PROPERTY TAX BOOSTS THE LOS ANGELES COUNTY! Fueled by California's red-hot real estate boom, Los Angeles County property tax revenues have soared as much as 40 percent in the last five years. The revenues have been a boon for local governments, with homeowners paying $9.5 billion in property taxes in fiscal 2004-05, compared with $6.7 billion in 2000-01. THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA COLLECTED 31.8 BILLION DOLLARS IN PROPERTY TAXES IN THE YEAR 2004! THE WINDFALL OF AN EXTRA BILLION DOLLARS IN ONE YEAR, DUE TO RISE IN PROPERTY VALUES. THIS; AS FAR AS I CAN TELL, IS FOUND MONEY! WHY NOT USE A FRACTION OF IT TO; 1. TO ENSURE OUR FUTURE GENERATIONS A WORLD WITHOUT EXTREME POVERTY? 2. A WORLD WHERE WE CAN ACHEIVE UNIVERSAL PRIMARY EDUCATION 3. TO PROMOTE GENDER EQUALITY 4. REDUCE CHILD MORTALITY. 5. IMPROVE MATERNAL HEALTH. 6. COMBAT HIV/AIDS, MALARIA, TUBERCULOSIS (new strain which has mutated and is now being called "Ebola on Steroids),and other infectious diseases. 7. ENSURE ENVIROMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY. 8. DEVELOP A GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP FOR DEVELOPMENT. WHAT IF THE STATE WERE TO USE A FRACTION OF THE PROPERTY TAXES THAT WE HAVE ALREADY PAID? IF EVERY STATE IN THE UNION DID THE SAME. COMMITING TO UPHOLD THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS!! (UNION INTERESTING WORD, UNITED!! ONE NATION UNDER GOD! ONE, ONE ,ONE!!) WE WILL SEE AN " END OF EXTREME POVERTY" AND A HAPPIER HEALTHIER MORE PRODUCTIVE PLANET! $28.5 million March Carpinteria, Calif. It was an active real estate year for actor Kevin Costner. Right around the time he paid $28.5 million for an oceanfront, bluff-perched mansion near Santa Barbara, he unloaded his Hollywood Hills home for $11.5 million to American Idol host Ryan Seacrest. Costner’s new digs feature five bedrooms, 950 feet of beach, stables and a polo field $28 million October Malibu, Calif. Michael Klein, the son of former San Diego Chargers owner Eugene Klein, unloaded his Malibu Colony home for $28 million dollars to an undisclosed buyer. He had owned the 7,000-square-foot, five-bedroom ocean side mansion, complete with beachfront pool, since 1999. $31 million to $35 million April $35 million Miami Beach, Fla. South Florida real estate came full circle when the 79-year-old villa once owned by Carl Fisher, the man credited with developing much of Miami Beach, was sold to high-rise developer Ugo Columbo for between $31 and $35 million. The 21,000-square-foot, 12-bedroom Italian renaissance style waterfront mansion is complete with an 85-foot high observation tower. PEOPLE WHO GET PERMITS ARE THE LUCKIEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD: Barbra Streisand and hubby James Brolin have gotten the go-ahead from the Malibu City Council to rip down one of their houses and build a new one in its place. That's what rich people call spring cleaning. 
