Tag Archives | United States

Miami Is Most Miserable City In U.S.

By majestic on February 5, 2012 in News 7

For those Americans who think that escaping the frigid climes of the northern states for sunny Florida is the path to happiness, think again (about Miami at least). Reuters reports:

Warm sun, white beaches, and million-dollar mansions notwithstanding, Miami has captured the dubious distinction of being the most miserable city in the United States, according to a new poll.

Photo: UpstateNYer (CC)

The playground of the rich and famous is home to a crippling housing crisis, one of the highest crime rates in the country, and lengthy daily commutes for workers, all of which have propelled it to the No. 1 position in the Forbes.com list.

“Miami has sun and beautiful weather but other things make people miserable. You have this two-tier society: glitzy South Beach attracts celebrities, but the income inequality has skyrocketed in recent years,” explained Forbes Senior Editor Kurt Badenhausen.

The rankings are based on factors including jobless rates, violent crime, foreclosures, income and property taxes, as well as considerations like weather, commute time and political corruption.

… Read the rest

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America’s Survival Subculture

By majestic on January 22, 2012 in News 72

Reuters reports on yet another uniquely American subculture:

When Patty Tegeler looks out the window of her home overlooking the Appalachian Mountains in southwestern Virginia, she sees trouble on the horizon.

“In an instant, anything can happen,” she told Reuters. “And I firmly believe that you have to be prepared.”

Tegeler is among a growing subculture of Americans who refer to themselves informally as “preppers.” Some are driven by a fear of imminent societal collapse, others are worried about terrorism, and many have a vague concern that an escalating series of natural disasters is leading to some type of environmental cataclysm.

They are following in the footsteps of hippies in the 1960s who set up communes to separate themselves from what they saw as a materialistic society, and the survivalists in the 1990s who were hoping to escape the dictates of what they perceived as an increasingly secular and oppressive government.

… Read the rest

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Ten Reasons The U.S. Is No Longer The Land Of The Free

By DeepCough on January 15, 2012 in News 5

Jonathan Turley suggests some self-reflection for Americans, writing in the Washington Post:

Every year, the State Department issues reports on individual rights in other countries, monitoring the passage of restrictive laws and regulations around the world. Iran, for example, has been criticized for denying fair public trials and limiting privacy, while Russia has been taken to task for undermining due process. Other countries have been condemned for the use of secret evidence and torture.

Even as we pass judgment on countries we consider unfree, Americans remain confident that any definition of a free nation must include their own — the land of free. Yet, the laws and practices of the land should shake that confidence. In the decade since Sept. 11, 2001, this country has comprehensively reduced civil liberties in the name of an expanded security state. The most recent example of this was the National Defense Authorization Act, signed Dec.

… Read the rest

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Thirty Percent Of Americans Arrested By Age 23

By majestic on December 19, 2011 in News 7

I’m sure “they” won’t rest until the percentage is 99% … From NPR:

There’s been a sharp increase in recent decades in the number of young Americans who report they’ve been arrested at least once, researchers report in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

While in the mid-1960s about 22 percent of Americans reported having been arrested by the time they turned 23, researchers estimate that the “prevalence rate” for arrests by that age now lies “between 30.2 percent and 41.4 percent.”

Increasingly, “arrest is a pretty common experience,” Robert Brame, a criminologist at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte and one of the study’s authors, tells USA Today.

According to ABC News, “Brame and his colleagues analyzed responses to a national survey of more than 7,000 young people between 1997 and 2008. … Not all of the young people remained in the study for all 11 years, accounting for the uncertainty reflected in the wide ranges of the study’s findings…

[continues at NPR]… Read the rest

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Does God Still Belong On Our Money?

By majestic on November 16, 2011 in News 76

An opinion piece by Skeptic Magazine’s Michael Shermer in the LA Times has stirred up lots of strong opinions amongst Angelenos. What do disinfonauts think?

The House voted 396-9 this week to reaffirm as the national motto the phrase “In God We Trust” and encouraged its pronouncement on public buildings and continued printing on the coin of the realm. The motto was made official in 1956 during the height of Cold War hysteria over godless communism and — in the words of Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper in “Dr. Strangelove” — “Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.”

As risible a reason as this was for knocking out a few bricks in the wall separating state and church, it was at least understandable in the context of the times. But today, what is the point of having this motto?

