Peace
& Social Justice Ministry
Diocese
of Joliet
Issues For
Our Times
John Bagley
St. Thomas the Apostle Parish,
Naperville
Contents
Introduction
This list was created in order to put,
in a single place, an "environmental scan" containing statements of the
issues which exist in today's world. The intent is not to make good
people feel bad or overwhelmed, but to give an overview of the "signs of
the times" so that individuals and groups can make rational choices of
the issues on which they will focus their efforts. That means that
they will consciously choose to ignore some issues while expending their
time, talent, and treasure on others. My experience is that the alternative
leads to trying to do too much and fragmenting resources as the "issue
of the month" comes to our attention. That leads to feelings of frustration
and powerlessness.
Note that these are issues. They
become moral or ethical issues when judged according to some standard (e.g.
Catholic Social Teachings or the Gospels). I have tried to avoid
both judgments and solutions.
The categories used for this list originated
with the list of issues in the version of the USCC document: "Faithful
Citizenship" issued for the 2000 election. They have been altered
and others added where that seemed reasonable. The original intent
was to express each issue as one or a few simple declarative sentences
but, when I began copying text from the references, some of the items have
grown longer.
A good general reference is Professor
Joseph M. Incandela's resource notes for his course on Catholic
Social Thought although it, understandably, focuses more on ethics
than on the issues themselves. The
National Center for Policy Analysis has
good summaries of issues, especially those that are the subject of federal
legislation. It tends to be on the conservative side. The Electronic
Policy Network, a project of The American Prospect magazine
is similar but with more of a liberal slant. Finally,
for the truly dedicated, may I suggest Volume I of the Encyclopedia
of World Problems which states: "The number of world problems described
is now 9,832, with a further 2,380 referenced by index only."
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Protecting
Human Life
Abortion
-
In 1997-JAN, the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention released data indicating that the abortion
rate in the US had dropped to its lowest level in 20 years. They recorded
1.3 million abortions in 1993 and 1.2 million in 1994. US Abortion
data provided in 1995 by Planned Parenthood indicated that the number of
abortions for every 100 live births has shown a gradual decline since 1980
(35.9) to 1992 (33.5). This number is highest for women under 15
(77.5 in 1992) and over 40 (47.0 in 1992); it is lowest among women 30
to 34 (18.3 in 1992). This may reflect differences in the rates of unexpected
pregnancies among women in these age groups. Abortions are relatively
rare among married women (8.1 per 100 live births) vs. those by unmarried
women (75 per 100 live births). Worldwide, about 46 million women
have abortions. This represents 22% of the 210 million pregnancies that
occur yearly. (Abortion
Facts)
Laws banning partial-birth abortion
have been enacted in 30 states, but courts have blocked enforcement of
most of them. The United States Congress enacted a federal ban on partial-birth
abortions but President Clinton vetoed it. (HLI)
-
Every year more than one million teenagers
become pregnant and have to make a choice concerning the future of their
child. Many choose abortion, and many more choose to parent, while fewer
than five percent choose adoption.(ALL)
-
Pharmaceutical abortifacients (RU-486)
will increase the number of abortions in this country.
(HLI)
-
Additional links:
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Assisted Suicide
and Euthanasia
-
On November 4, 1997, the electorate in
Oregon voted 60-40 to keep the law permitting physician-assisted suicide
on the books. (Commonweal, 11/21/97), (IAETF)
-
People with disabilities are
especially concerned that they will be pressured to seek physician assisted
death because others now view them with contempt and it will only be a
matter of time before professionals outside the disability community are
deciding that life with a disability is not worth living. (NDY)
-
Perhaps one of the most important developments
in recent years is the increasing emphasis placed on health care providers
to contain costs. In such a climate, euthanasia certainly could become
a means of cost containment. (IAETF)
-
Emotional and psychological pressures
could become overpowering for depressed or dependent people. If the choice
of euthanasia is considered as good as a decision to receive care, many
people will feel guilty for not choosing death. Financial considerations,
added to the concern about "being a burden," could serve as powerful forces
that would lead a person to "choose" euthanasia or assisted suicide. (IAETF)
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Additional links:
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War and
Preparation for War
-
There is a broad
consensus that minor ethnic and nationalistic conflicts will continue to
precipitate humanitarian disasters in the years ahead. (CDI
Vol. XXVI, No. 6)
-
Estimates of the
global nuclear stockpile range from a low of 24,700 to a high of 33,307
suspected nuclear weapons.(A2000)
The United States and Russia still possess enough nuclear weapons to completely
annihilate one another and most of the rest of the earth as well.
-
In the year 2002,
the single largest military program ever planned (the National Ignition
Facility) will be installed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
in northern California. The project consists of the world's biggest laser,
intended to produce small thermonuclear explosions to "advance" nuclear
weapons science. (
A2000)
-
Much of the fissile
material used to make Soviet nuclear weapons is poorly safeguarded and
the potential for theft is high. Only a small quantity of material, easily
smuggled into the U.S., is needed to make a bomb 35 to 55 times more destructive
than the Oklahoma City explosion. (CDI, XXV,
6)
-
Increasingly fearful
of the threats posed by germ warfare, the Pentagon announced Monday that
it would vaccinate every member of the armed services against anthrax,
one of the most deadly biological agents. ... The Pentagon considers anthrax
the easiest biological weapon to make and use and the most lethal.
In a report last month, the Pentagon said at least 10 countries, including
Iraq and North Korea, have the ability to develop biological weapons.
(Chi.Trib., 12/16/97, p.3)
-
According to the
most recent human rights report of the U. S. State Department, "an estimated
quarter of a million children, even as young as age 5, have been conscripted
to serve as soldiers in dozens of armed conflicts around the world, …".
(CDI XXVI, 4)
-
Many GIs
were lured into the armed forces by slick recruiting promises - including
money for college and/or job training. Once caught in the military,
many GIs face racist, sexist, homophobic harassment, loss of civil liberties,
verbal abuse, and systematic attempts to turn them into unthinking killers.
(CCCO)(SDMCC)
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Additional links:
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Peace and Sustainable
Development
-
26,000 people are
killed or maimed by land mines each year. More people have been killed
by anti-personnel mines than by nuclear and chemical weapons combined.
