August 2010
20 posts
“[Texas] State Rep. Rafael Anchia, a Democrat, disputed the claim, calling it “the myth of anchor babies.” “For that to rise to some sort of national security concern is really unsubstantiated,” Anchia said. “The 9/11 bombers were all here legally. The Times Square bomber was a naturalized citizen. He was not an anchor baby.” Anchia also disputed the contention that having a baby in the United States hinders the deportation process. “The law does not bear that out,” he said. “Just because you have a child here doesn’t mean you can’t be deported tomorrow.”
—Report: 8 percent of U.S. newborns have undocumented parents - CNN.com (via sexartandpolitics)
The Imprint: hey! you! unemployed person! if you have a loan with sallie mae.... →
cijimcb.tumblr.com
they have an unemployment program. meaning, if you are unemployed, you don’t have to pay your loan for 6 months, and you can renew this privilege for up to 3 years.
go to salliemae.com
click “manage my loan”
select “i would like to change my loan…”
this takes you to the “manage my loan” site….
Recession Fun Facts!
- 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
- 61 percent of Americans “always or usually” live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
- 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
- 36 percent of Americans say that they don’t contribute anything to retirement savings.
- A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
- 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
- Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
- Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
- For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
- In 1950, the ratio of the average executive’s paycheck to the average worker’s paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
- As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
- The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
- Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
- In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
- The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America’s corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
- In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
- More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
- For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
- This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
- Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
- Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
- The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.
(via)
“That’s when you know you’ve found somebody really special: you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably share silence.”
—
Pulp Fiction
Truth.
(via bigheartbeat)
(via reverend-green)
“One of my responsibilities at my job is to supervise our collection of Network Operators. This is an entry-level position that monitors our systems and servers, performs certain technical tasks and interacts with client requests. It pays $10/hr, is part-time and has no benefits. It’s a fairly high-turnover position, as people graduate from college or find jobs more in line with their career goals, so I have to interview pretty often. Over the last year I’ve interviewed several people with well over a decade of experience in IT. They can code, they can build networks, they can configure switches, they can put together a virtual HA environment with their eyes closed. They’re going for a part-time, $10/hr job becase A)$10/hr is better than $0/hr, and they’re hoping it will turn into something more down the road. They need to work, they want to work. They have, to quote Timothy Geithner, “the skills they need to re-enter the 21st-century economy.” They built the 21st century economy. But there are no jobs.”
—There Are No Jobs (via azspot) (via robot-heart-politics)
Charlie Crist and Big Sugar →
eyeonmiami.blogspot.com
“The Fanjuls are sugar barons whose lands in the historic Everglades are pivotal to control of Florida politics. The influence of campaign contributions is so strong—touching all parts of the political spectrum and all levels of Florida government— that the possibility a US Senator could emerge in Florida who has not received their blessings is remarkable.
Gov. Charlie Crist, the sunny optimist, triggered a plan by the State of Florida to add sugar lands to Everglades treatment marshes and storage by purchasing more than 100,000 acres owned by the Fanjuls’ biggest competitor, US Sugar. He did this, apparently, without consulting the Fanjuls and, for that, the Fanjuls are applying their muscle to Marco Rubio, the Jeb Bush stand-in on the Republican side.” via Eye on Miami
Take a peak at Big Sugar, a documentary on the Fanjul owned plantations here in South Florida and the Dominican Republic. There’s a full length documentary on them titled The Sugar Babies, which was surrounded by all kinds of nonsense and was prevented from being shown at the Miami Film Festival. Their influence crosses all party lines. I’m not endorsing Crist, I’m just saying he seems to be the only one that hasn’t taken any money from them and that’s a big deal in Florida Politics.
“The House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday that would reduce the disparities between mandatory federal sentences for crack and powder cocaine violations, a step toward ending what legal experts say have been unfairly harsh punishments imposed mainly on blacks. The bill, which passed the Senate in March, was adopted by the House in a voice vote and now goes to President Obama for his signature.”
—
Congress Moves to Narrow Sentencing Disparities for Crack and Powdered Cocaine - NYTimes.com
via ACSblog, who notes:
Under current law, the amount of powder cocaine triggering a mandatory minimum sentence is 100 times as much as the amount of crack cocaine triggering sentencing. The bill was passed in 1986 after a spate of drug-related killings.
The new law would decrease the ratio to 18-1 and eliminate the five-year mandatory minimum sentence for simple possession of crack cocaine.
(via sexartandpolitics)
