'By the grace of God': How workers survive on $7.25 per hour
Wed Mar 6, 2013 4:27 AM EST


 
Slideshow: Life at minimum wage
 
David Friedman / NBC News
Meet Crystal Dupont and John White. Both are struggling to live on minimum wage, one at the start of her career and the other toward the end of his.


By Allison Linn, Staff Writer, NBC News

Crystal Dupont knows what it’s like to try to live on the federal minimum wage.

Dupont has no health insurance, so she hasn’t seen a doctor in two years. She’s behind on her car payments and has taken out pawn shop and payday loans to cover other monthly expenses. She eats beans and oatmeal when her food budget gets low.

When she got her tax refund recently, she used the money to get ahead on her light bill.

“I try to live within my means, but sometimes you just can’t,” said Dupont, 25. The Houston resident works 30 to 40 hours a week taking customer service calls, earning between $7.25 and $8 an hour. That came to about $15,000 last year.

It’s a wage she’s lived on for a while now, but just barely.

About 3.6 million Americans were earning at or below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour in 2012, and those weren’t all high school students flipping burgers.

About half of them were 25 or older, a little more than one-third were working full time and a little less than three-fourths had graduated from high school, according to the most recent government data.

A person working full time for minimum wage would take home an annual salary of $15,080. That’s a shade higher than the poverty threshold for a household containing two adults, and about $8,000 less than the poverty line for a family of four.

These are the workers who answer your customer service calls, deliver your pizzas, take care of your children, bag your groceries and serve your food.

President Barack Obama has called on Congress to give them a raise by increasing the minimum wage to $9 an hour by 2015.

Liberal-leaning economists say the move would help millions of workers without better prospects pay their bills. It would also pump more money into the economy through higher consumer spending, they argue.

“Unfortunately, for far too many people, the ladder that they’re on doesn’t have a whole lot of rungs,” said Doug Hall, director of the Economic Analysis and Research Network at the progressive Economic Policy Institute.

But conservative thinkers argue the move would hurt both the economy and low-wage workers. They say employers would have to cut benefits or jobs so they could afford to pay the higher wages to remaining employees. Some say the minimum wage already keeps people out of a job.

“There (are) the people who are already working and are getting the minimum wage, and there’s the other group of people who are not working because of the minimum wage,” said Mark Perry, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Caught in the middle of this debate are the workers themselves, millions of whom are preoccupied with the daily worries of getting by.

Workers like John White, 61.

“It’s by the grace of God that I am having ends meet,” said White, who was out of work for 20 months before he got his current, part-time job delivering pizzas.
White has applied for a number of jobs, but he worries that at his age he is often overlooked for younger, more highly trained workers.

March 6: John White, who only gets about eight hours of work per week delivering pizzas, would rather see a focus on job creation than raising the minimum wage.

He earns a base salary of $7.25 an hour when he is prepping or doing other chores, but that drops to $4.50 an hour when he goes out on a delivery because he is supposed to also earn tips.

The Department of Labor allows tipped employees to be paid a base salary that is below minimum wage, but the employer must be able to show the employee receives minimum wage when tips are included.

In the past few years, White has relied on help from his church when he couldn’t pay his electric or phone bill, or needed car repairs. His fellow parishioners also helped him pick up odd jobs.

He gets $135 a month in food stamps, now known as SNAP, but lost his state-subsidized health insurance after he got his pizza delivery job. A lifelong bachelor, he lives in a family home in Robesonia, Pa., that he and his sibling inherited.

White’s wages have fallen steadily over the past decade. He worked in a warehouse of a regional department store for nearly 14 years and was earning $12.50 an hour before he was let go in 2003 after a dispute with a co-worker.

He was unemployed for about half a year until he got a job as a security guard in 2004. He earned $10.60 an hour in that job, and held it for six years until he was let go in June of 2010.

He’s been in the part-time pizza delivery job for nearly a year, but his financial situation remains precarious.

He’s hoping to pick up more hours. But unlike steadier jobs he’s had in the past, he’s learned that with this kind of job, there’s no guarantee of stable hours.

“You don’t even get eight hours in one day, (and) you might be lucky to get eight hours in one week,” he said.

Hoping for a better future
Dupont didn’t expect her working life to start out this way. She graduated from high school in 2006, a year after her father passed away, got a job and moved out of the family home.

But Dupont soon found that she couldn’t earn enough money to live on her own. She also needed to be home to help her mother, who is disabled and can’t drive because she has seizures.

Without her father’s income, Dupont and her mother couldn’t keep up on house payments, and the home they’d lived in since 1998 went into foreclosure in 2009. They moved into an apartment and now live on Dupont’s salary and her mother’s disability benefits and food stamps.

