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| Taking a Closer Look at the Stories Ignored by the Corporate Media |
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Archive for the Month of April, 2005.
Viewing Economics NEWS articles 1 through 12 of 12.
- It was a good year for the global billionaires’ club. Their ranks grew to 691, up 17 percent from the previous year. However, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of impoverished Americans rose 3.7 percent in 2003. The number of children living in poverty rose 6.6 percent. So there are about 100 more billionaires, but 12 MILLION more americans living in poverty. Is that an economic success story?
- Government specialists are busy measuring the growing lines at soup kitchens and food pantries across the nation. There were 25.5 million supplicants regularly lining up in 2002; they were joined by 1.1 million more the next year. And even more arrive as unemployment and other government programs run out. - Some of America's wealthiest individuals have declined billions of dollars in tax cuts bestowed upon them by President George W. Bush's administration and have urged others among the country's richest and most famous to donate their federal tax cuts to campaigns against the Bush package, often described as "tax breaks for the rich."
- Material Progression has Often Been Accompanied by Moral Regression . - The following are excerpts from a speech given by Hugo Chávez at Gigantinho Stadium during the 2005 World Social Forum. "One of these old guys, he was being ripped into pieces, pulled by horses from each arm and leg – Empires have always been brutal, there are no good or bad Empires, they are all aberrant, brutal, perverse, no matter what they wear or how they speak. When he felt he was about to die, he shouted "I die today but some day I’ll return and I’ll be millions". - Latino immigrants - especially from Mexico, but also from Ecuador, Guatemala and elsewhere - have settled everywhere from Yonkers to Peekskill and Mount Kisco to Mamaroneck. The men continue to follow the established pattern of taking day-laborer jobs in construction and landscaping; the women are usually domestic workers.
- The world as we know it, and have known it since the 15th century, is reaching a dichotomous moment. This has been brought on by Capitalism, the dominant economic and development model to this point. Humanity is at a junction, where it can either choose a more sane and sustainable future for all, or it can choose the path of annihilating other nations in order to steal their resources until there are no resources left - Inflation has outpaced the rise in salaries for the first time in 14 years. And workers are paying a bigger share of the cost of their healthcare.
- Thousands of people rioted Sunday in a village in southeastern China, overturning police cars and driving away officers who had tried to stop elderly villagers from protesting against pollution from nearby factories - Bigger tax breaks for wealth produces a system in which the middle class pays about the same as the rich.
- Oil production could peak next year. The one thing that international bankers don't want to hear is that the second Great Depression may be round the corner. But last week, a group of ultra-conservative Swiss financiers asked a retired English petroleum geologist living in Ireland to tell them about the beginning of the end of the oil age
- There are at least four million homeless souls plying our streets and roads and alleyways. The administration admits to that many, so the number is probably higher. Four million onion eaters. Or maybe 35 million. In the United States, there are 34.9 million people who go hungry or are food insecure, an increase of 3.9 million people since 1999. 12.9 million of these are children. What this says is: not only has our government failed, but also that you and I have failed.
Pages for April, 2005
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