Thursday, August 21, 2014

30 Reasons Why The Middle Class Is Done



middle class
.(Michael Snyder)  The 30 statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class in America is being systematically destroyed.  Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a staggering pace.Yes, the stock market has soared to unprecedented heights this year and there are a few isolated areas of the country that are doing rather well for the moment.  But overall, the long-term trends that are eviscerating the middle class just continue to accelerate.  Over the past decade or so, the percentage of Americans that are working has gone way down, the quality of our jobs has plummeted dramatically and the wealth of the typical American household has fallen precipitously.  Meanwhile, we have watched median household income decline for five years in a row, we have watched the rate of homeownership in this country decline for eight years in a row and dependence on the government is at an all-time high.eing a part of the middle class in the United States at this point can be compared to playing a game of musical chairs.  We can all see chairs being removed from the game, and we are all desperate to continue to have a chair every time the music stops playing.  The next time the music stops, will it be your chair that gets removed?nd in this economy, you don’t even have to lose your job to fall out of the middle class.  Our paychecks are remaining very stable while the cost of almost everything that we spend money on consistently (food, gas, health insurance, etc.) is going up rapidly.  Bloomberg calls this “the no-raises recovery”…all it the no-raises recovery: Five years of economic expansion have done almost nothing to boost paychecks for typical American workers while the rich have gotten richer.
eager improvements since 2009 have barely kept up with a similarly tepid pace of inflation, raising the real value of compensation per hour by only 0.5 percent. That marks the weakest growth since World War II, with increases averaging 9.2 percent at a similar point in past expansions, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data compiled by Bloomberg.There are so many families out there that are struggling right now.  So many husbands and wives find themselves constantly fighting with one another about money, and they don’t even understand that what is happening to them is the result of long-term economic trends that are the result of decades of incredibly foolish decisions.  Without middle class jobs, we cannot have a middle class.  And those are precisely the jobs that have been destroyed during the Clinton, Bush and Obama years.  Without enough good jobs to go around, we have seen the middle class steadily shrink and the ranks of the poor grow rapidly.The following are 30 stats to show to anyone that does not believe the middle class is being destroyed… 
1. In 2007, the average household in the top 5 percent had 16.5 times as much wealth as the average household overall.  But now the average household in the top 5 percent has 24 times as much wealth as the average household overall. 
2. According to a study recently discussed in the New York Times, the “typical American household” is now worth 36 percent less than it was worth a decade ago. 
3. One out of every seven Americans rely on food banks at this point. 
4. One out of every four military families needs help putting enough food on the table. 
5. 79 percent of the people that use food banks purchase “inexpensive, unhealthy food just to have enough to feed their families”. 
6. One out of every three adults in the United States has an unpaid debt that is “in collections“. 
7. Only 48 percent of all Americans can immediately come up with $400 in emergency cash without borrowing it or selling something. 
8. The price of food continues to rise much faster than the paychecks of most middle class families.  For example, the average price of ground beef has just hit a brand new all-time record high of $3.884 a pound. 
9. According to one recent study, 40 percent of all households in the United States are experiencing financial stress right now. 
10. The overall homeownership rate has fallen to the lowest level since 1995. 
11. The homeownership rate for Americans under the age of 35 is at an all-time low. 
12. According to one recent survey, 52 percent of all Americans cannot even afford the house that they are living in right now. 
13. The average age of vehicles on America’s roads has hit an all-time high of 11.4 years. 
14. Last year, one out of every four auto loans in the United States was made to someone with subprime credit. 
15. Amazingly, one out of every six men in their prime working years (25 to 54) do not have a job at this point. 
16. One recent study found that 47 percent of unemployed Americans have “completely given up” looking for a job. 
17. 36 percent of Americans do not have a single penny saved for retirement. 
18. According to one survey, 76 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. 
19. More than half of all working Americans make less than $30,000 a year in wages. 
20. Only four of the twenty fastest growing occupations in America require a Bachelor’s degree or better. 
21.  In America today, one out of every ten jobs is filled by a temp agency. 
22. Due to a lack of decent jobs, half of all college graduates are still relying on their parents financially when they are two years out of school. 
23. Median household income in the United States is about 7 percent lower than it was in the year 2000 after adjusting for inflation. 
24. Approximately one out of every four part-time workers in America is living below the poverty line. 
25. It is hard to believe, but more than one out of every five children in the United States is living in poverty in 2014. 
26. According to one study, there are 49 million Americans that are dealing with food insecurity. 
27. Ten years ago, the number of women in the U.S. that had jobs outnumbered the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps by more than a 2 to 1 margin.  But now the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps actually exceeds the number of women that have jobs. 
28. If the middle class was actually thriving, we wouldn’t have more than a million public school children that are homeless. 
29. If you can believe it, Americans received more than 2 trillion dollars in benefits from the federal government last year alone. 
30. In terms of median wealth per adult, the United States is now in just 19th place in the world.
 
