I haven’t seen Madonna’s, or Jolie’s kids on their family’s for-profit (for example, the Cyrus’ www.Mileyworld.com) website. I’ve only seen them in paparazzi photos, doing everyday things. Paparazzi, as in ‘not by choice’…
Noah Cyrus, 9, dressed for Halloween. Juan Rico, Fame Pictures
And here, on MileyWorld.com, (Miley’s FOR PROFIT webpage) is Noah Cyrus, 9, smacking her a**, singing ‘Smack That’, by Akon. Right in front of her sister Miley.
IrishCentral.com also says that Miley spoke about her heart problem, tachycardia, a condition in which the heart beats faster than normal.According to the article, she has had tachycardia from the time she was born, and because of her condition she needs to avoid stress as much as possible.
So let’s see. Miley Cyrus has had a serious heart condition since birth. She should try not to get stressed. As a young child, her parents put her on television. A very relaxing profession. (I mean, child stars never grow up and have serious problems, right?) Then they did the same thing with her sister. But Angelina Jolie and Madonna have done something wrong because people take photos of their kids.
“Any healthy system needs a way to correct error and remove waste. Nature has extinction, the economy has loss, bankruptcy, liquidation. Interfering in this process lengthens feedback loops. Error and waste are allowed to accumulate, and you ultimately get a massive collapse.
Capitalism is primarily attacked by two groups: utopians who wish to impose a more “compassionate” system, and political capitalists who want to enjoy the fruits of success without bearing the pain of failure. They use the coercion of the state to gain privileges, at the expense of everyone else.
As a country we’ve become less tolerant of economic failure. The result has been a series of interventions, such as meddling in the credit markets, promoting homeownership and creating a variety of safety nets for investors. Each crisis leads to an even greater crisis. The solution is always greater doses of intervention. So the system becomes increasingly unstable. The interventionists never see the bust coming, then blame it on “capitalism.”
-Kevin Duffy, Bearing Asset Management. (highlights are SchizoAmerica’s)
A $290 billion increase in the federal debt ceiling narrowly cleared Congress on Thursday, giving Treasury just enough leeway to pay the government’s bills into February and setting the stage for a showdown over fiscal policy early next year.
Senate Republicans insisted that 60 votes be required for passage and then held back their own members in order to force as many Democrats as possible to walk the plank on what has never been a popular or easily explained decision back home.
The same issue returns with a vengeance Jan. 20th when senators will be asked to vote on a still larger, long-term debt increase within days of President Barack Obama’s new budget and State of the Union address.
Treasury’s daily statements this week indicate it is still about $65 billion under its current $12.1 trillion ceiling, and conservatives argued that special measures could be invoked still to avert default over New Year’s. But with Congress leaving for the holidays, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) said that failure to act would have been “catastrophic” for the U.S. internationally. And Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said that payments to Social Security recipients were also at risk.
“The bottom line is we have no choice,” Baucus told his colleagues. “We have to approve it.”
So 2010 begins, much farther down the rabbit hole…
As 2009 draws to a close, we’re happy to report that the dwindling population in the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) forced the closure of one of the state’s most abusive youth prisons, Southern California’s Heman G. Stark. However, instead of seizing this opportunity to place youth from Stark closer to their families, the DJJ is sending many youth even farther away.
Maria*, a Families for Books Not Bars member, hasn’t seen her son in two years. A resident of East Palo Alto, she hasn’t been able to visit him due to the distance and the cost of travel. When she heard the news that Stark is being closed, she hoped her son would be transferred to a youth prison closer to her home. Maria’s hopes were shattered when she learned her son would remain in Southern California and not be transferred up north. Other families who want their children to remain near them in Southern California have learned their kids will be sent nearly 400 miles away.
Studies have shown that maintaining family connection throughout a child’s period of incarceration decreases the likelihood of recidivism and increases the likelihood of success. But it’s plain common sense to keep youth near their families, and it’s cruel to isolate them.
Today, help us commemorate Human Rights Day by standing up for the young people inside Stark. On December 10, 1948, the world came together to ratify the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the first global proclamation of human rights. It was signed by many countries, including the United States. While we reflect upon the gains we’ve made in the last 61 years around the world, we must also remain vigilant to protect the most fundamental rights of kids here in California.
We have a long way to go before California and the DJJ embody the tenets of the Declaration. But you can help. Make Human Rights Day especially meaningful this year by joining us in demanding that prison officials move young people closer to their families. http://www.ellabakercenter.org/?p=bnb_move_closer
Justice for families,
Zachary Norris
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
*Name has been changed to protect privacy and to prevent potential retaliation
(Hmmm, notice who is offering to FIX things for the American taxpayer, after we’ve been sold up river by the male dominated banking system and the Federal Reserve? A WOMAN…)
Economists agree that decreasing mortgages might be the only way to stop the massive avalanche of future foreclosures.
I see that most houses that go on the market in my area (San Francisco Bay Area) go on the market at inflated prices that reflect the real estate bubble of a few years ago. Problem is, that bubble has burst. No one can get loans, bank lending is super-tight despite being bailed out by billions of hard earned American dollars. If you missed ONE credit card payment, your credit score could drop 100 points, your credit cards can shoot their interest rate up to 29% and you are screwed. NO HOME FOR YOU!
The houses that do sell, sell for 20% to 30% off the asking price. So, in my opinion, banks should be forced to lower mortgages 20-30%.
Guess who benefits? Banks? Yes. YOU? YES. Finally, a solution that benefits the taxpayer who keep the economy afloat.
