, Nine Dragons, called for a reduction of the income tax rate for the country's top earners--those making a monthly salary of more than 100,000 yuan...

A few days ago, there was an article about how Chavez was going to give oil to the poor in the US. An article had the following quote: Those who claim to be truly concerned about morality should join us in asking Big Oil to share some of its bounty and calling on our government to fully fund the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program....JOSEPH P. KENNEDY II, President, CEO and founder, Citizens Energy Corp., Washington I resonded with: [Quote from article:]If there's something wrong with poor Americans receiving less than one-half of 1 percent of the 500 million barrels...

Most people would respond to the birth of a child with a hearty Mazel Tov! or a cigar. The Associated Press, here through the Los Angeles Times, decides to wear sackcloth and ashes. A baby boomlet in the United States -- which merely returned us briefly to viability -- gets blamed on a lack of abortions, poverty, and stupidity: The nearly 4.3 million births in 2006 were mostly due to a bigger population, especially a growing number of Latinos. That group accounted for nearly one-quarter of all U.S. births. But non-Latino white women and other racial and ethnic groups were...

One out of three school-age children in Milwaukee, WI lived with a family in poverty in 2005, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released Wednesday. Milwaukee ranked sixth highest overall among the nation's 70 largest school districts; only Cleveland, New Orleans, Detroit, Fresno, Calif., and St. Louis had higher percentages of children living with families in poverty.Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said creating jobs, resolving school-funding issues, getting more fathers involved in raising their children and getting kids to stay in school are key elements in reversing poverty's grip on the city. "I literally go into classrooms and say, 'I'm Tom...

(YANGMIAO, China) — When she gets sick, Li Enlan, 78, picks herbs from the woods that grow nearby instead of buying modern medicines. That is not a result of some philosophical choice, though. She has never seen a doctor and, like many residents of this area, lives in a meager barter economy, seldom coming into contact with cash. “We eat somehow, but it’s never enough,” Ms. Li said. “At least we’re not starving.” In this region of southern Henan Province, in village after village, people are too poor to heat their homes in the winter and many lack basic comforts...

CEDAR RAPIDS - Iowa grew poorer over the first five years of the decade, a trend that's more dramatic in some areas and includes middle-class incomes. "It just emphasizes that the recovery has not trickled down to the average person in Iowa," said Peter Fisher, research director for the Iowa Policy Project in Iowa City. "It's a recovery in terms of GDP (gross domestic product) and corporate profits, but it's not in terms of wages and jobs we've lost." According to statistics released Wednesday by the U.S. Census Bureau, 308,713 Iowans were in poverty in 2005, a jump of 30...

At a time when some voters are asking how the religious views of candidates will shape their policies, a professor’s discovery of how little tax the biggest landowners in her state paid to finance the government has prompted some other legal scholars to scour religious texts to explore the moral basis of tax and spending policies. The professor, Susan Pace Hamill, is an expert at tax avoidance for small businesses and teaches at the University of Alabama Law School. She also holds a degree in divinity from a conservative evangelical seminary, where her master’s thesis explored how Alabama’s tax-and-spend policies...

Laugh all you want at George Lakoff’s advice for the Democrats to win by framing the debate and altering the vocabulary. Language is a key battleground in culture wars, and as soon as you step into your opponent’s frame of reference and start identifying bad weather as climate change, illiteracy as public education, and freedom as desperate need of care and supervision, you may lose not just the debate but the war, the culture, and your very way of life. A recent humorous discussion about PeopleSpeak™ at the People’s Cube prompted me to take a more serious look (to the...

There are more losers in post-apartheid South Africa The number of South Africans living on less than $1 a day has more than doubled in a decade since shortly after the end of apartheid. The South African Institute of Race Relations survey said 4.2m people were living on $1 a day in 2005. This is up from 1.9m in 1996, two years after the first all-race elections. "Poverty has increased both in absolute numbers and proportionally," SAIRR said in a statement, blaming the rise on unemployment and HIV/Aids. Despite good economic growth in recent years, unemployment has remained consistently...

JALALABAD AIRFIELD, Afghanistan, Nov. 2, 2007 – A new partnership between U.S. and Afghan doctors here is helping the Afghan physicians do a better job of treating their own citizens. Army Spc. Amy Long, an x-ray technician with Company C, Brigade Support Battalion, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, prepares to screen an Afghan man Oct. 8, 2007, at a forward operating base near the northeastern Afghan city of Jalalabad. At right, another local man sits on a litter waiting for an assessment at the 555th Forward Surgical Team clinic. Photos by Spc. Gregory J. Argentieri, USA  (Click photo for screen-resolution...