 
- See more at: http://survivalbackpack.us/30-reasons-middle-class-done/#sthash.u4QYL8ij.dpuf

Hyperinflation CRISIS Caused by Fed Will Destroy U.S. Dollar!


Apple Soars to Record Amid Optimism About Coming Products
Average Price of Ground Beef Hits All-Time High
Price Index for Steak Hits All-Time High
The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet has more than quadrupled to $4.4 trillion since the beginning of the economic crisis due to its large “quantity” of securities purchases (ergo “quantitative easing”).
US Inflation in January 2014 Ticks Up, Annual Inflation Rate at 1.6%
Venezuela’s 12-month inflation tops 62 pct in June
Sources:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08…
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-m…
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-m…
http://www.foxbusiness.com/2014/08/13…
http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/…
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/…
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/0…

Nobody home! NYC going the way of ‘rich, elite’ cities


Watch the full Keiser Report: Thursday
In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert imagine a 3-D printed lawyer glut and bankers having their way with subprime mortgage bonds and then dumping them on unsuspecting pension funds. In the second half, Max interviews Jim Rickards, author of Currency Wars and the Death of Money, about the financial environment looking a whole lot like 1987 when markets tumbled by 22% in a day. They also discuss whether San Diego leveraging up on risk or Japan running out of steam could be the trigger for the big sell-off.

EU countries’ dependence on Russian #gas: share of the overall amount, % : *Germany: 39.3%, France: 17.2%

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Bear Market Looming? Stock Buybacks Are Falling, Car buyers Struggle with Loans, The Trend for Part-Time Work Sweeping The World

Stock buybacks are falling — here’s why it matters 
Insight: U.S. corporations have been borrowing like billy-o, but now they’ve stopped, says Brett Arends
Everyone knows the stock market has skyrocketed in the past few years, but far too few understand why.
No, it hasn’t been magic. It hasn’t been levitation. It hasn’t been the natural state of affairs.
It’s been supply and demand.
U.S. corporations have been spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year buying in their own stock, simultaneously increasing the demand for the stock and reducing the supply.
And this matters right now because…er…they just stopped.
The amount spent on share buybacks plunged by more than 20% last quarter, strategists at SG Securities calculate. Even though stock prices in the Standard & Poor’s 500 were on average 25% higher than they were a year ago, the amount spent on share buybacks actually fell.
As SG notes, “US corporates (have) been the major net buyer of US equity in recent years, purchasing over $500 billion of stock last year alone.” But, notes the bank, this happy trend may be drawing to a close.
There are two reasons….
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/uh-oh-stock-buybacks-are-on-the-decline-2014-08-20?dist=beforebell
Subprime trouble? Car buyers struggle with loans 
A new report shows a growing number of car and truck owners are struggling to make their monthly auto loan payments. Experian, which analyzes millions of auto loans, says the percentage of those loans that were delinquent or ended up in default with the vehicle being repossessed surged in the second quarter of this year.
“The number of delinquencies and repossessions rising is what we would expect as the auto industry sells more vehicles,” said Melinda Zabritski, senior director of automotive finance for Experian Automotive. “But this slight uptick is one to keep an eye on.”
The surge in delinquencies and repossessions is being driven primarily by borrowers with subprime and deep subprime credit scores. Experian considers subprime borrowers as those with credit scores of 550 to 619 while deep subprime borrowers are those with credit scores lower than 550. Combined, the two categories accounted for more than 12 million of the open auto loans in the second quarter, which is 19.6 percent of all open auto loans.
“The number of subprime auto loans has definitely increased, but overall, those loans make up a smaller percentage of all auto loans than they did during the start of the recession in 2008 and 2009,” Zabritski said.


