As states like Indiana, Kansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin withdraw Medicaid funding for family planning and birth control, teen births are on the rise. More teens and others will have difficulty finding access to birth control, and are more likely to bear children whom they cannot support and/or care for. These children may lack family support, and so risk dropping out of high school, and sadly, may enter the “pipeline to prison” taxpayers billions of dollars.

Planned Parenthood health centers offer health care and birth control for teens, young single women and parent(s) who earn small salaries. For eligible women, Medicaid supports these services that may include,

• · Help with irregular or painful periods, or no periods at all,
• · Breast exams & mammogram referrals when necessary,
• · Cervical cancer screening, pap tests & treatment for abnormal tests,
• · Colposcopy
• · Testing and treatment of urinary and vaginal infections,
• · Family planning and birth control information, and referral for abortion.

Shouldn’t we emphasize the importance of planning parenthood so that the cost of feeding, clothing, housing and providing health care for children can be paid by parent(s)? Shouldn’t we consider that today’s parent(s) need the skills and maturity to help children negotiate our complicated world?

Thanks, over and over again, to the donors and paid staff of Planned Parenthood who have the courage to offer essential services that increase the well being of our communities and country in the face of violence and even murder that has occurred in health centers offering birth control services. Hurray for Mass legislature that voted to continue funding Planned Parenthood!

Planned Parenthood: KS Budget Amendment Undermining .
Teen birth rates up in 26 states – USATODAY.com
Graduation and Dropout Rates | Alliance for Excellent Education
Cradle to Prison Pipeline Campaign

“No.” says Representative Byron Rushing from the 9th Suffolk District in Boston. “Homeless families simply have no home.” About 7,500 families and 6,000 high school students are homeless in Massachusetts today. More families live in their cars, or, are separated from one another; bunking with extended family or friends.

In Massachusetts we are asking our legislators to support funding for (1) rental subsidies, (2) annual grants of $4000 to assist families at-risk, (3) maintaining current eligibility rules for assistance, (4) no time-limitations on shelters so parents can find jobs and housing, and (5) job training for adults.

What is happening in your state? For more information nationally please check this web site. National Alliance to End Homelessness

Promise the Children Received this ReportEMBARGOED+Updated+Buffett+Rule+Report-2.pdfissued by the White House today. We want to share it with you. There are several interesting graphs in the pdf version of this report.  It has some very interesting new information…..

The Buffett Rule is the basic principle that no household making over $1 million annually should pay a
smaller share of their income in taxes than middle‐class families pay. Warren Buffett has famously
stated that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary, but as this report documents this situation is not
uncommon. This situation is the result of decades of the tax system being tilted in favor of high‐income
households at the expense of the middle class. Not only is this unfair, it can also be economically
inefficient by providing opportunities for tax planning and distorting decisions.

The President has proposed the Buffett Rule as a basic rule of tax fairness that should be met in tax reform. To achieve this principle, the President has proposed that no millionaire pay less than 30 percent of their income in taxes.

Why the Buffett Rule Is Needed

The average tax rate paid by the very highest‐income Americans has fallen to nearly the
lowest rate in over 50 years. The wealthiest 1‐in‐1,000 taxpayers pay barely a quarter of their
income in Federal income and payroll taxes today—half of what they would have contributed
in 1960. And, the top 400 richest Americans—all making over $110 million—paid only 18
percent of their income in income taxes in 2008.

Average tax rates for the highest income Americans have plummeted even as their incomes
have skyrocketed. Since 1979 the average after‐tax income of the very wealthiest Americans –
the top 1 percent – has risen nearly four‐fold. Over the same period, the middle sixty percent
of Americans saw their incomes rise just 40 percent. The typical CEO who used to earn about
30 times more than his or her worker now earns 110 times more.

Some of the richest Americans pay extraordinarily low tax rates—as they hire lawyers and
accountants to take particular advantage of loopholes and tax expenditures. The average tax
rate masks the fact that some high‐income Americans pay near their statutory tax rate, while
others take advantage of tax expenditures and loopholes to pay extraordinarily low rates—and
it is these high‐income taxpayers that the Buffett rule is meant to address .

Of millionaires in 2009, a full 22,000 households making more than $1 million annually
paid less than 15 percent of their income in income taxes — and 1,470 managed to
paid no federal income taxes on their million‐plus‐dollar incomes, according to IRS data.

Of the 400 highest income Americans, one out of every three in this group of the most
financially fortunate Americans paid less than 15 percent of their income in income
taxes in 2008.

Many high‐income Americans are paying less in taxes than middle class Americans in taxes.
Nearly one‐quarter of all millionaires (about 55,000 taxpayers) face a tax rate that is lower than
more than millions of middle‐income taxpayers. This is fundamentally unfair.

The oral arguments began against the Affordable Care Act threatening to overturn the law. Among many parts of the law that are being challenged are provisions that are key to insuring that kids can’t be denied coverage based on pre-existing conditions. A planned expansion of the Medicaid program will also be under attack.

