In This Video from WSWS,

this director from Detroit's free medical clinic denounces the utility shutoffs in the city, which have created many health problems among the poor, and even a few deaths:

The Booming Economy

Although Marvin Schur was buried, questions remain unburied about just why in the hell he was allowed to freeze to death in his Michigan home.

Anyway one looks at it, this is homicide as sure as if somebody had come in and shot him in the head.

The WSWS has some video:



link

The Booming Economy

A job layoff was to blame for a father killing his family in Los Angeles.

The children, whose pictures are posted on the sidebar of the article, were adorable. What a horrendous tragedy.
_____

Student protests against Governor Jim Gibbons' proposed draconian higher education budget cuts will likely have an impact on the legislature.

I am rather disappointed the turnout was relatively anemic given the fact UNR was providing transportation to Carson City.
_____

The WSWS lists some recent layoffs--as recent as the past couple of days--in this piece.
_____

The utility company in this outrageous case should be charged with murder.

It's just too bad, so sad the 93-year-old man froze to death. It was his fault, after all:

Local officials have reacted with callousness. The electricity commissioner and the mayor attempted to pin the blame on Schur. “I’m certain if there had been some communication we could have solved this without the tragedy that occurred,” Newston said.
“It’s just unfortunate that this gentleman didn’t reach out,” Mayor Charles Brunner said. “We would have been there. We would have pointed him in the right direction or put him on some sort of payment plan.” Brunner is among the Michigan mayors who lobbied Congress for a bailout of the auto industry, and was recently in attendance at the inauguration of President Barack Obama, who in his inaugural address said American people were to blame for the economic crisis because they had failed “to make hard choices.”

_____

A Little Known Effect

of the worsening economic situation is a rise in carbon monoxide deaths, as people find their utilities shut off and have to resort to other sources of heating, some of which are dangerous:

One stark indicator of just how much the working class is pushed to the limit was indicated in a January 6 report from MSNBC.com. The report shows that increasing numbers of American families, facing utility shutoffs and winter storms, are heating their homes by dangerous means with deadly results.

The cutoff of electric and/or gas service subjects affected households, particularly in the cold winter months, to the danger of house fires. But these families are also threatened with illness and potential death by a silent killer—poisonous carbon monoxide gas.

Carbon monoxide is the leading cause of accidental poisoning deaths in US, with more than 20,000 people hospitalized and nearly 500 killed each year. The Centers for Disease Control reports that cases of carbon monoxide poisoning have been on the rise in recent years, climbing 36 percent between 2001 and 2006. This year’s steep spike in utility shutoffs threatens to increase these tragic figures.