| LIFE-NET NEWS |
| by Ret Z. |
| Covering Poverty Widely in a Net of Many Voices |
| March 18, 2009 | No Profit; No Proceeds |
| Volume 12 Number 19 | All-Volunteer |
| "Give a family a fish, and they'll eat a meal; give them a Net, and they'll have fish for Life." |
| Sacramento Struggles with Growing Homelessness |
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SACRAMENTO, CA California's capital city is fighting a swelling homelessness problem among its residents, after a tent city sprung up on the city's outskirts. Sacramento has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the US. As many as 50 people a week arrive at the tent city. Authorities estimate it is now home to more than 1,200 people.
Now its homeless population hope an Oprah TV show about recession, foreclosures, and homelessness will help them out of poverty. They hope the segment on the national talk show will prompt more donations and government help. Producers came to Sacramento in February to visit the homeless shelters. "We're very glad that Oprah and her team have chosen to give this crisis a voice," Michele Steeb, executive director of St John's Shelter, said. "Our turnaway numbers have risen from 20 women and children being turned away per day in 2007 to 80 in 2008 to our current number of 230 women and children being turned away a day. It is a crisis and it's only getting worse." The city and county of Sacramento have already received $34 million to help fight the effects of the foreclosure crisis. In the meantime, hundreds of people have moved into the shelters. Source: Telegraph |
| Poverty Shields Berlin from Downturn |
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BERLIN, GERMANY At Oliv, a snazzy glass and concrete
café in Berlin's trendy Mitte district, Teena Marie is
pouring forth full blast from the speakers while a
fashion-forward clientele busies itself with sipping
cappuccinos. The newspapers are full of impending economic doom, but the hot spot's owner, Hans Thedeck, isn't buying it.
"We don't feel it at all," he said. "It's a lot of theory, this crisis. These financial types, they make crises and they make stimulus packages -- it's all very hypothetical. Everything can't always keep growing; you can't have 4% growth every year. It just doesn't have that much to do with real life." At least, in Berlin it doesn't. For most in the German capital, the financial crisis and the ensuing economic downturn seem unreal, a distant problem affecting other cities far away. The reason? The city wasn't doing terribly well even in the good times. It has become used to a dour economy and didn't have very far to fall. "Because Berlin has done relatively so poorly for the last 40 years, it can't do much worse," said Michael Burda, an economist at the city's Humboldt University. If anything, the economic difficulties facing other European capitals will lead to fears in Berlin that it may lose its coveted place at the bottom of the heap. The city thrives on its grungy, unkempt image, one that Mayor Klaus Wowereit immortalized in his 2003 comment that Berlin is "poor but sexy." Municipal services are kept at a bare minimum, with garbage often blowing down Berlin's wide boulevards and sidewalks left covered with ice and snow until the weather changes. When it comes to the financial crisis, Berlin can rightfully turn up its nose with a "been there done that" sniff. Throughout the 1990s, the Bankgesellschaft Berlin busied itself with handing out questionable loans in the real estate and construction sectors -- and then bundling them into funds sold to private investors. It was a practice not unlike that which led to the current finance crisis. The result was similar, too. The city has since transformed its commitment to chic poverty into one of its key selling points -- and it is one which has so far protected it from the tidal wave of economic bad news. Berlin's lack of industry means it is immune to the shocks being suffered in other parts of the country where auto manufacturers and engineering companies are feeling the full impact of the global economic slowdown. "Berlin is now the only place in the world you can go where everyone isn't depressed," said Marc Glimcher, president of PaceWildenstein art galleries in New York. "That's because in Berlin, it's always a recession." Source: Spiegel |
| Predatory Commercial Tax Preparers Take from Poor |
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WASHINGTON, DC The Children's Defense Fund on Monday released a report finding that in tax year 2006, low-income families lost $3.1 billion of their Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) benefits to high-interest, short-term loans, tax preparation fees, and other financial products issued
by commercial tax preparers. With the 2008 tax filing
deadline fast approaching and millions of families
struggling in the economic recession, the report warns
low-income families to avoid Refund Anticipation Loans
whose high interest rates can eat up a significant
percentage of their refund in exchange for receiving their money only a little earlier.