An estimated 110 million land mines are currently deployed in 70 countries
- most of them in the developing world. The USA has chosen to exclude
itself from the treaty banning the production and use of land mines. (ICBL)
-
As of September 11, 2000, 139 countries
have signed the Mine Ban Treaty and 107 countries have ratified it. The
United States still refuses to sign the Treaty, claiming that anti-personnel
landmines are crucial for U.S. defense of Korea. (CDI)
-
A five-hour meeting
with lab officials at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)
on October 7 (1997) left Catholic Bishops Walter Sullivan and Thomas Gumbleton
alarmed to learn that President Clinton's $40 billion Stockpile Stewardship
Program will enable the U.S. to continue to develop and test nuclear weapons
indefinitely. Despite the U.S. commitments to end nuclear testing
under the recently-signed Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and to nuclear
disarmament under the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), the laboratory program
will in fact enhance U.S. efforts to continue development and testing of
nuclear weapons. (PCUSA)
-
There are many ways to participate
in militarism. The most obvious is to personally fight in a war, but another
way is in financing its deeds. For those who cannot conscientiously
participate in killing, the payment of taxes creates a moral dilemma. (NVW)
-
The United States Defense Budget is three
times that of all potential adversaries combined.
-
An alternative to
a military defense is a civilian-based defense that uses nonviolent tactics.
Civilian-based defense can be effective, cheaper, and result in less loss
of life. The tactics used, called nonviolent sanctions, are similar to
those used by Gandhi and the Indians to drive out their British tyrants.
(CBDA)
-
The Pentagon
spends well over 1.9 billion dollars a year convincing Americans to "be
all that you can be;" to join the "few, the proud, the strong;" to "aim
high" (you've seen the billboards, they appear in low-income neighborhoods
right next to the Jack Daniels signs). At the same time, the federal
government slashes education, job training, rehabilitation, social services,
until the only options many young people (and their parents) see are the
military or prison. (CCCO)
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Global Trade
in Arms
-
Confronted
with reductions in Pentagon procurement funding in the 1990s, major military
contractors have, for the most part, not leapt on the conversion bandwagon.
Instead, they have responded to defense cutbacks with a variety of sometimes
conflicting strategies. These include mergers and acquisitions within the
defense industry; sell-offs of defense divisions or exiting the industry
completely; and diversification by commercializing defense technologies,
developing new civilian products, and acquiring commercial businesses.
(CEC)
-
More than 23 million
people have been killed by conventional arms since the end of World War
II. More are being slaughtered. This continuing violence is being fed by
high levels of arms transfers. The United States is the world's biggest
arms exporter. (CDI, XXIII, 7)
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Death Penalty
General references on capital
punishment and the death penalty can be found on The
Death Penalty Page from Florida State, Death
Penalty Information from NIU, and from The
Illinois Death Penalty Education Project.
-
The state
of Illinois has executed 12 criminals in our name since 1990. (DPIC)
-
In the
U.S., 33 prisoners have been executed in 2001, bringing the total number
of persons executed since the death penalty was resumed in 1977 to 716.--Death
Penalty information Center. (SotE)
-
Studies show that
in this century, at least 400 innocent people have been convicted of capital
crimes they did not commit. Of those 400, 23 were executed. (DPF)
-
Race is an important
factor in determining who is sentenced to die. In 1990 a report from the
General Accounting Office concluded that "in 82 percent of the studies
[reviewed], race of the victim was found to influence the likelihood of
being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty, i.e.,
those who murdered whites were more likely to be sentenced to death than
those who murdered blacks." (DPF)
-
The governing bodies
of the religious organizations that include the vast majority of citizens
in the United States have issued statements opposing the death penalty
(http://www.deathpenalty.net/religion.html).
-
There is no conclusive
evidence that the death penalty deters violent crime. States which
have the death penalty do not have lower crime rates or murder rates than
states without the death penalty. (http://www.essential.org/dpic/deter.html)
A 1995 Hart Research Poll of police chiefs in the U.S. found that the majority
of the chiefs do not believe that the death penalty is an effective law
enforcement tool. (http://www.essential.org/dpic/po.html)
-
The death penalty
costs more than life imprisonment. It costs $2.5 million to execute
a person in Illinois and only $600,000 to keep someone in prison for life.
(http://www.keynet.net/~icadp/)
-
The death penalty
is applied unfairly. Each year there are about 23,000 homicides in
our country, resulting in about 18,000 arrests, of which about 4,000 are
capitally prosecuted, and about 250 death sentences. (8) Thus, the vast
majority (99%) of those potentially chargeable with capital punishment
are not so prosecuted. Race and class are the most consistent predictors
of who will be selected for capital prosecution (9). (http://www.deathpenalty.net/unfairness.html)
-
We are all outraged
by the actions of murderers. But in our attempts to punish the murder,
very little concern is actually shown for the victim's family. Killing
the killer may satisfy our own thirst for blood, but the death penalty
does nothing to help those who have been harmed. It does not truly
restore the social order breached by the offenders. (http://www.archdiocese-chgo.org/p-cc/statement.html)
Many family members of murder victims don't want the death penalty.
(http://www.mvfr.org/)
-
The death penalty
cheapens the value of human life and may actually encourage murder because
of its brutalizing effect. (http://www.amnesty-usa.org/abolish/facts.html#9)
-
The United States
is the only western democratic country still carrying out executions.
-
Because the death
penalty is a uniquely irrevocable punishment, it demands infallibility
of the human beings who are part of the legal system which imposes death.
Because human beings are fallible, innocent people have been executed in
the past. (http://www.abanet.org/irr/hr/deathpen.html )
-
The death penalty
is especially inappropriate in the cases of juveniles, the mentally retarded
and the mentally ill. (http://www.amnesty-usa.org/abolish/facts.html#6)
-
Public support for
the death penalty drops to below 50 percent when voters are offered alternative
sentences. More people would support life without parole plus restitution
to the victim's family than would choose the death penalty. (http://www.essential.org/dpic/po.html)
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Promoting
Family Life
Marriage
-
Affordable
day care is not available in our area. (DCAC)
-
Effective parenting
education is not available. (Parenting
Project)
-
Support for families
(transient, stressed, single parent) is lacking. (ffcmh),
(FamRes)
-
Most poor families
have at least one parent in the workforce, but his or her earnings are
insufficient to raise the family above the poverty level. In spite of low
unemployment, California has one of the highest child poverty rates (20.3%)
among states, ranking 45th out of 50 states and the District of Columbia.
