LIFE-NET NEWS

by Ret Z.

Covering Poverty Widely in a Net of Many Voices

May 2, 2007	No Profit; No Proceeds
Volume 11 Number 1	All-Volunteer

"Give a family a fish, and they'll eat a meal;  give them a Net, and they'll have fish for Life."

Education Singled Out as Key to Longer Life

In every country, there is an average life span for the nation as a whole and there are average life spans for various subsets, based on race, geography, education, and even churchgoing. The one social factor that researchers agree is consistently linked to longer lives in every country where it has been studied is education. It is more important than race; it obliterates any effects of income.       Year after year, in study after study, says Dr Richard Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging, education "keeps coming up." And, health economists say, those factors that are popularly believed to be crucial, for example, money and health insurance, pale in comparison.       "Giving people more Social Security income, or less for that matter, will not really affect people's health," says James Smith, a health economist at the RAND Corporation. "It is a good thing to do for other reasons, but not for health." Health insurance, too, Smith says, "is vastly overrated in the policy debate."       Instead, he and others say, what may make the biggest difference is keeping young people in school. A few extra years of school is associated with extra years of life and vastly improved health decades later, in old age.       It is not the only factor, of course. There is smoking, which sharply curtails life span. There is a connection between having a network of friends and family and living a long and healthy life. And there is evidence that people with more powerful jobs and, presumably, with more control over their work lives, are healthier and longer-lived. But there is little dispute about the primacy of education.       The first rigorous attempt to decide whether education really changed people so that they lived longer began in a most inauspicious way. It was 1999 and a Columbia University graduate student, Adriana Lleras-Muney, was casting about for a topic for her doctoral dissertation in economics. She found an idea in a paper published in 1969, in which three economists noted the correlation between education and health and gave some advice: If you want to improve health, you will get more return by investing in education than by investing in medical care.       She confronted the question of how to sort out the causes and effects. The answer came to her one day when she was reading an economics paper that indicated that about 100 years ago, various states started passing laws forcing children to go to school for longer periods of time. Then she knew what to do.       "The idea was, when a state changed compulsory schooling from, say, six years to seven years, would the people who were forced to go to school for six years live as long as the people the next year who had to go for seven years," says Lleras-Muney. It turned out, she says, that life expectancy at age 35 was higher by as much as one and a half years simply by a person's having gone to school for one extra year.       Now, others papers have appeared, examining the effects of changed laws on compulsory education in Sweden, Denmark, England and Wales. In every country, compelling children to spend a longer period of time in school led to better health.       Source: International Herald Tribune

How to Make Sure Your Giving Actually Helps

Donors who want to ensure their aid is as effective as possible want to find and support the best poverty-fighting programs, knowing that much well-intentioned giving has little to show for its benevolence. But finding the best can be difficult.       Certain fundamental principles are critical to any effort to help raise up the poor. Conversely, neglecting them will doom even the most well-intentioned philanthropy. Respect the dignity of the poor by recognizing the role that personal responsibility must play in their lives. The ideal is to help people to help themselves, and to avoid a situation in which the poor end up dependent on public or private programs. Challenging the poor to take responsibility for their lives is also a challenge to donors, who can be tempted to center their thoughts on their own good intentions rather than on the long-term prospects of those they seek to help. It is no compliment to imply that a person in need can do nothing to help himself or others. By contrast, to tell poor people that they can succeed at work, break a destructive habit, go to college, or otherwise advance themselves is not only complimentary but liberating. The greatest antipoverty program is a job. Persons with low incomes sometimes need help finding jobs and developing work skills, but they and those who help them must keep their eyes trained on the goal of gainful employment for all the ablebodied. The poor need to be integrated into the economy as thoroughly as possible. It is vital that poor persons learn the economic basics: how to manage their money, how and where to save it, how to launch a business, and so on. This is an area that is especially blessed with excellent existing programs that only await further support to reach more of America’s underprivileged. Support economic growth. Without such growth, jobs will not be available for the jobless; new businesses launched by the less fortunate will not succeed; and even donors will find that they have fewer resources to come to their neighbors’ aid. Private businesses, of course, are the prime movers of economic growth, but philanthropists too can do much to grease the wheels of progress. Promote a healthy civil society among the poor. Poor neighborhoods need to be safe, not crime ridden; they need to be havens of sobriety, not substance abuse; and they need to have strong families.       Source: Helping People to Help Themselves: A Guide for Donors