Do people on the dole have a reasonable expectation of privacy vis-à-vis their financial affairs? No. That question, though not always my answer, is coming up frequently as defenders of the Democratic Party's $35 billion SCHIP expansion proposal condemn bloggers and talk show hosts, including Rush Limbaugh, who have examined the statement penned by aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and delivered as the official Democratic Party rebuttal to President Bush's weekly radio address by 12-year-old Graeme Frost, that the State Childrens Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is for "families like mine." The questioners' question: If Graeme Frost's family isn't...

LA PAZ, Bolivia - Vilified by world leaders wary of his nuclear ambitions, Iran's president is turning to South American leftists who are embracing him as an energy and trade partner and counterweight to U.S. influence. On the heels of a U.N. General Assembly appearance in which he said Iran will ignore demands by "arrogant powers" to curb its nuclear program, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was headed to Bolivia on Thursday to establish first-time diplomatic relations with the Andean nation.

Our house in Havana was on 1st Avenue at the corner of 30th Street. It was in the suburb of Havana called Miramar. The house was 110 yards from the Gulf of Mexico - I measured it. We were the only Americans in the neighborhood; all of our neighbors were Cuban. These folks for the most part were very friendly, but very poor. A half century of Castro's communism has reduced these once-proud people to a nation of beggars. I can't tell you how many times I was stopped in the street and have my neighbors plead for me to...

Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation is a national authority on poverty and the U.S. welfare system. Specializing in welfare reform and family breakdown, Rector has done extensive research on the economic and social costs of welfare. Q: John Edwards and others lament that 37 million Americans struggle with incredible poverty every day. You say it is not so simple or accurate to think of them as truly poor. What do you mean? A: Well, when John Edwards says that one in eight Americans do not have enough money for food, shelter or clothing, that’s generally what the average citizen...

A Wall Street Trader Draws Some Subprime Lessons: Michael Lewis Bloomberg can not be posted here. Full commentary here

RUSH: This ought to disqualify the Breck Girl.  His whole campaign is based on wiping out poverty.  Listen to this lead from the AP, which is unusual.  "Five years into a national economic recovery, the share of Americans living in poverty finally dropped."  Now, they had to put the word "finally" in there.  "The nation's poverty rate was 12.3% in 2006, which was down from 12.6% a year before, according to the Census Bureau.  Median household income increased slightly to $48,200 per year."  Median, that means as many above it as there are below it.  It's not the average.  ...

Poverty is an important and emotional issue. Last year, the Census Bureau released its annual report on poverty in the United States declaring that there were 37 million poor persons living in this country in 2005, roughly the same number as in the preceding years.[4] According to the Census report, 12.6 percent of Amer­icans were poor in 2005; this number has varied from 11.3 percent to 15.1 percent of the population over the past 20 years.[5]To understand poverty in America, it is important to look behind these numbers—to look at the actual living conditions of the individuals the government...

The Census Bureau announced Tuesday that 36.5 million Americans are "poor." Presidential candidate John Edwards claims these 36.5 million Americans "do not have enough money for the food, shelter and clothing they need." According to Edwards, poverty is an appalling national "plague" forcing "one in eight of us" to live in "terrible" circumstances. But, if poverty means (as Edwards claims) a lack of nutritious food, adequate warm housing and clothing, then very few of the 36.5 million people identified as "poor" by Census are, in fact, poor.... According to the government's own data, the typical person defined as "poor" by...

UN official: Rich countries pay poor to cut CO2 By Paul Eccleston Last Updated: 1:01pm BST 22/08/2007 A top UN official has triggered a row by claiming rich countries should be allowed to buy their way out of cutting carbon emissions. Two men fish in a lake next to a copper-smelting plant in Chelyabinsk, Russia Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said developing countries could be paid to make the cuts. But environmental groups condemned the remarks and said the consequences of climate change could only be solved by all countries - both...

Without fanfare, Gov. Martin O'Malley signed executive orders this month giving collective bargaining rights to home health aides and child care workers whose pay is subsidized by the state, despite the General Assembly's rejection of those proposals. Both issues have been hotly debated in the General Assembly, and neither idea got a favorable committee vote this year. Collective bargaining for child care workers in particular pitted organized labor against some child advocacy organizations that argued that the proposal would make child care more expensive and put it out of the reach of low-income families. "The long and the short of...

