Tag Archive for money

The “Clean 15” and “Dirty Dozen”

October 26, 2016 Comments Off on The “Clean 15” and “Dirty Dozen”

You may have heard in today’s news that thick-skinned produce, like bananas and avocados–are no healthier organic as they are regularly grown. Pesticides don’t get through their thick skins.  Still, wash them anyway to get rid of residue.

However, the nonprofit group dedicated to promoting and protecting people’s health, the Environmental Working Group, has a publication called Shoppers’ Guide to Pesticides in Produce. In it, they list their “Clean Fifteen.”  Based on 43,000 pesticide tests, these have been shown to be just as safe whether organic or grown the regular way.

  • Broccoli
  • Eggplant
  • Cabbage
  • Banana
  • Kiwi
  • Asparagus
  • Sweet peas (frozen)
  • Mango
  • Pineapple
  • Sweet corn (frozen)
  • Avocado
  • Onion

They also list what they call the “Dirty Dozen,” ones with the most pesticides.

So now you know, when you shop for produce, which ones it pays to spend extra on organic and which “organic” ones are just a waste of money.

 

 

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Where Are the Donations to Our Vets?

April 11, 2016 Comments Off on Where Are the Donations to Our Vets?

A person who holds a “huge” rally to raise money to benefit our veterans and manages to raise $6 million should be praised–unless he doesn’t get that money to the 24 organizations he promised it to.   Yes, some donors gave money directly to the charities rather than through the Donald J. Trump Foundation, and about half of the amount has found its way to the charities.  Where’s the rest?  Will the other charities ever get their checks?  Some have, once the Foundation was reminded.  How much reminding and media pressure will it take to get the promised funds to the charities?

Our veterans, who are struggling with health, mental, and financial difficulties as a result of their service to our nation, deserve better treatment.

(Read story in the Washington Post article “What ever happened to all that money Trump raised for the veterans?”

 

 

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Shame: San Francisco and the Super Bowl

February 3, 2016 Comments Off on Shame: San Francisco and the Super Bowl

The good news:  San Francisco is spending $5 million on the homeless.  The bad news: they’re spending the money not on services or housing to help the homeless make better lives for themselves and their families but to move them out of sight in time for the Super Bowl.  S.F. has the 8th largest homeless  population in the U.S., yet the city is moving them to a small spot under a highway overpass–far away from Super Bowl Fan City.

My question is, Will the city and businesses then take a good chunk of the tourist money the Super Bowl will bring in and apply it in ways to get the homeless out of the ghetto the city has created and into needed healthcare (physical and mental), jobs, and housing so that these people never need to be hidden away again?

I doubt it.  And there’s the shame.

For details, go to http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-01-22/san-francisco-nudges-homeless-away-from-super-bowl-fan-village.

 

 

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Money, Money, Money

February 2, 2016 Comments Off on Money, Money, Money

Where is it all?  According to Oxfam, 1% of the world’s population now owns as much as the other 99% put together.  Seems a bit topsy-turvy to me, considering all the poverty, disease, and starvation in the world.

You can read the details in “Oxfam: 62 richest people as wealthy as poorest half of world’s population.”

 

 

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Will ISIS Fighters Quit over Wages?

January 25, 2016 Comments Off on Will ISIS Fighters Quit over Wages?

I just heard that ISIS fighters earn $4200 a month, and more if they have a wife and children.  But now that American bombers have been blowing up their stashes of money, they’re cutting that salary in half.

This made me wonder how many of their fighters are motivated less by ideology and pleasing Allah and more by a wage they likely couldn’t earn in another job.  Will the cut in salary and benefits lead hoards of fighters to quit and–if they aren’t executed–go home?  Maybe, too, devoted ISIS volunteers living in other countries (like the U.S.) will demand that they be paid and refuse to blow themselves up if they aren’t.

Here’s a thought: will capitalism do what nations and peoples have been unable to do, namely, spell death to ISIS?

 

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Stock Market Make-Believe

January 8, 2016 Comments Off on Stock Market Make-Believe

While listening to the news of the bad effects the weak stock markets are having on the major countries of the world and our own economy, I got to thinking: all it is is electronic messages zipping through the ether, trading make-believe money that appears only as figures in those messages and on reports. How is it that all this stuff that doesn’t really exist determines real people’s lives and causes so much anguish?

Just wondering….

 

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Money, Marriage, and Family

December 17, 2015 Comments Off on Money, Marriage, and Family

Today’s Thursday Thought considers family, marriage, and the annual cost of social programs:

“ACF spends $46 billion per year operating 65 different social programs. If one goes down the list of these programs… the need for each is either created or exacerbated by the breakup of families and marriages.”  —  Wade Horn, Assistant Secretary, Administration for Children and Families (ACF/HHS)
Maybe we need to work harder on protecting our families and marriages….

 

 

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The Pleasure of Loaning Money

October 20, 2015 Comments Off on The Pleasure of Loaning Money

I love it when I receive another payment from a loan I made.  My latest is from a family man in Kanese, Uganda.  My big loan was $25.  It’s to send his kids to school.  He works hard at his job, plus farming on the side to add to his income.  He dreams of a better future for his kids, and he knows that education, although costly, is their path to that future.

He’s one of a bunch of people I give micro loans to through KIVA.  Some are people on the other side of the earth, some are in the good US of A.  All are people that KIVA has vetted as having a true need and a determination to repay the loan.  My $25 is added to similar loans to get to the needed amount.  Over the months, I receive updates on how the person is doing.  I get payments, too, until the loan is totally paid off.  At that point, I can get my $25 back, or I can invest it in someone else.  I’m sure you can guess which choice I always make.

I’ve even given a loan in someone else’s name, as a gift.  (Christmas is coming….)

Find out more about this life-changing program by going to http://www.kiva.org.

This is Janakason, at a rare time when he isn’t working.

 

 

 

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Love your AC

June 27, 2015 Comments Off on Love your AC

The hot weather is upon us.  Now’s the time to show your AC (plus the earth and your budget) a little love.  Clean or change the filter, saving as much as 350 pounds of carbon dioxide and $150 per year. Leaf 6

[For more easy, money-saving, earth-friendly tips, download a FREE copy of Green Riches: Help the Earth & Your Budget. Go to www.Smashwords.com/books/view/7000, choose a format, and download to your computer or e-book device. Or download a free copy from your favorite e-book seller.]

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Another Black Mark Against California

June 3, 2015 Comments Off on Another Black Mark Against California

Yesterday I wrote about a free ride for CA legislators. Today I’m again unhappy with my normally beloved state.

We’ve put in a lot of time, energy, and money to solve a problem: executions.  We haven’t had any for 9 years, and 170 people currently sit on Death Row, 17 of whom have no appeals left to them.

After hassling with the Supreme Court for some time, our corrections department has come up with a new form of execution.  Will it succeed where the electric chair, gas chamber, and 3-drug injections failed?  And will “success” be measured in a population of 0 on Death Row?

I can’t help wondering if all the time, effort, research, and money put into devising this new killing system were put into repairing our biased, unequally applied, wealth-driven, often wrong legal system, if maybe we’d reach 0 population on Death Row naturally, through death-by-old-age or morally, by equal application of capital punishment and release of people who, thanks to that equal application and advances in science, should never have been there in the first place.

 

 

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