Raw Number of Black Children Living in Poverty Surpasses Whites for First Time — Blacks Are Only 13% of Population

By Eileen Patten and Jens Manuel Krogstad
The share of American children living in poverty has declined slightly since 2010 as the nation’s economy has improved. But the poverty rate has changed little for black children, the group most likely to be living in poverty, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data.

Overall, 20% of children in the U.S., or 14.7 million, lived in poverty in 2013 – down from 22%, or 16.3 million, in 2010. (Poverty in 2013 was defined as living in a household with an annual income below $23,624 for a family of four with two related children.) During this period, the poverty rate declined for Hispanic, white and Asian children. Among black children, however, the rate held steady at about 38%. Black children were almost four times as likely as white or Asian children to be living in poverty in 2013, and significantly more likely than Hispanic children.

In fact, the number of impoverished white children (4.1 million) may have dipped below the number of impoverished black children (4.2 million) for the first time since the U.S. Census began collecting this data in 1974, though this difference was not statistically significant. This is despite the fact that there are more than three times as many white children as black children living in the U.S. today.

In terms of total numbers, there were still more Hispanic children living in poverty in 2013 (5.4 million) than any other group, as has been the case since at least 2008. This is because the Hispanic population is larger (and younger) than any other minority racial or ethnic group, and the Hispanic child poverty rate is relatively high, at about 30%.

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NYPD Mutineers Only A Tiny Minority: Only 4% Sign Union Leader's Anti-de Blasio Petition

Click to see full-sized

Pat Lynch - NYPD's Union Chief: A blood thirsty publicity hound
who thinks police should be allowed to kill unarmed, innocent blacks
and suffer no consequences whatsoever. He circulated the anti-de
Blasio petition which was rejected by 96 percent of NYPD officers.
(Illustration of Pat Lynch by Ronald David Jackson)

Only about 4% of the 23,000 active members of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association signed the form on the union’s website asking Mayor de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito not to come to their last rites if they die on the job, police sources said. 'It was just his idea and he threw it out there,' a source said of PBA President Patrick Lynch.

By Rocco Parascandola , Tina Moore
The vast majority of cops have no problem if the mayor shows up at their line-of-duty funerals, sources tell the Daily News.

Only 850 NYPD officers have asked Mayor de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito not to come to their last rites if they die on the job, police sources said.

That means about 4% of the 23,000 active members of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association signed the missive on the union’s website.

“That’s low,” one of the sources said.

PBA spokesman Al O’Leary said he could not confirm the figure because the union hasn’t been tallying the funeral letters.

“We haven’t collected them yet,” he said, calling the figure provided by the sources “totally bogus.”
But one of the sources said lightning rod PBA President Patrick Lynch hadn’t sought support from the union’s rank and file before announcing the online form, which could account for the lack of enthusiasm.

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The Obama Disaster: President Flim-Flam Leads Dems to Midterm Massacre

Illustration by DonkeyHotey.

“The Republican victory does not represent a shift by the American population to the right, but demonstrates the bankrupt and reactionary character of the Democratic Party and the mass disillusionment with the Obama administration. In the absence of any progressive alternative to the two right-wing, corporate-controlled parties, the majority of potential voters stayed home. Voter turnout hit another record low, with only 38 percent going to the polls….Voter participation by young people fell particularly sharply. Barely one-third of eligible voters went to the polls in California, the most populous state.”–Patrick Martin


By Mike Whitney 

The White House has denied claims that the midterm elections were a referendum on Barack Obama, but the polling data shows that they were. According to a CBS News exit poll:

“Fifty-four percent of those surveyed said their opinion of the president influenced their vote… 34 percent said they wanted to make a statement in opposition to Mr. Obama, while 20 percent said they voted in support of him.”

