SITUATION REPORT USA

We have three wars to wage: The War in Iraq, The War in Afghanistan and The War on Terror.  

 There is a 43 Trillion dollar hole in America's public finances that threatens our economic future. (A must read) Is America going broke?

    At the time of the catastrophe in New Orleans there were people in Florida who had not gotten back into permanent shelter from the 4 hurricanes in 2004.  Storms are increasing in intensity, sometimes up to 50% stronger and that will have an effect on the insurance industry if hurricanes wreak significantly more damage.  

    The Poverty Rate rose to 12.7 Percent in 2004.  1.1 million more people were added to those living below the poverty level.  It is now almost 37 million people.  A third of them are children.  In 2000 there were 31.1 million people in poverty, in 2001 there were 32.9 million, in 2003 it was 35.8 million.

    There are 45.8 million uninsured with medical bills the leading cause of bankruptcy.  Health costs per person in the US are now 15.4% of of the economy or about $6,423 for every man, woman and child per year  and will rise to almost 19% or $11,045 per person per year in a few years.  Our health care costs are the highest in the industrialized world and could hit 3.6 trillion per year by 2014.  Lack of insurance causes and estimated 18,000 unnecessary deaths each year.

    Though there were less than 200 official deaths form Gulf War 1 in 1991 the US Gulf War Veterans Association has reported over 8,000 Gulf War 1 veterans deaths in the last 10 years.  Some 200,000 GW1 veterans out of 600,000 who took part have registered health complaints.  The government has consistently underestimated the amount of money needed for funding veterans health needs. Depleted Uranium will cause health problems for veterans for many years to come and these health problems will be expensive.

    Japan, China, Taiwan, and South Korea hold 40 percent of our government debt.

    This year more people will file for bankruptcy than will file for marriage certificates.

    We have 3.5 million homeless who's causes of death in order are natural causes, homicide, ѕυιcιdє and hypothermia;  Over a quarter million are veterans. Some suffering from the effects of Depleted Uranium or Post Traumatic Stress syndrome.

    Three million six hundred thousand Americans ran out of unemployment insurance last year; 1.8 million--one in five--unemployed workers are jobless for more than six months.

    Then there is the Social Security problem that has to be dealt with.  The demographic tidal wave of baby boomers are starting to retire.  They will need healthcare if they are to have a decent life.  Half of men and 30% of women will be in a nursing home during their final days.  

    3.9 million families struggle to feed themselves at some point in the year.  

    The United States is ranked 41st in the world in infant mortality.  Cuba scores higher.

    According to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examinations Surveys analyzed by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention almost half of all HIV infected people in the United States who should be receiving HIV drugs are not getting them.

    Programs are being slashed and it is the citizens who produced the wealth that are suffering while 200 billion has already been spent in Iraq with no end in site at this writing.

    The International Association of Chiefs of Police said that cuts by the [Bush] administration in federal aid to local police agencies have left the nation more vulnerable than ever. (USA Today, Nov. 17, 2004).

        A budget that had a surplus of US$128 billion in 2001 has turned into a deficit of US$412 billion in 2004 -- the biggest annual shortfall in United States history.

    The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates we will need 1.6 Trillion dollars over the next 5 years to bring our infrastructure to an acceptable level. (part of this is in the pipeline) Our Crumbling Infrastructure

    The US Commission on National Security for the 21st Century has said "The harsh fact is that the US need for the highest quality human capital in science, mathematics and engineering is not being met."  In one recent study on international math and science tests given to 15 year olds in the US our students scored 24th out of 28 industrialized nations in math and 24th out of 40 countries in science.  We tied with Latvia.  In the year 2000 56% of China's undergraduate degrees were in the hard sciences, in the United States it was 17%.  China will produce almost 6 times the number of engineers that we produce and Japan, with half our population will produce twice as many.  Scientists and engineers make up less than 5% of our population but create up to 50% of our GDP.

"Most of the top ministers in China's government have degrees in hard science.  That's quite a difference from a government made up of lawyers."  Zhong Lin Wang, professor of nano-technology, Georgia Tech    

                     

   The United States is 49th in the world in literacy.  Foreign applications to U.S. grad schools declined 28 percent last year. Foreign student enrollment on all levels have fallen for the first time in three decades.  Yet they have increased greatly in Europe and China. Last year Chinese grad-school graduates in the U.S. dropped 56 percent, Indians 51 percent, South Koreans 28 percent.

   Twenty percent of Americans think the sun orbits the earth. Seventeen percent believe the earth revolves around the sun once a day (The Week, Jan. 7, 2005).

    Europe surpassed the United States in the mid-1990s as the largest producer of scientific literature yet Congress has cut funds to the National Science Foundation. The agency will issue 1,000 fewer research grants this year.

    The աօʀʟd ɦɛaʟtɦ օʀɢaռiʐatɨօռ ranked the US as 37th in overall health performance and 54th in health care fairness.

    One study said women are 70 percent more likely to die in childbirth in America than in Europe.

    There are 750,000 to 850,000 gang members in the United States.  More are being recruited every day.  Children who have no hope of achieving the American dream see no alternative but a life of crime and prison.

    America has one of the highest percentages of their population inside a prison: 12% of blacks, 3.7% of Hispanics and 1.6% of whites in prison; 68% of inmates are minorities.  Our inmate population stands at almost 2.1 million, 1 in 75 men in prison.  The rate per 100,000 of population is 715 in the United States, 169 in Mexico, 584 in Russia and 143 in England

    A significant number of those in our prisons can't read or write in the richest nation in the world.  It costs over $30,000 a year to keep someone in prison for a year.  What would these numbers be if we had spent a portion of the hundreds of  billions of our tax money the War in Iraq will surely cost to upgrade our education system, provide after school programs, to train people for the new types of jobs that are being created, to give them the skills needed to succeed instead of spending it on an unending war in Iraq and possibly another war with Iran.  

    An estimated 110,000 sex offenders are unaccounted for out of a total of over 500,000.  You can see the results of this on the nightly news.  A billion spent on improvements in this area would have stopped multiple tragedies.

    There are some 4,000 murder warrants out for illegals who have crossed into the United States, committed murder and returned south of the border.  Fox News interview with southwestern official, August 13, 2005    

       In New Mexico the governor declared a state of emergency along a 54 mile stretch of border to free up 1.5 million dollars of state money to deal with crime.  He said the federal government isn't doing its job of protecting our borders. CNN August 2005

    Across the Texas border in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico the new police chief was αssαssιnαtҽd after 6 hours on the job by one of the drug cartels who are battling for control of the drug trade along the US border.  When Mexican Federal troops were sent in to take control of the town in June of 05 some members of the police department fired on them.  An estimated 30% of the police work for the drug cartels.  At least 311 police officers quit out of a department of 780.  Things are heating up on the border.  http://aztlan.com wants a Hispanic ruled southern United States to secede.  

 The needs of the nation and the needs of the people are not being met.

http://wake-up-america.net/situation_report_usa.htm