Obama’s plan of loan modifications? FAILURE. 1/3 of American homeowners have underwater mortgages. With loan modifications, the bank agrees to make your 30 year mortgage into a 40 year mortgage. If you carry a $1,000,000 mortgage, you pay $2,160,000 over 30 years, at 5% interest. So now the bank agrees to charge you a bit less interest. But you’re paying an extra 10 years for a mortgage that is more than the value of your house. Guess who profits from the loan modification? Not you.
The only solution is REAL WORLD. Home values have dropped 30%. Drop mortgage values by the same 30%. NOW.
“Mr. Chairman, we have in this Country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks, hereinafter called the Fed. The Fed has cheated the Government of these United States and the people of the United States out of enough money to pay the Nation’s debt. The depredations and iniquities of the Fed has cost enough money to pay the National debt several times over… This evil institution has impoverished and ruined the people of these United States, has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted our Government. It has done this through the defects of the law under which it operates, through the maladministration of that law by the Fed and through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it.”
Today, Senator Jim Bunning, R-KY, who was the sole NO vote on Bernanke’s appointment 4 years ago, had the following HARSH words, calling Bernanke ‘the definition of moral hazard‘:
Under your watch, the Bernanke Put became a bailout for all large financial institutions, including many foreign banks. And you put the printing presses into overdrive to fund the government’s spending and hand out cheap money to your masters on Wall Street, which they use to rake in record profits while ordinary Americans and small businesses can’t even get loans for their everyday needs.
According to Robert Reich, 70% of Americans want a Public Option for Health Care Reform. In Canada, 10% of their GDP goes to their health care system and they cover ALL Canadians. In the U.S., we spend 16% of our GDP and leave out 45 million Americans.
the compromise that ended up in the House bill is to have a mere public option, open only to the 6 million Americans not otherwise covered. The Congressional Budget Office warns this shrunken public option will have no real bargaining leverage and would attract mainly people who need lots of medical care to begin with. So it will actually cost more than it saves…
Our private, for-profit health insurance system, designed to fatten the profits of private health insurers and Big Pharma, is about to be turned over to … our private, for-profit health care system. Except that now private health insurers and Big Pharma will be getting some 30 million additional customers, paid for by the rest of us.
Upbeat policy wonks and political spinners who tend to see only portions of cups that are full will point out some good things: no pre-existing conditions, insurance exchanges, 30 million more Americans covered. But in reality, the cup is 90 percent empty. Most of us will remain stuck with little or no choice — dependent on private insurers who care only about the bottom line, who deny our claims, who charge us more and more for co-payments and deductibles, who bury us in forms, who don’t take our calls.
This is NOT reform, people. This is victory for the millionaire lobbyists and the billionaire Pharma and Insurance companies.
We need Medicare FOR ALL.
Imagine how stable the U.S. economy would be, if only 10% of our GDP went to cover all 300 MILLION Americans…
In a stark and surprising finding, about half the children in the United States will be on food stamps at some point during their childhood, a new study of 29 years of data shows.
One in three white children and 90 percent of all black children – ages 1 through 20 – will use the food stamps program, according to research, published this month in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine…
The finding that 50 percent of children will be on food stamps in their lifetime is conservative, Thomas A. Hirschl, a sociology professor at Cornell University and a coauthor of the study with Mark R. Rank, a sociologist at Washington University in St. Louis, said.
That’s because only about 60 percent of households eligible for food stamps actually get them, a finding backed up by the newly released Department of Agriculture study. Stigma and ignorance of the program hold people back, he said.
How can we, as a country, let this happen when billion dollar bonuses are being paid on Wall Street?
David Kennedy, a professor at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, uses common sense to reduce crime and keep communities safer. In the February 9, 2009 issue of Newsweek, Suzanne Smalley reported on Kennedy’s techniques and the significant drop in crime (in 2008, one Nashville community saw a 91% decrease in drug crimes and prostitution) directly linked to his approach–he uses intelligence rather than force.
Rather than relying on law enforcement’s use of weapons, handcuffs, and prisons alone, Kennedy suggests that persuasion can also prove effective in stopping drug crimes. He instructs law enforcement officers to gather evidence against drug offenders and prepare criminal indictments. Before arresting them and locking the drug offenders into a system that perpetuates failure, he urges the officers to call the suspects in for a candid look at the evidence against them. The officers then give the criminal suspects a choice. Either they can enroll in a program with mentors who will help them develop community values and live as productive citizens, or the officers will go forward with the criminal cases against them and put them through the prison system. That liberal approach, to the chagrin of lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key conservatives has proven far more effective in reducing crime.
Prison administrators and legislators ought to consider the valuable lessons Professor Kennedy teaches. The use of intelligence is far more effective than the use of force in fostering safer communities.
By extinguishing hope for those who serve time in prison, administrators create us-versus-them environments. The more oppressive and controlling the prison regime, the more recalcitrant prisoners become. It is precisely the lack of hope that leads to the proliferation of gangs and violence inside America’s prison system. Such policies contribute to the cycles of failure and unsafe communities, as prisoners revert to crime upon release.
Some prisoners present a danger to law-abiding society and show no interest in living in accordance with the principles of good citizenship. Many more prisoners, however, would welcome opportunities to work toward reconciling with society and earning their freedom. The heavy-handed policies of get-tough politicians, however, keep society locked into a so-called “corrections” policy that is fundamentally flawed. It is the reason that taxpayers must spend $60 billion per year to fund a system that perpetuates failure.