Those differences were more stark among Republican voters “61 percent (of whom) said they cast ballots to take a stand against the current administration. (Only) Thirty-five percent of those who voted for GOP candidates said Mr. Obama didn’t play a role in their decisions at the polling places.” (2014 midterm elections look like a referendum on Obama, CBS News)

There’s no doubt that antipathy towards Obama played a significant role in Tuesday night’s bloodbath. Even so, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest insists that, “Most voters are deciding who to vote for based on the name that’s on the ballot, not the name that’s not….It’s up to those individual candidates, those Democratic candidates, to make decisions for themselves about how best the president and his support can be used to their benefit in the elections.”

In other words, the Democratic candidates that went down in flames on Tuesday, can only blame themselves. While that might be a good way to deflect responsibility, it certainly doesn’t square with the facts. Just get a load of these exit poll results from Forbes:

“45% of voters said the economy was the most important issue facing the country. It was the top issue of four listed on the exit poll ballot. Voters were generally pessimistic about it. Only 1% checked the box that said the economy’s condition was “excellent.” 70% said it was not so good or poor. 78% were worried about its direction in the next year. In another question, voters split pretty evenly: around a third of voters said it was getting better, getting worse, and staying about the same.

More voters expected the life for the next generation of Americans to be worse rather than better, 48 to 22%.” (Election Results From A To Z: An Exit Poll Report, Forbes)

What a damning survey. What a damning indictment of Obama. The vast majority of the people think the economy still stinks and that living standards for their kids are going to get a whole lot worse. And you wonder why the Dems got their heads handed to them on Tuesday? It’s because they failed on the number one issue, that’s why.

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'US Gives Too Much to Israel': That's What 6 in 10 American Citizens Think — Says Google Survey

By Robert Barsocchini
Surveying Americans about U.S. aid to Israel requires putting it into proper perspective. Given Israel’s position as the leading single U.S. foreign aid recipient (by a wide margin), as in 1989 asking the foreign aid question requires embedding relevant data to obtain a bona fide response.  When such data is included, the majority of Americans (60.7 percent) believe U.S. aid to Israel is excessive.  The major response, that aid to Israel is “Much too much” is 33.9 percent of Americans.  Some 26.8 percent believe it is “too much” while 25.9 percent believe it is “about right.” Only 13.4 percent of Americans believe U.S. aid to Israel is not enough.

The policy and political implications of this finding are stark.  Elected officials passing ever larger aid packages and supplemental spending for Israel simply cannot claim they are representing the majority interests of their constituents.  American presidents proclaiming the U.S.‐Israel bond is “unbreakable” cannot claim such a bond is willingly underwritten by U.S. taxpayers.  The finding also shines yet more light on Israel lobby organizations as the major factor coming between most constituents and their representatives and quietly working to ensure that Israel’s majority share of the U.S. foreign aid budget continues.

The survey also finds that, in particular, younger US citizens are strongly opposed to the amount of US aid that goes to Israel, and, crucially, finds that “Only the Wealthiest Americans believe U.S. aid is ‘about right’”:

The only category of Americans (47.6 percent) who believed U.S. aid for Israel is “about right” is the segment earning $150,000 or more (although even 42.9 percent in that category thought aid was too high).  The next lower income category, $100,000‐149,000 is the most vehemently opposed to aid, with 79.5 percent believing it is too high (42.9 percent responding “much too much” and 36.6 percent “too much.”)

While the Google report says the findings are “stark”, they are precisely consistent with the findings of the recent study out of Cornell and Northwestern universities, the largest study of its kind to date, which looked at nearly 1,800 individual US policy issues and found that the average US citizen has zero impact on those policies, while the wealthiest citizens essentially get exactly what they want, meaning they dictate US policy (and they largely comprise the US government).

This Google survey simply singles out one of the policy issues, which together illustrate that the USA is not a democracy, but a society in which people are allowed to choose which of two corporate-backed figureheads they want as the face of an oligarchy that dictates government policy in its own interest.

