http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.2512900.0.scots_artists_conquered_addiction_and_won_the_hearts_of_the_famous.php

"...I was on heroin for over 14 years before going on to a methadone program, which I came off last year and have been clean since.

"At my worst I lost jobs, was homeless and begged. But big Peter gave me a chance and now I think my work has reached a new high, a natural one.

"The things that changed my life have been my daughter Frankie - who is 14 - who I adore and want to be a good dad to, and Peter Howson.

"I was not much of a father being a junkie and Peter helped me believe that I had a future. I owe him everything.

"I am taking all these plaudits and fame with a pinch of salt. I am just happy to be alive. I should have been dead by now. I was spending £40 a day on heroin and begging and borrowing to feed my habit."

McFadden's life started to spiral out of control and he drifted into an underworld of addiction, crime and homelessness.

He tried to get his life back on track by applying for jobs but was fired twice from the same company due to his heroin habit. "I was sacked for late time-keeping," said McFadden.

That turned out to be one of McFadden's many lucky breaks. The firm that fired him was the Forrest Group in Glasgow where McFadden had worked as a sign-writer.

After meeting Howson McFadden found himself with the opportunity to put on his first exhibition, appropriately named Zero Tolerance, depicting the affects of substance abuse.”

Whether a person is abusing cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, pot or any other drug of abuse, they do have the power to overcome addiction with the help of the right program.

Narconon drug treatment 877-413-3073

It is true that we need to garner our resources during these economical times and be smart about where we spend our money – ensuring that there is a return on the investment.  Effective drug treatment is the obvious best possible investment as all the other related problems would go away.

Studies regarding what methods of alcohol and drug treatment work should be done before large amounts of money are doled out for treatment.  Some programs work and some don’t.  Investing in programs that don’t work will foster the idea that drug treatment does not work and continue the dark ages of prison and human suffering.

Whether a person is abusing heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, pot or any other substance, there is drug rehab available that can work.

Narconon 877-413-3073

“The vast majority of the estimated $467.7 billion in substance-abuse related spending by governments on substance-abuse problems went to deal with the consequences of alcohol, tobacco and other drug use, not treatment and prevention, according to a new report from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University.

The report, titled, "Shoveling Up II: The Impact of Substance Abuse on Federal, State and Local Budgets," found that 95 percent of the $373.9 billion spent by the federal government and states went to paying for the societal and personal damage caused by alcohol and other drug use; the calculation included crime, health care costs, child abuse, domestic violence, homelessness and other consequences of tobacco, alcohol and illegal and prescription drug abuse and addiction.

Just 1.9 percent went to treatment and prevention, while 0.4 percent was spent on research, 1.4 percent went towards taxation and regulation, and 0.7 percent went to interdiction.

"Such upside-down-cake public policy is unconscionable," said Joseph A. Califano, Jr., CASA's founder and chairman. "It's past time for this fiscal and human waste to end."

CASA estimated that the federal government spent $238.2 billion on substance-abuse related issues in 2005, while states spent $135.8 billion and local governments spent $93.8 billion. The report said that 58 percent of spending was for health care and 13.1 percent on justice systems.

Researchers estimated that 11.2 percent of all federal and state government spending went towards alcohol, tobacco and other drug abuse and addictions and its consequences. The report said that Connecticut spent the most proportionately on prevention, treatment and research -- $10.39 of every $100 spent on addiction issues -- while New Hampshire spent the least -- 22 cents.”

http://www.jointogether.org/news/headlines/inthenews/2009/states-waste-billions-dealing.html

By Hiram Lee
15 May 2009

Child actor Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail

Civil authorities in Mumbai, India have torn down the home of Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, the 10-year-old boy from Mumbai’s slums who appeared as young Salim in the Academy Award-winning film Slumdog Millionaire.

The home, more properly described as a shack or a lean-to with a tarpaulin roof and situated in the Garib Nagar slums, was destroyed by bulldozers Thursday in order to make room for a drainage path in preparation for the oncoming monsoon season. Approximately 30 more homes were destroyed along with Ismail’s, whose previous home was also destroyed in similar fashion while filming for Slumdog Millionaire was still taking place.

Those whose homes were destroyed were given no advance warning. Ismail’s mother told the press, “We didn’t even get a chance to remove our belongings. We are now left with no roof over our head tonight and the monsoon will begin in a few weeks. We have lived here for 15 years. I don’t know what we will do next.”