… Read the rest

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British Lawyers Claim US Declaration Of Independence Is Illegal

By majestic on October 19, 2011 in News 35

John Trumbull's "Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776"

BBC News reports on some British lawyers who have dared to show up in Philadelphia and claim that US Independence is illegal:

Was the Declaration of Independence legal?

In Philadelphia, American and British lawyers have debated the legality of America’s founding documents.

On Tuesday night, while Republican candidates in Nevada were debating such American issues as nuclear waste disposal and the immigration status of Mitt Romney’s gardener, American and British lawyers in Philadelphia were taking on a far more fundamental topic.

Namely, just what did Thomas Jefferson think he was doing?

Some background: during the hot and sweltering summer of 1776, members of the second Continental Congress travelled to Philadelphia to discuss their frustration with royal rule.

By 4 July, America’s founding fathers approved a simple document penned by Jefferson that enumerated their grievances and announced themselves a sovereign nation.

Called the Declaration of Independence, it was a blow for freedom, a call to war, and the founding of a new empire.

… Read the rest

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Are Americans The Coolest People In The World?

By majestic on September 8, 2011 in News 56

Photo: gcardinal (CC)

Well according to a new poll, the answer is “yes!” Reuters reports:

They may be witnessing their global superpower influence decline in the face of challenges from other emerging players on the world stage, but Americans have been voted the world’s “coolest nationality” in an international poll.

Social networking site Badoo.com asked 30,000 people across 15 countries to name the coolest nationality and also found that the Spanish were considered the coolest Europeans, Brazilians the coolest Latin Americans and Belgians the globe’s least cool nationality.

“We hear a lot in the media about anti-Americanism,” says Lloyd Price, Badoo’s Director of Marketing. “But we sometimes forget how many people across the world consider Americans seriously cool.”

Of course, not all Americans are cool far from it. Some like Snoop Dogg, Lady Gaga, Samuel L. Jackson, Johnny Depp and Quentin Tarantino are way cooler than others.

Americans, however, are the dudes who invented cool and who still embody it in many fields from music to movies and TV to technology.

… Read the rest

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African American Unemployment At 27 Year High

By majestic on September 4, 2011 in News 40

Annalyn Censky reports on this depressing statistic for CNN Money:

The August jobs report was dismal for plenty of reasons, but perhaps most striking was the picture it painted of racial inequality in the job market.

Black unemployment surged to 16.7% in August, its highest level since 1984, while the unemployment rate for whites fell slightly to 8%, the Labor Department reported.

“This month’s numbers continue to bear out that longstanding pattern that minorities have a much more challenging time getting jobs,” said Bill Rodgers, chief economist with the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.

Black unemployment has been roughly double that of whites since the government started tracking the figures in 1972.

Economists blame a variety of factors. The black workforce is younger than the white workforce, lower numbers of blacks get a college degree and many live in areas of the country that were harder hit by the recession — all things that could lead to a higher unemployment rate.

… Read the rest

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The Trouble With Too Much Democracy

By Pelliciari on August 10, 2011 in News 57

US_Government_Accountability_Office_seal Is America’s bigger problem the economic decline or it’s political decay? Andrew Potter writes in Axis of Logic:

The most telling moment of the recent standoff over talks to raise the American government’s debt ceiling came on July 22, when President Barack Obama called a press conference to announce that House Speaker John Boehner had backed out of the negotiations. “I’ve been left at the altar twice now,” Obama pouted. In case the image of the President as a jilted lover was not clear to everyone watching, he added that he had spent the previous day waiting for Boehner to return his phone calls.

The whole affair has left a lot of Americans in a state of bipartisan disgust, with citizens from all points on the political compass cursing out their elected representatives. Yet it doesn’t seem to have occurred to many people that there is something structurally flawed with a system that allows the head of just one legislative house to treat the supposed leader of the free world as his last choice for the senior prom.

… Read the rest

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One In Seven Americans Lives On Food Stamps

By majestic on August 6, 2011 in News 41

viewer Sad statistic of the day from IANS via Yahoo News:

Believe it or not, one in seven Americans – 15 percent of the country – now need government-provided food stamps simply to survive, according to latest government figures.

Nearly 46 million Americans receive food stamps out of a population of some 311 million people, the US Department of Agriculture, which administers what’s officially called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme reported Thursday.

The continued high unemployment and the weak US economy have contributed to the explosive growth of the food stamp programme with no end in sight to the monthly increases, CNN said noting that 27 million people were dependent on food stamps in October 2007…

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