A million homeless U.S. children
From Clement Daly of the World Socialist Web Site:
A report released in July by the advocacy groups National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth (NAEHCY) and First Focus reveals the explosive growth of homelessness among public school students during the economic crisis.
Based on Federal data from the US Department of Education, the number of students identified as homeless by public school districts rose by more than 40 percent between the 2006-2007 school year and 2008-2009, to 956,914. The figure has almost assuredly passed one million in the current school year.
That well over one million public school students are homeless is a damning indictment of the entire social order. The staggering growth in student homelessness took place simultaneously with the transfer of trillions of dollars in public funds to Wall Street, overseen by the administrations of former President George W. Bush and current President Barack Obama.
No part of the country was spared. NAEHCY and First Focus found that 70 percent of school districts reported an increase in homelessness since 2007-2008, and 39 percent reported enrolling more homeless students in the first six months of the 2009-2010 school year than in the entire previous year.
The worst affected states have been Texas and Iowa, with increases of 139 and 136 percent, respectively, between the 2006-2007 and 2008-2009 school year. Other hard-hit states include New Mexico (91 percent), Kansas (88 percent), New Jersey (84 percent), New York and South Dakota (73 percent), and Georgia (72 percent). Of the 50 states plus the District of Columbia, 13 registered increases of child homelessness of 50 percent or more.
Companies shift healthcare costs to workers
Reed Abelson of the New York Times reports:
As health care costs continue their relentless climb, companies are increasingly passing on higher premium costs to workers.
The shift is occurring, policy analysts and others say, as employers feel more pressure from the weak economy and the threat of even more expensive coverage under the new health care law.
In contrast to past practices of absorbing higher prices, some companies chose this year to keep their costs the same by passing the entire increase in premiums for family coverage onto their workers, according to a new survey released on Thursday by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit research group.
Workers’ share of the cost of a family policy jumped an average of 14 percent, an increase of about $500 a year. The cost of a policy rose just 3 percent, to an average of $13,770.
Workers are now paying nearly $4,000 for family coverage, according to the survey, and their costs have increased much faster than those of employers.
Since 2005, while wages have increased just 18 percent, workers’ contributions to premiums have jumped 47 percent, almost twice as fast as the rise in the policy’s overall cost.
Workers also increasingly face higher deductibles, forcing them to pay a larger share of their overall medical bills.
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Companies may be at a point where they are no longer willing or able to protect their workers’ health benefits, said Helen Darling, the president of the National Business Group on Health, an organization representing employers that provide coverage.
Obesity, diabetes plague Californians
Joanna Lin’s California WatchBlog piece describes the epidemic of bad health sweeping California.
While diabetes and obesity typically impact the poorest disproportionately,
it’s interesting to note that they are impacting the more affluent as well — though a reasonable assumption might be that a partial cause may be the reality that even the better-paid work longer hours as their pay stagnates.
Californians are increasingly overweight, obese and diabetic, a study by UCLA researchers found. The epidemics are worsening throughout the state and disproportionately affect ethnic minorities, the poor and the least educated.
More than half of the adults in the state – 15.3 million – are overweight or obese, and more than 2 million are diabetic, according to the report released yesterday by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.
In 2001, 19.3 percent of California adults were obese and 6.2 percent were diabetic. By 2007, 22.7 percent were obese and 7.8 were diabetic, the study found.
American Indians, blacks and Latinos have the highest rates of obesity and diabetes, but the rates have increased significantly among whites and Asians as well.
Lower income and less educated Californians have higher rates of obesity and diabetes, the report said. Nearly 28 percent of adults living below the poverty line are obese, compared to about 20 percent of those with higher incomes. Adults without high school education were twice as likely to be obese and three times more likely to be diabetic than those with college degrees.
Obesity and diabetes were most prevalent in some of California’s poorest areas. The rate of obesity is highest in Imperial County, where 39.6 percent of adults are obese. San Francisco had the lowest obesity rate, at 11.8 percent of adults. Diabetes is most prevalent in Tulare, affecting 12.1 percent of adults, and lowest in San Luis Obispo, with 3.1 percent of adults diagnosed as diabetic.
Youth unemployment becomes a global problem
From Jordan Shilton of the World Socialist Web Site:
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has issued a report documenting the severe impact of the global economic crisis on employment prospects for the world’s youth. The report, “Global Employment Trends for Youth”, presents detailed statistics on the growing number of 15-to-24-year-olds who find themselves out of work.
The most striking findings are those showing the rapid rise of youth unemployment from the eruption of the financial crisis in 2008 onwards. At the end of 2009, according to the report’s introduction, global youth unemployment stood at 81 million. This was an increase of 7.8 million, or nearly 10 percent, from the end of 2007.
In percentage terms, global youth unemployment rose from 11.9 percent to 13 percent during this period, an increase described as “sharper than ever before”.