Boycott Punishes People in Palestine

The suspension of Western aid and Israel's refusal to transfer money owed to the Palestinian Authority (PA) has led to grave humanitarian consequences for Palestinians, according to a survey commissioned by international development agency Oxfam International and released last month. The survey by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion (PCPO) found that more than four out of five of the 677 families interviewed have seen a drop in their income following the year-long boycott of the PA. Half of all the families reported losing more than half their income.       The PCPO also interviewed 67 senior managers running schools, hospitals, and water services across the West Bank and Gaza. Nine out of ten managers said that services had been negatively affected by the boycott. Half of the essential service managers reported that they have cut their vital services by half or more because of insufficient funding.       Palestinians had already been struggling to make ends meet when key Western donors including the US, the EU, and Canada suspended direct aid to the Palestinian government in April 2006. The move came in response to the victory of Hamas in parliamentary elections. Israel halted tax and customs revenue transfers it owed to the PA shortly afterwards.       Western donors argued that their goal was to change the policies of the Hamas-led government, not to punish the Palestinian people. However, Oxfam's survey shows that the financial boycott has had a devastating impact on civilians.       "International aid should be provided impartially on the basis of need, not as a political tool to change the policies of a government," said Oxfam International executive director Jeremy Hobbs. "Oxfam opposes violence against civilians and supports Israel's right to exist alongside a viable and independent Palestinian state. But suspending aid -- and withholding tax revenue in violation of international agreements -- is not an ethical or effective way to achieve these outcomes. And in this case, it hasn't worked. Instead, parents have been driven into debt, children taken out of classrooms, and whole families deprived of access to medicine and healthcare."       Source: Oxfam UK

Welfare State Growing Despite Overhauls

The welfare state is bigger than ever despite a decade of policies designed to wean poor people from public aid. The number of families receiving cash benefits from welfare has plummeted since the government imposed time limits on the payments a decade ago. But other programs for the poor, including Medicaid, food stamps, and disability benefits, are bursting with new enrollees.       The result, according to an Associated Press analysis: Nearly one in six people rely on some form of public assistance, a larger share than at any time since the government started measuring two decades ago.       Critics of the welfare overhaul say the numbers offer fresh evidence that few former recipients have become self-sufficient, even though millions have moved from welfare to work. They say the vast majority have been forced into low-paying jobs without benefits and few opportunities to advance.       "If the goal of welfare reform was to get people off the welfare rolls, bravo," said Vivyan Adair, a former welfare recipient who is now an assistant professor of women's studies at Hamilton College in upstate New York. "If the goal was to reduce poverty and give people economic and job stability, it was not a success."       Proponents of the changes in welfare say programs that once discouraged work now offer support to people in low-paying jobs. They point to expanded eligibility rules for food stamps and Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor, that enable people to keep getting benefits even after they start working.       "I don't have any problems with those programs growing, and indeed, they were intended to grow," said Ron Haskins, a former adviser to President Bush on welfare policy.       "We've taken the step of getting way more people into the labor force and they have taken a huge step toward self-sufficiency," he said. "What is the other choice?"       Source: Associated Press

Cattle Interests Threaten Uncontacted Tribes

The heartland of the last uncontacted Indians south of the Amazon basin is at imminent risk of destruction. Powerful land-owning companies are trying to have injunctions protecting the Indians' territory lifted.       The injunctions are currently the only protection for the last remaining forests of the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode Indians. The injunctions have been flouted, and long tracks have already been bulldozed into the forest.       Much of the Indians' territory is owned by a Paraguayan company called Jaguarete Pora SA, a merger of the previous land-owning companies known as Luna Park International Ltda and Itakyry SRL. Under Paraguayan law all this area, as a small remaining part of the Ayoreo's forest homeland, should have been titled to the Indians years ago. But Jaguarete is instead trying to get permission to bulldoze much of the forest and introduce cattle, a process that has already ruined vast areas of the Ayoreo's territory.       Although most of the Ayoreo tribe, including some members of the Ayoreo-Totobiegosode sub-group, have had contact with outsiders for many years, several groups are known to still live uncontacted in the forest. The most recent group to emerge came out of the forest in 2004, pleading for water after cattle-farming colonists occupied all the permanent water holes in their territory.       Source: Survival International

