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POPSAmerica's "BRUTAL Approach to Punishment. "
Inextricably linked to the long history of racial inequality, with blacks put away in numbers vastly disproportionate to their overall population. The states with the highest ratio of prisoners per population are all former slave states with long traditions of jailhouse brutality, chain gangs and other barbaric practices: Louisiana (816 prisoners per 100,000 people), Texas (694) and Mississippi (669). In many states, blacks are up to 15 times as likely as whites to find themselves behind bars. In Florida, one in three adult black men has a criminal record. Some trends are more recent - tied, in particular, to the mania for tough-on-crime legislation that has swept state after state in the past 25 years. The national prison population up 400% since 1980, the increase fuelled in particular by the "war on drugs" and incarceration of petty drug offenders. Exacerbated a host of problems from overcrowding to prison rape to the formation of ultra-violent prison gangs, many racial
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POPSIncome-Inequality Gap Widens The gap between the affluent and the poor is growing larger every day in this country and all over the world. The despair that accompanies poverty is seen by many as the primary cause of many of the world's most serious problems. Terrorism, disease, war, political unrest, hunger, malnutrition, polluted water, racial intolerance, crime, drug and alcohol abuse and suicide all can be traced to poverty. Nothing will test the moral foundation of humanity more than how mankind addresses this issue and nothing will be more important to our physical and spiritual survival.
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POPSSeparate Is Never Equal
Unfortunately, the tendency of self-segregation amongst races in America persists in spite of the economic repercussions it passes on to future generations. The model incorporated the idea that parents tend to invest more heavily in giving their children the skills that employers value when they expect that investment to pay off later in higher wages. It also included the fact that children are more likely to succeed when they are surrounded by other children who are succeeding. For example, studies show that having friends with strong vocabularies helps a child to pick up more words with less effort. The latter effect makes informal, social segregation particularly damaging, the researchers found. People who have been subject to discrimination in the past are less likely to have acquired the skills needed for high-wage jobs, compared with those who were not subject to discrimination. Their children, then, are less likely to pick up those skills naturally at home.
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POPSThe Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race An oldie but a goodie, not on clipmarks elsewhere (so far as my searches have shown). Written by Jared Diamond two decades back. Before being critical, read the entire article please. If you think the anthropology is somehow flawed, I suggest Anthropik's Thirty Theses ( http://anthropik.com/thirty ), which cover a lot of ground.
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POPS Haryana's sex ratio changes drastically This is excellent news... 'Successive state governments have taken various measures. Besides coming down heavily on private clinics doing sex determination tests that was attributed to the rising incidents of female foeticide, the state administration announced monetary incentives to parents giving birth to girl child, free education and government help in the form of cash at the time of their marriage.'
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POPSA Fresh Look At Catholicism Some good news from the article and one reason I am a Catholic: "In one session, religious scholar Angel Galindo Garcia discussed the role of the church in an era of globalization. He referenced George Orwell's Big Brother and critiqued growing inequality between rich and poor nations. However, I had to laugh out loud at this quote: "Can one be a homosexual without ever having sexual relations with a person of the same sex?" she asked the crowd rhetorically and then answered: "Yes, of course." Save your questions for later kiddies! OMG, do you know how CRAZY I drove my nuns in catethism class with questions? I was almost held hostage by my fellow classmates once for questioning the dogma of purgatory as a place rather than a state of being. The teacher LOVED me though. It's the first time I saw him come alive in that class.
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POPSFourteen Wild Ideas 14 interesting speculations about the present and the future. Worth looking into some the actual papers.
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POPSThe Entirely Self Made Myth "If we recognize that all private wealth depends on our common wealth, then we incur two obligations. One is to contribute our fair share — and the bigger the rewards we derive from society, the bigger that share should be. The other obligation is to participate in protecting our common wealth and determining how it is used. We should not let those decisions be made only by those who sell us a self-serving myth and then laugh all the way to the bank."
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POPSChange in food prices, 1985-2000 The prices for fruits, vegetables, and cereals has gone up, while the prices for sweets, fats, and soft drinks has gone down. I wonder what free-market advocates would make of this pattern. Taken from a factsheet published by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
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POPSThe Rich and The Poor From 2003 to 2004, the average incomes of the bottom 99 percent of households grew by less than 3 percent, after adjusting for inflation. In contrast, the average incomes of the top one percent of households experienced a jump of more than 18 percent, after adjusting for inflation. In fact, it’s worse than that. The CBPP explained that the enormous gains at the top of the income pyramid caused a rise of income as a whole. But median income dropped between 2003 and 2004, and has not risen appreciably since then. In short, while the rich get richer, the middle class is shrinking, as economist Paul Krugman has pointed out.
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POPSThe Rich Are Making the Poor Poorer Everybody knows that the dice are loaded Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed Everybody knows that the war is over Everybody knows the good guys lost Everybody knows the fight was fixed The poor stay poor, the rich get rich Thats how it goes Everybody knows From the song "Everybody Knows" by Leonard Cohen
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POPSFACT: US economy does better under Democrats Graphic proof: Democratic admins usually bring growth in jobs, GDP, and stock values; Repub admins bring deficits, greater gap between rich and poor. If blue-collar Americans ever understand this, it'll be mighty bad news for Republicans.
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POPSThe Global Gender Gap Report 2007 The US dropped six places, going from 25th in last year’s gender equality study to 31st. While the US did make progress on political empowerment, the large gap in economic participation brought down the overall score....
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POPSUN report: Parts USA = Third. World!!! War declared? UN hits back at US in report saying parts of America are as poor as Third World. The annual Human Development Report normally concerns itself with the Third World. Bush wants to replace multilateral solutions to international problems with a world order in which the US does as it likes on a bilateral basis. "This is the UN coming out all guns firing," said one UN insider. "It means that, even if we have a lame duck secretary general after the Volcker report (on the oil-for-food scandal), the rest of the organisation is not going to accept the US bilateralist agenda."
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POPSExtreme Rich-Poor Divides From Digg, this website features photos of inequality around the world. In the U.S., the border between Detroit and Gross Pointe, MI is very
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