"THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE"
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JUST THE FACTS
1 in 4 jobs pay less than a poverty-level income.
During the 1980s, 13% of Americans age 40 to 50 spent at least one year below the poverty line; by the 1990s, 36% did.
Since 2000, the number of Americans living below the poverty line at any one time has steadily risen. Now 13% of all American – 37 million – are officially poor.
Among households worth less than $13,500, their average net worth in 2001 was $0. By 2004, it was down to -$1,400.
Bush’s tax cuts (extended to 2010) save those earning between $20,000 and $30,000 an average of $10 a year, while those earning $1 million are saved $42,700.
In 2002, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) compared those who point out statistics such as the one above to Adolf Hitler.
Bush has dedicated $750 million to “healthy marriages” by diverting funds from social services, mostly childcare.
Bush has proposed cutting housing programs for low-income people with disabilities by 50%.
Among the working poor, 13% of their income is spent on commuting if they use public transportation, 21% if they us a private vehicle.
Workers who earn $45,000 or more spend 2% of their income on commuting.
2 in 3 jobs are in the suburbs.
1 in 3 people who’ve left welfare since 1996 did so because they couldn’t meet program requirements or they hit the 5-year limit.
1 in 7 have no work, no spousal support, and no other government benefits.
46 million Americans are uninsured -a 15% increase since 2000.
83% of people who earn $75,000 or more work for companies that offer insurance, versus 24% of people who earn less than $25,000. ???
51% of the uninsured are $2,000 or more in medical debt, 16% owe at least $10,000.
In 1997, 3 out of 4 doctors provided some free or reduced-cost care. Now, 2 out of 3 do.
2 in 5 elderly live on less than $18,000 a year, (1,500 a month), including Social Security benefits.
Last fall, Minnesota firefighters let an elderly man’s mobile home burn down because he hadn’t paid a $25 “fire fee.”
600,000 high school students dropped out in 2004. If each had stayed in school for just one more year, the nation would have saved $41.8 billion in lifetime health care costs.
$41.8 BILLION in health care costs would have been saved had the 600,000 high school students dropped out in 2004 had stayed in school for just one more year.
2/3 of the reported “shrinking” gap between white and black men’s wages is attributable to black men dropping out of the labor market altogether.
The true jobless rate of black men in their 20s without a high school diploma is 72%.
A prison record reduces a convict’s wages by about 15% and wage growth by 33%.
Since 1983, college tuition has risen 115%. The maximum Pell Grant for low-and moderate income college students has risen only 33%.
If tuition cost $500 a quarter in 1983, today it costs almost $1,100, while a $500 Pell grant today would be $666.50.
52% of poor college-qualified students go to a 4-year college within 2 years of graduating, while 83% of richer qualified students do.
From “The Progressive” March 2007
Welfare Queens
Wal-Mart again topped the list of private companies in Washington State with the most workers on Meidicaid and the state’s Basic Health Plan, reports AP. Wal-Mart had 3,194 employees in the two taxpayer-subsidized programs out of 16,000 workers in the state, costing Washington $9 million. “I don’t think it’s an accurate picture of who is using the system most,” Wal-Mart spokesman Jennifer Holder said.
Money in Politics
Halliburton subsidiary KBR, the U.S. military’s largest contractor in Iraq, has formed a new political action committee, KBRPAC, reports The Washington Post. The company recently agreed to pay the government $8 million to settle allegations of overcharging for work in the Balkans and faces similar allegations for its work in Iraq.
Unsafe Viewing
“Condoms don’t belong in school, and neither does Al Gore,” said Frosty Hardison, a parent of a student at the Federal Way School in Washington State, who complained about An Incovenient Truth being shown at the school.
Truth in Wages
Robert Nardelli received $210 million severance pay from Home Depot. Sales clerks at Home Depot get about $8-$10 an hour for being the experts that tell us how to do our home improvements.
Costs of the Iraq Occupation (Mother Jones, March-April 2007)
Who is fighting:
U.S. Soldiers 141,740
British Soldiers 7,200
Other Coalition Forces 6,938
Iraqi Military 134,700
Iraqi Police 188,200
Kurdish Pesh Murga 100,000
Sunni Insurgents 12,000-30,000
Shiite Militias 12,000-60,000
Foreign (inc Al Qaeda) 800-2,000
Who’s Dying:
U.S. Soldiers 3,021
British Soldiers 129
Other Coalition Soldiers 123
Iraqi Soldiers/Police 5,965
Iraqi Civilians 70,100 to 601,000 (est)
Defence Contractors 665
Journalists 146
Causes of Death of U.S. Soldiers in Iraq:
36% improvised explosive devices
32% hostile fire
17% nonhostile fire
5% helicopter accidents and shoot-downs
4% car bombs
4% mortars and rockets
3% rocket-propelled grenades
23,000 soldiers have been wounded in Iraq
More that 4,600 Iraq vets have suffered severe head or brain injury, which could cost more than $19 billion to treat over their lifetimes.
More than 1,300 soldiers have limbs amputated, more than twice the rate of other wars. This could cost more than $200 million to rehabilitate them over their lifetimes.
A prosthetic limb can cost as much as $100,000.
