Thursday December 27, 2001
Fast Food Fat Calculator
You gotta love this right after the holidays, you plug in your favorite food from your favorite fast food place and this calculator tells you the fat and calorie content. I was astonished for see them see that Taco Bell Taco Salad with Shell is 52 grams of fat — are you kidding me?
2002 Brings New Homelessness — Are Shelters Full?
Lots of reporters make their way to shelters this time of year to do the obligatory stories a bout good people serving holiday meals. But this year, there is a far more important story. Hunger and homelessness rose sharply in major American cities over the last year, according to a new survey released by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Requests for emergency food assistance climbed an average of 23 percent and requests for emergency shelter assistance increased an average of 13 percent in the 27 cities surveyed.
The 17th annual report found an increase in requests for emergency food assistance in 25 of the 27 cities surveyed. There was no change in the other two cities. The average increase reported in emergency food assistance requests was 23 percent.
The largest increases were reported in
Santa Monica (50 percent)
Phoenix (44 percent)
Charlotte (42 percent)
Salt Lake City (35 percent)
Portland, Oregon (34 percent)
The survey also found that 19 cities reported increases in requests for emergency shelter compared to last year. The increases averaged 13 percent and were sharpest in:
Trenton (26 percent)
Kansas City (25 percent)
Denver (20 percent).
Chicago (22 percent)
Requests for emergency shelter actually declined by five percent in Philadelphia and St. Louis. Across the cities surveyed, the number of emergency shelter beds for homeless people rose nine percent.
Last week, the Census Department released county by county poverty figures for every county in the United States.
States Try Tax Amnesty Programs to Grab Cash
Stateline.org reports, “Like hungry college students searching under couch cushions for some pizza cash, states are turning to tax amnesty programs to bring in a little extra revenue from delinquent or elusive sources — tardy or non-filing taxpayers New Hampshire and Ohio are in the middle of tax amnesty periods approved earlier this year. Louisiana and Maryland recently completed their own amnesty programs: Louisiana’s program brought in $80 million, while Maryland’s reaped $39.2 million, well short of the state’s $70 million goal. Michigan and Nevada have scheduled amnesty periods for next year, and just this month Arizona lawmakers approved one for 2002 as well. With over 40 states suffering from revenue shortfalls, analysts expect more of them to hop on the tax amnesty bandwagon. Does your state have one of these programs? Why not? If so, how has it worked out? Who participates?
An Outstanding Collection of News Sites for you to Use
We all love Google as a search engine, now the Google folks are collecting news headlines too. Take a look. This is now my second favorite news site next to 1stHeadlines.com which I mention in all of my online seminars. I particularly like the beat by beat index on the left side of the page.