 These RICH AND FAMOUS PEOPLE are EXTREMELY philanthropic, they give their time and money to numerous charitable orginizations. Giving shoud not lie SOLEY on the wealthy! A GENEROUS NATION: Donations by Americans to nonprofits rose to $248.5 million in 2004, according to a new report. Individual donors were responsible for three-quarters of those donations. The type of nonprofit to take in the most money: religious groups. Specific annual sums that can be counted on over time. It is the only way change can happen. RANDOM DONATIONS BY THE RICH AND EXTREMELY FORTUNATE; DONATIONS THAT GO TO THIS CHARITY OR THAT CHARITY IS NOT ENOUGH! With 1.5 million nonprofits in the US and growing, some experts say charities should merge. To reduce the number of nonprofits, some communities, including Pittsburgh, have offered financial incentives to encourage charities to merge. "Unfortunately, nonprofits don't like to be told what to do, and usually it's only the wrong organizations that take advantage of these efforts," Light says. Even Light suggests that there is room for more charities in certain sectors, ESPECIALLY in areas that care for the POOR. "Human-service nonprofits are still needed in some areas,(thirteen cities in the United States still have people living in extreme poverty http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2816480 ) but the new ones really need to SHAKE UP THE NORM or challenge the industry." WE CAN'T KEEP DOING THE SAME THINGS EXPECTING DIFFERENT RESULTS! NOT EVERYONE CAN AFFORD TO GIVE! WE GET TAXED ON OUR INCOME, TAXED ON EVERY ITEM WE SPEND MONEY ON, TAXED ON OUR HOME TAXED ..... THE MONEY THAT'S NEEDED TO ATTACK THESE ISSUES OF EXTREME POVERTY IS ALREADY THERE WE ALREADY GIVE ALMOST HAVE OUR INCOME TO TAXES! WHY NOT TAKE MONEY OUT OF THE MONEY WE ALREADY GIVE; PROPERTY TAXES! "WE THE PEOPLE" ARE THE GOVERNMENT, BY DEFINITION! WHY NOT ENSURE THE FUTURE HEALTH AND SUSTAINABILITY OF OUR PLANET?

GRATITUDE TO ZAADZ OWN benjamin cziller http://benj.zaadz.com/ OF www.imagedriven.com FOR HIS GENEROUS CONTRIBUTION OF THE NEW ZERO POVERTY LOGO HE CREATED FOR http://endpoverty.meetup.com/40/ AN ARTICLE FROM POOR MAGAZINE! ADVENTURES IN THIRD-WORLD MALIBU By T.W.C. The year I began cleaning Dick Clark's windows and Mary Crosby's home, I lived alone in a three-bedroom bungalow on Broad Beach, the nicest beach in Malibu. I had pocketed a couple of thousand dollars, and I felt I might be able to make it through some heavy rains. When it began to rain, people began cancelling jobs and talking about waiting till after the rains (3 or 4 months). Then the front end of my '81 Subaru fell apart, piece by piece. After it had eaten up my entire savings replacing axles, brakes, calipers, rotors and things I knew nothing about, my only financial cushion was gone. Then my landlord gave me notice, and I had to get out. Without even the money to pay first month rent anywhere, I began to live in my car at the campground at Leo Carillo Beach on the western end of Malibu. It happened so fast, it took me awhile to accept the fact that I was homeless. It honestly doesn't sink in very rapidly. Even when you are driving around seeking a safe-looking place to park and lock yourself in for the night, you tell yourself it is only temporary. I discovered the trick to the campground after a few nights. There was an $8 charge normally, but if you came in after the rangers had gone and left before they arrived, you didn't have to pay. I still had the Crosby job, so I was earning enough each week for food and gas, but nothing more. I SPENT FOUR MONTHS LIVING IN THAT CAR, which seemed to shrink daily. I can't begin to tell you how depressing it was. It was raining a lot, and all I could do was sit or lie in the car, reading when there was light. I sincerely believed that one could find valuable understanding in every experience that life throws in our direction. As time passed, however, my search for some valuable lesson disintegrated into anger. I began to DRINK a lot of beer during that period to ease the pain. It occurred to me that some homeless people who become alcoholics don't necessarily follow the drink into homelessness: it becomes the quickest way to ignore what has happened, and dull the torturing thoughts which can make a bad situation one hell of a lot worse. At the campground, I realized that a lot of the people were there for an extended period, even though there were 14-day limits.MANY WERE FAMILIES WITH CHILDREN. and one or both parents would go off to work during the day. They were making enough to feed themselves, as long as they