"When money goes to pay for high-interest Refund Anticipation Loans from commercial tax preparers, families and communities lose important resources," said CDF president Marian Wright Edelman. "In this economic downturn, both families and our economy need important investments like the Earned Income Tax Credit. These benefits will provide urgently needed assistance to hard-pressed families who are likely to stimulate our economy by quickly spending the money to meet urgent needs." The EITC is a refundable federal tax credit for low- and modest-income workers and is one of the most effective tools for lifting families out of poverty. With growing numbers of working families struggling against the rapid downturn in the economy, it is especially important that all eligible families and individuals know about the EITC and how to take full advantage of it. Families' losses are in part due to commercial tax preparers' aggressive marketing of Refund Anticipation Loans to lower-income communities and people with low financial literacy. These Refund Anticipation Loans often carry triple-digit interest rates and can cost a taxpayer a sizeable portion of his or her refund, all for only a slightly quicker return. According to the report, areas of the country hit hardest by Refund Anticipation Loans include North and South Dakota and states in the Deep South such as Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina. Source: Children's Defense Fund |
| Coalition of Christians Fight Cambodian Sex Trade |
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PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA With the global recession affecting Cambodia, humanitarian workers say that more young women are being snared by human trafficking and prostitution. The capital city has 20% of trafficked sex workers. Christians are working together to help the victims and end the sex industry.
On a late afternoon, a Cambodian girl easily initiatied friendly conversation with foreign strangers. Vanthat, 10, said that French men often come to Cambodia to talk to the children. She said that sometimes those same kids disappear as possible victims of the sex-trafficking industry. The UN says 200 to 500 Cambodian women from the provinces are trafficked every month into Phnom Penh and neighboring Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos. Children as young as 4 account for 35% of the victims. Ros Heng, national facilitator of the Chabdai Coalition, a Christian network of 20 organizations committed to ending sex abuse and trafficking, said the children find it easier to lie: "Even though they are victimized they don't tell the truth. These men come to them, touch them, and give them money. If they tell the truth and men are arrested, they lose the income." Most of the child victims come from very poor families in the provinces, according to Ros. He said some are sold as many as five times over, and for as little as $300. Charya,15, not her real name, was sold by her aunt to the brothel when she was 7, along with her 4-year-old sister. "They locked us in a room and forced us to watch pornography so we would know what to do. If we refused they would electrocute us." Charya and her sister were rescued after four years. Traumatized children are helped and given a home by the Chabdai Coalition. Another Christian group committed to helping sex-trade victims is Hagar International. Emelita Goddard, Hagar's senior manager, described the abuse suffered by a young victim: "In Thailand she said she didn't know she had to service ten men per day. She was 10 years old. She ran away when she was 14 years old. She had to service so many men just to pay her way to Cambodia. By the time we have her, she was almost 18." At Hagar, the abused women are placed under the organization's holistic program that provides not only counseling, but also equips women to earn a living outside the sex trade. Most of the girls are employed in Hagar-run enterprises such as a soya factory, crafts and garments, and a catering business and restaurant. The women are also finding an eternal hope: "They said before we have never heard about the God who cares," said Goddard. "When we have problems we never ask someone to help us, but this time when we have problems, we prayed and Jesus answered us." Source: CBN |
| Navajo-Hopi Development Ban to be Lifted |
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WASHINGTON, DC The US Senate has voted to lift a decades-old ban on development on about 700,000 acres in Arizona's Black Mesa region that both the Navajo and Hopi
tribes claimed as their own. The Senate unanimously
approved a bill by Arizona senators John McCain and Jon Kyl
on Thursday night to lift a ban on development in the
"Bennett Freeze" area. Action by the House is still
required, but no opposition is expected.
