America in the year 2012 = 13 million living below the poverty level

The conditions aren't sanitary; they're unhygienic at best. But those who have been unable to maintain a job or those who simply can't make enough to afford rent have resorted to these uncomfortable living conditions.

Poverty has become a painful reality for those hit hard with the economic downturn over the past couple of years.

If you've passed through the town of Ann Abor, Michigan, perhaps you also noticed an untidy mini-housing establishment of about 30 tents in the woods nearby.

Those woods have become home for local residents who can no longer afford the cost of rent due to joblessness or extreme wage-cuts.

Imagine a home without heat, electricity, or toilets...

Black mould plagues these people on a regular basis, tainting their bodies, clothes, and bedding.

For at least 5,000 desperate Americans – out of the 47 million living below the poverty level – this is the best home they can get in these tough times; singles, couples, and families alike.

According to Panorama, the latest tent-city trend has popped up in at least 55 cities throughout the United States.

One of the largest tent-homes houses approximately 300 individuals in sunny Florida. New Jersey and Portland now harbor some sizable tent communities as well.

With recent budget cuts affecting a great deal of some of America's poorest residents, there has been too much pressure on homeless shelters to let everyone in.

Because of the increase in homelessness, city residents generally run these tent camps with help from a local charity group.

Census data reveals that America hasn't seen poverty like this in more than 50 years. Years of high unemployment has caught up with ordinary Americans all over the nation.

Right now, there are at least 13 million unemployed Americans.

The scariest part of this story is that many of these desperate, homeless tent-dwellers were very recently living comfortable lives as part of America's middle-class...they were good, honest, hard-working people.

The future of American children if you VOTE Republican in 2012!!! = Slavery

Tears tracing lines of dirt on his face, six-year-old Pakistani boy Nabeel Mukhtar cries while crouching on a pavement to scrub motorbikes, his job for nine hours a day, six days a week.

He is one of millions of children driven into labor by poverty in a country where the unpopular government is seen as too corrupt and ineffective to care for its citizens, even the young and helpless.

"I want to study and become a doctor but we don't have any money," said Mukhtar, who helps his family make ends meet.

Rising food and fuel prices and a struggling economy have forced many families to send their children to search for work instead of to the classroom.

USA VOTE Democrat in 2012 if you want to avoid slavery!!!  Fight for your FREEDOM...it is being taken AWAY.

Romney told CNN on Feb. 1 that “I’m not concerned about the very poor”

Republican presidential candidateMitt Romney’s statement that the “very poor” don’t concern him comes at a time when the portion of Americans living in deep poverty is the highest in more than a generation while assistance varies widely and is inadequate.

“Virtually any food bank in any city in America would tell you that they have not been able to keep up with the demand,”said Bill Shore, founder and chief executive officer of Share Our Strength, a national charity that fights childhood hunger.“That means more rationing of food, not allowing families to take as much as they would have before and being open shorter hours.”

More than 20 million Americans live in a household with income of less than half the federal poverty rate, the level social scientists often use as a category for the very poor, according to census data for 2010. Last year that meant an annual income below $11,057 for a family of four.

The portion of the population in that category was the highest in at least 35 years and has almost doubled since 1975, from 3.7 percent then to 6.7 percent in 2010.

Mr. Romney said, “I’m not concerned about the very poor

On Wednesday morning in an interview with CNN, Mr. Romney said, “I’m not concerned about the very poor,” a comment that has ricocheted around the Web and cable news channels.

I guess the very poor are something less than American....

Under Mitt Romney unemployment with no benefits is your future 99%

In October 1993, Bain Capital, co-founded by Mitt Romney, became majority shareholder in a steel mill that had been operating since 1888.


Less than a decade later, the mill was padlocked and some 750 people lost their jobs. Workers were denied the severance pay and health insurance they'd been promised, and their pension benefits were cut by as much as $400 a month.

What's more, a federal government insurance agency had to pony up $44 million to bail out the company's underfunded pension plan. Nevertheless, Bain profited on the deal, receiving $12 million on its $8 million initial investment and at least $4.5 million in consulting fees.

Romney for an economy where fewer people succeed while most Americans get left behind

"Romney apparently prefers an economy where fewer people succeed while most Americans get left behind,” Wukela says in reference to the candidate’s most recent campaign platform.