(Children
Now)
-
Poverty affects
children and youth across all ethnicities. Yet, there are striking differences
in the level of poverty among various ethnic populations. An African American
or Latino child is at least twice as likely to be poor as an Asian/Pacific
Islander or white child. (Children
Now)
-
Runaway children
are victimized in our cities. (Covenant
House)
-
Children
are especially vulnerable to gun violence. Every day, 16 American children
under the age of 20 are killed and many more are wounded by guns. (CPHV)
-
Our children don't
know how to resolve conflict without violence. (ESR)
(CR)
-
The typical American
child will witness 8,000 murders and 100,000 acts of televised violence
in his lifetime. Source: American Psychological Association.; More
than 3,000 studies over the past 30 years offer evidence that violent TV
programming has a measurable effect on young minds. Source: Christian Science
Monitor, July 6, 1993. (Media
Violence), (KYTV)
-
The military
uses increasingly sophisticated techniques to reach today's youth -- including
the doubling of high school JROTC units, mobile military recruiting trucks
and ships, military booths at career fairs, and expensive advertising with
catchy jingles. (CCCO)
-
Toys and games accustom
our
children to violent solutions to problems. (PGS)
-
From East Los Angeles
to Northern Ireland to South Africa, children are the victims of daily
violence. In the past decade, millions of young people have suffered
the tragic effects of ethnic, religious, nationalistic, racially inspired
and gang-related warfare waged by adults around the world. Many children
continue to be killed, and many more are hurt, both physically and psychologically.
(EduPeace)
-
In Illinois, the
juvenile arrest rate has more than doubled in the past ten years.
-
The latest report
card on children's health in the United States indicates that while the
overall death rate fell about 2 percent every year from 1950 to 1993, deaths
due to suicide or homicide have almost tripled among youngsters under 14
since 1968. (NYT)
-
In Chicago, one
study found that more than 70% of high school and middle school students
have witnessed violent crime, more than 40% were primary victims, and 22%
said they had committed a violent act. (Peace Museum, 11/17/97)
-
More than 2,000
children die every year as a result of child abuse and neglect in the U.S..
An estimated two and one half million more children suffer pain and anguish
because of child abuse and neglect. (National Child Safety Council, Jackson,
Michigan)
-
A survey reported
by the American Medical Association showed that violence against children
and young adults is not restricted to inner cities. In fact, the
survey found a higher percentage of suburban boys reported being hit or
punched at school in the previous year than boys in the inner city.(NCPC)
-
The report also says that more
children are being recruited as fighting soldiers, estimating that recently,
thousands of children under the age of 16 have fought in wars in 25 countries.
In 1988 alone, they numbered as many as 200,000. One of the main reasons
for this increase is that light weapons now enable children to be proficient
killers. An AK-47 rifle, which in one West African country now costs no
more than US$6, can be stripped and reassembled by a child of 10. In some
ways, children make better soldiers than adults: they are easier to intimidate
and they do as they are told, they are less likely to run away and they
do not demand pay. (UNICEF)
-
UNICEF estimates that it would
cost $34 billion a year to meet the needs of the world's children. This
is less than what the world spends annually on golf ($40 billion).
(RESULTS)
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Just Wages
-
A full-time, full-year
minimum wage job, even after the recent minimum wage increase, will still
only support a family of three at 83 percent of the poverty level. For
the decade of the 1970's, the full-time minimum wage was close to or slightly
exceeded the poverty level for a family of three, and during that period
the child poverty rate averaged 15.7 percent. By contrast, in 1996, with
a far lower minimum wage, the child poverty rate was 20.5 percent and more
than three-quarters of poor children lived in a household with a working
adult. (CDF)
-
"There is still
hunger in America. Poverty is not going away. Many people working at minimum
wage jobs can’t feed, clothe, and provide shelter and medical care for
their families. They come to Catholic Charities to help them with these
necessities," said Rev. Fred Kammer, SJ, president of Catholic Charities
USA. (CathChar)
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Education
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Communications
-
The poor lack access to high
tech communications (computers, e-mail. Fax, the Internet). This removes
another path out of poverty for them and their children.
-
Although there is much dross,
commercialism, and noise and some smut, the internet does have useful sites.
(IFC),
(CPSR)
-
"By the time most Americans
are 18 years old, they have spent more time in front of the television
set than they have spent in school, and far more than they have spent talking
with their teachers, their friends or even their parents." ... "By first
grade, most children have spent the equivalent of three school years in
front of the TV set." Quotes from Abandoned in the Wasteland: Children,
Television and the First Amendment, by Newton Minnow, former Chairman
of the FCC, and Craig LaMay, 1995 (KYTV)
-
When half the population say
that there is too much sex and violence on television, this is no longer
a negligible issue embraced by a minority of fanatics. (S&V)
There is a consensus developing
among members of the research community that "...violence on television
does lead to aggressive behavior by children and teenagers who watch the
programs" . (VTV)
-
The battle for ratings
and a singular emphasis on profits have too often replaced the commitment
to legitimate public interest standards with glorification of violence
and exploitation of sexuality in television programming, movies, and other
newer media. (PR)
-
Television advertising
promotes materialistic values, discontent, excess consumption and waste.
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Pursuing Social
Issues
Economic Justice
-
Families and institutions need
the information necessary to direct their investments in ways that promote
their moral values (Socially Responsible Investing).
-
Transnational corporations
move jobs to areas with low wages and benefits, no worker protection, and
lax environmental protections. Some corporations are also concentrating
their sales efforts on the markets of the Third World, where they can sell
lower-quality products or products that are outright toxic and thus banned
in the industrialized countries. (CAGE,
49)
-
What has taken place
is a massive shift of power, out of the hands of nation-states and into
the hands of TNCs [transnational corporations] and banks. It is now
the TNCs that effectively govern the lives of the vast majority of people
on earth; yet these new world realities are seldom reflected in the strategies
of citizen movements for democratic social change. All too often,
strategies are aimed primarily at changing government policies, while ther
real power being exercised by TNCs behind the scenes is rarely challenged,
let alone dismantled. (CAGE,
298)
-
Economic globalization
expands the opportunities for corporations to go about their business of
concentrating wealth-and from the corporate perspective, it has been a
brilliant success. The Fortune 500 corporations shed 4.4 million jobs between
1980 and 1993-while increasing their sales 1.4 times; their assets by 2.3
times; and CEO compensation by 6.1 times. These same corporations now employ
only 1/20th of 1 percent of the world's population, but they
control 25 percent of the world's economic output and 70 percent of world
trade. (WCR),
(CR), (PCDF)
-
Many so called trade
agreements, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and
the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), are not really trade
agreements at all. They are economic integration agreements intended to
guarantee the rights of global corporations to move both goods and investments
where ever they wish-free from public interference and accountability.
GATT is best described as a bill of rights for global corporations. (WCR)
-
The corporation
is an institutional invention specifically and intentionally created to
concentrate control over economic resources while shielding those who hold
the resulting power from liability for the consequences of its use. The
more national economies become integrated into a seamless global economy,
the further corporate power extends beyond the reach of any state and the
less accountable it becomes to any human interest or institution other
than a global financial system that is now best described as a gigantic
legal gambling casino. (WCR)
-
Forbes tells us
the world now has 358 billionaires. Their combined net worth exceeds the
combined net worth of the world's poorest 2½ billion people. (WCR)
-
The higher one goes
up the income scale, the greater the rate of capital accumulation. Economist
Paul Krugman notes that not only have the top 20 percent grown more affluent
compared with everyone below, the top 5 percent have grown richer compared
with the next 15 percent. The top one percent have become richer compared
with the next 4 percent. And the top 0.25 percent have grown richer than
the next 0.75 percent. That top 0.25 owns more wealth than the other 99
percent combined. (Parenti)
-
In 1957, corporations
in the United States provided 45 percent of local property tax revenues.