To Make a Sustainable City

One of your fellow subscribers, Tino Rozzo, also star of a couple of Life-Net Radios, had some interesting things to say (here condensed) while running for mayor of Vineland NJ this year:       I hate what has become of Vineland. For years now it has been an economically depressed area with no jobs and no hope. The social elevator has been horribly stuck at the bottom.       My agenda is a simple one. To make Vineland a sustainable, livable city. I plan on a twelve-step program: Eliminate Faulkner Petitions. Set a city constitution that protects the people. Only use eminent domain for the people, not business. Set up a consumer affairs office. Declare Vineland a Sustainable City and work in tandem with other cities as such. Develop a Sustainable Industrial Park. Invite foreign interests (Act Locally, Think Globally). Start a community chest with community franchise to offset financial needs. Set up a free health care system similar to one in Red Bank NJ. Set up an initiative for worker-owned cooperatives. Fight privatization. Fight the State for improved public transportation.       All this is possible. I have seen it in Italy in my father's hometown of Pomigliano D'Arco in Naples. Someone must give Vineland its true Renaissance. The current administration has given us bad ideas. Vineland has never had it this bad.       Source: Tino Rozzo

Seminary Principal Chides Greedy Church Leaders

Dr Seth Agidi, the principal of the Evangelical Presbyterian Seminary at Peki, Ghana, has expressed concern about the inability of Christian churches to live up to the hope and aspirations of society. He said that the church has completely deviated from its basic roles and responsibilities of supplying people's spiritual needs as well as physically helping to improve people's living conditions. He said that most churches now direct their attention to the acquisition of material things. Agidi, who was delivering the sermon at the end of the 60th Southern Presbytery Conference of the E P Church at Adidome in the north Tongu District of the Volta Region, called on the church to draw up human development centered programs to support the less privileged in society.       He said that the absence of human development programs in most churches has led to a situation where people join churches because they regard them as social clubs which would give them a befitting burial when they die. The minister said Christianity now lacks practical action and Demonstration to attract non-believers to be converted; church leaders concentrate on seeking material gains such as beautiful chapels and houses and expensive cars. "Corruption and greed to acquire riches has now become the order of the day, and we have forgotten about the basic principle of Christian life. Churches no longer care for the orphans and widows in our communities".       Agidi stressed that churches need to adapt to changing global needs and move away from only preaching the word of God to also providing social services, like the payment of school fees for poor children, and contributing meaningfully to the growth and development of society. "Let us love the work of Christ and take delight in the welfare of one another. May the good Lord abide with us."       Source: Ghanaian Chronicle

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Some 475,000 families in Texas sought assistance following "the forgotten disaster", 2005's Hurricane Rita. A year and a half later more than 5,000 individuals and families still wait for help. With every rainstorm, leaky roofs and moldy walls remind them of the catastrophe. Although fatalities from Rita were minimal, home damage was severe. "There are homes in southeastern Texas that look the same today as they did on September 24, 2005, when Rita struck," says Linda Reed Brown, Associate Director for Church World Service's Emergency Response Program. Many of those affected by Rita don't have insurance, have lost coverage, or simply don't have the funds to pay for repairs on their own. (Church World Service) Anbar Province, long the lawless heartland of the tenacious Sunni Arab resistance, is undergoing a surprising transformation. Violence is ebbing in many areas; shops and schools are reopening; police forces are growing; and the insurgency appears to be in retreat. Many Sunni tribal leaders, once openly hostile to the American presence, have formed a united front with American and Iraqi government forces against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. With the tribal leaders’ encouragement, thousands of local residents have joined the police force. About 10,000 police officers are now in Anbar, up from several thousand a year ago. During the same period, say American military officials, the police force in Ramadi, the provincial capital, has grown from fewer than 200 to about 4,500. (New York Times) The United States and the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria have jointly donated $2.9 million to distribute more than 500,000 insecticide-treated mosquito nets in Zambia. The nets will help protect those who sleep under them from contracting malaria, which kills up to 50,000 Zambians a year, mostly children. The nets, enough for a tenth of the country's population, will be handed out before November, the beginning of malaria season. (New York Times) As the number of mortgage foreclosures rises around the US, the number of companies offering help is increasing, too. Many are negotiating terms the homeowner could fairly easily obtain on their own, while others are doing even less and simply exploiting vulnerable homeowners. While no one tracks the number of foreclosure aid providers, real estate professionals and consumer advocates nationwide say questionable practices are rising, especially in areas such as Southern California, Las Vegas, and southeast Florida where a housing boom was fed by a sharp increase in mortgages to borrowers with riskier credit. "Every time I think I've seen the latest scam, another one comes along," said real estate veteran Terry Shattuck. "Every shyster calls these people and says, 'I'll bail you out. All you have to do is sign the deed of the house over to me.'" (Associated Press) The new AIDS treatment access numbers released by the World Health Organization are a grave warning about the state of AIDS treatment scale-up. In 2006, treatment access grew by 700,000 to an estimated total of 2,015,000 people, leaving many millions more in urgent need of antiretroviral therapy. At this rate of expansion the world will fall 5 million people short of the internationally declared and reaffirmed Universal Access target of 9.8 million on treatment by 2010. A Global Week of Action is set for May 20-26. (ITPC) The number of people living on less than $1 a day has fallen below 1 billion, according to new estimates from the World Bank, which show a continuous decline in world poverty rates during the first four years of this century. According to the annual World Development Indicators report, the number of people living in extreme poverty (subsisting on a daily income of less than US$1) fell 18.4% between 2000 and 2004, to an estimated 985 million. This marks a clear decline since 1990, when the number was 1.25 billion. The number of people living on less than US$2 a day is also falling steadily, though this population still accounted for half the developing world in 2004, according to the Bank. (Worldwatch Institute)