The 10-year-old actor, who had been asleep in the home when the bulldozers came to demolish it, told reporters, “A police officer took a bamboo stick to hit me, and I was frightened.”

The authorities, no doubt embarrassed by the sudden publicity of the event—the outrageous and inhumane destruction of the homes would never have found its way into the news had it not been for the level of fame achieved by one of the victims—have suggested they will provide the Ismail family with housing, but that promise has not yet been kept.

The destruction of the Ismail family’s home is the second highly-publicized tragedy to befall a young cast member from the Oscar-winning film. Last month, the impoverished father of 9-year-old Slumdog actress Rubina Ali allegedly tried to sell his daughter to a wealthy family. Since then, the Jai Ho Trust, established by the makers of Slumdog Millionaire to provide for their young child stars when filming was completed, has hired a social worker to see that Ali is kept safe.

The Jai Ho Trust was meant to provide young Ismail and Ali with housing, education and, once they turned 18 and completed school, an undisclosed amount of money with which to begin their adult lives. The filmmakers also donated $747,500 to a charity charged with providing support to the large number of Mumbai’s slum children.

In spite of their efforts, the filmmakers have been unable to secure a stable, healthy life for their child actors. Both Ismail and Ali continue to suffer in the slums, with Ismail and his family now forced into homelessness. Ultimately, such acts of personal charity, while well-meaning, are inadequate.

There are some 18 million people living in Mumbai. Over half of them are consigned to the slums.

The White House has given the green light for nationwide wage-cutting with its demands on Chrysler and GM workers, who have seen wages for new-hires slashed by 50 percent, along with the abolition of cost-of-living raises and cuts in vacation pay.

Several new reports show that big business is following the example set in Washington with enthusiasm.

According to an account published Sunday by the Washington Post, recent wage cuts have included a 10 percent reduction for contractors working for Microsoft, cuts for hotel workers in New York City, and reductions for state and local government workers in many areas and in much of the newspaper industry.

The Society for Human Resource Management said that its index of wages for new-hires showed a decline and wage rates for temporary workers are also falling. A survey of young workers by the online advocacy group Qvisory found that 19 percent of adults 29 or younger were out of work, 41 percent had been affected by wage cuts or cuts in work hours, and 40 percent had skipped meals recently to save money. Overall, 62 percent said their economic circumstances were “poor” or only “fair.”

Among the well-known companies that have announced major wage cuts are Advanced Micro Devices, Honda, Hewlett-Packard, Best Buy and FedEx. A Watson Wyatt survey of 245 major corporations in February found that 7 percent had already cut salaries and another 4 percent expected to as the economic slump worsens.

The Federal Reserve Board, in the March edition of its “beige book,” which collates reports from regional Federal Reserve banks, noted “outright reductions in hourly compensation costs” for the first time in the current slump.

The spread of wage-cutting has already begun to impact consumer spending, which fell in March, the first monthly decline of the year. Incomes fell for the third consecutive month, by 0.3 percent in March, “reflecting wage cuts and layoffs as employers cut costs,” according to the Associated Press.

The employment cost index, a broad measure of combined wages and benefits published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showed a rise of only 0.3 percent in the first quarter of 2009. It was the smallest quarterly increase since the US Department of Labor began tracking such statistics in 1982. Given the more rapid rise in prices, this means that most working class families have suffered a decline in real wages.

The fall in workers’ real incomes and the growth of mass unemployment are driving a continuing increase in poverty, hunger and homelessness. US food stamp enrollment rose again in February, according to figures reported Monday by the US Department of Agriculture, to a staggering 32.55 million Americans. The number of people receiving food stamps has risen by one million since the financial crisis exploded last September, with more than ten percent of all working people compelled to seek food assistance from the federal government.

According to the Food Research and Action Center, a non-profit group, another 16 million people are eligible for food stamps but are not receiving them, either because they are unaware of their right to benefits, have not applied or have been wrongfully denied.

The sharp fall in wages comes after an economic “upturn,” from 2002 through 2007, that was the worst for the incomes of working people since the Census Bureau began tracking the real purchasing power of wages in the 1940s. For the first time, the real earnings of middle-income families were lower at the end of the “recovery” than they were at the beginning.

More than one-quarter of all American workers, 26.4 percent, earned poverty-level wages in 2007, before the beginning of the current recession. That figure has skyrocketed since.

