(CNN) -- Donna LeBlanc gave her husband, a former restaurant manager, the stark ultimatum: become a pizza delivery man or their family "wouldn't make it."

The Lafayette, Louisiana, family of six was struggling with $45,000 of mounting medical debt from Donna LeBlanc's unexpected case of pneumonia and tonsillitis a year earlier. The family savings account had dwindled to $100.

"It's embarrassing for my husband to take a job he is overqualified for, and I know he feels ashamed at times," says Donna LeBlanc, a 35-year-old mother with four children. "But this is what we have to do and we're going to make the best out of it."

She watched her husband, Rob LeBlanc, 35, load Domino's pizza boxes into their family car and deliver orders until near dawn for $10 an hour.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/personal/01...

Source: ABC News

Washington has quieted down. The president is hard at work. The Obama girls are back in school. The Jonas Brothers have left the White House.

But as the first family settles into its first weekend in their new home, an interruption in Sasha and Malia's privacy has already given them a taste of the new normal.

This week Michelle Obama's spokeswoman, Katie McCormick Lelyveld, explained how the first lady feels about new dolls on the market that share her daughters' names.

"We believe it is inappropriate to use young private citizens for marketing purposes," Lelyveld said in a statement.



Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/President44...

(Mental Floss) -- Work hard, get promoted, succeed in your new post, and eventually you'll start earning the big money. This progression seems like a firmly ingrained part of the American Dream, and it's certainly worked for a lot of people.

However, these steps aren't absolutely necessary to fatten your bank account, as Washington Mutual CEO Alan Fishman learned last week.

When WaMu failed and was seized by government regulators, Fishman had been on the job for just 17 days. However, he was contractually guaranteed $11.6 million in cash severance on top of the $7.5 million signing bonus he got for taking the job.

Basically, Fishman netted just under $20 million for 17 days of work, which is a pretty nice setup for the head of a collapsing corporation. (In Fishman's defense, it's tough to blame WaMu's failure on his leadership alone; it seems highly unlikely that any CEO, however determined, could crash such a large thrift in just two weeks.)

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/1...

Source: KTRK-TV Houston

GALVESTON, TX (KTRK) -- The death toll from Hurricane Ike has reached at least 27 in Texas. A body was found in a pile of debris in Chambers County. And hundreds of people are still unaccounted for in Galveston County and surrounding areas.

Gail Ettenger, Marion Arrambide, Ronald Auseberry and hundreds more are all linked by a common thread.

"We have about 400 active cases right now," said Bill Smither with the Laura Recovery Center.

Nearly 400 people are presumed missing 12 days after Hurricane Ike slammed on shore. Calls flooded a Galveston County missing persons hotline at the Laura Recovery Center. People are terrified a relative was lost in the storm.

Read more: http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=...

SMITH POINT, TX (KTRK) -- A grim reminder of Hurricane Ike is not only the property damage, but the tragic loss of life. More than 20 people are known to have died as a result of the storm.

And in Chambers County, investigators fear there could be more victims.
The county is full of debris-filled roads. At Smith Point, debris seemed to come from every direction.

"All the houses from Bolivar and Crystal Beach ended up here," said Chief Jay Prague with the Smith Point Fire Department. "We are cleaning the debris on the road coming into Smith Point, but the only access to the debris on the shoreline is by boat."

Chambers County Judge Jimmy Sylvia says the state brought in cadaver dogs and spent Sunday looking through rubble.


http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=...

Media restricted from covering Hurricane Ike’s devastation.


Yesterday in a local report on KTRK-TV in Houston, TX, reporter Wayne Dolcefino revealed that media have been blocked from covering Hurricane Ike’s devastation. In a press conference, Dolcefino pressed Gov. Rick Perry on why media aren’t even allowed to fly over parts of Galveston Island, noting that media access was far better in Mississippi and Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. Perry tried to brush off Dolcefino’s concerns, but eventually passed blame to federal officials:

DOLCEFINO: That is unprecedented and quite honestly not appropriate because it’s our job to inform people. Why can’t we go to Bolivar and West End?

