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Updated:
September 30, 2002
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Household incomes
fall for first time since 1991;
Poverty rates show first increase
since 1993, government says
Household incomes fell
in the U.S. for the first time in 11 years while the number of Americans
living in poverty rose for the first time in nearly a decade, government
figures show.
Household incomes declined last year in every region except the
northeast, the Census Bureau announced. The median drop in income was
$950, meaning half of all U.S. households lost less than that and half
lost more, the government said. The decline does not include money lost
in the stock market.
Meanwhile, 1.3 million more Americans were officially ranked as poor,
marking the first nationwide rise in poverty since 1993, according to
the Census Bureau. Unlike previous recessions, most of the reported rise
in poverty occurred among whites and people living in the suburbs and
rural areas. The official poverty line for a family of four is $18,000 a
year.
The figures reflect conditions one year ago and the economy has weakened
ever since, one economist pointed saying, “I suspect we haven’t seen the
worst of it.”
CEO pay highest at firms that cook
the books
CEOs at 23 companies
under investigation for questionable accounting earned 70 percent more
pay than other U.S. executives, according to a study by United for a
Fair Economy.
CEOs at the 23 suspect firms pocketed a total $1.4 billion in the past
three years. During that same period, share prices at their companies
dropped $530 billion (losing 73 percent of their value) and, since
January 2001 alone, 162,000 jobs were slashed, UFE reported.
The average CEO currently earns 411 times more than the average worker,
according to the study. CEOs at the 23 firms suspected of “cooking the
books” earned an average $62.2 million in the period 1999-2001, compared
to average $36.5 million earned by other top executives.
For the complete UFE study, go to:
http://www.ufenet.org/press/2002/EE2002_pr.html
2.2 million workers
will exhaust benefits; find no jobs this year
By year’s end, 2.2
million workers will have run out of unemployment benefits without
finding new jobs, according to the Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities.
The Center reported 1.5 million unemployed Americans had exhausted their
benefits by the end of September and that more than 60 percent of all
workers receiving extended benefits this year ran out of benefits
without finding new jobs. The figure was 45 percent in 1992, during the
last major recession.
The report pinned much of the blame on a flawed regulation that
prematurely canceled 13 weeks of extended benefits authorized by the
federal government for a dozen states suffering high unemployment. The
regulation has since cut off extended benefits to 10 of the states,
including Michigan, with a 6.5 percent jobless rate, and California
where the unemployment stands at 6.4 percent. Only Oregon and
Washington still provide 13 weeks of additional extended benefits.
Lax federal safety blamed in one of
nation’s worst mine disasters
The explosion that
killed 12 men last fall in America’s deepest coal mine was the worst
U.S. mine disaster in nearly 20 years. It was also utterly preventable,
according to an investigative report by Mother Jones magazine.
Alabama’s “Blue Creek #5” mine had 31 outstanding violations from the
federal Mine Safety and Health Adminstration (MSHA) and a long history
of safety violations at the time of the explosion, the magazine
reported. Six days before the fatal blast, MSHA inspectors warned that
methane concentrations “in excess of 5 percent” posed an “imminent
danger” of explosion, that the “approved ventilation plan was not being
complied with” and that miners worked amidst excessive coal dust (which
can fuel explosions) and unsupported mine shaft roofs (a partial roof
collapse causing electrical sparks is thought to have ignited the
methane), Mother Jones wrote.
Critics charge MSHA officials cozy up to the industry and ignore their
own inspectors. The MSHA official responsible for “Blue Creek #5” worked
as a manager for the company that owns the mine, reported Mother
Jones. MSHA Director David Lauriski, a Bush appointee, is a former
general manager for the Energy West Mining Co., industrial relations
manager at the Kaiser Steel Corps. Sunnyside mine, chairman of the Utah
Board of Oil, Gas and Mining and a board member of the Utah Mining
Association.
Bush pushes unknown right winger for
federal bench;
40 year-old Estrada could fill next
Supreme Court spot
A 40 year-old man with
no experience as a judge is Pres. Bush’s choice for a seat on the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the “crown jewel” of the
federal court system.
Miguel Estrada’s prime qualifications appear to be his Hispanic
background and his role representing Bush in the 2000 presidential
vote-count scandal in Florida.
Paul Bender, Estrada’s former boss in the U.S. Solicitor General’s
Office, calls him “a right wing ideologue… [who] couldn’t be trusted to
state the law in a fair, neutral way.” Estrada’s closest supporters
include Kenneth Starr and Theodore Olson, who argued the Florida recount
case for Bush before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Attorney General John Ashcroft is refusing to provide the Senate
Judiciary Committee with copies of Estrada’s writings from the time he
worked for the U.S. Solicitor General. However, one of Estrada’s public
writings is a legal brief defending a $52 million fine levied against
the United Mineworkers without granting the union it’s legal right to a
jury trial. The Supreme Court called that denial unconstitutional and
dismissed the fine.
“Estrada is 40 and if he makes it to the circuit, he will be Bush’s
first Supreme Court nominee. He could be on the court for 30 years,” a
Senate staffer predicted. “Because he’s Hispanic, Bush is counting on
some liberals not to oppose him.”
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