In January, Dupont started taking classes at Houston Community College, where she is in the business technology and computer science programs.

She took out a $3,500 student loan but is hoping that she can use scholarships and grants, or perhaps find a second job, to avoid taking on more debt.

On her days off, she’ll sometimes spend six hours studying, working ahead two or three weeks in her classes because she enjoys it so much.

“It tells me that there’s more than what I’m doing now out there – there’s more to life than this,” she said.
 

 

Crystal Dupont talks about living on minimum wage. The 25-year-old answers customer service calls from the bedroom of her Houston apartment and hopes earning a computer science degree will pay off in lucrative technology job.

Conservative Latino Republican Ted Cruz, who was supported by the Tea Party, won the Republican Senate seat in November and is already making waves. (Photo/AP Images)

Opinion: Sen. Cruz might face birther problem, isn’t that ironic?

by Julio Ricardo Varela

5:00 am on 03/15/2013

I don’t even know how to react to the “renewed buzz” that Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz was born in Canada, but I will try my best, because as natural-born American citizen from Puerto Rico, I demand answers.
This all started when FOX’s Carl Cameron said on March 8 that Cruz would not be eligible to run for President in 2016 because he was born in Canada. Here is what Cameron said:

“And Rubio’s not the GOP’s only Latino up-and-comer. Texas freshman Ted Cruz’s feisty Senate debut had some Tea Partiers noting that in 2016, he’d have as much Senate experience as President Obama did when he first ran. But Cruz was born in Canada and is constitutionally ineligible.”

My first reaction was that I should make a call to Maricopa Country Sheriff Joe Arpaio to see if he can send his Cold Case Posse to Calgary to expose such un-American developments.
Then I thought I should reach out to the Breitbarts of the world to see what can be done and demand that the truth be told about Cruz’s Canadian past. However, it appears that Breitbart has already called out Cameron for false information, and has already written its constitutional interpretation of what it is to be a “natural-born citizen.” Besides, Sen. John McCain was born in the Panama Canal zone, and he was eligible.
You see, the U.S. Constitution does indeed leave it wide open when it states the following: “No Person except a natural-born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President…” Cruz’s defenders are quick to point out that Cruz’s mom is an American citizen, and even though his dad is Cuban, Cruz is an American citizen because his mom is one.
Does that sound familiar at all? Anyone?
Time to get those Air Canada tickets for the Cold Case Posse so that we as Americans are absolutely sure. I mean, the last thing I would want in this country is Canadian Cruz fooling us all in 2016. Next thing you know, a President Cruz would enact the Tim Horton Hockey Act of 2017, requiring that all young Americans under 12 buy ice skates and find their nearest frozen pond. The horror.
Let’s be real: the political hypocrisy is full tilt with this story. To think that the very same argument that President Obama made to “prove” he was born in Hawaii is now being used for Senator Cruz is beyond ironic. Cruz’s defenders all use his patriotism as proof that he is 100% American. Guess people have never seen the “Manchurian Candidate?”
A Cruz spokesperson sent via e-mail a response stating:

Sen. Cruz is a U.S. citizen by birth, having been born to an American-born mother. He is focused entirely on his new role in the Senate, and on working every day to represent Texas and defend conservative principles in the Senate.

Birtherism aside, the bigger hypocrisy is Cruz himself. Yes, the Latino “up and comer” Ted Cruz has already gone extreme in the immigration reform debate when he issued the following statement on January 28:

 I have deep concerns with the proposed path to citizenship. To allow those who came here illegally to be placed on such a path is both inconsistent with rule of law and profoundly unfair to the millions of legal immigrants who waited years, if not decades, to come to America legally.

Dude, you were born in Canada. Seriously?
This is the problem with Cruz: where would he be right now if his mother weren’t an American citizen? How easy would it been for him and his family to cross the Canadian border and thrive in the United States? What about the others who share his same last name who aren’t as lucky as the senator from Texas? Canadian Cruz is a classic example of the “I got mine” mentality. And that is perhaps the most un-American attitude of them all.

In this photo provided by the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Pope Francis celebrates his inaugural Mass with cardinals, inside the Sistine Chapel, at the Vatican, Thursday, March 14, 2013. (AP Photo/L’Osservatore Romano, ho)

Opinion: If Pope Francis revives Catholicism among US Latinos, it will be a miracle

by Raul A. Reyes

8:44 am on 03/15/2013


When the world glimpsed the white smoke emanating from the Sistine Chapel on Wednesday, millions of Catholics were ecstatic that a new pope had been elected. Then came the historic news that this pontiff was the first from the Americas. Latinos of all faiths were thrilled by the realization that Pope Francis, the new head of the Roman Catholic Church, was an Argentine known for his humble ways.

