“We eat once a day,” said Mrs. Bai, 65, explaining how she and her family had survived the lack of rain.

via Drought Puts Focus on a Side of India Left Out of Progress – NYTimes.com.

¶As many as 222 million workers run the risk of joining the ranks of the working poor, earning less than $1.25 a day, according to an estimate by the International Labor Organization.

¶Remittance flows, which reached $328 billion in 2008, will drop by 7.3 percent in 2009, the World Bank predicts.

¶Hunger rates are up in every region in the world, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.

via U.N. Chief Says Recovery Not Reaching World’s Poor – NYTimes.com.

Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year — one every 12 minutes — in large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care, Harvard Medical School researchers found in an analysis released on Thursday.

“We’re losing more Americans every day because of inaction … than drunk driving and homicide combined,” Dr. David Himmelstein, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, said in an interview with Reuters.

“For any doctor … it’s completely a no-brainer that people who can’t get health care are going to die more from the kinds of things that health care is supposed to prevent,” said Woolhandler, a professor of medicine at Harvard and a primary care physician in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

via Study links 45,000 U.S. deaths to lack of insurance | Health | Reuters.

Ann Arbor’s ‘Camp Take Notice’ put on notice by State Police – AnnArbor.com.

The tents are still up at Camp Take Notice, but members of the camp know that their days in a field at the Ann Arbor-Saline park-and-ride lot are numbered, with regular police visits and the second arrest of their leader late Friday.

via Leader of ‘Camp Take Notice’ arrested a second time – AnnArbor.com.

It is an irony that in a time when all are calling for efficiency, resource-sharing, consolidation of services, and collaborations to save and find money, a state institution that has led statewide programs that work for the benefit of all Michigan citizens, and which help to provide the critical tools needed for our workforce to reinvent itself, is threatened because someone has the very uncool and uninformed notion that libraries are obsolete.

The Ann Arbor District Library opposes Executive Order #2009-36, and supports funding of State Aid to Libraries at the current level of $10M.

Josie

Please consider contacting your State Senator and your State Representative.

via AADL Library Services Threatened by Governor’s Executive Order to Abolish State Library | Ann Arbor District Library.

The rise, to more than one million students without stable housing by last spring, has tested budget-battered school districts as they try to carry out their responsibilities — and the federal mandate — to salvage education for children whose lives are filled with insecurity and turmoil…

There were 679,000 homeless students reported in 2006-7, a total that surpassed one million by last spring, Ms. Duffield said.

A Surge in Homeless Children Tests School Aid Programs – NYTimes.com.

There are more than 86,000 homeless people in Michigan. A 2008 report by the Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness says that’s up more than 10% compared to the year before.

Danielle (she asked that her last name not be used on the air) wants to be a cosmetologist. Hair, makeup, nails, the works. She enrolled at a training institute in Ann Arbor and got the whole thing paid for through financial aid. She says she should get her license by January.

Problem is, she’s on a break for the next two months, so she doesn’t have any financial aid coming in. Two weeks ago her lease was up, so she moved into a tent on a grassy opening right next to the I-94 freeway. But don’t call her homeless.

via MICHIGAN: Homeless Tent Sites Pop Up (2009-09-03).

A set of proposed international sex education guidelines aimed at reducing H.I.V. infections among young people has provoked criticism from conservative groups that say the program would be too explicit for young children and promote access to legal abortion as a right.

The guidelines, scheduled to be released by Unesco in a new draft next week, would be distributed to education ministries, school systems and teachers around the world to help guide teachers in what to teach young people about their bodies, sex, relationships and sexually transmitted diseases. They would address four different age groups.

via Draft Global Sex-Education Guidelines Draw U.S. Conservatives’ Objections – NYTimes.com.

A set of proposed international sex education guidelines aimed at reducing H.I.V. infections among young people has provoked criticism from conservative groups that say the program would be too explicit for young children and promote access to legal abortion as a right.

The guidelines, scheduled to be released by Unesco in a new draft next week, would be distributed to education ministries, school systems and teachers around the world to help guide teachers in what to teach young people about their bodies, sex, relationships and sexually transmitted diseases. They would address four different age groups.

via Draft Global Sex-Education Guidelines Draw U.S. Conservatives’ Objections – NYTimes.com.

Lesson for Obama on Healthcare:

Roosevelt relished the opposition of vested interests. He fashioned his governing majority by deliberately attacking those who favored the status quo. His opponents hated him — and he profited from their hatred. “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today,” he told a national radio audience on the eve of the 1936 election. “They are unanimous in their hatred for me — and I welcome their hatred.”

Roosevelt sounds like Hugo Chavez:

For Roosevelt was a divider, not a uniter, and he unabashedly waged class war. At the Democratic Convention in 1936, again speaking to a national radio audience, Roosevelt lambasted the “economic royalists” who had gained control of the nation’s wealth. To Congress he boasted of having “earned the hatred of entrenched greed.” In another speech he mocked “the gentlemen in well-warmed and well-stocked clubs” who criticized the government’s relief efforts.

Roosevelt understood that governing involved choice and that choice engendered dissent. He accepted opposition as part of the process. It is time for the Obama administration to step up to the plate and make some hard choices.

Health care reform enacted by a Democratic majority is still meaningful reform. Even if it is passed without Republican support, it would still be the law of the land.

via Op-Ed Contributor – Roosevelt – The Great Divider – NYTimes.com.

A CBS News poll released on Tuesday reports that 41 percent of those polled wanted troop levels in Afghanistan decreased, compared with 33 percent in April. Far fewer people — 25 percent — wanted troop levels increased, compared with 39 percent in April. And Mr. Obama’s approval rating for his handling of Afghanistan has dropped eight points since April, to 48 percent.

via G.O.P. Support May Be Vital to Obama on Afghan War – NYTimes.com.

In other parts of the developed world, people are retiring as planned, because of relatively flush state and corporate pensions that await them. But here in the United States, financial security in old age rests increasingly on private savings, which have taken a beating in the last year. Prospective retirees are clinging to their jobs despite some cherished life plans.

“Retirement is kind of an elusive dream at this point,” says Ms. Petrucci, 58, who works at an Atlanta hospital while her retired husband, Ned, 61, interviews for jobs (unsuccessfully, so far). “We tease at work about someday having to go around at the hospital with our walkers.”

The diverted life plans of families like the Petruccis are an unintended economic consequence of the nation’s sprawling 401(k) plans. These private retirement savings vehicles, designed 30 years ago as a supplement to traditional corporate pensions, have somewhat haphazardly replaced the old system, like an innocuous weed that somehow overgrew the garden.

A Pew Research survey scheduled for Thursday release found that nearly four in 10 workers over age 62 say they have delayed their retirement because of the recession.

via Lacking a Safety Net, Some Workers Delay Retirement – NYTimes.com.

The Brazilian government is claiming deforestation in the Amazon forest is at its lowest level in more than two decades. Brazilian Environment Minister Carlos Minc said the decline was as much as 65 percent.

Brazilian Environment Minister Carlos Minc: “This year there was a 46 percent reduction in deforestation in relation to the previous year. According to the Amazon Research Institute, there was a 65 percent fall. This is still unsatisfactory. Deforestation rates are still very high, but this year we will have the smallest deforestation rate of the past twenty-one years.”

via Democracy Now! | Headlines for September 03, 2009.