Economist Paul Krugman called attention to what he termed the “Falling Wage Syndrome” in his Monday column in the New York Times. He warned, “Falling wages are a symptom of a sick economy. And they’re a symptom that can make the economy even sicker.” He pointed to the danger that wage cuts would accentuate the problem of defaults on mortgages and consumer debt payments, as well as depressing consumer spending, the principal engine of the US economy.

A supporter of the Obama administration who occasionally criticizes it from a liberal standpoint, Krugman glossed over the fundamental class issues involved in the ongoing assault on wages.

He wrote: “Some of the wage cuts, like the givebacks by Chrysler workers, are the price of federal aid. Others, like the tentative agreement on a salary cut here at the Times, are the result of discussions between employers and their union employees. Still others reflect the brute fact of a weak labor market: workers don’t dare protest when their wages are cut, because they don’t think they can find other jobs.”

Krugman makes arbitrary distinctions in what is in fact a single process. Cutting wages is the class strategy of the American corporate elite, imposed through all the agencies of the ruling class, starting with the Obama administration.

Just as the Reagan administration’s smashing of the PATCO strike in 1981 gave the signal for the orgy of union-busting and strikebreaking that followed, so the Obama administration’s wage-cutting at Chrysler and General Motors is giving the White House seal of approval to a similar policy by corporate America.

Significantly, one of Obama’s key economic advisers today is Paul Volcker, who served as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board from 1979 to 1987, playing a leading role in the corporate onslaught on the working class and hailing Reagan’s mass firing of the PATCO air traffic controllers.

It was President Obama himself who declared that in the new economy he seeks to create, Americans would “consume less and save more.” If one asks exactly which Americans will be consuming less, the figures cited above supply the answer: working class Americans, many of whom are already living on the edge of poverty and bankruptcy.

As for Krugman’s reference to “discussions between employers and their union employees,” this too is an evasion. Giant corporations like the New York Times Co. are demanding savage wage cuts—using, as at the Times-owned Boston Globe—the threat of outright closure and mass layoffs—while relying on the union apparatus to impose their dictates on the work force.

There is no end to the demands by big business that workers pay for the crisis of American and world capitalism. What is required is a movement from below that rejects the entire framework of the profit system and advances the independent social and class interests of working people, based on a socialist program.

I am confident that exposure of administrative horror stories across all industries and systems; sharing and networking our suggestions and solutions will shine a healing light on U.S. Economic Recovery and we will be successful in achieving long term economic prosperity.  Here is the Administrative Challenge.  Here is where poor work ethic and variables of morality cause syphoning away from U.S. Economic Recovery.  By:  Roxanne Grinage -- Hire Roxanne Grinage if passion and insightful Administrative Tools Development and Implementation is necessary for your quality of life impacting marketing, careers, label or stores Strategic Planning and Presentation need.

2.         Americans’ real and justified fear of homelessness is causing them to come up with bartering and trade off relationships in lieu of leases.  The horror stories surrounding this housing phenomenon are seemingly endless but I will list a few here now. 

1. Most obvious and most talked about is the home foreclosure fraud con artists (like Charisse Randolph) who present themselves when convenient to do so as advisors/consultants who can help people keep their homes when most times, by the time they take money for their consulting services the banks have already taken the house back and the home owners are displaced anyway.  The quality of life impacts of some of your family’s stuff sat out on the front yard and the rest of it pad locked inside are obvious. 

2. Many Americans are moving in with friends or associates because poor credit rating keeps them from getting apartment leases or mortgages in their own name.  These Americans work and generate income.  However, fear of creditors, student loan, child support and even food stamp lien garnishments cause them to enter into relationships that enable procurement of basic needs of life with cash or exchange of goods and services in lieu of cash. 

3. Many of these cash flow efficient, credit poor functioning under the table and off the radar in the baby boomer population, confident in their amassed skills sets and earning capabilities. 

4. These Americans are proficient at producing cash flow, but are ultimately at the mercy of the personality with whom they are in a non-written contractual relationship with.  They are able to be evicted or ripped off for big chunks of cash for cars or move in expenses easily because our court processes are not able to recognize they have paid their way in the absence of traditional inflexible lease agreements.  

5. What these Americans responsibly work for and build is lost whenever a tempermental or dishonest personality wants to pull the rug out from under them.  The aging American easily finds him or herself literally in the streets, hungary and stigmatized as though they had been a non contributing member of society all their lives.