It remains to be seen, however, whether this pope can reverse the decline in the number of Latino Catholics in the U.S. Pope Francis is unlikely to be a reformer, and his social conservatism puts him at odds with most American Hispanics. He arrives at the helm of the church at a time of crisis – and even his charisma may not be enough to bring Latinos back to the pews.

Although Latino Catholics are jubilant about Pope Francis’ election, the fact is that their numbers are declining in the U.S. According to Gallup polling, between 2008 and 2012 the number of Hispanics who identify as Catholic fell from 58 to 54 percent. Latinos are drifting away from the church, often to more welcoming protestant denominations which are not as bound by rules and tradition.

What’s more, Pope Francis does not share the values of most American Hispanics. Many Latinos are quite liberal when it comes to the hot-button issues of abortion and same-sex marriage. In contrast, in 2012 then-Cardinal Bergoglio spoke out against abortion, saying it was ”never the right choice.” He has called same-sex marriage the work of the devil and a “destructive attack on God’s plan.” He has defended the Vatican’s stance on celibacy, birth control, and the ordination of women. So while there is much about Pope Francis that is new and exciting, at heart he is devoted to the traditional Catholic doctrine.

Then again, how could Pope Francis not be traditional? He was elected by one of the most conservative, secretive organizations in the world. The conclave does not choose rebels. Going against the grain of such a massive institution, in an official capacity, is virtually impossible. But for these same reasons, it will be an uphill climb for Pope Francis to prove to American Hispanics that the church remains relevant to their daily lives.

Pope Francis has an admirable history of devotion to the poor. He comes from the Jesuits, an order devoted to education and social justice. In 2007, he told a group of Latin American bishops that income inequality is a “social sin,” and he has criticized church leaders for their “hypocrisy” in not being more involved in their communities. Still, populist appeal has limits. Consider that in the pope’s native Argentina, 76 percent of the population identifies as Catholic, yet only about 25 percent regularly attends mass.

There are steps that Pope Francis can take to engage Hispanic Catholics. He can promote a more transparent church bureaucracy, by initiating policies to ensure that the abuse scandals and cover-ups are a thing of the past. And as the son of immigrants, he can be a voice in support of immigration reform and in defense of the undocumented. Such measures may not fill the pews on Sunday – but they will remind people that the church can be a powerful force for good.

Pope Francis has captured the attention of the world, and the hearts of millions of faithful Hispanic Catholics. Yet he is constrained by the very institution that has chosen him as its spiritual leader. Expecting him to lead a revival of Catholicism among U.S. Latinos may asking for a miracle that even he cannot perform.

Argentina’s gay community was upset about the news that former cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was chosen as Pope, recalling that years ago Bergoglio had spoken out strongly against gay marriage. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko, File)

Argentinian gays not thrilled with Pope Francis

by Associated Press

5:00 am on 03/16/2013


BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — While the appointment of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as pope has filled many in this deeply Catholic country with pride, members of the gay pride community are unsurprisingly less than enthusiastic with the Vatican’s choice.

Nearly three years before Argentina became known as home to the first Latin American pope, it made history as the first country in the region to approve gay marriage — an action that then-Cardinal Bergoglio actively opposed.

The gay community here remembers Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, as the man who launched “a war of God” against the move to approve gay marriage.

“He was the visible face of the Catholic Church’s opposition to equal marriage and he approached it from a fundamentalist position, posturing that he had to wage a war of God against what he considered a plan of the devil,” said Esteban Paulon, president of the Argentine Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transsexuals.

But that isn’t the whole story.

Before the Argentine Congress approved gay marriage in July 2010, some provinces in the country and individual judges had already begun allowing it.

With that reality and the pro-gay marriage stance of President Cristina Fernandez, the church had to decide what to do.

According to the new pope’s authorized biographer, Sergio Rubin, Bergoglio was politically wise enough to know the church couldn’t win a straight-on fight against gay marriage, so he urged his bishops to lobby for gay civil unions instead. It wasn’t until his proposal was shot down by the bishops’ conference that he publicly declared what Paulon described as the “war of God” — and the church lost the issue altogether.

Despite his conservatism, “Bergoglio is known for being moderate and finding a balance between reactionary and progressive sectors,” Paulon said. “When he came out strongly against gay marriage, he did it under pressure from the conservatives.”

The first Argentine couple to be married, before the national law was passed, were Alex Freyre and Jose Maria Di Bello in December 2009, in the southern city of Ushuaia, province of Tierra del Fuego. Their union was made possible by a judge who declared unconstitutional two articles of the civil code limiting marriage to that between a man and a woman, and the province’s governor, who backed the judge and issued a decree allowing gay marriage. Shortly afterward, however, a judge declared the marriage “nonexistent.”