Life-Net News Extras

Donated Freezers Start West African Micro-Businesses

Every morning, Owattara Waraba lifts the metal lid of her freezer and peers in on her icy merchandise. Colorful bottles of frozen juice and bags of ice lay stacked and ready for market -- each of them a small part of the microenterprise project that has helped this widowed mother-of-five rebuild her life.       In Abidjan, the capital city of Cote d'Ivoire in French-speaking West Africa, Operation Blessing has teamed up with a regional ministry to bring relief to orphans and widows such as 48-year-old Owattara. The Centre International d'Evangelisation de Cote d'Ivoire, operating under the leadership of Dr Ambroise Sery and his wife Rebecca, was alerted to the dire needs of some widows living with their children in the Abidjan area. The situation was grim as many of these families faced life with little food and no way to find work.       Ten years ago, Owatarra's husband died and she was left as the sole provider for a family of five growing children. She was not alone; other widows in the area faced a similar plight. To complicate the situation, Owatarra's elderly mother resides in a distant village in the African interior and is unable to support herself.       After learning of Owattara's situation, the Serys informed Operation Blessing and a plan was formed to help her and the other women. Families were given a chest freezer for their homes, one they could use to prepare goods for sale at the local market. Items such as drinking water and juice usually sell quickly. The vendors also use ice to keep meats and produce cool and fresh.       "The ice can be used for any number of purposes in the marketplace," said Jon Cassel, Operation Blessing's outreach center director in French Africa. "The widows can also freeze fruit drinks in plastic bottles, which remain cold all day long in the large picnic coolers that Operation Blessing supplied."       The microenterprise project has changed the life of Owatarra and her family. Not only is she able to afford food, but the income also helps pay for the children's school expenses. She is even earning enough money to help care for her mother.       "The freezer has been a huge boost for my family," said Christine Gnalko, 50, who is widowed with 10 children. "It is an answer to prayer for me and my children."       Source: Operation Blessing International

A Step Forward for Universal Health Coverage

More than 350 union members representing workers in manufacturing and public and private service industries filled the Connecticut State Capitol on a mid-April day to support universal health care. Cheers went up when the Government Administration and Elections Committee voted in favor of SB 1371 to establish the "Connecticut Saves Health Care" single-payer program for universal coverage.       Speaking in Spanish, school bus driver Evelyn Vega, a member of the Service Employees union, told of being forced to work while sick, having a mini-stroke while driving school children that day, and returning to work before full recovery in order to pay for medications and other bills. "The Legislature needs to know that workers are making decisions between their health and their jobs," she said. "The real value of fixing our broken health care system is truly priceless." Stories like Vega’s are being circulated to organize grassroots pressure for action before the Legislature’s June 6 adjournment.       Business opponents are running a vicious scare campaign, claiming the proposal is unacceptable because of the projected $18 billion cost. But Majority Leader Chris Donovan told the crowd, "The cost of health care now is $22 billion. With single-payer we could save $4 billion and cover everybody with a good plan."       Source: People's Weekly World