In 2009 alone, the number of young people out of work globally rose by a staggering 6.6 million. As the report noted, “To put this in perspective, over the course of the ten-year period prior to the current crisis (1996-1997 to 2006-2007), the number of unemployed youth increased, on average, by 192,000 per year”.
The report projected that this rate of increase would slow, but that by the end of 2010 global youth unemployment would stand at 13.1 percent. Most significantly, it stated that although the unemployment rate would drop slightly from 2011, there would be no return to the lower jobless levels of the pre-crisis period.
The report warns of the danger of young people becoming alienated from the labour market and today’s youth becoming a “lost generation”. It states, “Numerous studies show how entering labour markets during recession can leave permanent scars on the generation of youth affected, and recently fears have been expressed regarding a possible crisis legacy of a ‘lost generation’ made up of young people who detach themselves from the labour market altogether”.
Food shortages spark riots in Mozambique
From BBC News:
The government of Mozambique says price rises which have led to riots in the capital Maputo are “irreversible”.
The comments came after an emergency cabinet meeting on the two days of unrest in which seven people have died.
Troops have been deployed to help clear up the debris while text messages are reported to have been circulating urging people to continue protesting.
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Officials say seven people have been killed in the two days of violence in Maputo and 288 have been wounded. Two of those killed were reported to have been children.
Protesters have also damaged or looted 23 businesses while 12 buses and two train carriages were vandalised. . .
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On Wednesday, President Armando Guebuza said he understood people’s anger and was aware of the poverty in which many people in the country lived.
“Combating poverty is part of the government’s five-year plan,” he said.
But Mr Guebuza it was “sad that people used the right to demonstrate peacefully to turn it into violent protests”.
Putin extends grain export ban through Spring
With much of Russia’s grain harvest destroyed or threatened by an ongoing heat wave and disastrous fires, President Vladimir Putin has extended his ban on grain exports, a move certain to keep grain prices — especially given the loss of much of Pakistan’s grain from the flooding caused by the same weather patterns which have brought dry heat to Russia.
From the London Daily Telegraph:
Vladimir Putin has announced Russia will not lift a ban on grain exports before next year’s harvest, extending the embargo for another year, sparking fears over a global food shortage.
The Russian prime minister said that it was “necessary to note that we will only be able to consider lifting the grain export ban after next year’s harvest … and we have clarity on the balances”.
His announcement came after deadly protests in Mozambique and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation calling an emergency meeting to discuss the shortages.
The export ban is aimed at keeping the Russian domestic market well supplied with grain after Russia, which the world’s third largest wheat exporter last year when it sold 21.4 million tonnes of grain, after the country suffered a record drought which destroyed a quarter of its harvest.
Forest and brush fires flared up again on Thursday, killing two people and burning down more than 160 houses and buildings. Mr Putin is keen to avoid any signs of social unrest ahead of elections due in 2012.
The export ban from such a key global exporter sent wheat prices to 231.5 euros a tonne, just short of last month’s two-year high of 236 euros, sparking worries of a crisis in global food supplies.
A rise in the price of state-controlled food, water and electricity prices have sparked protests in Mozambique where seven people have been killed and hundreds left injured after clashes with police. The price of a loaf of bread is due to rise by 25 per cent on September 6.
Environmentalists blame Russian fires on new laws
Anna Smolchenko of Agence France Presse reports:
Wildfires have cost Russia 300 billion dollars in forest loss, environmentalists said on Thursday, explaining the scale of the disaster by Vladimir Putin’s “absurd” changes to forestry law.
The economic damage amounts to 25,000 dollars per hectare (2.4 acres), or at least 300 billion dollars, according to estimates based on the market value of timber and the cost of reforestation, said Alexei Zimenko, general director of the Biodiversity Conservation Centre.
“The figures are completely astronomical,” Zimenko told a news conference, adding that they did not include several factors, such as the loss of wildlife like insects and rare birds and animals.
According to Russian environmentalists, citing data from the Global Fire Monitoring Centre, the fires have covered an area of 10 million to 12 million hectares in Russia since the start of the year.
The government’s emergencies ministry says however that nearly 29,500 fires covering a total area of 935,286 hectares have so far been registered in the country this year.
Environmentalists say the authorities have purposely under-reported the scale of the disaster.
“Unfortunately, official data on the scale of wildfires is reduced by a factor of three to 10,” several environmental groups, including Zimenko’s Biodiversity Conservation Centre, WWF Russia and Greenpeace Russia, said in a statement released at the news conference.
Several economists have put the cost to the economy this year at roughly 7-15 billion dollars.
The fires wreaked such colossal damage due to the “absurd” forestry legislation and reforms passed since the start of Vladimir Putin’s 2000-2008 presidency when he eliminated the Federal Forestry Service and introduced a new Forest Code, activists said.
eats shoots 'n leaves 