Freyre, executive director of the Buenos Aires AIDS Foundation, wrote on his Twitter account this week that Pope Francis ”knows that gay marriage isn’t the end of the world or the species.”

RELATED: Pope Francis effect: Energized Hispanics may return to Catholicism, become Church leaders


“Now he can say it in Latin.”

In another Tweet, he remarked, “Maybe the fact that the Vatican has chosen a pope from a country where gay marriage is allowed is a sign that they get it?”

Freyre went on to urge the new pope ”to renovate the church so that it resumes a path of spirituality.”

Paulon also urged Pope Francis to promote true reform in the church.

“He has seen that Argentina hasn’t suffered any commotion with the gay-marriage law. … It would be difficult for him to now argue that it leads to chaos or discord. It hasn’t destroyed the family, and the anti-Christ hasn’t arrived.”

But Paulon is also realistic.

He recalls, for example, that when Bergoglio served as head of the Argentine conference of bishops for several years, he was a die-hard opponent of abortion, and argued against sex-education laws that permit free access to contraceptives and allow Argentines to determine their gender based on their self-identity instead of their biology.

In any case, analysts note, any real reform of these issues would not be up to Pope Francis alone, but would rise or fall only after an internal Vatican debate between diverse factions.

Bergoglio is a man “open to dialogue,” said Adolfo Perez Esquivel, one of Argentina’s principal human rights leaders and a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Perez said he hoped the new pope would “form teams that can help him effect the changes that the church really needs.”

Iran launches destroyer in Caspian Sea

 Ebrahim Nourozi / AFP - Getty Images FILE
Iran's first domestically made destroyer Jamaran sails in the Gulf on February 21, 2009.


By Craig Giammona, NBC News

With President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad looking on, Iran launched a domestically built destroyer in the Caspian Sea Sunday, the Iranian media reported.

The event marked first time Iran has launched a major warship in the oil-rich region, according to the Associated Press.

The 1420-ton warship, which is longer than a football field and can sail at 30 knots with a 20,000-horsepower engine, was put in the water near the northern port city of Bandar Anzali, about 150 miles northwest of Tehran, the Iranian media said.

The ship, named Jamaran 2, is equipped with advanced artillery and torpedo systems, can carry surface to air missiles and has a helicopter landing pad.

It was described by state media as a "symbol of the Islamic Republic's capability and strength that conveys the message of peace and friendship to the Caspian Sea states," according to Press TV, an English-language media outlet based in Tehran.

Press TV said the ship will formally join the Iranian navy in six months, after the completion of final tests.

Iran previously launched a version of the Jamaran destroyer in the Persian Gulf in 2010, AP reported.

In the last two decades, Iran has been building a self-sufficient military, reportedly producing its own jet fighters, tanks, missiles and light submarines as well as torpedoes.

Both Israel and the United States have not ruled out military strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities. The West suspects Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, a charge Iran denies.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to press President Obama about a potential strike on Iran during a meeting between the leaders scheduled for Wednesday in Israel.

Late-winter storms could bring more snow to Northeast

 Terry Prather / AP
Snow falls early Sunday, March 17, 2013, as an Amish family travels to church services near Maysville, Ky.


By Craig Giammona, NBC News

A pair of storm systems that were moving across the country on Sunday could join forces to bring snow to the Northeast — even as the official start of spring approaches next week.

One storm was spreading snow showers from the Cascades and northern Rockies into the northern Plains and was expected to bring snow to the Dakotas, Minnesota and western Wisconsin tonight, the Weather Channel said.


There was also a chance of snow in West Virgina, southwest Pennsylvania and northwestern Virginia Sunday night, according to meteorologists.

Another storm system was moving over the Ohio Valley Sunday and was expected to continue moving east, joining the northern system to produce a "fairly potent storm off the New England coast Tuesday," the Weather Channel said.

In addition, severe thunderstorms were in Monday's forecast from southern Ohio down into Kentucky, Tennessee and parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and northeast Texas.

Snow was expected to close in on parts of the Northeast as the work week gets underway. The Weather Channel said the best chance for accumulating snow and freezing rain was in New England and other interior sections of the Northeast.

Snow is also possible on the I-95 corridor from Washington to Philadelphia Sunday night and from New York to Boston Monday night.

The National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration called for a chance of rain in New York City Monday, with showers also forecast for Tuesday. NOAA also forecasted snow early Tuesday morning in Boston, but little accumulation is expected as the precipitation turns to sleet and rain during the day.

Wednesday marks the first official day of spring.

Earthquakes turn water into gold

 Heritage Auctions
The tyrannosaur of the minerals, this gold nugget in quartz weighs more than 70 ounces (2 kilograms).