By 1987 their share had dropped to about 16 percent. (WCR)
-
The scale of the
concentration of economic power that is occurring is reveal in the statistics:
of the world's hundred largest economies, fifty are corporations, and the
aggregate sales of the world's ten largest corporations in 1991 exceed
the aggregate GNP of the world's hundred smallest countries. (WCR)
-
Consumerism distorts
our values and wastes our resources.
-
Military spending
continues to consume more than half of the federal discretionary budget.
-
CEO pay now stands
at 475 times the pay of the average worker, according to Business Week’s
annual survey of American corporations. In 1980, the multiplier was
42. (UFE)
-
Additional links:
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Workers’ Rights
-
The popular Nike
athletic shoes that sell for US$73 to $135 around the world are produced
by 75,000 workers employed by independent contractors in low income countries.
A substantial portion of these workers are in Indonesia-mostly women and
girls housed in company barracks, paid as little as 15 cents an hour, and
required to work mandatory overtime. Unions are forbidden and strikes are
broken up by the military. In 1992, Michael Jordan reportedly received
$20 million from the Nike corporation to promote the sale of its shoes,
more than the total compensation paid to the Indonesian women who made
them. (WCR)
-
Corporations "down
size" older workers and hire younger, lower paid, ones to fill their positions.
Workers over 40 find it difficult to get new jobs even at lower wages.
-
Some Catholic institutions actively
oppose union activity by their employees.
-
The International
Labor Organization has estimated the total number of child workers to be
between 100-200 million. According to the ILO, more than 95 percent
of all child workers live in developing countries. (Child
Labor)
-
Many goods in our
stores are produced by child labor in foreign countries.
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Poverty
-
38.5 million Americans (14.5%
of the population) live below the poverty level. (SERVEnet)
-
The United States has higher child poverty
than seven other major industrialized western countries (UNICEF, State
of the World's Children Report 1993, 1992). The U.S. child poverty
rate is dramatically higher than those of Canada, Germany, Norway, Sweden,
Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. (mindspring)
-
The United States has the highest proportion
of single-parent families; nearly one child in four now lives with one
parent (Hobbs, F., & Lippman, L., 1990). In 1991, the poverty
rate among children in female-headed families was 55 percent, more than
five times the rate among married-couple families (U.S. Bureau of the Census,
1992). (mindspring)
-
About half of the Nation's poor in 1991
were children under 18 years of age (40.2). Children are almost twice
as likely to be poor than any other group of Americans, including the elderly
(U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992). (mindspring)
-
The income disparity
between the rich and poor is greater in the United States than in any other
nation in the industrialized world.
-
The richest 20%
of Americans receive 49% of the nation's income while the poorest 20% receive
3.7%. The gap between rich and poor in income and wealth continues to grow.
-
While jobs continue
to migrate from the inner cities to the suburbs, public transportation
has been allowed to deteriorate. That leaves the poor without the means
to get to the jobs.
-
Washington, DC-
A startling 7.9 million people came to Catholic Charities agencies for
emergency services in 1996, an unexpected 11 percent increase over the
previous year, according to a new survey released today by Catholic Charities
USA. Half of the increase was in people coming for food. Overall, Catholic
Charities agencies served 12.7 million people in 1996, up from 10.8 million
in 1995. (CathChar)
-
The average AFDC family consists
of 3 family members, usually a single mother and 2 children. The average
number of children is 1.8. (KSU)
-
The 1992 welfare
caseload consisted of 9.2 million children and 4.4 million adults (virtually
all of them mothers). About half the children in welfare families
are under six years old; one-quarter are under three years old. There
is no federal welfare program to provide income to able-bodied adults without
children. (TCF)
-
TANF is, by definition, a subsistence
program for extremely poor families, but the current TANF monthly payment
($377 for a family of three in Chicago) is insufficient to allow families
to meet their basic needs.
-
This report analyzes recent changes in
child care policies in the ten states with the largest welfare populations
(California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
Texas, Washington) as part of the Progressive Policy Institute's ongoing
monitoring of state implementation of federal welfare law. It finds that
in many states, the block grant money allocated to child care for welfare
recipients participating in work activities comes at the expense of low-income
working families who do not receive welfare. (HandsNet)
-
While considerable political heat is directed
at poor welfare recipients receiving taxpayer money, more than three times
that amount is paid in welfare to wealthy corporations, according to a
new Essential Information study released by Ralph Nader. A total of 153
federal programs totaling $167.2 billion, a cost of $1,388 for each taxpayer
this year, benefited corporations, according to the study, Aid for Dependent
Corporations (AFDC). By contrast, Aid to Families with Dependent Children
and other forms of social welfare, including food stamps, housing assistance,
and child nutrition, cost $50 billion a year, or $415 for individual taxpayers,
the study said. (CorpWelf)
-
President Bush's tax cut is too large
and fundamentally unfair. It jeopardizes our nation's ability to meet domestic
and foreign responsibilities, threatens fiscal stability and security,
and inequitably distributes its benefits. (FTFA)
-
The share of poor single mothers in the
paid-labor market is at an all-time high. The annual employment
rates of women who received welfare
benefits at some point in the year were relatively flat in the late1980s and early 1990s. But around
the mid-1990s, when welfare reform was being phased in, they took off, growing from 39 percent in 1994
to 57 percent in 1999. Of course, this was also the period when the labor market tightened up. So the
challenge, again, is to figure out how much of this trend is specifically
caused by welfare reform. (epn)
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Additional links:
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Living Wage
-
Advocates of the
so-called living wage want low-income workers to earn enough to avoid the
poverty threshold -- now defined as $17,000 a year for a family of four.