PERRY: I think when the local officials decide it was appropriate, whether it’s the media or first responders or what have you. The fact of the matter, that is actually a local decision, Wayne, that is made by the local county judge and by the mayor of those —

DOLCEFINO: They don’t control that area.

PERRY: Last time, the state of Texas does not’t even.

DOLCEFINO: So it’s the federal government?

PERRY: I don’t know.



http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/15/hurric... /


I watched as all three local networks televised about this media blackout... The worst hit sections of Bolivar, Crystal, Gilcrest, High Island, Orange and others were being blacked out, not Galveston per se.... Since this storm hit us in Houston, I have had my local news turned on day and night... For two days it was a radio...

CHAMBERS COUNTY, Tex. — The rescue trucks and ambulances, neatly arranged in a double column, sat waiting at the point where State Highway 124, the road to the Bolivar Peninsula, disappeared underneath a storm-bloated ocean. Early Sunday afternoon, that was the closest the rescue workers could get to the string of little towns they had fled two days before as Hurricane Ike approached, leaving behind what they estimated were a few hundred holdouts


As they waited, stymied, for the waters to recede, their minds were occupied with visions of the worst. “There’s going to be substantial deaths,” said the emergency medical services coordinator for High Island, Robert Isaacks. “It looks pretty grim, to tell you the truth.”

He added, “The water’s slowly but surely going down now, but it’s not going down fast enough for us.”

The Bolivar Peninsula is a barrier island-like finger of land east of Galveston Island; between the two is the entrance to Galveston Bay. It is normally reached by ferry from Galveston or via the rice-farming country east of Galveston Bay, where on Sunday drowned cattle were half-buried in piles of debris along the gravel roads.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/us/15sce...

GALVESTON, Texas (AP) — The death toll from Hurricane Ike is remarkably low so far, considering that legions of people stayed behind as the storm obliterated row after row of homes along the Texas coast. But officials suspect there are more victims out there and say some might simply have been swept out to sea.

Exactly how many is anybody's guess, because authorities had no sure way to track those who defied evacuation orders. And the number of people reported missing after the storm, whose death toll stands at 17 in Texas, is fluctuating.

Search-and-rescue crews cleared out Wednesday after plucking survivors from Galveston and the devastated Bolivar Peninsula, and authorities are relying on Red Cross workers and beach patrols to run welfare checks on people named by anxious relatives.

"We don't know what's out there in the wilds," said Galveston County medical examiner Stephen Pustilniks. "Searchers weren't looking for bodies; they were looking for survivors."

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iGMMtnF...

Five days following a direct hit from Ike, search and rescue teams have evacuated many people and recovered five dead. Still, many are missing and even believed to have been washed away. And the common question remains: "Has anyone seen.....?"

Since a few days following Hurricane Ike's devastation to Galveston, TX, there has been some speculation about the rising death toll and those who are still missing. In a news report today, it was said that some may have simply washed away. With around 90,000 people who ignored the mandatory evacuation order in three affected counties in Texas and viewing the devastating effects this storm left behind, it leaves some wondering why the toll isn't higher.

excerpts from articles)

With search and rescue efforts geared towards saving those who were still alive, the death toll could rise as the focus turns towards the missing. Strong reliance on Red Cross shelters and workers to connect the missing with queries about loved ones will likely begin as they have access to information regarding individuals who have evacuated or have been evacuated. It isn't unlikely that many individuals and families haven't been able to make contact with extended family members around the nation just due to the nature of having to file claims, move from shelters to hotels and just try to make some sense of the event. The Red Cross is setting up registries and running the welfare checks in conjunction with Texas Task Force 1, who has been going from door to door to see who does or doesn't answer.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/2599...

The mainstream news media’s lack of interest, given the ferocity of the hurricane, is curious.


Here’s a question for you. Given the many people who refused to leave Galveston, Texas, how many died as the result of Hurricane Ike?

If you cannot find any reports than you are not alone. There is a virtual news blackout regarding casualties and deaths from the devastation the hurricane inflicted on Galveston.