By Becky Oskin, OurAmazingPlanet

Earthquakes have the Midas touch, a new study claims.

Water in faults vaporizes during an earthquake, depositing gold, according to a model published in the March 17 issue of the journal Nature Geoscience. The model provides a quantitative mechanism for the link between gold and quartz seen in many of the world's gold deposits, said Dion Weatherley, a geophysicist at the University of Queensland in Australia and lead author of the study.

When an earthquake strikes, it moves along a rupture in the ground — a fracture called a fault. Big faults can have many small fractures along their length, connected by jogs that appear as rectangular voids. Water often lubricates faults, filling in fractures and jogs.

About 6 miles (10 kilometers) below the surface, under incredible temperatures and pressures, the water carries high concentrations of carbon dioxide, silica and economically attractive elements like gold.

Shake, rattle and gold
During an earthquake, the fault jog suddenly opens wider. It's like pulling the lid off a pressure cooker: The water inside the void instantly vaporizes, flashing to steam and forcing silica, which forms the mineral quartz, and gold out of the fluids and onto nearby surfaces, suggest Weatherley and co-author Richard Henley, of the Australian National University in Canberra.

While scientists have long suspected that sudden pressure drops could account for the link between giant gold deposits and ancient faults, the study takes this idea to the extreme, said Jamie Wilkinson, a geochemist at Imperial College London in the United Kingdom, who was not involved in the study.

"To me, it seems pretty plausible. It's something that people would probably want to model either experimentally or numerically in a bit more detail to see if it would actually work," Wilkinson told OurAmazingPlanet.

Previously, scientists suspected fluids would effervesce, bubbling like an opened soda bottle, during earthquakes or other pressure changes. This would line underground pockets with gold. Others suggested minerals would simply accumulate slowly over time.

Weatherley said the amount of gold left behind after an earthquake is tiny, because underground fluids carry at most only one part per million of the precious element. But an earthquake zone like New Zealand's Alpine Fault, one of the world's fastest, could build a mineable deposit in 100,000 years, he said.

Surprisingly, the quartz doesn't even have time to crystallize, the study indicates. Instead, the mineral comes out of the fluid in the form of nanoparticles, perhaps even making a gel-like substance on the fracture walls. The quartz nanoparticles then crystallize over time. [Gold Quiz: From Nuggets to Flecks]

Even earthquakes smaller than magnitude 4.0, which may rattle nerves but rarely cause damage, can trigger flash vaporization, the study finds.

"Given that small-magnitude earthquakes are exceptionally frequent in fault systems, this process may be the primary driver for the formation of economic gold deposits," Weatherley told OurAmazingPlanet.

The hills have gold
Quartz-linked gold has sourced some famous deposits, such as the placer gold that sparked the 19th-century California and Klondike gold rushes. Both deposits had eroded from quartz veins upstream. Placer gold consists of particles, flakes and nuggets mixed in with sand and gravel in stream and river beds. Prospectors traced the gravels back to their sources, where hard-rock mining continues today.

But earthquakes aren't the only cataclysmic source of gold. Volcanoes and their underground plumbing are just as prolific, if not more so, at producing the precious metal. While Weatherley and Henley suggest that a similar process could take place under volcanoes, Wilkinson, who studies volcano-linked gold, said that's not the case.

"Beneath volcanoes, most of the gold is not precipitated in faults that are active during earthquakes," Wilkinson said. "It's a very different mechanism."

Understanding how gold forms helps companies prospect for new mines. "This new knowledge on gold-deposit formation mechanisms may assist future gold exploration efforts," Weatherley said.

In their quest for gold, humans have pulled more than 188,000 tons (171,000 metric tons) of the metal from the ground, exhausting easily accessed sources, according to the World Gold Council, an industry group.

Pope Francis describes wish for 'poor church for the poor'

Pope Francis said Saturday he wanted "a poor church for the poor" in his first remarks to the media since he was elected leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics. NBC's Anne Thompson reports.
 
By Claudio Lavanga and Marian Smith, NBC News

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Francis said Saturday he wanted "a poor church for the poor" in his first remarks to the media since he was elected leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics.

Wearing simple white robes and plain black shoes, he explained how he decided to name himself after St. Francis of Assisi: When he reached two-thirds of the vote in the conclave, a fellow cardinal embraced him and said, "Don't forget the poor."

"That's when I thought of Francis of Assisi," he said. "And that is how the name came to me: Francis of Assisi, the man of poverty, of peace."


He added: "This is what I want, a poor church for the poor."

His comments underscored previous indications of his preference for austerity -- he did not sit on the papal throne to receive the cardinals after being elected, he took a bus with the rest of the cardinals back to their hotel and he was pictured Friday paying the bill himself.