The ban had prevented about 8,000 Navajos who live there
from putting in electric lines, repairing leaky roofs, and running water lines to their homes unless the improvements were approved by the neighboring Hopi Tribe. The ban was imposed in 1966 by former US Commissioner of Indian Affairs Robert Bennett as a way to settle the land dispute between the tribes. It was lifted in late 2006 after the tribes reached an agreement and a federal judge signed off on it.
Tribal members remained fearful that the freeze could be reinstated if the law that authorized it wasn't repealed. "That's the last scar that needs to be erased," Leslie Dele, chairman of the Navajo Nation Council's Navajo-Hopi Land Commission, said Friday. "It will be there as memories, but at least we get it off the books. This will be good news for the people back home." The Bennett Freeze area, on the western edge of the Navajo Nation, includes nine Navajo communities and arguably is the most depressed area on the 27,000 square-mile reservation. A recent study commissioned by the Bureau of Indian Affairs found that 77% of the homes in the area aren't suitable to live in; more than 40% of homes don't have electricity; and 10% of residents make almost daily trips to haul water. It's expected to cost upward of $1.3 billion to rehabilitate the area, and tribal officials largely will be looking to the federal government for funding. "The federal government has a moral obligation to support the redevelopment of the former Bennett Freeze area," said Roman Bitsuie, executive director of the Navajo-Hopi Land Commission Office. "The construction freeze is over. The legal issues between the two tribes are largely resolved. Now it is time for all parties to work together to address the human issues that this legacy of tangled and unjust laws has left behind." Source: Associated Press |
| Saudi Arabia Considers Protections for Domestics |
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NEW YORK, NY Saudi Arabia's Shura Council should ensure
that proposed labor protections for domestic workers adhere to international standards and recommend their prompt enactment, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Friday. The Shura Council was planning to discuss the draft annex to the labor law this week and make recommendations to the Saudi cabinet, which can enact the measure into law.
Saudi Arabia's current labor law excludes domestic workers, denying them rights guaranteed to other workers, such as a weekly day of rest, limits to hours of work, and overtime pay. A 2008 HRW report documented how domestic workers often worked 18 hours a day, seven days a week, and had little power to collect owed wages in labor disputes. "The Saudi government has an opportunity to improve conditions for domestic workers dramatically and to serve as a model for the region," said Nisha Varia, deputy director of the women's rights division at HRW. "It should adopt these reforms quickly to prevent future cases of abuse." The Shura Council is a consultative body. It debates draft legislation presented by the cabinet and, once approved, the draft law goes back to the cabinet which can make further changes and enact it into law. Approximately 1.5 million women from Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and other countries are employed as domestic workers in Saudi Arabia. Saudi authorities and the foreign missions of domestic workers' home countries receive thousands of complaints of labor exploitation or abuse each year. Excessive workload and unpaid wages, for periods ranging from a few months to 10 years, are among the most common complaints. Many more cases probably go unreported, given domestic workers' isolation in private homes, employers' ability to have workers summarily deported, and migrants' lack of information about their rights. "The Shura Council should ensure that the proposed reforms provide domestic workers the same rights accorded other workers under the labor law," said Varia. "Working in private homes does not mean they should lose basic protections, and guaranteeing these rights by law can be especially important since they work out of the public view." Domestic workers' rights are further compromised by the restrictive kafala (sponsorship) system, which ties migrant workers' visas to their employers, and means employers can deny workers the ability to change jobs or leave the country. HRW interviewed dozens of domestic workers who said their employers forced them to work against their will for months or years. In other cases, domestic workers face forced confinement in the home, or physical and sexual abuse. Source: Human Rights Watch |
| Potato Giveaway Puts Tons Into Hands of Camden Needy |
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CAMDEN, NJ Phyllis Powell learned early how to use potatoes to stretch a meal. "My grandmother taught me that you can do so many things with potatoes," said the mother of four, who was among the hundreds of people who got a free 50-pound bag of potatoes from Respond Inc on March 5.
"This is going to be a big help for me and my family."