So we are agreed. We are living in the second great Gilded Age, a time of startling personal wealth. In the West, the mansion after mansion with broad and rolling grounds; in the East, the apartments with foyers in which bowling teams could play. Or, on another level, the week's vacation in Disneyland or Dublin with the entire family--this in a nation in which, well within human memory, people with a week off stayed home and fixed things in the garage, or drove to the beach for a day and sat on a blanket from one of the kid's beds...

20 million of Russians do not have enough money to buy even the cheapest ticket for a standard train. Russian Railways offer a salvation of the problem – to launch low-comfort trains, with no air conditioning and one WC per train.

The Racist Arab Control also in... Haiti Just when you thought you know all about Arab racism, like; against Jews, against Africans such as in Sudan, Chad & in Egypt, against Asians residing in Saudi Arabia, against Kurds, etc. Haiti? nah, you wouldn't think... Well, We spoke lately to Haiti refugees, as you know, Haiti is the poorest country in that region, even poorer than neighbouring Dominican Republic. They explained it bluntly, greedy Arab business owners, mainly from Syria, CONTROL the entire country, and will NOT let any Haitian native have any opportunity in establishing a business. Their words, not...

Rioting could break out on Britain's streets because of anger at the widening gap between rich and poor, it has been claimed. Sir Ronald Cohen, himself one of the nation's richest men, warned that violence could flare if the chasm between the haves and have-nots was not closed. ... "You are too rich, you are making too much money and you are not paying enough tax."

NEW YORK — Poor residents will be rewarded for good behavior — like $300 for doing well on school tests, $150 for holding a job and $200 for visiting the doctor — under an experimental anti-poverty program that city officials detailed Monday. The rewards have been used in other countries, including Brazil and Mexico, and have drawn widespread praise for changing behavior among the poor. Mayor Michael Bloomberg traveled to Mexico this spring to study the healthy lifestyle payments, also known as conditional cash transfers. In New York, the two-year pilot program with about 14,000 participants will use private funds...

Retailers in the state's poorest areas sold about 50 percent more of the priciest Texas Lottery tickets than retailers in the state's wealthiest areas over the past year.That's according to a San Antonio Express-News analysis of Texas Lottery Commission records. Retailers in the state's 10 poorest ZIP codes sold more of the $10, $20, $25, $30 and $50 games than their counterparts in the 10 richest ZIP codes. Taken alone, the $50 tickets, which went on sale May 7, have sold faster in more affluent ZIP codes. But overall, per capita spending on the high-dollar tickets was $25 in the...

WASHINGTON - The Internal Revenue Service does a poor job in identifying tax-exempt groups that may have links to terrorists, according to a report released Friday. IRS investigators look at paper documents and use a limited terrorist watch list to pinpoint possible ties between charitable and other nonprofit groups and terrorists, said the office of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, which does independent oversight of the tax agency. As a result, it said, "There is a risk that these charities will not be reported to the federal government authorities fighting terrorism." Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (news,...

Today a teacher said that the rich are getting richer. I replied that it really doesn't matter how rich the rich get what really matters is everybody underneath. If the rich get richer yet the poor and middle classes wealth increases also, even though its at a slower pace than the only important stat is that the middle classes and poor got richer. I also told her that the rich doesnt effect me because it is me and the rest of the middle class that really drives prices overall because we are the ones that are doing the majority of...

Indiana Apologizes for Role in Eugenics Indiana's Health Commissioner Apologizes for State's Role in Developing Eugenics By KEN KUSMER The Associated Press INDIANAPOLIS April 13, 2007 (AP)— - Indiana sought to atone for its role in pioneering the state-authorized sterilization of "imbeciles," paupers and others it deemed undesirable, expressing regret for passing the first such law 100 years ago. Health Commissioner Dr. Judith Monroe said Thursday at a symposium at the Indiana State Library that Indiana needed to acknowledge and learn from its role in developing eugenics. "It is one that we do regret but we should not forget,"...

NEW YORK — Good behavior at school, regular trips to the doctor and job training all have long-term rewards — but soon city officials will be offering some residents a more immediate payoff for such accomplishments: cash. Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Thursday the details of a plan to pay some poor families up to $5,000 a year for making healthy choices. All but $8 million of the $50 million in private funds proposed for the program, which is set to start in September, has been raised, city officials said. Similar efforts have seen successful in countries including Brazil and Mexico,...