Total balances of auto loans in America in the second quarter climbed 11.7 percent to an all-time high of $839 billion, according to Experian.
The trend for part-time work sweeping the world
Part-time work dominating jobs in the United States, Canada, and Japan.

The employment statistics do a good job concealing the true nature of the workforce. The unemployment rate has dropped dramatically since the recession ended largely because millions of Americans are now no longer considered part of the workforce. This is an easy way to boost the employment rate without actually creating new jobs. Another trend that seems to be growing around the world is that of part-time work. Part-time work and low wage labor go hand and hand. Part-time workers usually are not afforded the same benefits as those working full-time. They are also brought on with a just in time attitude and are treated as such when no longer needed. Part-time work has been growing before the recession and continues to do so today. In Canada, part-time work has been the dominant sector of employment growth. Low wage labor and part-time work go together like peas in a pod. Is this a trend we should be concerned about?
Headlines:
  1. August 20, 2014; Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Euro Woe’s (McAlvany audio)
  2. Venezuela calls for greater “civic-military unity” to stabilize economy
  3. US Hospitals Have Had 68 Ebola Scares, CDC Says
  4. Moody’s South Africa Bank Downgrade Raising Sovereign Risk
  5. Argentina Farmers Struggle to Finance Crops After Default
  6. Hollande unveils measures to pep up stagnant French economy
  7. Russia economic funk ripples out through ex-Soviet states

Profit Down 62% For Another Major US Retailer

(Siddharth Cavale)  Target Corp cut its full-year earnings forecast as it offers more discounts to attract cash-strapped customers and win over shoppers unnerved by a massive holiday-season data breach.
The third-largest U.S. retailer, however, said sales and traffic have improved in the past few weeks as the back-to-school season begins.
Target’s shares rose 1 percent to $59.81 in noon trading.
The company’s U.S. same-store sales rose more than 1 percent in July, Chief Financial Officer John Mulligan said in a statement. Sales have been “better” in August, driven by demand for back-to-school items, he said.
Sales at U.S. mass merchandisers such as Target and Wal-Mart Stores Inc have been hit this year as consumers struggling with stagnant wages and high inflation reduce spending.
On top of that, Target has run up big losses in Canada, where its ambitious expansion has stumbled due to supply chain issues and a backlash from customers who had expected prices to be more in line with those in the United States.
Target’s same-store sales have either declined or failed to show growth in the past six quarters. Customer traffic has fallen for nine straight quarters, but is now showing signs of recovery.
The fall in traffic slowed to 1.3 percent in the second quarter from 2.3 percent in the first quarter.
“A vast majority of guests have come back to us … Trust and confidence is returning to Target,” Mulligan said on a call, adding that discounting was a contributing factor.
Target replaced its CEO Gregg Steinhafel with former Wal-Mart executive Brian Cornell after the data breach in the holiday shopping season last year led to the theft of at least 40 million payment card numbers and 70 million other pieces of customer data.
“I think slowly and maturely that the confidence is coming back and bulk of the shoppers shopping there again are getting comfortable,” Edward Jones analyst Brian Yarbrough told Reuters.
FORECAST CUT
Still, Target cut its full-year adjusted profit forecast to $3.10-$3.30 per share from $3.60-3.90, saying it was cautious due to sales and margin trends so far this year.
Analysts on average were expecting $3.49 per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Target said earlier this month that the data breach had cost it a net $111 million so far after taking insurance into account.
The company did not provide an updated figure on Wednesday.
Net profit fell 62 percent to $234 million, or 37 cents per share, in the quarter ended Aug. 2.
Excluding items, the company earned 78 cents per share.
Total sales rose 1.7 percent to $17.41 billion.
Analysts on average expected earnings of 79 cents per share, and revenue of $17.38 billion.

