Thursday, August 26, 2004
Mix-and-match
The cost of Bush's war:
A giant clock ticking the cost of the war in Iraq lit up in Times Square on Wednesday, making its debut by flashing $134.5 billion.
The amount on the clock will grow at a rate of $177 million a day, $7.4 million an hour and $122,820 per minute, said the advocacy group Project Billboard which put it up.
The other cost of Bush's war:
Some 1.3 million Americans slid into poverty in 2003 as the ranks of the poor rose 4 percent to 35.9 million, with children and blacks worse off than most, the government said on Thursday in a report that fueled Democratic criticism of President Bush.
Despite the economic recovery, the percentage of the U.S. population living in poverty rose for the third straight year to 12.5 percent -- the highest since 1998 -- from 12.1 percent in 2002, the Census Bureau said in its annual poverty report. The widely cited score card on the nation's economy showed one-third of those in poverty were children.
The number of U.S. residents without health-care coverage rose 1.4 million to 45 million last year, while incomes were essentially stagnant, the Census Bureau said.
The poverty line is set at an annual income of $9,573 or less for an individual, or $18,660 for a family of four with two children. Under that measure, a family would spend about a third of its income on food.
UPDATE: Two other costs of Bush's war can be found here and here. (Also here.)
posted by chris at 4:07 PM
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