There were some 5,600 accredited journalists – including some children and family members – packed into the Vatican's Paul VI Hall, the UK's Sky News reported.

The 76-year-old pontiff praised reporters for their coverage of the historic transition of the papacy.

"The role of mass media has become essential in modern times, so thank you...you have worked hard," he said to applause.

Pope Francis, formerly Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was set to meet Emeritus Pope Benedict at his retreat south of Rome next week, the Holy See said in a statement. It will be the first time in modern history that a newly elected pope has met his predecessor.

Benedict resigned from the papacy on Feb. 28, the first to do so in 600 years. Francis, an Argentine and the first non-European pope, was elected on Wednesday.

Pope Francis is also expected to meet Argentine President Christina Kirchner next week ahead of his Installation Mass on Tuesday, the Vatican said.

More than five thousand journalists joined Pope Francis for his first news conference since being elected Pope. NBC's Vatican analyst George Weigel reports.

The two have a combative history over issues such as same-sex marriage, which Bergoglio described as "a plan to destroy God's plan." Kirchner, meanwhile, said his remarks were "reminiscent of the times of the Inquisition."

On Friday, the Vatican denied "anti-clerical" accusations that Pope Francis had failed to protect priests during the so-called "dirty war" waged by Argentine dictators more than 30 years ago.

"We have every reason to affirm that these accusations are not reliable and there is no reason for them today to cast a shadow over the new pope," Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said at a briefing.

A second spokesman, Father Tom Rosica said the accusations by an Argentine journalist amounted to a political smear campaign against the new pope.

"They reveal left-wing elements, anti-clerical elements that are used to attack the Church," Rosica said. "They must be firmly and clearly denied."

Bergoglio was not a cardinal, or even a bishop, during the time in question but supervisor of Jesuit priests in Argentina.

NBC News' Alastair Jamieson and Ian Johnston, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

The sister of Pope Francis told reporters that her brother was in love with a girl when he was young and went to church to pray about it. She said it was at that moment that he "felt the call" to serve the church. NBC's Keir Simmons reports.

Submitted By: Ray Bolognone

Purple haze over Maui

Submitted By: Nathan Heidt

Bryce Canyon, UT.

Submitted By: Martin Vavra

Lightning over the Atlantic Ocean, Myrtle Beach, SC

Submitted By: Parag Bhimani

The Louvre, Paris France

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Chinese Maiden in Guilin

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No Sharing!

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Desert Vignette-Guadalupe Mtns NP, TX

Tourism Ireland

The Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx as they will appear for St. Patrick's Day 2013.

Courtesy Tourism Ireland

The Sydney Opera House will go green once again this year for St. Patrick's Day. The "greening" activity is part of a global initiative by Tourism Ireland.

Courtesy Tourism Ireland

The water rushing over Niagara Falls glows green for St. Patrick's Day.

Tourism Ireland

A rendering of what the welcome to Las Vegas sign will look like.

 

 

Impromptu appearance, off-the-cuff address: Pope's Sunday surprises delight

"It's nice to be here to say hi to you all," said Pope Francis to a crowd of thousands gathered in St. Peter's Square Sunday. In his first Angelus blessing of his pontificate, the pope spoke about forgiveness. NBC's Keir Simmons reports.

By Frances D'Emilio, The Associated Press

VATICAN CITY -- A crowd of more than 150,000 people roared in delight as Pope Francis made the first Sunday window appearance of his papacy in St. Peter's Square.

Breaking with tradition, Francis delivered off-the-cuff remarks, about God's power to forgive, instead of reading from a written speech.

He also spoke only in Italian — beginning with "buon giorno" (Good day) and ending with "buon pranzo" (Have a good lunch) — instead of greeting the faithful in several languages as recent predecessors had done.

In just five days, Francis' straightforward, spontaneous style has become immediate hallmark of his papacy.  

PhotoBlog: See images of Pope Francis's first Sunday on the job
 
Earlier, he began his first Sunday as pontiff by making an impromptu appearance to the public from a side gate of the Vatican, startling passersby and prompting cheers, then kept up his simple, spontaneous style by delivering a brief, unscripted homily at the Vatican's tiny parish church.

Dressed only in white cassock, Francis waved to the crowd in the street outside St. Anna's Gate and before entering the church, which serves Vatican City State's hundreds of residents, he shook hands of the parishioners and kissed babies.

In keeping with his informal style, Francis then went over to the chief of his security detail and appeared to indicate he wanted to greet two priests in the crowd, who approached and embraced him.

Slideshow: Pope Francis: His life before the papacy

 Marcos Brindicci / Reuters
Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina was elected to lead the Catholic Church following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI.

