| LIFE-NET NEWS |
| by Ret Z. |
| Covering Poverty Widely in a Net of Many Voices |
| 2003 March 5 | No Profit; No Proceeds |
| Volume 6 Number 7 | All-Volunteer |
| "Give a family a fish, and they'll eat a meal; give them a Net, and they'll have fish for Life." |
| War, Inspections, Or This? |
|
Millions of people have joined the antiwar movement, and
the world is desperate for a "third way" between war and
ineffectual responses--an alternative instead of war to defeat
Saddam Hussein. If we are to find a way instead of a
full-scale military assault against Iraq, that "instead" must
be strong enough to rank as a serious alternative to war.
A group of U.S. church leaders, accompanied by colleagues from the United Kingdom and the worldwide Anglican Communion, met with Prime Minister Tony Blair and his secretary of state for international development, Clare Short, on Feb. 18 to discuss alternatives to war. After that meeting, the church group designed what they call a realistic alternative, a "third way," that is illustrated in a six-point plan. Please read the plan. Then, if you agree that it represents a viable third way, you can use the form at the bottom of the page to send a copy of the plan to President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. The page also gives you an easy way to tell others quickly. Source: SojoMail |
| Troubled Child-Welfare Agency Studies Reform |
|
New Jersey Human Services Commissioner Gwendolyn Harris
has vowed to fix a state child-welfare agency that she said
lacks focus, accountability, resources and longevity among its
workers. Harris and the newly appointed director of what is
now called the Division of Child Protection and Permanency,
Colleen Maguire, said a fundamental problem was that the
agency's mission had crept from ensuring the physical
well-being of children to addressing related family issues.
A complaint of caseworkers is that they get bogged down with
matters such as trying to reschedule a parent's drug-abuse
counseling session, conferring with teachers on truancy, or
even shopping for diapers or food.
"More long-term is to transform the division and get back to its original mission, which is protection and permanency," Maguire said. "We have to make sure that children are safe." To relieve caseworkers of the other tasks, Harris said, other agencies will have to become more involved. But Harris was unsure how the plan for other agencies to help out would be achieved when child welfare is one of the few agencies whose budget isn't being cut because of the state budget crunch. Harris said a consulting firm's sample audit of agency practices would be used to establish performance goals. She said the audit would include interviews with people involved in cases, including family members, court and health officials, and police. They will be conducted statewide, and report cards will be issued. "Those report cards will require, as we discern necessary, a corrective-action plan," she said, and district office management and regional office staff will be held responsible. Source: Associated Press |
| Harare Church Protesters Held |
|
Some 20 clergymen have been detained by police after
attempting to protest in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare. An
AFP news agency reporter saw the church men being loaded onto
the back of an open vehicle and driven away accompanied by two
police vehicles.
The clergymen in suits and dog collars went to police headquarters carrying three wooden crosses seeking an apology for the arrest of a one of their colleagues two weeks ago at a church. They wanted to hand over a petition to police chief Augustine Chihuri asking him "to ensure that the police force in the country performs its duties with respect for the church and every citizen of Zimbabwe". They were quoted as saying that it was their duty to overcome "unjust laws that encourage the selective and vindictive exercise of authority". Relations between the Zimbabwean Government and some churches have deteriorated in recent weeks as leading clergymen have become more outspoken about political repression and economic hardship. Source: BBC News |
| Rich Get Richer; So Do Poor |
|
A columnist writes:
Liberals think the President's tax cuts won't increase the share of the tax burden borne by upper-income individuals. They miss the irony, because every time the government reduces the tax penalty against work, saving, investing and entrepreneurial risk-taking by reducing tax rates, the rich end up paying a larger share of the total tax burden. Of course there is still poverty, and I saw it firsthand as housing secretary for President George Herbert Walker Bush. But wherever poverty exists in America today, it is due to government policies and taxes that punish work, discourage homeownership and restrict access to capital. Free-market economies are working just as Churchill described: The rich are getting richer, and so are the poor. Low-income Americans are healthier and live longer, eat better, have more leisure and enjoy a higher standard of living than ever before. A recent report by the Federal Reserve Board revealed that the net worth of Americans in the lowest income quintile (the lowest 20%) rose 25% between 1998 and 2001. Yet liberal class warriors who practice the politics of envy would have us believe the plight of the poor is worsening because income gains among those in the upper income tiers have been larger than those at the bottom. (That same Fed study found that the net worth of those with incomes in the top 10% rose 69% over the same time period.) The problem with these so-called "distribution studies" is that they deal with abstract statistical aggregations, not real individuals, and they fail to consider the great amount of income mobility that characterizes America. A study by the congressional Joint Economic Committee that corrects this oversight found a remarkable amount of churning as people constantly move up and down in the income distribution. It found that, "the degree of income mobility in American society renders the comparison of quintile income levels over time virtually meaningless." The study found that 86% of tax filers in the bottom quintile had exited this quintile by the end of a decade. According to IRS tax data, the study noted that "an individual who began the 10-year period under study in the bottom quintile had a greater chance of rising to the top by the end of the period than remaining at the bottom." Source: Empower America |
