Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It. He says that too many Americans lean on taxpayers rather than living within their means. He supports politicians who promise to cut government spending. In 2010, he printed T-shirts for the campaign of a neighbor, Chip Cravaack, who ousted this region’s long-serving Democratic congressman.
Yet this year, as in each of the past three years, Mr. Gulbranson, 57, is counting on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. There is little poverty here in Chisago County, northeast of Minneapolis, where cheap housing for commuters is gradually replacing farmland. Dozens of benefits programs provided an average of $6,583 for each man, woman and child in the county in 2009, a 69 percent increase from 2000 after adjusting for inflation. The problem by now is familiar to most.
He paused. Middle-Class Blues Mr. Science Daily: News & Articles in Science, Health, Environment & Technology. Occupy Wall Street Sept. 17, 2011.
New flavors emerge from Peruvian cacao collection trip. New cacao types with unique flavors that are distinctly Peruvian have been identified by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists. These new flavors could one day be marketed like wine, by geographical provenance. Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists at the agency's Sustainable Perennial Crops Laboratory (SPCL) and Systematic Mycology and Microbiology Laboratory (SMML), both in Beltsville, Md., and Peruvian collaborators found these new cacao plants during collection expeditions in 2008 and 2009 in the Amazon Basin of Peru. ARS is USDA's principal intramural scientific research agency, and this research supports the USDA priority of promoting international food security. The researchers found hundreds of new cacao tree samples during the trips.
This industry covets new and unique flavor sources. ARS and ICT are helping Peru create its own niche in the chocolate industry by working with San Martin's Oro Verde cooperative and Maranon Chocolate. Good news. Positive, uplifting, inspiring stories - Huffington Post. Dr. Boyce Watkins: Black Teen Flash Mobs: A Frightening Result Of Chronic Political Neglect. Like the rest of the country, I couldn't help but notice the occurrence of black teen '"flash mobs" around the country.
For those who haven't been made hip to the game, flash mobs are random groups of people who get together and do "stuff. " The acts committed by flash mobs can be naïve and cute, like singing the Star Spangled Banner on one leg while drinking a Pepsi. They can also be nasty and violent, like beating down anyone who happens to be passing by. We can leave it to teenagers to find creative and potentially frightening ways to use the amazing power of social media. The most recent incident involved the 60-second robbing of a 7-11 store in Maryland.
Another series of incidents occurred in Philadelphia, leading Philly Mayor Michael Nutter to put the entire city on lockdown with a 9 p.m. curfew for all citizens under the age of 18. We could have spent time addressing the 40 percent unemployment rate of black teens all across America. Dr. First responder's dramatic video after attack.
Career firefighters Kevin McCullagh and Jerry Walsh had retired weeks before terrorists attacked the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Their years at Ladder 126 in South Jamaica, Queens, were over. But when they heard the news, they didn’t hesitate to drive across the Hudson River and volunteer to support their fellow firefighters. McCullagh took along his retirement gift: a camcorder. Aware that history was in the making, he started filming snippets of what they saw from a firefighter’s perspective: a giant pall of smoke rising over the Manhattan skyline, ash a foot deep, firefighters sifting through a sea of rubble, little fires burning here and there, trees blown on their sides, gouges in buildings, and, yes, the collapsed Twin Towers.
“It was unbelievable,” McCullagh recalls. “It was surreal. One sight especially surprised the two friends. McCullagh, now 52, and Walsh, now 54, worked for seven days -- every day, all day. “I just kept walking,” he says.