Respond, a nonprofit that offers a wide array of social services for the needy in Camden, distributed 45,000 pounds of potatoes to the public that day. About 600 people lined up at a vacant lot on Eighth and Linden Streets, where a truckload of potatoes was delivered. The potatoes came from the Society of St Andrew's Potato and Produce Project, which collects unmarketable produce from farmers and distributes it to the needy nationwide. "The line must have been 30 to 40 people deep at times," said Respond executive director Wilbert Mitchell. "Everybody was discussing what they were going to make with them," added Judith Everts, Respond's director of adult services. In the first half-hour of the giveaway, Respond volunteers distributed about one-third of their load. "We were going to call the food bank in case we couldn't give them all away," said Everts, "but we didn't need to do that." "People were saying 'Thank you, Respond'," said the Rev Joseph Scott, who coordinated the effort. "And you were thinking they were getting more than just potatoes." Scott, who was a United Methodist pastor for 33 years before joining the Respond staff, got the idea for the giveaway when he volunteered to help with another Society of St Andrew food giveaway in Atlantic City: "It worked there and I was pretty sure it would work here. People need food, especially with the way the economy is." Each of the bags would retail for roughly $40 at grocery stores, Respond officials said. "It's going to help my budget tremendously," said Lena Toledo of Clementon. "I just had a baby and the way the economy is ... It's not easy." Every Monday night, the mother of two joins the rest of her family for a meal. "We'll go through five pounds in one night." Source: Courier-Post |
| Iran Tries Hard to Encourage Marriage |
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MASSHAD, IRAN After a day-long journey on a rusty train, Afshin and his fiancée, Fahimeh, along with 120 other couples, reach the holy northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad to celebrate their state-organized mass wedding. The young couple say they are blessed that their first trip
together is to the shrine of Reza (765-818), the eighth
Imam of Shia Muslims, and the most popular honeymoon
destination in Iran.
The trip is part of a plan started more than a decade ago by the office of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to encourage "student marriages". The organized weddings have brought together 40,000 students every year, out of a total student population of 3.5 million. Today's youth -- 60% of the population is under 30 -- are not as eager for marriage as their parents. Better education, aspirations for independence, and difficult economic conditions have driven up the marriage age for men from about 21 in the 1970s to 26 now, and for women from 18 to 25 during the same period. Mohammad-Javad Ali-Akbari, the head of the National Youth Organization, recently warned that Iran was facing a "marriage crisis" and too many people were having sex outside wedlock, which is illegal under Islamic law. Insisting that this predicament was "more dangerous than the enemy’s bombs and missiles", the organization said that up to 15 million of Iran's population of 70 million should be getting married but are prioritizing education and jobs instead. It warned that the marriage age in big cities was nearing 40 for men and 35 for women. Girls, who now account for 65% of university students, have increasingly high expectations from life and want more than to find a suitable husband. Many young men, meanwhile, cannot afford to marry. The unemployment rate among educated people is 25%, and the average salary is $500 a month. Soaring housing prices, meanwhile, have forced young people to seek second and third jobs to pay the rent. "I am concerned about economic issues but I’m not afraid," says Afshin, 27, a psychology student. "I don't have a job, I don't have an apartment, and neither my family nor my wife's family can financially support us." The ceremony in Mashhad is simple. Brides wear modest, floral chadors -- the head-to-toe cover -- and light make-up, in what they say is a symbolic celebration that challenges the idea that weddings have to be costly. At the end, each couple is promised a gold coin worth about $200 from Ayatollah Khamenei and can expect another $100 in cash from President Ahmadi-Nejad to be offered later. Students are given $4,000 by the government and an $800 loan from their university. Afshin and his bride say they are looking for a simple life. He complains, "This tendency towards modern ideas among young people has shaken the marriage institution." Source: Financial Times |
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| Texas-Mexico Border Wall Records Withheld or Redacted |
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WASHINGTON, DC Federal officials are illegally withholding documents that would allow the public to determine the full impact of the 700 miles of fence being built along the Texas-Mexico border, according to a lawsuit filed by Public Citizen. Filed in US district court last Wednesday the suit is on behalf of a member of the University of Texas (UT) Working Group on Human Rights and the Border Wall.