The federal minimum wage now stands at $5.15 an hour. If the concept of
the living wage is adopted, the amount would jump to $8.20 an hour -- and
even higher in large metropolitan areas. (NCPA)
-
Even when other
government benefits, such as food stamps, are factored in, on average,
an AFDC family receives maximum benefits equal to only 42 percent of the
poverty line. The combination of welfare, food stamps, and housing
assistance raises fewer than one in five welfare families above the poverty
line. Only one-quarter of AFDC families receives added assistance
to pay for housing. Most AFDC households purchase shelter, as well
as clothing, transportation, personal hygiene, household needs, and school
supplies, out of an annual benefit income that averages $8,000 for a family
of three when AFDC and food stamps are combined. (TCF)
-
Additional links:
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Social Security
-
One in every three Americans
over age 65 has no prescription drug insurance. Millions more have
only limited coverage, and that is slipping away as HMOs and company retirement
plans cut back or drop altogether their drug benefits. Meanwhile, the prices
for the pharmaceutical medications continue to climb. It is the quiet crisis
of retirement in America today. (NCPSSM)
-
The number of companies offering
health coverage for their retirees has dropped by 25 percent in the last
four years. More than one-third of larger firms, employing 5,000 or more
workers, eliminated coverage during the same period. Instead, many are
switching to managed-care plans for their retirees, which offer expensive
or limited drug coverage. (NCPSSM)
-
The Social Security and Medicare
trustees' report shows the danger of proceeding with a tax cut as large
as the Administration has proposed and thereby failing to set aside a healthy
portion of projected non-Social Security, non-Medicare surpluses for use
in helping to restore long-term solvency to these programs. This is a conclusion
of an analysis the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities issued on the
trustees' report. (CBPP)
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Health Care
-
Our nation's
health care system still serves too few and costs too much. (PR)
-
The spread of the
AIDS epidemic around the world is one of the most alarming new developments
in the past twenty years. There are approximately 18 million AIDS-infected
people in the world. Each day, some 6000 additional people are infected.
By the year 2000, there will be an estimated 40 million people who have
the AIDS virus. The $6 billion cost for the AIDS Prevention and Control
Program is about 40% of what the US spends on cosmetic surgery per year,
or about the same amount as is spent on tobacco advertising in the US,
or about .007% of the world's annual military budget. (WWW)
-
In 1994, the United
States infant mortality rate was eight deaths, by age one, per 1,000 live
births. In terms of infant mortality, the United States ranks twenty-first
among industrialized nations. (UNICEF)
-
Affordable health
care is not available on our area.
-
Most teenagers engage
in behaviors that put them at risk for chronic disease; but they are less
likely to do so in families with higher education and income, according
to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
(NCPA)
-
A study by the Center
on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia (CASA) reveals that in 1995
substance abuse and addiction will account for $77.6 billion of federal
entitlement payments, including Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security Disability
Insurance, Veterans, health, and other federal entitlement programs and
welfare. That represents nearly twenty percent of the $430 billion that
the federal government will spend on these entitlement programs this year.
-
Vast sums are spent
on organ transplants and other highly technical procedures while prenatal
care, nutrition, and other preventative programs languish for lack of funding.
-
The "War on Drugs" has not only failed
to make America free of illicit drugs but in the process has constructed
laws that are: highly unjust and racist in their application, a threat
to our civil liberties, and a danger to public health.
-
The estimated 39
million Americans not covered by either private or public insurance represent
about 16 percent of the population. And during the course of a year 58
million are uninsured for at least one month. Interestingly, 85 percent
of the uninsured are members of a family with a working adult, and more
than half of them live in families with an adult who has steady, full-time
employment. (ncpa)
-
Nonprofit hospitals,
owned by communities and religious institutions, are being purchased by
for-profit corporations. When that happens, they raise their prices and
reduce care for the indigent.
-
Registered nurses
are being replaced with less expensive practical nurses. Patients are forced
to endure long waits for many types of needed surgery.
-
For-profit hospitals
and nursing homes often refuse to accept Medicaid patients.
-
Additional links:
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Housing
-
Housing
is being seriously neglected as a priority of national concern, governmental
action, and federal investment. Shelters cannot substitute for real housing
for low-income families and poor individuals. (PR)
-
Affordable housing
is lacking in our area. There are long waiting lists for "Section 8" housing.
-
[A 1994] study found
that 6.5% (12 million adults nationwide) of the respondents had been literally
homeless at some point in their lives, and that 3.6% (6.6 million adults
nationwide) of the respondents had experienced homelessness (literal or
doubled up) between 1989-1994 (Link et al., 1995). Thus, it appears that
12 million of the adult residents of the U.S. have been literally homeless
at some point in their lives. (nch)
-
By the year 2003
the ratio of income-eligible families to low-income units will be nearly
two to one in the United States. There is a lack of private or public low-income
housing in the U. S. The public low-income housing which does exist is
in very bad condition, overcrowded and managed poorly. (Habitat)
-
Percentage of cities
reporting an increase in homelessness: 71%. Percentage of cities that turn
away homeless due to lack of resources: 81%. Average decrease in number
of available shelter beds: 2.5%. Average amount of time it takes for a
homeless person to get off the street: 6 months. Average decrease in available
transitional housing: 11%. Percentage of homeless who are mentally ill:
24%. Percentage of homeless who are veterans: 19%. Percentage of homeless
who are employed: 18%. Percentage of cities in which families must split
up to find shelter: 56%. Average percentage of income spent on housing
by low-income households: 49%. Percentage of eligible low-income households
receiving housing assistance: 28%. Percentage of cities that have stopped
taking applications for at least one housing assistance program due to
length of waiting lists: 68%. - All information taken from 1996 Conference
of Mayors Report on Housing and Homelessness. (Real
Change)
-
Housing for the
handicapped is lacking in our area.
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Agriculture
-
Malnutrition
is the principal cause of infant and child mortality in developing nations.
In many of them, over 25% of the population die before the age of four.
In Guatemala, 75% of the children under five years of age are undernourished.
Yet, Guatemala exports 40 million pounds of meat to the United States.
(NCA)
-
Our food and agriculture
system is similarly designed to generate profits for giant chemical and
agribusiness corporations with little regard for the health of people and
the ecosystem. . . .It comes at the costs of depleting soils and aquifers,
contaminating water with chemical runoff, and driving out the small family
farms that were long the backbone of strong rural communities. (WCR)
-
Wealthy landlords
in developing countries are using their land for export crops and the workers
can't grow enough to feed their families.
-
Additional links:National
Catholic Rural Life Conference
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to Site Contents
Hunger
-
Even on its own
terms, the tragedy of chronic, persistent hunger is staggering. This silent
killer takes the lives of 35,000 of us each and every day, three-quarters
of whom are children under the age of five. The health, intelligence and
productivity of nearly one billion of our fellow human beings are ravaged
by hunger. (THP)
-
The International
Famine Relief Agency could be funded with 32% of what just the US spends
on candy each year. The Increased Fertilizer Availability Program could
be funded with just 11% of what Europe, Japan and the US spend on cosmetics.
