ETERNAL FLAME NEWS: Jul 26, 2010

Monday, July 26, 2010

Dateline NBC's Report on Economic Crisis in Ohio

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

JMC Ministries Response

We live between an hour and an hour and a half from Athens County and Nelsonville where NBC did this 9 month report on the Economic Crisis in Ohio. These are the faces of suffering America, and it is happening everywhere in Ohio. Even right in our Town Of Chillicothe. We ourselves have donated food, money, and time to help people not just in our own communities but in other states who were on the verge of being homeless, and going hungry.

Most Americans don't want a hand out, they want a job. A job where they don't have to depend on the government to take care of them and their families. These are hard working Americans who are literally scraping the bottom of the barrel to survive. This IS the reality, that you won't hear or see most of the time unless you are really looking for it.

America is falling and fast. Reach out to those in your community and help, you may be their only hope. God have mercy on America.

U.S Middle Class Is Being Wiped Out of Existence

Click to read original story from Yahoo News

From The Business Insider

Editor's note: Michael Snyder is editor of theeconomiccollapseblog.com

The 22 statistics detailed here prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.

So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and "free trade" that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn't tell us that the "global economy" would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.

Here are the statistics to prove it:

• 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
• 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
• 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
• A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
• 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
• Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
• As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
• Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
• In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
• The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
• More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
• or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
• This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
• Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
• The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.

Giant Sucking Sound

The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker 10 times more (plus benefits) to do the same job? The world is fundamentally changing. Wealth and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and the big global corporations are making massive amounts of money. Meanwhile, the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new "global" labor pool.

What do most Americans have to offer in the marketplace other than their labor? Not much. The truth is that most Americans are absolutely dependent on someone else giving them a job. But today, U.S. workers are "less attractive" than ever. Compared to the rest of the world, American workers are extremely expensive, and the government keeps passing more rules and regulations seemingly on a monthly basis that makes it even more difficult to conduct business in the United States.

So corporations are moving operations out of the U.S. at breathtaking speed. Since the U.S. government does not penalize them for doing so, there really is no incentive for them to stay.

What has developed is a situation where the people at the top are doing quite well, while most Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to make it. There are now about six unemployed Americans for every new job opening in the United States, and the number of "chronically unemployed" is absolutely soaring. There simply are not nearly enough jobs for everyone.

Many of those who are able to get jobs are finding that they are making less money than they used to. In fact, an increasingly large percentage of Americans are working at low wage retail and service jobs.

But you can't raise a family on what you make flipping burgers at McDonald's or on what you bring in from greeting customers down at the local Wal-Mart.

The truth is that the middle class in America is dying -- and once it is gone it will be incredibly difficult to rebuild.

Joni Eareckson Tada Cancer Surgery Being Called A Success

Click to read full story from Christian Post.com
Quadriplegic disability advocate Joni Eareckson Tada has emerged “successfully” from breast cancer surgery and is hopeful of a positive prognosis, a leader with her ministry reported Tuesday.

“Joni’s surgery was completed successfully yesterday evening, and she is resting comfortably, preparing to begin the rest of her course of treatment in the next few days,” stated Doug Mazza, president and COO of the Joni and Friends International Disability Center, following Monday’s surgery.

Tada, who founded Joni and Friends in 1979 to accelerate Christian ministry in the disability community, was diagnosed with cancer early last week and was informed last Tuesday that the cancer was malignant.

Though the 60-year-old ministry leader confessed that news of the cancer was “alarming,” she and her husband said they affirmed their faith in God and said doctors had assured them by noting how more advancements have been made in the last five years in treating breast cancer then in the last 150 years.

“[A]lthough cancer is something new, I am content to receive from God whatever He deems fit for me," said Tada, who has been a quadriplegic for more than 40 years.

According to Mazza, Tada’s family physician, Dr. Geoffrey Drew, was with the disability advocate all day at Los Robles Medical Center and Hospital in Thousand Oaks, Calif., standing by as the oncology surgeon, Dr. David Chi, performed the procedure.

Drew, following the surgery, said Tada’s cancer was determined to be in Stage 2.

“[A]nd while some lymph nodes were affected and Joni will need chemotherapy to follow up this surgery, this is a highly survivable cancer and we anticipate a positive prognosis,” he reported.

Iowa Flooding Leaves Homes and Business Damaged After Lake Delhi Dam Fails

Click to read full story from Fox News

MONTICELLO, Iowa

Flooding from the Maquoketa River after the Lake Delhi dam failed has damaged dozens of homes and businesses, causing millions of dollars in damage in Monticello, officials said Sunday.

The Lake Delhi dam in eastern Iowa failed Saturday as rising floodwater from the Maquoketa River ate a 30-foot-wide hole in it. Areas below the dam, including in Hopkinton and Monticello were evacuated.

"It is simply unbelievable. This is unprecedented. We've had floods before and we've always been able to contain the situation and minimize the damage, but with Mother Nature's fury ... there was no way to do anything about it," said Mike Willey, president of the board of directors at the Lake Delhi Recreation Association. "There was simply too much water."

The river crested upstream of the dam at Manchester early Saturday afternoon at 24.53 feet — more than 10 feet above flood stage and well above its 2004 record of 21.66 feet — before it began to slowly recede.

About 50 homes and 20 businesses had major flood damage and the city's sewer plant had been flooded and shut down about 7 p.m. Saturday, said Monticello Public Works Director Dana Edwards.