| Conservatives Against War |
|
A columnist writes:
Conservatives, the real conservatives, in my estimation, oppose this war because they oppose war in general. "War is the health of the state," they say, quoting Randolph Bourne. They believe war gives politicians an excuse to expand the state by increasing taxes and decreasing civil liberties. They believe the welfare state grows concomitantly with the warfare state, as the war in Vietnam well proved. The price for the war was that massive and failed welfare program, "The Great Society." If you wonder why so many liberals want war in Iraq, think about that. War is a waste. As more than one writer has observed, war is the least conservative of government enterprises; it is the ultimate big-government program. It is a fabulously wasteful expenditure of the nation's financial resources on a project that employs millions of citizens, either as taxpayers or combatants, to destroy another country. Then the same taxpayers who paid to destroy the country pay to rebuild it. Source: AgapePress |
| A Handy Substitute for Panhandled Donations |
|
Helping the homeless could become as easy as feeding a
parking meter--literally--in a new plan proposed by the Athens,
Georgia, Downtown Development Authority, in which four
refurbished parking meters would collect money for the
homeless. The idea is supposed to be an alternative to giving
money directly to panhandlers on downtown streets, and instead
put it in the meters which would then have their wares
distributed to local service organizations, according to the
Athens Banner-Herald.
"I think it's worth a try," Athens-Clarke Mayor Heidi Davison told the Banner-Herald. "We'll see if it works, and if not we'll try something else." Source: Street News Service |
| 'All Children Are Ours', Says Million-Dollar Campaign |
|
All children are our children. They are the common hope
and future of the world. During the last 20 years, the
children of Iraq have suffered at the hands of both internal
and external forces. The Gulf war in 1991 and more than a
decade of sanctions followed a protracted Iraqi war with Iran
during the 1980s. Estimates of the number of children who
have died run from 500,000 to more than 1 million. It is a
crisis of tragic proportions to which compassionate people of
faith in the United States must respond.
"All Our Children" is a $1 million campaign to respond to critical health care needs of Iraqi children. At a time of great anxiety about another war in Iraq, this effort by people in the United States will be a tangible demonstration of our love for children--a love shared by all humanity. This response includes desperately needed items such as antibiotics, anesthesia, IV solution kits, and methods for accessing clean drinking water. It will send a message to the world, particularly the people of the Middle East, that compassion for all our children unites us. "All Our Children" was initiated by CHURCH WORLD SERVICE, Jubilee Partners, Mennonite Central Committee, the National Council of Churches, and Sojourners. Source: SojoMail See: All Our Children |
| Landlords Get to Play Good Guy |
|
New York City has been experimenting with a trial program
for a state bill that proposes tax credits for landlords to
keep them from evicting long-term, elderly, disabled or
otherwise vulnerable tenants like Brooklynite Rose Quiles, 72,
who has had four strokes. Her monthly Social Security check
barely covers her rent, she said, and she has been unable to
get any government rent subsidies or other protection, and the
building does not fall under the state's rent regulations.
Under the bill, which was introduced in the state legislature in January, New York City could offer landlords a tax abatement equal to half the difference between a tenant's current rent and the fair market rent a landlord could charge, as assessed by the city. In Mrs. Quiles's case, that amounts to a payment to the landlord of $275, which her building's owner, Jeffrey Raiola, says is enough of a compromise to allow him to keep this loyal tenant. If the bill is passed by the Legislature, it will depend on a City Council vote on whether to enact the program. Participation in it would not be mandatory, and those eligible would be landlords of longtime, low-income tenants who spend at least 30% of their income on rent. Proponents of the program say that it would be crucial in keeping neighborhoods stable in the face of gentrification and soaring rents. "We spend a lot of our time fighting landlords, but realized that there are a lot of landlords out there already doing the right thing, and they need a little help to keep doing it," said Benjamin Dulchin, organizing director of the Fifth Avenue Committee, a group in Park Slope that helped conceive the program and finance the pilot. If the bill is approved, said Park Slope's city council representative, who will be introducing the legislation this month, the city would pay an average of $200 a month per unit to keep a family in its apartment, compared with maintaining a homeless family in a city shelter for $3,000 a month. Source: New York Times |
| Life-Net News Extras |
| A Fishing Tangle On Lake Victoria |
|
Fish catches on the Kenyan side of Lake Victoria declined
considerably in 2002 due to the utilisation of illegal gear,
says a report issued by the fisheries department.
