Starving Greeks queue for food in their thousands as debt-wracked country finally forms a coalition government... but how long will it last? | Digg Topnews

Starving Greeks queue for food in their thousands as debt-wracked country finally forms a coalition government... but how long will it last? | Digg Topnews


Starving Greeks queued around the block for free food handouts yesterday as the country's politicians managed to end a crippling stalemate to form a coalition government.
Young children as well as the elderly waited in line in Athens to collect the parcels of fruit and vegetables donated by farmers from Crete to help ease the devastating austerity faced by many Greeks.
But as hungry people collected food, a few miles away a new conservative-led alliance was formed, vowing to renegotiate the country's strict European bailout in a bid to breath economic life back into the debt-stricken country.






















Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2161651/Starving-Greeks-food-thousands-politicians-finally-form-coalition-government--long-last.html#ixzz1yclTKEPx

Roosevelt's Second Inaugural gets 2012 treatment I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished... and we're glad they are

I see a great nation, upon a great continent, blessed with a great wealth of natural resources. Its hundred and thirty million people are at peace among themselves; they are making their country a good neighbor among the nations. I see a United States which can demonstrate that, under democratic methods of government, national wealth can be translated into a spreading volume of human comforts hitherto unknown, and the lowest standard of living can be raised far above the level of mere subsistence.

But here is the challenge to our democracy: In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens—a substantial part of its whole population—who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life.

I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day.

I see millions whose daily lives in city and on farm continue under conditions labeled indecent by a so-called polite society half a century ago.

I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children.

I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory and by their poverty denying work and productiveness to many other millions.

I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.

But it is not in despair that I paint you that picture. I paint it for you in hope—because the nation, seeing and understanding the injustice in it, proposes to paint it out. We are determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country’s interest and concern; and we will never regard any faithful law-abiding group within our borders as superfluous. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

If I know aught of the spirit and purpose of our Nation, we will not listen to comfort, opportunism, and timidity. We will carry on.

Nickel and Dimed from The American Ruling Class!

John Stossel on Fox to promote his "tv stunt" on poverty

No class warfare here

Daily Kos: New York minimum wage increase being blocked by Republicans would give 880,000 workers a raise:

 "The minimum wage increase that has passed the New York State Assembly but is stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate and is not drawing support from Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo would directly benefit 10.1 percent of New York workers. The proposed increase from the federal minimum wage of $7.25 to $8.50 would affect 880,000 workers currently earning less than $8.50 an hour, a new report from the Fiscal Policy Institute finds, and another 200,000 workers making just over $8.50 might benefit from a spillover effect.

A majority of the workers who would get a raise live in New York City and the surrounding area—352,000 in New York City, 126,500 on Long Island, and another 72,500 in suburban counties. But several upstate counties would actually see a disproportionate number of workers benefit, among them Broome County and Oneida County, where 12.6 and 12.5 percent of workers would get raises, respectively, and Erie County where the figure is 11.4 percent. That's another 71,400 workers getting a better standard of living in return for their work.

"

'via Blog this'

Thank God we got John Stossel to tell us what poverty is. With one day on a line at a food kitchen and a slickly spliced taped.

I work in the inner city, in a very poor part of a major city. I've seen first hand connection from inner city schools to jails, but don't tell John Stossel we have air conditioning in there when it works. Hopefully the air conditioning at Fox works a little better. I really learned a lot.

Study: Broke Americans Are Too Poor To File For Bankruptcy, Thanks To The Pols Who Voted For 'Reform' | Crooks and Liars

Study: Broke Americans Are Too Poor To File For Bankruptcy, Thanks To The Pols Who Voted For 'Reform' | Crooks and Liars:

'via Blog this'

Yes, thanks to politicians like Tom Carper, whose baby it was, and Joe Biden, the former senator from MBNA, who supported it, the bankruptcy "reform" act pretty much killed off any chance at all for poor people to recover from their debts. It also made credit card companies more powerful - and profitable, so as far as the politicians are concerned, win/win!