“He wants to roll back financial reform and let Wall Street writes its own rules again, and he wants to return to the same policies that caused the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and sped up a 30-year abandonment of the middle class.“The people of South Carolina can’t afford what Mitt Romney is offering.”

Former employee of Mitt Romney says, "The only thing he's ever produced is profits for the rich."

Randy Johnson has been a critic of Mitt Romney for around 18 years. He was one of hundreds of people who were laid off when Romney's company, Bain Capital, bought and closed Ampad, an office supply company in Indiana.

"Those were the hardest times, you can imagine, when you see people crying at your desk at the age I am now, all because companies were putting profits before people," said Johnson.


He says Romney is in the business of making the rich richer and doesn't care about the middle class.

House Republicans cannot be elected by the People...can they? Becasue they certainly aren't working for the People or by the People or with the People...

The House Republican proposal — part of their larger proposal to extend the payroll tax cut and UI benefits — would slash, by 40, the number of weeks potentially available to unemployed workers who are struggling to find a job in some states that were hit the hardest by the jobs slump. That greatly raises the risk that unemployed workers will run out of UI benefits before they find another job, imposing even greater hardship on them and their families. It also reduces the amount of support that UI — one of our highest-bang-for-the-buck stimulus programs — can provide for the struggling recovery. And, to add insult to injury, the Republican proposal contains onerous requirements on qualified UI applicants, such as drug tests and requirements to hold or be working toward a GED, that would make it harder for them to receive benefits at all.

A Financially Inclusive World...you may call us dreamers but we're not the only ones....come and join us!!!

Letter from the CEO of ACCION:


Fifty years ago this year, ACCION was founded on the belief that we can create a better world by helping people to help themselves. Half a century later, we continue to fulfill this mission by providing high-quality, affordable financial services with dignity to those who need it most – those living in poverty.



Our vision is to build a financially inclusive world with access to economic opportunity for all. Over the last year, your support has enabled us to advance our mission and vision in many ways, including the provision of loans and other key financial services to millions.


Despite this progress, more than 2.7 billion people remain excluded from the world’s financial systems and the opportunity such access can create. With your support we can continue to bridge this gap, bringing life-changing microfinance services to the poor.

This year, ACCION made significant progress in all three of our strategic focus areas.


First, we are building the next generation of top-tier microfinance institutions – enabling these institutions to deliver a range of high-quality, affordable financial services. Highlights include:

• Inaugurating ACCION Microfinanças in Brazil, in June – a new MFI in the heart of the Amazon, where half of the region’s 14 million inhabitants live in poverty.

• Creating microfinance services for rural clients in Latin America through a grant from the Inter-American Development Bank. Over 130,000 clients in Peru, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Colombia and Ecuador have already been reached with rural credit products. Micro-savings programs that help clients recover from natural disasters and other unexpected events have been rolled out in Peru, Colombia and the Dominican Republic.
• Building and strengthening EB-ACCION Microfinance, a new microfinance institution in Cameroon, where more than 65 percent of the actively employed population lacks access to any form of secure, financial services.

• Providing secure savings accounts for more than 250,000 low-income people served by our partners in Tanzania, Nigeria and Cameroon, and proudly recognizing the achievement of both ACCION Microfinance Bank (AMfB) in Nigeria as ‘Microfinance Bank of the Year,' and EB-ACCION Savings and Loans in Ghana as African Banker’s ‘Microfinance Institution/Project of the Year 2011.’

• Strengthening our pioneering microfinance work in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia, China through partnership with the International Finance Corporation.

• Redoubling our commitment to the future of Indian microfinance, through equity investments and guarantees for our Mumbai- and Bihar-based partners, Swadhaar and Saija.

• Increasing opportunity here at home by working ever more closely with the ACCION U.S. Network – the largest microlending network in the country. Since inception, the Network has extended more than $300 million in small, working-capital loans.

• Continuing to explore un-served and underserved countries and regions of the world, such as Kenya, the Philippines, Pakistan and beyond, where our management, investment and governance skills can help foster financial inclusion.

Second, we are fueling innovation in financial inclusion, providing funding and technical assistance to promising start-ups and sustainable technologies beyond MFIs that serve people at the bottom of the pyramid:

• ACCION’s Frontier Investments Group continued to invest in ground-breaking financial services this year, such as mobile payments in Zambia, cashless payments in Peru, and a new technology services company in India staffed by people with disabilities.