didn't have to pay five hundred to a thousand dollars rent. Many of them paid the daily fee, for which they received a campground with fireplace and public showers, and packed up and left for one night every 14, before coming back for another two weeks. I had been living in Malibu, California for over three years, and I had no idea that there was a whole community of people who lived at the campgrounds. Unfortunately, my deepest personal journey into the world of indigence was occurring under the eaves of the homes of some of Hollywood's wealthiest people. I had no desire for wealth. But cleaning Dick Clark's windows or Mary Crosby's home, and then getting in my car to wait for the sun to go down so I could park it for free and sleep in it, gave rise to emotions that I neither understood nor could control. I thought about how many of the places where I worked were just weekend homes or one-month-a-year homes. The rest of the time they stood empty - huge homes with massive bedrooms, restaurant-style kitchens, cathedral dining rooms, and totally empty. The owners were in Europe, or shooting a picture somewhere, or only came for two months in the summer. Hundreds upon hundreds of empty palaces, but not one with a spare bed for the hundreds of homeless people parked at the beach or squirreled away under the brush in one of Malibu's many canyons (where homeless people without cars lived). The ending of the rains that winter was like waking up from a nightmare. Jobs began reappearing, and finally I could afford the 80 dollars a week for which someone had offered me a room in their home. MY GOD,WHAT A LUXURY IT FELT TO SLEEP IN A BED AGAIN, and have a shower and toilet right next to the bedroom, and a kitchen to make some food in. Who cared if it was shared? I had my fill of locking myself in bathrooms of restaurants or office buildings to make a clean, private place to shit and then brush my teeth, sometimes getting rousted out by an impatient security guard. I was long ago weary of the loaf of bread, mayonnaise, mustard and cheese that traveled with me as lunch and dinner. THE NUMBER OF DAILY HUMILIATIONS THAT ACCOMPANY HOMELESSNESS ARE INNUMERABLE. "Poverty Sucks!" was the caption of a poster that hung framed on the walls of a few homes I worked in. It showed a man dressed in English riding attire, leaning against a Rolls Royce with the arrogant sneer of the priggishly rich on his face. Some people who chuckle over it have no concept of how deeply poverty sucks to those who stew in it, and the hatred of the affluent that impoverishment nourishes.

CARING IS SOMETHING PEOPLE FEEL, IT RADIATES WARMTH LIKE THE SUN! WHEN IT IS NOT THERE IT FEELS COLD LIKE WINTER PEOPLE WHO CARE ARE THE FUTURE CHANGE AGENTS IN OUR WORLD. WHEN YOU CARE PEOPLE KNOW IT INSTINCTIVELY. ONE OF TWO THINGS HAPPEN, 1. IT MAKES PEOPLE TRY HARDER BECAUSE THEY KNOW THEIR ACHEIVEMENTS REALLY MATTER TO SOMEONE, 2. OR THEY'RE INTIMIDATED AND RESENT YOU BECAUSE THEY THINK THEY CAN'T LIVE UP TO YOUR EXPECTATIONS, EITHER WAY PEOPLE FEEL YOUR CARING, IT IS THE SEED WHICH GROWS THE CHANGE. IF MORE PEOPLE CARED WE WOULD HAVE A HEALTHIER HAPPIER MORE PRODUCTIVE SOCIETY! HERE IN LIES THE SOLUTION: IT STARTS AT THE TOP! IN ANY BUSINESS, GROUP, SCHOOL, ORGANIZATION, COUNTRY,FAMILY THE LEADERSHIP HAS TO CARE! NOT JUST PRETEND, THEY HAVE TO WALK THE WALK, NOT JUST TALK THE TALK. AS A NATION IF WE FEEL THAT OUR GOVERNMENT CARES, GREAT THINGS CAN HAPPEN! THINK ABOUT THIS, WHO IN YOUR LIFE CARED ABOUT YOU? BELIEVED IN YOU, GAVE YOU A LEG UP, INSTLLED CONFIDENCE? IT COULD HAVE BEEN A TEACHER, MOTHER, FATHER,FOOTBALL COACH, GRANPARENT... IT MATTERED WHAT THEY THOUGHT BECAUSE YOU KNEW THEY CARED. IF OUR GOVERNMENT TRULY CARED WOULDN'T IT MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD? WHY THEN DOES IT FEEL COLD LIKE WINTER? WHAT'S MISSING IS JUST A LINK, LET'S AS A PEOPLE FORGE IT! LOVE ONE ANOTHER, EVERYBODY GET TOGETHER... SINCERELY, DIANA NICHOLSON. JOIN US! http://endpoverty.meetup.com/40/