This Medicaid expansion is projected to provide coverage to 7 to 8 million children. Together with the 1.2 million children added to the rolls of the Children’s Health Insurance Program in recent years, health reform is clearly too important to needy children to let go without a fight.

Let your friends and elected representatives know you support the health reform law!

“The new Ryan budget is a remarkable document — one that, for most of the past half-century, would have been outside the bounds of mainstream discussion due to its extreme nature.

“In essence, this budget is Robin Hood in reverse — on steroids. It would likely produce the largest redistribution of income from the bottom to the top in modern U.S. history and likely increase poverty and inequality more than any other budget in recent times (and possibly in the nation’s history).

“It also would stand a core principle of the Bowles-Simpson fiscal commission’s report on its head — that policymakers should reduce the deficit in a way that does not increase poverty or widen inequality.”

View the full statement:
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3712
http://www.cbpp.org/files/3-21-12bud-stmt.pdf 4 pp.

“The President’s budget proposes to raise the rents charged to more than 500,000 of the nation’s poorest families. It would do this by raising to $75 a month the ‘minimum rent’ charged to the poorest families in the rental assistance programs that the Department of Housing and Urban Development administers and eliminating state and local housing agencies’ discretion to set the minimum rent below that level.

“Half a million families with incomes below $250 per month, or $3,000 per year, would face rent increases that many would have difficulty affording. For the vast majority of these households — about 400,000 of them — rents would increase by 50 percent or more.

“A substantial number of families in every state would face rent increases (see Appendix I), although the severity of the impact would vary due to differences across the states in such factors as joblessness and the strength of other safety-net programs (see Appendix II). The affected families include 725,000 children, and are disproportionately minority.

“This proposal comes even as a study by leading poverty researchers finds that the number of U.S. families with children living below a standard the World Bank uses to measure serious poverty in third-world countries — income of less than $2 per person per day — has more than doubled since the mid-1990s, to 1.46 million families with 2.8 million children”

Proposed Rent Increase Would Further Impoverish Poorest Recipients of Federal Housing Assistance

View the full report:
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3706
http://www.cbpp.org/files/3-20-12hous.pdf 11 pp.

Appendix I: Number of Households Facing Rent Increase if Minimum Rent is Set at $75 by State and Program

Appendix II: State Safety Net Programs and Share of HUD-Assisted Households Facing Rent Increase Under $75 Mandatory Minimum Rent

According to their website Bully is a beautifully cinematic,
character-driven documentary. At its heart are those with huge stakes in this issue whose stories each
represent a different facet of America’s bullying crisis.

Filmed over the course of the 2009/2010 school year, BULLY opens a window onto the
pained and often endangered lives of bullied kids, revealing a problem that transcends
geographic, racial, ethnic and economic borders. It documents the responses of teachers and
administrators to aggressive behaviors that defy “kids will be kids” clichés, and it captures a
growing movement among parents and youths to change how bullying is handled in schools, in
communities and in society as a whole.

“Sign the Petition!”:

http://www.change.org/petitions/mpaa-don-t-let-the-bullies-win-give-bully-a-pg-13-instead-of-an-r-rating

Because the movie is about real life and reflects real life stories, the Motion Picture Association has given the movie an NC17 rating, making it harder for young people to see. It also means that it cannot me shown in schools where it could find it’s best audience. There is a movement started by a teen named Katy Butler to change the rating to PG13 with a petition circulating online.

Please look for the movie Bully in your neighborhood or find a way to bring it to your city or town. And sign the petition.

Everyone should see this movie!

According to the film’s makers….
The Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless is the lead organization behind House Bill 3838, An Act Providing Housing and Support Services for Unaccompanied Homeless Youth. This bill, sponsored by Representative James O’Day, will reduce youth homelessness and its adverse effects by funding a continuum of housing and support services geared specifically for unaccompanied homeless youth. The goal of these efforts is to improve housing and residential stability, reduce the risk of harm and improve educational, physical and mental health outcomes for this population.

An “unaccompanied homeless youth” refers to a youth between the ages of 14 and 22, who does not have access to stable, adequate housing and is not in the care of a parent or guardian. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education estimates that nearly 6,000 high school students are homeless and on their own. Thousands more homeless youth are not reflected in these numbers because they have already dropped out of school and cannot be accounted for.
Call your Massachusetts legislator today and ask him or her to support House Bill 3838. Send an email Here.

Their pictures will be on exhibit at the Massachusetts State House March 12th through the 15th.So far the project has worked with parents in Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Camden, and several counties in Pennsylvania.

These mothers are so brave to speak out in public about their trials and their triumphs. It does our society no good to hide the reality about the struggle to put food on the table for so many families in this country. One in five families with children rely on the SNAP program to put food on the table.

Watch this story on CNN about the project and the moms’ strength under pressure.

Visit Witness to Hunger