Together, all three programs-famine relief, fertilizer and sustainable
agriculture-total $19 billion per year for ten years, which is 2.4% of
the world's total annual military expenditures or 1.9% of the world's annual
expenditures on illegal drugs. This amount is also about 55% of what the
people of the US spend on weight loss programs each year. The cost for
eliminating starvation and malnutrition in the world is also about 75%
of what European governments spend annually on subsidies to their farmers
or 38% of what Japanese farmers receive. (WWW)
-
World food reserves are low.
-
Many people in our
area can't afford food and rely on our food pantries for their survival.
-
The "World Food
Summit" in Rome, November, 1966 estimated that there are currently 840
million undernourished people in the world. The US mission to the UN has
released a study which estimates that 36.2 million people are at risk of
malnutrition or starvation in 1997.
-
In the U.S. and
other first world countries obesity, overweight, and gluttony are widespread.
-
The livestock population
of the United States today consumes enough grain and soybeans to feed five
times the human population of the country.... It is hard to grasp how immensely
wasteful is a meat-oriented diet-style. By cycling our grain through livestock,
we end up with only 10 percent as many calories available to feed human
mouths as would be available if we ate the grain directly. 1 acre of land
can produce only 165 pounds of beef, but the same 1 acre can produce 20,000
pounds of potatoes. It takes 20 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of beef,
but 1 pound of bread can be produced with 1 pound of grain.
(NCA)
-
Budget cuts made at the expense of nutrition
programs, such as food stamps and school lunches, are false savings, because
of the costly problems associated with hunger. All told, these changes
would restore just under $8 billion of the $30 billion lost to nutrition
programs under the federal welfare reform law of 1996.
-
Additional links:
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Farm Workers
-
Farm workers are
treated unfairly.
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to Site Contents
Environment
-
Since
the Industrial Revolution, human activity has been increasing greenhouse
gas concentrations and trapping more heat. Earth's average surface
temperature increased 0.5-1.0 degrees F during the last century.
Climate scientists estimate a warming of 1.8-6.3 degrees F during the next
century. Global warming is likely to raise the level of the sea and change
the climate in most regions of the world. A higher sea level will
erode beaches, inundate wetlands and lowlands, and alter the ecological
balance of many estuaries. Changing regional climate is likely to
disrupt agriculture and forests, increase flooding along rivers, and decrease
populations of several species of birds and fish. (EPA)
-
The developed countries
produce a disproportionate amount of greenhouse gasses. The United States
with 4% of the world's population produces 20% of its greenhouse gasses.
(ToxTurk)
-
The layer of ozone
in the stratosphere, a layer far above the earth's surface, is critical
to life on earth because it blocks out ultraviolet rays. Human activities
have reduced ozone concentrations in the upper atmosphere at some times
and in some places around the world. A thinner ozone layer is likely to
cause a noticeable increase in skin cancer, eye problems, and other diseases.
(Ozone
Depletion FAQ)
-
The average North
American consumes five times as much as an average Mexican, ten times as
much as an average Chinese and thirty times as much as an average Asian
Indian.
-
Each American individual
uses up 20 tons of basic raw materials annually.
-
Even though Americans
comprise only 5% of the world's population, in 1996 we used nearly one
third of its resources and produced almost half of its hazardous waste.
-
The industrialized
countries, with just 21 percent of global population, use 75% of all energy
produced.
-
One fifth of humanity
does not have access to clean drinking water.
-
In the developed nations, the automobile
has had powerful negative effects. Urban sprawl has consumed large quantities
of arable land for housing and roads.
-
Although Americans continue to recycle
at higher rates, the massive amount of trash sent to landfill sites continues
to grow. In 1970, we recycled 7% of our garbage and sent 113 million tons
to landfills. Today, we recycle about 27%, but we still throw away over
150 million tons. (ULS)
-
The US Dept. of
Energy estimates that our government will spend at least $230 billion over
the next 75 years to clean up the pollution at nuclear facilities in the
United States. Another US Dept. of Energy document reveals that more nuclear
waste will be generated over the next 20 years than the past 50 years.
(
A2000)
-
Nuclear and other
toxic waste is dumped disproportionally in areas containing low-income
and minority populations.
-
Annual trash from gift wrap and shopping
bags totals about 4 million tons. Third class mail adds another 4.4 million
tons to mail bags and, ultimately, to garbage bags. In fact, holiday waste
will add an additional 5 million tons of trash to U.S. landfills. (ULS)
-
Additional links:
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Immigrants
-
The denial
or elimination of services and benefits to legal immigrants produced the
single largest federal saving in the welfare reform law. (NCSL)
-
Welfare payments to legal immigrants
have been eliminated. (NCSL)
-
There is no reputable
evidence that prospective immigrants are drawn to the U.S. because of its
public assistance programs. (CEIP)
-
Most researchers
believe that few undocumented immigrants illegally use public assistance
programs. However, the data are scarce, and firm conclusions cannot be
drawn. (CEIP)
-
Evidence suggests
that over the last three decades, immigrants have played a significant
role in reversing the nationwide decline in the rate of non-farm self-employment.
(AILA)
-
The rate of U. S. immigration in the 1990s
is about one-third the rate of immigration at the beginning of this century.
The total number of immigrants--including illegals--is about the same as
or less than the number then, though the country's population has more
than doubled. (cato)
-
The foreign-born population of the United
States is 8.5 percent of the total population, which is significantly lower
than the proportion--13 percent or higher--during the period from 1860
to 1930. (cato)
-
Immigrants do not increase the rate of
unemployment among native Americans, even among minority, female, and low-skill
workers. The effect of immigration on wages is negative for some of these
special groups and positive for others, but the overall effects are small.
(cato)
-
This large influx of aliens in the labor
market depresses wages and working conditions for native low-skill workers
(who are often the young, minorities, and other recent immigrants).
It blocks our native poor from entry level opportunities, contributes to
the widening gap between rich and poor in our society, and increases business
dependency on cheap labor instead of innovation and modernization. (FAIR)
-
Total per capita government expenditures
on immigrants are much lower than those for natives, no matter how immigrants
are classified. Narrowly defined welfare expenditures for immigrants are
slightly more than for natives, but this has been true in the past, too.
These welfare expenditures are only small fractions of total government
expenditures on immigrants and natives. Schooling costs and payments to
the elderly are the bulk of government expenditures; natives use more of
these programs, especially Social Security and Medicare. (cato)
-
The educational levels of immigrants have
been increasing from decade to decade. No major shifts in educational levels
of immigrants relative to natives are apparent. (cato)
-
Natural resources and the environment
are not at risk from immigration. As population size and average income
have increased in the United States, the supplies of natural resources
and the cleanliness of the environment have improved rather than deteriorated.
Immigration increases the base of technical knowledge. That speeds the
current positive trends in both greater availability of natural resources
and cleaner air and water. (cato)
-
Migrant workers
in Will and Kendall Counties must endure miserable conditions.