Forty-eight percent of Germans think the United States is more dangerous than Iran, a new survey shows, with only 31 percent believing the opposite. Germans' fundamental hypocrisy about the US suggests that it's high time for a new bout of re-education.The Germans have believed in many things in the course of their recent history. They've believed in colonies in Africa and in the Kaiser. They even believed in the Kaiser when he told them that there would be no more political parties, only soldiers on the front. Not too long afterwards, they believed that Jews should be placed into ghettos...

One expects the political left to point to income inequality as a defect of our capitalist system. But when President George W. Bush expresses alarm over a "growing income inequality gap" and urges corporations to rethink the compensation packages they offer to top executives, we would be wise to pay attention. In the past 15 years, incomes in each of the five quintiles (i.e., 20 percent shares of the population) tracked by the government rose in real, inflation-adjusted dollars. Incomes in the top quintile rose by slightly more than 20 percent. Incomes in the bottom quintile rose by 21 percent....

With Democrats in control of both Houses of Congress for the first time in twelve years, economic inequality is back on the agenda. In his response to the State of the Union address, new Virginia Senator James Webb began by contrasting how much those at the top of the average company earned with the amount earned by those at the bottom. Running for the Democratic Presidential nomination, John Edwards is returning to his 2004 theme of "two Americas." They are joined by liberal pundits such as Paul Krugman and Jonathan Chait, who between them accuse conservatives of "hatred" and of...

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - One in six Europeans lives below the national poverty line, while 10 percent of people live in households where there is nobody working, according to the European Commission's annual social inclusion report published on Monday (19 February). Conducted in 2004, the study showed that 16 percent of EU citizens lived under the poverty threshold which is defined as 60 percent of their country's median income. Key Account Manager The poverty statistics ranged from 9-10 percent in Sweden and the Czech Republic to 21 percent in Poland and Lithuania while in all countries except the Nordic states,...

Talk about creating a false dichotomy geared to discrediting a policy! The AP has generated a doosie in theirs titled "Rural America bears scars from Iraq war" and subtitled "Nearly half of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq came from a small town". Their main thrust is that small towns are somehow seeing their sons fall on the field of battle in "unfair" numbers. Across the nation, small towns are quietly bearing a disproportionate burden of war. Nearly half of the more than 3,100 U.S. military fatalities in Iraq have come from towns like McKeesport, where fewer than 25,000 people live,...

"A Kennedy!" The older ladies of Spofford Hills, a housing cooperative in the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx, are brandishing cameras, thrilled to see the son of Robert F. Kennedy outside their building on this radiantly sunny day just before Thanksgiving. It doesn't hurt that Joe Kennedy is also president of Citizens Energy, a nonprofit providing heating assistance to low-income Americans, and that he's here to make a fuel delivery to Spofford Hills. But the real star of the day--though absent--is someone even more famous: Hugo Chávez. Through Joe Kennedy's organization, the government of Venezuela--and Citgo, a petroleum...

THERE'S BEEN a lot of controversy lately over whether Citizens Energy Corp. should distribute -- and the poor should accept -- discount heating oil from Venezuela while that country is under the leadership of President Hugo Chávez. But those who have no problem staying warm at night should not condemn others for accepting Venezuela's oil. Rhetoric means little to an elderly woman who has to drag an old cot from her basement to sleep by the warmth of the open kitchen stove or give up food or medicine to pay her heating bill. For nearly 30 years, Citizens Energy has...

THE JUDEO-CHRISTIAN MESSAGE IS MORE CONSERVATIVE THAN YOU MIGHT BE AWARE OF http://dissectleft.blogspot.com/ This time of the year is an appropriate one to reflect on the Christian message so regard the comments below as the inside message of your Christmas card: Although I am an atheist, I grew up steeped in the New Testament so reading the Bible is for me like visiting an old friend. I do not however know the Old Testament as well as I should so I recently read right through the Book of Deuteronomy. Its main theme is avoidance of false gods and when I...

Apparently, conservatives care more about the poor and are more generous when giving to the poor. This shatters the age old myth that Liberals are more compassionate towards the poor. It also destroys the cornerstone of the Liberal argument. Republicans work harder, make more money, and donate more of their money to the poor. We also fight all the wars! God Bless America and all that is great about our country! Here is the article: SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks is about to become the darling of the religious right in America -- and it's making...

LONDON: The richest 2 percent of adults still own more than half of the world's household wealth, perpetuating a yawning global gap between rich and poor, according to research published Tuesday. The report from the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research shows that in 2000 the richest 1 percent of adults — most of whom live in Europe or the United States — owned 40 percent of global assets. The richest 10 percent of adults accounted for 85 percent of assets, according to the report from the institute, which is part of the United Nations University. By contrast, the...