However, according to an annual report by fisheries authorities in the western Kenya district of Kisumu, there was a marked increase in revenue collection and service delivery by their department during the same period. Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda share Lake Victoria. Kisumu District fisheries officer Rosaline Okwach quoted findings by her department, which indicated that an increasing number of fishermen were chasing a decreasing number of fish in the lake. There were 5,231 fishermen operating 1,118 boats in the lake last year. According to the fisheries officer, new strategies have to be formulated to reduce the unsustainable number of fishermen operating in the lake. "During the year 2002, a total of 1,143 different species of fish were landed earning the fishermen 54,487,303 Kenya shillings ($716,938 US) as compared to a total of 1,650 different species of fish the previous year," reads part of the report. However, fishermen and opinion leaders interviewed attributed the low catches to the natural depletion of stock and lack of larger fishing vessels to enable fishermen to venture deeper into the lake where bigger species are usually found. A civic leader from the Lake region also blamed mounting incidents of piracy on Lake Victoria as another possible cause of the depletion. "Fishing is the major economic lifeline of the people in the Lake Victoria basin and the government should intensify security patrols in the lake to save the industry from collapsing," the civic leader said. He said the local authorities in the lake districts of Tanzania and Uganda, who also depended on the revenue collected from fishermen need to introduce stringent measures to punish those who wrecked havoc on honest fishermen. Source: PANA |
| Mayor Personally Bulldozes Blighted House |
|
New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin hopped behind the wheel of a
bulldozer Thursday to help demolish an abandoned home next to
Clark High School.
The city and the Orleans Parish School Board are teaming up to clean up areas within a five-block radius of public schools. Nagin said creating clean "safe zones" will protect children walking to school, and may even attract new teachers. The city and the School Board said in one district alone there are 137 blighted properties. Source: The New Orleans Channel |
| Filipinas Resist US Presence |
|
The Gabriela Network, a Philippine-U.S. women's
"solidarity organization" celebrated International Women's Day
"with deep anger and horror" ...
The Bush Administration has confirmed our worst fears when U.S. troops were sent to the Philippines last year, as part of an alleged "war on terrorism." An additional 1,750 troops will be sent to the Philippines and they will be engaged in combat operations in areas of dissent in the archipelago. In one fell swoop and for a pathetic $25 million "security assistance," George Bush and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo nullified and made a mockery of nearly one century of struggle of the Filipino people against the presence of foreign troops and foreign military bases in the country. As the two presidents were not popularly elected, this unholy alliance is not surprising. We reject the excuse given for this violation of the Philippine constitution--that of going after the 250-man Abu Sayyaf which, as everyone in the Philippines knows, was part of the counter-insurgency tactics of the CIA. In previous statements, we have warned that the real targets of the US return to the Philippines were the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the National Democratic Front. The peace pact between the MILF and the Manila government has been broken. The peace talks between the NDF and the Manila government have been suspended. Both events were instigated by the Manila government. We see through this excuse of a "war against terrorism." It is not a coincidence that U.S. naval power will be stationed in the seas where vast oil reserves have been found. In the Philippines as in elsewhere, the so-called war on terrorism has become a war to control oil reserves and natural resources of poor and weak countries for exploitation of multinational corporations. We condemn the bald-face violation by the U.S. of the Philippine Constitution, which specifically prohibits the presence of foreign troops and bases in the archipelago. |
| The Carrot Seems To Have Been Overlooked |
|
Ret Z. wrote to the President:
In the Iraq situation, and maybe others, I think I'm seeing an error that most bosses make. They apply pressure and forget about positive reinforcement. Frustration has resulted every time, while I've hovered in the background with my visions of how the boss's business could be transformed by a systematic and thoughtful campaign of positive reinforcement. You've been a corporate exec before, Mr. President, so I hope you understand what I'm saying here. For a positive bottom line, use positive reinforcement. In watching Ambassador Al-Douri of Iraq speak, I've noticed that they seem hot to trot to get rid of the economic sanctions. This is an opportunity, and it appears to have been overlooked. Whenever you want to get somebody to do something, you look for what they want. Then you dangle before them a real possibility of getting what they want, so that you can get what you want. No doubt about it, almost everyone wants Saddam to disarm. Saddam, on his part, seems eager to get sanctions lifted. Now, suppose you whip out some of that wonderful compassion talk of yours. :) Talk about how you'd rather see Saddam disarm peacefully. About how you see the suffering of the Iraqi people under sanctions, and how you're sick of hearing about children begging on the streets and dying from treatable diseases--as I am, along with many activists I've interviewed. Yes, you're ready for war, you'd say, but it would surely make you happier if Saddam would disarm and the UN would lift its sanctions and perhaps Iraq might join the international community. |
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