If there's anything at all that I wish the Occupy movement would focus on, it would be overturning this travesty and getting people some relief from debt prison.
It's also why it's really, really important to support Elizabeth Warren. It will make the bankers crazy:

This year, hundreds of thousands of Americans are expected to be too broke to file for bankruptcy.
The average cost to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection, the most common form of consumer bankruptcy, is more than $1,500, according to recent research submitted to the National Bureau of Economic Research.

As a result, anywhere between 200,000 and one million consumers are estimated to be unable to afford that steep cost this year.

Mitchell and Webb - Kill The Poor

I didn't realize Britain had Republican strategists too.

Raise Taxes On The Poor - Eric Cantor. We've got to shake down "big homeless."

From Truthout: According to Gallup a quarter of California households have adequate food for their children

One in Four California Families Can't Afford Food for Their Kids

Sunday 21 August 2011

by: Raul Rodriguez, New America Media | Report

(Photo: Wayan Vota)

San Francisco - One in four California households with children reported food hardship, according to a new analysis of Gallup data released last Thursday by the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC).

“It’s disturbing, but not surprising,” said Kelly Hardy, director of health policy at Children Now.

The report analyzed data gathered as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index project’s responses to the question: “Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?”

“It sends a clear signal of economic distress, particularly for families with children,” noted James Weill, president of FRAC. “The answers to the question reveal there are times that these families are going without eating a meal, or the parents are skipping a meal for their children, or children are skipping meals.”

California had the second highest number of metropolitan areas with rates of food hardship in households with children in 2009-2010, according to the report.

Rest of story hear: http://www.truth-out.org/one-four-california-families-cant-afford-food-their-kids/1313941639

The children who aren't sacrificing enough to support the billionaire tax cuts

"We finally go home. Our house might not satisfy some but to me its heaven. The plaster has holes in it. Inside the holes are slats with brownish horse hair poking through, that resembles nose hair, and on the hair are microscopic flecks of plaster strung like beads. Other holes are haphazardly patched and bulge like cysts. The kitchen floor is chipped and broken. The poor always take chances as our appliances are all connected to the few working outlets by a mish mash of frayed crisscrossing extension cords. One spark could burn down our house and send us back to Grammy’s, providing we survive."  -- Friend of the blog Gary Floyd

Hungry: Original fiction that first appeared Saltwater Quarterly

Amy has been a contributor to this blog and has been a long time personel friend

Hungry
By Amy-Willoughy-Burle

She takes her kids to the park to preoccupy them with swing sets and jungle gyms. Tells them, when they ask, “you ate already” like they’re tiny Alzhemiers patients who can be fooled with reassuring words and misdirection. She tried not to go on food stamps, but pride gives way easy to a child’s aching stomach. She remembers the jabs she heard as a child about government cheese and welfare babies. But those words didn’t apply to her then—young, well dressed and fed— unaware of what it meant to be a scavenger.

She gets enough on her little plastic card to last them the most of the month, but those last few days feel pretty thin. She works. She manages to keep the lights on and the rent paid most months but sometimes they spend a few days in the dark. She tells her kids that they’re on adventure—camping in the living room. Candles and ghost stories. Cold beans from the can.

A few times she’s had to barter with the landlord—cleaning his house, mowing the lawn. Once when the whole of the rent went to fixing up her busted Buick, she gave in a bit more than she wanted. She would have cried about it, but there was no need to waste the tears.

     

When she did cry, she knew how to hide it, how to turn her face and wipe her eyes; how to smile like the mothers who come through her checkout line buying fresh fruit and good meat and whole wheat bread for their children’s lunch sacks. The same women look at her when she drops her kids off at school. The look says she doesn’t care because her children are dressed in Goodwill clothing and the slices of cheese in their white bread sandwiches came wrapped in plastic. She hates the looks from those mothers accusing her, assuming she doesn’t love her kids as much as they do, when perhaps, perhaps, she knows how to love them more. Knows how desperate love can be when there is a chance it could be taken away... (for the rest of the story http://www.amywilloughbyburle.com/shows.html)

I was just wondering

Why is it when you give a tax cut to a poor man it destroys his desire to work but when you give it to a mega billionaire it incentives him to work even harder just wondering? Oh I forgot that’s because they’re the job creators who never really create any jobs.