Up and Down

It's been said that alcohol and sex are not a good mix. If the following reports are any guide, it appears that the bad economy is leading many people to take that message to heart.

1. "U.S. Alcohol Consumption Hits 25-Year High" (Fox News)

Economy plays a role in booze business

The booze business is recession proof, just ask your neighborhood bartender. They know the following to be true: When times are good, people enjoy a cocktail. When times are rough, people enjoy two cocktails. A recent Gallup poll shows alcohol consumption hit a 25-year high in 2010, with 67 percent of Americans reporting drinking alcoholic beverages. This number approaches the all-time booze benchmark of 71 percent set in the 1970s.

Many believe the economy can contribute to the rise in alcohol consumption, but perhaps not in the obvious way. A poor economy may not drive the masses to drink, but it sure gives people the extra time to have an adult beverage or two – especially if they have lost their job or are staying at home on weekends to save cash.

2. "Is Economy Best Birth Control? US Births Dip Again" (Associated Press)

The economy may well be the best form of birth control. U.S. births dropped for the third straight year — especially for young mothers — and experts think money worries are the reason.

A federal report released Thursday showed declines in the birth rate for all races and most age groups. Teens and women in their early 20s had the most dramatic dip, to the lowest rates since record-keeping began in the 1940s. Also, the rate of cesarean sections stopped going up for the first time since 1996.

Experts suspected the economy drove down birth rates in 2008 and 2009 as women put off having children. With the 2010 figures, suspicion has turned into certainty.

"I don't think there's any doubt now that it was the recession. It could not be anything else," said Carl Haub, a demographer with the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization. He was not involved in the new report.

Comments

[Tom]

My neighbor, a successful stone mason by trade, just welcomed a new baby boy into his home last week. i couldn't help wondering what kind of future this child and his two year old sister will have in the next 10 yrs. i'm not sure we'll even survive as a species that long at this point, but i wished him congratulations and best of health for his baby none-the-less.

http://questioneverything.typepad.com/
Is There Hope?

[Let them eat nothing?]

Last week, a federal judge in Mississippi sentenced a mother of two named Anita McLemore to three years in federal prison for lying on a government application in order to obtain food stamps.

Apparently in this country you become ineligible to eat if you have a record of criminal drug offenses. States have the option of opting out of that federal ban, but Mississippi is not one of those states. Since McLemore had four drug convictions in her past, she was ineligible to receive food stamps, so she lied about her past in order to feed her two children.

The total "cost" of her fraud was $4,367. She has paid the money back. But paying the money back was not enough for federal Judge Henry Wingate.

Wingate had the option of sentencing McLemore according to federal guidelines, which would have left her with a term of two months to eight months, followed by probation. Not good enough! Wingate was so outraged by McLemore’s fraud that he decided to serve her up the deluxe vacation, using another federal statute that permitted him to give her up to five years.

He ultimately gave her three years, saying, "The defendant's criminal record is simply abominable …. She has been the beneficiary of government generosity in state court."

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/woman-gets-jail-for-food-stamp-fraud-wall-street-fraudsters-get-bailouts-20111117#ixzz1e4DY4md2

[GoneWithTheWind]

"Lied about her past in order to feed her children"!!! My god, did she ever think about working in order to feed her children? Is it simply coincidence that someone on welfare has drug charges? What do you think she spent her food stamps on? I'm betting she bought drugs with them. When will our bleeding hearts wake up and realize that welfare bums are addicts who game the system and have bankrupted us. The federal budget for welfare is about $1.2 a year and states spend even more. Most of it is wasted or worse used to buy drugs and is an incentive to qualify for even more welfare. What a waste of money and people...

[Juvenal]

Thats right gone with the wind..she's the BIG problem..not these guys..you should change your moniker to HOT AIR......

What price the new democracy? Goldman Sachs conquers Europe

While ordinary people fret about austerity and jobs, the eurozone's corridors of power have been undergoing a remarkable transformation

The ascension of Mario Monti to the Italian prime ministership is remarkable for more reasons than it is possible to count. By replacing the scandal-surfing Silvio Berlusconi, Italy has dislodged the undislodgeable. By imposing rule by unelected technocrats, it has suspended the normal rules of democracy, and maybe democracy itself. And by putting a senior adviser at Goldman Sachs in charge of a Western nation, it has taken to new heights the political power of an investment bank that you might have thought was prohibitively politically toxic.

This is the most remarkable thing of all: a giant leap forward for, or perhaps even the successful culmination of, the Goldman Sachs Project.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/what-price-the-new-democracy-goldman-sachs-conquers-europe-6264091.html

[Gone in sixty seconds]

How to steal like Wall Street

BOSTON (MarketWatch) — It’s a lucky thing these kids only tried to “occupy” Wall Street.

If they’d been really radical they would have done something much more dangerous.

They would have just imitated Wall Street.

Everyone now knows the rules down on America’s Street of Shame. These are almost the exact opposite of the rules in the real, normal, moral economy the rest of us inhabit.

On Wall Street, you take every nickel and dime you can get your hands on. If it’s not nailed down, it’s yours. You take without conscience or shame. If you see a blind man selling pencils on the street, steal the pencils. Steal his pennies. Steal his dog.

On Wall Street, you gamble. You gamble big. But you gamble with other people’s money.

Borrow as much as you can. If it doesn’t work out, too bad — for someone else. Heads you win, tails they lose.

MF Global, anyone?

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/steal-wall-street-050046558.html

[roger]

Corporate Welfare Information Center

"The $150 billion for corporate subsidies and tax benefits eclipses the annual budget deficit of $130 billion. It's more than the $145 billion paid out annually for the core programs of the social welfare state: Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), student aid, housing, food and nutrition, and all direct public assistance (excluding Social Security and medical care)."