THE UNITED STATES SHOULD BE WAGING A WAR AGAINST EXTREME POVERTY. WE ARE THE RICHEST NATION IN THE WORLD AND IN THIRTEEN CITIES THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO STILL LIVE IN EXTREME POVERTY! EXTREME POVERTY KILLS JUST AS MERCILESSLY AS ANY TERRORIST! THREE QUARTERS OF THE OUR TAX MONEY (THE MONEY WE ARE NICKEL AND DIMED FOR EVERY DAY!) GOES TO BUILDING ARMS AND PERPETUATING A SENSELESS WAR! IT IS THE MONEY THAT IS USED TO RUN OUR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. GOVERNMENT BY DEFINITION IS "WE THE PEOPLE" "WE THE PEOPLE HAVE A SAY " ALL WE HAVE TO DO IS STAND UNITED! ALL IT WILL TAKE IS A FRACTION OF FRACTION OF A FRACTION... OF OUR TAXES TO END EXTREME POVERTY! WE CAN USE SOME OF THE MONEY FOR SAVING LIVES, LOVE, AND CARING, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE? "WE THE PEOPLE!" NOT DOING SOMETHING! JOIN THE EVOLUTION WITH A SOLUTION, IT'S JUST THE BEGINING! http://endpoverty.meetup.com/40/ "We will have time to reach the Millennium Development Goals – worldwide and in most, or even all, individual countries – but only if we break with business as usual. We cannot win overnight. Success will require sustained action across the entire decade between now and the deadline. It takes time to train the teachers, nurses and engineers; to build the roads, schools and hospitals; to grow the small and large businesses able to create the jobs and income needed. So we must start now. And we must more than double global development assistance over the next few years. Nothing less will help to achieve the Goals." United Nations Secretary-General Kofi A. Annan Investing in Development Is The only way Task Force Reports The detailed analysis and recommendations the UN Millennium Project Task Forces are presented in a series of in-depth reports. To view any of the Task Force reports, please go to http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/index.htm Hunger Halving hunger by 2015: Education and Gender Equality Toward universal primary education: investments, incentives, and institutions Education and Gender Equality Taking action: achieving gender equality and empowering women Child Health and Maternal Health Who's got the power? Transforming health systems for women and children HIV/AIDS, Malaria, TB, and Access to Essential Medicines, Working Group on HIV/AIDS Combating AIDS in the developing world HIV/AIDS, Malaria, TB, and Access to Essential Medicines, Working Group on Malaria Coming to grips with malaria in the new millennium HIV/AIDS, Malaria, TB, and Access to Essential Medicines, Working Group on TB Investing in strategies to reverse the global incidence of TB HIV/AIDS, Malaria, TB, and Access to Essential Medicines, Working Group on Access to Essential Medicines Prescription for healthy development: increasing access to medicines Environmental Sustainability Environment and human well-being: a practical strategy Water and Sanitation Health, dignity, and development: what will it take? Improving the Lives of Slum Dwellers A home in the city Trade Trade for development Science, Technology and Innovation Innovation: applying knowledge in development As of Jan 1, 2007, the advisory work formerly carried out by the Millennium Project secretariat team is being continued by an MDG Support team integrated under the United Nations Development Program. PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT THIS MAN IN THE VIDEO HAS TO SAY! THE ORGANIZATION MILLENNIUM PROMISE IS STANDING UP AND DOING SOMETHING BECAUSE THEY CARE! JOIN THE REVOLUTION WE MAY HAVE A SOLUTION! http://endpoverty.meetup.com/40/ Sincerely Diana Nichoilson

People tell me: FIgHTING FoR THe "ENd Of EXTReME POVeRTY" Is YOuR FIgHT NoT MINe! My response to this is; "If we don't get a cap on extreme poverty it will quite literally be our downfall": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTX5kwr1mk0 "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil, for every one who is striking at the root". H D Thoreau (The root is Extreme Poverty) Jeffrey Sachs Interview On Extreme Poverty, Chicago Public radio http://audio.wbez.org/wv/2007/02/wv_20070213b.mp3 We Are Racing Against an Airborne Killer and What You don't know Will hurt You, It is Just the Begining! January 17, 2007 — The emergence of extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) — a form of TB that can be incurable — has set off alarms throughout the global health community. Called “Ebola on steroids” by some, XDR-TB is a particularly deadly threat to people with HIV/AIDS and is swelling to emergency proportions in Southern Africa. Unless steps are taken now to strengthen TB control efforts in Africa and throughout the world, these deadly strains will continue to spread and multiply — Undermining much of the recent progress in AIDS treatment scale-up and TB control, and posing a risk to the U.S. and members of our armed forces serving overseas. XDR-TB: A New Menace Emerges Poor TB treatment spawns multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and ineffective monitoring and treatment of MDR-TB gives rise to XDR-TB. XDR-TB strains raise the very real specter of a virtually untreatable disease. The Lancet reports