The official death toll, according to an Associated Press, September 17, report was 49 “with most of the deaths coming outside of Texas.” The same report cited nine deaths in the Houston-area, but there was no word from Galveston, a place that currently resembles the surface of the Moon.

The most recent news report about Galveston that I could find was on the MSNBC website, updated as of Sunday. It cited two cases of Texans killed by the storm without reference to Galveston. It may have been too soon to know, but by Wednesday, there still was no word.

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/artic...

The destruction of Gilchrist, Texas

From the blog:
Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog

Wednesday, September 17, 2008


We're in day three of my promised 7-10 day lull in Atlantic hurricane activity. That prediction is still looking good. There are no threat areas to discuss today, and the earliest any model foresees a tropical storm developing is Sunday, when the NOGAPS indicates something developing in the western Caribbean. The GFS model predicts this development will occur on the other side of Central America, in the Eastern Pacific. The GFS also predicts development of a tropical depression by Tuesday off the coast of Africa.

The destruction of Gilchrist

Many of you have probably seen the photo of Gilchrist, Texas showing complete destruction of the town of 750 people, save for one lone home. High-resolution satellite imagery made available by NOAA's National Geodetic Survey (Figure 1) confirm that of the approximately 1000 structures existing in the town before Hurricane Ike, only about five survived the hurricane. Approximately 200 of these buildings were homes, and it is thought that some of the residents attempted to ride out the storm in their homes. According to media reports, about 34 survivors from Gilchrist and the neighboring communities of Crystal Beach and Port Bolivar have been fished out of Galveston Bay in the past few days. Rescuers who have reached Gilchrist have not been able to find any victims in the debris because there is no debris. Ike's storm surge knocked 99.5% of the 1,000 buildings in Gilchrist off their foundations and either demolished them or washed them miles inland into the swamplands behind Gilchrist. Until search teams can locate the debris of what was once was Gilchrist, we will not know the fate of those who may have stayed behind to ride out the storm.






Figure 1. The town of Gilchrist, Texas before and after Hurricane Ike. Image credit (top): Googlemaps.com, DigitalGlobe, GeoEye, Houston-Galveston Area Council. Bottom: National Geodetic Survey.

Why did Gilchrist get destroyed?

It's rare to see a town so completely destroyed by a hurricane, to the point where you can't even see the wreckage. The neighboring towns of Crystal Beach, to the south, and High Island, to the north, were also mostly destroyed, but weren't swept clean of nearly all structures and wreckage. This is because Gilchrist was built in an unusually vulnerable place. It's bad enough to situate your town on a low-lying peninsula, as was the case for Crystal Beach. But in Gilchrist's case, the town was located at the narrowest point of the Bolivar Peninsula, at a point where it was only a few hundred meters wide (Figure 2). Not only did Gilchrist suffer a head-on assault by Ike's direct storm surge of 14+ feet, topped by 20' high battering waves, the town also suffered a reverse surge once the hurricane had passed. As Ike moved to the north, the counter-clockwise flow of wind around the storm pushed Galveston Bay's waters back across the town of Gilchrist from northwest to southeast. This second surge of water likely finished off anything the main storm surge had left.

Will Gilchrist be rebuilt?

I hope the government will see fit to buy up the land that was once the town of Gilchrist and make it into a park. Building a town in Gilchrist's location makes as much sense as building a town on the sides of an active volcano. (Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who have done just that, such as on the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius in Italy). If past history is any guide, Gilchrist will be rebuilt, and it will take another mighty hurricane to permanently take down the town. That was the case for the town of Indianola, Texas, which lay in a vulnerable low-lying location on the shores of Matagorda Bay in the mid-1800's. Indianola was the second largest port in the state of Texas, and home to 5,000 people. In 1875, a powerful Category 3 hurricane piled up a huge storm surge as it came ashore in Indianola. The surge destroyed 3/4 of the town's 2,000 buildings, and killed 176 people. The city was rebuilt, but in 1886, a devastating Category 4 hurricane swept almost the entire town of Indianola into Matagorda Bay, killing another 250 townspeople. The people of Indianola finally gave up and moved elsewhere, and the ruins of their town now lie under four feet of water in Matagorda Bay.