• We are developing plans for the launch of a new venture capital fund that will provide patient capital to very small start-ups whose experimental but promising business models could catalyze the next leap in financial inclusion.

Third, we are proud to report that your support is helping us to build a strong microfinance industry with the highest possible standards:

• Through the Smart Campaign, ACCION’s Center for Financial Inclusion is helping to direct the industry’s first-ever, global consumer-protection initiative. With over 2,400 signatories serving more than 40 million clients in 130 countries, the Campaign is helping to ensure quality delivery of services, worldwide.

• We are helping to build industry capacity at training centers in India, Ghana and China, and in the last three years have taught more than 3,000 industry professionals new skills for delivering high-quality services.

• We continue to publish leading-edge, thought-provoking research on the industry, such as the recent reports on the state of client protection, and ‘opportunities and obstacles’ to financial inclusion.

• And we are expanding our collaboration with other industry leaders, including the ACCION Network of partners in Latin America and a working group of microfinance organization CEOs, on a common agenda to address key industry challenges. Our goal is to redouble the industry’s commitment to consumer protection, pricing transparency and meaningful measurement of social impact.

ACCION’s work has helped the microfinance industry to grow by orders of magnitude – from reaching tens of thousands of the world’s poor a few decades ago, to approximately 200 million today. Yet we know that much more remains to be done. That is why we are asking you for your continued support for our work around the globe.

As we look ahead to our next 50 years, we renew our pledge to build a truly financially inclusive world, where all of society can benefit from all that society offers. Thank you again for your participation. It has already made a difference; together, we can do so much more.

Romney "Right to Work" = 1% right to pay you less; with no benefits

The average worker in a right-to-work state is paid $30,167 a year, or about $5,333 a year less than workers in other states without right-to-work legislation that favors the employer at the expense of the employee, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.



Labor leaders failed to win legislation making it easier to organize a union after Democratic allies triumphed in the 2008 elections. Next year’s voting may spawn instead a law letting workers opt out of unions.



Republicans in Congress are pursuing so-called right-to- work legislation barring agreements between unions and employers that make union membership and payment of dues a job requirement, Bloomberg Government reports. 


“There is a very strong likelihood that a Republican Congress and a Republican White House would pass a national right-to-work law,” Gary Chaison, a labor-law professor at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, said in an interview. “It should be expected from a Republican Congress that, in terms of national jobs growth, sees unions as part of the problem rather than part of the solution.”

1% you are missing the point; fabricating research, buying politicians with lobbyists = is the heart of the problem

The Occupy Wall Street movement is a big enough problem for U.S. banks that they should pay for opposition research into the political motives of protesters, said a firm that lobbies for the industry.




Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford, a Washington-based firm, proposed the idea in a memo to the American Banking Association, an industry group which said on Saturday that it did not act on the idea.


The four-page memo outlined how the firm could analyze the source of protesters' money, as well as their rhetoric and the backgrounds of protest leaders.


"If we can show they have the same cynical motivation as a political opponent, it will undermine their credibility in a profound way," said the memo, according to a copy of it on the website of TV news channel MSNBC, which first reported on it.

Clark Lytle Geduldig counts the banking association among its regular lobbying clients, U.S. Senate records showed.

Other clients include MasterCard Worldwide and a banking coalition concerned about interchange fees.

The firm did not respond to requests for comment.


Its memo said it could deliver research, survey data and plans to use the information in 60 days at a cost of $850,000.


Banking association spokesman Jeff Sigmund told Reuters the memo is authentic, but his group was not interested.


The memo is dated November 24, five days after it became public. Sigmund did not respond to a follow-up question about the date. November 24 is also the Thanksgiving holiday.


The memo said U.S. financial firms should be concerned about comments that Democratic campaign consultants have made in the news media about trying to harness the energy of the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

"This would mean more than just short-term political discomfort for Wall Street firms," it said.


"If vilifying the leading companies of this sector is allowed to become an unchallenged centerpiece of a coordinated Democratic campaign, it has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bull's-eye."


The memo is from Clark Lytle Geduldig's four name partners. Two of them, Sam Geduldig and Jay Cranford, are former aides to House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, a Republican.

Using shorthand for Occupy Wall Street, the memo said:
"It may be easy to dismiss OWS as a ragtag group of protesters but they have demonstrated that they should be treated more like an organized competitor who is very nimble and capable of working the media, coordinating third party support and engaging office holders to do their bidding. To counter that, we have to do the same."

