Facts About Poverty That Will Blow Your Mind

There is a common denominator here, see #17 for a clue.

I guess the War on Poverty isn’t going so well, is it?

100 Million Living in poverty in the US

The following are 40 facts about poverty in America that will blow your mind….

#1 In the United States today, somewhere around 100 million Americans are considered to be either “poor” or “near poor”.

#2 It is being projected that when the final numbers come out later this year that the U.S. poverty rate will be the highest that it has been in almost 50 years.

#3 Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be either “low income” or impoverished.

#4 Today, one out of every four workers in the United States brings home wages that are at or below the poverty level.

#5 According to the Wall Street Journal, 49.1 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives financial benefits from the government. Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent.

#6 It is projected that about half of all American adults will spend at least some time living below the poverty line before they turn 65.

#7 Today, there are approximately 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing. That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.

#8 During 2010, 2.6 million more Americans fell into poverty. That was the largest increase that we have seen since the U.S. government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959.

#9 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of “very poor” rose in 300 out of the 360 largest metropolitan areas during 2010.

#10 Since Barack Obama became president, the number of Americans living in poverty has risen by 6 million and the number of Americans on food stamps has risen by 14 million.

#11 Right now, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

#12 It is projected that half of all American children will be on food stamps at least once before they turn 18 years of age.

Continue reading Facts About Poverty That Will Blow Your Mind

Runaway Slave – the Movie

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial

in the summer of 1963, he delivered one of the most powerful speeches in our nation’s history. Known for its famous line, “I have a dream,” Dr. King concluded his speech with these words:

“And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last, free at last! Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last!'”

Now, nearly a half-century later, has his dream become reality? Have we allowed freedom to truly ring? Or has that longed-for freedom somehow become even more elusive?

In RUNAWAY SLAVE, an intriguing new documentary that opens in theaters this summer, Rev. C.L. Bryant journeys across America to find answers. A one-time NAACP local chapter president, Rev. Bryant discovers that by buying into the entitlement mindset of “progressives,” the black community has traded one form of tyranny for another.

Using leading black conservatives as “conductors,” Rev. Bryant believes it is time for a new Underground Railroad to help liberate all Americans from the Government plantation that has left the black community dealing with a new form of slavery: entitlements.

“Why are we still thinking we are not free at last? What ideas are keeping us down?” Rev. Bryant asks. “For too long, we have been depending on other people for our success. We have to pursue our happiness; our happiness is not provided to us. If we are relying on someone else for our wellbeing, that in itself is a form of slavery.”

The Fate Of Our Nation Rests in Obamacare Decision

There is more to the coming Supreme Court decision expected to be handed down as early as next June than merely whether all or part of Obamacare will be upheld. This decision will actually decide whether the Constitution actually means anything today or not. The Constitution is a document which limits federal power, and without the limitations spelled out in the Articles, and the first ten amendments, commonly known as the Bill of Rights, our country, and the Constitution would never have been ratified in the first place.

That’s right, the first ten amendments were added to the Constitution before it was ratified by the 13 States, which were then operating rather poorly under the Articles of Confederation.

Here is an interesting article from American Thinker:

. . . In a 2006 interview with PBS, Roberts discussed the most revolutionary aspect of the American Constitution, which is that it is the law over government and not merely a political document melded at will by political leaders.  Chief Justice John Marshall’s landmark opinion in Marbury v. Madison, Roberts notes, “says, what is the Constitution?  It’s law.  It’s law that the people have established to control this new government.”

In this regard, the ObamaCare case is very much about more than just ObamaCare.  It is about the extent to which the Constitution is binding as law that controls government, and what the Supreme Court will do to enforce that law on government.

Thomas Paine wrote, “A constitution is not an act of government, but of the people constituting a government, and a government without a constitution is power without right.”  Political thinker Sir Kenneth C. Wheare referred to a constitution as “the collection of rules which establish orgovern the government.”

In Marbury v. Madison, Marshall called the United States Constitution our paramount law — so much so that laws passed by the people’s representatives are void if repugnant to that fundamental, supreme law.

Earth Day 2012: An Economic Suicide Pact?

It’s difficult . . .

to put things in perspective at times. A little over 150 years ago we fought a great Civil War. Armies of foot soldiers walked, and teams of horses hauled the supplies. Oil had not yet been discovered near Titusville, PA, and Thomas Edison and NikolaTesla were not yet exploring the wonders of AC and DC electrical current. Tiny Wabash, Indiana became the first electrically lighted city in the world a mere 132 years ago.

Such wonders of advancement, dare I say progress,  that we have witnessed in such a short time since then. America has been blessed with huge supplies of coal, oil, and natural gas, which allowed us to harness energy beyond the simple mill-dam crushing wheat seed into flour. Coal was easily mined, which heated our houses and buildings much more efficiently than using wood as our predecessors did, and with the discovery of electricity, coal could be used to make steam to efficiently drive electrical turbines and distribute power wherever a power-line could reach.

We owe our current modern way of life to these early and unencumbered scientists and pioneers.

Why are some in our society doing their best to convince us to enter into a suicide pact? Here is what I would do if I wanted America to fail. What would Henry Ford say if he were alive today?

Plentiful, cheap energy is what has allowed and driven our nation to be great. 

NASA Engineers, Astronauts Letter to the Administrator

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Blanquita Cullum 703-307-9510 bqview at mac.com

Joint letter to NASA Administrator blasts agency’s policy of ignoring empirical evidence

HOUSTON, TX – April 10, 2012.

49 former NASA scientists and astronauts sent a letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden last week admonishing the agency for it’s role in advocating a high degree of certainty that man-made CO2 is a major cause of climate change while neglecting empirical evidence that calls the theory into question.

The group, which includes seven Apollo astronauts and two former directors of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, are dismayed over the failure of NASA, and specifically the Goddard Institute For Space Studies (GISS), to make an objective assessment of all available scientific data on climate change. They charge that NASA is relying too heavily on complex climate models that have proven scientifically inadequate in predicting climate only one or two decades in advance.

H. Leighton Steward, chairman of the non-profit Plants Need CO2, noted that many of the former NASA scientists harbored doubts about the significance of the C02-climate change theory and have concerns over NASA’s advocacy on the issue. While making presentations in late 2011 to many of the signatories of the letter, Steward realized that the NASA scientists should make their concerns known to NASA and the GISS.

“These American heroes – the astronauts that took to space and the scientists and engineers that put them there – are simply stating their concern over NASA’s extreme advocacy for an unproven theory,” said Leighton Steward. “There’s a concern that if it turns out that CO2 is not a major cause of climate change, NASA will have put the reputation of NASA, NASA’s current and former employees, and even the very reputation of science itself at risk of public ridicule and distrust.”

Select excerpts from the letter:

  • “The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.”
  • “We believe the claims by NASA and GISS, that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated.”
  • “We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject.”