It is also worth noting here that 1) the top ten recipients of US aid (with Israel as #1) all, like the US itself, have torture regimes, 2) US law “prohibit[s] U.S. foreign aid to nuclear weapons states such as Israel that are not signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty”, and 3) Obama, while repeatedly insisting the US is a “nation of laws”, requested more military aid for Israel than any president ever (among many other blatantly illegal acts).

_________
Robert Barsocchini is a researcher focusing on global force dynamics.  He also writes professionally for the film industry.  Here is his blog.  Also see his free e-book, Whatever it Takes – Hillary Clinton’s Record of Support for War and other Depravities.  Click here to follow Robert and his UK-based colleague, Dean Robinson, on Twitter.

Reprinted with permission from Center for Research in Globalization.

The Upsetting Ethnic Taxonomy of Russia's Richest Businessmen

Images edited by Kevin Rothrock.

By Kevin Rothrock
One of Russia’s most popular news websites, the once vaunted Lenta.ru, finds itself at the center of a scandal today, after publishing an ethnic breakdown of Russia’s 200 richest people. According to the study, 44.5 percent of Russia’s wealthiest citizens are ethnically Russian, 21 percent are Jewish, 12 percent are Ukrainian, followed by smaller percentages of Tatars, Armenians, and a dozen or so other nationalities. “Overall,” the report concludes questionably, “it’s clear how different ethnic groups in a multiethnic country have used a collaborative solidarity and response to the beginning of the ‘capitalist era’ to build a new kind of economic and political life.”

Lenta’s study is based on Forbes’ 2014 ratings of Russia’s “200 Richest Businessmen,” though Elmar Murtazaev, Forbes’ chief editor, has already criticized the ethnic breakdown. On Facebook, Murtazaev questioned Lenta’s judgment, implying that Forbes has considered analyzing the nationalities of its “top 200” list, but rejected the idea every year for the last decade. “What was published isn’t an investigation,” he argued online, calling Lenta’s work “nothing more than pure speculation.” (Indeed, Lenta’s authors themselves admit that many individuals on Forbes’ list don’t advertise their nationality, making it difficult to assign labels.)

Murtazaev isn’t the only one upset about Lenta’s study. Nikolai Svanidze, a media personality and a member of Russia’s Civic Chamber (a consultative body within the Kremlin), says Lenta’s article is racist—even fascist. Natalia Gevorkyan, another prominent Russian journalist, also disliked the piece, asking on Facebook if its publication embarrassed Alexander Mamut, who ranks 42nd on Forbes’ list and owns Lenta’s parent group, Rambler & Co.

Maya Stravinskaya, Snob.ru.

Maya Stravinskaya, a data journalist at Rambler & Co., says she tried to pull the image in the study, after it landed on her desk in the final stages of development, but the article went ahead, regardless. “Lenta didn’t see anything xenophobic about it,” she wrote on Facebook. Stravinskaya told RuNet Echo that her team at Rambler & Co. (which recently migrated from RIA Novosti) created the infographic included in Lenta’s story, but she did what she could to stop its publication. “Ultimately, I can’t influence the site’s editorial policy,” she stressed.

As it happens, this isn't the first time a Russian news site published an ethnic breakdown of Forbes’ top-200 richest men in Russia. Two years ago, Pavel Pryanikov’s website Ttolk.ru posted a nearly identical study (with roughly the same findings) that also looked at businessmen’s class history (tracking their socioeconomic trajectories from Soviet times). On Facebook, Pryanikov reminded readers of his website’s “been there, done that” accomplishment, and pointed out that it is hypocritical for Murtazaev to attack Lenta, as Forbes itself has ranked the world’s richest Jews and Armenians.

There are undoubtedly many reasons for apprehensions about Lenta’s study. Methodologically, it’s nearly impossible to establish the ethnicity of many of Russia’s oligarchs (whose mixed heritage defies classification). Ethically, on the other hand, liberals in Russia are averse to racial taxonomies that threaten to stir ethnic tensions. Indeed, the chief finding in both Lenta’s article and Pryanikov’s study is that ethnic Russians are heavily underrepresented in the Russian elite, relative to their numbers in the general population. Presumably, and perhaps justifiably, Russian nationalists’ critics fear statistics like these could catapult their adversaries to political prominence.