-
The United States
is closing its doors to immigrants from the Southern Hemisphere who are
seeking to better themselves economically.
-
Additional links:
- U.S.
Bishops' 2001 Statement: Renewing
U.S. Leadership in Refugee Protection
- U.S.
Bishops' 2000 Statement: Welcoming the Stranger Among Us - Unity in
Diversity
- Resolution
on Immigration Reform, U.S. Bishops, 2000
- U.S.
Bishops' 1997 Statement: Called to Global Solidarity - International
Challenges for U.S. Parishes
- USCCB
Office of Migration and Refugee Services
- USCCB
Resources on International Issues
- Catholic
Relief Services
- Immigration
and Refugee Services of America
- U.S.
Committee for Refugees
- Interaction—
Refugee & relief agency coalition
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Education
-
Because of the way that schools
are funded, the children of the poor often receive an inferior education
thus condemning them to a future of poverty. (sf&tr)
-
Families and communities face
a fundamental challenge when attempting to any efforts to raise the level
academic success for all children: economic inequality. Grave disparities
in access to, quality of, and affordability of education have motivated
The Century Foundation to examine the causes and effects of economic inequality
and explore policy options for redressing these problems. As part of this
effort, The Century foundation is launching a new website: (www.equaleducation.org).
-
Urban students perform far worse,
on average, than children who live outside central cities on virtually
every measure of academic performance. The longer they stay in school,
the wider that gap grows. Urban schools are different because they
are more likely than nonurban ones to have a high percentage of low-income
students. Concentrated school poverty is consistently related to lower
performance on every educational outcome measured. (EdWeek)
-
Homeless children are being excluded from
schools.
-
Rising public school enrollments, and
demands for higher standards, may suggest a need for higher education spending.
But The Finance Project's Martin Orland and Carol Cohen suggest that growth
in per-pupil education spending is unlikely to continue at its 1970-to-1992
rates. Greater demands on state and local budgets can be expected from
other government service sectors and this will make it exceedingly difficult
for most states to continue education spending increases. Recent spending
data from 1990 to 1994 reveal that a marked slowdown has probably already
begun. (Challenges),
(IC-E)
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Private and
Religious Schools
-
Many Catholic Colleges and Universities
have campus ROTC programs. Few have programs of peace studies and conflict
resolution.
-
In inner cities, privately funded religious
schools often provide a better education at much lower cost than publically
funded schools.
-
A number of communities across the country
are trying vouchers or voucher-like mechanisms to see if they will make
a difference in the lives of poor children. The two most notable examples
are Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Cleveland, Ohio. In those communities-in
any community anywhere in the nation-Title I vouchers could make an enormous
difference to poor families. (CUPR)
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Violence
-
Each day 105 Americans
die from gunshot wounds.
-
The fact is, if
there's a handgun in your home, it is more likely that a domestic homicide
or suicide will occur. The family gun is 43 times more likely to
kill you or someone you know than to kill in self-defense. (CPHV)
-
Last year, more
than 13,000 Americans were slain with firearms, 67 percent of the
total of homicides. It's estimated that an additional 18,000 took
their own lives with guns. (ChiTrib, 12/28/97)
-
Each year, the Family
Shelter Service in Glen Ellyn receives 10,000 phone calls to its hotline
and police report 6,000 incidents of domestic violence in our community.
-
Women account for
95 percent of domestic violence victims. A woman is more likely to be assaulted,
injured, raped, or killed by a male partner than by any other type of assailant.
An estimated 3 to 4 million American women are battered each year by their
husbands or partners. In 1991, more than 90 women were murdered every
week; nine of ten by men. Weapons are used in 30 percent of domestic
violence incidents. (JPD)
-
Medical expenses
from domestic violence total $3 to $5 billion annually. Business
forfeit another $100 million in lost wages, sick leaves, absenteeism, and
nonproductively. (JPD)
-
As violence against
women becomes more severe and more frequent in the home, children experience
a 300 percent increase in physical violence by the male batterer.
(JPD)
-
Wife-beating results
in more injuries requiring medical treatment than rape, car accidents and
mugging combined. More than one million women seek medical assistance
annually for injuries caused by battering. One fifth of all women
treated by emergency rooms receive their injuries from their male partners.
(JPD)
-
Contrary to popular
belief, the typical crime victim is a single, unemployed, young male.
Of 10.8 million violent crimes (attempted or completed) in 1993, 6.8 million
of the victims were male; only 4.6 million were female. Young people,
ages 16 to 24, are more than ten times as likely as their grandparents
to be victims of violence. (NCPC)
-
Prostitutes are
victimized by predators in our cities.
-
History is full
of thousands of people who have cooperated in morally-reprehensible activities
when so ordered by their government or employer. One has only to
look at the large complicity needed in World War II’s Holocaust, a carefully-planned
and executed extermination of millions of Jews, Gypsies and other "undesirables."
(NVW)
-
Additional links:
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Discrimination
-
Racism
pervades our society. Prejudice coupled with power enables many in the
majority to discriminate against minorities in housing, economics, employment,
politics, and other areas of our common life. (RRN),
(IHR)
-
Discrimination hurts
all of us, but especially
-
African-Americans
-
Asian-Americans
-
Native-Americans
and other indigenous (ECEP)
-
Hispanics (NCPRR)
-
Gays, lesbians,
bisexuals, and the transgendered (HRC)
-
The physically and
mentally disabled
-
The elderly
-
Jews, Catholics,
Muslims, and other non-WASPs
-
Women (CEDAW)
-
People with AIDS
-
The poor
-
Families with children
-
The Catholic Church
discriminates against its members and employees, especially lay women.
-
Due to affirmative
action, blacks from middle-class and affluent families are granted preference
at the expense of poor whites with stronger academic credentials.
And Hispanics, who have historically been classified as white, get preferential
treatment at the expense of Asians -- a minority who have also suffered
discrimination. (NCPA)
-
The election of
many African American leaders has failed to translate into genuine political
power or effective policy support for black issues. The rise in membership
in Pentecostal and Islamic denominations suggests that many blacks, frustrated
with the political detachment of more traditional churches, continue to
pursue more socially concerned activism at a local level. (EPN)
-
The HOPE fair housing
center in DuPage County handled 318 fair housing complaints in the year
ending in September 1997. Discrimination occurs in all aspects of housing:
advertising, rental, sales, financing, and insurance.
-
Additional links:
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Prisoners and Prisons
-
Prisons
are inhuman places and many prisoners are tortured and raped.
-
Mandatory sentencing has resulted in long
sentences for non-violent criminals and a vast expansion of our prison
system.
