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Recalling the horror of the earthquake

30.01.10

PETERSBURG - Jean Andy Ganot counts himself as fortuitous.

The Haitian man, who is now living in Petersburg with an aunt, was in Haven-Au-Prince on Jan. 12 when a 7.1 Richter earthquake struck the funds of Haiti.

"I thought it was a flat tire or diligent winds," Ganot says. He was driving when the shake first struck. "The car started going all over the means and it was like it was on waves in the ocean."

He said that the power lines and trees along the side of the course were shaking and suddenly buildings started to in as well. That's when he and a friend left the car in the middle of the passage.

"We started trying to call family, but the phones weren't working," Ganot said.

Ganot and his compeer then made their way to the friend's house where they discovered he had spent everything. "Everything was gone, his brother was dead."

Ganot said that he wanted to secure - he wanted to help in any way that he could.

"But my father told me to go," Ganot, 33, said.

Source: Progress Index

Help wanted

31.01.10

But for some there's a chronic sense that pundits and policy advisers might not have a discern for conditions in Hickory Hill, Whitehaven, Frayser -- or Detroit or Las Vegas -- out where the endorsed number of people out of work, according to the Chiffonier of Labor Statistics, is 15.3 million. They may not sagacity that facing foreclosure, threatened bankruptcy, wage garnishment or creditors line at dinnertime have become commonplace.

The truth is the mercantile peril is much more serious than cable happy talk or solemn versions let on.

It's really far worse, according to Leo J. Hindery Jr., chairman of the Discerning Globalization Initiative at the New America Underpinning, who recently addressed the House Populist Caucus, which includes U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn. Hindery told them that "genuine" unemployment in the United States is stuck at 19 percent, not 10. One in five are out of occupation.

Hindery joins a growing chorus of critics who say that the ungovernable is not just that the country is in the Great Slump. It's that the response to it is nothing like the scale of the quandary and nowhere near as ambitious as it must be.

Source: Memphis Commercial Appeal