Reprinted with permission from Global Voices.

Political Amargedden Facing Democrats and Obama in November?: Republicans Chances of Taking Over Senate Increases to 60 Percent

By Amanda Cox and Josh Katz
For the last month, we’ve been adding one or two polls a day to The Upshot’s Senate forecasting model. Today, we update all 36 races, based on estimates from a YouGov online panel that covers every congressional and governor’s race across the country.

The panel, asked for its preferences in collaboration with CBS and The New York Times, is unusual in its scope: It comprises more than 66,000 people living in states with a Senate race this year. YouGov, a polling firm, also conducted online interviews with roughly half of the panelists in previous years, allowing it to know how they voted in the past.

With the addition of the YouGov estimates to our model, the overall outlook for the Senate remains roughly the same. The Republicans appear to have a slight advantage, with the most likely outcome being a Republican gain of six seats, the minimum they need to finish with a 51-to-49-seat majority. But we, like many other forecasters, would not be surprised by a gain of anywhere from four to eight seats.

Summing up the possible outcomes, our model gives the Republicans a 60 percent chance of taking control, up from 54 percent on April 1.

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Former US Defense Sec Robert Gates: Says Vice President Biden Was "Wrong" About Almost "Everything" But He's Absolutely Wrong On Iraqi Opinion of US

Robert Gates Duty Spoof - Doody
(Illustration by jfxgillis)

By Ronald David Jackson
Former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates was on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight to hawk his new book, "Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War," when he suggested that most Iraqis have a favorable opinion of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq: "for most Iraqis, life is in fact significantly better than under Sadam Hussein."

While with Piers Morgan, Gates almost gloated about how consistently "wrong" Vice President Joe Biden has been regarding foreign policy. Yet Gates doesn't seem to have the slightest idea of what he is talking about on the issue of Iraqi views, which calls into question his book, his opinions, and his leadership as Defense Secretary. 

What Iraqis Think:
United States "Broke It" But Didn't Fix It

"If you break it you own it."
General Colin Powell,
warning regarding the invasion of Iraq.

What do the Iraqis themselves think about Iraq after the US invasion? They are not very happy, according to the findings of opinion polls.

According to a Gallup Poll published in March of 2011, Iraqis say security is better as a result of US withdrawal. That is, Iraqis believed the presence of the United States was causing conflict, not reducing it. More than four in five "perceived security to have been positively impacted by the U.S. departure." A poll published by Zogby Research Services in December of 2011 showed that only 30% of Iraqis believed Iraq is "better off" as a result of the US invasion.

In fact, the only segment of Iraqi public opinion that considers itself better off after the US intervention are the Kurds, who gained more independence as Iraq has further splintered into three segments: Shia, Sunni and Kurd.


The Number One Menace for Arabs:
The United States and Israel

Health Care Law Support Drops To All-Time Low – Newfound Opposition Coming From Women: CNN Poll

ObamaCare Falling (Illustration by Charles Fettinger)

By Paul Steinhauser

Washington (CNN) – Support for the country's new health care law has dropped to a record low, according to a new national poll.

And a CNN/ORC International survey released Monday also indicates that most Americans predict that the Affordable Care Act will actually result in higher prices for their own medical care.

CNN/ORC International Survey Full Results

Only 35% of those questioned in the poll say they support the health care law, a 5-point drop in less than a month. Sixty-two percent say they oppose the law, up four points from November.

Nearly all of the newfound opposition is coming from women.

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Barack Obama's Record Low Poll Ratings: Deteriorating Image Could Shred Remaining Authority

Are Obama's ratings dipping past the point of no return? (via AFP)

Barack Obama's second term fumbles have pitched him to record low poll ratings and splintered his credibility with the American people. But has his presidency reached the point of no return? History and opinion poll data suggest that when reelected…