22 Army soldiers have committed suicide in Iraq in 2005, twice as much as in 2004.
The V.A. reports that 1 in 5 Iraq Veterans suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD related disorders.
44% of Gulf War Veterans filed for disability benefits and it is estimated that a similar percentage of the 1.4 million current soldiers, which could cost $127 billion in long term medical care and benefits.
At home in the U.S.
Army divorces went up 14% between 2003 and 2005.
Calls to domestic violence hot lines jumped from 50 to 600 per month after the start of the Iraq War (Miles Foundation).
1 out of 5 military spouses applied for government assistance to make ends meet in 2004.
The wife of a New York National Guardsman deployed in Iraq, was forced to apply for food stamps to feed their three children on an annual salary of $19,000. “His monthly military salary does not cover one monthly mortgage payment.”
Federal spending on Iraq war and reconstruction
2001 and 2002 $ 2.50 billion
2003 $51.00 billion
2004 $77.30 billion
2005 $87.30 billion
2006 $100.40 billion
==========
Total $318.50 billion
U.S. Funding for Iraqi Congress $38.6 million
State Departments---“Future of Iraq Project” $5 million
Reconstruction plan, which the White House all but ignored.
Estimated Cost of Iraq Study Group $900 million
Which failed to find weapons of mass destruction.
Cost of Iraq Study Group $1 million
Amount requested by Pentagon to construct military bases in Iraq. $806 million
Amount Congress budgeted for a “Commemoration of Success” $20 million
for American troops.
In April 2003 the head of US AID said the cost of rebuilding Iraq would not, “even compare remotely with the size of the Marshall Plan.” Iraqi reconstruction has cost the United States $34.1 billion to date. Rebuilding postwar Germany cost $30.3 billion (in 2006 dollars).
Cost of the U.S. Embassy in Iraq.
With a staff of nearly 1,000, it’s already the largest U.S. Embassy in the world. It will have a 15 foot thick wall, its own water treatment and power plants, a gym, a swimming pool, a food court, a movie theater, and an “American Club for diplomats who feel. Cooped up.
3% of the staff will speak Arabic, and 6 of them will be fluent.
The embassy complex with be 104 acres, compared to the Vatican which is 109 acres, and the Pentagon which is 29 acres.
The annual budget of the U.S. embassy in Iraq in 1991 was $3-5 million.
The White House has requested to build and operate the new embassy. $1.3 billion
What The White House said the war would cost:
September 2002 $100 to $200 billion -White House economist
Lawrence Lindsey, who was fired three months later.
October 2002 “The cost of one bullet.”-White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.
February 2003 “Highly uncertain.” -Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
March 2003 “We’ll let you know.” George W. Bush
March 2003 “Not Knowable.”
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld just before he asked Congress
for $62 billion two days later.
41 cents of every American dollar for reconstruction is spent on the Iraqi military or police. 3 cents is spent on “democracy building.”
Iraqi soldiers are paid $60 per month and half of the Iraqi units sent to new combat areas go AWOL. The Pentagon is attempting to “instill a more deployable mindset.”
Of the 323,000 Iraqi security forces 1/3 is considered “technically proficient” while only 10,000 are “politically dependable.”
American trainers have reported that 70% of the police force is infiltrated by militias, and that 90,000 rifles and 80,000 pistols that were supplied to the Iraqi security forces cannot be accounted for.
Corruption costs in Iraq:
$4 billion annually
$8.8 billion given by the U.S. to the Iraqi government cannot be accounted for.
20% of the government’s Ministry are “Ghost employees” –nonexistent employees who collect pay checks.
30% of Iraq’s refined oil ends up on the black market or illegally taken out of the country. The U.S. government reports that the insurgency raises $25 to $100 million annually smuggling oil. $9 billion in oil revenues have been lost.
Nearly a 1/3 of the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have served multiple tours. “Retired Brig General David Grange reported in December that: “I don’t think they can sustain the rotations the way they are right now without really starting to have severe readiness issues in the Army much more than another year.”
Cost of deploying a soldier in Iraq for a year: $275,000
Cost to feed a soldier in Iraq for a year: $5,840
It costs $17 billion a year to replace worn and lost military equipment. Some military equipment used in Iraq has felt 27 years of use in just 3 years.
!.6 million Iraqis have been displaced. 1.8 million have left Iraq, with 3,000 fleeing daily.
700,000 Iraqi refugees now live in Jordan. More than 60,000 live in Sweden. Only 202 were allowed into the United States last year.
Saudi Arabia is building a 560-mile border fence to keep Iraqi refugees out.
In Iraq before the war, 100% of the children attended school. In 2006 it was down to 30%.
In 2006 a survey found that 47% of children in Baghdad had recently experienced a traumatic event; 14% had PTSD.
40% of Iraqi professionals have fled the country; this includes 1/3 of all doctors.
2000 doctors have been murdered since 2003.
The president of the Iraqi National Council of Women cannot go out without bodyguards. She states that she started with 6, increased to 12, went to 20 and now has 30 bodyguards.
A member of the 66 women in the Iraqi Parliament has informed the UK Observer that: “This is the worst time in Iraqi women’s lives. In the name of religion and sectarian conflict they are being kidnapped and killed and raped.”