Civil Rights American Style....

Fourteen protesters in lower Manhattan were arrested following a decision earlier today to postpone the closing of Zuccotti Park, the site of demonstrations against the financial industry, police said.



Protesters arrested included those who stood or sat down in the street, Paul Browne, a spokesman for the New York City Police Department, said in an e-mail. Others taken into custody included individuals who allegedly overturned trash baskets or hurled bottles, Browne said. At least one demonstrator was detained after he allegedly knocked over a police scooter.


The arrests took place in the vicinity of Broadway and Exchange Place. They came after a decision earlier today to keep Zuccotti Park, near Liberty Street and Broadway, open rather than close it for cleaning.


The postponement averted a confrontation there between Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, who had gathered in greater numbers overnight, and police who threatened to remove tents and sleeping bags.


As protesters filed out of the park and marched on lower Manhattan streets, more than 30 police cruisers and 50 officers gathered near the federal courthouse at the eastern end of the Brooklyn Bridge.


An Oct. 1 march onto the bridge by protesters resulted in hundreds of arrests. Protesters arrested in the march sued New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly for allegedly violating their constitutional rights.

Civil Rights Lawsuit

Five of the protesters, seeking to represent about 700 people arrested, filed a civil rights complaint Oct. 4 in Manhattan federal court, claiming police officers lured them onto the bridge’s roadway to trap and arrest them.


The National Lawyers Guild, a nonprofit bar association, is representing at least 30 arrested protesters who have appeared in court already and is seeking to represent the more than 800 other demonstrators who have been charged since the protests began Sept. 17, said Martin R. Stolar, a member of the guild.

The guild is representing four people arrested on Oct. 12, including James Lafferty, 73, executive director of the guild’s Los Angeles chapter, and his 63-year old wife, who were charged with obstructing governmental administration, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest, Stolar said.

No Jobs Bill, No Ideas = Republican Party = Merry Xmas my fellow Christians!!!

It was all predicted, but the unanimous decision by Senate Republicans on Tuesday to filibuster and thus kill President Obama’s jobs bill was still a breathtaking act of economic vandalism. There are 14 million people out of work, wages are falling, poverty is rising, and a second recession may be blowing in, but not a single Republican would even allow debate on a sound plan to cut middle-class taxes and increase public-works spending.

The bill the Republicans shot down is not a panacea, but independent economists say it would have a significant and swift effect on the current stagnation. Macroeconomic Advisers, whose forecasts are often used by the Federal Reserve, said it could raise economic growth by 1.25 percentage points and create 1.3 million jobs in 2012. Moody’s Analytics estimated new growth at 2 percentage points and 1.9 million jobs. Those economists say that Republican ideas for increasing growth would have no measurable effects in the next year.

There's something happening here.....

Tahrir Square in Cairo, Green Square in Tripoli, Syntagma Square in Athens and now Zuccotti Park in New York -- popular anger against entrenching power elites is spreading around the world.



Many have been intrigued by the Occupy Wall Street movement against financial inequality that started in a New York park and expanded across America from Tampa, Florida, to Portland, Oregon, and from Los Angeles to Chicago.


Hundreds of activists gathered a month ago in the Manhattan park two blocks from Wall Street to vent their anger at what they see as the excesses of New York financiers, whom they blame for the economic crisis that has struck countless ordinary Americans and reverberated across the global economy.


In the U.S. movement, Arab nations see echoes of this year's Arab Spring uprisings. Spaniards and Italians see parallels with Indignados (indignant) activists, while voices in Tehran and Beijing with their own anti-American agendas have even said this could portend the meltdown of the United States.


Inspired by the momentum of the U.S. movement, which started small but is now part of U.S. political debate, activists in London will gather to protest outside the London Stock Exchange on October 15 on the same day that Spanish groups will mass on Madrid's Puerta del Sol square in solidarity.


"American people are more and more following the path chosen by people in the Arab world," Iran's student news agency ISNA quoted senior Revolutionary Guards officer Masoud Jazayeri as saying. "America's domineering government will face uprisings similar to those in Tunisia and Egypt."


Chinese newspapers splashed news about Occupy Wall Street with editorials blaming the U.S. political system and denouncing the Western media for playing down the protests.