an estimated 424,000 cases of MDR-TB occurred in 2004, and these drug-resistant strains have been found in nearly every nation. Without strong action now, we could soon see an explosion of XDR-TB cases. Already, XDR-TB has been identified in 26 countries on five continents — including the U.S. — and researchers worry this is just the tip of a lethal iceberg. XDR-TB: Threatening to Reverse Progress Against AIDS and TB The world caught a preview of this frightening scenario last summer when an outbreak of XDR-TB at one hospital in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa killed 52 out of 53 patients, most within a matter of weeks. All of those patients who were tested were HIV-positive, demonstrating that XDR-TB is a particularly deadly threat for people with AIDS. Even more worrisome is the fact that anti-retrovirals did not protect people with AIDS from the XDR-TB strain in the South Africa outbreak, underscoring the threat to progress made, and billions invested, in life-saving AIDS treatment scale-up in southern Africa (and in other regions where the two diseases collide, like Eastern Europe). The U.S. has invested billions of dollars to reduce deaths and sickness due to HIV/AIDS through the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Especially in southern Africa — an epicenter of the AIDS pandemic and now the site of a growing MDR/XDR-TB disaster — lives saved by AIDS program scale-up could easily turn into casualties of an XDR-TB epidemic. Basic TB control programs — which are among the highest impact health interventions in the world — have seen enormous treatment success in the last decade, with massive expansions particularly in Asia, and with programs in place across in Africa and almost every nation in the world. The question we must answer is: If a modest investment now will save lives in Africa, protect the enormous investments and progress made in AIDS and TB treatment to-date, help secure our health here at home from nearly incurable TB and protect U.S. personnel overseas, how can we afford to not act? The consequences of inaction are predictable, costly and dire. Time Is Running Out XDR-TB is deadly, transmitted by the most natural act in the world: breathing. Delaying action would be a huge and irreversible mistake. In the early 1990s, an outbreak of MDR-TB in New York City cost about $1 billion to deal with just some 300 cases. MDR-TB is treatable. An XDR-TB outbreak here at home would be measured not just in dollars lost, but in the tragedy of human lives needless taken. We cannot afford XDR-TB at home and we must not merely stand by as it ravages the lives of those abroad. >> TB is the leading killer of people with HIV/AIDS Sincerely, Diana Nicholson

"Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number - Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you - Ye are many - they are few." percy bysshe shelley At the moment aids is a tragic emergency along with darfur, malaria, tuberculosis...The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria is currently evaluating its grant portfolios, and it appears that despite receiving the smallest share of Global Fund resources, TB interventions are saving more lives than any other Global Fund investment. And this doesn't even capture the bigger picture — the many families who were not pushed over the brink into severe poverty thanks to TB treatment. What's next, maybe something worse There will always be an emergency As long as we ignore the root of the problem We could be hacking away at the branches forever until we deal with the root The Root Is Extreme Poverty America "We The People" should embrace our humanity against extreme poverty 15,000,000 million people die of poverty related causes every year Deaths from the war in Iraq; 750 / year (actually 600 / year (from http://icasualties.org/oif/stats.aspx) in combat, the rest in accidents etc.) 2 billion dollars a day spent on a senseless war 18,000 thousand children die every day from starvation Thirteen cities in the United States still have people living in extreme poverty SAVE THE HUMANS YOU CAN DO SOMETHING If "We the People" join together we can acheive great things! Our nation, our government just needs to be reminded of; "WHAT MATTERS MOST" The reality is it won't happen without the United States on board Without the United States help, who knows maybe the next coming plague born in an extremely impoverished region will be the one that leaves us to weak to hack away at. Dear Mr. President we are here to remind you of what matters most JOIN US! http://endpoverty.meetup.com/40/