Denise Gilman, a clinical law professor at UT, submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in April for records that would show where the fence would be built, including maps, surveys and appraisals of affected properties. She also requested information about the criteria for deciding where segments of the wall would be built and agency assessments of the impact of the wall on surrounding communities. Almost a year later, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the US Army Corps of Engineers have not complied with Gilman's request. Despite initial indications that the agencies possessed volumes of records responsive to Gilman's request, the corps of engineers denied part of her request outright and released only a few documents with substantial redactions. DHS referred her entire request to CBP, which released a mere two redacted documents in December. On January 30, CBP told Gilman that it was still processing her request despite a federal requirement that it respond to her April request within 20 days. UT's Working Group on Human Rights and the Border Wall was formed to study and investigate the impact of the wall on property owners, indigenous communities, and the environment. A full analysis is difficult without the documents showing where the wall will be built and the criteria on which those decisions were made. With what little information is available, researchers have found significant differences in the income and race of property owners whose land will be affected and those who will not. For example, news outlets have reported that the wall will skip a wealthy country club on the border while having a devastating impact on some poorer neighborhoods and Native American communities. "The Working Group at UT believes that the information we are seeking is necessary to allow a serious look at this massive border wall project moving forward at great expense to taxpayers, likely in the billions of dollars," Gilman said. "We sincerely hope that the Obama administration, which has pledged greater transparency and accountability in government, will release the requested documents so that informed debate and consultation regarding the border wall can take place before there is any further construction." Source: Public Citizen |
| Sanitation Access VIP-Only at World Water Forum |
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Adapted from a piece posted today by Meera Karunananthan, National Water Campaigner at the Council of Canadians:
Yesterday, I picked up my media accreditation for the World Water Forum. I now don't need to pay the exorbitant fee of 100 euros a day, which has kept so many of our comrades from having their voices heard at the international conference which is being promoted as open and democratic. Sometimes it's the simple things that matter. Maude, Wenona Hauter, the Executive Director of Food and Water Watch, and I needed to use the bathrooms at the World Water Forum and discovered that there were separate bathrooms for the VIPs which we were not allowed to use. When we finally made our way to the ordinary people's bathrooms, we discovered there was no running water, so the toilets wouldn't flush and we couldn't wash our hands. The symbolism is hard to ignore. It's a perfect statement about the World Water Forum's agenda serving the rich and powerful while the poor are denied access to water and sanitation. The VIPs have a special space reserved for their sanitation purposes, while the rest of us have no running water. The Council of Canadians held a panel at the official World Water Forum yesterday with Our Water Commons, Food and Water Watch, and other organizations to launch a report that highlights success stories of communities working to protect the water commons through a communitarian approach to water management. Highlights: A representative of the Uruguayan government, Jose Luis Genta talked about the recognition of water as a human right in Uruguayan domestic law. "Water should be delivered according to social principles not economic principles." Activists from India delivered a powerful message: Reject the corporate agenda by implementing indigenous knowledge. Speaking of a community in India whose land was transformed, "It was traditional knowledge that served the community," said Rajendra Singh. "University knowledge serves corporate interests and imposes one system on all. Traditional knowledge, which is about everyone sharing what they know, helped us find a solution." Adriana Marquiso, President of the Public Water Union in Uruguay stressed the importance of redefining the meaning of public so it extends beyond state control. "There are forms of public management that recognize other structures of governance. The public interest can also be promoted through models of public communitarianism." Wenonah Hauter used the US example to expose the myth of private sector efficiency being advocated by the World Water Forum. "We did a survey in 20 states that have privatized water services and found that private companies charge more than public utilities. The difference was stark in many states. In Delaware for example, privatized water is 80% more expensive." Source: Alternet |
| CNN: Single-Payer Is So 90s |
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NEW YORK, NY In one of the few recent corporate media mentions of single-payer healthcare, CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen (3/5/09) explained why healthcare "reform" is more possible now than it was under President Bill Clinton: "Fifteen years ago you sometimes heard -- actually you heard quite a bit -- people saying, 'Let's have a single-payer system like in Canada. The government is going to be the health insurer for everybody.' You don't hear that as much as you used to. So more people are on the same page more than they once were."