"The future of America stands at a crossroads. Presuming that effective measures to relieve the social mood and reconstruct justice cannot be found, it is not impossible that the Occupy Wall Street movement might be the final straw under which America collapses," said a commentary in the Global Times.


"This movement has uncovered a scar on American society, an iceberg of accumulated social conflicts has risen to the surface," said the commentary in the tabloid, which is owned by the Communist Party mouthpiece, the People's Daily.

30% Of (USA) Americans Rapidly Approach Poverty; meanwhile Brazil lifts 13% of its population out of poverty with a mandate of eliminating it by 2015!!!

A shocking report from Brookings exposes just how massive America's poverty problem is. America's poor have been rocked by the dual economic downturns since 2000. The result is that poverty grew at twice the rate of U.S. population growth from 2000 – 2008 during the Bush administration, and now encompasses 50 million Americans.

Now let’s turn to an emerging market…Brazil.

On a cool July evening, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff hosts a cocktail party for 50 leaders of her governing coalition, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its November issue. Speaking from the foot of a red-carpeted staircase in the living room of Alvorada Palace, where she lives with her mother and aunt, Rousseff tells the gathered politicians that these are the best times for Brazil, according to four people who attended.

“The world is going through economic and financial turbulence,” says Rousseff, who’s dressed in a black pantsuit. “But we’re living through a great moment.”

In a toast, Dilma, as she’s known to almost all Brazilians, juxtaposes the task of managing the country’s new economic prosperity with U.S. President Barack Obama’s struggle with the Republicans to get the U.S. government budget under control.

“And up there, they only have two parties,” she jokes.

Brazil has 27.

Rousseff, 63, inherited just about everything a president could want from her mentor and predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva: an economy growing at a 7.5 percent annual pace and unemployment, at 5.3 percent, that was the lowest since at least 2001. Brazil’s Bovespa stock market index rose six-fold during Lula’s eight-year tenure, as iron ore, soybean and sugar exports boomed, driven in large part by demand from China.

Lula pulled 24.5 million people out of poverty in his years in office, according to data compiled by the Getulio Vargas Foundation, and Rousseff says that in the next four years, she will eliminate extreme poverty in Brazil.

Let's try a picture book...poverty = bad government; middle class = good government

Gov. Rick Perry, the GOP presidential candidate who calls Social Security a “monstrous lie” and a “Ponzi scheme” has implied that future retirees can’t rely upon receiving benefits from the system.



Not only is Perry shooting wildly from the hip on these statements — a strategy cynically designed to attract angry, younger independent voters — he’s spewing some layered falsehoods that need to be addressed.

Social Security can not only be preserved for future generations, its coming fiscal shortfalls can be fixed relatively simply. What Perry also neglects to mention is that it’s one of the most successful anti-poverty programs in U.S. history.

The before-and-after Social Security picture is dramatic. Before Social Security, almost half of elderly Americans had income below the poverty line, reports the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Roughly 12 percent of elderly citizens are considered poor today. The program lifted more than 11 million out of poverty — more than 60 percent of those were women.

Here’s some even more relevant Texas-sized context: Today, more people are slipping back into poverty because of permanent job losses, recessions, a housing meltdown, stock-market downturns, reduced employment benefits, higher medical costs and stagnant wage growth. The U.S. poverty rate last year increased for the third straight year — the highest it’s been since 1993. Some 46 million have annual incomes below the poverty line of $22,113.

As the U.S. is saddled with the highest poverty rate among industrialized countries, why are the anti-poverty features of Social Security being attacked?

US$ 447 bn to create employment; a no brainer.....

Some 9.1% of Americans are currently out of work (nearly 43% of them have now been out of work for more than six months), an issue that is expected to dominate the election campaign. For this reason last September 8th President Obama unveiled the American Jobs Act, his latest stimulus plan, this time majorly intended to create jobs but also to spur the economy. Nearly all of the plan is made up of ideas that have been supported by both Democrats and Republicans. Now the plan (which at the moment it is just a President’s proposal) needs to be passed by the Congress (expected to be done yesterday).

The purpose of the American Jobs Act is according the White House: “to put more people back to work and put more money in the pockets of working Americans – without adding a dime to the deficit.” The proposal includes more than $248 billion in tax incentives for small businesses and employers, according to administration estimates. The rest of the money would be devoted to infrastructure spending, state aid, unemployment insurance, and neighborhood rehabilitation. Overall, the bill would deliver roughly $450 billion in job creation measures, a majority of which would come in the form of tax breaks. Because the bill is mostly focused on 2012, it is similar in scale to the 2009 recovery act.