A Lesson in Open-Borders Arithmetic

Adapted from a piece by columnist Michelle Malkin:       The New York Times is always ready and willing to serve as lead public relations staffers for the open-borders movement. On May Day, the day of mass illegal alien protests across the country, the paper saw fit to print a front-page sob story decrying rising illegal alien deportations.       "Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, facing intense political pressure to toughen enforcement [read: do their jobs], removed 221,664 illegal immigrants from the country over the last year," the Times reported ominously. That's "an increase of more than 37,000 -- about 20 percent -- over the year before, according to the agency's tally."       221,664. Big number. It certainly sounds like we're getting serious about immigration enforcement, if you believe what the Times tells you.       But you know better than that. It's what the paper didn't tell you on the day of the pro-amnesty demonstrations that provides the truly alarming news. Far from a nation that takes its immigration laws seriously, we remain in a shoddy, dangerous state of immigration non-enforcement nearly six years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- chaos that will only worsen if Congress and the White House join hands on a "comprehensive" illegal alien amnesty plan.       In March, the Homeland Security Department's inspector general disclosed that the feds have lost track of 623,292 fugitive illegal aliens. These "absconders" were apprehended by immigration officers, placed in the immigration court system, ordered out of the country and released. Never to be seen again.       221,664 "removed" illegal aliens vs. 623,292 released illegal alien fugitives. In other words: There are nearly three times as many officially designated illegal alien fugitives freed by the feds as there are illegal aliens who have been removed over the last year. This inconvenient truth was glossed over by the Times.       So was this: Despite more than $204 million earmarked since 2003 for 52 special fugitive operations teams across the country, the "backlog of fugitive alien cases has increased each fiscal year since the [fugitive apprehension] program was established in February 2002."       Source: Town Hall

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A USA Today/Gallup Poll has shown 78% of the US public favoring giving all or most of the 12 million undocumented immigrants a chance to legalize and eventually become US citizens. The poll, carried out on April 13 and 14, also suggests that immigration is not at the forefront of the worries of the US public. “Immigration” and “illegal immigration” ranked low in the topics of concern listed by respondents, far behind the Iraq war, Social Security, the economy and health care. Only 14% said the immigrants should be kicked out and never allowed to return. (People's Weekly World) The notorious difficulty of completing financial-aid applications is one of many barriers standing between low-income Americans and college degrees. But this year, researchers are using tax season to try to make that task less taxing. More than 1,700 potential college students and parents who earn less than $45,000 annually and had their taxes done at select H&R Block offices got free help completing the FAFSA, or Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Later, their levels of college attendance and aid awards will be compared with a group that received only a financial-aid pamphlet. The study aims to inform and improve the national debate on access to higher education. (Christian Science Monitor) Demonstrators carried a coffin outside a meeting of African Union health ministers in early April to protest what they called government backsliding on pledges to fund the fight against AIDS. A coalition of anti-AIDS groups which staged the protest urged governments to recognize the pandemic as an "emergency that needs an extraordinary response", saying most of the targets set in previous meetings had been missed. "We refuse to be told that our lives are expendable and ... demand that our governments keep the promises they made and specific targets they agreed to," they said in a statement at the protest in Johannesburg. Speaking on Tuesday ahead of the three-day gathering, AU Commission chairman Alpha Oumar Konare raised concern about governments' failure to stump up enough cash to fight the diseases on the continent. "Last year we made new commitments to make resources available, but when I look at the tools being implemented, I see no positive developments." (Agence France-Presse) Warming temperatures could result in food shortages for 130 million people by 2050, according to a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The report suggests that a 3.6-degree increase in mean air temperature could decrease rain-fed rice yields by 5% to 12% percent in China. In Bangladesh, rice production may fall by just under 10% and wheat by a third by the year 2050. The drops in yields combined with rising populations could put close to 50 million extra people at risk of hunger by 2020, an additional 132 million by 2050, and 266 million by 2080, the report said. "Unchecked climate change will be an environmental and economic catastrophe but above all it will be a human tragedy," Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, said in a statement. Penehuro Lefale, one of the lead authors on the small-island chapter, said in a statement the warmer temperatures will also hurt sectors ranging from tourism to agriculture and fisheries on many island nations. (Associated Press)

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