-
Among the State prison inmates in 1991:
fewer than half were sentenced for a violent crime, a fourth were sentenced
for a property crime, about a fifth were sentenced for a drug crime. (bjs)
-
Most federal legislation being considered
puts more money and effort in punishment of juvenile crime than in prevention.
Proposed legislation would allow children over the age of 14 to be tried
as adults in federal cases and to be incarcerated in adult prisons. One
piece of legislation would lower the minimum age for the death penalty
from 18 to 16. (ICC)
-
If recent incarceration rates remain unchanged,
an estimated 1 of every 20 persons (5.1%) will serve time in a prison during
their lifetime. Lifetime chances of a person going to prison are
higher for: men (9%) than for women (1.1%), blacks (16.2%) and Hispanics
(9.4%) than for whites (2.5%). Based on current rates of first incarceration,
an estimated 28% of black males will enter State or Federal prison during
their lifetime, compared to 16% of Hispanic males and 4.4% of white males.
(bjs)
-
From 1950 to 1974 " a period during which
imprisonment for serious crime declined sharply " the crime rate soared.
In 1974, the rate of imprisonment began increasing and, as a result, the
crime rate leveled off in the 1980s and has actually declined in recent
years. Still, the rate of serious crime remains distressingly high. (NCPA)
-
We, as a society, are in crisis. Held
enthralled by fear, most people feel helpless about crime -- feel as though
caught in a maelstrom -- a vicious dynamic cycle of disputes, transgressions,
and violence beyond control, ever escalating in severity. Moreover, our
public policy debates, which we could reasonably hope might generate ideas
for rational, workable, and effective societal responses, seem driven more
by fear and anecdote -- sensationally violent media portrayals of the most
heinous crimes -- than by any optimism for meaningful improvement in the
situation. Politicians, speaking to this fear and sense of helplessness,
sadly seem to betray a willingness to keep the public policy debates at
a lowest-common-denominator level of intelligence -- they essentially sell
us 'protection' by campaigning for the 'war on crime', 'three strikes,
you're out', 'lock 'em up and throw away the key', and even 'capital punishment'.
(CERJ), (PACS)
-
791,600 black males were incarcerated
in June 2000, a new high. Nearly one in eight black males age 20 to 34
was in prison on any given day.
-
While crime rates have fallen the last
decade, the total number of people incarcerated in the United States has
risen steadily to a record high of 1.9 million people in 2000, the Justice
report said. (HoustonChronicle)
-
Additional links:
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Civil Rights
-
Government
agencies and private corporations have collected and stored vast amounts
of information about individuals. Extensive databases and powerful computers
enable them to invade our privacy. (CPSR)
-
Corporate lobbyists
and PACs have more influence on our government's actions than do ordinary
citizens. Corporations subvert government regulatory bodies to further
the interests of those they are supposed to regulate. (Common
Cause)
-
The government uses
secrecy and classification to cover up its own errors and ineptness. Senator
Daniel P. Moynihan has revealed that in 1995 alone -- long after the end
of the cold war -- the U.S. government classified 400,000 documents as
"Top Secret," meaning that their disclosure would cause "exceptionally
grave damage to the national security." The cost to taxpayers of "protecting"
these records is more than $5 billion a year. (NCAC)
-
99.97% of Americans
do not make political contributions of more than $200, but individual contributions
of more than $200 are the largest single source of money for Congressional
campaigns. Past elections show that whoever raises the most money usually
wins. A senate seat costs $4.6 million and a House seat, $520,000. (The
Dollars and Democracy Project).
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Practicing
Global Solidarity
Debt Relief
-
Poor countries owe a vast amount
of money to rich nations and international financial institutions (IFIs)
like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. For developing
countries as a whole this debt is over $2 trillion. Most of this is owed
by "middle-income" developing countries. But some of the lowest-income
countries in the world also are heavily indebted, owing around $250 billion.
(J2000)
-
Hundreds of millions of people
living in poverty in low and middle-income countries alike are paying the
price for their countries’ enormous international debt. Ordinary people
did not benefit from many of the loans that gave rise to this debt. Yet
they bear the principal burden of repayment. Without major debt reduction,
poor countries are trapped, making unending interest payments on their
debts. This requires them continuously to divert large amounts of scarce
resources from health care, education and food security. The debt burden
inhibits the social and economic development that is needed to lift people
out of poverty.(J2000)
-
Additional links:
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Global Poverty
-
Some of the statistics about
the state of the world can be overwhelming. One-fifth of the world's population
survives on $1 a day. More than 50 million people have been forcibly displaced
from their homes. Seven million children die each year because the poorest
countries spend more money on debt than on health or education. Fourty
million people die each year from hunger alone.(NetAid)
-
Foreign aid
-
Trade policies
Human Rights
-
Thousands
of people are in prison because of their beliefs. Many are held without
charge or trial. Torture and the death penalty are widespread.
In many countries men, women and children have "disappeared" after
being taken into official custody. Still others have been put to
death without any pretence of legality: selected and killed by the governments
and their agents.(AI)
-
Additional links:
Religious
Liberty
-
Members of religious minorities
are persecuted for their beliefs.**
United Nations
-
The United
States often seeks military solutions to problems that can best be solved
by other means.
-
The CIA has been
involved in covert operations in foreign countries that involved the overthrow
of governments as well as drug smuggling. (TMC)
-
There was a time
when the United States shouldered 63 percent of the world's foreign aid
burden. That was 40 years ago. Now, America provides only a sixth of the
world's development assistance. Japan spends more, and soon too will France
and probably Germany. As a portion of its wealth, America's foreign aid
donation is less than that of any other donor nation--a distinction bound
to continue as a result of Congress's 23 percent cut in the Agency for
International Development's budget for development aid. (US News 5/20/96)
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The United states
has become delinquent in paying the dues it pledges to the International
Development Corporation (IDC), a branch of the World Bank which assists
the world's poorest countries.
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In 1945 the United
States played a leading role in forming the U.N. for the purpose of maintaining
world peace, furthering human rights, and promoting economic development.
The U.S. currently owes over $1 billion in arrears to the U.N. for its
regular budget and peacekeeping operations. (WFA)
The continued failure of the U.S. to honor its legal obligations threatens
the financial viability of the United Nations. While continued reform is
necessary, the United Nations advances important U.S. interests and deserves
the support of the president and Congress as well as the American people.
Of the top 15 contributors to the United Nations, only the United States,
Russia and Ukraine are delinquent, with the U.S. owing 62 percent of all
outstanding arrears. (Maryknoll)
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Over the past few
decades, numerous nations, particularly in Africa and Latin America, funded
their development projects through loans from the banks of industrialized
nations. Debt and interest payments from these loans from the world's least
developed countries today amount to $199