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Report: ‘Battered by the Storm’ Details Safety Net Failures

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America’s safety net is full of holes, according to a new national study co-authored by Barbara Ehrenreich, author of “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” and a person who has spent years researching the daily lives of the working poor.

Battered by the Storm: How the Safety Net is Failing Americans and How to Fix It, published today by the Institute for Policy Studies, a left-leaning think tank based in Washington, D.C., details the inadequacies of the federal welfare system, linking it to an erosion of social supports that began 30 years ago. The report outlines the following key findings:

  • Levels of long-term unemployment, underemployment and discouraged workers are reaching historic levels;
  • The percentage of poor children receiving temporary assistance under TANF ([Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] the main federal “welfare” program) has fallen from 62% in 1995 to 22% in 2008; [and]
  • TANF benefits are far from sufficient to support the families that depend on them: 2008 assistance payments averaged only 29% of the money needed to bring families up to the official poverty line … .

The authors call for a more than $400 billion emergency relief package that includes $40 billion for job creation; up to $270 billion for state and local government fiscal relief; and more than $100 billion to expand TANF, Food Stamps, and unemployment insurance. It also says long-term changes are needed to  “end the scourge of poverty in our nation and to help all people achieve a living income, without regard to race, religion, or gender.” Download the report here.

CREW: Looking Out for You

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OK, sure, I’m a little biased in support of CREW | Citizens for  Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Not only do they do great work throwing the bipartisan hammer down on ethically challenged Congress-critters, the organization recently hired Church Street Editorial* to edit its “Ethics in Your State” materials.

But here I give a shout out to the CREW staffers and affiliated researchers who painstakingly searched the Internet and other media sources for any information they could find on state and local watchdog organizations working in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The result is a state-by-state compilation of ethics organizations, such as The League of Women Voters and Common Cause, with (where possible) specific information on the issues they focus on, the number of local chapters in the state, and whether or not they are able to compensate their workers. Recent corruption stories are highlighted, along with links to blogs and news sources. And, according to CREW, it’s just a start:

Our hope is that this directory will provide state and local activists with the contact information they need to cooperate on projects, to seek out assistance from natural allies in their respective states, and to benefit from the experiences of other activists in their states and across state borders.

Click on your state or jurisdiction to find out where it fits in the national corruption rankings, which are based on a New York Times investigation. While our not-so-fair city of Washington, D.C., ranks Numero Uno in the number of guilty officials per capita, at least the District’s watchdogs can now see they are among a broad group of justice-seekers working each day to smoke out the ne’er-do-wells who, if unchecked, are allowed to violate the public trust, abuse their power, and squander taxpayer dollars. Way to go CREW!

*Special thanks to Michelle for her editing support!

Pulitzer Prize to Recognize Online-Only Works

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Well, I guess I never realized they did not accept online-only texts.

From the announcement:

The eligibility rules for the Pulitzer Prizes in journalism have been revised, opening the door wider to entries from text-based online-only newspapers and news sites, the Pulitzer Prize Board announced today. A year ago, the Board broadened the competition to include many United States news outlets that publish only on the Internet at least weekly, but it required that all entered material—whether online or in print—had to come from entities “primarily dedicated to original news reporting and coverage of ongoing events.”

[snip]

The requirement sometimes excluded possibly promising entries—notably by online columnists, critics and bloggers—because of the nature of their Web affiliation, according to Sig Gissler, administrator of the Prizes.

Hat tips: Pat Lovenhart via (the great) Nita Congress

Good news for all the bloggers out there, but I worry about a future of Twititzer Prizes.

Watch Conan O’Brien’s hysterical Twitter send up below:

Arts and Culture Blogging: Terra Cotta Warriors

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If you’re in D.C. and have one hour and 12 bucks to spare, the Terra Cotta Warriors exhibit at the National Geographic is well worth checking out. I agree that a traveling exhibition with just 15 of the life-sized sculptures (and more than 100 objects) can never compare to an in-person view of some 1,000 battle-ready soldiers discovered so far in the Chinese city of  Xi’an. But the display layout, brief reading material, reproductions, and actual pieces are arrayed well and can be easily digested, even if there’s a crowd. For those who’ll never get to China, the exhibit provides at least a small sense of what was accomplished more than 2,000 years ago. (I was fascinated to learn that even 2,000 years ago, folk were contending with government bureaucracy!)

Listen to a radio interview with the museum director, watch a four-minute video, download teaching materials, and read other information on the website. The exhibit is in Washington through March 2010.

Subscribe to the National Geographic magazine.

 

Happy Thanksgiving …

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Have fun, eat well, and …  

Feed a Neighbor, from a White House guide.

Read, in the New Yorker, a heart-breaking story of famine in North Korea and an array of articles about the opposite problem in The Food Issue (Nov. 23, 2009; pictured at right), including this one about the somewhat beleaguered Michelin Guide.

Watch the ridiculous turkey-pardoning ceremony.

See PETA’s take on the whole Turkey thing.

Tune in tomorrow for American Public Media “The Spendid Table” Turkey Confidential.

Consider these turkey freakonomics.

Enjoy.

 

 

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