Food stamp ‘challenge’ lays bare hard times in US
By 1554
Posted on September 30, 2011, Printed on September 30, 2011

A record 45 million Americans are now living on food stamps, a weekly stipend from the US government that helps them make ends meet in hard times.

A sign in a market window advertises the acceptance of food stamps in 2010 in New York City. A record 45 million Americans are now living on food stamps, a weekly stipend from the US government that helps them make ends meet in hard times.

For everyone else, there’s the Food Stamp Challenge, thrown down by anti-hunger activists in the industrial port city of Baltimore to lay bare the reality of living on the poverty line.

Participants each get $30 — the average food stamp benefit in the East Coast state — to buy groceries for a week, after which they are invited to blog about their experience.

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Occupy Wall Street Day 12 – Poised to Take Off
Friday 30 September 2011
by: Dave Johnson, Campaign for America’s Future [3] | News Analysis

“Occupy Wall Street [4] is leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions. The one thing we all have in common is that We Are The 99% [5] that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%.”

“We are the 99 percent [5]. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we’re working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent. ”

People Have Had It

This is what happens when people have had it. The “Occupy Wall Street” crowd has been there for almost 2 weeks, camping out, saying they’re fed up and are going to stay until American democracy is restored.

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Hispanic students vanish from Alabama schools
Sep 30, 4:05 PM (ET)
By JAY REEVES

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) – Hispanic students have started vanishing from Alabama public schools in the wake of a court ruling that upheld the state’s tough new law cracking down on illegal immigration.

Education officials say scores of immigrant families have withdrawn their children from classes or kept them home this week, afraid that sending the kids to school would draw attention from authorities.

There are no precise statewide numbers. But several districts with large immigrant enrollments – from small towns to large urban districts – reported a sudden exodus of children of Hispanic parents, some of whom told officials they would leave the state to avoid trouble with the law, which requires schools to check students’ immigration status.

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Occupy Wall Street: A Movement is Born

“Wall Street is War Street” – A sign at the Occupy Wall Street protest

As trading came to a close on Sept. 28, Day 12 of the Occupy Wall Street movement, hundreds of protesters took part in what has become a now-regular march on the U.S.’s leading financial institutions.

As the demonstrators filed by Wall Street’s iconic statue, calls to “castrate the bull” erupted. While passing One Chase Manhattan Plaza they chanted, “The banks got bailed out, we got sold out.”

From the bank bailouts to the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the protesters say the government is acting on behalf of an elite few, while serious needs continue to go unmet.

James McGauhey, a 26-year-old from Carthage, works with individuals with developmental disabilities. Or at least he did. McGauhey quit his job to come organize and camp out at the-now-occupied-and-renamed Liberty Plaza, located approximately a thousand yards from Wall Street.

Continued at TheFightBack.org

For-profit company behind the execution of Troy Davis
By STEPHON JOHNSON Amsterdam News Staff

When Troy Davis was murdered by the state of Georgia last week, it was not a nameless, faceless bureaucrat who oversaw his execution.

It was Dr. Carlo Musso, who owns CorrectHealth, a for-profit company that provides what they call “cost effective” health care to prisoners, who managed the process. He does this work under the umbrella of another company he owns, Rainbow Medical Associates, which, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, is contracted by the Georgia Department of Corrections to do its executions.

While some may defend Rainbow Medical Associates as capitalism in action, Musso might find himself in a heap of trouble-of the legal kind-that could do more damage than the backlash from the Davis execution.

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To believe that Bush won in 2004 you must also believe that…
by Richard Charnin

Do you believe the Final 2004 National Exit Poll? If so, you must also believe that there were 6 million more returning Bush 2000 voters than were still living in 2004.

Based on the Final National Exit Poll vote shares, in order for Bush to win by his 3.0 million recorded vote margin, he needed a 90% turnout of living Bush 2000 voters and just 62% of returning Gore voters. If you believe that, there is a great Chinese restaurant in lower Manhattan near a famous old bridge that’s for sale.

Assuming 90% Bush 2000 voter turnout, Kerry needed just 71% Gore turnout to win by 360,000 votes. Consider the following 36 myths and anomalies about the 2004 election.

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Huge crowd on Wall Street:

Source: http://instagr.am/p/Oq2Po/

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Wall Street Mocks Protesters By Drinking Champagne 2011

Protesters in Zuccotti Park (scoboco’s flickr)

Mayor Bloomberg made some ominous comments today about the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests that have been going on for nearly two weeks in Zuccotti Park. When he was asked on his weekly radio show whether he’ll let the anti-corporate protesters stay as long as they want, he responded cryptically: “We’ll see. People have a right to protest, but we also have to make sure that people who don’t want to protest can go down the streets unmolested.” [Good idea! So maybe tell the NYPD not to mace by-standers?—MCM]

“We have to make sure that while you have the right to say what you want to say, people who want to say something very different have a right to say that as well,” the mayor told WOR radio host John Gambling. Zuccotti Park is privately owned, but Bloomberg said the park must remain open to the public because of an agreement the owners struck with the city years ago to win zoning code changes. And there’s also sanitation to worry about: “The right to protest is part of our culture. It’s also true that there are other societal concerns. You’re worried about sanitation and you’re worried about lots of different laws on the books.”

In general, Bloomberg has not had much sympathy for the protesters since they took over the square, despite the fact he predicted something like this would happen. The billionaire criticized them today for a lack of nuance in their arguments, and accused them of targeting the wrong people:

“The protesters are protesting against people who make $40,000, $50,000 year and are struggling to make ends meet.” He also added, “Those are the people that work on Wall Street in the finance sector…If the banks don’t go out and make loans, we will not come out of our economic problems. We will not have jobs.”

Koch brothers spooked by forthcoming story – War Room – Salon.com
Anonymous sources try to discredit Bloomberg article on Koch Industries before it’s even published
By Justin Elliott

Here’s a rule of thumb about public relations: When P.R. pros begin furiously spinning a story before it has even come out, there’s a pretty good chance the story is going to be damaging to the reputation of said P.R. pros’ bosses.

And that’s exactly what we’re seeing right now, as an anonymous person or persons in the orbit of the billionaire conservative donors Charles and David Koch try to discredit a forthcoming story in Bloomberg Markets magazine.

Based on the prebuttal items appearing this week in the Washington Examiner, the Daily Caller, and U.S. News and World Report, the Bloomberg story focuses on alleged malfeasance and/or fraud and/or bad behavior by the conglomerate Koch Industries.

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