National Poverty Crisis?

With the 2006 Census Bureau “Income, Poverty, and Heath Insurance” report coming out this month many people are up in arms about the number of people living in this country that are considered to be at or under the poverty threshold. The poverty threshold is listed at $10,210 for a single person and $13,690 for a two-person household. In 2006, 36.5 million people lived under the poverty threshold. Sounds like alarming numbers.

Of that 36.5 million people in poverty, 12.8 million were children under the age of 18. Children represent 35.2 percent of people living in poverty and 24.9 percent of the total population. If you take a look at the total population of children it is also notable that 42.1 percent of children living in single parent homes are living in poverty while only 8.1 percent of children who’s parents are married live in poverty. Those numbers vary significantly when you look at children under the age of 6 in which 52.7 percent of children under 6 living in poverty are born to single mothers, that is over 5 times the rate of married couple families who have children under the age of 6 living in poverty. With fewer people getting married each year the number of children born out of wedlock is rising drastically. Last year 37 percent of children born were born out of wedlock. If poor mothers married the fathers of their children 75 percent of children would be lifted out of poverty.

The report also breaks down the poverty and income levels based on race and nativity. The median income for a native born citizen in 2006 was $49,074. Surprisingly, the median income for naturalized citizens, foreign born but took the proper steps to become a citizen, is above that of native-born citizens. The average naturalized citizen makes approximately $51,440 a year. This should be good motivation for all the illegal immigrants to take the steps and become citizens. The number of Whites, Blacks and Asians, living in poverty remained the same from 2005 to 2006 while the number of Hispanics living in poverty decreased from 21.6 percent to 20.6 percent. The number of non-Hispanic Whites living in poverty in 2006 was 8.2 percent, accounting for 43.9 percent of the total population in poverty. The poverty rate for Blacks in 2006 was 24.3 percent and the rate of Asians living in poverty was 10.3 percent. It is notable that Blacks see the fewest number of marriages with in their race and the highest number of out-of-wedlock childbirths, which significantly increases their own poverty rate.

Based on this report it seems that many people living in this country must be suffering intolerable conditions. When most people think of persons in poverty they relate it to individuals who are homeless and do not have enough to eat. But are our poor really that bad off. The answer is a resounding “No.” The Census Bureau also found while conducting the report that 43 percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by a person under the poverty threshold has 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and a garage. Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning, 75 percent own a car, 31 percent own 2 cars, 97 percent own a color television, 50 percent own 2 or more color televisions, 78 percent have a DVD player, 89 percent own a microwave, 50 percent own a stereo and 33 percent own an automatic dishwasher. The average poor person in American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna and Athens. Not so bad off after all.

Of all poor persons the average number of hours worked each year averages 800, about 16 hours a week. If individuals raised their amount of work to 2,000 hours a year, or 40 hours a week, nearly 75 percent would be lifted out of official poverty.
Instead of encouraging these individuals to work more and get married, the government creates programs such as welfare to give aid to those individuals who do not meet the poverty threshold. Many people in this country could raise themselves out of poverty if they got married and worked full time. Welfare, public housing and food stamp programs both penalize marriage but the report shows that if poor individuals with children would marry they could lift themselves out of poverty. Programs such as these should reward those who work to get themselves out of poverty, otherwise why not live on government aid for the rest of their lives.

These standards of living for our country’s poor are good news. Things are not as dire as the media will make it out to be. Even better news is the fact that the country can substantially reduce the number of children living in poverty by encouraging parents to work more and get married. 75 percent of children in poverty could be lifted above the poverty threshold if their parents married. Additionally, 75 percent of children in poverty could be raised out of poverty if their parents worked full time. Government aid is not the answer, hard work has and always will be the answer to reducing the poverty levels.

Global Warming in 1922!

Check this story out..

A journalist was digging through some archived newpapers and found a headline news story that said "Artic Ocean Getting Warm, Seals Vanish and Ice Bergs Melt." This headline ran in 1922. Yes you read that right, 1922. Must have been all the green house gases causing that too right? What about in the 70's when the media warned that we were heading into another Ice Age, was that from green house gases too??? Turns out the hottest year on record was 1934. What don't people understand about climate change??? The earth goes through cycles. We're not causing it. It's normal! If the same thing was happening in 1922 that is happening now you'd think some people were smart enough to see it's a cycle. Anyway theres even more in the story (transcript) below...

Rush Limbaugh
RUSH: From yesterday's Global Warming Stack, from the Washington Times, John McCaslin, Inside the Beltway, reports that a "D.C. resident John Lockwood was conducting research at the Library of Congress and came across an intriguing Page 2 headline in the Nov. 2, 1922 edition of The Washington Post: 'Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt.' The 1922 article, obtained by Inside the Beltway, goes on to mention 'great masses of ice have now been replaced by moraines of earth and stones,' and 'at many points well-known glaciers have entirely disappeared.' 'This was one of several such articles I have found at the Library of Congress for the 1920s and 1930s,' says Mr. Lockwood. 'I had read of the just-released NASA estimates, that four of the 10 hottest years in the U.S. were actually in the 1930s, with 1934 the hottest of all.'"