President Barack Obama’s jobs package could lift economic growth by one to three percentage points in 2012, add well over one million jobs and lower the unemployment rate by at least half a percentage point, judging by early estimates.


The American Jobs Act has five key components:


1. Tax Cuts to Help America’s Small Businesses Hire and Grow: new tax cuts to businesses that provide immediate incentives for firms to hire and invest. These tax cuts would be available to all businesses, regardless of size, but are designed to target their impact towards the smallest businesses.


Measures:
- A payroll tax cut to businesses, with a focus on small employers.

- A complete payroll tax holiday for new jobs or wage increases.

- Extend 100 percent business expensing through 2012 ($5 billion).


- Help entrepreneurs and small businesses access capital and grow.


■Changing the Way the Government Does Business with Small Firms.

■Reducing Regulatory Burdens on Small Business Capital Formation.

■Helping Small Businesses Compete for Infrastructure Projects.

■Passing Patent Reform.

2. Putting Workers Back on the Job While Rebuilding and Modernizing America: the purpose is to put Americans back to work in key areas that are central to America‘s future competitiveness. Repairing and modernizing classrooms across the country and making sure that teachers who have been laid off because of budget cuts can be brought back to work. It will take on the fact that the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) awarded the United States a ‘D’ for the overall condition of its infrastructure. Both to modernize the nation‘s roads, railways, airports and schools and to put hundreds of thousands of workers back on the job.


Measures:
- A Helping Hand for Veterans.


- Preventing Teacher Layoffs and Keeping Police Officers and Firefighters on the Job ($35 billion).

- Modernizing At Least 35,000 Public Schools – From Science Labs and Internet-Ready Classrooms to Renovated Facilities ($30 billion).
■Safer, Healthier, and Technologically-Advanced Schools of the Future.

■A Focus on Schools in Need.

■Modernizing Community Colleges to Train a 21st Century Workforce.

- Immediate Investments in Infrastructure ($50 billion).
■Investments in Making US’ Highway Systems Safer and More Efficient.

■Repairing Transit Systems and Improving Rail Systems.

■Improving Airports.

■Opportunities in the Transportation Sector.

■Funding for Innovative Transportation.

■Expediting High Impact Infrastructure Projects.

- National Infrastructure Bank ($10 billion)
■Independent, Non-Partisan Operations Led by Infrastructure and Financial Experts.

■Broad eligibility for Infrastructure and Unbiased Project Selection.

■Addressing Market Gaps for Infrastructure Financing.

- Project Rebuild: Putting People Back to Work Rehabilitating Homes, Businesses and Communities ($15 billion).
■Focus on Distressed Commercial Properties and Redevelopment to Stabilize Communities.

■Include For-Profit Entities to Gain Expertise, Leverage Federal Dollars and Speed Program Implementation.

■Increase Support for “Land Banking”.

■Create Jobs Maintaining Properties and Avoiding Community Blight.

- Expanding Nationwide Wireless Internet Services For the Public and the First Responders, in a Fiscally Responsible Way.


3. Pathways Back to Work for Americans Looking for Jobs: extension of unemployment insurance to prevent 6 million Americans looking for work from losing their benefits, while at the same time reforming the system to help support programs that build real skills, connect to real jobs, and help the long-term unemployed.


Measures:
- Reform Unemployment Insurance System to Provide Greater Flexibility, While Ensuring 6 Million People Do Not Lose Benefits ($49 billion).


■Rigorous Reemployment Assistance.

■Work Sharing: UI reform to prevent layoffs.

■State Flexibility for Bold Reforms to Put the Long-Term Unemployed Back To Work.

- Tax credits for businesses that hire the long-term unemployed ($8 billion).
■An Effective, Targeted Measure.

■Rising to the Challenge of Persistent Unemployment.

- Investing in Low-Income Youth and Adults ($5 billion).
■Support for Summer and Year-Round Jobs for Youth.

■Subsidized Employment Opportunities for Low-Income Individuals Who Are Unemployed.

■Support for Local Efforts to Implement Promising Work-Based Strategies and to Provide Training Opportunities.

- Ending Discrimination Against the Unemployed.