The impromptu appearance came more than two hours ahead of his first appointment of his papacy with the faithful from his studio window overlooking St. Peter's Square.

Benedict XVI gave his last window blessing on Sunday, Feb. 24. Four days later, Benedict went into retirement, the first pontiff to do so in 600 years.

 

Francis, the first Latin American pope, was elected on March 13.

Giant video screens were set up so that the overspill crowd could have a close-up look at Francis. Fifty medical teams were set up in case people fell or felt ill in the rush and crush to see Francis.

After the Mass, the pope stepped out jauntily from St. Anna's Church and waved to a crowd of hundreds kept behind barriers across the street, and then greeted the Vatican parishioners one by one. One young man patted the pope on the back in an indication of the informality that from the first moment of his papacy has been evident.

"Francesco, Francesco," children shouted his name in Italian from the street. As he patted one little boy on the head, he asked "Are you a good boy?" and the child nodded. "Are you sure?" the pope quipped.

In his homily, Francis spoke only five minutes, saying the core message of God is "that of mercy." He said God has an unfathomable capacity to pardon, and noted that people are often harder on each other than God is towards sinners.

Pope Francis said Saturday he wanted "a poor church for the poor" in his first remarks to the media since he was elected leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics. NBC's Anne Thompson reports.

The Issue:' Chained CPI' an answer to deficit or unfair to seniors and other vulnerable groups?

President Barack Obama held a series of Capitol Hill meetings last week to discuss ways of cutting the budget deficit and other issues. Pictured here with Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. UPI/Drew Angerer/Pool
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Published: March. 17, 2013 at 4:30 AM

 By MARCELLA S. KREITER,

The latest mantra in budget rhetoric, "chained CPI," has become a rallying point for seniors and organizations like AARP, which see the change in calculating inflation for entitlement and other programs floated by President Obama as having a disproportionate impact on the elderly.

The overall Consumer Price Index climbed 1.7 percent in 2012, below the 2 percent target set by the Federal Reserve. Excluding food and fuel, the so-called core index, inflation was 1.9 percent, the Labor Department said. Labor said Friday both overall and core prices for February were up 2 percent from last year.

An experimental index set up by the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates a much higher rate of inflation on things for which seniors spend their money.

The problem with chained CPI as applied to Social Security increases is that it is tied to the spending habits of workers, not retirees who are apt to spend a larger portion of their income for housing and healthcare, the two cost areas that have been going up the most quickly. Healthcare inflation last year rose 3.7 percent and housing inflation was pegged at 2.1 percent.

"The Bureau of Labor Statistics' experimental elderly index more accurately tracks the consumption patterns of the elderly, and it shows that inflation for seniors is actually higher, not lower, than the current measure," said Nicole Woo, director of domestic policy for the non-partisan Center for Economic and Policy Research. "If accuracy is indeed a concern, the BLS could construct a full elderly index for annual Social Security cost-of-living adjustments."

The Heritage Foundation estimates the CPI overstates inflation by a full percentage point. But AARP estimates, based on seniors' spending habits, the CPI already underreports inflation 0.2 percentage points a year. Chained CPI would add 0.3 percentage points a year to that, picking seniors' pockets by about $112 billion annually and compounding over time.

"Using a more accurate inflation index would save Social Security about $112 billion over the next 10 years," David C. John said in a Heritage Foundation blog post. "That is not nearly enough to fix Social Security's massive deficits, but it is a good start. Doing nothing will result in 22 percent to 25 percent across-the-board benefits cuts for everyone who is receiving benefits."

"The adoption of the chained CPI is likely to further erode seniors' standard of living," AARP says on its website. "A chained CPI makes sense only in a budget-driven world where accuracy takes a back seat to benefit cuts for the purposes of deficit reduction."

AARP further explains: "Look at it this way: The COLA [cost of living adjustment] for this year was 1.7 percent. If your monthly Social Security check was $1,250 last year, it increased to $1,271.25 this year.

"With the chained CPI, you would be getting $1,267.50 -- or $3.75 less a month and $45 less a year. Again, that might not seem like a big reduction, but if the COLA is the same next year, the difference increases to $7.61 a month and $91.32 for the year.

"You start to get the picture. The gap accelerates and begins looking like real money. If you're 62 and take early retirement this year, by age 92 -- when healthcare costs can skyrocket and more than 1 in 6 older Americans lives in poverty -- you'll be losing a full month of income every year."

Nonetheless, House Minority Leader Nancy Peolsi, D-Calif., said last week she'd be willing to look at chained CPI if it can be assured "it doesn't hurt the poor and the very elderly."

What doesn't get talked about as loudly is chained CPI will also have an effect on tax rates, easing people into higher brackets over time and raising more revenue without lawmakers having to utter the dreaded words: tax increase.