“There is no inflation” – people who don’t pay for: tuition & fees, medical care, shelter, food, etc.

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30 stats to show to anyone that does not believe the middle class is being destroyed

Michael Snyder 
RINF Alternative News
The 30 statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class in America is being systematically destroyed.  Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a staggering pace.  Yes, the stock market has soared to unprecedented heights this year and there are a few isolated areas of the country that are doing rather well for the moment.
But overall, the long-term trends that are eviscerating the middle class just continue to accelerate.  Over the past decade or so, the percentage of Americans that are working has gone way down, the quality of our jobs has plummeted dramatically and the wealth of the typical American household has fallen precipitously.  Meanwhile, we have watched median household income decline for five years in a row, we have watched the rate of homeownership in this country decline for eight years in a row and dependence on the government is at an all-time high.  Being a part of the middle class in the United States at this point can be compared to playing a game of musical chairs.  We can all see chairs being removed from the game, and we are all desperate to continue to have a chair every time the music stops playing.  The next time the music stops, will it be your chair that gets removed?
And in this economy, you don’t even have to lose your job to fall out of the middle class.  Our paychecks are remaining very stable while the cost of almost everything that we spend money on consistently (food, gas, health insurance, etc.) is going up rapidly.  Bloomberg calls this “the no-raises recovery”…
Call it the no-raises recovery: Five years of economic expansion have done almost nothing to boost paychecks for typical American workers while the rich have gotten richer.
Meager improvements since 2009 have barely kept up with a similarly tepid pace of inflation, raising the real value of compensation per hour by only 0.5 percent. That marks the weakest growth since World War II, with increases averaging 9.2 percent at a similar point in past expansions, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data compiled by Bloomberg.
There are so many families out there that are struggling right now.  So many husbands and wives find themselves constantly fighting with one another about money, and they don’t even understand that what is happening to them is the result of long-term economic trends that are the result of decades of incredibly foolish decisions.  Without middle class jobs, we cannot have a middle class.  And those are precisely the jobs that have been destroyed during the Clinton, Bush and Obama years.  Without enough good jobs to go around, we have seen the middle class steadily shrink and the ranks of the poor grow rapidly.
The following are 30 stats to show to anyone that does not believe the middle class is being destroyed…
1. In 2007, the average household in the top 5 percent had 16.5 times as much wealth as the average household overall.  But now the average household in the top 5 percent has 24 times as much wealth as the average household overall.
2. According to a study recently discussed in the New York Times, the “typical American household” is now worth 36 percent less than it was worth a decade ago.
3. One out of every seven Americans rely on food banks at this point.
4. One out of every four military families needs help putting enough food on the table.
5. 79 percent of the people that use food banks purchase “inexpensive, unhealthy food just to have enough to feed their families”.
6. One out of every three adults in the United States has an unpaid debt that is “in collections“.
7. Only 48 percent of all Americans can immediately come up with $400 in emergency cash without borrowing it or selling something.
8. The price of food continues to rise much faster than the paychecks of most middle class families.  For example, the average price of ground beef has just hit a brand new all-time record high of $3.884 a pound.
9. According to one recent study, 40 percent of all households in the United States are experiencing financial stress right now.
10. The overall homeownership rate has fallen to the lowest level since 1995.
11. The homeownership rate for Americans under the age of 35 is at an all-time low.
12. According to one recent survey, 52 percent of all Americans cannot even afford the house that they are living in right now.
13. The average age of vehicles on America’s roads has hit an all-time high of 11.4 years.
14. Last year, one out of every four auto loans in the United States was made to someone with subprime credit.
15. Amazingly, one out of every six men in their prime working years (25 to 54) do not have a job at this point.
16. One recent study found that 47 percent of unemployed Americans have “completely given up” looking for a job.
17. 36 percent of Americans do not have a single penny saved for retirement.
18. According to one survey, 76 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.
19. More than half of all working Americans make less than $30,000 a year in wages.
20. Only four of the twenty fastest growing occupations in America require a Bachelor’s degree or better.
21.  In America today, one out of every ten jobs is filled by a temp agency.
22. Due to a lack of decent jobs, half of all college graduates are still relying on their parents financially when they are two years out of school.
23. Median household income in the United States is about 7 percent lower than it was in the year 2000 after adjusting for inflation.
24. Approximately one out of every four part-time workers in America is living below the poverty line.
25. It is hard to believe, but more than one out of every five children in the United States is living in poverty in 2014.
26. According to one study, there are 49 million Americans that are dealing with food insecurity.
27. Ten years ago, the number of women in the U.S. that had jobs outnumbered the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps by more than a 2 to 1 margin.  But now the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps actually exceeds the number of women that have jobs.
28. If the middle class was actually thriving, we wouldn’t have more than a million public school children that are homeless.
29. If you can believe it, Americans received more than 2 trillion dollars in benefits from the federal government last year alone.
30. In terms of median wealth per adult, the United States is now in just 19th place in the world.