Cohen is right that there were many people in favor of single-payer 15 years ago. As an Extra! article from that era (7-8/93) pointed out, New York Times polling since 1990 had "consistently found majorities -- ranging from 54% to 66% -- in favor of tax-financed national health insurance." The numbers today? A New York Times/CBS poll (1/11-15/09) found 59% in favor of government-provided national health insurance. In other words, contrary to Cohen's claim, people are on pretty much the same page today as they were 15 years ago. Cohen's suggestion that it was those loud voices that stymied "reform" is likewise unsupportable. As Extra! reported back in 1993, corporate media were then solidly behind the Clinton administration's big insurer-friendly "managed competition" plan: "While the phrase 'managed competition' appeared in 62 New York Times news stories in the six months following the 1992 election, 'single-payer' appeared in only five news stories during that period -- never in more than a single-sentence mention. Establishment journalists thus silenced those single-payer voices in 1993, just as Cohen and her contemporaries silence single-payer advocates today, as a new FAIR study recently revealed (3/6/09). Earlier (CNN Newsroom, 2/26/09), Cohen had argued that "if in time, Americans start to think what President Obama is proposing is some kind of government-run health system -- a la Canada, a la England -- he will get resistance in the same way that Hillary Clinton got resistance when she tried to do tried to do this in the '90s." As noted above, a government-financed national health insurance program is broadly popular in opinion polls, so it's unclear why Obama would get "resistance" if "Americans start to think" he's proposing such a plan. (If insurance companies start to think that, on the other hand, then they're certainly likely to create resistance.) And Hillary Clinton in 1993 was certainly not proposing a government-financed system like Canada's, let alone a government-run system like Britain's. Her "managed competition" plan was explicitly designed to preserve a central role for private insurance companies. It's hard to square the suggestion that Clinton was proposing a government-based healthcare system with Cohen's later acknowledgment that single-payer advocates were not "on the same page." Source: FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) |
| Conference Speakers Call Global Warming Policies Genocidal |
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NEW YORK, NY The people like Al Gore who promote global warming alarmism are committing genocide by the withdrawal of technology from the developing world, said Dr Arthur Robinson, Director of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, on March 9 in a speech to the 2nd International Conference on Climate Change, which was hosted by the Heartland Institute in New York City. He said, "there is a current example of genocide by the removal of technology, and that is the ban on DDT, and that has resulted in the deaths of 30 to 40 million people and has left half a billion infected with malaria."
Conference speakers included Lord Christopher Monckton, who prepared the "Global Warming Swindle" video tape, MIT meteorologist Dr Richard Lindzen, and Dr Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist. Lindzen said that "the process of co-opting science on behalf of a political movement has had an extraordinarily corrupting influence on science -- especially since the issue has been a major motivation for funding. Most funding for climate would not be there without this issue. And, it should be added, most science funded under the rubric of climate does not actually deal with climate, but rather with the alleged impact of arbitrarily assumed climate change." Robinson also said that policies promoted by propagating alarmism are much worse than the ban on DDT, because they will lead to rationing of energy, which will have the biggest impact on the Third World populations, who are trying to uplift their standard of living by the application of energy and technology. He said "that the billions of people who live at the lowest level of human existence will suffer greatly from the rationing of energy, and this, in turn, will lead to the death of hundreds of millions, or possibly billions." Lindzen and other speakers noted that "the global mean temperature anomaly has not increased statistically significantly since at least 1995," adding that this does not disprove the warming thesis, but that "for the public this fact is likely to be crucial." Monckton said, "There never was a climate crisis, there is not a climate crisis, and there will be no climate crisis. Since there is no climate crisis, the leaders of the world must have the courage to do nothing." Monckton said that the environmental movement's "policies have murdered 40 million people, mainly children, with the ban on DDT." He added, "They have caused mass starvation and food riots with their nonsensical drive for bio-fuels. The forces of darkness in the environmental movement want to create a new dark age in which humanity is pushed back to the Stone Age and without the right to light a fire." Source: Executive Intelligence Review |
| ABC News Finds 'Person of the Week' in South Jersey |
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CHERRY HILL, NJ A homegrown campaign to spread charity through the Internet landed in the national limelight Friday when ABC's World News Tonight profiled its Cherry Hill NJ-based founder in a "Person of the Week" segment. It's been just 18 months since Dave Girgenti, 37, launched his Web site, Wish Upon a Hero, at wishuponahero.com.
