Progress in the Fight Against Poverty in the United States

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included the following investments to alleviate poverty.

•To fight hunger, the Act includes a $20 billion increase for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as Food Stamps, as well as funding for food banks and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC);

•The Act also provides for $2 billion in new Neighborhood Stabilization Funds to help maintain ailing neighborhoods and $1.5 billion in Homelessness Prevention Funds to keep people in their homes or rapidly rehouse them;

•The Act increases funding for the Community Services Block Grant by $1
billion;

•The Act increases the Weatherization Assistance Program by $5 billion to help low income families save on their energy bills by making their homes more energy efficient;

•The Act increases job training funds for those who need them most, with $3.95 billion in additional funding for the Workforce Investment system, which will support green job training, summer jobs for young people, and other opportunities;

•The Act provides increased income support, including an increase of $25 per week for Unemployment Insurance recipients and incentives for states to expand unemployment insurance eligibility, as well as an extra $250 payment to Social Security and Supplemental Security Income beneficiaries and new resources for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program; and,

•The Act provides tax breaks to working families through the Make Work Pay and Child Tax Credits. These changes will reduce the marriage penalty and provide a larger credit for families with three or more children.

This act will hopefully lead to the improvment of poverty in the United States.

Reasons for Poverty

   Helium gives some ideas about what causes poverty. Here are some of them:

1. No Jobs
2. A near complete lack of public services
3. A weak and corrupted central government

   A lot of people then die from starvation and easily preventable diseases that we do not always think are fatal. We can help these people and organizations such as relief agencies and the United Nations do help these people.

Lack of Water

     According to Global Water, the lack of clean drinking water is the primary cause of disease in the world today. Tens of thousands of people die everyday due to causes linked to contaminated water. Water supplies in underdeveloped countries tend to be contaminated with virulent diseases.
     What can we do? We can help by digging wells below the level of contamination into clean water supplies. It is a difficult tast that few organizations want to undergo. However, Global Water is one of those few organizations that does dig wells. If you do not actually want to dig wells, you can raise awarness in your community or donate to organizations.

Please help those who are less fortunate.

List of Least Developped Countries:

Africa:

Angola, Cape Verde, Democratic Repubic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Mali, Rwanda, Somalia, Uganda, Benin, Central African Republic, Djibouti, Gambia, Liberia, Mauritania, Sao Tome and Principe, Sudan, Zambia, Burkina Faso, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, Madagascar, Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania, Burundi, Comoros, Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau, Malawi, Niger, Sierra Leone, and Togo

Asia

Afghanistan, Lao PDR, Timor-Leste, Bangladesh, Maldives, Yemen, Bhutan, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Nepal

Australia and the Pacific

Kiribati, Vanuatu, Samoa, Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu

Carribean

Haiti

Top 12 Places to Go in 2010

New York Times created a list of the top 31 places to go in 2010, here are their top 12.
 (Sri Lanka Flag)

1. Sri Lanka
2. Patagonia Wine Country, Argentina
3. Seoul, Korea
4. Mysore, India
5. Copenhagen, Denmark
6. Koh Kood, Thailand
7. Damascus, Syria
8. Cesme, Turkey
9. Antartica
10. Leipzig, Germany
11. Los Angeles, United States
12. Shanghai, China

Many of these places would be great places to go see so if you get the chance to see one, go for it!

9 Spooky Stays

Just for Halloween, CNN complied a list of the 9 most haunted houses in the United States. I thought it was a fun article that is great for ideas about spooky halloween travel.


1. American Haunting Tours - based in Illinois the American Haunting Tours organize ghost hunting trips in the Mid-West.

2. Elaine's Victorian Inn and Dinner Theater in Cape May, New Jersey - is a haunted Inn that has a lot of recorded paranormal activity. The brave can even take a tour of the most haunted spots in Cape May, NJ.

3. Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, West Virginia - is an old Lunatic Asylum where people can go to hunt down ghosts in groups of 10 or by themselves. It is open from 10:30 pm to 6:30 am. The cost is $100 each in October and on October 31st they host a Witches Ball.

4. Prospect Place in Dresden, Ohio - was a stop on the undergroud railroad and is rumored to be one of the most haunted buildings in Ohio. From 8 pm to 6 am on Halloween there is an annual ghost hunt that costs $50 per person and there are evening tours for people 18 and up and cost $15.

5. Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado - is a very haunted hotel where people have very close encounters with the paranormal (aka ghosts). The most popular rooms are 217 (where  Stephen King stayed while developing the idea for his book "The Shining." and 401 which is aparrently haunted by two ghosts). The inn has been open for 101 years and is very popular in October.

6. Historic Anchorage Hotel in Anchorage, Alaska - is a hotel in Alaka that has 32 ghosts according to two psychics. They go all out to decorate for Halloween and many visitors report seeing ghosts.

7. Lizzie Borden B&B in Fall River, Massachusetts - is a bed in breakfast where the infamous killer Lizzie Borden took an ax to her parents. Some of the rooms even have crime scene photos in them.

8. Crescent Hotel & Spa in Eureka Springs, Arkansas - is a hotel that offers ghost tours nightly. Several visitors have experiences with the paranormal kind.

9. San Diego Zoo in San Diego, California - this zoo allows parents and kids ages 4 and older to stay overnight in the haunted Timbuktu camp.