Morning Links

• "Is Afghanistan a narco-state?"--Long but good article

• Woman Chooses Death Over Foreclosure

• A City’s Police Force Now Doubts Terror Focus

• A&M scientist: Gulf "dead zone" likely to be biggest ever

• The Minimum Wage rises today by 70 cents only to be eaten up by inflation....

The new minimum is less than the inflation-adjusted 1997 level of $7.02, and far below the inflation-adjusted level of $10.06 from 40 years ago, according to a Labor Department inflation calculator.

A full-time worker who earned the $2.90-an-hour minimum wage in 1979 earned enough to pull a family of three out of poverty. That same family would fall nearly $4,000 below the poverty threshold today because the minimum wage hasn't kept pace with inflation.

Comments

[pansypoo]

class warfare and the poor are losing.

[Ficus]

The thing that struck me about the Dead Zone article -- an AP article -- is that there is no mention of fertilizer until the absolute very last paragraph.

The article states at the bitter end: "[...] this year's zone, believed to be caused by nutrient pollution from fertilizers that empty into rivers and eventually reach the Gulf."

Wouldn't most people put the CAUSE of the Dead Zone somewhere near the front of the story? Unless, you know, you don't want to talk about the cause, because then you'd have to talk about what we can or can't do to fix that cause.

Instead, the whole story is sort of "observational" -- oh, look at the Dead Zone ... my, how big it is! -- and not a hint of a thought about how to do anything about it. Maybe they're saving that for the next article, next year...