Now, this is an interesting thing. We've talked about this, but you may not remember it, and I wish I could remember who did this. Two guys, their names escape me, but what they did was an analysis of media. I know Koko will find this and we can put it up on the website this afternoon when we update it for today's content, but what they did was research the media treatment of climate change going all the way back to the 1800s. What they found was fascinating, that the whole notion of climate change could not be in the public domain were it not for a willing accomplice media, and every 25 years the cycle changes, from warming, to warning about cooling. It was a fascinating piece. This 1922 Washington Post story illustrates that that's exactly what's happened. So you can have a bunch of scientists at any time in history say, "Hey, we just did some research here and the glaciers are expanding, the world is getting colder." Remember 1979, TIME and Newsweek, "The coming ice age"? It's about a little more than 25 years ago, but the cycle is starting to repeat itself, isn't it?

So it was global cooling back then; now we're into global warming. This has been the cycle; every 25 to 30 years, the media changes its tune. It's all part of the narrative. It's all about having something catastrophic on the horizon to report, just like they're going nuts with these two storms. We have Tropical Storm Erin Burnett out there, Tropical Storm Street Sweetie, which is about to hit Corpus Christi. We have Tropical Storm Dean, hasn't become a hurricane yet. It's down there in the southern Atlantic, and the track on that one keeps changing. But the Drive-Bys are excited now, folks, we have catastrophe on the horizon, and this is something that excites them. I know people are starting to pound me out there for saying this whole global warming thing is a hoax. Let me clarify. We may be warming up. What is a hoax is that only rich industrialized nations are causing it, that it is manmade. I don't think we have the ability, and I think it's outrageous for people to claim with such vanity that we have such power on the one hand, and on the other hand we're no more important than field mice. In fact, some people would say that for the earth to survive, we'd have to get off of it, or die. It's a religion.

The whole thing is a political process and a political agenda, hiding behind the saving of the planet and so forth. I don't know if it's warming up or not, but I think it's always warming or cooling. How do we know what the ideal temperature on the planet is? Who the hell are we? None of us have been around more than 85, a hundred years. And look at our vanity: "Why, it's perfect right now. This is what the world was meant to be, and it's changing, and it's our fault." It's just cockeyed. Hotter in the past, colder in the past, who's to say what's normal, natural, and ideal? We have to adapt to whatever happens, which is what we've done. We're doing great things and the right things and keeping the climate clean or the environment clean. Every species has to adapt in order to thrive because it's a constantly changing climate, a constantly changing environment. But we have all the vanity now suggesting that it's just as it was supposed to be right here, and we, because we are here right now, are destroying it. I think, folks, that is sophistry.

Here, another interesting story: "Trees Won't Fix Global Warming." Now, of course, trees are the linchpin to another hoax, and that's carbon offsets. You don't want to reduce your carbon footprint, i.e., your pollution? Fine and dandy, go out and buy some carbon offsets. There are a bunch of companies that will scam you into doing this, and you'll pay them to go plant a bunch of trees, and then you can rest easy, you can keep polluting all you want, knowing full well that your carbon footprint is going to be absorbed because somebody's out there planting trees for you. Well, guess what? "The plan to use trees as a way to suck up and store the extra carbon dioxide emitted into Earth's atmosphere to combat global warming isn't such a hot idea, new research indicates. Scientists at Duke University bathed plots of North Carolina pine trees in extra carbon dioxide every day for 10 years and found that while the trees grew more tissue, only the trees that received the most water and nutrients stored enough carbon dioxide to offset the effects of global warming." Only the trees that received the most water and nutrients stored enough carbon dioxide to offset the effects of global warming. "The Department of Energy-funded project, called the Free Air Carbon Enrichment (FACE) experiment, compared four pine forest plots that received daily doses of carbon dioxide 1.5 times current levels," and it made no difference. It didn't make a hoot's worth of difference. This is why I say all of this is a hoax.

Look at this from Live Science: "Irrigation Counteracts Global Warming." No! Irrigation is destroying the planet, I thought. "Irrigation isn't natural; it's manmade; God never intended it, nature never intended it. We're destroying what was pristine and wonderful, Mr. Limbaugh." "Irrigation can counteract global warming on a local scale, a new study shows, but increasing demand for water is likely to curb that influence in the future, scientists predict. Scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California showed that there was an irrigation-induced cooling in agricultural areas, based on observations of temperature and irrigation trends throughout California." Weeell, how about that? I got an idea, folks, let's start irrigating Laurie David's backyard. Let's irrigate Brentwood. Let's irrigate Bel Air and Beverly Hills. They care about global warming out there. They got the solution right in their backyards. Dig a ditch and put some water in it.


BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: By the way, one more global warming story here. This is from Reuters. Get this: "Australian scientists have discovered a giant underwater current that is one of the last missing links of a system that connects the world's oceans and helps govern global climate." They just found this? Would somebody tell me how in the name of Sam Hill -- and there was such a guy -- how in the name of Sam Hill can they been predicting all this global warming when there's been such a huge missing link that they just now found? "New research shows that a current sweeping past Australia's southern island of Tasmania toward the South Atlantic is a previously undetected part of the world climate system's engine-room." They just found it. What else don't they know? See, I thought this was settled science. I thought it was settled and the consensus was there.


END TRANSCRIPT

Bush admin to crack down on Illegal Immigration.

Bush is finally starting to crack down on illegal immigration. Since our joke of a congress wasn't able to pass any kind of reform President Bush is making some changes in our current plan that will fine employers who hire illegal immigrants. Personally I think this is a good start but so much more needs to be done. For starters, why don't we try enforcing the laws we already have in place! We also need to crack down on Apartment homes who are renting to illegal immigrants. If they can't work here and can't live here they'll be no need for them to come here illegally. Just a thought. (hey if you can't beat them, fine the heck out of them) ...Anyways, check out the latest.... read below.

Government to Step Up Immigration Law Enforcement
Friday , August 10, 2007
WASHINGTON —

The Bush administration on Friday unveiled a host of changes aimed at stepping up enforcement on illegal immigration, which officials said was necessary because Congress failed to act on comprehenesive reform legislation earlier this year.

"Our hope is that the key elements of the Senate bill will see the light of day at some point, but until Congress chooses to act, we'll be taking some energetic steps of our own," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Friday.

The new measures are aimed at strengthening border security, further preventing illegal immigrants from taking jobs, finding immigrants who have already entered the United States, and revising temporary worker programs.

The measures would include fines for employers by as much as 25 percent, and a stepped up process to punish employers who knowingly and repeatedly hire illegal immigrants, Chertoff said. The administration also would speed deployment of border agents and increase processing facilities.

Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez announce the changes in a news conference Friday.

The administration also wants to expand the list of international gangs whose members are automatically denied admission to the U.S., reduce processing times for immigrant background checks, and install by the end of the year an exit system so the departure of foreigners from the country can be recorded at airports and seaports.

In addition, employers will face possible criminal sanctions if they don't fire employees unable to clear up problems with their Social Security numbers.

The Homeland Security Department will ask states to voluntarily share their driver's license photos and records with the agency for use in an employment verification system. The sharing is meant to help employers detect fraudulent licenses, according to the summary, which was provided by a congressional aide.

Some of the initiatives are similar to proposals contained in the recent immigration measure which failed to pass in the Senate, though they are not nearly as sweeping.

The legislation was opposed by many conservatives who complained that people don't trust their government to start new immigration programs since existing immigration laws are not enforced.

The Senate bill would have allowed millions of illegal immigrants to obtain legal status and eventually apply for legal residency. It also would have created a guest worker program and stepped up border security.

Some lawmakers have kept up efforts to tighten the border. Last month, the Senate added $3 billion to a homeland security bill and devoted the money to U.S.-Mexico border security.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Expoitation of our Heroes.

On July 21 the city of San Diego hosted a "gay pride" parade in which they forced the city firefighters to participate in. Imagine if the company you worked for forced you to take part in a "gay day." They were not even given the choice to opt out of this parade. Forcing these men and women to participate in something like this is nothing short of sexual harassment and exploitation. The firefighter's that were subjected to this are suing the city for sexual harassment charges, are rightly so.

If this were a Christian parade the ACLU would be claiming that religion was forced upon these fire fighters and they'd be suing the city, just like they did with a public school that had a "Christmas" play.

If the company I worked for hosted any kind of homosexual event and forced me to go you'd bet I'd sue too. No one should be forced by their employer, especially under threat of losing their jobs, to attend any kind of event that compromises their beliefs and values, especially a sexually explicit one. This is definitely sexual harassment and is unacceptable.



San Diego Firefighters Claim Harassment
Tuesday, August 07, 2007

By ALLISON HOFFMAN, Associated Press Writer
SAN DIEGO —

Four firefighters are pressing sexual harassment claims against the city's fire department after they were taunted while driving a fire engine in a gay pride parade last month, an attorney said Monday.

The men claim their battalion chief ordered them to ride in the July 21 parade through San Diego's Hillcrest neighborhood, according to their attorney, Stephen Stirling. The firefighters followed the order out of concern they would otherwise be suspended or punished.

During the parade, the firefighters said, bystanders taunted them with sexually explicit comments and colleagues called to tease them for participating in the event.

"I was forced into a situation that would compromise what I hold true and what I believe in," engineer Jason Hewitt said in a statement.

The four contend the department failed to protect them from sexual harassment and didn't immediately act to correct the situation, Stirling said.

Their lawyers sent a letter Wednesday to the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing seeking right-to-sue notices, a first step toward a lawsuit. The Thomas More Law Center, a conservative Christian legal organization based in Michigan, is helping represent the plaintiffs.

Fire department spokesman Maurice Luque said the four men, who were assigned to a fire station in the parade route area, were called in after another crew that had volunteered to participate canceled at the last minute because one firefighter had a family emergency.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.