Free Republic

Santa Rosa resident Nancy Roberts lived in England for five years in the 1970s and got her master's degree there. She wrote this note in the wake of a recent Chronicle article and SFGate blog posting about the underemployment rate -- a measurement that adds people forced to work part-time and discouraged job-seekers to the unemployed. California's unemployment rate is 12.2 percent. Its underemployment rate is 21.9 percent. -- Tom Abate Thank you for raising this question, which has been much on my mind. Here's the situation for some of my American friends. (Their names have been changed.) -- Todd:...

I am haunted by the specter of the people on that overpass during hurricane Katrina. They stood there and waited for help. It never occurred to them to help themselves by walking north. When no help was forthcoming, they began to chant, “We want help. We want help. We want help.” It was very clear to ME that they perceived that the way to get help was to “demonstrate” and demand it—to create a disturbance until someone took notice of them and helped them so they would be silent. It was so similar to a child throwing a tantrum that...

Money funds, once considered a safe place to park cash, could become moderately risky again when the government program hastily initiated last year to guarantee money fund deposits expires on Sept. 18. In 2008 the colossal Reserve Primary Fund, with $62.5 billion in its portfolio "broke the buck" when Lehman Brothers defaulted on $785 million in bonds which the fund held. Investor redemptions skyrocketed. This prompted then Treasury secretary Henry Paulson's unprecedented intervention to protect all money market assets, approximately $3.5 trillion, and thus avert a panic, writes Joe Nocera in The New York Times. "Here we are a year...

Judge Says Those Duped Need Aid Under The Securites Investor Protection Act ― Federal investigators remain at the investment offices of disgraced investor Bernard Madoff, scouring through records to learn the scope of what may be the biggest Ponzi scheme ever in the United States. The numbers are staggering, the losses far-reaching, but help may be on the way for investors thanks to an order for protection from a federal judge. The scheme was operated out of the so-called "Lipstick Building" on Third Avenue. Bernard Madoff Investment Securities LLC occupies three floors and may have bilked investors of $50 billion....

The US government has tweaked its terminology in referring to the nearly 11 million Americans who face a constant struggle with hunger to refer to them as people with "very low food security." According to a report released this month by the US Department of Agriculture, roughly 35 million Americans had difficulty feeding themselves in 2005 and of those some 10.8 million went hungry. But unlike last year's report on hunger in America, which labeled families who don't get enough to eat as having "food insecurity with hunger," this year's report referred to them as having "very low food security."...

It was a carefully staged Norman Rockwell scene. The street was lined with American flags; a high school band played "God Bless America." Then, under the watchful gaze of Wal-Mart's chief operating officer, Maryland's governor vetoed a bill that would have obliged large businesses to spend more on employee health care. The news here isn't that some politicians wrap their deference to corporate interests in the flag. The news, instead, is that Maryland's State Legislature passed a pro-worker bill in the first place. In fact, the bill passed by a veto-proof majority in the Maryland Senate, and fell just short...

<p>PRESIDENT Bush's plan for Medicaid represents a fundamental change in the philosophy behind the health care program for poor and disabled Americans.</p> <p>It's a change California's congressional delegation should resist.</p> <p>Here's the current philosophy: The federal government will match the money states pay for health services to poor children and disabled adults. All states offer a basic level of services; if they offer more, the feds will match those dollars, too. Wealthier states like California receive roughly one federal dollar for every state dollar; poorer states like Mississippi receive more than $3.</p>