Rest of Story

What ever happened to the golden rule?

That's what I often asked myself as I was researching my new book, The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker. I often felt amazed, even appalled by the way many corporate managers treated their workers. It's understandable that corporate managers have grown tougher in recent decades because foreign competition and Wall Street have placed ever-fiercer pressures on companies to cut costs. But that hardly explains why so many managers seem to have grown downright callous and why so many treat their workers with a shocking lack of dignity.

Unfortunately, I found a disconcertingly large number of real-life examples to draw from as I was writing The Big Squeeze (for more information, see www.stevengreenhouse.com ), which seeks to explain the tough times that millions of American workers--white-collar and blue-collar, male and female, twenty-somethings and fifty-somethings--face as wages have stagnated, health and pension benefits have grown worse, job security has shriveled, and many workers have been pressured to work harder and faster.

One company fired a computer engineer on Take Your Daughters to Work Day as his eight-year-old daughter looked on. At Electronic Arts, the video games giant, some employees complained that they were required to work 30 days a month, 80 hours a week.


Then there's the worker at a dollar store in Brooklyn who told me that several female coworkers were fired simply because they missed work for a day or two to take care of a sick child. In Syracuse, I interviewed several women at a plastics factory who had grown furious because the male workers often groped them and asked for blow jobs while the women were tending the machinery. When these women complained to management, the factory's managers blew them off, taking a boys-will-be boys attitude.

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/...

Opponents of a bill that would expand the president's surveillance powers have succeeded in delaying a vote on the measure, ensuring that Senators have the Independence Day recess to ponder their positions on what critics say is a move to gut the Constitution.

The Senate this week was considering an update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that civil libertarians said would legalize President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program and preclude any independent inquiry into potentially illegal actions by the administration and the nation's major telecommunications companies.

Sens. Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Chris Dodd (D-CT) threw as many procedural roadblocks in front of the bill as they could, and they managed to prevent the Senate from ramming it through with little debate. A vote on the FISA update is now scheduled for July 8, after Senators return from a weeklong recess; they also will consider an amendment seeking to strip telecom immunity from the bill, although its chances of passing are slim.

"I’m pleased we were able to delay a vote on FISA until after the July 4th holiday instead of having it jammed through," Feingold said late Thursday. "I hope that over the July 4th holiday, Senators will take a closer look at this deeply flawed legislation and understand how it threatens the civil liberties of the American people. It is possible to defend this country from terrorists while also protecting the rights and freedoms that define our nation."


http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Feingold_pra...

Economist Predicts Increase By 2010, Which Would Take 10 Million Cars Off The Road


CBS) A new energy report predicts $200-a-barrel oil in as short a time as two years. If that happens, gas would likely go up to $7 a gallon - and that would have an enormous impact on the way Americans live.

Mitchell Igelko in Miami complains rising gas prices are threatening his 20-year-old landscaping business. His two biggest trucks sit idle - he can't afford to fill them up.

Right now, Igelko's business averages $30,000 a month in gas - at $7 a gallon, that would jump to about $50,000 a month, CBS News correspondent Priya David reports.

"I think at that time, I'm gonna put a sign 'gone fishing,'" he said.



http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/26/...

This aired last year, but it still applies today....


Bill Moyers talks with Bruce Fein and John Nichols


Watch Video

Read Transcript



JOHN NICHOLS: Well, let's try a metaphor. Let's say that-- when George Washington chopped down the cherry tree, he used the wood to make a little box. And in that box the president puts his powers. We've taken things out. We've put things in over the years.

On January 20th, 2009, if George Bush and Dick Cheney are not appropriately held to account this administration will hand off a toolbox with more powers than any president has ever had, more powers than the founders could have imagined. And that box may be handed to Hillary Clinton or it may be handed to Mitt Romney or Barack Obama or someone else. But whoever gets it, one of the things we know about power is that people don't give away the tools. They don't give them up. The only way we take tools out of that box is if we sanction George Bush and Dick Cheney now and say the next president cannot govern as these men have.