4. More Money in the Pockets of Every American Worker and Family: put more money in the pockets of working and middle-class Americans by providing tax relief to 160 million workers – extending the payroll tax cut passed last December. Congress approved a cut in the tax for workers last year, from 6.2% to 4.2%. But that measure was due to expire in December. Mr Obama wants to continue that cut next year, lower the tax even further to 3.1% for workers, and extend a similar cut to companies, at a cost of $240bn.
Measures:
- Cutting Payroll Taxes in Half for 160 Million Workers Next Year ($179 billion)


■A Targeted Tax Cut for American Workers.

■A Boost to Economic Growth and Job Creation.

■A Tax Cut That Has Received Bipartisan Support in the Past.

■Social Security Trust Fund Would Not Be Impacted by Payroll Tax Cut.

- Helping More Americans Refinance Mortgages at Today’s Historically Low Interest Rates.

46 million Americans live in poverty...and Congress is busy doing what? Blocking the American Jobs Act!

The U.S. poverty rate remains among the highest in the developed world.  Congress you are not doing your job!!!

The worst economic downturn since the 1930s has left a record number of Americans in poverty and created strains on the government’s safety net not seen in decades, according to a report issued Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.


“Clearly the safety net has helped, but it’s got holes in it,” said Jared Bernstein, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and former White House economist.

With the unemployment rate stuck stubbornly over 9 percent, the poverty rate in the United States climbed to 15.1 percent last year — the highest level since 1993 — as the number of impoverished Americans swelled to a record 46.2 million, the Census report said.

The U.S. poverty rate remains among the highest in the developed world. Among 34 countries tracked by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, only Chile, Israel and Mexico have higher rates of poverty.

The rate would be even higher without a variety of government programs intended to blunt the impact of the worst recession since the 1930s. The Census estimated that the extension of unemployment benefits enacted in 2009, for example, helped another 3.2 million remain above the poverty line, which the government defines as an annual income of $22,314 for a family of four. Last year, the Social Security helped some 20.3 million seniors and disabled working-age adults avoid falling into of poverty.

Millions more households are collecting food stamps to stretch household budgets far enough to keep food on the table. Since the recession began in 2007, the number of households receiving food stamps has nearly doubled to 21.4 million.

Still, millions have fallen through the cracks of the government safety net. Tuesday's Census report found that the poverty rate rose faster in 2007-2010 than in any three-year period since the early 1980s, when households were battered by rising energy prices, high inflation and soaring interest rates as well as high unemployment.

Ponzi Perry

Social Security is a government-run insurance program that provides the typical retiree with single-digit returns on contributions deducted from their paychecks over the course of their working lives. The program has operated for 76 years amid praise from presidents of both parties. In 1983, even as staunch a critic of big government as President Ronald Reagan vowed: “The Social Security system must be preserved.”
In December 2010, 54 million Americans received either retirement or disability payments under the Social Security program.

Poverty among elderly Americans was endemic before the program was created in 1935. The first benefit checks weren’t issued until 1940, and as late as 1959 more than 35 percent of the elderly were living below the poverty line, according to the Social Security Administration. In 2009, the most recent Census Bureau data available shows, the figure was 8.9 percent.

To presidential hopeful Texas Governor Rick Perry, however, the country’s most expensive entitlement program is a financial con that would have made Charles Ponzi blush. “It is a Ponzi scheme to tell our kids that are 25 or 30 years old today, you’re paying into a program that’s going to be there,” Perry said during a Sept. 7 debate of the Republican presidential candidates, reprising a theme from his 2010 book “Fed Up.”

Experts on both Ponzi schemes and Social Security say Perry is wrong. “Ponzi schemes are, by definition, fraud,” said Mitchell Zuckoff, author of “Ponzi’s Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend.”

“Social Security is above board,” he added. “We can argue about whether it’s a good system. But you can’t call it a fraud.”

The Social Security and Medicare Trustees project a deficit this year of $46 billion and continuing annual shortfalls until the $2.5 trillion fund is exhausted in 2036. Beyond that point, the program is expected to have sufficient funds from continuing infusions of payroll taxes to pay about 75 percent of promised benefits.

Perry’s aversion to the program is nothing new. In his 2010 book “Fed Up,” he lambastes Social Security as a “crumbling monument to the failure of the New Deal” and likens it to “a bad disease.”

Democrats crowed over a statement they regarded as political gold. “Ponzi Perry just lost the general election,” former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm tweeted during the debate.