Another US “Staple” To Close 140 Stores This Year

Screen shot 2014-08-20 at 4.49.31 PM

(Matt Townsend)  Staples Inc. (SPLS:US) will shut about 140 locations this year, part of a store-closing plan announced earlier, as the world’s largest office-supply chain responds to online competition.
Staples shut 80 outlets in North America in the fiscal second quarter. Net income in the three months ended Aug. 2 dropped 20 percent to $82 million, or 13 cents a share, as $101 million was spent on closing locations, the Framingham, Massachusetts-based company said in a statement today.
Expansion by Web-based rivals such as Amazon.com Inc. has spurred reorganizations across the retail industry, including the merger of stationery suppliers Office Depot Inc. (ODP:US) with OfficeMax Inc. Staples outlined plans in March to shut as many as 225 North American stores through next year, amounting to 12 percent of its outlets in the region, and to reduce costs by as much as $500 million.
“We have more work to do to stabilize our retail business, and we’re taking action to improve customer traffic, reduce expenses and close underperforming stores,” Chief Executive Officer Ron Sargent said in the statement.
Staples fell 2.6 percent to $11.32 at the close in New York. The stock has declined(SPLS:US) 29 percent this year, compared with a 7.5 percent gain for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.
The retailer forecast sales this quarter will decline, without providing specifics. Earnings excluding some items will be 34 cents to 39 cents a share, the company said. Analysts projected 37 cents and estimated revenue to fall 3.4 percent.
Second-quarter earnings excluding some items were 12 cents a share, matching the average of 17 analyst (SPLS:US) estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
Revenue in the quarter fell 1.8 percent to $5.22 billion, beating analysts’ expectations for $5.17 billion. The sales declined in part from earlier shutdowns of outlets and currency effects, Staples said. North American online revenue increased 8 percent. Annualized cost savings so far this fiscal year totaled $150 million.

The 35.4 Percent: 109,631,000 on Welfare

food stamps
(AP File Photo)
109,631,000 Americans lived in households that received benefits from one or more federally funded "means-tested programs" — also known as welfare — as of the fourth quarter of 2012, according to data released Tuesday by the Census Bureau.

The Census Bureau has not yet reported how many were on welfare in 2013 or the first two quarters of 2014.

But the 109,631,000 living in households taking federal welfare benefits as of the end of 2012, according to the Census Bureau, equaled 35.4 percent of all 309,467,000 people living in the United States at that time.

When those receiving benefits from non-means-tested federal programs — such as Social Security, Medicare, unemployment and veterans benefits — were added to those taking welfare benefits, it turned out that 153,323,000 people were getting federal benefits of some type at the end of 2012.

Subtract the 3,297,000 who were receiving veterans' benefits from the total, and that leaves 150,026,000 people receiving non-veterans' benefits.