Chained CPI has its backers: The Washington Post editorial board, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and the Heritage Foundation among them, along with various bipartisan congressional commissions like Simpson-Bowles, Domenici-Rivlin and the Gang of Six.

Chained CPI attempts to take into account consumer reaction to price shifts. While the regular CPI will reflect a consumer shift to cheaper apples if the price of a premium variety goes up too much, chained CPI will account for what is known as substitution bias, a consumer shift to oranges if the price of apples gets too steep.

The Iowa Alliance for Retired Americans says the substitution idea falls apart when it comes to healthcare costs.

"These costs cannot simply be substituted with a cheaper version. A senior cannot just substitute triple bypass surgery with a double because it's cheaper," the alliance notes. "The chained CPI ignores this reality and instead is a backdoor way of trying to balance the budget on the backs of our nation's seniors."

The Moment of Truth Project estimates switching to chained CPI for all inflation-indexed government programs and the tax code would reduce the deficit through 2022 by $236 billion. That's pretty close to the 2010 Congressional Budget Office 10-year estimate of a $221 billion.

The Center for Economic and Policy Research said in December switching to the chained CPI "would result in cuts to already modest Social Security benefits. As well, the chained CPI is likely not an accurate measure of the inflation rate seen by seniors. Finally, ... the chained CPI would result in a proportionately larger increase in income taxes for lower- and middle-income Americans than for those in the top tax brackets.

"The change to the chained CPI would also cut benefits for veterans, low-income children, people with disabilities and many others who rely on government programs."

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said though on first blush it looks like chained CPI would have a disproportionate impact on those earning $10,000 to $20,000 a year, changes to the tax code could take care of that. The Tax Policy Center estimates people making more than $100,000 annually actually would bear 60 percent of the impact in higher taxes.

Leading House Democrat says job creation, not deficit cutting, is immediate priority

By Tom Curry, National Affairs Writer, NBC News

As both the House and Senate work on budget blueprints for the new fiscal year, Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, emphasized on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday that for his party “our priority is job growth” -- not cutting the debt or annual budget deficits.

“Right now our big problem is to sustain the economic recovery. We’ve seen momentum in the job market and the last thing we want do right now is to put the brakes on that,” Van Hollen told NBC’s David Gregory. “In fact one half of this year’s deficit is due to unemployment.”

Reps. Chris Van Hollen and Kevin McCarthy visit Meet the Press to discuss the future of the budget battle and what each member's party will request for an agreement.

According to the most recent report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 12 million Americans were unemployed and seeking work in February, while another 885,000 weren’t looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them.

“What the president is saying is our focus right now should be to get people back to work, sustain the recovery – and then reduce the deficit in a measured, balanced way,” Van Hollen said. He added that President Barack Obama’s budget proposal for the new fiscal year which begins on Oct. 1 will put budget deficits “on a sustained, downward trajectory.”

Appearing alongside Van Hollen, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican Whip, complained that “the Democrats’ budget never balances,” while his party’s Fiscal Year 2014 blueprint will achieve a balance of spending and revenues by the end of the ten-year forecasting period.

“The president has a different belief than we do. He believes deficits don’t matter. We do,” McCarthy said.

The California Republican defended the House Republicans’ budget plan which assumes that Obama’s health care overhaul, the 2010 Affordable Care Act, will be repealed. “Budgets are blueprints and priorities,” he explained. “We think Obamacare should be repealed. A majority of Americans agree with us. But we also think tax reform should happen so you can grow the economy.”

McCarthy added that persistently high federal debt would crowd out private sector borrowing and inhibit the growth of businesses.

Van Hollen said that the Democrats’ proposal would eventually achieve a balanced budget “out in the future, around 2040.” But he reiterated that for now the urgent need is job creation. The House Republican budget plan “will slow job growth at exactly the wrong time,” he contended.

Meanwhile on ABC’s This Week, House Speaker John Boehner again rejected the idea of additional tax increases, on top of the ones that Obama signed into law on Jan 2.

“The president believes that we have to have more taxes from the American people. We’re not going to get very far,” Boehner said. “The president got his tax hikes….. The talk about raising revenue is over. It’s time to deal with the spending problem.”

Boehner agreed with Obama’s recent remark that the federal government doesn’t face an imminent debt crisis. “We do not have an immediate debt crisis – but we all know that we have one looming,” Boehner said. “And we have one looming because we have entitlement programs that are not sustainable in their current form.”

Another prominent Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee said on Fox News Sunday that Republicans “would be glad to look at tax reform that generates additional revenues. And that doesn’t mean increasing rates, it means closing loopholes, and that also means arranging our tax system so that we have economic growth. And I think we have been saying that since day one.”