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"Great Depression had Hoovervilles. 70's crisis snaking gas lines. Today's recession is about disappearing wealth"
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(Above) Steve looks out over tent city as storm clouds gather above the makeshift community. The Great Depression had Hoovervilles. The energy crisis of the 1970s had snaking gas lines. But today’s deep recession is largely about disappearing wealth -- painful, yes, but difficult to see.
A tattered encampment of 200 men and women along the American River is a vivid symbol of a financial crisis otherwise invisible to most Americans. Officials say they will shut it down within a month.
Reporting from Sacramento -- The capital's tent city sprawls messily on a grassed-over landfill beneath power lines, home to some 200 men and women with nowhere else to go. It has been here for more than a year, but in the last three weeks it has transformed into a vivid symbol of a financial crisis otherwise invisible to most Americans.
Then this tattered encampment along the American River began showing up on Oprah Winfrey, Al Jazeera and other news outlets around the world. On Thursday, city officials announced that they will shut it down within a month. "We're finding other places to go," said Steven Maviglio, a spokesman for Sacramento's mayor. The camp is "not safe. It's not humane. But we're not going in with a bulldozer." read more »
Taxes' many faces: hard times mean a hard look at taxes - how much we pay, who skates through loopholes and more
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Where the Money Comes From
How the cash flows into Uncle Sam's coffers.
For 2007
Individual income taxes: 50.4%
Payroll taxes (FICA): 31.4%
Business income taxes: 14.6%
Excise and other taxes (tobacco, gas, etc.): 3.6%
Total tax revenue for 2007 = $2,709,798,000,000
One Family's Burden
How much a typical family in Philadelphia earning $50,000 paid the tax man in 2007.
Federal taxes: $6,007 (41%)
Sales tax: $803 (5%)
Property tax: $4,235 (29%)
State/local income tax: $3,361 (23%)
Auto tax: $231 (2%)
Total = $14,637 or 29.3% of income
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Illustrations courtesy of Carlos Aponte / Reader’s Digest
Original Source: Reader’s Digest
Man-made junk in low Earth orbit: satellite collision highlights space pollution and rising hazard from debris
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The military tracks about 18,000 pieces of orbital debris. On Tuesday, the census of space-garbage suddenly jumped by 600, the initial estimate of the number of fragments from a stunning collision of two satellites high above Siberia.
Space is now polluted with the flotsam of a satellite-dependent civilization. The debris is increasingly a hazard for astronauts and has put crafts such as the Hubble Space Telescope and communications satellites at risk of being struck by an object moving at high speed.
The military's radar can spot objects about four inches in diameter - roughly the size of a baseball - or larger. This collision, however, may have produced many thousands of small, undetectable pieces of debris that would still carry enough kinetic punch at orbital velocities to damage or destroy a spacecraft. read more »
"SOS Amazon": every second we lose 1.5 acres of rainforests once covering 14% of earth land surface, now a mere 6%
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The Disappearing Rainforests
We are losing Earth's greatest biological treasures just as we are beginning to appreciate their true value. Rainforests once covered 14% of the earth's land surface; now they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years.
* One and one-half acres of rainforest are lost every second with tragic consequences for both developing and industrial countries.
* Rainforests are being destroyed because the value of rainforest land is perceived as only the value of its timber by short-sighted governments, multi-national logging companies, and land owners.
* Nearly half of the world's species of plants, animals and microorganisms will be destroyed or severely threatened over the next quarter century due to rainforest deforestation. read more »
Peru, one of poorest countries with 30% population living <$2, 10% <$1 a day, to plant 40 million trees by Feb '20
To mitigate climate change, Peru, one of the poorest countries with 30% population living under $2, 10% under $1 a day, is planting 512,820 trees daily to capture more than 570,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually. Who’s next?
Astounding poverty
Peru is one of the poorest countries in the world with 30.6% of its population living under 2 dollars a day, 10.5% under $1 dollar a day;
Astounding goal
Peru has launched a nationwide tree-planting project to plant 40 million trees by Feb. 2020 to capture more than 570,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually.
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In an attempt to mitigate climate change, the Ministry of Agriculture of Peru has launched a nationwide tree-planting project with the astounding goal to plant 40 million trees by Feb. 20 to capture more than 570,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, El Comercio reported Friday.
Venice hit by biggest flood in 20 years, waters rising quickly to 1.56m/5ft. Famous St Mark's Square submerged
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The city of Venice has suffered its highest flooding in more than 20 years. Many of Venice's streets, including the famous St Mark's Square, were submerged, before the high waters began to retreat.
The lagoon city in the Adriatic suffers some level of flooding for about 200 days every year. The authorities are planning to complete the building of an underwater dam to protect the city by 2011.
Driven by strong winds, the sea level rose to 1.56m above normal on Monday, submerging nearly all of the city and forcing residents and tourists to wade through almost knee-high water, including St Mark's Square, officials said. It was the highest "acqua alta", or high water, since it reached 1.58m in 1986.
US national debt: $10+ tril, increasing $3.99 bil daily. US population: 305 mil; each citizen’s share: $35k
Shocking figures about the US National Debt:
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1.
7 Oct 08 - National Debt passes $10 trillion (Huffington Post)
Bush Administration adds $4 trillion to National Debt (CBS News)
2.
The estimated population of the United States is around 305 million.
So each citizen's share of this debt is close to $35k.
3.
The (National Debt has continued to increase an average of
$3.99 billion per day since Sept. 28, 2007!
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Original Source: brillig.com
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