The 153,323,000 total benefit-takers at the end of 2012, said the Census Bureau, equaled 49.5 percent of the population. The 150,026,000 taking benefits other than veterans' benefits equaled about 48.5 percent of the population. http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/terence-p-jeffrey/354-percent-109631000-welfare

Study Finds 25% Of Troops Use Food Banks

(Amy Bushatz)  A new study suggests that 25 percent of troops in active duty, Guard and the Reserve use food banks to provide groceries and meals for themselves or their families.
The study sponsored by Feeding America, the nation’s largest food bank network, is conducted once every four years and was based on data collected in 2012. It found that four percent of surveyed households who used a food bank contained a currently serving military member.
Based on those results, Feeding America officials estimated that 620,000 of their 46.5 million customers, or about 25 percent of the military population in 2012, used food banks.
“We find it disheartening,” said Maura Daly, a spokesman for Feeding America. “We know from our food banks anecdotally that they have seen a dramatic increase in the number of military families that they are serving over the last several years. We weren’t surprised that the need is there. We were a little surprised by how much need is there, and we believe that this is just the beginning of understanding this issue.”
The study did not differentiate between Guard and Reserve or active duty members, creating no way to tell what portion of the four percent are inactive guard or Reservists, who may have vastly different monthly income and different assistance needs as compared to active duty members.
Pentagon officials took immediate issue with the study’s methodology. They said that surveying households instead of individuals while comparing those numbers to military data creates an inaccurate picture.
“Without performing appropriate statistical adjustments to match the survey sample with the military population, it is impossible to accurately calculate an estimated percentage of military households served by the Feeding America’s programs based on the survey data,” said Navy Cmdr. Nathan Christensen, a Pentagon spokesman.
Christensen said pay for active duty members or activated Guard and Reservists is better among officers than 90 percent of comparative civilians and, among enlisted, better than 83 percent of civilians with similar education and experience levels.
“The work of Feeding America and other organizations will help the Department amplify the DoD resources available to service members and families, particularly in high-cost locations,” said Navy Cmdr. Nathan Christensen, a DoD spokesman. “The Department of Defense recognizes that personal financial readiness of service members and their families must be maintained to sustain mission readiness.”
Officials with the National Military Family Association (NMFA) said they also question the methodology. However, they said regardless of whether or not Feeding America’s data on the military population is accurate, knowing that some military families face financial hardship is enough to cause a need for action.
“Military families face financial hardships for many reasons: youth and inexperience with financial matters, unemployment or underemployment of military spouses, frequent moves that add out of pocket costs and make spouse employment continuity difficult, lower income after deployments which force adjustments in spending that could take families time to make,” said Joyce Raezer, executive director for NMFA. “Military pay at junior levels is comparable to age and education of civilian peers –but, if someone enters the military with a family, they are going to face financial challenges.”
Officials with Feeding America said that if a family or individual feels that they need the help of a food bank they can visit the Feeding America locator to be connected with a food bank in almost any county in the U.S.

Bank of America agrees to $17bn fine over mortgage fraud – report

America’s second largest lender has reached a $17 billion settlement with US federal authorities over selling bad mortgages, according to sources close to the negotiations.
The bank will pay out $10 billion in cash and $7 billion for consumer relief – such as modified home loans and refinanced mortgages, AP reports, citing officials close to the negotiations. The final verdict is due on Thursday.
The fine will be the largest single compensation settlement, beating out JPMorgan Chase & Co’s $13 billion penalty paid in November 2013. Citigroup, another major US bank, had to pay $7 billion in July.
In March, the bank was ordered to pay $9.5 billion to the Federal Housing Finance Agency to resolve similar associations. Since the financial crisis, the bank has been ordered to pay over $60 billion in fines, claims, and buying out mortgage bonds.
The deal requires the bank to admit it misled investors about the quality of mortgage loan sale prior to the housing crash, when banks lent out too much money to homeowners who eventually could not pay off their loans.
This eventually resulted in the collapse of the housing bubble and the beginning of the recession in late 2007. The banks defrauded investors about the condition of the loans, which led to billions in losses while millions of Americans lost their homes to foreclosure.
Three quarters of the loans in question came from Countrywide Financial, which Bank of America acquired in 2009, along with Merrill Lynch. In total, between 2004 and 2008, the groups sold more than $965 billion in bad loans.
This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.