The site's concept is to connect people in need with those who can offer a hand. Anyone can visit the site and post wishes -- anything from a tummy tuck and dental work to a porch swing and a new job, all of which have appeared on the site. Likewise, anyone can visit and see if he or she can grant someone else's wish. According to Girgenti, the site so far has shepherded the granting of more than 27,000 wishes. He said the users of the not-for-profit site help promote it via newspapers, radio stations, television outlets, and other media. Somehow, it grabbed the attention of ABC News. The broadcast picked Girgenti "and the heroes of Wish Upon a Hero" for "Person of the Week" because "of their work to fulfill wishes big and small, something that has taken on new meaning and importance in these tough economic times," ABC News spokeswoman Natalie Raabe wrote in an e-mail message. Since the broadcast, online visits to Wish Upon a Hero have ballooned, Girgenti said. He said the digital deluge was enough to knock out five servers that were running the site. With new servers installed since then, Girgenti said, the site now runs on nine. Girgenti's paying job is as creative director for an advertising firm in Mount Laurel. "A lot of people think Wish (Upon a Hero) is my day job." Source: Courier-Post |
| Happiness Study Favors Financial Security over Cash-On-Hand |
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PRINCETON, NJ A study of the mental state of the modern American woman by a Princeton University psychologist has found a powerful link between concerns over financial security and satisfaction with one's life. In looking toward the future, women who concentrated much of their thinking on financial matters were much less likely to be happy with their lives, according to Talya Miron-Shatz, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton.
Contrary to expectations, many of those with such worries had plenty of money by conventional standards, she said, suggesting that there is more at play in obtaining peace of mind than simply having cash. "Even if you are making a hundred grand a year, if you are constantly worried that you are going to get fired, that you are going to lose your health insurance or that you are simply not sure you are going to 'make it,' you are not going to be happy." Such concerns, she found, affected a wide variety of women at all income levels. Conversely, those who didn't fixate on finances like retirement savings, tuition for college, or simply making ends meet, reported being the happiest of the group. The study was published February 25 in Judgment and Decision Making, a scholarly journal. Miron-Shatz is hoping the results might guide policy decisions, especially those being devised by President Obama and the US Congress in the wake of today's financial crisis. Her work would favor a focus on strategies that create social and financial "safety nets" over measures that would directly increase income. To understand how income and concerns over financial security may relate to a person's satisfaction with life, Miron-Shatz conducted two separate studies of a representative sample of nearly 1,000 American women of various ages and incomes. In one study, she showed that considerations of financial security were as important to the study subjects as their monetary assets. She asked subjects in the second study to think about the future in an open-ended manner. Those who did so and mentioned financial concerns -- retirement, college tuition, making ends meet, etc -- were less satisfied with their lives, she found, than those who did not raise such concerns. One of her participants said that when thinking of her future she wondered, "Will I be happy and financially stable?" The stability, Miron-Shatz says, is crucial. "It's not about greed," she added. "It's about knowing whatever it is you have, be it your McMansion or your motor home, won't be taken away from you." Discussions about wealth need to be expanded to include this notion of financial security, she said. Though valid and meaningful, this factor is "glaringly missing from economic discussions." Source: Princeton University |
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