Sticklers for detail will notice this is the Strip and not actually Paradise, a few blocks East.
Things are tough all over.
I do hope nobody is surprised to learn that poverty in the United States is even higher than expected. After all, some 15% of our population is on food stamps — and that’s according to the freaking Wall Street Journal! And it is worse than average here in Vegas, where the “recovery” you lucky souls in other parts of the nation have been experiencing the last 2 years has passed us by like some angry Santa:
There’s a newer version of this chart right here. Add to that the fact that Vegas is still the reigning foreclosure capital of the nation, and it shouldn’t be any shock that we have a problem with homelessness and “food security” — a fancy term for “no food and/or no money for food.” Please remember that no matter what you may think of the work ethic of people in these situations, some of the people effected are children. There are mighty few jobs available to children that will pay the family’s bills, and most of them are worse than mere hunger.
Maybe if Wall Street didn’t sell us a pack of lies about how we can run our economy on lattes and cheap imports, we could change things. Even Starbucks is trying to create jobs outside the Latte Economy.
In Closing: is police use of a GPS really different from tailing them (uh, yeah); whites use more drugs, but blacks get sent to prison more (huh, could the War on Drugs possibly be racist??); even a broken clock is right twice a day; Americans would rather have government bureaucrats than insurance company bureaucrats (who could know these things?); amen; and right on, Rick.
The health care beaurocracy article has a comment from a guy named RMGregory which is interesting:
In other words, two major beneficiaries of (and advocates of) federal involvement in health care contrived questions intended to elicit a response which purports to contradict well-measured public opinion. This is similar to the finding, by federal bureaucrats, that federal bureaucrats are paid less than their counterparts employed by tax-revenue-generating businesses. Surprised at the outcome?!
What was the breakdown between tax-paying and non-tax-paying Americans; that is, do voting citizen taxpayers — those who actually pay for federal involvement in personal health care decisions — want to foot the increased tax burden necessary to pay for milking rooms, abortions, and other “health” care needs of deadbeats?
I think the CRA did in fact have a ROLE in the credit crisis/economic downward spiral, but wasn’t THE cause. The CRA added subprime mortgages to the CDS’s which were then foolishly traded and double/triple insured.
That Spain didn’t have a CRA didn’t insulate them from buying the CDS’s (and the subprime mortgages) and other mortgage backed securities.